BENEDICT XVI: NEWS, PAPAL TEXTS, PHOTOS AND COMMENTARY

For a new world:
The Pope's insistence
on the question of God
Editorial
by Carlo Di Cicco
Translated from
the 1/1/2010 issue of



In the year that has just passed, the question of God seems to have returned to actuality. His traces had seemed to have disappeared or become confused with an endless list of new idols on whom even the most evolved societies seem to confer celebrity so easily.

But no one can guarantee that the return of God to debates, nor even his 'presence' on the Internet, means his friendly reception into the history of our day and in the life of religions themselves.

Benedict XVI - who is without doubt the most passionate and convinced advocate of a renewed encounter with God that can make the earth and the homes of men more livable - invites us above all to take reasonable steps towards a God who is not generic, but who was incarnated in Jesus Christ.

Thus, his Pontificate is showing itself increasingly to be a bridge between God and modernity. The Pontiff, above every other concern, has opened in the Church a new attention to the things of the spirit.

Evangelization - announcing the Gospel of Jesus, Savior of the World - takes place through the practice of charity. Papa Ratzinger has pointed out, in every phase of his Magisterium and with every kind of interlocutor, the need based on reason to actualize the encounter of contemporary society with God, a decisive point even for the future of mankind.

Opening with the use of the senses a broader horizon of progressive inquiry into the cosmos helps to find new harmonies in the universe which, in small steps that have been registered by science even in the year just past, appears to us more and more known.

Benedict XVI's belief that a new era for humanity is facilitated by man's friendly encounter with God is a perspective that is far from banal.

To reason about God makes man more careful, it liberates him from ire and from the will to dominate, because it teats both his greatness as well as his limitations.

This sense of limitation is helpful to scientists, politicians and churchmen, as the Pope continually reminds himself and everyone. Just as he repeats thorough various formulations a basic concept: to be Christian is to live as the family of God.

Familiarity with God is a gift open to everyone. And God - at least, the God shown by Jesus, the one we invoke in praying 'Our Father' - should not be brandished against anyone. Because to be with God cannot be reduced to using God.

Everyone who wants to may draw up a balance sheet and evaluate the actions of Papa Ratzinger, but it would be necessary to soar as high as he does, without getting bogged down in internal diatribes that are also partial, because they lose sight of the whole picture.

Among the many significant events that the Church experienced in the year just past - one can just think of the Synodal assembly dedicated to Africa with its prophetic power that Benedict XVI himself has noted - two deserve special reflection, as signs that reveal a plan and a method that, like seeds, could flower.

In the first place, one must reread the letter of March 10, 2009, addressed by the Pope to the bishops of the Catholic Church "on the remission of excommunication from the four bishops ordained by Archbishop Lefebvre".

For the circumstances that gave birth to it, for its tone, for the unexpected and exceptional gesture that it was, and for the questions it touched upon, it cannot be easily shelved. Indeed, it lays bare the burning issues that are disquieting the Church

The return to a peaceful confrontation among Catholics is, in fact, capitally important in order to understand the authentic sense of Vatican II without without recriminations and without instrumentalization - but rather, accepting it, with all its consequences, as a true Pentecost in our time.

Benedict XVI reads the disquiet that degenerates to harsh confrontation as a manifestation of the gradual attenuation and disappearance of God from the horizon of men. Discord among believers weakens their credibility as witnesses to Christ's message.

In the second place, it is impossible not to recall the encyclical Caritas in veritate, in which, while effectively expressing the love and respect of the Church for secular society and its autonomy, the Pope has chosen to deal with economics, one of the central problems with the present international order.

Casting seeds for a new economy, the encyclical is open to a very wide circle of persons and peoples. The global crisis has shown very concretely how much the world economic order affects the life of individuals, besides its effects on international politics and within individual nations.

If the economy goes wrong, everyone suffers, and the poor suffer worse. From the disorder that is created under the skies, with its cyclical crises, it is possible to find a way out, if man learns to look at the skies again.

Because the God who lives in heaven and that Benedict XVI has been 'showing' to everyone, also lived once on earth among men. He will help men to overcome through effective solidarity the repugnance for each other that man, forgetting fraternity, drags him down and that he feeds continually - thinking up and raising, with incredible imagination, walls and fences of every kind.

Here's a belated post that I am inserting for the record because I suppose it reflects the common secular view among Jews about the Holy Father and the Jews, and of course, about Pius XII.... To much of it, the kindest comment is "YADA, YADA, YADA', since it's the same irrational emotion-fuelled drivel and cavalier disregard for objective fact that we have been hearing for the past five years.


After Pius move, Pope Benedict
practices delicate Jewish dance
By Ruth Ellen Gruber



ROME, Dec. 31 (JTA) -- For at least the third time in his papacy, Pope Benedict's XVI is doing the Jewish dance that takes him one step back, one step forward.

The step back came when Benedict made a move in mid-December to bring Holocaust-era Pope Pius XII a bit closer to sainthood. The step forward will come in mid-January, when Benedict visits Rome's main synagogue -- a trip planned long before Benedict's move on Pius.

The question is what impact the visit will have on ruffled Catholic-Jewish relations.

"It is an important event, a milestone in the dialogue," Rome’s chief rabbi, Riccardo Di Segni, told Vatican Radio about the planned synagogue visit. "We have great expectations for what it can mean in terms of the general climate."

"If we stop at the things that divide us deeply, we won't get anywhere," he said. "The differences are important to move forward."

Benedict's visit -- set to take place Jan. 17, the Catholic Church's annual Day of Dialogue with Judaism -- will come a month after he recognized the religiously defined "heroic virtues" of both John Paul II and Pius XII, putting them one step away from beatification.

The Polish-born John Paul made fostering Catholic-Jewish relations a hallmark of his papacy. But critics have long accused Pius of having turned a blind eye to Jewish suffering during the Holocaust. The Vatican and other supporters say Pius acted behind the scenes to help Jews.

Gary Krupp, a Jew and the head of Pave the Way, a nonsectarian foundation that promotes interfaith dialogue, suggested in a recent Op-Ed in The New York Post that criticism of Pius XII began in the 1960s as part of a Soviet smear campaign against the Catholic Church, which at the time was profoundly anti-Communist. The Anti-Defamation League responded with a call on the Pope to disregard Krupp's "flawed" evidence.

Scholars and Jewish organizations for years have called on the Vatican to fully open its secret archives in order to clarify the issue before Pius is moved any further toward sainthood.

[In the interest of fair reporting, the reporter should at least mention that the Vatican is working to do this and that it expects to be able to open the full Pius XII archives in five years.]

Benedict's decision to green-light Pius's advance drew widespread criticism from Jewish bodies. While many Jewish organizational leaders said it was up to the Vatican to decide whom to honor with sainthood, they renewed calls for the archives to be opened.

"As long as the archives of Pope Pius about the crucial period 1939 to 1945 remain closed, and until a consensus on his actions -- or inaction -- concerning the persecution of millions of Jews in the Holocaust is established, a beatification is inopportune and premature," the World Jewish Congress’ president, Ronald Lauder, said in a statement.

The Vatican responded with a conciliatory statement saying Benedict's move was in no way "a hostile act towards the Jewish people" and should not be considered "an obstacle on the path of dialogue between Judaism and the Catholic Church."

The uproar over Pius XII is not the first episode where the Vatican had to backpedal, clarify or explain a Pope Benedict decision that angered Jews.

In 2008, Jewish protests over the reinstatement of a Good Friday Latin prayer that appeared to call for the conversion of the Jews led the Vatican to change some of the prayer's wording. Still, Italian rabbis were so angry over the issue that they boycotted participation in last year's January 17 Day of Dialogue with Judaism.

One year ago, the Pope's lifting of a 1988 excommunication order against Richard Williamson, a renegade Bishop who turned out to be a Holocaust denier, sparked outrage among political figures and mainstream Catholics as well as Jews.

Williamson was one of four bishops rehabilitated as part of the Pope's effort to bring their ultra-conservative movement, the Society of St. Pius X, back within the mainstream Catholic fold.

The Vatican ordered Williamson to recant and admitted that the Pope had not been aware of his views -- despite a video of Williamson that was widely circulated on YouTube [only after the outcry!]

The Pope himself issued a strong message of support to a visiting delegation from the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations and announced to the group the plans for his May 2009 visit to Israel, his first to the Jewish state as Pontiff.

Analysts said Benedict's move on Pius is part of the Pope's effort to shore up conservative forces within the Church. [A fallacious hypothesis which makes Benedict XVI no better than a secular politician looking to strengthen his base - especially if one considers that 'conservative' Catholics, among all Catholics, are those who need the least shoring up, since they are the firmest and most orthodox of the faithful.]

"The Pope apparently has chosen to balance his unquestionable commitment to the Catholic Church's good relations with world Judaism with his commitment to recuperating the religious right wing of Catholicism," said Lisa Palmieri Billig, the American Jewish Committee's liaison to the Vatican. "Obviously his path is strewn with warring obstacles."

Rabbi Gary Bretton-Granatoor, an expert in interfaith relations and the vice president of the World Union for Progressive Judaism, said, "The great struggle of this moment is shoring up the most traditional elements of his church as he fights the growing secularization and Islamification of the European stage, which is right before his eyes."

Bretton-Granatoor said that the visit to the synagogue in Rome is "far more telling about the state of Catholic-Jewish relations" than the move to elevate Pius.

His visit to the shul in two weeks will mark only the second time that a Pope has crossed the Tiber River from the Vatican to visit the synagogue in Rome. As Pope, Benedict has visited synagogues in his native Germany and in the United States, and he made the trip to Israel last May.

But the Rome synagogue has particular significance. Rome is said to have the oldest continuous Jewish community in the Diaspora. The visit to the synagogue in 1986 by Benedict's predecessor, Pope John Paul II, was the first time any Pope had set foot in any shul since the time of St. Peter.

Bretton-Granatoor put some of Benedict's apparent gaffes down to differences in style and substance that set this Pope apart from his predecessor.

John Paul "was an actor and a pastor -- he understood that every gesture had meaning," Bretton-Granatoor said. Benedict, on the other hand, "was an academic and was never a pastor-- he doesn't seem to get it in the same way as his predecessor."

[He was pastor for five years of Munich-Freising, one of the largest dioceses in Europe. And it's Jews like Bretton-Granatoor who don't get it about Benedict XVI - he's not playing to the media in any way, nor has he ever. Not that John Paul II was playing to the media either, because he made many good decisions that the media did not welcome, and perhaps did not do enough about the sexual offenses by priests that the media focused on in the last five years of his Pontificate.]

He added, "This Pope is vastly different from his predecessor. He is a German and, therefore, cannot speak about the Shoah in the way that [John Paul], a Pole, could." [What rot! On the contrary, doesn't the fact that Benedict XVI happens to be German make his repugnance of the Nazis even more resonant? Besides, a crime against humanity is a crime against humanity regardless of nationality!


Here is the Krupp article referred to, which I am posting here for thematic continuity:


Friend to the Jews:
Pius XII's real record
By GARY L. KRUPP

December 28, 2009


A recent papal decree moved Pope Pius XII, among others, closer to sainthood -- returning to the forefront the controversy over his role in World War II and the Holocaust.

Growing up Jewish in Queens, I never dreamt I would be defending the man I once believed to be a Nazi sympathizer and an anti-Semite. But my work since 2002 with my wife, Meredith, and the Pave the Way Foundation has led me to this point

We founded Pave the Way to identify and eliminate nontheological obstacles between religions. Thus, despite our early prejudices, we decided to investigate the papacy of Pius XII (Eugenio Pacelli), one of today's greatest sources of hurt between Jews and Catholics.

After years of research in documentary evidence and eyewitness testimony, what we found shocked us. We found nothing but praise and positive news articles concerning Pius' actions from every Jewish, Israeli and political leader of the era who lived through the war.

A few articles in the postwar era suggested that he should have done more to confront the Nazis -- but it wasn't until 1963, in the wake of the fictitious play "The Deputy" (written five years after Pius died), that accusations began flowing that he had failed to act, that he was a cold-hearted Nazi sympathizer who couldn't care less about the Jewish people.

The evidence strongly suggests this was part of a KGB-directed and -financed bid to smear Pius, a Soviet disinformation campaign meant to discredit the Catholic Church, which at that time was profoundly anti-Communist.

In any case, the facts simply don't match what so many have come to believe about Pius.

It is unquestionable that Pius XII intervened to save countless Jews at a time most nations -- even FDR's America -- refused to accept these refugees. He issued false baptismal papers and obtained visas for them to emigrate as "Non Aryan Catholic-Jews." He smuggled Jews into the Americas and Asia. He ordered the lifting of cloister for men and women to enter monasteries, convents and churches to hide 7,000 Jews of Rome in a single day.

Among the 5,000 pages of documents that Pave the Way has located, there is abundant evidence that Pacelli was a lifelong friend of the Jews. Some highlights:

* In 1917, at the request of World Zionist Organization Director Nachum Sokolow, Nuncio Pacelli intervened with the Germans to protect the Jews of Palestine from extermination by the Ottoman Turks.

* In 1925, Pacelli arranged for Sokolow to meet with Pope Benedict XV to discuss a Jewish homeland in Palestine.

* In 1930, Pacelli supported the German bishops' orders excommunicating anyone who joined "the Hitler Party."

* In 1938, Pacelli intervened to defeat a Polish anti-koshering law.

* In 1939, A.W. Klieforth, the US consul general based in Cologne, Germany, wrote a confidential letter to Washington reporting on the "extremeness" of Pacelli's hatred of National Socialism and of Hitler.

* In 1947, at the United Nations, he encouraged the 17 Catholic countries out of the 33 in favor to vote for the partitioning of Palestine to create the State of Israel.

* A 1948 deposition by Gen. Karl Wolff, the SS commandant for Italy, revealed the Nazis' wartime plan to kidnap the pope, kill countless cardinals and seize the Vatican.

But the personal tales may be more compelling. Pacelli's childhood best friend was Guido Mendes, an Orthodox Jewish boy. He tells how Pacelli shared Shabbat meals with him. Mendes taught him Hebrew, and Pacelli helped him to emigrate to Palestine in 1938.

Pius XII's detractors prefer to criticize rather than simply look at the evidence. Two years ago, Pope Benedict XVI ordered the opening of the Vatican's archives up to 1939, containing much evidence of Eugenio Pacelli's activities leading up to his papacy. According to the sign-in sheets, few of Pius' critics have bothered to come to the archives to view the material.

Pinchas Lapide, a Jewish historian, theologian and Israeli ambassador, stated that the actions and policies of Pius XII saved as many as 860,000 Jews.

Albert Einstein, Golda Meir, the chief rabbi of Palestine, the chief rabbi of Rome and the heads of every Jewish organization showered praise upon him during his lifetime.

Were all these witnesses who lived through the war misguided?

Gary L. Krupp is president of the Pave the Way Foundation, which has many of the documents noted here online at ptwf.org and which will soon publish a book with the main evidence in English, Hebrew, Spanish and French.

I almost completely forgot about this item from the 1/1/10 OR.
My first post in the CHURCH&VATICAN thread last May was about the Holy Year of St. James in 2010:




Benedict XVI on the Holy Year of St. James:
An occasion to meet Christ
even for non-believers
Translated from
the 1/1/10 issue of



The opening of the Holy Door in the cathedral of Santiago de Compostela on the afternoon of December 31, 2009, marked the start of the Holy Year of St. James 2010, which calls on the Spanish faithful and pilgrims from all over Europe and the other continents to visit what tradition has always held to be the tomb of St. James the Major, brother of John.

[Santiago is Spanish for 'St. James' derived from his Jewish name Jacob, Sant'Iacobo --> Santiago.]

The solemn rite was followed by a Eucharistic Celebration presided over by the Archbishop of Santiago, Mons. Julián Barrio Barrio.

The Holy Year of 2010 is the 119th since 1120 when Pope Callistus II granted the diocese the privilege of declaring a Holy Year every time that the Feast of James, July 25, falls on a Sunday.

On the eve of this Holy Year, the archbishop wrote a pastoral letter in which he uses the story of the disciples in Emmaus to explain the significance of the Holy Year as well as the spirit and the place of pilgrimage in the observance of the faith.

For the occasion, Benedict XVI sent Archbishop Barrios the following letter (translated here from the Spanish):

---

To Mons. Julián Barrio Barrio
Archbishop of Santiago de Compostela


1. On the occasion of the opening of the Holy Door which will begin the Compostela Jubilee of 2010, I send a cordial greeting to Your Excellency and the participants in this significant ceremony, as well as to the pastors and faithful of the local Church, which for its immemorial link to the Apostle St. James, has its roots anchored in the Gospel of Christ, offering this spiritual treasure to its children and to pilgrims from Galicia, other parts of Spain, Europe and the farthest corners of the world.

This solemn act opens a special time of grace and forgiveness, of the 'great pardon', as tradition calls it. A special opportunity for believers to recall their calling to holiness in life, to commit themselves to the Word of God which enlightens and interpellates, and to acknowledge Christ who comes to accompany men in the vicissitudes of their journey in this world and gives himself to them personally, especially in the Eucharist.

But even those who have no faith, or perhaps have allowed it to shrivel, will have a singular opportunity to receive the gift of "Him who enlightens all men so that they may finally have true life" (Lumen gentium, 16).

2. Santiago de Compostela has been distinguished since remote antiquity as an eminent destination for pilgrims, whose steps have marked the Way that bears the Apostle's name [Camino de Santiago], to whose tomb have come countless people, especially from the most diverse regions of Europe, to renew and strengthen their faith.

It is a Way that is sown with so many examples of fervor, penitence, hospitality, art and culture that speak to us eloquently of the spiritual roots of the Old Continent.

The theme of this new Compostelan Jubilee Year - "A pilgrimage towards the light" - as well as the pastoral letter for this occasion, "Pilgrims of the faith and witnesses to the Risen Christ", faithfully follow this tradition and offer anew an evangelizing call to the men and women of today, recalling the essentially pilgrim character of the Church and of the Christian in this world (cf. Lumen gentium, 6.48-50).

Along the Way, one contemplates new horizons which allow a recapacitation from the straits of one's own existence for the immensity of the human being within and outside himself, preparing him to go forth in search of what his heart truly yearns for.

Open to wonder and transcendence, the pilgrim lets himself be instructed by the Word of God, and in this way, rid his faith of unfounded adherences and fears.

As the Risen Lord did with some disciples, who still stunned and disheartened, were on their way to Emmaus. When his words were completed by his breaking bread with them, their eyes were opened (cfr Lk 24,31) and they recognized him whom they had thought dead.

Thus did they meet Christ personally, who lives for always and is part of their lives. At that moment, their first and most ardent desire was to announce and testify to others what had just occurred (cf. Lk 24, 35).

I ask the Lord fervently to accompany the pilgrims, that he may enter their hearts "so that they may have life and have it in abundance" (Jn 10,10). This is the true destination, the grace which the mere material undertaking of the journey cannot accomplish by itself, and which brings the pilgrim to convert himself into a witness to others that Christ lives and he is our enduring hope for salvation.

The Archdiocese, along with many ecclesial organizations, has placed into motion multiple pastoral initiatives of a spiritual nature to help achieve this essential objective of the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela, even if in some cases, there has been a tendency to ignore or distort them.

3. In this Holy Year, which blends in with the Year for Priests, priests have a decisive role - their spirit of hospitality and full commitment towards the faithful and pilgrims has to be especially generous.

Pilgrims themselves, they are called on to serve their brothers, offering them the life of God, as men of the Divine Word and of the sacred (To the International Priests Retreat in Ars, Sept. 20, 2009).

Therefore, encourage the priests of the Archdiocese, those who will augment their numbers during the Jubilee, and those of the dioceses along the Way of St. James, to do all they can in administering the sacraments of Penance and the Eucharist, since the most sought after and most precious characteristic of the Holy Year is forgiveness and encounter with the living Christ.

4. In this circumstance, I express my special closeness to the pilgrims who are arriving and will continue to arrive in Santiago. I invite them to take stock of the experiences of faith, charity and brotherhood that they encounter along their journey so that they may live the pilgrimage interiorly above all, allowing themselves to listen to the call that the Lord makes to each of them.

Thus they can say with joy and firmness when they get to the Portico of Glory in Compostela, "I believe".

I also ask them not to forget in their prayers those who could not be with them, their families and friends, the sick and the needy, immigrants, the weak of faith and the People of God with their pastors.

5. I cordially thank the Archdiocese of Santiago, as well as the authorities and other collaborators, for their efforts in preparing for this Compostelan Jubilee, and to the volunteers and all who are willing to contribute to its success.

I entrust the spiritual and pastoral fruits of this Holy Year to our Mother in heaven, the Pilgrim Virgin, and to the Apostle James, 'the friend of the Lord', as I impart to all with affection the Apostolic Blessing.

From the Vatican
December 18, 2009

---

Saturday, January 2

From left: Basil and Gregory; St. Basil; St. Gregory; and the two saints with St. John Chrysostom - celebrated in the Orthodox Churches as the "Three Hierarchs' with their joint feast on January 25
SAINTS BASIL THE GREAT (Asia Minor, 330-379) and GREGORY NAZIANZENE (Asia Minor, 330-390)
BISHOPS, THEOLOGIANS AND DOCTORS OF THE CHURCH
Apart from the fact that they were friends from youth and had almost parallel lives, I have not immediately found an explanation for why they have the same feast day. Both born in what is now central Turkey, they studied together in Cappadocia and much later, in Athens. Both were engaged in the great battle against Arian heresy. Basil, as Bishop of Cappadocia, also distinguished himself for spelling out what Benedict XVI called 'the first social doctrine of the Church'. Gregory, who later became Bishop of Constantinople, was such a gifted theologian that he is also known as Gregory the Theologian. His most outstanding contributions are to the doctrine of the Trinity and of the Holy Spirit. In July and August 2007, Benedict XVI dedicated two catecheses each to these two towering figures of fourth-century Christianity. Along with St. Athanasius and St. John Chrysostom, they were the first Doctors of the Eastern Church in the Catholic faith.
Readings for today's Mass: http://www.usccb.org/nab/010210.shtml



No OR today.

No events scheduled for the Holy Father.


POPE MOURNS THE DEATH
OF EMERITUS IRISH CARDINAL


CardIinal Cahal Brendan Daly, Emeritus Archbishop of Armagh (ireland), died in Belfast on Thursday, DEc. 31. The funerals ervices will be held on Tueday, January 5.

Here is the text of the telegram sent by the Holy Father to Cardinal Sean Brady, current Archbishop of Armagh:

---

TO MY VENERABLE BROTHER
CARDINAL SEAN BAPTIST BRADY
ARCHBISHOP OF ARMAGH

DEEPLY SADDENED TO LEARN OF THE DEATH OF CARDINAL CAHAL DALY, I OFFER HEARTFELT CONDOLENCES TO YOU AND YOUR AUXILIARY BISHOP, TO THE PRIESTS, RELIGIOUS AND LAY FAITHFUL OF THE ARCHDIOCESE OF ARMAGH AND TO ALL THE PEOPLE OF IRELAND.

I RECALL WITH GRATITUDE CARDINAL DALY’S LONG YEARS OF DEVOTED PASTORAL SERVICE TO THE CHURCH AS PRIEST, BISHOP AND PRIMATE OF ALL IRELAND, HIS ASSISTANCE AS A MEMBER OF THE COLLEGE OF CARDINALS, AND ESPECIALLY HIS SUSTAINED EFFORTS IN THE PROMOTION OF JUSTICE AND PEACE IN NORTHERN IRELAND.

IN COMMUNION WITH YOU IN THE HOLY SPIRIT I PRAY THAT, THROUGH THE GRACE OF CHRIST, GOD OUR MERCIFUL FATHER MAY GRANT HIM THE REWARD OF HIS LABOURS AND WELCOME HIS SOUL INTO THE JOY AND PEACE OF THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN.

TO ALL GATHERED FOR THE SOLEMN RITES OF CHRISTIAN BURIAL AND ESPECIAL1Y TO CARDINAL DALY’S RELATIVES AND FRIENDS, I CORDIALLY IMPART MY APOSTOLIC BLESSING AS A PLEDGE OF CONSOLATION AND HOPE IN THE LORD.

BENEDICTUS PP. XVI

---

Pope sends Mons. Gaenswein
to visit Susanna Maiolo
by Antonio Sbraga
Adapted and translated from

January 2, 2010


SUBIACO - Mons. Georg Gaenswein, the Pope's private secretary, paid a half-hour visit on December 31 to Susanna Maiolo, 25, who had 'attacked' Benedict XVI at St. Peter's Basilica on Christmas Eve, at the psychiatric ward of the local hospital where she is being temporarily kept for observation and care.

The visit was made in great secrecy, but upon leaving the hospital by a secondary exit door, Gaenswein was recognized by persons waiting in the hospital's first-aid area.

Apparently he arrived at 11:45 a.m. in a vehicle with Italian, not Vatican ,carplates, and dark windows. The visit was arranged with the head of the Psychiatric department and the hospital's nursing director.

Maiolo, who lives in Frauenfeld, Switzerland, has a history of psychiatric disturbances for which she has been previously treated. She first tried to approach the Pope after the Christmas Midnight Mass in 2008, but at that time, she was caught before she could get near him.

"I immediately recognized Mons. Georg," said one of the witnesses, who is a sacristy aide in one of the parishes of Subiaco.

However, the department head Paolo BGalimberti preferred to say "No comment".

He did say that "The patient is cooperating in her care and she is not under any obligatory health treatment. The question of a transfer has not been discussed, but she will decide for herself. We will continue to provide the appropriate care".





In a variety of stories, the Italian media are reporting on the major points made by Pope Benedict XVI in his various texts since Christmas Eve - probably because he is the only leader anywhere in the world whose Christmastime agenda is crammed with substantial events!

The problem with the early release of the Pope's messages for special occasions is that by the time the observance comes around, media usually 'forget' about the message previously given and do not revisit it on the occasion itself. So it was, for the most part, with the Pope's Message for the World Day of Peace yesterday.... which makes this commentary all the more welcome.


How Benedict XVI's ecological
message is generally misread
by Flavio Felice
Translated from

January 2, 2010


Felice is president of the Italian Tocqueville-Acton Study Center, an adjunct to the American Enterprise Institute.

"Safeguarding creation and the realization of peace are realities that are intimately connected... If you want to cultivate peace, take care of creation".

So much commentary on Benedict XVI's Message for the 43rd World Day for Peace observed yesterday has interpreted it as an 'ecological turning point' in Pontifical Magisterium.

Which is forcing an argument, though it is understandable because the present Pope has offered a social reflection in which ecological issues occupy a primary place.

But one aspect, among so many, must be underscored particularly - the nexus that Benedict XVI establishes between strictly ecological questions and what he calls 'human ecology':
"Duties to the environment derive from those towards the individual person considered in himself alone and in relation to others".

It follows that Benedict XVI urges education of the new generations about their specific ecological responsibility, but the Pope's ecological messages certainly do not echo the rhetoric of 'sustainable development' (in which denatalization - slowing down the birth rate - is the measure of sustainability).

On the contrary, the main objective of ecological education is to safeguard an authentic human ecology. Benedict XVI's ecological message refers back to the anthropological question - relating all events to their consequences on man - and not to a sociology of 'egalitarianism' among all living beings (plant, animal and human). No matter how noble the intention may be, it is inadequate, at the very least, from the Christian point of view.

With the nexus he makes, Benedict XVI renews the central message of the Church's Social Doctrine on "the inviolability of human life at every stage and in every condition", and reaffirms the "dignity of the person and the irreplaceable mission of the family to educate children about love for their neighbor and respect of nature".

The Pope's arguments are those traditionally found in the 'theology of Creation' which was already a specially distinctive mark in the social Magisterium of John Paul II, in relation to labor, capital, business and profit, as analyzed in the encyclicals Laborem exercens (1981), Sollicitudo rei socialis (1987), and Centesimus annus (1991).

Benedict XVI emphasizes the authentically human face of development, reiterating what he spells out in Caritas in veritate (2009).

It is a view of development that is closely related to the basic nature of man as a being created in the image and likeness of God, a beneficiary of the Creator's paternal love. This love makes all men God's children and therefore brothers on earth, and imposes the calling to love each other as God loves us. Such a reading obviously goes back to the mystery-'scandal' of the Cross, the measure of how much God loves us.

This anthropological, or man-centered, view is even more evident when the Pontiff affirms:

---

"If the Magisterium of the Church shows its perplexity at the idea of the environment inspired by ecocentrism and biocentrism, it does so because such a concept eliminates the ontological and axiologic difference between the human person and other living beings. Such a notion eliminates man's identity adn superior role in favor of an egalitarian view of the dignity of all living beings. This leads in turn to a new pantheism with neo-pagan accents which wees man's salvation in nature alone".

---

On the contrary, the Pope tells us, the Church calls for considering ecological questions 'in a balanced manner', respecting first of all "the grammar that the Creator has inscribed in his work".

This grammar entrusts to man the role of active custodian, not a foolish guardian who abdicates his role as co-creator - a role that comes from having been crated in the image and likeness of God.

Respect and caring concern for the material world make up only a minimal aspect of the space for activity that is open to man so that he may express his own creativity.

Creation is not merely ex nihilo - out of nothing - but also contra nihilum- against nothing, and against the inconsistency of things.

Benedict XVI tells us that ecological denial is not only an anti-aesthetic disfigurement of the beauty of creation, making the cosmos less smiling and attractive - it also takes away from man the possibility of a calm and communicative encounter with reality. It takes away from reality itself the possibility of a continual process of perfection.


Avvenire's editorialist, poet Davide Rondoni, writes for another newspaper to comment on the 2010 Peace message:

The Pope's New Year messages:
Man enrapt in the sacredness of Nature
by Davide Rondoni
Translated from

January 2, 2009


The center from which Benedict XVI's 'ecology' flows is Psalm 8. He cites a well-known passage to establish the premise for his demanding Mesesage for the first day of the year and the Church's World Day for Peace.

"When I see your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and stars that you set in place - What are humans that you are mindful of them, mere mortals that you care for them?" (Ps 8,4-5) [I have been using the New American Bible to render all Biblical citations made by the Holy Father in English, but for this psalm, I much prefer the traditional translation, 'What is man that thou art mindful of him?" as much more idiomatic and poetic!]

The root of the 'human ecology' raised once more by Benedict XVI is to be found in that bewilderment, the wonder of God's creature that re-echoes in so many brilliant expressions through the ages - think of our [Giacomo] Leopardi [1798-1837, philosopher, essayist and great lyric poet].

Thus, the Pope's invitation to 'cultivate the peace and take care of creation' - rather than a heavy-handed ethical imperative or an epochal need - is the attitude that flourishes in a spirit shaken by the disproportion that the human being sees between himself and the vastness of Creation.

It is the attitude of someone who sees in this bewilderment a kind of tremorous privilege: that there is no other point in all of creation that can equal man, his dignity and the grandeur of his consciousness.

This hinge of man's primordial wonder is also linked to the tenderness that the Pope referred to in his homily at the New Year's Day Mass - in the example of brotherhood that is evident among children of various races and origins when they are together, as a sign of that for which man was made, above and beyond all differences.

Respect for others is strong if it is born out of that wonder. It is the 'face of God', says the Pope, who can make 'an empty heart' sensitive and 'reveal' to it the faces of men, "even if at times, the human face marked by the hardness of life and by evil makes it difficult to appreciate and accept it as an epiphany of God".

"In order to recognize and respect each other as we truly are, namely, brothers... we must look to the face of our common Father, who loves us all despite our limitations and errors".

The Pope pegs his message and his homily to the words of the Psalm, which provide the current of energy that sustains the Pope's calm, firm and free reasoning when he talks of man's relationship to Creation.

Without that wonder at the vastness of Creation and the special position that man occupies in its 'grammar', Benedict XVI says, man cannot take on a true and proper responsibility for it.

Once more, the great challenge: the religious man, who lives 'as if God exists', can develop a more responsible attitude towards existence than one who believes that life occurs as a result of some obscure and unknown urge or casual fate.

In this sense, Benedict's message - even as it deals with issues that are part of the great public debate but often prey to stale and tiresome commonplaces - is once more distinguished by its radical difference that challenges thought and not just behavior.

In short, the Pope's Message is not the nth ecological appeal repeated this time by a Pope rather than by Greenpeace. No, it is a free and dispassionate plunge into the subject of correct knowledge that can allow better care of the world.

Having established this, the Pope's reasoning and and does proceed in great freedom and accuracy to get to the crux of the problem - and he calls on everyone, without half terms, to their individual responsibility - in the face of Nature tyrannized by self-interests and therefore taking its toll on mankind.

Ecological irresponsibility violates "inter-generational solidarity'. Technology, detached from its inner tension to favor development, becomes a factor for inequality and domination. Instead of the moderation and solidarity that we are called on to observe as principles of existence, what persist are attitudes of deception and indifference to consequences.

These consequences include the tragedy of 'environmental refugees' who are constraiend to flee unlivable conditions and multiply the ranks of those who are refugees from wars and violence.

The book of nature, the Pope insists, is one. There cannot be concern for nature without respect for the human being and acknowledgment of his supreme dignity - a true and proper ontological distinction from other living creatures.

And even as he praises the activities of many non-governmental entities who urge more equitable choices, he also warns against taking on a pantheistic vision - that in which a human being is not worth as much as a seal cub.

If one is truly committed to saving the latter, it would be inevitable to be concerned first about the right to life and dignified existence of the former.

The Pope's strong appeal on New Year's Day to anyone who belongs to any armed groups, to stop every offensive and violent action is part of his passion for a 'human ecology'.

The Pope is firm and solid in his analyses and in his appeals. But he also advocates seeing crisis as possibility. We have the opportunity, he said, that from every difficult situation there can come a call to everyone for a change in mentality. A call on each one to operate at the level that is possible to him, according to the principle of subdidiarity.

Benedict XVI is not a complaining type. He always calls on everyone to hope for what is possible, and underscores the religious root of responsibility. That is, the root of joy from which, alone, commitment to the great questions of life - often expressed in many small things - can arise and endure.

Cardinal Ratzinger's joke -
and lament - about
the quality of preaching

A few days ago, L'Osservatore Romano carried an article by Mons. Mariano Crociata, secretary-general of the Italian bishops conference, lamenting the poor quality of preaching among most Italian priests.

A female reporter, writing for Gazzetta del Sud, a regional newspaper, recalled an anecdote by Vittorio Messori on this issue - an anecdote that must be shared.

---

"Even Ratzinger jested once when he was still cardinal: 'One confirmation for me of the divinity of the faith is that it has survived millions of homilies every Sunday', he said at a dinner in Bsssano del Grappa in the early 1990s."

"Of course, it was a joke, said during a meal," Messori said yesterday, "but nonetheless revealing of the perplexity he certainly had."

---

I'm sorry I never did get around to translating Mons. Crociata's article.

PAPAL & VATICAN NEWS HIGHLIGHTS
SEPTEMBER-DECEMBER 2009



VATICAN CITY, 30 DEC 2009 (VIS) - Following are highlights of the activities of Pope Benedict XVI and the Holy See for the months of September through December 2009.


SEPTEMBER

5: Publication of the Holy Father's Message for the 83rd World Mission Day, to be celebrated on Sunday 18 October on the theme: "The nations will walk in its light".

6: Pastoral visit of the Holy Father to the Italian towns of Viterbo and Bagnoregio.

7: Benedict XVI receives a group of prelates from the National Conference of Bishops of Brazil (West 1-2) at the end of their "ad limina" visit.

11: Holy Father receives in audience Ricardo Martinelli Berrocal, president of the Republic of Panama.

11: Pontifical Council for Inter-religious Dialogue publishes its annual Message to Muslims for the end of the month of Ramadan. The Message, signed by Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran and Archbishop Pier Luigi Celata, respectively president and secretary of the council, has as its theme: "Christians and Muslims: Together in overcoming poverty".

15-20: Archbishop Hilarion of Volokolamsk, president of the Department for External Church Affairs of the Patriarchate of Moscow, visits Rome at the invitation of Cardinal Walter Kasper, president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity.

16: Holy Father receives in audience Emil Boc, prime minister of Romania.

17: Benedict XVI receives a group of prelates from the National Conference of Bishops of Brazil (Northeast 2) at the end of their "ad limina" visit.

19: Benedict XVI receives Catholic patriarchs and major archbishops from the Oriental Churches.

26-28: Apostolic trip to the Czech Republic.


OCTOBER

4: In the Vatican Basilica, Benedict XVI presides at a Eucharistic concelebration with Synod Fathers for the opening of the Second Special Assembly for Africa of the Synod of Bishops.

4: Beatification of Servant of God Eustachio Kugler (ne Joseph), German professed religious of the Hospitaller Order of St. John of God, in the cathedral of Regensburg, Germany.

11: In St. Peter's Square, Holy Father canonises Zygmunt Szczesny Felinski, Francesc Coll y Guitart, Jozef Damian de Veuster, Rafael Arnaiz Baron, and Mary of the Cross Jugan (nee Jeanne).

18: Beatification of Servant of God Ciriaco Maria Sancha y Hervas, Spanish cardinal and archbishop, founder of the Congregation of the Sisters of Charity, in the cathedral of Toledo, Spain.

25: Beatification of Servant of God Carlo Gnocchi, Italian diocesan priest and founder of the "Pro Juventute" Foundation, in the Piazza del Duomo in Milan, Italy.

25: In the Vatican Basilica, the Pope presides at a Eucharistic concelebration with Synod Fathers to mark the closure of the Second Special Assembly for Africa of the Synod of Bishops.

31: Beatification of Servant of God Zoltan Lajos Meszlenyi, Hungarian bishop and martyr, in the cathedral of Esztergom, Hungary.


NOVEMBER

8: Pastoral visit of the Holy Father to the Italian city of Brescia.

9: Pope receives participants in the World Congress for the Pastoral Care of Migrants and Refugees, being held in the Vatican from 9 to 12 November on the theme: "A pastoral response to the phenomenon of migration in the era of globalisation".

9: Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith publishes the Apostolic Constitution "Anglicanorum coetibus", which provides for personal ordinariates for Anglicans entering into full communion with the Catholic Church, and some Complementary Norms for the same Apostolic Constitution.

12: Holy Father receives in audience Stjepan Mesic, president of the Republic of Croatia.

12: Benedict XVI receives 7000 professors and students of Rome's LUMSA University (Libera Universita Maria Santissma Assunta) for the seventieth anniversary of its foundation by Servant of God Luigia Tincani.

13: Holy Father receives in audience Gordon Bajnai, prime minister of the Republic of Hungary.

14: Holy Father receives in audience Boris Tadic, president of the Republic of Serbia.

14: Holy Father receives in audience Jan Fischer, prime minister of the Czech Republic.

17: Publication of a letter from Cardinal Secretary of State Tarcisio Bertone S.D.B. to priests of the Catholic Church in the People's Republic of China, for the occasion of the Year for Priests called to mark the 150th anniversary of the death of St. John Mary Vianney, the saintly "Cure of Ars".

17: Holy Father receives in audience Pierre Nkurunziza, president of the Republic of Burundi.

18: Holy Father receives in audience Sheikh Hasina, prime minister of the People's Republic of Bangladesh.

21: Benedict XVI meets with artists in the Sistine Chapel.

22: Beatification of Servant of God Maria Alfonsina Danil Ghattas (nee Soultaneh Maria), co-foundress of the Congregation of the Sisters of the Most Holy Rosary of Jerusalem, in the Basilica of the Annunciation in Nazareth, Israel.

27: Publication of the Holy Father's Message for the ninety-sixth World Day of Migrants and Refugees. The theme of this year's Message is "Underage migrants and refugees" and the Day is due to be celebrated on 17 January 2010.

28: Benedict XVI receives in separate audiences Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, president of Argentina, and Michelle Bachelet, president of Chile, to mark the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Treaty of Peace and Friendship between the two States.

30: Holy Father receives in audience Alan Garcia Perez, president of the Republic of Peru.

30: Holy Father receives in audience His Royal Imperial Highness Otto von Hapsburg, archduke of Austria.


DECEMBER

3: Publication of the Pope's Message for the eighteenth World Day of the Sick, which is due to be celebrated in the Vatican Basilica on 11 February 2010, Feast of Our Lady of Lourdes.

3: Holy Father receives in audience Dimitri Medvedev, president of the Russian Federation. Re-establishment of full diplomatic relations between the Holy See and the Russian Federation.

4: Holy Father receives in audience His Beatitude Anastas, archbishop of Tirana, Durres and All Albania, who was accompanied by other representatives of the Autocephalous Orthodox Church of Albania.

5: Benedict XVI receives a group of prelates from the National Conference of Bishops of Brazil (Region South 3 and 4) at the end of their "ad limina" visit.

5: Holy Father receives in audience Horst Kohler, president of Germany.

10: Holy Father receives in audience Ali Bongo Ondimba, president of the Republic of Gabon.

11: Holy Father receives in audience Nguyen Minh Triet, president of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam.

12: Holy Father receives in audience Sali Berisha, prime minister of the Republic of Albania.

14: Holy Father receives in audience Milo Djukanovic, prime minister of Montenegro.

15: Publication of Pope's Message for the forty-third World Day of Peace, due to be celebrated on 1 January 2010, on the theme: "If You Want To Cultivate Peace, Protect Creation".

15: Publication of Benedict XVI's Motu Proprio, "Omnium in mentem", dated 26 October, containing two variations to the Code of Canon Law.

17: Holy Father receives Letters of Credence of eight new ambassadors to the Holy See: Hans Klingenberg of Denmark; Francis K. Butagira of Uganda; Suleiman Mohamad Mustafa of Sudan; Elkanah Odembo of Kenya; Mukhtar B. Tileuberdi of Kazakhstan; Abdul Hannan of Bangladesh; Alpo Rusi of Finland, and Einars Semanis of Latvia.

17: Benedict XVI receives prelates from he Conference of Catholic Bishops of Belarus, at the end of their "ad limina" visit.

19: Publication of decrees concerning the martyrdom, miracles and heroic virtues of twenty-one Blesseds and Servants of God, among them Pope Pius XII and Pope John Paul II.

21: In his traditional pre-Christmas meeting with the Roman Curia, the Pope recalls that 2009 was a year "passed under the sign of Africa".


This is a convenient reference and a commendable service from VIS. I became aware of it only in the preceding quarter. I wonder if they have something comparable that goes all the way back to April 19, 2005.... I've always meant to go back over all the daily Vatican bulletins since then, and do something similar because now that we are going into the sixth year of Benedict XVI's Pontificate, it's getting more difficult to rely on my faulty memory when I need cross-referencing about events in the Pontificate. But obviously, I've been unable to find the time.

Everytning I do on the Forum is on the run, unfortunately, time stolen from other things I need to do - so I don't have the time to think back or think forward, to plan anything in advance, beyond the snap decisions I have to make, the moment I see an item that I need to post, and determine whether I already have a thematic banner for it, or if I need to cobble together a new thematic banner, assuming I know where to get the elements for it and can do it all in a few minutes. The same snap decisions I have to make on how to post photographs, how they should be resized and sorted in a logical way that is also 'aesthetic'.

All this, like I had to do in the days when I had an hourly deadline to put a TV newscast on the air or to put together the front page of a newspaper in time for the press run. In the ame way, I interpose my comments when necessary under the same pressure-cooker constraints I had when churning out a daily editorial or column in the midst of other editorial duties (such as giving and checking news assignments and editing reporters' copy, which was always the most laborious and time-consuming).

The one standard I try to keep at all times since I started being a contributor at PRF - and as long as I have access to the Internet - is to post all the important and interesting items I can find about Benedict XVI (avoiding unnecessary duplication of content), including prompt translations of all papal texts, and accompany them with as many photographs of him that are immediately available (though I did not arrive until relatively late at the logical SOP that the best place for photographs is to accompany the news items they illustrate).

Everything else is secondary.

Sorry to have to post something unpleasant again - but this is what passes for conventional wisdom in the liberal media these days. In many ways, this is worse than the JTA article I posted earlier today.

This article easily qualifies as one of the most stupid I have seen lately - perpetrated by unthinking editors who do not see the absurdity of calling anything 'a rush to Pius XII's sainthood": The man has been dead for 50 years, the cause for his canonization was introduced in 1965 - 45 years ago - and that's a rush?????... The rush is in the liberal media seeking to discredit a Pope for their own reasons - pandering to the Jews, genuine dislike for Catholicism and using anythng to beat it down with, who knows?

Everything about this article drips with shameless ignorance and bitter bias against the Church! It's incredible how seemingly intelligent people can pontificate in print over the internal affairs of a Church they do not even seek to learn more about. Would they dare to pontificate about strictly internal religious decisions made by, say, the Supreme Leader of the 'Islamic Republic of Iran'? Or the Chief Rabbis of Israel, for that matter?

Nothing in this article leads me to believe that the reporter is or ever was a Catholic. And if she is, then she is being willfully ignorant about the Church.



Why a rush to sainthood for Pius XII?
By CELESTINE BOHLEN
Published in

January 1, 2009


PARIS (Bloomberg News) — Does the world really need yet another Roman Catholic saint, particularly if that means canonizing one of the most controversial popes in history? [How rash! Has she ever stopped to consider the entire history of the papacy????]

By one count, there are already more than 10,000 saints and “beati,” or blessed, accumulated since Roman times, with at least three saints already assigned for every day of the year.

[Why do non-Catholics care at all? If they find nothing exemplary about the lives of known and recognized Catholic saints, that's their loss. They misunderstand the nature and significance of sainthood if they think the Church can have 'too many saints'!]

That’s just one of several reasons why Pope Benedict XVI’s decision to proceed toward the canonization of Pius XII, the Church’s World War II-era Pope, was so surprising.

Another two miracles to his name, and Pius will have cleared all the hurdles to sainthood, where he will be among the ranks of such beloved figures as St. Francis of Assisi and St. Joan of Arc.

[So? Considering how many hundreds of millions of Catholics lived under the Papacy of Pius XII [compared to the population of the Middle Ages] and who venerated him as Pope - as Catholics still did in those days, who is to say that he was not - and is not - 'as beloved as other saints'? Can anything be sillier?]

It’s hard to see the urgency or the necessity of an act that was sure to anger and upset large groups of people — most significantly, Jews who worry that Benedict has again delivered a setback to the difficult and delicate task of reconciling Catholicism and Judaism.

There may be explanations for Pius XII’s studied silence about the Holocaust in the early 1940s: it is true that public criticism might have put more innocent people in danger, and it is also true that the Pope, like many Catholics, took risks to protect Jews.

The question of Pius’s wartime record remains open, and will stay that way as long as the relevant archives are closed.

Benedict himself had previously asked Vatican officials to hold off any decision on Pius until the opening of the 1939-58 archives, now slated for 2014.

[He did no such thing, and this is blatant falsehood. He said at the time that he was going to reflect on the matter some more (he didn't say how long) - and meanwhile, without publicity, he ordered his own private review of the available documentation by a reputable adn respected Church historian. At the same time, the head of the Vatican Archives said in 2008 that it would take its technicians at least six years to catalog all the documents before they could be open to the public. A year has passed, so the Vatican recently said 'Five years more".]

This approach was endorsed by Jewish leaders, who are now left expressing puzzlement and dismay over Benedict’s decision to jump the gun and issue a decree proclaiming Pius’s “heroic virtues,” setting the stage first for beatification, and then canonization.

So what was the rush? The answer is politics — which does not make for an edifying religious spectacle. [Nor does it make for valid analysis. It is passing off sheer speculation for analysis!]

The common perception [by whom????] , disputed by the Vatican, is that by pairing Pius XII with John Paul II in the Dec. 20 decree, Benedict had hoped to satisfy both the conservative and the liberal wings of the Catholic Church.

[The pairing hypothesis is something that has been put forward by some Vaticanistas. Their speculation does not necessarily make it true.]

Let’s just leave aside the fact that there isn’t much of a public constituency clamoring for a St. Pius XII (Pius IX is beatified, and Pius I, V and X are already saints), as there is for a St. John Paul II, a charismatic Pope who played a key role in the collapse of Communism. At his funeral in 2005, crowds called for a quick beatification, with chants of “Beato subito.” [Brava! She can't even get this one right - anyone ever heard that line 'Beato subito' before????]

In contrast, Pius XII — born Eugenio Pacelli, scion of Rome’s so-called black nobility, which has staffed the church’s upper ranks for centuries — was a lifelong Vatican bureaucrat-turned-diplomat, with a dour, ascetic manner. [And that's all this woman knows about Pius XII? How pathetic that she doesn't even try to learn more about one of the most erudite and holy men among the Popes of the modern era!]

This isn’t Mother Teresa, the Albanian-born nun who spent her life caring for the poor of Calcutta and was beatified in 2002, or even Father Jerzy Popieluszko, the Polish priest who was beaten to death by the Communist secret police in 1984 and who this month was put on the path to sainthood, together with Pius XII and John Paul II.

[Who is she to decide - on the basis of media images - who is worthy to become a saint or not? The Church has used stringent criteria for proclaiming saints for centuries - they have become more stringent in the past four decades that there has been a Congregation for the Causes of Sainthood - and the process is long, involved and intensive. This willfully ignorant reporter makes it sound as though saints were created by papal whim!]

So the Vatican once again found itself trying to calm waters stirred by one of Benedict’s decisions. Last February, when the pope offered an olive branch to leading figures of a conservative schismatic movement who included a Holocaust-denying ex-bishop, the Vatican blamed “a management error.”

This time, the Vatican press office issued a statement explaining that the pope’s decree on Pius’s “heroic virtues” wasn’t an assessment of “the historical impact of all his operative decisions,” but a confirmation that he had led a deeply Christian life. Surely, that was a requirement Pacelli met when he was chosen to be the Pope in 1939.

Many experts think that Benedict is trying to reconcile the Church with its own history, with teachings that prevailed before the Second Vatican Council, the historical gathering of church leaders convened by Pope John XXIII in the 1960s.

That was when the Roman Catholic Church entered the modern age, adopting such principles as separation of church and state [Excuse me! Does this woman even review history at all????], freedom of religion, a more modern liturgy and a repudiation of anti-Semitism.

“Benedict wants to emphasize the continuity of the Church’s teachings, to make the point that the Second Vatican Council was not a break with the past,” said the Rev. Thomas Reese, a Jesuit scholar and senior fellow at the Woodstock Theological Center at Georgetown University.

This isn’t a surprising line of thinking from a conservative Pope who, as a theologian, once kept watch over the Church’s doctrine. But he didn’t need to add another Pope to the roster of saints to make the point.

[For the nth time, Ms Biohlen, whoever you are, it's not the Pope who is 'adding' to the roster of saints. He only acts on the outcome of the Congregation's rigorous norms.]

Of the 265 popes in history, 76 are already saints: six are blessed. Perhaps now is the time to declare a halt to the practice, for liberals like John Paul II and John XXIII, as well as for conservatives like Pius XII.

As Father Reese aptly noted, Popes cannot be examples for ordinary Christians: Popes can only be examples for other popes. [Excuse me???? How can a Pope not be an example for all Christians? He is the spiritual leader of Roman Catholicism.! Would Reese say that Obama should not be an example for all Americans, but only for Presidents? Spare us the ponderations of people like Thomas Reese who are, in juridical parlance, 'hostile witnesses' to begin with.]

After President Barack Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, a lot of people argued that heads of states should not be nominated for that kind of award until after they have left office. Maybe in the case of Popes, sitting on the throne of St. Peter should be honor enough.


Dear God! Forgive them for they know not what they write so cockily about - and do not mind exposing their blissfully willful ignorance!...

Some reporters really delude themselves into thinking that their criticism and contempt will do anything to influence the course of the work undertaken by the Congregation for the Causes of Sainthood, in particular, or Benedict XVI's decisions in general!

For the record, yet another year-end list, this one based very much on name recall and, sometimes, how much in the news someone has been - which certainly helps name recall.



Americans most admire Obama, Clinton, Palin -
and Benedict XVI ranks 5th among the men
By Susan Page
USA TODAY



Source: USA TODAY/Gallup Poll, taken Dec. 11-13, of 1,025 adults. Margin of error +/4 percentage points.


WASHINGTON, Dec. 30 — President Obama is the man Americans admired most in 2009, a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll finds, while Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and former Alaska governor Sarah Palin are virtually tied as the most-admired woman.

The close finish by Clinton, named by 16% in the open-ended survey, and Palin, named by 15%, reflects the nation's partisan divide. Clinton was cited by nearly 3 in 10 Democrats but only 6% of Republicans, Palin by a third of Republicans but less than 1% of Democrats.

Obama dominates the field among men at 30%, though his support also shows a partisan split. He was named by more than half of Democrats but just 7% of Republicans.

While the president's job-approval rating has eroded during his first year in office, his standing as the most-admired man demonstrates "a very strong fan base," says Frank Newport, Gallup's editor in chief. The only past presidents to score higher were George W. Bush in 2001, in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks, and John Kennedy in 1961.

First lady Michelle Obama ranks as the fourth most-admired woman, behind Oprah Winfrey.

The survey, taken by Gallup almost every year since 1948, shows the nation's broad judgment — and name recall — of politicians, popes and talk-show hosts. Presidents often lead the list, though as president-elect, Obama swamped Bush in 2008. This year, as last, Bush finished a distant second.

South African leader Nelson Mandela is third and conservative commentator Glenn Beck fourth. Evangelist Billy Graham, who has been on the top-10 list every year the survey has been taken since 1955, is sixth, just after Pope Benedict XVI.

The question asked of the respondents is:
Who is the living man/woman you most admire?

Therefore, the names come entirely from the respondents and are not suggested to them.



I went back and checked how Benedict XVI has fared in this poll in the first four years of his Pontificate: In 2005, he was #4 (behind Presidents Bush, Clinton and Carter); in 2006, #7; in 2007, #9; in 2008, #4. So far, five for five.

Pope Pius XII made the list 10 times since 1946 when the poll was first taken (since he died in 1958, it means he missed it two years) - American Jews certainly were among the respondents in that time period!; Pope Paul VI, 12 times during his Pontificate (missed making it for 3 years); John Paul II, every year for 26 years, topping the list in 1980 (the year President Carter was weakest and ended up being defeated by Ronald Reagan).

In 1999, Gallup did a poll of the 'most admired' persons of the 20th century, living and dead, and Mother Teresa won it by a mile, with half of the respondents naming her. John Paul II came in #8, with 24%. (#2-#7 were Martin Luther King, John F. Kennedy, Albert Einstein, Helen Keller, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Billy Graham.)

My initial impression is that US Presidents and Popes almost automatically get into the list - it's an interesting sign that there are enough respondents for whom a Pope or a religious leader like Billy Graham or a living saint like Mother Teresa is the most admired person.

An interesting 'twinning' - possibly random - in most of these polls is Benedict XVI and Bill Gates, who have tied or ranked next to each other in the Gallup lists of the past five years, as well as in a couple of 'power' lists drawn up in 2009.

In any case, I think these are choices whose significance other than superficially sociological cannot really be accredited nor validated.

Sunday, January 3

FEAST OF THE HOLY NAME OF JESUS
The Angel Gabriel told Mary that her son would be named Jesus, the name Mary and Joseph gave him when he was circumcised eight days after his birth. St. Paul had exalted it as 'the name above every other name', but devotion to the Holy Name began in the 12th century with Cistercian monks and nuns. St. Bernardine of Siena in the 15th century was the great apostle of devotion to the Holy Name as a way to overcome the bitter conflicts in the Italian city-states of his time. Dominicans and Franciscans alike propagated the devotion, and since the 16th century, the Jesuits who adopted the Christogram IHS, an abbreviation of the Greek form of Jesus, as their symbol. The feast of the Holy Name was introduced into the Universal Church in 1731.
Readings for today's Mass: http://www.usccb.org/nab/010310.shtml



OR for 1/2-1/3:

Benedict XVI in his first Angelus message for 2010 appeals to armed groups everywhere:
'Stop, reflect, and abandon the ways of violence!'

This double issue carries the coverage of the Pope's events and texts since Dec. 31, with Vespers and Thanksgiving Te Deum at St. Peter's Basilica' the New Year's Day Mass, and the Angelus . Page 1 has an editorial on 'The face of God' based on the Pope's New Year's Day homily, and a report on Taize superior Brother Alois's address to the youth of Poland. The only international news on Page 1 is on Pakistan as hostage to Taliban terror, with a Jan. 2 car bombing attack on a Pakistan city near the Afghan border that killed at least 90 and wounded dozens more.



THE POPE'S DAY
Angelus at noon - The Holy Father spoke of Christian hope in the light of the readings today from
Ecclesiastes, St. Paul's Letter to the Ephesians, and the prologue to the Gospel of St. John.



Vatican confirms Gaenswein visit
to Pope's Christmas Eve 'aggressor'
Translated from

---

Following some reports in the press, the Vatican press director confirms that, in recent days, the personal secretary of the Holy Father, Mons. Georg Gaenswein, made a private visit to Miss (Susanna) Maiolo to express the Holy Father's interest in her situation.

The judicial process started by the Magistrate of Vatican City State will follow its course towards a conclusion.

---

Apparently, Fr. Lombardi also spoke to newsmen but did not say much more:


Pope's aide visits
hospitalized woman


VATICAN CITY, Jan. 3 (AP) — A Vatican spokesman says Pope Benedict XVI's personal aide has visited the young woman who jumped over a barrier and knocked the Pontiff down in St. Peter's Basilica on Christmas Eve.

The Rev. Federico Lombardi says that Benedict asked the aide to pay a call on the woman, who is being treated for psychiatric problems, to "show the Pope's interest and benevolence."

Lombardi declined to comment on an Italian newspaper report Sunday that the papal aide told the woman during the Dec. 26 [??? The report said Dec. 31 - See translated story in preceding page] visit that Benedict had "pardoned" her. [It was mere speculation, since the report clearly shows the reporter only spoke to witnesses who recognized Gaenswein and some hospital officials who declined comment.]

The Italian-Swiss woman, 25-year-old Susanna Maiolo, yanked Benedict's vestments, pulling him down as he walked up the center aisle to celebrate Mass. In the commotion, an elderly French cardinal fell, breaking his hip. The Pope wasn't hurt.

ANGELUS TODAY



The Pope's greeting today to English-speaking pilgrims:

---

I greet all the English-speaking pilgrims and visitors present for this Angelus.

As we continue to rejoice in the birth of Christ our Saviour, let us pray for the grace to live through love in his presence. Thus, like John the Baptist in today’s Gospel, we can be witnesses to the light that enlightens the whole of creation.

Upon each of you and your loved ones at home, I invoke God’s abundant blessings!

---

Here is a full translation of the Holy Father's words at the Angelus today:

---

Dear brothers and sisters!

On this Sunday - the second after Christmas and the first of the New Year - I am happy to renew to everyone my wish for every blessing from the Lord!

Problems will not be lacking in the Church and in the world, and in the daily life of families. But thank God, our hope does not depend on improbable prognostications nor on economic conditions, no matter how important these are.

Our hope is in God, not in the sense of a generic religiosity, or a fatalism brought on by the faith. We trust in God who in Jesus Christ revealed in a complete and definitive manner his intention to be with man, to share his story, in order to lead us all to his Kingdom of love and life. And this great hope animates and sometimes corrects our human hopes.

Three Biblical readings of extraordinary richness speak to us in today's liturgy of this revelation: Chapter 24 of the Book of Sirach Ecclesiastes, the hymn which opens St. Paul's Letter to the Ephesians, and the prologue to the Gospel of John.

These texts affirm that God is not only the creator of the universe - an aspect that is common to other religions as well - but that he is the Father who "chose us before the foundation of the world... (and) destined us for adoption to himself through Jesus Christ" (Eph 1,4-5), and thus he came to the inconceivable point of becoming man: "The Word became flesh and came to dwell among us" (Jn 1,14).

The mystery of the Incarnation of the Word of God was prepared in the Old Testament, especially where Divine Wisdom identifies itself with Mosaic Law. Indeed, this Wisdom says: "Then the Creator of all... chose the spot for my tent, Saying, 'In Jacob make your dwelling, in Israel your inheritance'" (Eccl 24,8).

In Jesus Christ, the Law of God became a living testimony inscribed in the heart of a man in whom, through the action of the Holy Spirit, all the fullness of divinity is corporeally present (cfr Col 2,9).

Dear friends, this is the true reason for mankind's hope: history has a meaning because it is 'inhabited' by the Wisdom of God. Nonetheless, God's plan is not carried out automatically, because it is a plan of love, and love generates freedom and requires freedom.

The Kingdom of God is certainly coming - or better still, it is already present in history, and thanks to the coming of Christ, has already conquered the negative power of evil.

But every man and woman is responsible for accepting it in his own life, day to day. That is why even 2010 will only be 'good' to the degree that each of us, according to our own responsibility, knows to collaborate with God's grace.

Let us turn then to the Virgin Mary, to learn from her this spiritual attitude. The Son of God took flesh through her but not without her agreement. Every time that the Lord wishes to take a step forward. together with us, towards 'the promised land', he knocks first at our heart, awaiting, so to speak, our Yes, in the small choices as well as in the big ones.

May Mary help us to always accept the will of God with humility and courage, so that even the trials and difficulties of life may help to hasten the coming of his Kingdom of justice and peace.


After the prayers, he addressed a special message to Spanish-speaking pilgrims:

The Gospel today reminds us of the great event of the Christmas mystery: the Word of God became flesh and dwelt among us, so that we may contemplate his glory and become children of God if we believe in his name.

In that name, the Holy Year Door of [the Cathedral of] Santiago de Compostela was opened a few days ago - the door through which for centuries, multitudes of pilgrims have entered in search of the light of faith and the grace of forgiveness, on contemplating the majestic 'Portico of Glory' of the temple that preserves a particular memory of the Apostle St. James the Major (Santiago el Mayor) in the western limits of the European continent.

I invite everyone to let themselves be enlightened by Christ, light of the world, for a rebirth of hope, of a new life and a new world of peace and concord.

---

A couple of commentaries have appeared in the Italian newspapers on the obvious way in which Benedict XVI has downplayed what happened to him on Christmas Eve in St. Peter's Basilica.

With his exquisite sensibility - especially because he came out of it with literally not a hair out of place - he has not once mentioned the incident in public, nor paid any attention to the immediate suggestions in the Italian media that he should visit his 'aggressor', who is clinically deranged.

If a secular personage had made such a visit, everyone would have called it a stunt, so why should they expect the Pope to behave less sensibly for no reason than because it would give the media a photo opportunity? Imagine the derision if Silvio Berlusconi had visited the man who smashed his face with a marble figurine!

The Pope is the last person on earth to need or want for more photo opportunities than he already gets by virtue of who he is, and does not have to create artificial ones.

More importantly, he can very well forgive the woman in his heart - as he must have done so instantly on Christmas Eve - without having to beat his breast in public about it!


Thanks to Lella's

for this transcript of a commentary made earlier today on Italian state TV's RAI-2
by veteran Vatican correspondent Lucio Brunelli on the issue:

The Pope's secretary makes a visit
that is not meant for the cameras
by Lucio Brunelli
Translated from a commentary for
RAI TG-2
January 3, 2010


A gesture far from the cameras... and even today, at the Angelus, not a word about it from the Pope.

But the Vatican confirmed that on December 31, Benedict XVI's private secretary, Mons. Georg Gaenswein, paid a visit to a hospital in Subiaco outside Rome, to Susanna Maiolo, the 25-year-old Swiss-Italian woman who caused the Pope to fall down on Christmas Eve at St. Peter's Basilica.

It was Papa Ratzinger's way of showing his interest in the situation of the psychiatrically disturbed woman. Mons. Gaenswein brought her the Pope's best wishes and gave her a rosary blessed by the Pope.

The visit was supposed to be very private, but some patients at the hospital recognized Mons. Gaenswein leaving the hospital, so the visit was reported in a couple of newspapers yesterday.

Today, the Vatican press Office confirmed the visit in a brief communique, which was decidedly terse. Intentionally, the word forgiveness does not appear at all - not because the Pope has not forgiven the woman's sick attempt, but precisely because in her condition, she was obviously incapable of sane judgment nor even of malice, and therefore, he does not ascribe any moral responsibility to her action - which, subjectively at least, was an offense.

By nature and by rearing, Joseph Ratzinger has avoided theatricality, disliking to display his sentiments, and fleeing from any mediatic personalism.

At the Angelus today, he called on Catholics not to rest their hopes for the New Year on improbable forecasts, but to remember that 2010 will be 'good' to the measure that we know how to work with the grace and will of God.



Earlier, Renato Farina, who has been an open admirer of Benedict XVI, wrote a longer piece for the Sunday issue of Il Giornale, commenting on Mons. Gaenswein's visit which the newspaper was the first to report yesterday.

The article, I believe, intended to mean well towards Pope Benedict but soon spoils its message by comparing, in effect, Benedict XVI's low-key and unmediatic response, with John Paul II's dramatic (and undoubtedly mediatic) visit to his would-be assassin in jail back in 1981.

But the incidents are not even comparable in any way! One was an unequivocal attempt to kill the Pope by a thug in the hire of the Communist secret services; the other, an ultimately harmless (except to poor Cardinal Etchegaray) unarmed attack by a deranged person acting alone.

Can anyone even imagine Benedict XVI thinking to make more of the Christmas Eve incident than what it was. by calling attention to it in any way on his own behalf? He could comment in public and make light of his 'small accident' in Les Combes because it only involved himself. The St. peter's incident involves one of those 'generally anonymous people' he spoke about in his December 8 homily whom the media decide to rob of their anonymity in ways that are exploitative and not kind to the victim at all.

His December 8 homily resonated immediately when, by Christmas Day, several websites had opened in Italy by 'fans' of Susanna Maiolo who cheered her aggression against the Pope, proving that they are even sicker than she is!

I will post Farina's article when I have translated it - because it also provides a lamentable lesson on how even intelligent people who should know better continue to yield to the temptation of eternally making comparisons to John Paul II.

Even worse, as Lella and many of her blog followers have pointed out, Farina refers to Benedict XVI as 'the minimal Pope' (in the sense that he eschews grand gestures) and in the same breath, calls his predecessor the 'Gran Polacco' with capital letters. It's very disconcerting that Farina seems not to be aware of such a blatant gaffe!

Have those who derive sadistic pleasure from such invidious comparisons - not that I count Farina among them, though his invidious comparisons cause me no small amount of teeth-gnashing - ever stopped to think that John Paul II himself would be the first to deplore such an uncharitable and unfair treatment of his successor?

God has a hand in the choice of the men who become his Vicars on earth, and he has his reasons for the selection of each and everyone of them at a specific time in the history of the Church. Surely, he never meant his Vicars to be cast as rivals in a perennially-running popularity contest as the media in the past several decades have tended to treat them.


The Pope forgives Maiolo and
the Vatican confirms Giornale's scoop
by Renato Farina
Translated from

January 3, 2009


He waited until the furor over the incident died down, and then on St. Sylvester's [New Year's Eve], he sent his secretary to visit Susanna Maiolo - Don Georg brought her the Pontiff's best wishes and gave her a rosary.

And so on the last day of the year, Pope Benedict sent a message, outside official texts, private and personal, but in fact, one basically addressed to each of us. Instead of words, action.

Mons. Georg Gaenswein, the Pope's private secretary, went to Subiaco on St. Sylvester's Day, at his chief's behest. There, in a protected ward for mentally-disturbed patients, he visited 25-year-old Susanna Maiolo, the Swiss-Italian woman who vaulted over the barrier in St. Peter's Basilica on Christmas Eve and dragged the Pope down. {With collateral damage to Cardinal Roger Etchegaray who broke his hip, a serious injury for an 87-year-old man.)

Don Georg came to Susanna, who has a history of previous confinement in a Swiss asylum, to find out how she was doing, and apparently told her that the Holy Father believed she had no bad intentions and has forgiven her, a message he also conveyed in behalf of Cardinal Etchegaray. That, with best wishes from the Pope, and a rosary that ahd been blessed by him.

We learned this all from someone who is very close to the Pope, trusting that we would keep it confidential. I understand, but I write it anyway. Because so many criticisms have been making the rounds among both priests and faithful about the 'silence' of the Pope.

And yet, not a word for what the Pope must have thought, the emotions he underwent, if he had forgiven his aggressor. True: the incident in itself was marginal to the mysteries of Christmas, but it made the front pages and the TV newscasts around the world.

The general judgment [????] appears to have followed established prejudice: that we are dealing with a German Pastor, who is cold though superficially smiling, but someone who is really more wedded to doctrine than to persons.

[But who really thinks that, except the Pope's diehard detractors who will never see anything good about him? I protest vehemently in behalf of all the simple faithful who simply love and venerate their Pope, who certainly do not find his smiles superficial in any way, nor think that doctrine means more to him than people! - because everything he says and does in public underscores his deep, warm and genuine humanity, which makes his equally obvious spirituality even more striking!]

Even the most authoritative commentators agree that Joseph Ratzinger is a man incapable of great gestures that would resound on the world stage!

[If 'grand gestures' only mean theatrical gestures, then that is true. How would Farina qualify spontaneous gestures like Benedict's moment of reflection at the Blue Mosque in Istanbul - so perfect, spontaneous, insulated and unspoiled by all the cameras that were recording it, or his meetings with victims of sex-offender priests in Washington and Sydney, rightly done without benefit of cameras?

Or what, for me, is the most definitive moment of his Pontificate so far and the towering highlight of 2009 - his March 12 letter to the bishops of the world, entirely without precedent in the history of the papacy?

Or the equally behind-the-scenes gesture - but oh-so-right though politically incorrect - of deciding to unblock the beatification process for Pius XII, as were his decisions to liberate the traditional Mass from its summary and unworthy suppression, and to lift the excommunication of the Lefebvrian bishops?

This is the same man, after all, who took all the heat in 2000, in the middle of the Jubilee Year festivities, for Dominus Iesus, as he knew he would, and stood up firmly and calmly for it contra mundum!

And this is the German Pope who went to Auschwitz, expressed the universal sense of the Holocaust as no one had done before him, and was blessed with the rainbow sign of God's covenant with man even as he said those words. On that occasion, the heavens completed his gesture - but people are quick to forget, including Jews who know their Scripture.]

Therefore, in an era where image and the power of gestures count more against however profound a thought or announcement, Benedict XVI is consigned to incomprehension and solitude. [Again, by whom? Certainly not by the faithful. No man can be lonely who attracts such crowds to St. Peter's twice a week and at every liturgy! And we can only imagine the e-mails and letters he must get every day. And the prayers at countless daily Masses around the world for him, and by the individual faithful!]

There comes unbidden a comparison with John Paul II. ['Unbidden or 'involuntary', to use the cognate of the Italian word Farina used, one does not have to yield to it, if only out of sheer comon sense. Unbidden thoughts do not have to be verbalized, especially if they became unfair and counter-productive!]

He dominated the great theater of the world, he harnessed the force of destiny, he defied fate like a giant, and he really was. [By implication, he seems to be saying - "in comparison to which, Benedict XVI is a midget!' These logical implications, even if unintended, are always the danger with invidious comparions!]

Even if one cannot possibly compare the asssination attempt on Wojtyla [with Maiolo's attack], Ratzinger went through all of his experience in minor mode, he did not claim the protection of the Madonna nor did he thank God in public for having escaped injury [a fall for a man his age could have meant serious injury].

And unlike the Great Pole, he did not feel it necessary to go and visit his attacker to listen to what the person had to say. At the time, the TV cameras had allowed a glimpse into the conversation between John Paul II and his would-be assassin - Ali Agca did not seek forgiveness; he only wanted to know what was 'this Fatima' to which the Pope attributed the miracle of the deviated bullet that spared his life.

Ratzinger has a different destiny - or, if you wish, a different dispensation by Providence. Not the terrible fate of a Muslim Turkish killere, but thank God!, just a mentally-challenged Swiss woman.

He receives atrocious threats from Islamist sites, but the liberal media treat him as a reactionary. This is the era of insensitivity.

Yet one knows his life is that of a simple humble Christian who has never placed himself in the center of anything, even when he makes the front pages. And he is capable of forgiveness, friendship, and hope, even if his detractors only have hatred for him because he opposes 'the dictatorship of relativism' - almost as if his view of the world were nothing more than this bitter criticism.

How blind we are: this 'minimal Pope' is great in his love and his humility. Speaking of friendship and wishes for the new year, consider his New Year's wish that few have quoted:

"I hope that the friendship of our Lord Jesus Christ may accompany you every day of the year that is about to begin. May this friendship of Christ be our light and guide, helping us to be men of peace, of his peace. A happy New Year to all!"


After translating the whole thing, I am far less well-disposed to Farina, despite his closing lines! This is one article he should have reviewed thoroughly before submitting. At best, he can be faulted for tactlessness and a tendency to thoughtless generalization; at worst, for insensitivity and bad taste.

Probably nothing is more indicative of the resonance of Benedict XVI's Magisterium than the fact that somewhere in Italy every day, there is some major or minor conference or lecture about some aspect of his Magisterium, whether it be his homilies, his encyclicals, his book Jesus of Nazareth, or his theological writings, especially on the liturgy.

I think perhaps this is unprecedented for any Pope, and a phenomenon made possible by the prodigious wealth to be mined from his body of work - even if we limit ourselves only to the output of his Pontificate so far.

I translated the following article, carried by Lella's invaluable blog

even if the item is very uneven, dangling and incomplete as a report - from which I have reproduced the parts that are coherent - if only to indicate the kind of insight that this particular lecturer has about the Pope.



'The people of God'
through the Pope's theology
by Anna Maria Crisafulli Sartori
Adapted and translated from

January 3, 2009


MESSINA - "To build up the Christian community in Italy" - This is the thematic context for the present cultural project undertaken by the Maria Cristina di Savoia lecture series, that was underscored by its president Giuseppe Napoli Scarcella when he introduced a lecture on "The people of God" by Prof. Aristotele Malatino, professor of law and passionate scholar of Christianity's eaarly theologians.

The professor analyzed some fundamental passages from the theological and pastoral work of Papa Ratzinger, which display his freedom of thought, calling him "a very refined theologian, who is able to comprehend the internal dialectic of the Christian system".

A Pope who follows in the wake of John Paul II and Paul VI, and therefore, "not reactionary, but rather, inflexible in doctrine"...

Malatino sees the great importance of tbe Pope's homilies as a testimony of his teaching activity aimed at edifying the 'People of God', especially today when "atheism, for which the word God corresponds to nothing, is ever more dangerous"...

He describes the Pope as someone "who, whether he speaks as theologian or historian, as parish priest or bishop, as Pope, or as a simple man, never ever says empty words" and cites passages in which he codnemns pride and hypocrisy (which Christ harshly reproaahed the scribes for), underscores the value of the Mass and all the expressions of Christian life that are not mere empty ritualism.

From Caritas in veritate, Malatino cited, among other passages, that in which he affirms that ethics must be integrated in the economy "which cannot function if it doesn't take human values into account"...


The rambling, sometimes incoherent recounting of what Benedict XVI says is an occupational hazard to those who write about the Pope for a living, and is not restricted to smalltown journalists. For instance, every editorial that the editor of L'Osservatore Romano writes dutifully after any major text by Benedict XVI convinces me that to try and paraphrase the Pope necessarily dilutes the power of his words. That is why somehow, Vian's editorials always read flat and flaccid to me. As this editorial on the Holy Father's New year's Day homily...


The face of God
and the faces of men
Editorial
by Giovanni Maria Vian
Translated from
the 1/2-1/3/10 issue of



Before the representatives of the peoples of the world gathered every year at St. Peter's for the celebration of the Solemnity of the Mother of God and the World Day for Peace, Benedict XVI chose to speak of the face of God.

The face that every human creature, even without knowing it, has always looked for and continues to look for, that progressively revealed itself to man, and finally, in the fullness of time, revealed itself in Jesus.

In the incarnation of Christ, man can understand, if he wants, the tenderness of God which Byzantine art intuited and represented in the 'tenderness' icons of Mary: in the look that the Baby Jesus gives his mother, who in turn looks at us.

Whoever grasps this tenderness can consequently change his own outlook and his heart, in order to follow the way that leads to peace. The Pope's reflection addresses the essential, and before the diplomats who represent the nations of the earth, he speaks to everyone.

He denounced in particular the torment on the faces of so many children - whom the Pope considers 'a reflection of God's view of the world' - as a result of wars, violence, exploitation and sexual abuse, which are a violation of 'man who is sacred for the innocence of his childhood' as Paul VI said in his concluding homily of the second Vatican Council.

The kind of violence that is registered daily throughout the world, and once more, in Pakistan, in this horrible massacre that was deliberately carried out against adults and children gathered in a village for a children's basketball game.

Benedict XVI looks at God and therefore he can speak of man with realism. In particular, he evokes the faces of children of various nationalities who live together everyday in schools, smiling, crying and playing in exactly the same way - the faces of little innocents who demand responsibility from everyone confronted with the 'false justifications of war and violence'; as well as the faces of 'the least'. regarded with love and tenderness by those 37 witnesses for Christ who gave their lives for them in the past year [their stories are told by Fides, the news agency of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples].

And finally, the face of Creation itself, in which one can recognize the reflections of God's face, incarnated in the Baby whose mother holds him in her arms to show him to the shepherds of Bethlehem and the men who had come from afar.

In the same way that the Church - prefigured by Mary - shows and offers Christ to every human being.


I have maintained staunchly that the best way to report on what Benedict XVI says is to publish his full text - or at least, quote substantially from it in a coherent and not random manner. (It's the exigent reason that I try to post full translations of his texts ASAP.) Except for the encyclicals, major messages and books (obviously), the papal texts are short enough to be read through easily.

The public is not well served to rely on news reports that are always incomplete, often randomly selective, and worse, disruptive of his thought flow.

The Pope's texts are not meant to be fragmented into sound bites, and his language does not lend itself to being paraphrased. His words are simple enough that they can and should be quoted directly, without need for paraphrasing.

An editorial or commentary on what the Pope says should take the form of the extended, discursive and insightful essays of Fr. Schall, who also has the rhetorical gifts that do justice to the Pope's texts; or the short, pithy and focused pieces of Bruno Mastroianni who never tries to be encyclopedic, to cite two excellent examples of the long and the short.

Perhaps, too, the OR should follow the practice of major Italian newspapers, including Avvenire, who have a stable of competent editorial writers for particular topics. Vian's editorials bring his particular focus to the papal text he comments on, but his verbal tools often do not measure up to the job.


1/4/09
P.S. Some of the major Italian dailies today gave some play to the Pope's Angelus message from yesterday, focusing on the warning to the faithful not to trust prognostications or economic forecasters for what they face in 2010.

The one in Corriere della Sera was a good example of reporting on a brief papal text, interspersing appropriate commentary with excerpts from the homily reported in 'chronological' order as the Pope delivered it.

Monday, January 4

Center photo: Seton house and shrine in downtown New York City.
ST. ELIZABETH ANN SETON (USA, 1774-1821)
Widow, Convert and Founder of the Sisters of Charity of St. Joseph
This remarkable woman who accomplished so much in 46 years of her life was born
tp an Episcopalian family in New York City's high society. At age 19, she married
a wealthy banker and bore him five children, after which he lost his fortune and
fell sick. He died while convalescing in Italy, where his wife became exposed to
Catholicism. She converted after his death and was denounced by her family for
doing so. Having to raise five children by herself, the moved to Baltimore where
she set up a free school for the poor, the first Catholic parish school in the USA.
It became the basis, in 1809, for founding the first American religious community
for women, the Sisters of Charity of St. Joseph, dedicated to educating children
of the poor. Seton also established the first American Catholic orphanage. She died
early of tuberculosis. She was beatified in 1963 and canonized in 1975, the first
native-born American citizen to become a saint. She is considered as the patron
saint of schools.
Readings for today's Mass: www.usccb.org/nab/readings/010410.shtml


No OR today.


No bulletin so far (12:20 p.m. Rome time) from the Vatican Press Office.

Pope is right to warn
against trusting economists,
says Italian finance minister
by Lorenzo Totaro



ROME, Jan. 4 (Bloomberg) -- Pope Benedict XVI is right in urging Catholics not to believe in predictions by magicians and economists, Italian Finance Minister Giulio Tremonti said.

“Wishing to forecast the future of human things, of politics, of the economy, is superstitious as this depends on the man,” Tremonti said late yesterday in an interview on Tg1, the evening news show on state-controlled channel RAI 1.

“Our hope does not rely on improbable predictions, nor even on economic forecasts,” the Pontiff said yesterday during his Sunday Angelus prayer from his window overlooking St. Peter’s Square.

“2010 will also be more or less ‘good’ to the extent that each one of us, in accordance with our responsibilities, will be able to work with the grace of God.”

Tremonti credited the Pope with being the first to predict the global financial crisis, a “prophecy” dating to a paper titled “Market Economy and Ethics” that he wrote while a cardinal.

“The prediction that an undisciplined economy would collapse by its own rules can be found” in a 1985 article written by then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, Tremonti said at Milan’s Cattolica University in November 2008.


An extended commentary on the Pope's comment yesterday on economic forecasters was made by Ettore Ogti Tedeschi - now president of the the Vatican Bank IOR, and economic and financil editorialist for L'Osservatore Romano - in an interview with Corriere della Sera, which I hope to translate later.

And the usually anti-Benedict La Repubblica also carries a substantial commentary.

Thanks to Beatrice. who incidentally, has a new banner for her site

benoit-et-moi.fr/
for these two welcome articles, which are not available online
and which she had to scan from the paper editions. I will post the first article now, as I have yet to translate the other..


A swallow doesn't a summer make -
but the 'Benedict effect' does work
at times on his media critics
by Jean Madiran
Translated from

January 3, 2009


...This issue of Present that comes to you as its first during the new year is for us the last put together in 2009, and could well have served as the occasion to review the year past, whether anecdotal or chronological.

But I hesitated. Perhaps it is more important for me to dwell on a small and recent fact: this time, Catherine Panzoni has surprised us happily.

You (French readers) are supposed to know her - this French-Italian woman who is very much 'in' these days. She is a journalist, not a singer, and last March, I traced the highlights of her career, rom her classical studies with the Dominicans at the Institut San Congariano to her Grand Prix Mahous [???? Tried to google this - no luck] for reportage, after apprenticeship at the Pomadin [Coiffeur] magazines. I said then she was now the 'biggie' reporter for the weekly magazine Pruris-Match [I believe a pejorative reference to the crassly vulgar Paris-Match - pruris meaning pruritus, or itch, itchiness]

Last March, she wrote the most vicious article ever to come out in the Parisian press against Benedict XVI. And last month, she was her magazine's 'special correspondent' to Rome to 'inquire about the eventual beatification of Pius XII" - after which she pulls a surprise! Probably, a Christmas grace from Pius XII, whose force was such that in 1944, Grand Rabbi Zolli of Rome converted to Catholicism, with the Rabbi taking the Pope's secular name Eugenio at Baptism.

It seems, since March [shortly after the Williamson brouhaha and the Pope's epochal letter to the world's Catholic bishops], Panzoni has learned have a better regard for Benedict XVI. Apparently struck by his courage, she has sought to understand him and has found in him a sympathetic frankness and transparency on the great issues that agitate Rome.

And she has come to perceive that "he prefers to deal with problems instead of stifling them", and that "reserved about himself", he acts "without triumphalism but with determination".

Above all, it is almost miraculous, for a professional in today's media world which is closed in on itself, that she now understands that if "this Pope is so not given to publicity", it is because he has "never worked with public opinion in mind, but for the eternity of the holy, apostolic and Roman Church".

Ending with a pretty phrase, which is a beautiful definition for the Pontificate of Benedict XVI: Benedict XVI, Panzoni says, "speaks only to God and the People of God".

And I would comment: He speaks to God - it is his prayer; he speaks to the People of God - it is his task to teach and to lead them.

Benedict XVI has not given an inch to the tyranny of the media, just as his predecessor did not [about whom Panzoni had earlier written a book,Jean-Paul II secret].

But Benedict XVI's resistance is different. John Paul II imposed himself over the media because he was a sovereign master of the media music. Benedict XVI is simply immune to all the sirens that sing this music to him.

Such a calm immunity comes from a world that is strange to newsmen formatted by the virtual falsehood of the major media.

And yet, here comes Panzoni who has discerned that, in fact, far from this being a 'blunder' or clumsiness by Benedict XVI, it his his strength.

You will say one swallow doesn't a summer make. Certainly, and Christmas is not even the right season. But in the grey of winter, it is nonetheless a beautiful little flutter of wings that deserves to be greeted with a smile....

Happy New Year to Catherine Panzoni, and Happy New Year to all. And may this be a more smiling year.


The second item to be translated is the Panzoni article itself from Paris-Match.

I am a bit confused now, because I was able to bring up the Paris-Match article itself online, and it is bylined by Caroline Pignozzi, whose often catty, sometimes vicious, articles about Benedict XVI I have read in the past (not the March 2009 article though - but it is available online). Is 'Catherine Panzoni' her real name, or did Jean Madiran somehow use the wrong name?

In any case, the article itself is still full of those lamentable and unprofessional media habits of misrepresenting objective fact about the Church - which one does not expect of a writer who received a classic Dominican education - and speculating baselessly on the state of the Pope's health...

The courage of the Pope

Benedict XVi took the world by surprise by proclaiming on the same day as Venerable Servants of God
both John Paul II and the controversial Pius XII...
A portrait of a unique Pope who has never acted with an eye to public opinion and who grasps with transparency
the great issues that agitate Rome even as he remains quite mysterious himself.

by our special correspondent to Rome
Caroline Pignozzi


From the issue of December 26, 2009



In the shadow of the 30-meter high fir on St. Peter's Square, that had come from the Ardennes as a gift from the Belgians, 2009 risked ending, for Benedict XVI, as it had begun - in turmoil.

In fact, the Pope has shown himself both politic and dogmatic in taking the world by surprise on December 19, by proclaiming at the same time the heroic virtues of John Paul II and the controversial Pius XII, not to mention the Polish priest Jerzy Popieluszko, who was assassinated by the Polish Communist police.

A decision that was not solemnly proclaimed from his study window after Sunday Angelus [but these decrees never are announced by the Pope verbally - they are, above all, official documents], but more discreetly in signing the decrees published Saturday in the Vatican newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano [No, the decrees came out in teh Sunday issue, after being published in the regular Vatican bulletin on Saturday].

Thus, the news, which came out on the Jewish Sabbath, which is respectfully observed in Israel and by observant Jews, could not be commented on immediately by the Jewish community, which is itself strongly divided on the issue [of Pius XII].

[I don't think there was a design at all to the Saturday release of the bulletin, which went online after 12 noon Saturday, on the day the Pope met with the full Congrgeation for the Causes of Sainthood to address them on their 40th anniversary!

Israel time is only one hour earlier than Italy, and since Sabbath runs from sundown of Friday to sundown of Saturday, sundown came in both places within a few hours of the Vatican release - not exactly a significant delay! In fact, the Chief Rabbi of Rome had a reply right after sundown!]

Moreover, in the four corners of the globe, few newspapers appear on Sunday. {And does that fact really matter in this case, considering that there are only 14 million Jews around the world - and anyone interested could well have informed himself on the Internet soon enough?]

As for the State of Israel, it has long ago made clear that it cannot take an official position (on Pius XII) because that would be getting into the internal business of the Catholic Church.

Nonetheless, it demands the opening of the Vatican Archives for the controversial period of Pius XII's Ponitificate (1939-1945). [And the Vatican has officially announced it expects to do so in five years time, so it's not as if the Jewish 'demand' has been ignored! They just cannot have 'instant gratification'.]

Benedict XVI has therefore planned closely this announcement whereby he underscores the continuity of the papacy. Beyond the differences between the two Popes, he wished to honor in the same way the Pope most loved by the Jews and the one most controversial for them.

Popes Wojtyla and Pacelli, though they are now 'Venerable Servants of God', are not yet beatified, but it is a decisive step before the final requirement for beatification: recognition of a miracle attributed to the Venerable candidate after his death.

After visiting Jerusalem last May and before visiting the Great Synagogue of Rome next month, the 265th Successor of Peter chose to announce the news without triumphalism but with determination. {Decrees and acts celebrating the heroic virtues, martyrdom, beatification or sainthood of exemplary Catholis are never an occasion for triumphalism by the Church. In fsct, nothing should be an occasion for tirumphalism. Joy and celebration, yes, but always in the context of the universal Church and its concept of the People of God as an eternal and actual communion of saints.]

In the case of Papa Wojtyla, Benedict XVI is caught up in an almost implacable mechanism. In effect, tehe Polish lobby, headed by John Paul II's former secretary, Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz, has made an international cause of the beatification, which is also orchestrated in Rome by a number of cardinals. [This is unfair to all concerned. It gives the impression that the cause for sainthood can be 'lobbied' in any way - when, on the contrary, there is a precise, well-defined and stringent process for it to happen.]

Already at John Paul II's funeral, crowds prompted by the Focolari movement cried out "Santo subito" and had streamers and signs saying the same thing.

However, the pairing of John Paul II with Pius XII surprised a good number of cardinals and the Jewish community. [Because all of them wrongly assumed - when Benedict XVI said last year that he would spend more time for reflection before signing the May 2007 decree on Pius XII's heroic virtues - that it was his way of avoiding the issue, which he would leave as a problem for the next Pope!]

This 'sequential' Pope - who tries to resolve problems calmly one by one - also has a secret challenge, which is, rapprochement with the Orthodox Christians and relaunching the dialog with them. [How is it secret in any way, when he said very clearly in his first homily as Pope, on April 20, 2005, that he would make Christian unity one of his priorities?]

On June 20, he will go to Cyprus, where most Christians are Orthodox, but it has also been the site for many negotiations and sessions of the mixed internationl commission for theological dialog between Catholics and Orthodox.

It is a step that could create a proptiious climate for a future meeting between the Pope and the Patriarch of Moscow, Kyrill I. [But the primary reason for the Cyprus trip is to meet the bishops of the Mediterranean region to formally consign the working agenda for the Bishop's Synod's Special Assembly for the Middle East in October 2010.]

It is a legitimate challenge, for the Soveriegn Pontiff, to wish to succeed where his predecessor had failed [to meet the Patriarch of Moscow]. [Put that way, it seems petty. The cause of Christian unity rests on so much more than notching a diplomatic 'win'! Why no mention at all that the mixed commission has now come to discussing the role of the Pope in a reunified Church????]

The crusade [is this a right term here?] promises to take a long time because the Orthodox themselves do not see eye to eye. There is no harmony at all among the Patriarchs of Greece, Serbia, Kosovo, the United States, the historical Primate of Orthodoxy, Bartholomew I, Archbishop of Constantinople, and the Patriarch of Moscow, who is at the head of almost half of the world's Orthodox Christian population [135 million out of 300 million].

But Benedict XVI feels no despair about his goal, especially since, last November, he succeeded to placate the Protestants. [??? Not the best nor most correct way to describe the opening toward Anglicans.]

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, Primate of the Church of England, was informed that Rome was preparing to welcome the male members of the Anglican clergy who wish to convert to Catholicism. [Not just the clergy, but also the faithful!]

Many Anglicans disapprove the Anglican opening towards women and homosexuals as priests and bishops. The Vatican will allow them to convert and keep their liturgy [closer to the traditional Mass than the Novus Ordo is], even their married priests to continue being priests after re-ordination, and an administrative system of communities rather than dioceses.

This Pope obviously does not lack courage. In the past weeks, he has apologized for the abominable crimes by Irish priests against thousands of children committed to their care in boarding schools.

The offenders in the Diocese of Dublin, in the years from 1975-2003 [as investigated by an Irish government commission] were protected by their hierarchy, who covered up their offenses.

The Pope thus obliged the Bishop of Limerick to resign. [No. The Bishop of Limerick - along with a handful of other bishops subsequently - felt it was his duty to resign, and did offer his resignation to the Pope, who accepted.]

In fact, although a considerable number of Cstholics reproach Benedict XVI for his traditionalism and, especially, his conservatism, this austere Pope is also strict and rigorous [I suppose she means in the sense that he is scrupulous about following rules, whether they are commandments of God or commandments of the Church.]

He prefers to resolve problems rather than to stifle them - before his time, this was not at all the style of the Vatican, which preferred to avoid raising painful issues; even the Polish Pope kept the reflexes of a Church of silence.

In fact, Benedict XVI's transparency and frankness tend to be disconcerting to some members of the Sacred College. But in this sovereign state, where silence has reigned majestuously since time immemorial, everyone is speculating in subdued tones on inevitable questions about the Pope's health.

Because to advance Midnight Mass by two hours for the reason given - not to tire the Pope too much during a period when he has many public events - only drew smiles from the Roman Curia; such explanations are never taken seriously by them. [Do we really care what they think? They must abide by the Pope's schedule, period!]

Especially since on Christmas Day, unlike John Paul II who celebrated Mass on St. Peter's Square, all Benedict XVI did was to deliver his Christmas message and greetings at noon from the Basilica's central loggia. [That is so wrong! John Paul II never celebrated Mass on Christmas Day in St. Peter's Square , not even during the Jubilee Year - the Christmas Mass he offered with the public was the one at midnight.

[In fact, all the feigned outcry over a Christmas Eve Mass that starts at 10 p.m. instead of midight was completely artificial. The Wikipedia entry on the Midnight Mass says: "Many Roman Catholics and Anglicans traditionally celebrate a midnight Mass (Eucharist) which begins either at or sometime before midnight on Christmas Eve. A popular joke is to ask what time Midnight Mass starts, but in recent years some churches have scheduled their 'Midnight' Mass as early as 7 p.m." I distinctly remember one Christmas in the final years of Cardinal O'Connor, when I missed the telecast of the Midnight Mass at St. Patrick's Cathedral because it had started at 10 p.m.]

An excuse that nonetheless troubled the Pope's entourage. [Why should it trouble them if it is for the Pope's good?] In fact, to organize a Mass that is followed by tens of millions of viewers around the world is hardly an anodyne task. The tradition of the Christmas Midnight Mass, then called the 'Mass of the Angels' began with Sixtus III.

[The story is that when Sixtus had the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore built, with a chapel dedicated to the Nativity - it is said to contain a relic of the Manger - he instituted the Midnight Mass (in 430), inspired by a midnight vigil that fourth-century Christians observed in Bethlehem on Christmas Eve, proceeding to Jerusalem in a torchlight procession to get there on Christmas Day.]

This Pope is unusual, even disquieting to some, because he applies a real transparency to the great issues that agitate Rome, even as he remains mysterious, even secret, in his own person. [Because the Pope's role is to call attention to Jesus Christ, to God, not to himself!]

Unlike John Paul II, who was given medical care in Rome's Gemelli Polyclinic, this Pope has an up-to-date medical unit at the Vatican, with an operating room - indeed a veritable private hospital on the third floor of the Apostolic Palace.

[If that is true, then it is a wise and prudent measure. But the reporter glosses over the fact that in John Paul II's final weeks, medical care was provided for him right in the papal apartments - and one can imagine, no effort was spared to have the best equipment available. In fact, I read then that one reason for the renovations that kept Benedict XVI from moving into the papal apartments for a few weeks was to 'undo' the changes that had been introduced to accommodate the requirements for appropriate medical care of John Paul II. And it would make sense to have subsequently set up a self-contained medical unit next to the papal apartment.]

Attending him now is not a generalist as was Dr. Buzzonetti, who was John Paul's personal physician, but a cardiologist who specializes in cardiac resuscitation, Dr. Patrizio Polisca, deputy director of the Vatican's health services.

The Holy Father, now 82-1/2, was diagnosed in the past with arterial hypertension without a specific cause. Such a condition carries the risk [if not controlled by adequate medication!] of leading to renal insufficiency or a cerebral accident (stroke).

He suffered a slight stroke in the past and has undergone a coronary angiography [which determines if any of the arteries feeding the heart are clogged or in danger of clogging].

It seems his dcotors are not entirely satisfied with his medications so far [How does she know this?], since it is not easy to find the right combination of beta-blockers, vasodilators and diuretics. His doctors have been trying out various combinations without getting the desired result. Thus, he must observe a saltless diet and he has been advised to rest as much as possible.

[This is all speculation, presented in a deceptively 'knowledgeable' way, citing facts that anyone who has had any experience with a hypertensive person would know to be possible but do not necessarily happen.]

Therefore, he has prudently limited his official meetings to the strict minimum and never has guests for lunch or for his private Mass in the morning. {It really gets outrageous when any journalist reports as fact things that are hearsay or made up simply to give the impression that they are 'in the know'. Pigozzi goes to Rome to look into the Pius XII case, and suddenly, she is reporting as fact all these things about the Pope's state of health that not even Andrea Tornielli or Paolo Rodari have dared to assume!]

The Pope wishes to be in good shape for the beatification ceremonies. [Only for the beatification ceremonies? Isn't it more natural that he would wish to be in good shape to do all his day-to-day tasks?]

A date? They are saying next October - the anniversary of the election 32 years ago of Cardinal Karol Wojtyla as Pope, and the death of Pius XII in 1958. They love anniversaries at the Vatican. [But she is assuming that the two Popes will be beatified at the same time, which is not likely at all, and which Fr. Lombardi alredy ruled out. John Paul II has a miracle all ready to be certified by medical experts and theologians. One has not read any such progress in the case of Pius XII.]

What one had hardly foreseen was that this Pope - so little disposed to communicating[Not indiscriminate communicating, no, but certainly, no recent Pope - or international leader - has been so focused and intent on communicating what he has to say to the faithful and to the world!], has just shown that for reasons that are dplomatic as well as spiritual, he only speaks to God and to his people.

So, in beatifying his predecessors, will he himself enter, in life, the Pantheon of history? [Not in beatifying his predecessors but by the totality of his being and actions! There is no rule that excludes the possibility of the Church having two Popes, in immediate succession, meriting the appellative of 'Great'!]

Tuesday, January 5

Third photo from left shows St. John Neumann's remains at his National Shrine in Philadelphia.
ST. JOHN NEPOMUCENE NEUMANN (Jan Nepomucyk Neumann)(b Bohemia 1811, d USA 1860), Missionary and Bishop
It's very strange that the Czech-born saint left his native land to go to the United States at age 24 because no bishop in Europe would ordain
him as a priest. The reason: there were too many priests already! He came to the US, was ordained, became a Redemptorist father after 4 years
(the first one in the US), and did missionary work in several states before he was appointed at age 41 to be the third Bishop of Philadelphia.
A great organizer, he changed the parochial school system into a diocesan one, resulting in a 20-fold increase in enrolment, He also brought in
religious teaching orders to serve the city. In life, he was reputed for his holiness and learning, his writings and his preaching. In 1963, he became
the first American bishop to be beatified, and then to become a saint when he was canonized in 1997. President Obama's gift to Benedict XVI
when he visited last July was the original pallium that had been placed on St. John's remains.
Readings for today's Mass: www.usccb.org/nab/readings/010510.shtml




OR for 1/4-1/5/10:

At the Sunday Angelus, the Pope calls on the faithful to welcome God's plan of love into their lives:
'Hope in a God who is part of man's history'
Other Page 1 stories: An editorial commentary on 'The true church that the newspapers do not write about', referring to
the 37 Catholics (including 30 priests) who gave their lives for the faith in 2009; in Somalia, 2009 was another year of
deaths and displaced persons in the country's civil war; and new terrorist attacks are feared from reactivated Al-Qaeda
elements in Yemen. Inside-page stories include an interview with Cardinal Tauran on the state of inter-religious dialog
today; an excellent eye-opening essay about Egyptian priest-scholar Georges Anawati (1905-1994) who is credited with
the balanced formulation of the Muslim provision in Nostra aetate and who said towards the end of his life that arriving
at Muslim-Christian understanding requires 'geological patience'; and a story on rock star Bono's faith.



No events scheduled for the Holy Father today.



The Vatican released the figures of the Pontifical Household for attendances at the Pope's various
public events in the Vatican in 2009. [These statistics have become increasingly questionable over
the past 5 years, because they are based only on the number of tickets given out by this office, and
because its estimates for no-ticket events such as the Angelus have always been dramatically at odds
with pictures of such events.]

Pontifical Household's estimates of
2009 attendance at papal events in Rome


VATICAN CITY, 5 JAN 2010 (VIS) - During the course of the year 2009, a total of 2,243,900 faithful and pilgrims participated in general or special audiences, in the Sunday Angelus or in liturgical celebrations presided by the Pope.

According to statistics released by the Prefecture of the Pontifical Household, more than half a million people attended the Wednesday general audiences, the month of April registering the highest attendance figures, and 1,120,000 were present for the Sunday praying of the Angelus.

A communique concerning the statistics explains that the figures are approximate, being calculated on the basis of various factors: formal requests received to attend the events, tickets issued, and (in the case of the Angelus or large celebrations in St. Peter's Square and the Vatican Basilica) calculations of the number of faithful present.

The statistics, the communique concludes, refer exclusively to celebrations and events held in the Vatican and Castelgandolfo, and do not take account of the Pope's meetings with large numbers of faithful during his pastoral visits within Italy or on his apostolic trips to other countries.



Cardinal Schoenborn professes
his belief in Medjugorje



Lella has posted on her blog an interview with Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn, Archbishop of Vienna, from a Bologna newspaper, Il Resto del Carlino, in which he says unequivocally that he believes that the Virgin Mary appeared to the 'visionaries' of Medjugorje.

Late last year, he became the first ranking Catholic prelate to say Mass in that Bosnian pilgrimage site. The interviewer does not press him whether he believes the Virgin has been appearing daily for the past 20 years or so to one or more of the 'visionaries'...

The Italian papers reported last month that Pope Benedict XVI appointed Cardinal Camillo Ruini to head a Vatican commission that will investigate the Medjugorje phenomenon definitively.

The Bishop of the diocese that has jurisdiction over Medjugorje has issued a statement about Cardinal Schoenborn's high-profile visit and statements in this regard. [Posted in the CHURCH&VATICAN thread].


Is it right or even seemly for Schoenborn to jump the gun this way? More and more, the man who heads the Benedict XVI Foundation appears to be straying off the reservation in alarming ways!


A new director for
the Sistine Chapel choir?



A couple of English blogs have already reported Sandro Magister's recent blog entry that Salesian Fr. Marco Palombella will soon be named to replace Mons. Giuseppe Liberto as director of the Sistine Chapel Choir.

His background: 15 years as music director of the Coro Inter-Universitario of Rome, composed of students from various Roman universities.

Magister adds that although Palombella's repertoire often includes compositions by the masters of polyphony from Palestrina to Bartolucci [who was unceremoniously retired in 1997 as director of the Sistine Chapel Choir even if he had been named director for life], he had a 'less than encouraging' debut at St. Peter's when his choir sang at the papal Vespers service with Rome's university students on Dec. 17.

Palombello's sponsor is fellow Salesian Cardinal Bertone, and Magister cites two recent articles in the OR (directly under Bertone) as a sort of pro-Palombello lobby. Magister has been very critical of the current choir director, Fr. Giuseppe Liberto, who was named to replace Bartolucci.

He points out the marked decline in the musical quality of the choir since Bartolucci, but also Liberto's choice of music, which is generally anti-traditional.

Magister goes as far as to entitle his blog entry on Palombello "Thumbs down on Ratzinger: A requiem for the Sistine Chapel Choir".

Is the Pope simply giving in to Bertone's recommendation, or does he really think Palombella is the man to redeem the Sistine Chapel Choir? Perhaps he has consulted his brother, Mons. Georg Ratzinger, about this. Does the veteran chormaster think that, given the right guidelines, Palombella has the potential to be an excellent choirmaster?

Yesterday, Bruno Bartoloni in Corriere della Sera wrote for his paper a belated account of the 'scoop' Il Giornale had on all the rest of the media Sunday regarding Mons. Gaenswein's visit to the deranged woman who 'jumped' the Pope on Christmas Eve.

He led off by claiming, in effect, that Gaenswein had told Maiolo the Pope would see her at the Vatican after a General Audience once the Vatican judicial process on her case is over - an element that was certainly not in the original story, which was deduced from eyewitnesses who saw Gaenswein in the hospital, nor from Renato Farina's subsequent article which cited an unnamed Vatican source for the detail of the rosary given to the woman, and the message from Cardinal Etchegaray, who is the major victim of the aggression.

Lella had provided a link to Bartoloni's story, and after reading it, I dismissed the story outright for being the flimsiest of speculations, and not worth passing on at all. How preposterous that Bartoloni could have leaped from the facts reported in those two original stories to his claim - for which he does not even cite a source, named or unnamed! (But apparently, the story was picked up by other media in Europe, though by no other Italian media so far).

Here, textually, is Bartoloni's lead sentence to his story: "Benedict XVI will receive Susanna Maiolo at the Vatican after the conclusion of the Vatican prosecutor's inquiry: This is what the Pope's private secretary supposedly implied to ('avrebbe lasciato intendere' - literally, 'left her to understand') the mentally-disturbed Italo-Swiss woman etc...." But how does anyone leave a mentally disturbed person to understand anything???])

The rest of his story is a rehash based on Fr. Lombardi's statement after the fact, and further speculation to the effect that the Vatican justice department could recommend that she be sent back to the Swiss asylum, but before she does, it is possible she could be received by the Pope after a Wednesday audience, etc.

It defies logic and common sense to imagine that Benedict XVI, who has admirably kept a judicious distance from the event, without even making any reference to it in public, would then make such a public gesture that is intrinsically meaningless and unnecessary - in other words, a publicity stunt - because he can forgive the woman without having to meet her, and 'rewarding' her in such a fashion would seem to be encouraging fanatics who commit such offenses.

Besides, the woman is mentally deranged and has been in a Swiss asylum before. Even a Vatican judicial clearance or dismissal is not going to cure her psychiatric problem. And would Vatican security really go out of their way to make all the necessary arrangements to protect the Pope and any other around him from any possible incident by admitting a deranged woman to his presence? They have better things to expend their resources on.

I am glad that today, Andrea Tornielli has dismissed Bartoloni's irresponsible fancy by saying, in the following story on new Vatican security arrangement, that he has not found any confirmation at all for such an eventuality.... And I doubt Bartoloni will come back to defend his unsourced speculation.


Here's how security arrangements
have changed at St. Peter's
by Andrea Tornielli
Translated from

Jan. 5, 2009


New norms for Benedict XVI's security in the Vatican Basilica: the space between the barriers along the central aisle has been widened by one meter more on both sides.

Without fuss nor official announcements, the Vatican security services led by Domenico Giani has instituted new measures to avoid incidents like that on Christmas Eve...

It will be recalled that Giani promptly subdued the woman, but she had already grasped the Pope's pallium, dragging him down. In the ensuing melee, one of the security men rushing towards the Pope bumped into French Cardinal Roger Etchegaray, 87, who fell and broke his hip.

The incident was followed by a meeting among Vatican officials, including Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, Secretary of State, to discuss better security measures.

Two arguments were debated: whether to increase the number of plainclothes gendarmes around the Pope - which would give the visible effect of excessive 'shielding', or more discreet measures that would make unforeseen incidents more unlikely. Discretion prevailed.

And the result was visible at the Vespers service on December 31, when the Pope, dressed in ritual garments belonging to his predecessors, presided at Vespers and Te Deum.

The width of the central aisle used for the procession has been widened notably, reducing the seating space for the faithful. This is clearly visible in the two pictures below - the first taken in October, at the end of the Synodal Assembly for Africa; the second taken on January 1, on the Solemnity of the Mother of God:


Since the photos are not on the same scale, the best reference point is the large mosaic circle on the aisle. The barriers have been moved away from the circle in the second photo.

In the October photo, the people behind the barriers cannot reach the Pope with their hands, but the Pope only needs to make two steps to get close enough to them.

In the second photo, the barriers are set back at least a meter on each side, and gendarmes (six can be seen near the Pope) have much more room to maneuver in case of an incident.

The Pope can still walk towards each side if he wants to, but the additional space gives his security men time and space to react, and do it without interrupting the procession or risk running down someone as what happened with Cardinal Etchegaray, who was the only real victim of Susanna Maiolo's aggression.

After the Dec. 31 visit of the Pope's secretary, Mons. Georg Gaenswein, accompanied by the head of Vatican security, to Maiolo at the psychiatric ward of Angelucci hospital in Subiaco, there is no confirmation at all of the speculation on a possible meeting between the Pope and the patient with her family after a Wednesday general audience.

P.S. An I-media report today basically rehashing Tornielli's report adds in its last paragraph:

---

According to I-media sources, Maiolo confessed last year, after she was successfully blocked from getting to the Pope, that she had wanted to scratch him in the face.

---

That is someone you definitely do not want to get near the Pope. Manic impulses are unpredictable in form, degree and timing.





DOES ANYONE KNOW A GOOD GERMAN SITE???

One of my wishes for the New Year is to find a regularly reliable site by some German follower of Benedict XVI who tries to keep a comprehensive account of - at the very least, the most significant and interesting - reports and commentaries that appear in the Germanophone media about Benedict XVI, in the same way that Beatrice does for the French media and Lella for the Italian media.

Because of time limitations, I have not been able to systematically check out what is available online in the German media. After the initial B16 years (2005-2006) when all the major German newspapers online were freely accessible, they have since become accessible to subscribers only, including Tagespost, which was the best substantial one-stop German 'shop' for all things Benedict (events, commentary and books).

There's BILD, of course, but their stories tend to be few and far between, and rather brief... and there's always kathnet, if I can only remember to check them out regularly. So, please, if anyone is aware of any German Benaddict individual or organization who run(s) a blog or website a la Lella and Beatrice, I would appreciate the information.

Thank you.

History in the making
The year ahead: 2010
by Robert Mickens and Elena Curti

Issue of January 2, 2010


A papal visit to Britain, the creation of a handful of new cardinals, the canonisation of Australia’s first saint and the beatification of Cardinal Newman as well as other likely events will make this year a highly significant one for the Catholic Church worldwide.

It may be weeks or even months before Rome makes a formal announcement, but it is practically certain that Pope Benedict will visit England and Scotland this autumn.

The Pope’s trip will be the highlight of what promises to be a significant year for Britain’s Catholics. While in England, he will beatify Cardinal John Henry Newman – now on track to become the first non-martyr English saint since the Reformation.

In a few weeks’ time the bishops of England and Wales, closely followed by those of Scotland, will be going to Rome to brief Pope Benedict about the state of Catholicism in Britain.

It is an important year for Catholicism internationally too, with the likelihood of a huge ceremony in St Peter’s Square to beatify the now Venerable John Paul II. There will also be a Vatican-based Synod on the Middle East, a crop of new cardinals, and the Turin Shroud will go on public display for the firsttime in a decade.

The Pope’s visit to Britain will be the last of four foreign journeys he will make this year, all of them in Europe. He is expected to arrive in England on 16 September and travel to Scotland on 19 September before returning to Rome.

The trip will, according to the Government, have “the status of a state visit”. As such, it would normally involve meeting the Queen, although for now Buckingham Palace is staying silent on the matter.

Most of the talking so far has been done by the Secretary of State for Scotland, Jim Murphy, a Catholic, who told The Tablet in December 2009 that the visit is “a unique constitutional arrangement” as the Pope is head of a faith as well as a head of state. Mr Murphy explained that Pope Benedict would eschew the normal trappings of a state visit including “banquets and gold carriages”.

In truth, a journey in the state coach along The Mall in London, as normally befits a visiting head of state, was never on the cards given that the Pope’s visit coincides with the Queen’s traditional holiday at Balmoral. For this reason, the “state” element of the visit is likely to be in Scotland.

It is possible that Her Majesty will travel to Edinburgh to host the Pope at her official residence in Scotland, the Palace of Holyroodhouse, a place important in Catholic history as the home of Mary Queen of Scots and briefly the headquarters of Bonnie Prince Charlie during the uprising of 1745.

It has also been suggested by Cardinal Keith O’Brien that Pope Benedict could deliver an address to the Scottish Parliament, an idea enthusiastically taken up by Scotland’s First Minister, Alex Salmond, who has written to the Pope expressing the hope that he will take up the invitation to visit Scotland.

But given the brevity of the visit and the Pope’s age – he will be 83 by then – there are limits on how much he can do. The centrepiece of the trip will be the beatification of Cardinal Newman and it looks as though this will take place at Coventry Airport.

One or two football stadiums, including Aston Villa and Wembley, were approached but are not available. The liturgy for the beatification and other ceremonies is being planned in conjunction with the Pope’s Master of Ceremonies, Mgr Guido Marini.

The Scottish bishops very much want the Pope to attend a pastoral event north of the border too, but realise that may be difficult if he has to meet the Queen.

The general secretary of the bishops’ conference of Scotland, Fr Paul Conroy, told The Tablet that the Pope would spend a total of nine hours in Scotland and would need three hours’ rest in the middle of the day.

“It is a very restricted programme. A meeting with the Queen cuts things back quite considerably and we are led to believe there could be other things. The Holy Father likes to celebrate Mass in the morning but that may not be possible,” said Fr Conroy.

“He would certainly want to ensure there are certain aspects of the visit, like meeting people and having a sense of encounter with the local Church. The pomp and circumstance that might be associated with a state visit from other heads of state is not something that happens with the Pope. At the same time, he would be very gracious in responding to what the Queen might suggest.”

The visit will doubtless be on Pope Benedict’s mind when he meets individually with the bishops of England and Wales later this month and in the first week of February when it will be the turn of Scotland’s bishops. These meetings are part of the ad limina visits that all bishops make every five years to report on the current state of their dioceses.

Among the matters likely to be discussed will be the setting up of an ordinariate that will accommodate those disaffected Anglicans who want to become Catholics but retain their “Anglican patrimony”.

Pope Benedict’s other foreign journeys will not take him too far from Rome. The first will take place during 17-18 April in Malta to mark the 1,950th anniversary of St Paul’s shipwreck on the island. There will be a second island visit – tentatively scheduled for 4-6 June – this time to Cyprus to unveil symbolically the working paper for a Synod on the Middle East to be held in October at the Vatican. Before that, Pope Benedict will go to Portugal on 11-14 May. That visit includes stops in Porto, Lisbon and the Marian shrine of Fátima.

At some point in the year, probably in the autumn, Pope Benedict is planning to canonise Mary MacKillop (1842-1909), making her Australia’s first saint.

I wish I had seen this earlier - in time for St. Sylvester's Day and the Te Deum...



Te Deum Laudamus
By James V. Schall, S.J.

Dec. 31, 2009




On the Feast of Pope St. Sylvester I (d. 335), the evening of the last day of the year, the Holy Father is present in a Roman Church for that solemn traditional chant of praise, Te Deum, Laudamus. Giving thanks is not a bad way to end a year.

The Latin reads, literally, “You, God, we praise.” The English version reads: “You are God: we praise you.” The Latin is more forceful. We are not engaged in a philosophical statement. We are not informing God who He is or what we are doing. [That is a great way to make an essential point about translations! A basic element in translating anything is to capture the sense of the original, which must prevail over a conscientious but literal translation which changes or distorts that sense.]



The first words that we see are: “Te Deum – You, God.” The emphasis is on God, whom we presume, on the authority of His Son, to address with the familiar form of “Thou” or “You.” You, God, we praise, not any thing else, not some other god.

This chant is addressed to the Father. We want to be sure what we are about. All comes from the Father; all returns to the Father, both in God’s inner life and in the cosmic order of creation and redemption.

“You are the eternal Father; all creation worships you.” Apostles, prophets, martyrs, and the holy Church itself “acclaim you, Father, of majesty unbounded.”

The hymn then takes up Christ, “king of glory, the eternal Son of the Father.” He became Man, this Son. He overcame death: “We believe that you will come, and be our judge.” Isn’t that an interesting line! This Son of God will be our judge.

Much of Benedict’s encyclical, Spe Salvi, is on this very subject of our final judgment. The Nicene Creed, itself from the time of Pope Sylvester, explicitly states that Christ will come “to judge the living and the dead.”

The world, in justice, cannot be complete without such a judgment. Plato, too, understood this, as we see in the last book of the Republic.

Robert Hugh Benson’s apocalyptic novel, The Lord of the World, ends, as does the world itself, on the Feast of St. Sylvester, at the very moment that the whole world is arrayed against the last Pope. His name is, of course, Sylvester, an Englishman. The end of the world comes when the last believers, including the Pope, are eliminated, ironically, in the name of a better world on this earth.

Pope Sylvester, in legend, supposedly cured the Emperor Constantine of leprosy. He is also associated with the famous forgery known as the Donation of Constantine, on which papal claims to Roman territories were said to have rested.

He was Pope during the first Council of Nicaea, still one of the most important of all Church councils. Its Creed we still profess on Sundays as a testimony that we know and speak what we hold to be true of God. Sylvester had to deal with the Donatists, who gave Augustine so much trouble, and with the Arian heresy.

Sylvester was present in Rome when Christians were finally politically free to build their own churches. The Roman Breviary for his Feast Day includes the following passage from Eusebius of Caesarea: “Then came the spectacle that we had prayed and hoped for: dedication festivals throughout the cities, and the consecration of newly erected houses of worship.”

These called many bishops and laity together from all over the Empire: “Yes, and our bishops performed religious rites with full ceremonial, priests officiated at the liturgy, the solemn ritual of the Church, chanting psalms proclaiming the other parts of our God-given Scriptures, and celebrating the divine mysteries.” There are, indeed, places where we still can be present at such rites.

The end of one year, 2009, the beginning of another, 2010 – a decade of the twenty-first century has now passed. We are well into the Third Millennium. Aquinas called time the fluxus ipsius nunc, the flowing of the very now in which we ourselves are immersed at all times.

The Te Deum ends in this way: “Come then, Lord, and help your people, / bought with the price of your own blood, / and bring us with your saints / to glory everlasting.”

I like that – “Bring us to glory.” “Bring us to a glory that is everlasting.” Who could think beings of our kind really can be satisfied with anything less? We cannot be. In the very fiber of our bones, we cannot be satisfied with anything less.

The Feast of Pope Saint Sylvester is the year’s last. The New Year, on its first day, we find the Feast of Mary, the Mother of God – Theotokos.

A Te Deum verse reads: “When you (Christ) became man to set us free / you did not spurn the Virgin’s womb.” It all fits together if you think about it, which is precisely what we are asked to do at the end and beginning of each year.




2009 was also a year of martyrdom for 36 pastoral workers of the Church, including 30 priests, for whose lives in the service of the Church, we also give thanks....

To insure greater visibility for this item, I am posting it here first before cross-postin in the CHURCH&VATICAN thread....



The true Church that
the media does not report
by Lucetta Scaraffia
Translated from
the 1/4-1/5/09 issue of



Thirty-seven missionaries were killed in the year that just ended.

Except for some praiseworthy exceptions (that were to be expected, after all) in the Catholic media, especially Avvenire - which dedicated an entire page to the subject - the Italian media have hardly paid attention to the dossier circulated by Fides, the news agency of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples, on these Catholics who were killed in the performance of their apostolate.

The table shows the nationality, diocese or institution and place and date of death (in European style, the day is indicated before the month).

The toll in 2009 was almost twice that in 2008. It was also the highest number registered in 10 years. And the figure is not even final, because the killings have probably led in some instances to other deaths as yet unreported.

The news has not received any play in the secular media - probably because it contradicts the image of the Church that prevails in the media. In which it is usually represented as a rich and powerful structure that wants to impose its laws even on those who do not feel part of the Catholic world.

The image is that the Church is led by an aged and rigid hierarchy that is incapable of understanding how the world has changed, and is therefore, an antique that should be liquidated for the sake of human freedom.

Rather, what the media highlight about the Church are the defects and offenses of some of its unfaithful members, such as the sex-offender priests in Ireland.

They prefer to represent the Church through its cardinals who are portrayed as stereotypes of powerful men or through priests who are a scandal to the Church because of their behavior or vecause of their criticisms of the Church - not through the men and women who are seriously committed and engaged in difficult and often dangerous missions, in which they risk their lives because of making that courageous choice of love.

These witnesses to Christ are found in all the continents, because while only one priest was killed in Europe last year (France), eight Europeans - all missionary priests - were among these who died on other continents; 19 were American; seven, African; and two, Asian.

Of course, there is no difference in the deaths of missionaries and local Catholics - all were killed as a consequence of their decision to live and work in dangerous places of the world, seeking through their activity and example to bring to those places a message other than the reality that their inhabitants have to live with day by day.

The mere fact of having chosen such a different life to bring trust and assistance where otherwise there is only fear and violence,
makes them dangerous to those who seek to dominate and oppress through such violence.

But it is precisely the heroic testimony of these missionaries which demonstrates - if there was any need to do so - the importance of having a presence like theirs in areas that have been debased and devastated by all kinds of abuse.

Without weapons - and often, with scarce means, certainly far less that those of the violent forces that they are up against - these Catholics demonstrate with their example that a different world is possible, a world of brotherly solidarity and truth, and of generous love given freely.

But that alone makes them a mortal target.

Why, for instance, has no one in the media picked up the story of William Quijano, a young man belonging to the Sant'Egidio Community in El Salvador. In the capital city, he was the sparkplug of a center that promotes the culture of peace - in a land where it is not just a matter of ideological utopia, but a concrete teaching against the violence that gets more wisdespread daily - and for this, he was killed by a gang of his go-for-broke contemporaries who constitute a reservoir of guns for hire for those who wield power.

And there is Fr. Révocat Gahimbare, killed in ambush in Burundi, while on his way to bring help to Bene Maria nuns whose convent had been attacked.

Many of the victims were killed in acts of pillage against their churches or residences, for the simple reason that they usually live and work in battle zones without any protection - places where nobody else would come to visit, much less, to reside, and could be called 'God-forsaken', except that the missionaries are there precisely to show that God never abandons anyone.

And this is the true Church, the one that is never written about or reported in the media, even when they are stories of crime, that normally is of great interest to them.

Teresa! I'm very sorry to tell you that the only German source I can recommend is kath.net. If there are any individuals who are keeping a blog on the Pope corresponding to yours or to Lella's, I've never seen it.

If I do find anything, I'll let you know!





Thanks, Heike. KATHNET it is! I have just checked out the German section on the RFC too - I must remember to do that regularly.
Kirsty and her group have been admirably diligent all these five years - more power to them!

TERESA

Wednesday, January 6
FEAST OF THE EPIPHANY

From left: 'Adoration of the Magi', 13th-century mosaic, Sta. Maria Maggiore; painting by Bartolo di Fredi; Russian icon of the Theophany; prayer-card image of the 'Adoration'.
The Epiphany on the twelfth day after Christmas celebrates the manifestation of Jesus to the world. In the Western Church, it is symbolized by the adoration of the Magi; in the Eastern churches, it is represented by the Baptism of Christ - the Theophany, or his manifestation as the Son of God. In some countries, the Epiphany is now celebrated on the first Sunday following January 1.
Readings for today's Mass: www.usccb.org/nab/readings/010610.shtml

January 6 is also the feast day of a soon-to-be-saint.

BLESSED ANDRE BESSETTE (Canada, 1845-1937), Priest
The eighth of 12 children born to a poor Montreal family, the sickly Andre nonetheless
worked as farmhand, shoemaker, blacksmith, baker, and factory worker before applying
to the Congregation of the Holy Cross (CSC). He was first refused ordination because
of his poor health, but he was finally ordained at age 28 and was assigned to be
a doorman and general go-fer at the CSC's Notre Dame College, a job he would hold for
40 years. A lifelong devotee of St. Joseph, he used oils from votive candles to the saint
on visits to the sick. Miraculous cures started being attributed to the oil, particularly
during an epidemic, attracting pilgrims in ever-growing numbers. In 1904, Andre started
a small chapel to St. Joseph with $220 in contributions. Meanwhile, the CSC acquired
the property on Mount Royal near the college. In 1924, construction began on St. Joseph
Oratory, completed in 1967 as Canada's largest church, with the world's third largest
dome, next to St. Peter's. When Brother Andre died at age 92 in 1937, a million people
came to view his remains. Today, the Oratory gets at least 2 million visitors every year.
Brother Andre was beatified in 1992, and last month, Benedict XVI signed the decree
certifying the second miracle that paves the way for his canonization, expected this year.


OR today.

Illustrations: 20th-cent Maronite icon of the Theophany and a contemporary image of the Magi.
Other than Rinunce e Nomine, no papal stories in this issue. A story on the Baptism of Jesus in the Siro-occidental tradition continues
the OR series on how Christian feasts are celebrated in the Eastern churches. Page 1 news stories: Obama meets his security team and
calls Yemen-based terrorism a global menace; global funds are reducing exposure to US investments because of alarm over the Obama
administration's fiscal policies; and 170 killed in latest battle between armed rebels and government troops in the Democratic Republic
of Congo. In the inside pages, two unusual interviews - with Italian punkrock star Ferretti who has become an ardent Catholic, and with
Fr. Guy Consolmagno, a leading astronomer of the Vatican Observatory, on end-of-the-world myths as perpetrated in movies like '2012'.



THE POPE'S DAY
Mass of the Epiphany in St. Peter's Basilica. Homily.

Holiday Angelus at St. Peter's Square.

No General Audience today.



Pope greets faithful in basilica



VATICAN CITY, January 6 – Pope Benedict XVI is celebrating the last major ceremony of the Vatican's Christmas season in St. Peter's Basilica amid new security measures. [There is one more event, on January 10, marking the Baptism of the Lord.]

The main aisle was widened to give the Pope and his security entourage more space as he walked toward the altar.

It was during the entrance procession on Christmas Eve that a mentally unstable woman scrambled over a barrier and yanked on Benedict's vestments, pulling him to the ground.

Officials pushed back the barriers lining the aisle to create more space for the procession Wednesday.

Despite the new measure, a relaxed Benedict moved to the side of the aisle where faithful were eager to get close to him. He caressed babies and blessed adults. [He was so composed - spontaneous and affectionate as ever!]

The Church was celebrating Epiphany, also known as Three Kings Day.


PRE-MASS REFLECTION
ON THE EPIPHANY
In preparation for the Mass today, the following text was offered for reflection by the Massgoers at St. Peter's today:




From the libretto of the Mass.

MASS OF THE EPIPHANY


Libretto illustrations from the GRANDES HEURES for Anne of Brittany, Tours, 1503-1508, Bibliotheque Nationale de France.

Full libretto on www.vatican.va/news_services/liturgy/libretti/2010/2010...



At ten o'clock this morning, the Holy Father Benedict XVI celebrated Holy Mass at St. Peter's Basilica on the occasion of the Epiphany.

Insensitivity, smugness, pretension
keep people from God, says Pope
By Carol Glatz



VATICAN CITY, Jan. 6 (CNS) -- An insensitive, hardened heart, over-confidence and world-weary smugness keep people from experiencing the true joy and love found in Jesus Christ, said Pope Benedict XVI.

While the Christ child born in Bethlehem seems weak and fragile, in reality "he has the power to give the human heart the greatest and most profound joy" in the world, he said.

The babe in the manger, he said, represents "the stupendous reality that God knows us and is near, that his grandeur and strength do not follow the logic of the world, but the logic of a defenseless baby whose only strength is the love he entrusts to us."

The pope made his remarks at a Mass in St. Peter's Basilica Jan. 6, the feast of the Epiphany, which marks the manifestation of Jesus as savior to the world.

In his homily, he asked people to reflect upon why there always seem to be so few people who believe in Jesus Christ.

Just as after Christ's birth many people witnessed the star of Bethlehem, but only few -- like the Wise Men or Magi -- actually responded to God's invitation to follow a new path that would change the world, he said.

The full homily is translated below.











Here is a translation of the Holy Father's homily:

---

Dear brothers and sisters!

Today, the Solemnity of the Epiphany, the great light radiating from the Cave of Bethlehem, floods all of mankind through the Magi who came from the East.

The first Reading, taken from the Book of the prophet Isaiah, and the passage from the Gospel of Matthew, which we just heard, bring together side by side the promise and its fulfillment, in that particular tension that results when successively reading passages from the Old and the New Testaments.

There comes before us the splendid vision of the Prophet Isaiah who, after the humiliations undergone by the people of Israel at the hands of the powers of this world, sees the moment when the great light of God - apparently without power and incapable of protecting his people - would shine on all the earth so that the kings of nations would bow before him, coming from the ends of the earth to deposit the most precious treasures at his feet. And the heart of the people would tremble with joy.

Compared to that vision, that which the evangelist Matthew presents to us appears poor and humble: it seems impossible for us to recognize in it the fulfillment of the prophet Isaiah's words.

In fact, those who arrived in Bethlehem were not the powerful and the kings of the earth, but the Magi, mysterious personages, perhaps even suspicious, and in any case, not deemed worthy of particular attention.

The residents of Jerusalem learned of their coming, but they did not think it was worth their bother, and even in Bethlehem, no one seemed to care about the birth of this Baby, called King of the Jews by the Magi, these men who had come from the East to pay him a visit.

Shortly thereafter, in fact, when Herod made it clear that he was very much in power - forcing the Holy Family to flee to Egypt and offering proof of his cruelty in the massacre of the innocents (cfr Mt 2,13-18), the episode of the Magi appeared to have been annulled and forgotten.

It is therefore understandable that the hearts and souls of believers throughout the centuries have been attracted more by the vision of the prophet than by the sober narration of the evangelist, as we see even in the representation of teh Nativity scene today - where there are camels and kings kneeling before the Baby, laying down their gifts to him in precious chests.

But we must pay more attention to what the two texts communicate to us.

What, in fact, did Isaiah see with his prophetic sight? In one single moment, he glimpsed a reality that was destined to mark all of history. But even the event Matthew narrates to us is not a brief and negligible episode that closes after the Magi hurry back home in haste.

On the contrary, it is a beginning. Those personages who came from the East were not the last but the first of a great procession of those who, throughout all the epochs of history since then, have recognized the message of the Star, have walked along the paths indicated by Sacred Scripture, and thus, to find him who is apparently weak and fragile, but instead, has the power to grant the greatest and most profound joy to the heart of man.

In him, indeed, is made manifest the stupendous reality that God knows us and is close to us, that his grandeur and power are not expressed according to the world's logic, but in the logic of a helpless baby whose strength is only that of the love which he entrusts to us.

In the course of history, there are always those who are enlightened by the star, who find the way and reach him. All of them live, each in his own way, the experience of the Magi.

They had brought gold, incense and myrrh, They are certainly not gifts that correspond to primary or daily needs. At that moment, the Holy Family was much more in need of something other than incense or myrrh, and not even the gold could have been immediately useful to them.

But these gifts have a profound significance: they are an act of justice. In fact, according to the mentality prevailing then in the Orient, they represent recognition of a person as God and King, and therefore, an act of submission.

They were meant to say that, from that moment on, the donors belong to the sovereign and they recognize his authority. The consequences of this are immediate. The Magi could no longer follow the road they came on, they could no longer return to Herod, they could no longer be allied with that powerful and cruel sovereign.

They had been led for always along the road of the Baby, making them ignore the great and the powerful of the world, and taking them to Him who awaits us among the humble - the road of love which alone can transform the world.

Therefore, not only did the Magi set forth on their journey, but their deed started something new - they traced a new road, and a new light shone down on earth which has never gone out.

The vision of the prophet was realized: that light could no longer be ignored by the world. Men would go towards that Baby and would be illuminated by that joy that only He can give.

The light of Bethlehem continues to shine throughout the world. To those who have welcomed this light, St. Augustine said: "Even us, recognizing Christ our King and Priest who died for us, have honored him as if we had offered him gold, incense and myrrh. But what remains is for us to bear witness to him by taking a different road from that on which we came" (Sermo 202. In Epiphania Domini, 3,4).

Thus if we read the promise of the prophet Isaiah and its fulfillment in the Gospel of Matthew together in the great context of all history, it is evident that what we have been told - which we seek to reproduce in our Nativity creches - is not a dream nor a vain play on sensations and emotions, devoid of vigor and reality, but it is the Truth that irradiates the world, even if Herod always seems stronger, and that Baby seems to be found among people of no importance or who are downtrodden.

But in that Baby is expressed the power of God, who brings together all men through the ages, so that under his lordship, they may follow the course of love which transfigures the world.

Nevertheless, even if the few in Bethlehem have become many, believers in Jesus Christ seem to be few. Many have seen the star, but only a few have understood its message.

Scholars of Scripture in the time of Jesus knew the Word of God perfectly well. They had the ability to say what could be found in Scripture about the place where the Messiah would be born, but as St. Augustine said: "They were like milestones along the road - though they could give information to travellers along the way, they remained inert and immobile" (Sermo 199. In Epiphania Domini, 1,2).

We can therefore ask ourselves: What is the reason why some men see and find, while others do not? What opens the eyes and the heart? What is lacking from those who remain indifferent, who point out the road but do not themselves move?

We can answer: too much certainty in themselves, a claim to knowing reality perfectly, the presumption of having formulated a definitive judgment on everything - these make them closed, and their hearts insensitive, to the news of God.

They are smug with the thought that they are made for the world and do not have to involve themselves in the intimacy of an adventure with a God who wants to meet them.

They have placed their confidence in themselves, not in Him, and they do not think it possible that God could be so great as to make himself small to really get close to us.

Ultimately, what they lack is authentic humility, which knows to submit itself to that which is greater, but they also lack authentic courage, which leads one to believe in what is truly great even if it manifests itself in a helpless Baby.

They lack the evangelical capacity to be children at heart, to feel wonder, and to emerge from themselves in order to follow the way that the star points to, the way of God.

Let us therefore ask him to give us a heart that is wise and innocent, that allows us to see the Star of his mercy, to proceed along his way, in order to find him and be flooded with the great light and true joy that he brought to this world. Amen.

---

The Holy Father wore a Roman chasuble today, and unlike most Papal Masses on major religious feasts, it was not a concelebration. He was attended by two cardinal deacons.

And the new security arrangements did not get in the way of his interaction with the faithful:






A liturgical touch
from the traditional rite

The liturgy this morning included what experienced liturgical observers identify as a feature of the classical Roman rite for the Mass of the Epiphany, which apparently has not been used with the Novus Ordo, in which after the Gospel reading, and before the homily, the cantor chanted the following 'announcement of the day of Easter' and proceeds to give the dates of the movable feasts for the rest of the liturgical year (translated from the Mass libretto):

---

Know, dearest brothers, that with the facvor of God's mercy. just as we rejoiced at the Birth of our Our Lord Jesus Christ, so we announce the joy of the Resurrection of our Savior.

On February 17, it will be the day of Ashes, start of fasting for the sacred Lent;

On April 4, we will celebrate with joy the Holy Passover of our Lord Jesus Christ;

On May 13, the Ascension of the Lord;

On May 23, the Solemnity of Pentecost;

On June 3, the Solemnity of teh Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ;

On November 28, the first Sunday of the Advent of our Lord Jesus Christ:

To him, honor and glory for ever adn ever. Amen.

---

ANGELUS TODAY



After celebrating the Mass of the Epiphany at St. Peter's Basilica, the Holy Father led the noontime Angelus at St. Peter's Square wearing his winter mozzetta, as he also did for the New Year's Day Angelus.

This is what he said to English-speaking pilgrims:

---

Today we celebrate the solemnity of the Epiphany of our Lord. As the wise men of old followed a star and knelt before the Christ child, we too are called to welcome him who today reveals the loving face of God to the nations.

May the example of the wise men encourage us to give our very best to God and to our neighbours. Upon each of you and your loved ones at home, I invoke God’s abundant blessings!

---

After the prayers, he expressed a special greeting for the Christians of the Oriental Churches who celebrate the Nativity of the Lord tomorrow.

He also reminded the faithful that the Church also observes Missionary Day for Children instituted by the Venerable Pope Pius XII in 1950.



Here is a full translation of the Holy Father's words at the Angelus:

---

Dear brothers and sisters:

Today, we celebrate the great feast of the Epiphany, the mystery of the Lord's manifestation to all peoples, represented by the Magi, who had come from the East to adore the King of the Jews (cfr Mt 2,1-2).

The evangelist Matthew, who recounts the event, underscores how they arrived in Jerusalem following a star, which they had seen when it first emerged, and interpreted as the sign of the birth of the King announced by the prophets, that is, the Messiah.

Arriving in Jerusalem, however, the Magi needed directions from the priests and scribes to know exactly where to go, that is, Bethlehem, the city of David's birth (cfr Mt 2,5-6; Mic 5,1). The star and the Sacred Scriptures were the two lights that guided the journey of the Magi, who appear as models of authentic searchers for truth.

They were wise men, who scrutinized the stars and knew the history of peoples. They were men of science in the broad sense, who observed the cosmos and considered it almost as a great book full of signs and divine messages for man.

That is why, far from considering their their knowledge to be self-sufficient, they were open to further revelations and divine calls. Indeed, they were not ashamed to ask for instructions from the religious chiefs of the Jews.

They could have said: Let us do it by ourselves, we do not need anyone - thus avoiding, according to our mentality today, any 'cross-contamination' between science and the Word of God. Instead, the Magi listened to the prophecies and accepted them.

As soon as they resumed their way towards Bethlehem, they saw the star again, almost in confirmation of the perfect harmony between human searching and divine truth - a harmony that filled their hearts of authentic wise men with joy (cfr Mt 2,10).

The climax of their itinerary of quest was when they found themselves in front of "the Baby with Mary his mother" (Mt 2,11). The Gospel says they "prostrated themselves and did him homage" (ibid).

They could well have been disappointed, even scandalized. Instead, as true wise men, they were open to the mystery that manifests itself in a surprising way. And with their symbolic gifts, they demonstrated that they recognized in Jesus the King and the Son of God. That very act fulfilled the Messianic oracles that announced the homage of nations to the God of Israel.

A last detail confirms the unity of intelligence and faith in the Magi: the fact that "having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they departed for their country by another way" (Mt 2,12).

It would have been natural for them to go back to Jerusalem, to Herod's palace and to the Temple, to give resonance to what they had found. Instead, the Magi, who had chosen the Baby as their sovereign, kept it hidden, in the style of Mary, or better yet, of God himself, and just as they had appeared, they disappeared in silence, fulfilled, but also changed by their encounter with the Truth. They had discovered a new face of God, a new royalty: that of love.

May the Virgin Mary, model of true wisdom, help us to be authentic searchers for the truth of God, capable of always living the profound harmony between reason and faith, science and revelation.


After the Angelus prayers, he said this:
I am happy to address my most cordial wishes to our brothers and sisters of the Oriental Churches who will celebrate the Holy Nativity tomorrow. May the mystery of light be a source of joy and peace for every family and community.

On the solemnity of the Epiphany, we also observe the Missionary Day for Children, with the motto, "Children helping children".

Promoted by the Venerable Pope Pius XII in 1950, this initiative educates children to have a mind open to the world and to feel brotherly solidarity with less fortunate children of their age.

I affectionately greet all the little missionaries present in the five continents and encourage them to always be witnesses for Jesus and announcers of his Gospel.

---

In his final greeting to the Italian faithful, the Pope took note of the participants of a traditional historical-folklore parade presented this year by the citizens of Alatri, Fiuggi and Vico, in the province of Lazio.

PROTECTING THE POPE

A virtual phalanx of close-in security surrounded the Pope during his entrance and departure processions down the central aisle of St. Peter's for the Mass of the Epiphany.



The photo was taken at the same point where Susanna Maiolo launched herself on the Pope from the barrier on the right. It also shows the Pope having moved off center, very likely to greet some lucky people to his right. He seemed very much at ease and moved right or left spontaneously when he saw a child or a baby he wished to greet.

Despite the heightened security, I thought the plainclothesmen caused no undue distraction to the telecast images, and the new arrangement seemed to work very well.

God bless the Pope and his guardian angels, human and celestial!

In the CHURCH&VATICAN thread, I posted a lengthy lecture given last night, January 6, by Mons. Guido Marini, master of pontifical liturgical ceremonies, to an international Clergy Conference taking place at the Domus Sanctae Marthae in Rome this week.




The text was made available by

which also provided the following related item:


Priests send New Year
wishes to the Pope

Following this conference a card was given to Msgr. Marini to be delivered to the Holy Father (in Latin and English). Here is the English text:

GOD BLESS OUR PRIESTS!




Mons. Marini's lecture is reported by the CNS today.


Papal liturgist endorses
'reform of the reform'
By Father Matthew Gamber



VATICAN CITY, Jan. 7 (CNS) - The pope's chief liturgist, Msgr. Guido Marini, endorsed calls in the cHurch for a "reform of the reform" of Catholic liturgy.

"For some years now, several voices have been heard within church circles talking about the necessity of a new liturgical renewal," Marini said.

A fresh renewal movement would be "capable of operating a reform of the reform, or rather, move one more step ahead in understanding the authentic spirit of the liturgy and its celebration," he said.

Marini, who has served as master of papal liturgical ceremonies since late 2007, spoke Jan. 6 to a conference of priests from English-speaking countries gathered in Rome to mark the Year for Priests. The conference was sponsored by the Australian Confraternity of Catholic Clergy and the U.S.- based Confraternity of Catholic Clergy.

The papal liturgist said the goal of the new reform movement "would be to carry on that providential reform of the liturgy that the conciliar fathers had launched" but which has "not always, in its practical implementation, found a timely and happy fulfillment."

Marini stressed that the liturgy celebrated by the church should be marked by historical continuity.

"I purposefully use the word continuity, a word very dear to our present Holy Father," Marini said. "He has made it the only authoritative criterion whereby one can correctly interpret the life of the church."

Marini said that an appreciation of continuity would help bring together divergent schools of thought regarding the liturgy.

"The liturgy cannot and must not be an opportunity for conflict between those who find good only in that which came before us, and those who, on the contrary, almost always find wrong in what came before," he said.

The way forward for any liturgical renewal is "to regard both the present and the past liturgy of the church as one patrimony in continuous development," he said.

He offered suggestions for showing continuity in the liturgy and gave examples from current papal liturgical celebrations.

The tradition of praying while facing East, and so symbolically facing the Lord, is now seen in the placement of a crucifix on the altar of St. Peter's Basilica, he said.

"Hence the reason for the proposal made by then-Cardinal Ratzinger and presently reaffirmed during the course of his pontificate, to place the crucifix on the center of the altar, in order that all, during the celebration of the liturgy, may concretely face and look upon the Lord, in such a way as to orient also their prayer and hearts," he said.

A renewed emphasis on "adoration," explained by Marini as "union with God," also will foster continuity with the past and should be a criterion for future liturgical practices, he said.

Everything in the liturgy must be conducive to adoration, Marini said, including the music, the singing, the periods of silence, the way of proclaiming the Scriptures as well as the liturgical vestments and the sacred vessels.

He said it was this same desire to renew a sense of adoration that prompted Pope Benedict to make it the norm in papal liturgies for the pope to distribute Communion on the tongue to people kneeling.

"By the example of this action, the Holy Father invites us to render visible the proper attitude of adoration before the greatness of the mystery of the eucharistic presence of our Lord," Marini said.

He said the same attitude of adoration "must be fostered all the more when approaching the most holy Eucharist in the other forms permitted today."

Throughout his talk Marini quoted extensively from the writings of Pope Benedict concerning the liturgy.

"I have learned to deepen my knowledge these past two years in service to our Holy Father, Benedict XVI. He is an authentic master of the spirit of the liturgy, whether by his teaching or by the example he gives in the celebration of the sacred rites," Marini said.

Thursday, January 7

ST. RAMON PENYAFORT (Raymond Penafort) (Catalonia, 1175-1275)
Dominican, Bishop and Confessor
One of the most brilliant in the great constellation of saints who lived in the 12th and 13th
centuries, Ramon was born into a noble family related to the royal family of Aragon. He
was educated in Bologna where by age 20, he was teaching theology and philosophy, while
earning doctorates in canon and civil law. He was called back to Spain to tutor the man
who would become King James I of Aragon. In 1222, having met St. Dominic, he joined the
Dominican order and became well-known for his preaching against the Moors. His reputation
in the law drew the attention of Pope Gregory IX who called him to Rome to be his chaplain
and confessor, and to compile all the decrees of previous Popes and Councils, resulting in
the monumental Gregorian Decretals, published in 1231, which remained the basic
reference on canon law until the present Code of Canon Law was promulgated in 1917. He
returned to Spain in 1236. At age 60, he was named Archbishop of Tarragona but he resigned
after two years to return to working within the Dominican Order. Shortly after that, he was
elected Superior General of the order, to succeed St. Dominic. He reformed the order and
then resigned, devoting the remaining 35 years of his life to preaching against heresy and
the Moors, and seeking to convert Jews and Muslims. It is said he convinced Thomas Aquinas
to write the Summa contra Gentiles, often called a missionary manual on the truths of the
Catholic faith and the errors of the infidels. Raymond died peacefully in Barcelona at the age
of 100, and is buried in the Cathedral there.
Readings for today's Mass:http://www.usccb.org/nab/readings/010710.shtml




No OR today.



THE POPE'S DAY

The Holy Father met today with

- H.E. Kenan Gürsoy, Ambassador from Turkey, who presented his credentials. Address in English.

- Cardinal Ivan Dias, Prefect of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples.

- Cardinal Ennio Antonelli, President of the Pontifical Council for the Family.

- Carabinieri of the Compagnia Roma San Pietro (the state police assigned by the Italian government
to Vatican and papal security) on their traditional New Year visit. Address in Italian.

Pope thanks Italian police
for their work in the Vatican





VATICAN CITY, Jan. 7 (AP) -Pope Benedict XVI has thanked the Italian Carabinieri who help maintain Vatican security for their "humble yet indispensable work."

The Pontiff met Thursday with the Carabinieri's Vatican corps during its traditional annual audience, two weeks after a woman with psychiatric problems breached a security barrier in St. Peter's Basilica and pulled the Pope to the floor.

Benedict didn't mention the Christmas Eve incident. But he referred to the Christmas holidays, saying they "allowed so many people to appreciate the humble yet indispensable work" that security guards perform in protecting Vatican visitors.

Benedict wasn't hurt in the knockdown and his personal bodyguard - who stands closest to the Pope - tackled the woman. She is undergoing treatment at a clinic outside Rome.

[It must be pointed out that the Italian carabinieri are not involved in the Pope's close-in security.]




I am posting the following story here not to give more undue attention to the person who attacked the Pope on Christmas Eve, but because it appears to indicate that she is not all that crazy, that there is some method in her madness.

An earlier report cited an acquaintance of hers saying the woman had said that when she tried to jump the Pope in 2008, she had 'wanted to claw him in the face".

And it also reveals an apparent breach in Vatican security, in the sense that the ticket office apparently gave out the tickets for somebody else to someone who could not present identification.

The story comes from BLICK, the leading Swiss tabloid daily, a la Germany's BILD. It is published in German. The Pope's attacker is from Frauenfeld, in the German-speaking part of Switzerland.


'My friend, the Pope-jumper'
Adapted and translated from

January 5, 2010


WEINFELDEN TG - Debora E. (24) is the best friend of Susanna, the Pope-jumper. She reveals what took place behind the 'spectacular' attack by her friend Susanna Maiolo (25) against Pope Benedict XVI on Christmas Eve, which shows that Susanna had planned the deed.

"I was totally shocked that Susanna was capable of doing this," Deborah said. She adds that her friend is mentally disturbed, 'a bit cuckoo' and has had several psychiatric confinements. "She sees things differently as we do because she thinks she is from another planet".

Nonetheless, Debora is horrified that her friend apparently had planned her mission for some time. In summer, she had apparently written the Vatican, using Debora's name, asking for tickets to the Christmas Eve Mass.


Left: Part of Vatican letter informing Debora she had three tickets for the Christmas Eve Mass, and first line of Susanna's Dec. 16 note to her friend to Debora, which reads: "By the time you get this gift and read my letter, I don't know what will happen..."; right, a videograb of the woman getting hold of the Pope.

On September 12, Debora received a letter from the Pontifical Household saying she and two companions could come to the Mass, and they could pick up their tickets from the Vatican.

She was perplexed, not knowing what Susanna had done. "But I was very happy and so I asked her and my grandmother to come with me".

Susanna apparently panicked. She had not expected anyone to come to Rome with her. But she was determined not to have her plan derailed.

On December 16, she sent Debora a gift [a Puzzleball for 'constructing' the solar system] with a rather confused letter. [Apparently not enough to alarm Debora, who may not be 'all there' herself, or much too indulgent with her friend! She certainly would have had time to investigate further.]

The previous Christmas Eve, Susanna had already tried to get to the Pope, but was stopped in her tracks, and it seems this time, she was determined she would do it.

On December 21, Susanna showed up at the Vatican to pick up the tickets for Debora, claiming to be her, and saying she had lost her ID papers - but still was given the three tickets.

When Debora came to pick up her tickets the following day, presenting her identification, the person giving out the tickets seemed to think there was nothing unusual in that someone else had already claimed the tickets. He simply gave her 3 tickets far to the rear of the Basilica, where she could not see the attack when it happened.

[The report goes on to say that BLICK asked Debora to call Susanna on the telephone during their interview. She claims Susanna seemed more sorry for the fact that she deceived her friend over the tickets than that she had attacked the Pope. "She does not understand that she did something wrong," Deborah claimed, saying she still loves her friend.]

An uncle will reportedly take back Susanna to Switzerland this weekend.

Pope sees Turkey as 'a bridge
between Islam and the West'



Rome, Jan. 7 (dpa) - Pope Benedict XVI called Turkey a "bridge between Islam and the West," during a discussion with Kenan Gursoy, the new Turkish ambassador to the Vatican Thursday. But the Pontiff also said the Catholic Church should receive a recognized legal status in the country.

Such a status would help the Church to "enjoy complete freedom of religion and help to build up (Turkey's) society," Benedict told Ambassador Kenan Gursoy.

The Pope also thanked Turkey for "all steps making it easier for pilgrims to visit sites related to the life of Paul of Tarsus," also known as Saint Paul.




Here is the full text of the Pope's address, delivered in English:

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Mr Ambassador,

I am pleased to welcome you to the Vatican and to accept the Letters accrediting you as Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the Republic of Turkey to the Holy See.

I thank you for your gracious words and for the greetings that you bring from your President, His Excellency Abdullah Gül. Please convey to him my own good wishes and assure him of my continuing prayers for the well-being and prosperity of all the citizens of your land.

As Your Excellency has observed, we are fast approaching the fiftieth anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between Turkey and the Holy See, a fruit of the pontificate of my predecessor Pope John XXIII who had himself served as Apostolic Delegate in Istanbul and whose affection for the Turkish people is well known.

Much has been achieved during the last fifty years in the areas of shared interest that you have indicated, and I am confident that these cordial relations will grow deeper and stronger as a result of continuing collaboration on the many important questions that currently arise in multilateral affairs.

I recall with great pleasure my own visit to your country in 2006, when I was able to pay my respects to the Turkish people and to members of your Government. I take this opportunity to renew my appreciation for the warm welcome that I received.

One of the highlights of that visit was my meeting with Patriarch Bartholomaios I in the Phanar. Within the secular Republic of Turkey, alongside the predominantly Muslim population, the Christian communities are proud to play their part, conscious of their ancient heritage and of the significant contribution they have made to the civilization, not only of your land, but of the whole of Europe.

During the recent celebrations of the two-thousandth anniversary of the birth of Paul of Tarsus, that Christian heritage became a focus of particular attention throughout the world, and I should like to express the appreciation of Christians everywhere for the steps that were taken to facilitate pilgrimages and liturgical celebrations at the sites associated with the great Apostle.

My visit to Turkey also provided me with a welcome opportunity to greet members of the Muslim community. Indeed it was my first visit as Pope to a predominantly Islamic country.

I was glad to be able to express my esteem for Muslims and to reiterate the commitment of the Catholic Church to carry forward inter-religious dialogue in a spirit of mutual respect and friendship, bearing joint witness to the firm faith in God that characterizes Christians and Muslims, and striving to know one another better so as to strengthen the bonds of affection between us (cf. Address, Meeting with the President of the Religious Affairs Directorate, Ankara, 28 November 2006).

It is my fervent prayer that this process will lead to greater trust between individuals, communities, and peoples, especially in the troubled areas of the Middle East.

The Catholics in Turkey appreciate the freedom of worship that is guaranteed by the Constitution, and are pleased to be able to contribute to the well-being of their fellow citizens, especially through involvement in charitable activity and healthcare. They are rightly proud of the assistance provided for the poor by the La Paix and Saint Georges hospitals in Istanbul.

In order that these worthy endeavours may flourish, I am sure your Government will continue to do what it can to see that they receive whatever support may be needed.

Furthermore, the Catholic Church in Turkey is waiting for civil juridical recognition. This would help her to enjoy full religious freedom and to make an even greater contribution to society.

As a secular democratic state that straddles the boundary between Europe and Asia, Turkey is well placed to act as a bridge between Islam and the West, and to make a significant contribution to the effort to bring peace and stability to the Middle East.

The Holy See appreciates the numerous initiatives that Turkey has already taken in this regard, and is eager to support further efforts to put an end to long-standing conflicts in the region.

As history has so often shown, territorial disputes and ethnic rivalries can only be satisfactorily resolved when the legitimate aspirations of each party are duly taken into account, past injustices acknowledged and, when possible, repaired.

Let me assure Your Excellency of the high priority that the Holy See gives to the search for just and lasting solutions to all the conflicts of the region and of its readiness to place its diplomatic resources at the service of peace and reconciliation.

In offering my best wishes for the success of your mission, I would like to assure you that the various departments of the Roman Curia are always pleased to provide help and support in the fulfilment of your duties. Upon Your Excellency, your family and all the people of the Republic of Turkey, I cordially invoke the abundant blessings of the Almighty.

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