BENEDICT XVI: NEWS, PAPAL TEXTS, PHOTOS AND COMMENTARY

ALWAYS AND EVER OUR MOST BELOVED BENEDICTUS XVI

Wednesday, April 24, Fourth Week of Easter

ST. FIDELIS OF SIGMARINGEN (b Prussia 1777, d Switzerland 1622), Capuchin Friar and Martyr
He was born Mark Rey and his father was Burgermeister (mayor) of Sigmaringen. Always known for his charity,
when he became a lawyer, he dedicated his services to defending poor people. Eventually, he decided to become
a Capuchin like his brother George, and divided his ealth between poor seminarians and the poor. He was sent
as part of a missionary team by the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith to the Calvinists and
Zwinglians of Switzerland. Not an easy task, for he was immediately accused of opposing a peasant movement
for independence from Austria. Despite warnings, he continued to preach but had a strong presentiment of
death. He started signing his letters 'Pater Fidelis, prope diem esca vermium' ('soon to be food for worms').
He escaped a gunshot fired on him while preaching but eventually he was ambushed and killed. He was canonized
in 1746 as the first martyr of the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith.
Readings for today's Mass:
www.usccb.org/bible/readings/042413.cfm

AT THE VATICAN TODAY

General Audience - Pope Francis today reflected on three parables by Jesus to illustrate the 'end times'
including the Last Judgment implied in the passage "sits at the right hand of the Father, from whence he
shall come to judge the living and the dead" from the Credo.

In the afternoon, he will meet with Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran, president of the Pontifical Council
for Inter-Religious Dialog.

EIGHT YEARS AGO TODAY -

THE INAUGURAL MASS OF BENEDICT XVI'S PONTIFICATE

Last year, April 24 fell on a Tuesday, so there were no events for the Holy Father Benedict XVI. I shall devote the following post to the lookback to the inaugural Mass of Benedict's Petrine ministry, which is a major milestone. But here's an interesting sidelight from last year's anniversary.

Gift book on B16 today
to all readers of OR and
Italy's 'Il Sole 24 Ore'
April 24, 2012



The book is BENEDETTO XVI: TEOLOGO & PONTEFICE, about which I posted a translation of Il Sole's news release about it on Sunday, April 22, in the preceding page, along with the Foreword to the 88-page book by OR editor, Giovanni Maria Vian. OR reproduces the original in Italian on its Page 1 today.

The additional information is that all told, 300,000 copies of the book are being given out today by OR and Il Sole, (which is Italy's equivalent of the US Wall Street Journal and the UK Financial Times). In addition, 200,000 copies will be given out in Spanish to readers of Spain's La Razon, which has carried the OR in Spanish as a Sunday supplement since 2010. The book can also be downloaded from the Il sole site in Italian, Spanish or English if you susbcribe to the newspaper.

It is always worth going back to re-read the great trilogy of homilies given by Cardinal Ratzinger/Pope Benedict XVI in April 2005. It's the best tribute we can do to him on these anniversary days. On April 18, 2005, just before the cardinals entered the Sistine Chapel to elect a new Pope, he gave what is now commonly referred to as the 'dictatorship of relativism' speech although he said much more than that; on April 20, the first homily he delivered as Pope to the cardinal electors the day after his election, delivered in Latin; and on April 24, the homily at the inaugural Mass of his Petrine ministry - the anniversary we observe today. They continue to be very powerful and will always be powerful because always relevant. Man will always be man and therefore fallible - as men of the Church will continue to be fallible...

MASS, IMPOSITION OF THE PALLIUM
AND CONFERRAL OF THE FISHERMAN'S RING
FOR THE BEGINNING OF THE PETRINE MINISTRY
OF THE BISHOP OF ROME

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HOMILY OF HIS HOLINESS BENEDICT XVI
St. Peter's Square
Sunday, 24 April 2005



Your Eminences,
My dear Brother Bishops and Priests,
Distinguished Authorities and Members of the Diplomatic Corps,
Dear Brothers and Sisters,

During these days of great intensity, we have chanted the litany of the saints on three different occasions: at the funeral of our Holy Father John Paul II; as the Cardinals entered the Conclave; and again today, when we sang it with the response: Tu illum adiuva – sustain the new Successor of Saint Peter.

On each occasion, in a particular way, I found great consolation in listening to this prayerful chant. How alone we all felt after the passing of John Paul II – the Pope who for over twenty-six years had been our shepherd and guide on our journey through life! He crossed the threshold of the next life, entering into the mystery of God. But he did not take this step alone.

Those who believe are never alone – neither in life nor in death. At that moment, we could call upon the Saints from every age – his friends, his brothers and sisters in the faith – knowing that they would form a living procession to accompany him into the next world, into the glory of God. We knew that his arrival was awaited. Now we know that he is among his own and is truly at home.

We were also consoled as we made our solemn entrance into Conclave, to elect the one whom the Lord had chosen. How would we be able to discern his name? How could 115 Bishops, from every culture and every country, discover the one on whom the Lord wished to confer the mission of binding and loosing?

Once again, we knew that we were not alone, we knew that we were surrounded, led and guided by the friends of God.

And now, at this moment, weak servant of God that I am, I must assume this enormous task, which truly exceeds all human capacity. How can I do this? How will I be able to do it?

All of you, my dear friends, have just invoked the entire host of Saints, represented by some of the great names in the history of God’s dealings with mankind. In this way, I too can say with renewed conviction: I am not alone. I do not have to carry alone what in truth I could never carry alone. All the Saints of God are there to protect me, to sustain me and to carry me. And your prayers, my dear friends, your indulgence, your love, your faith and your hope accompany me.

Indeed, the communion of Saints consists not only of the great men and women who went before us and whose names we know. All of us belong to the communion of Saints, we who have been baptized in the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, we who draw life from the gift of Christ’s Body and Blood, through which he transforms us and makes us like himself.

Yes, the Church is alive – this is the wonderful experience of these days. During those sad days of the Pope’s illness and death, it became wonderfully evident to us that the Church is alive. And the Church is young. She holds within herself the future of the world and therefore shows each of us the way towards the future.

The Church is alive and we are seeing it: we are experiencing the joy that the Risen Lord promised his followers. The Church is alive – she is alive because Christ is alive, because he is truly risen.

In the suffering that we saw on the Holy Father’s face in those days of Easter, we contemplated the mystery of Christ’s Passion and we touched his wounds. But throughout these days we have also been able, in a profound sense, to touch the Risen One. We have been able to experience the joy that he promised, after a brief period of darkness, as the fruit of his resurrection.

The Church is alive – with these words, I greet with great joy and gratitude all of you gathered here, my venerable brother Cardinals and Bishops, my dear priests, deacons, Church workers, catechists. I greet you, men and women Religious, witnesses of the transfiguring presence of God. I greet you, members of the lay faithful, immersed in the great task of building up the Kingdom of God which spreads throughout the world, in every area of life.

With great affection I also greet all those who have been reborn in the sacrament of Baptism but are not yet in full communion with us; and you, my brothers and sisters of the Jewish people, to whom we are joined by a great shared spiritual heritage, one rooted in God’s irrevocable promises. Finally, like a wave gathering force, my thoughts go out to all men and women of today, to believers and non-believers alike.

Dear friends! At this moment there is no need for me to present a programme of governance. I was able to give an indication of what I see as my task in my Message of Wednesday 20 April, and there will be other opportunities to do so. My real programme of governance is not to do my own will, not to pursue my own ideas, but to listen, together with the whole Church, to the word and the will of the Lord, to be guided by Him, so that He himself will lead the Church at this hour of our history.

Instead of putting forward a programme, I should simply like to comment on the two liturgical symbols which represent the inauguration of the Petrine Ministry; both these symbols, moreover, reflect clearly what we heard proclaimed in today’s readings.

The first symbol is the Pallium, woven in pure wool, which will be placed on my shoulders. This ancient sign, which the Bishops of Rome have worn since the fourth century, may be considered an image of the yoke of Christ, which the Bishop of this City, the Servant of the Servants of God, takes upon his shoulders. God’s yoke is God’s will, which we accept. And this will does not weigh down on us, oppressing us and taking away our freedom.

To know what God wants, to know where the path of life is found – this was Israel’s joy, this was her great privilege. It is also our joy: God’s will does not alienate us, it purifies us – even if this can be painful – and so it leads us to ourselves. In this way, we serve not only him, but the salvation of the whole world, of all history.

The symbolism of the Pallium is even more concrete: the lamb’s wool is meant to represent the lost, sick or weak sheep which the shepherd places on his shoulders and carries to the waters of life.

For the Fathers of the Church, the parable of the lost sheep, which the shepherd seeks in the desert, was an image of the mystery of Christ and the Church. The human race – every one of us – is the sheep lost in the desert which no longer knows the way.

The Son of God will not let this happen; he cannot abandon humanity in so wretched a condition. He leaps to his feet and abandons the glory of heaven, in order to go in search of the sheep and pursue it, all the way to the Cross. He takes it upon his shoulders and carries our humanity; he carries us all – he is the good shepherd who lays down his life for the sheep.

What the Pallium indicates first and foremost is that we are all carried by Christ. But at the same time it invites us to carry one another. Hence the Pallium becomes a symbol of the shepherd’s mission, of which the Second Reading and the Gospel speak.

The pastor must be inspired by Christ’s holy zeal: for him it is not a matter of indifference that so many people are living in the desert. And there are so many kinds of desert.

There is the desert of poverty, the desert of hunger and thirst, the desert of abandonment, of loneliness, of destroyed love.

There is the desert of God’s darkness, the emptiness of souls no longer aware of their dignity or the goal of human life. The external deserts in the world are growing, because the internal deserts have become so vast.

Therefore the earth’s treasures no longer serve to build God’s garden for all to live in, but they have been made to serve the powers of exploitation and destruction.

The Church as a whole and all her Pastors, like Christ, must set out to lead people out of the desert, towards the place of life, towards friendship with the Son of God, towards the One who gives us life, and life in abundance.

The symbol of the lamb also has a deeper meaning. In the Ancient Near East, it was customary for kings to style themselves shepherds of their people. This was an image of their power, a cynical image: to them their subjects were like sheep, which the shepherd could dispose of as he wished.

When the shepherd of all humanity, the living God, himself became a lamb, he stood on the side of the lambs, with those who are downtrodden and killed. This is how he reveals himself to be the true shepherd: “I am the Good Shepherd . . . I lay down my life for the sheep”, Jesus says of himself (Jn 10:14f).

It is not power, but love that redeems us! This is God’s sign: he himself is love. How often we wish that God would make show himself stronger, that he would strike decisively, defeating evil and creating a better world.

All ideologies of power justify themselves in exactly this way, they justify the destruction of whatever would stand in the way of progress and the liberation of humanity. We suffer on account of God’s patience. And yet, we need his patience.

God, who became a lamb, tells us that the world is saved by the Crucified One, not by those who crucified him. The world is redeemed by the patience of God. It is destroyed by the impatience of man.

One of the basic characteristics of a shepherd must be to love the people entrusted to him, even as he loves Christ whom he serves. “Feed my sheep”, says Christ to Peter, and now, at this moment, he says it to me as well.

Feeding means loving, and loving also means being ready to suffer. Loving means giving the sheep what is truly good, the nourishment of God’s truth, of God’s word, the nourishment of his presence, which he gives us in the Blessed Sacrament.

My dear friends – at this moment I can only say:
Pray for me, that I may learn to love the Lord more and more. Pray for me, that I may learn to love his flock more and more – in other words, you, the holy Church, each one of you and all of you together.

Pray for me, that I may not flee for fear of the wolves. Let us pray for one another, that the Lord will carry us and that we will learn to carry one another.

The second symbol used in today’s liturgy to express the inauguration of the Petrine Ministry is the presentation of the fisherman’s ring.

Peter’s call to be a shepherd, which we heard in the Gospel, comes after the account of a miraculous catch of fish: after a night in which the disciples had let down their nets without success, they see the Risen Lord on the shore. He tells them to let down their nets once more, and the nets become so full that they can hardly pull them in; 153 large fish: “and although there were so many, the net was not torn” (Jn 21:11).

This account, coming at the end of Jesus’s earthly journey with his disciples, corresponds to an account found at the beginning: there too, the disciples had caught nothing the entire night; there too, Jesus had invited Simon once more to put out into the deep.

And Simon, who was not yet called Peter, gave the wonderful reply: “Master, at your word I will let down the nets.” And then came the conferral of his mission: “Do not be afraid. Henceforth you will be catching men” (Lk 5:1-11).

Today too the Church and the successors of the Apostles are told to put out into the deep sea of history and to let down the nets, so as to win men and women over to the Gospel – to God, to Christ, to true life.

The Fathers made a very significant commentary on this singular task. This is what they say: for a fish, created for water, it is fatal to be taken out of the sea, to be removed from its vital element to serve as human food. But in the mission of a fisher of men, the reverse is true.

We are living in alienation, in the salt waters of suffering and death; in a sea of darkness without light. The net of the Gospel pulls us out of the waters of death and brings us into the splendour of God’s light, into true life.

It is really true: as we follow Christ in this mission to be fishers of men, we must bring men and women out of the sea that is salted with so many forms of alienation and onto the land of life, into the light of God.

It is really so: the purpose of our lives is to reveal God to men. And only where God is seen does life truly begin. Only when we meet the living God in Christ do we know what life is.

We are not some casual and meaningless product of evolution. Each of us is the result of a thought of God. Each of us is willed, each of us is loved, each of us is necessary.

There is nothing more beautiful than to be surprised by the Gospel, by the encounter with Christ. There is nothing more beautiful than to know Him and to speak to others of our friendship with Him.

The task of the shepherd, the task of the fisher of men, can often seem wearisome. But it is beautiful and wonderful, because it is truly a service to joy, to God’s joy which longs to break into the world.

Here I want to add something: both the image of the shepherd and that of the fisherman issue an explicit call to unity. “I have other sheep that are not of this fold; I must lead them too, and they will heed my voice. So there shall be one flock, one shepherd” (Jn 10:16); these are the words of Jesus at the end of his discourse on the Good Shepherd. And the account of the 153 large fish ends with the joyful statement: “although there were so many, the net was not torn” (Jn 21:11).

Alas, beloved Lord, with sorrow we must now acknowledge that it has been torn! But no – we must not be sad! Let us rejoice because of your promise, which does not disappoint, and let us do all we can to pursue the path towards the unity you have promised. Let us remember it in our prayer to the Lord, as we plead with him: yes, Lord, remember your promise. Grant that we may be one flock and one shepherd! Do not allow your net to be torn, help us to be servants of unity!

At this point, my mind goes back to 22 October 1978, when Pope John Paul II began his ministry here in Saint Peter’s Square. His words on that occasion constantly echo in my ears: “Do not be afraid! Open wide the doors for Christ!”

The Pope was addressing the mighty, the powerful of this world, who feared that Christ might take away something of their power if they were to let him in, if they were to allow the faith to be free.

Yes, he would certainly have taken something away from them: the dominion of corruption, the manipulation of law and the freedom to do as they pleased. But he would not have taken away anything that pertains to human freedom or dignity, or to the building of a just society.

The Pope was also speaking to everyone, especially the young. Are we not perhaps all afraid in some way? If we let Christ enter fully into our lives, if we open ourselves totally to him, are we not afraid that He might take something away from us?

Are we not perhaps afraid to give up something significant, something unique, something that makes life so beautiful? Do we not then risk ending up diminished and deprived of our freedom?

And once again the Pope said: No! If we let Christ into our lives, we lose nothing, nothing, absolutely nothing of what makes life free, beautiful and great. No! Only in this friendship are the doors of life opened wide. Only in this friendship is the great potential of human existence truly revealed. Only in this friendship do we experience beauty and liberation.

And so, today, with great strength and great conviction, on the basis of long personal experience of life, I say to you, dear young people: Do not be afraid of Christ! He takes nothing away, and he gives you everything. When we give ourselves to him, we receive a hundredfold in return. Yes, open, open wide the doors to Christ – and you will find true life. Amen.

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Perhaps not even Leo the Great delivered three great homilies following in quick succession as Benedict XVI did that April of 2005. But they only prefigured the great Paschal Triduum-Easter quadrilogy of homilies he would go on to deliver every year in the next six years...

Sorry I could not find a better report than the following to give an idea - a rather pale one compared to the reality - of the ceremony in St. Peter's Square on April 24, 2005, when for the first time since his brief appearance on the central loggia of St. Peter's Basilica on April 19, the world saw Benedict XVI formally installed as Supreme Pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church.

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Benedict XVI officially installed:
Says 'listening with the Church'
will be his 'program of governance'
By Stacy Meichtry

April 24, 2005

Pope Benedict XVI officially took the reins of the Roman Catholic church Sunday, receiving the symbols of his authority with a call for unity with other faiths and a pledge to govern the church through cooperation rather than papal mandate.

In a ceremony colored by centuries-old pageantry, Benedict accepted the fisherman's ring and seal -- the symbol of his continuity with St. Peter -- and a lamb's wool pallium -- a sash that signifies the pope's role as the shepherd of the faithful. [It's not a sash - in the form Benedict XVI took it on that day, it was a long stole; since 2009, he has reverted to the collar form used by metropolitan bishops, except the papal pallium has the crosses in red, while the bishops have theirs in black.]

Benedict then delivered a homily that aimed to recast these tokens of papal power as symbols of servitude, signaling a dramatic departure from his former role as the church's chief doctrinal authority.

"At this moment there is no need for me to present a program of governance," he told the 350,000-strong crowd, composed of dignitaries, religious leaders, royalty and rank-and-file faithful. "My real program of governance is not to do my own will, not to pursue my own ideas, but to listen, together with the whole church."

Benedict extended his call to Christian churches "not yet in full communion" with the pontiff and to the "Jewish people," whom he characterized as "brothers and sisters," united with the church through "a great shared spiritual heritage."

As Cardinal Ratzinger, head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Benedict was the chief author of a document that reasserted Catholicism's superiority over other faiths and claimed that other Christian churches derive salvific power through their links to Catholicism. [A false reading of Dominus Iesus.]

On Sunday, Benedict showed no signs of excluding anyone from his reign. [That is such an uninformed reading! The Pope is a Universal Pastor whose ministry is therefore not exclusive. It is entirely another thing to clarify Catholic doctrine for all the faithful by affirming that the defining characteristic of the one Church Jesus founded, - which was undivided until the Great Schism of 1043, leaving the Roman Catholic Church as the only universal Christian church that traces its origins all the way back to the apostles [As do a few Oriental churches begun directly by the Apostles and therefore called 'apostolic churches'.]

"Like a wave gathering force, my thoughts go out to all men and women of today, to believers and non-believers alike," Benedict said.

Benedict began the ceremony beneath the Basilica, in a space believed to mark the burial spot of Catholicism's first Pope St Peter. He wore heavy golden vestments, embroidered with a seashell patterns and gripped a papal staff that once belonged to his predecessor, John Paul II. {So too did the miter and chasuble he wore.]

Upon appearing in the square, Benedict stood immobile before the cheering crowd. His eyes scanned the throng while his face remained expressionless.

With St. Peter's massive façade looming over his shoulder, Benedict waited as the fisherman's ring and the pallium were carried from the altar to his throne.

Cardinal Jorge Medina Estevez, the Chilean who proclaimed Benedict's name to the world from the basilica balcony last Tuesday, placed the pallium around the pontiff's neck. A simple stole made of white lambs wool, the pallium was embroidered with five crimson crosses that Estevez pinned with silver stakes to signify the nailing of Christ to the cross.

Benedict described the pallium, an accessory popular among Medieval popes, as a "yoke" that "does not alienate us, it purifies us -- even if this can be painful."

Cardinal Angelo Sodano, the Vatican's Secretary of State, brought a golden jewel box before the pontiff with its lid ajar, exposing the glittering fisherman's ring, emblazoned with a relief of Peter casting his fishing net -- the image traditionally used to seal apostolic letters. Benedict plucked it from the box and slid his right ring finger through it.

Twelve people representing Christ's disciples then lined up to kneel before Benedict and kiss his ring. Among the 12 chosen was a religious woman -- the first ever to participate in the ritual.

As Benedict read the Mass's homily, his eyes fixed to the text. Occasionally he invoked the name of John Paul, stirring applause from the crowd and memories of his predecessor's commanding skills as an orator.

Once he cited John Paul's Mass of Investiture in 1978, when the late pontiff imported: "Do not be afraid!" The words stood in stark contrast to Benedict's soft-spoken message.

"I am not alone," Benedict declared, prompting loud cheers from the audience. "You see," he said, briefly lifting his eyes to the crowd in a brief departure from his text. "We see it. We hear it."

Benedict's call for unity also contrasted with the dire tones of the messages he had delivered as a cardinal -- most notably a Good Friday address that characterized the Church as a sinking ship and the pre-conclave Pro Eligendo Mass, in which the former cardinal called on the Church to defend itself against an ideology-based "dictatorship of relativism."

Sunday Benedict cast his condemnation of ideological influence in a more subtle light.

"All ideologies of power justify themselves in exactly this way. They justify the destruction of whatever would stand in the way of progress and the liberation of humanity," he said. "God, who became a lamb, tells us that the world is saved by the crucified, not by those who crucify."

"Pray for me," he said, "that I may not flee for fear of the wolves."

After the Mass concluded, Benedict mounted a white jeep and circled the square to the cheers of onlookers who held out their hands and flashed digital cameras.

Beyond the square, an endless crowd packed the Via della Conciliazione, which was lined with jumbotrons for the occasion. Similar screens were positioned outside Vatican City walls to accommodate late arrivals.

City officials estimated that 100,000 pilgrims from the ope's native Germany attended the event.

Among them was Simone Steffan, 30, who traveled 12 hours by train from Munich to arrive in Rome Sunday morning and secure a spot in the square.

"I saw the top of his hat," she said, describing the pontiff's cruise on the popemobile. Steffan followed most of the Mass in a state of incomprehension, waiting for the pontiff to speak in his native tongue. Her wish was not fulfilled. "I just wanted one word in German," she said.

Dignitaries from more than 131 countries also attended the Mass, including German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, Prince Albert II of Monaco and Florida Gov. Jeb Bush.

Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams; Metropolitan Chrisostomos, a top envoy for Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I, the spiritual leader of the world's Christian Orthodox; and a senior representative of the Russian Orthodox church, Metropolitan Kirill were present at the Mass and scheduled to meet with the freshman pontiff later in the day.

Following the Mass, dignitaries formed a line inside the Basilica to greet the newly installed pope. Schroeder gently bowed and shook hands with Benedict while Queen Sofia of Spain, wearing a lacy white dress and a flowing veil, knelt before the pontiff and planted a kiss on his newly minted ring.

Although Spain ranks among Europe's largest Catholic countries, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, Spain's prime minister, did not attend Benedict's investiture Mass. This week, the lower chamber of the Spanish parliament passed by an overwhelming majority a bill that allows gay couples to marry and adopt children.

As the former Cardinal Ratzinger, Benedict condemned homosexuality as a premarital sexual relationship. [How can the reporter of a major newspaper get that so wrong? Catholic teaching considers the physical homosexual act sinful, just as pre-marital heterosexual sex is.] He has not addressed the issue since becoming Pope as Vatican officials have worked hard to present their pope in a softer hue. [Yeah, right!. As if any Pope would begin his Pontificate by lecturing about homosexuality which is not exactly among the top problems for the world's 1.2 billion Catholics.]

Saturday Benedict met with the media and thanked them for their hard work and the intensive coverage they have provided during this time of the death of a Pope and the election of a new one.

Benedict "has been catapulted into this position," said Costantino Mirra, 52, who runs a sanitation company in southern Italy. "Before he had an embarrassing job," he said, referring to Benedict's days as the prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. "Now he can reflect, taking his new job one day at a time."

While his ministry officially began today, Benedict has been in the public eye for months. As the dean of the College of Cardinals, he was designated to celebrate the only Mass of the year that drew more supporters than Sunday's ceremony: John Paul's funeral.

In a repeat performance of that day, Italian authorities employed elaborate security measures. Boats patrolled the Tiber River, a no-fly zone was imposed, anti-missile units were put in position as were NATO surveillance aircraft. The city of Rome reported that 10,000 police were deployed.

In a final invocation of the late pope, Benedict reformulated John Paul's 1978 call to not be afraid: "I say to you, dear young people: Do not be afraid of Christ!"

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P.S. The homily delivered by Pope Francis on his inaugural Mass last March 19 may be found here
http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/francesco/homilies/2013/documents/papa-francesco_20130319_omelia-inizio-pontificato_en.html
The homily was structured around the figure of St. Joseph, patron of the universal Church, whose feast day the Church marked that day.

If one must look for parallels, I would quote Benedict XVI's powerful 'desert' imagery in this April 24, 2005, homily, alongside Pope Francis's now-famous 'peripheries' imagery ['outskirts' is the word used in the official Vatican translation] drawn from his experience in the poor peripheries of Buenos Aires.

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From Benedict XVI's inaugural homily on April 24, 2005:
The pastor must be inspired by Christ’s holy zeal: for him it is not a matter of indifference that so many people are living in the desert. And there are so many kinds of desert.

There is the desert of poverty, the desert of hunger and thirst, the desert of abandonment, of loneliness, of destroyed love.

There is the desert of God’s darkness, the emptiness of souls no longer aware of their dignity or the goal of human life. The external deserts in the world are growing, because the internal deserts have become so vast.

Therefore the earth’s treasures no longer serve to build God’s garden for all to live in, but they have been made to serve the powers of exploitation and destruction.

The Church as a whole and all her Pastors, like Christ, must set out to lead people out of the desert, towards the place of life, towards friendship with the Son of God, towards the One who gives us life, and life in abundance.


From Cardinal Bergoglio's pre-Conclave intervention in the General Congregation of the College of Cardinals, early March, 2005:
Evangelizing presupposes a desire in the Church to come out of herself. The Church is called to come out of herself and to go to the peripheries, not only geographically, but also the existential peripheries: the mystery of sin, of pain, of injustice, of ignorance and indifference to religion, of intellectual currents, and of all misery.

From Pope Francis's homily at the Chrismal Mass, March 28, 2013, addressing priests and bishops:
We need to “go out”, then...to the “outskirts” where there is suffering, bloodshed, blindness that longs for sight, and prisoners in thrall to many evil masters.

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So, did Francis say anything in 2013 that Benedict XVI had not articulated even more powerfully eight years ago? Without the puzzling reproach that "the Church must come out of herself" [How else has she been doing her evangelization, then? - and she has done that a lot in Africa and Asia in the past few decades!] And Benedict completes the thought by saying not just to 'set out' but "to lead the people out of the desert towards...the One who gives us life".

This is the second appreciation of Benedict XVI that Fr. Geiger, a Franciscan, has published recently, and we can all be grateful to him for his commendable loyalty, perspective and objectivity - all virtues that are very rarely found these days in the media, including Catholic media (even if I do object to his use of the term 'transitional Pope' for Benedict XVI)...

Pope Benedict XVI’s legacy:
Faith and the future
Six essential and enduring themes of
the pontificate of the Pope Emeritus
by Father Angelo Mary Geiger

April 23, 2013

The new springtime for the Church hoped for by Blessed John Paul II found its great advocate and defender in Benedict XVI. He has been an indefatigable defender of Tradition and renewal in the light of both the Second Vatican Council and the crisis that has been its aftermath.

Perhaps one may call him a transitional Pope. [???? Most of MSM, even those hostile to Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI have long stopped calling him a 'transitional Pope', a term usually given to someone who is perceived merely to have been Pope for a generally short period during which he is distinguished mostly by just being Pope and not undertaking anything significant - certainly not the case with Benedict XVI!]

However, the work that he has done will prove pivotal to future of the Church willed by Christ. Joseph Ratzinger was the guardian of the doctrine of the faith under Blessed John Paul II, and his resignation has given us the extraordinary conclave that elected Pope Francis.

But what he did in this transition [I protest this term most vehemently, as though Benedict XVI was only a placeholder until the 'transition' could be made from John Paul II to Francis] was to make clear once again to the naysayers that, even in crisis, the Church is the only viable future, just as it was at the beginning when it was small and persecuted.

Prophetically, Joseph Ratzinger pronounced the keynote of his coming pontificate at the Mass Pro Eligendo Romano Pontifice just before the conclave that elected him began. He contrasted the relativism of our age, the “being carried about by every wind of doctrine,” with the standard by which the Church judges a truly humane society, namely, the person of Jesus Christ. Against what he famously called the “dictatorship of relativism” he pitted a faith fully embraced as a deep encounter with Christ:

An “adult” faith is not a faith that follows the trends of fashion and the latest novelty; a mature adult faith is deeply rooted in friendship with Christ. It is this friendship that opens us up to all that is good and gives us a criterion by which to distinguish the true from the false, and deceit from truth.

For Benedict, to encounter the truth is to encounter a Person. In his Christmas greetings to the Roman Curia in 2012 he said we do not so much possess the truth, as we are possessed by it. “Christ, who is the truth, has taken us by the hand, and we know that his hand is holding us securely on the path of our quest for knowledge.”

Thus, Pope Benedict has proposed as a solution to the relativism of our age the life of faith as friendship with Christ, and the reform of the Church in the modern age, not merely as a structural adjustment, but as an extension of the life of Christ in the world.

In 1997 Joseph Ratzinger wrote that the mystery of Christ in the Church cannot be reduced to a thing, a program of action, or what he called a “Jesus Program.” The Church can only be reduced to Christ. This perhaps explains why this Pope chose to write a trilogy on the person of Jesus of Nazareth, because, as he says in the introduction to the first volume, the person of Christ becomes “self-contradictory” and “unintelligible” unless we appreciate that He alone can reveal God to us. He is not just the friend of God, but His Son, and He who is nearest to the Father’s heart who has made him known (Jn 1:18).

This Pope, named after one the great patrons of Europe, St. Benedict, the father of Western monasticism, has been deeply concerned about the decline of Christianity in the West and so committed to the New Evangelization.

In a like manner, he has urged a Church in crisis to live with the convictions of the early Christians, who did not spread the faith through power or programs, but by means of the force of their own convictions lived out through a deep communion with the Lord.

In his first encyclical letter, Deus Caritas Est, “On Christian Love” (December, 25, 2005), Pope Benedict began his exposition on the three theological virtues, and there distinguishes the love of God from its counterfeits in relativistic society.

Modern secular society has exalted erotic love, or desire, and has accused the Church of destroying it. But Pope Benedict directs our attention toward Jesus Christ and His friendship and proclaims that it is the Church, and only the Church, that saves desire from being closed off from the highest values of the soul.

Desire is purified, exalted and fulfilled when man, like Christ, becomes a gift to another in an act of oblation. This kind of love is not simply an instinct or intuition, much less is it merely spontaneous passion. It is not a love that revolves around the ego. This kind of love is shaped by faith in Jesus Christ and is the result of communion with Him.

Indeed, Pope Benedict’s pontificate followed upon that of the great pope of love, Blessed John Paul II, who through his pastoral ministry to the nations, his teaching on human dignity, and his Catechesis on Human Love showed forth the compelling truth and beauty of Christian charity. Three days before Pope Benedict promulgated Deus Caritas Est, he held up to the members of the Roman Curia the words and example of John Paul II, who "has left us an interpretation of suffering that is not a theological or philosophical theory but a fruit that matured on his personal path of suffering which he walked, sustained by faith in the Crucified Lord".

According to Pope Benedict, in the words and deeds of Blessed John Paul II, especially in his suffering, we have been given an example of the power of Divine Mercy, of suffering joined to redemptive love.

When Pope Benedict beatified his predecessor he said of the new blessed that as his strength failed his message became more eloquent: “In this way he lived out in an extraordinary way the vocation of every priest and bishop to become completely one with Jesus, whom he daily receives and offers in the Church.”

Pope Benedict’s continued “reform of the reform” in respect to the liturgy should also be seen in the light of his commitment to put communion with Christ at the center of all reform and renewal.

By lifting the excommunication of the bishops of the Society of St. Pius X and the earlier action of the motu proprio Summorum Ponitificum, Pope Benedict gave an example of charity toward the marginalized and also made it clear once and for all that the sacred liturgy must have God at its center.

Some would count the dialogue of the Society of St. Pius X with the Holy See a failure, but what Pope Benedict has done is to place the proper emphasis on reverence, adoration, and charity. That is a success.

All of Pope Benedict’s liturgical dispositions had as their purpose the salvaging of the liturgical reforms of Vatican II from the grip of those who would try to manufacture the liturgy and deform it into a kind of celebration of ourselves.

Again, [personal] desire must be subordinated to sacrificial love, nowhere found or experienced in a greater way than in the redemptive mystery enshrined in the sacred liturgy. The liturgy above all is where egoism should recede and place of Christ increase.

Joseph Ratzinger had indicated 10 years after the Lefebvrist schism that those on either extreme of the liturgical spectrum fail to understand what is truly essential to the sacred liturgy, namely, that through it we enter into a communion of love with Christ, by a deep contemplative participation in the mysteries we celebrate.

The different but complementary liturgical dispositions of Pope Francis indicate such an interpretation is correct: whether the liturgy is carried out in as magnificent a way as possible or otherwise, God must be its center and adoration its primary purpose.

In his second encyclical letter, Spe Salvi, “On Christian Hope” (November 30, 2007), Pope Benedict urged the modern world and modern Christianity to confront the present state of affairs in the light of what constitutes true progress.

Here again, Pope Benedict directs our attention back to friendship with Christ. For Benedict, the world is not governed by “the elemental spirits of the universe, the laws of matter, and evolution,” but by “reason, will, love—a Person.” We are not “slaves the universe” but are free persons who are known and loved by God.

“Life is not a simple product of laws and the randomness of matter, but within everything and at the same time above everything, there is a personal will, there is a Spirit who in Jesus has revealed himself as Love.”

Pope Benedict says that hope is a consequence of faith. Christians know they have a future and this, the Holy Father says, is essential to living the present well. In this way the knowledge of Christ is not only “informative,” but “performative,” that is, “life-changing.”

This was part of Joseph Ratzinger’s perspective on the “new springtime” of the Church. In an interview given less than a year before he became Pope, he said that the new springtime is the power of the faithful’s convictions to proclaim that there is indeed a future and that it lies with the Church.

In the light of what Pope Benedict had to deal with in terms of the crises in the Church — such as the child abuse problems with the clergy, alleged corruption within the Vatican, the continued assault on the dignity of human life, the sanctity of marriage and the family—this message of hope has a particular eloquence.

In 2010, calls from atheists like Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens to arrest Pope Benedict for alleged “crimes against humanity” when he came to England preceded his visit. But once in England Pope Benedict brought hope. In his homily for the beatification of the great John Henry Newman he quoted the new blessed:

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I have my mission. I am a link in a chain, a bond of connection between persons. He has not created me for naught. I shall do good, I shall do his work; I shall be an angel of peace, a preacher of truth in my own place…if I do but keep his commandments and serve him in my calling.

---

In the light of this teaching one can understand the overwhelmingly positive reception of Pope Benedict in England, and its subsequent fruitfulness with the establishment of the Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham, which received converts from Anglicanism.

This reminds us of what the Holy Father teaches in Spe Salvi, that salvation has a social dimension. Those who are the friends of Christ have a special role to usher in the future and to deliver to the world the message of hope.

Throughout history those who were committed to reform, not only were persecuted, but they were also full of the joy that is rooted in message of salvation and the promise of a blessed future. This message, Pope Benedict says, is particularly important in the modern age, which suffers under the illusion that it can control the future through science and technology.

We must not put our “faith in progress,” but view the progress toward a future full of hope through the lens of faith. Hope is transformative. Thus we cannot forget also Pope Benedict’s contribution to the social doctrine of the Church with his other encyclical letter, Caritas in Veritate, “On Integral Human Development in Charity and Truth,” where he details in the way in which hope provides the “service of integral human development” with the necessary impetus to transform society in law and justice.

This theme of hope, as experienced in the present and oriented toward the future, is exemplified also by Pope Benedict’s Wednesday audience catechesis on Apostolic Tradition, as it was deposited with the Apostles and handed on by the Great Christian thinkers of the ages., [with the lesson that] we must hold onto what we have received without repudiating the past, but still be oriented toward the future.

In one of these audiences about the great Franciscan, St. Bonaventure (March 10, 2010), Pope Benedict pointed out that, in respect to the future, the temptation to the extremes — namely, that the Church is in a state of inexorable “decline,” or that it will escape the trials of the present in a kind of “utopian spiritualism” — has always been present. So in the Christian concept of hope, Pope Benedict cuts a path between the extremes. That middle path can be characterized as “innovation in continuity.”

In a sense, Pope Benedict is a transitional Pope who has straddled the two halves of the postconciliar century and has sorted out for us in very clear terms the differences between the “Council of the Media,” as he called it one of his last addresses (March 14, 2013), and the “Council of the Fathers,” or between the “Virtual Council” and the “Real Council.” It is along these lines that he has pointed out that the future lies — not along the lines of decline or utopia, but of Christian hope. [OK, in this context, I will accept the use of the term 'transitional' in the specific sense that Benedict XVI has bridged the gap between the five decades that passes after Vatican-II with the rampant misinterpretation of the Council that has caused so much trouble within the Church, and the fresh look at the Council in the hermeneutic of continuity that he advocated and led so strongly.]

Pope Benedict, the great teacher, who is not disposed to programmatic adjustments to the Church, again, has cut a middle path. Amid all the furor that erupted concerning the address he gave to the representatives of science at the University of Regensburg (September 12, 2006), in which he quoted a derogatory remark about Islam [the remark cited was not about Islam itself, but about Mohammed and how he imposed the new religion in large part by violent means - a precedent which has since been used by Islamist extremists today to justify their use of violence], the real point was lost.

Both fundamentalism and rationalism suffer from the same defect: they fail to see that faith and reason work in harmony and keep each other from becoming inhuman. Ideology is never the answer.

In respect to the Second Vatican Council, both progressives and traditionalists have to realize that only the Church in its communion with Jesus Christ and under the visible headship of Peter can navigate the waters of the future without rupturing with the past. Pope Benedict has famously called this a “hermeneutic of continuity” (December 22, 2005).

It may be hugely providential, in the end, that Pope Benedict did not complete his trio of encyclicals on the theological virtues. He intended to publish the encyclical on Faith during this Year of Faith, which commemorates the dual anniversaries of the opening of the Second Vatican Council and the promulgation of The Catechism of the Catholic Church.

Instead, Pope Benedict has given us the gift of his prayer as he withdraws from ministry, and the gift of a new Successor of St. Peter, Pope Francis. Some, instead, have seen this act as an abandonment of the Church and a departure from Tradition.

But true to form, Pope Benedict shows himself committed to renewal in continuity, and he placed his hope not in calculations and well-designed programs, but in the communion that the Church grants to Christians with Christ Himself.

Both Popes Benedict and Francis have commented [They have??? We can be sure they think that, but I don't recall any explicit comment to that effect, either by Francis, much less by Benedict, who has not made any public comment at all since February 28] on the fact that this papal transition [turnover!] was the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, and while these two men are very different in style and temperament, they have been both committed to renewal and reform according the mind of the Church in fidelity to apostolic Tradition.

Both of them have said that the Year of Faith cannot remain only an anniversary, and in particular, Pope Francis, remembering the contribution of Pope Benedict, has warned us against attempting to “tame the Holy Spirit” (April 16, 2013).

Both Popes have also been committed to bringing forth the effects of the Marian principle of the Church. Pope Benedict has stated that the Marian principle of the Church is “even more fundamental” than the Petrine, and said that the choice of the Council Fathers to place the treatment of Our Lady at the end of the Constitution on the Church was “a felicitous decision,” because it emphasized the “connatural relationship” between Our Lady and the Church (March 25, 2006). But this perhaps is the key to what Pope Benedict has envisioned for the renewal of the Church.

Why? Because the new springtime of the Church is neither a return to the past or a utopian future but a spontaneous and free choice to live and die for Christ. As Joseph Ratzinger said years ago, the person of Mary not only as model of the Church but as its personal form and mother guarantees that the Church will not be reduced to a thing, or a program of action, but only to the Person of Christ. According to Joseph Ratzinger, she is the “vanquisher of all heresies,” because in her the Church will never be manipulated or hijacked by ideologues.

Pope Benedict, the great contemplative and thinker, has helped to clarify and promote the principles that will continue to guide us out of the crisis of modernity.

He has recaptured the lost past and oriented it toward the future, so that we can live out of the depths of our convictions in faith, hope and love.

The Church is the future and Pope Benedict, in his last papal act of humility, has entrusted it—in that faith which is hope — to Christ who is Lord of the future and Master of the new springtime. It is up to us, by the force of our convictions and the freedom of our choices, to follow the lead that we have so providentially been given in Benedict XVI.

Father Angelo Mary Geiger is a Franciscan Friar of the Immaculate and chaplain to a community of the contemplative branch of Sisters of the Immaculate in Cornwall, England. Father has written and spoken extensively on Marian topics and blogs at Maryvictrix.com.

Archbishop Fisichella presents
2 new events for the Year of Faith


Vatican City, 24 April 2013 (VIS) – A press conference was held this morning in the Holy See Press Office to present the next two events scheduled for the Year of Faith: the Day of Confirmands (27-28 April) and the Day of Confraternities and Popular Piety (3-5 April).

Participating in the press conference were Archbishop Rino Fisichella and Bishop Jose Octavio Ruiz Arena, respectively president and secretary of the Pontifical Council for Promoting New Evangelisation.

Archbishop Fisichella explained that the common denominator of the events, which will take place in Rome with the Holy Father, will be “highlighting pilgrimage to the tomb of Peter. That is why, the day before, the participants will take part in a symbolic procession from the obelisk in St. Peter's Square to the tomb of the Apostle where they will pray the Creed. Along the way there will be a brief catechesis to recall the significance of the places that we find ourselves at and their historic meaning for the faith.”

The first event will take place this 27-28 April and will be dedicated to all those who have or who will receive the Sacrament of Confirmation this year. “Already more than 70,000 youth, accompanied by their catechists and priests, have signed up. This presence shows the enthusiasm with which they have joined in the initiative and the great turn-out that we should expect.”

For the first time, Pope Francis will confer the Sacrament of Confirmation on 44 persons from around the world, symbolically representing the entire Church.

“They are people,” the archbishop said, “ who show the face of the Church in places where people are living and suffering, to give everyone hope and certainty for the future.” The confirmands will range in age from 11 to 55.

The second important event, which over 50,000 persons have already signed up for, will take place from May 3-5 and will be dedicated to popular piety. The Confraternities, particularly from the countries where the tradition is strongest, will give witness to the different local traditions that have resulted from a religiosity that has been expressed through the centuries with popular practices and works of art that have lasted to this day. The event's culminating moment will be Mass celebrated by the Pope on Sunday at 10:00am in St. Peter's Square.

It will be “a moment of faith,” the prelate concluded, “that finds, in the simplicity of the expressions of popular piety, its most deep-rooted core in our people who live these signs uninterruptedly as a reminder of the faith of previous generations and as a tradition that should be witnessed to with courage and enthusiasm.”

Pope Francis:
'The Church is a love story'

April 24, 2013

The Church is not a bureaucratic organization, but a love story. This was Pope Francis's message during Wednesday’s Mass in the Chapel of the Casa Santa Marta.

Attending the Mass this morning were employees of the Institute for the Works of Religion, commonly called the Vatican bank. Cardinal Javier Lozano Barragán, President Emeritus of the Pontifical Council for Health Pastoral Care, concelebrated Mass with the Holy Father.

The day’s readings tell the story of the growth of the first Christian community. In his homily, the Pope warned against being tempted to make "deals" simply to get "more partners in this enterprise."

Instead, he said, “the road that Jesus willed for His Church is otherwise: the way of difficulties, the way of the Cross, the way of persecution . . . And this makes us wonder: what is this Church? Because it seems it is not a human enterprise"...

The Church, he said, is "something else." The disciples do not make the Church – they are the messengers sent by Jesus. And Christ was sent by the Father: “The Church begins there,” he said, “in the heart of the Father, who had this idea . . . of love. So this love story began, a story that has gone on for so long, and is not yet ended. We, the women and men of the Church, we are in the middle of a love story: each of us is a link in this chain of love. And if we do not understand this, we have understood nothing of what the Church is..."

The rest of the Vatican Radio English service's account of this morning's homily can be read here:
en.radiovaticana.va/news/2013/04/24/pope_francis:_church_is_in_a_love_story/en...

What it does not quote is something highlighted in the Italian service's account, in my translation, as follows:

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And when the Church wants to boast of its numbers and creates organizations, creates offices and becomes somewhat bureaucratic, the Church loses her principal substance and risks turning herself into an NGO*. The Church is not an NGO. It is a story of love... But there are those from the IOR - excuse me, eh? - all this is necessary, offices are necessary, OK? [he uses the colloquial Italian phrase "eh, va be?", which I've translated to 'OK'?. But they are necessary to a certain point - as a help to this story of love. And when the organization takes the first place, love is forgotten, and the Church, poor thing, becomes an NGO. This is not the way!"

---

[NGO is the horrible UN term for 'non-governmental organizations', usually referring to bleeding-heart liberal groups, as opposed to 'government organizations' considered to be inherently evil by nature.]

Subsequently, the Pope's reference to the IOR was scrubbed out of the RV story about this morning's homily, and not mentioned at all in the story appearing in tomorrow's issue of the OR.

Even at this early date, six weeks into his Pontificate, Pope Francis will already be remembered in history as the Pope who has improvised his public discourses the most, since he has improvised all the homilies he has given during the daily Masses he has celebrated at Domus Santa Martha since March 14, 2013.

Although Vatican Radio and L'Osservatore Romano have faithfully reported these homilies everyday, no transcripts have been issued, and they do not appear on the Vatican website's detailed documentation of Pope Francis's activities and pronouncements, since, presumably, the daily Masses at Santa Martha are not considered 'official' events.

But one expects an anthology soon (Part 1 of what will certainly be a spectacularly popular series) from the Vatican publishing house that will put together edited transcripts of the homilies.

Edited, not necessarily because the Pope may have said anything theologically wrong - which is the main reason Popes have not extemporized their homilies (even Benedict XVI always spoke his homilies from a pre-written text, even if he occasionally extemporized from the text), but because the Vatican 'editors' may decide to 'scrub' the transcripts of anything that might be taken amiss. As they sought, execrably, to 'edit' what Benedict XVI said about AIDS and condoms during his inflight Q&A with newsmen in March 2009 enroute to Cameroon, after the actual transcripts had already been released the day before by journalists who were travelling with the Pope.

Objectively, there is nothing wrong with Pope Francis making the reference to the IOR the way he was quoted this morning - especially since IOR employees made up most of today's congregation. But contextually, one might say it is at least questionable that the Pope should cite the IOR as an example of what he considers an NGO-like organization.

Not just because he is singling out a specific Vatican office for public censure at an inappropriate occasion, but because the IOR has seemed to be aboveboard in the past two years that it has been under the close scrutiny of the Moneyval inspectors. Which is not to say that the IOR is above criticism - it obviously has its problems. But why should its rank=and-file have to be censured in public by the Pope (even if he employed some humor to temper what he went on to say). As if they were responsible for whatever problems the IOR has, not the IOR's management which has always been overseen by a cardinals' commission!

But there is a larger comment to be made about this morning's homily, whose message, as synthesized by the RV headline is "The church is a love story, not a bureaucratic organization". A conviction expressed over and over and in so many ways by Benedict XVI (and I am sure, without having to research it, by all his modern predecessors as well).

My main concern is that the cardinals who chose Pope Francis - according to all the statements made by those of them who spoke and have been speaking freely to the media - have made it appear that the main problem confronting the Church (as Benedict XVI left it) is the Vatican bureaucracy. Not that they are wrong to criticize an inefficient, incompetent and even, perhaps, 'corrupt' Church bureaucracy, but that they made it appear as if reforming the Curia was the main problem of the Church - not the crisis of faith.

The 'fresh air' and 'springtime' they all praise today refers to their conviction that Francis is the 'air freshener', the magic spray, whose very breath can rid the Church of all those problems 'left behind by Benedict XVI'. And does any of them list the crisis of the faith as one of those problems? NO - they cite the Curia, Vatileaks, and pedophile priests. Ignoring not just the substantial work Benedict XVI did about these issues but also the bedrock of his Petrine ministry, of any Pope's ministry - confirming Catholics in their faith while upholding that faith against all challenges.

Unlike his electors, Pope Francis has spoken much more since his election about the essentials of the faith than he has about structural reforms, and has mentioned more than once, as Benedict XVI said every so often, that, in effect, the structure is not the problem but that every member of the Church, clergy and laity alive, must live the Christian message.

Another example of the Pope's sense of humor surfacing at these daily homilies came early in his homily at the Pauline Chapel on his name day, the feast of St. George, yesterday (from Vatican Radio's (translation):

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The [first] reading today makes me think that the missionary expansion of the Church began precisely at a time of persecution, and these Christians went as far as Phoenicia, Cyprus and Antioch, and proclaimed the Word. They had this apostolic fervor within them, and that is how the faith spread! Some, people of Cyprus and Cyrene - not these, but others who had become Christians - went to Antioch and began to speak to the Greeks too. It was a further step.

And this is how the Church moved forward. Whose was this initiative to speak to the Greeks? This was not clear to anyone but the Jews. But ... it was the Holy Spirit, the One who prompted them ever forward ... But some in Jerusalem, when they heard this, became 'nervous and sent Barnabas on an "apostolic visitation": perhaps, with a little sense of humor we could say that this was the theological beginning of the [Congregation for the] Doctrine of the Faith: this apostolic visit by Barnabas. He saw, and he saw that things were going well.

---

The usual dissidents in the Church, like the LWCR types, may well cite this to say that Pope Francis mocks the idea of 'apostolic visitations' such as those ordered by Benedict XVI to the Maciel's organizations, to Ireland, and to the LCWR.

Irish audits show 'evidence of
steady progress' in dealing
with priest's sex abuses
By Michael Kelly


DUBLIN, April 24, 2013 (CNS) -- The head of the Catholic Church's child safeguarding watchdog said he is encouraged by the latest audits of the handling of abuse allegations by dioceses and a religious congregation.

Ian Elliott, head of the National Board for Safeguarding Children in the Catholic Church, said the seven audits, published April 24, show "clear evidence of steady progress in developing robust safeguarding structures" in the church.

"The overall picture is a very positive one with the vast majority of the criteria used to assess performance against the review standards as being fully met," he said.

While commending the overall picture, some of the audits are critical of past failings. In Clogher Diocese, for example, the review found that retired Bishop Joseph Duffy "consistently missed" opportunities to prevent abuse.

The review covered the period from Jan. 1, 1975, to last December. It found a line had been drawn "between the practice of this diocese today and some of the practices that existed previously."

The review of the Ferns Diocese was also critical of retired Bishop Brendan Comiskey for not handling allegations appropriately. Bishop Comiskey resigned in 2002 after his approach to abuse was criticized sharply.

Overall, however, the safeguarding board described the results as "gratifying." Elliott singled out the parishioner-volunteers in every parish who are responsible for ensuring that safeguarding procedures are adhered to.

"Their efforts have been nothing short of heroic," he said.

Of the 121 priests accused of abuse dealt with in the audits, just eight have been convicted. One of the audits, in the Diocese of Elphin, noted what the reviewers described as a "significant number of allegations which upon investigation were shown to be unfounded."

The safeguarding board has now begun the next round of audits, which is expected to focus on the remaining dioceses as well as religious congregations and missionary societies. Sixteen of the country's 26 dioceses have been reviewed, while a further 158 religious orders, congregations and missionary societies will be audited.

The audit process was extended to all Church institutions after a 2008 review of the Diocese of Cloyne found that procedures there were "inadequate and, in some respects, dangerous." Cloyne Bishop John Magee initially stepped aside in 2009 and later resigned in 2010. A 2011 judicial report was highly critical of his mishandling of abuse allegations.

Thanks to Lella and her new blog for leading me to this article, from the webmagazine of the international Jesuits - an article which is of interest if only because it is written by a Jesuit friend of the late Cardinal Martini but one who admires Benedict XVI and is not judgmental about him...

The Pope as shepherd, not monarch
by Francesco Rossi de Gasperis, SJ
Translated from

April 5, 2013

Editor's Note: A Jesuit, Biblical scholar, profound connoisseur of Israel, a friend of the late Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini during his years in Jerusalem, and emeritus professor at the Jesuits' Gregorian University in Rome, Fr. Rossi is an authoritative observer of Church affairs. With his consent, we are publishing this letter in which he comments on the two extraordinary events in recent Church history: the resignation of Benedict XVI and the election of Pope Francis. the first Jesuit Pope.


The helicopter carrying Pope Benedict XVI from the Vatican to Castel Gandolfo passed over our house on February 28.

I have loved and continue to love Joseph Ratzinger, whose refined spirit has made him so reserved, patient, more ready to step aside himself than to fire people.

He always had lucidly clear ideas, as one notes in this text written in 1969:

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From her crisis today, a Church will emerge that will have lost much. She will become smaller and must start from scratch, more or less. She will no longer be able to dwell in those edifices built in times of prosperity. With relatively less numbers, she will also lose a great part of her 'privileges' in society.

She will start all over from small groups, from movements, a minority who will once again place faith in the center of their lives. She will be a more spiritual Church that will not seek a political mandate, flirting now with the Left, now with the Right. She will be poor and will be the Church of the poor.* At that time, people will see this small flock of believers as something totally new: they will discover them as a response for their own questions, the response they had always secretly sought. (Joseph Ratzinger, December 24, 1969, Conclusion of a cycle of radio lectures for Hessian Rundfunk (state broadcasting of Hesse), republished in Faith and the Future, Ignatius Press)

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*[Joseph Ratzinger wrote this in 1969, more than four decades before Pope Francis would utter the very same words, but in a different context, for which he earned universal panegyrics. I don't think Ratzinger's 'poor church' that will be 'the church of the poor' was meant in the sense that she must divest herself of her patrimony and cater only to the poor - as the media have interpreted Francis's words - but that in the eventual state to which she would be reduced if the crisis of the faith continues unstemmed, she would be greatly impoverished, not necessarily in the material sense, and the remaining faithful equally impoverished.]

For a man who entertained this hope, life in the Vatican must have been a ghastly experience. Whether what he said in 1969 was an enlightened prophecy or not, he gave the Church a decisive contribution in making her universally visible and felt - like the whirring we heard from his helicopter - in renouncing his "ministry as Bishop of Rome, Successor of St. Peter" on February 11.

His successor appears to be moving in harmony with him, in the discretion with which he has avoided speaking of himself as Pope, preferring to choose the 'episcopal' notion in the New Testament of the Bishop of Rome, namely, "Bishop of the pilgrim Church of God in Rome", as one reads in the First Letter of Clement (first Successor of Peter) to 'the pilgrim Church of God in Corinth".

In fact, the 'Pope' is not 'the supreme leader of a universal Church' outside of being the Bishop of Rome, but the universally primatial nature of the Petrine ministry derives from being Bishop of the Church that saw the brilliant testimony of the martyrtdom of Peter and Paul, a bishop who "presides in the place of the region of the Romans, worthy of God, worthy of honour, worthy of the highest happiness, worthy of praise, worthy of obtaining her every desire, worthy of being deemed holy, and which presides in love, with the law of Christ in the name of the Father", as St. Ignatius of Antioch said.

St. Irenaeus of Lyon said of the Church of Rome that "it is the greatest and oldest Church, known by everyone and established in Rome by the glorious apostles Peter and Paul". And that is why she has a pre-eminent role (potentior principalitas) because she has always safeguarded the tradition that comes from the Apostles.

The 'papacy', as it is referred to today, is a sociological and cultural datum with which the Church of Rome became weighed down during the second millennium, especially after 1870, when, after the First Vatican Council, the Successor of Peter appeared to have become isolated from episcopal collegiality, as if he was now the parish priest of all the churches on earth, a substitute for all their bishops, like an absolutely self-referential monarch, like a sultan or a powerful emperor, very different from the Peter of the Gospels and the New Testament, who always appeared among his brothers, those in the Twelve and the others with them (cfr Lk 24,33; Acts 1,15).

[I think the above is a most uncharitable conclusion to make, because there is no evidence that any of the modern Popes from Pius IX, with whom the temporal power of the Popes ended, to Benedict XVI, ever behaved like a monarch, sultan or emperor, even if the 'papal court' and the notion of the Pope as monarch dates back to the first millennium - think of the Byzantine Popes. And as the Church grew and the number of priests and bishops grew with her, the Successors of Peter could not very well have continued to be physically among them all, as Peter could!]

Joseph Ratzinger correctly re-conducted the Petrine ministry to its sacramental significance, "the sensible sign, destined to pass, and not sacred" of the one "great shepherd of the sheep" (Heb 13,20), the Lord Jesus Christ who resurrected, the 'chief shepherd' (1Pt 5,4), and the only "great High Priest" (Heb 4,14) at the head of the common 'royal priesthood' of all of us, "a holy nation, people whom God acquired to proclaim the admirable work of him who has called us (1Pt 2,5.9; cf. Ap 1,6; 5,10; 20,6).

[Why was it necessary for Fr. Rossi to cite all that, when it is clear all the Popes (at least the Popes since Pius IX with whom we are most familiar) - have never acted as anything but the Vicar of Christ - his representative on earth, pointing the faithful to him and the Trinity, and not to themselves!]

Without a previous agreement between them, but only following the Holy Spirit, Pope Francis started to express through his gestures and his words the plain New Testament language referring to the Petrine Ministry, which has otherwise been the object of intrigue for newsmen and others nostalgic for medieval courts and Renaissance lordships.

May the Lord give us the grace to take up unhesitatingly the legacy of Vatican II, free of the disputes over continuity or discontinuity, but only with the Gospel of Jesus as interpreted by Francis of
Assisi.

[While I am glad that Fr. Rossi recognizes - and is probably the only commentator so far to have said so explicitly - that Benedict XVI highlighted (or to use his term, 'reconducted') the sacramental nature of the Petrine ministry (not that his immediate predecessors did not), I disagree that 'disputes over continuity and discontinuity' are irrelevant when discussing the legacy of Vatican II. It matters capitally. And while the most that Pope Francis has said so far about Vatican II is that it would be 'stubborn' to think of going against it, he has not yet explicitly spelled out what that 'it' consists of. His orthodoxy in the doctrinal essentials so far however does not indicate he is a 'progressivist' at all, unlike Fr. Rossi's late friend, Cardinal Martini.]

Insta-books on Pope Francis

April 24, 2013

With the dramatic events in Rome in March, publishers have responded with a slew of new books about Pope Francis this month. USA TODAY's Lindsay Deutsch rounds up titles about the leader to 1.2 billion Catholics around the world:

Francis: Pope of a New World by Andrea Tornielli (Ignatius Press). Biography covers how Francis was elected as the first pope from the Americas — and the first Jesuit pope — in one of the shortest conclaves in history.

Pope Francis: From the End of the Earth to Rome by the staff of The Wall Street Journal (Wall Street Journal and Harper; e-book). Compiles Journal reporting about the challenges and opportunities faced by the man charged with leading the Catholic Church.

Pope Francis: The Vicar of Christ, From Saint Peter to Today by the editors of LIFE (LIFE). Features the best photography from coronation day in Rome.

On Heaven and Earth: Pope Francis on Faith, Family and the Church in the 21st Century by Jorge Mario Bergoglio and Abraham Skorka (Image). Interreligious theological dialogue between Pope Francis (as Cardinal Bergoglio) and Rabbi Abraham Skorka; English translation of 2010 Spanish-language work.

Francis: The Pope From the End of the Earth by Thomas J. Craughwell (Saint Benedict Press). Gift book printed on enamel paper and featuring many photographs.

Pope Francis: Conversations With Jorge Bergoglio: His Life in His Own Words (Putnam, on sale April 30). Biography based on personal interviews with Francis when he was cardinal; English translation of 2010 Spanish-language book.

Pray for Me: The Life and Spiritual Vision of Pope Francis, First Pope From the Americas by Robert Moynihan (Image, on sale April 30). Leading expert on the papacy (Moynihan is the founding editor of Inside the Vatican magazine) introduces the pope.

On the way: Francis: Man of Prayer (Thomas Nelson; May 14) and The Trial of Pope Benedict (Arsenal Pulp Press; June 18).


Thanks to Lella and her new blog for leading me to this item:

Pope Francis's media exposure -
and a historical perspective on how
Catholics have related to the Popes
by Juan Manuel de Prada
Translated from

April 18, 2013

The media exposure of the Pope is a phenomenon that may seem 'normal' and which it is, in fact, at this stage of history.

But it is a phenomenon that can be so 'spectacular' that inevitably, it touches the lives of Catholics, if not in the substance of their faith, at least in the way they live it.

Through the centuries until the past several decades, Catholics lived serenely even without knowing who the Pope was, or knowing about the Pope only vaguely, with no idea if he was fat or thin, tall or short, taciturn or chatty, refined theologian or rustic pastor.

Through the centuries, Catholics only needed to know that in Rome, there was a man who was the Vicar of Christ on earth and that this man, whose succession from Peter was assured by Church tradition and practice, was the guardian of the faith they professed, a faith inherited from his predecessors and that he was passing on.

Through the centuries, Catholics lived their faith in prayer, in receiving the sacraments, in common attendance at Mass and other liturgies, and the only teachings most of them received were from the
parish priest and his homilies, and from their parents who taught them the faith at home.

So it was until fairly recently, and it now seems like the Golden Age of Christianity.

Before we got to this ueber-mediatic phase of history, there was an intermediate stage [beginning in the 19th century], when newspapers allowed the curious Catholic to learn about the decisions of the Popes on questions of faith and morals through reports about their encyclicals, and even of the difficulties of the Papacy in the international political context.

At the time, a Catholic also came to know what the Pope looked like thanks to images on prayer cards, and those who read newspapers and magazines also had a general idea of the guidelines of the current Pontificate.

But the overwhelming majority of Catholics continued to be ignorant of such particulars and went on living their faith in the traditional ways: along with their communities, they went to Mass and listened to their parish priest, whether he was a saint or a dissolute. The ordinary Catholic considered this a frivolous question, because he knew that his priest, whether saint or libertine, was 'alter Christus' whenever he celebrated Mass. It was a time when the Church was without any question so much more than [and not identical to] than the persons who 'represented' her.

But then the mediatic phase came upon us, and everything went off-kilter. Suddenly, the Pope became an omnipresent figure, and the ordinary Catholic started to learn intimate details about him. Whether the Pope had gout or balding, whether he liked chess or football, whether he was austere or sumptuous in his vestments, if he wore shoes of marocain or cordovan, whether he was willing to put on whatever headgear he was offered by people he met or whether he declined to do so.

It was almost as if the Catholic was being told that by knowing such details, he could love the Pope more completely, that in this way, the Pope could be made more 'human', more 'close', more 'accessible'.

Assumptions which are totally grotesque, since the Pope has no other mission on earth but to be the Vicar of Christ and to bring us closer to him, to make Christ himself 'more human, close and accessible'.

Christ himself gave us the formula: "Because I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me..."

It is not through knowing as many details as one can about the Pope that one comes closer to Christ. It is by suffering with those needier than us that we imitate Christ.

One must therefore ask whether the mediatic omnipresence of the Pope does not, in fact, contribute to the disaggregation or weakening of Catholic faith.

One must ask if the assiduous media coverage of the Pope, not so much in his decisions on faith and morals, but in the most assorted daily media follies with which we are regaled, is not generating a 'papolatry' which is very alien to Catholic tradition and is in fact circumscribed within the 'fan' phenomenon surrounding pop singers, sports figures or movie stars.

One must ask if this almost 'abusive' media exposure of the Pope does not generate a distortion in the transmission of the faith. If Christ had wanted the faith to be transmitted by 'great' means, he would have invented all in one breath the megaphone, the radio, TV, transmission towers, the Internet and its social networks, etc.

And even if he could have done so, he wanted the faith to be transmitted in the warmth of human relationships, in small communities which grew through the personal witness of his disciples and that irreplaceable heart-speaking-to-heart.

Having been one of those Catholics who was blissfully happy with just knowing there was a Pope in Rome who was, above all, Vicar of Christ on earth, I did not really get caught up in media coverage of the Popes until Paul VI, who was Pope at the time I began working as a journalist. And I plead guilty, of course, to succumbing to the fascination with all the minutiae of media reporting about the Popes, starting with John Paul II - no such papal minutiae before him - and most especially, of Benedict XVI.

An interest that was nonetheless always secondary to how I myself have tried to live the Christian message, and one that has always been tempered by an actively conscious and subconscious critical view of what is being reported or opined. Never forgetting that the Pope is the finger pointing to the sun of Christ.

But my experience of self-imposed daily assiduousness in following media coverage of Benedict XVI showed me early enough the danger of Papolatry and its first cousin, media partisanship, when one Pope is constantly pitted against another. But as bitter as I was about the unfair and unfounded comparisons to John Paul II (whom I loved and admired greatly), I rejoiced that Benedict XVI was by no means objectively any less great than his predecessor.

Not expecting at all that after Benedict XVI renounced the Pontificate freely for the best of reasons, he would then become the object of an even more unfavorable comparison with his successor, almost from the very first minute there was a new Pope. I am distressed most of all that media coverage of Pope Francis makes 'popularity' the primary measure for a Pope, as though he were someone voted for on 'American Idol', obscuring his message of Christ in a misplaced enthusiasm for the least of his gestures.

While I have the same filial love for Pope Francis as I had for the other Popes in my lifetime, I have freely admitted I do not feel the same personal connection to him that I felt with John Paul II and continue to feel most strongly with Benedict XVI. The heart has its reasons, and love takes infinite forms... And I continue to pray daily, as I have since March 13, 2013, "God bless Pope Francis, and God bless Benedict XVI".

Thursday, April 25, Fourth Week of Easter
FEAST OF ST. MARK

Third from left, a depiction of Mark's martyrdom; the statue is by Donatello.
ST. MARK, EVANGELIST & MARTYR
Little is known of Mark's early life, except that he was born in Judea. The Acts and Paul's letters tell us he was a friend of both Peter and Paul. Peter called him 'my son', and
Mark's house in Jerusalem appeared to have been a gathering place for the early Christians. He travelled with Paul and Barnabas on the first missionary journey, but Paul did
not want him along on the second one, though apparently they made up later as Paul asked him to visit him in prison. His Gospel is the oldest and shortest of the four Gospels,
and Eusebius says it is his account of what Peter preached. Ten to 20 years after Christ's Ascension, Mark came to Alexandria, in Egypt, where the Church he founded is now
the Coptic Orthodox Church. He is considered the first bishop of Alexandria and the founder of Christianity in Africa. He died a martyr under Nero's rule, when anti-Christian
feeling led the people of the city to drag him through the streets with a rope around his neck until he died. He is the patron saint of Venice, where in 825, two Venetian
merchants brought his relics from Alexandria. The Copts venerate his head at the St. Mark Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria. [NB: In what seems like a strange oversight,
Benedict XVI did not give a catechesis on St. Mark or St. Luke. Since neither of them was an Apostle, one might have expected their stories to follow the first catecheses
on St. Paul in the Apostles series, before the cycle on the early Christians which began with Timothy and Titus.!]
Readings for the day's Mass: www.usccb.org/bible/readings/042513.cfm


AT THE VATICAN TODAY

Earlier, I posted that no official events were announced for Pope Francis today - and several hours later, the Vatican Bulletin webpage still has no entries for April 25. But Vatican Radio has a news report that the Pope met today with the officials of CELAM, the conference of Latin American and Caribbean bishops.

Pope Francis calls
President Napolitano
Translated from

April 24, 2013

Around 6 p.m. this evening, Pope Francis made a telephone call to [recently re-named] Italian President Giorgio Napolitano to thank him for his telegram greeting the Pope on his name day on April 23, and to express his appreciation in these words:

---

I am calling you, Mr. President, to thank you for your example. You have been an example for me. With your actions, you have given life to the fundamental principle of coexistence: that unity is better than conflict. I am moved by your decision.

---

I'm not sure what decision he is referring to, and the Vatican bulletin gives no explanation. President Napolitano was given a second seven-year mandate as President, and he has now asked Enrico Letta, 45, of the center-left Partito Democrata to form a new government which will necessarily be a broad coalition.




One year ago today...

The Holy Father Benedict XVI continued his catecheses on Christian prayer, focused lately on the prayer activity of the Apostles and the first Christian community. He pointed out today how the Apostles
acknowledged the importance of both prayer and works of charity, yet clearly gave priority to prayer and the proclamation of the Gospel.

The Vatican released the program for the Holy Father's pastoral visit on May 11 to Arezzo in Tuscany and the diocese's shrines in La Verna and Sansepolcro.

And the Secretariat of State announced that "In the wake of recent leaks of reserved and confidential documents on television, in newspapers and in other communications media, the Holy Father has ordered the creation of a Commission of Cardinals to undertake an authoritative investigation and throw light on these episodes.

His Holiness has determined that the said Commission of Cardinals, which will act at all levels on the strength of its pontifical mandate, shall be presided by Cardinal Julián Herranz, and shall have as its members Cardinal Jozef Tomko and Cardinal Salvatore De Giorgi..."

Vatican says WYD Rio will be
the Pope's only trip abroad this year

April 25, 2013

Brazil will be the only international destination for Pope Francis in 2013, Father Federico Lombardi, director of the Vatican press office, said today at the the headquarters of the Foreign Press Association in Rome.

"I ask you not to expect other trips abroad this year," he said. [What happened to the planned trip to Argentina in December which was announced earlier?]

Pope Francis will travel to Rio de Janeiro for the 28th World Youth Day, to be held July 23 to 28, with the motto "Go and make disciples of all nations" (Mt 28, 19).

In recent days, Alberto Gasbarri, who coordinated most of Benedict XVI's foreign trips, traveled to Rio de Janeiro to finalize details of Pope Francis’s visit: "The program will follow the desires of the Pope," he said.

However, he will keep the program that had been established for Benedict XVI, including the welcome ceremony, the Way of the Cross, the Prayer Vigil and closing Mass of World Youth Day, scheduled for Sunday, July 28 at the Campus Fidei, in Guaratiba.

Lombardi said he would not rule out the publication this year of the Pope’s first encyclical. He pointed out that Benedict XVI had already prepared the material on the topic of faith. [He is assuming that Francis will necessarily pick up from there - he may have his own ideas for his first encyclical!]

Father Lombardi also said that Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI is expected to move back to the Vatican from Castel Gandolfo take up permanent residence at the Mater Ecclesiae monastery between late April and early May.

Pope Francis, however, will continue to reside in the Casa Santa Marta, where "he is very well settled”. Father Lombardi added: “At the moment, he does not seem to want to change his dwelling, even if a final decision has not been made."

Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI's decades-long concern with the future of Europe has always been spot-on. Unfairly criticized for being 'Euro-centric' because of this concern, he saw the loss of Christian identity and values in a continent that had been shaped by Christianity being just as urgent as the need to consolidate the faith in the Third World where it is either disaggregating as in Latin America or where the millions of new Catholics gained in recent decades require nurturing and nourishing by the Church. Hence, the New Evangelization.

And a report such as the following makes us fear that Europe continues unbtrammelled down the path to hell in the secular totalitarianism of its new bureaucrats in Brussels and Strasbourg seeking to institute a 'brave new world' of onethought-onespeak...

European Union spending
millions to silence critics
by Samuel Westrop

April 25, 2013

The European Union (EU) is pouring millions of pounds into organizations that advocate state control of the press. For many, the funding -- uncovered recently by Telegraph journalist Andrew Gilligan -- is yet further evidence of the EU's increasingly Orwellian, authoritarian nature. The Soviet dissident Vladimir Bukovsky has for years referred to the organization as the EUSSR.

One recipient of European taxpayers' money, Mediadem, for example, has been given 2.3 million pounds. Mediadem describes its mission as working to "reclaim a free and independent media."

Addressing the topical issue of how to restructure the system of redress for those wrongfully accused or defamed by newspapers, Mediadem recommends the "imposition of sanctions beyond an apology or correction" and the "co-ordination of the journalistic profession at the European level."

Mediadem's representative, Dr Craufurd Smith, has written, "Liberal conceptions of media freedom focus on editorial freedom for government interference.... [however] states may also be required to take positive measures to curtail the influence of powerful economic or political groups.... this entails that neither the media, nor those individuals who own or work for the media, enjoy an absolute right to freedom of expression."

This is not the first time the EU has sought to control freedom of expression. In 2001, the European Court of Justice ruled that the EU was allowed to suppress political criticism of its institutions and of leading figures. The court ruled that the EU was lawfully allowed to punish individuals who "damaged the institution's image and reputation." [Can you imagine the opprobrium against the Church if it ever adopted such a hard line against here critics? Better yet, can you imagine what the EU apparatchiks might have done if the attacks against Benedict XVI in 2010 - not to mention the continuing unfounded and highly-biased attacks against the Church - had been made against an EU official or the EU itself?]

The European Court of Justice is the EU's highest court. Its advocate general, Damaso Ruiz-Jarabo Colomer, had previously argued that a book criticizing EU financial policy was akin to extreme blasphemy, and thus not protected by free speech laws. [Sounds like they want to take a page out of the darkest annals of the medieval Inquisition!]

The attack against freedom of expression has extended to economic information. In 2011, an EU official proposed a ban on the issuing of sovereign credit ratings for countries in bailout talks. Michel Barnier, a European internal market commissioner, said, "I think it's legitimate to have a special treatment when a country is in negotiation or is covered by an international solidarity program with the IMF or a European solidarity".

In the wake of the Leveson Report, a British parliamentary inquiry into the "ethics of the Press," an EU report called for tighter press regulation and demanded that the EU should be given new powers to enforce fines or the sacking of journalists against errant media outlets.

Much of the EU's keenness to intervene comes from its concern at the negative coverage it receives in the British press. When the EU is not proposing to regulate the press, it is spending vast sums on pro-EU advertising. In 2012, the EU spent £682 million of British taxpayers' money on its enormous public relations department.

Some of this money has been funnelled into the creation of "Captain Euro." an online children's comic book, in which the integrationist super-hero battles against an "evil organization" that is "hard at work in the shadows."

Conservative MEP Daniel Hannan has noted there is a whiff of anti-Semitism to the cartoon. The "enemy" of Captain Euro, called Dr Vider, has a prominently hooked nose and uses the free market to make money, "no matter if it might involve the suffering of others."

It is further explained that, "Banned and ostracised from the financial world for unprofessional conduct he managed to escape arrest despite his involvement in financial scandal."

An internal EU report goes some way in explaining the fondness for comic books, by concluding, "Children can perform a messenger function in conveying the message to the home environment. Young people will often in practice act as go-betweens with the older generations, helping them embrace the euro."

In 2012, the EU spent £106,000 on a video in which a white woman, dressed in EU colors, overcame threatening, dark-skinned martial arts attackers. The video was withdrawn after complaints of racism. Further, various EU youth groups have produced music videos -- in one of which, European youths sing, "I am European, and I love it to be, I am European, it's my destiny."

While the EU is happy to use the Internet to disseminate pro-EU propaganda, it also advocates the regulation of Internet content. In 2012, the EU proposed the "harmonization" of laws across the 27 member-states to force websites to delete information shortly after consumers request its removal. The EU also funds a number of a projects designed to explore censorship of "terrorist" content on the Internet.

There is a joke in Brussels that if the European Union were a country applying to join itself, it would be rejected on the grounds of being undemocratic. But it is not much of a joke.

The EU is run by a body that combines legislative and executive power, with an unelected President at the very top. According to a recent Parliamentary report, widespread fraud has led to more than £4 billion of taxpayer's money "disappearing" from the EU budget each year. Auditors have refused to sign off EU accounts for eighteen years in a row and EU officials have been sacked for exposing corruption and fraud within the vast bureaucracy.

The European Union's flaws are best summed up by Sholto Byrnes, who wrote in the Independent: "All it takes to have a profound suspicion of the EU and its greedy accretion of powers is this: to believe in transparency and accountability; to feel in your bones that sovereignty should not be passed from nation state to international body without the voters being consulted; and to desire that those voters should be as close as possible to the representatives they elect. To be, in other words, a democrat."

Unable to counteract criticism of its failings through meaningful reform, the European Union is resorting to undisguised propaganda and proposed regulation of its critics.




Meanwhile, here's a sampling of headlines today that might be of interest to Catholics...


I will post something on the kidnapped bishops in Syria when the story clear up...


I owe the Forum a comprehensive post on what is now fait accompli in France, despite the continuing massive protests held by the supporters of traditional marriage... On the other hand, the same-sex 'marriage' seems to be skidding down the slippery slope to universal acceptance (God forbid!), as everyday we seem to get news that another country or another state in the USA has approved a law allowing this unnatural arrangement...

---

St. Mark, the author of the second Gospel, was the son of Mary whose house at Jerusalem was the meeting place of Christians. He was baptized and instructed by St. Peter. In about the year 42 A.D. he came to Rome with the Prince of the Apostles. There at the request of the faithful he wrote his Gospel about the year 50 A.D. His Gospel is a record of St. Peter's preaching about Our Lord and pays special attention to the head of the Apostles. The Gospel was written for Roman Gentile converts. It rarely quotes the Old Testament, and is careful to explain Jewish customs, rites and words. It excels in portraying the emotions and affections of both Christ and His hearers.

---

Tribute to St. Mark:
'Pax tibi, Marce,
Evangelista meus'
by Dom Mark Kirby, OSB

April 25, 2013

The blogger is the conventual prior of a Benedictine priory in County Meath, Ireland.

... Saint Mark's Gospel has been described as a "hastening to the Cross." It is Saint Mark who gives us the confession of faith of the centurion Saint Longinus, while Saint John tells us that the same centurion opened the side of Jesus with a lance. A link with the mystery of the Pierced Heart!

Tradition calls Saint Mark the interpreter of Saint Peter; clearly the relationship between Peter and Mark was both strong and tender. Saint Peter calls Mark "his son" (1 P 5:13), suggesting the gift and mystery of the Fisherman's spiritual fatherhood in Christ. Mark was a son to Peter.

Personally, I find in this a compelling reason to look confidently to Peter and his successors, and to remain attached to Peter and to his successor today, Pope Francis. Mark laboured at Peter's side, preaching the Gospel in Rome before carrying it to Venice and then to Alexandria where he gave his life for Christ. To this day the Churches of Rome, Venice, and Alexandria rejoice in the protection of Saint Mark and seek his intercession.

Some of you may remember the coat of arms of Blessed John XXIII as Patriarch of Venice. It bore the inscription: Pax tibi, Marce, evangelista meus, "Peace to you, Mark, my evangelist!" I have always taken comfort in these words. They are personal, a kind of message to the heart.

My great-great-grandmother was Venetian and would have known this motto well; to this day it is displayed with Saint Mark's lion on the coat of arms and flag of Venice, La Serenissima. The text is not found in Sacred Scripture; it comes rather from the ancient Passion of Saint Mark, the account of his martyrdom.

The story goes that on the day of Pasch, after singing Mass, Saint Mark was seized, a rope was attached to his neck, and he was dragged through the city of Alexandria until his blood ran upon the stones. After this, he was imprisoned. An angel came to comfort him, and after the angel, the Lord Jesus himself came to visit and comfort Mark, saying, "Peace be to thee, Mark, my evangelist! Be not in doubt for I am with thee and shall deliver thee."

The following day Mark was put to death, thanking God, and repeating the words of the Crucified: "Into thy hands, Lord, I commend my spirit" (cf. Lk 23:46).

The word "preaching" occurs in each of the three Proper prayers of the Mass of Saint Mark: the Collect, the Prayer Over the Oblations (Secret), and the Postcommunion. Mark was an Evangelist, not only as a writer of the second Gospel, but also as a preacher, spending himself, pouring himself out for Christ.

In the Collect we beg for the grace to "deepen his teaching." The Latin text says proficere which means to gain ground or to advance. This is what lectio divina is all about: gaining ground in the Gospel, penetrating ever more deeply the inexhaustible riches of the Word.

In the Prayer Over the Oblations we ask that the Church may "ever persevere in preaching the Gospel." The Church, like Saint Mark in his passion, needs the comforting presence of Christ who says, "Be not in doubt for I am with thee," and she has that comforting presence always in the mystery of the Eucharist.

The words of Christ to Saint Mark echo those given us in today's Communion Antiphon: "Behold, I am with you always, even to the close of the age" (Mt 28:20).

In the Postcommunion, we ask that what we have received from the altar may "sanctify us, and make us strong in the faith of the Gospel preached by Saint Mark." This prayer instructs us on the dynamic relationship between the altar and the ambo or, if you will, between the Most Holy Eucharist and the Gospel.

We ordinarily think of the preaching of the Gospel as sending us to the altar, and preparing our hearts for the Holy Sacrifice, and rightly so. But the Postcommunion suggests something else as well. The Most Holy Eucharist fulfills what the Gospel announces: the mystery of holiness, that is, "Christ in us, the hope of glory" (Col 1:27).

The Most Holy Eucharist makes us strong in the faith of the Gospel; it is our viaticum, food for the journey of faith, a remedy for every infirmity. The seed sown by holy preaching is made fruitful by the mysteries of Christ's Body and Blood. Take away the altar, and the ambo stands in a void.

The altar is the guarantee of that abiding presence of the comforting Christ who says to each of us today, as to Saint Mark, "Peace be to thee. . . . Be not in doubt, for I am with thee and shall deliver thee."

I have truly been bothered all this time that our beloved Benedict somehow never gave a catechesis on St. Mark or St. Luke, the two evangelists who were not among the Twelve. For my peace of mind, it's worth writing GG to ask why not!

Benedict XVI returns to
the Vatican on May 1
by Andrea Tornielli
Translated from the Italian service of

April 25, 2013

In a few days, Benedict XVI returns to the Vatican which he left on February 28, the last day of his Pontificate, which ended a few hours later when his resignation took effect at 8:00 p.m.

Barring any unexpected changes, the return from Castel Handolfo will take place on May 1 [a name day for him, since it is the feast of St. Joseph as Patron Saint of Workers].



Everything is ready at the former Mater Ecclesiae monastery which has been renovated to be the emeritus Pope's retirement home. The residential part of the monastery is a four-story building with common rooms and 12 monastic cells, and a two-story annex with the chapel, cloisters, library, and workrooms.

The monastery has an evergreen hedge and a formidable gate to delimit the cloistered area. It has a large garden where peppers, tomatoes, zucchini and cabbages are grown, and a small orchard of lemon and orange trees.

Benedict XVI will be moving in with his former 'pontifical family' from the Vatican - the four Memores Domini who run his household and have other assorted duties, and his private secretary, Mons. Georg Gaenswein. [The other private secretary, Mons. Alfred Xuereb, is now private secretary to Pope Francis.]

A new member of the 'family' is the German deacon who was hired as a male assistant for the former Pope in the daytime when Mons. Gaenswein is at work as Prefect of the Pontifical Household. For the past two months, the latter has been commuting to work from Castel Gandolfo daily.

And obviously, the emeritus Pope's brother, Mons, Georg Ratzinger, will have a room when he comes to visit from Regensburg.

The presence of Benedict XVI at the Vatican will also facilitate a visit now and then from Pope Francis.

Papa Ratzinger's physical frailty was evident in the video and photos released after Pope Francis visited him in Castel Gandolfo last March 23. But Fr. Federico Lombardi, Vatican spokesman, has denied that the emeritus Pope is suffering from any specific illness other than old age. He turned 86 on April 19.

For a change, someone has come out these days to say explicitly the obvious fact that the problems of the Curia did not start under Benedict XVI. All the reproaches and criticisms so far against the Pontificate of Benedict XVI have focused on the Curia whose apparent or presumed dysfunction, if not corruption, is thought to have led to Vatileaks.

The critics have spoken of this as having 'hindered the Petrine ministry', even without any objective facts presented to substantiate that charge. In what way was Benedict XVI hindered from doing what he thought was best for the Church because of an inefficient or uncooperative Curia? The only specific charge that a diocesan bishop has made so far against the Curia is that too much time is taken to decide on marriage annulments. (In this specific case, the organism involved is the Roman Rota, not one usually thought of as part of the Curia). As if that issue - which affects such an infinitesimal fraction of Catholics - were enough to 'hinder evangelization' as Cardinal George of Chicago presented it.

The fact is that the entire burden of 'what's wrong with the Roman Curia' as all the critics have been bandying about, is based on an accretion of bad impressions that go back for decades and have been heard for decades, exacerbated by perceived missteps made in the name of John Paul II by those he trusted to govern the Church in the final years of his illness.

A situation Benedict XVI inherited - and even If for some time, he had to work with the same Curial heads named by John Paul II, there was not really much they could do to oppose his agenda, other than carp against him anonymously and making use of the media to make their disapproval known. Middle-level career bureaucrats could also throw sand on the machine, and probably did, to slow down any initiatives they may not have liked, which seems to have been the case at the Secretariat of State, where the overriding problem, however, was their disapproval of Cardinal Bertone and perhaps, a dislike of Benedict XVI.

[BTW, Sandro Magister who runs the site www.chiesa has often taken to posting unsigned articles like this attributed to '***', but I see no reason why they should not be signed.... I am using the English version provided on the site.]

Vatican Diary:
Future curia, old project
The document is from 1931, possibly written by a Dutch cardinal.
The reforms awaited now were already anticipated, because criticisms
of the Curia then were the same as today, if not tougher

by ***


VATICAN CITY, April 25, 2013 – A curia with "more representation and a more collegial government." A curia with "dialogue and bi-directional communications in a modern and efficient organization." A curia with a full "re-evaluation of the episcopal office". A curia with "above all: fewer Italians."

These would seem to be the lines of action of that reform of the curia which Pope Francis has set in motion - including through the constitution of a group of eight cardinal advisors - to apply the indications of the cardinals who elected him, formulated in the general congregations that preceded the conclave.

In reality, this program is not a response to the curial dysfunction that manifested itself in a dramatic way during the pontificate of Benedict XVI. ['Dramatic' only because the media blew up Vatileaks and its major documents as representative of widespread Curial dysfunction, even if the embarassments these documents showed had been previously known and reported (Bertone's misplaced attempts to consolidate power, all of them fortunately foiled by Benedict XVI - a capital fact that is hardly ever pointed out) or quickly and appropriately rebutted by the Vatican (the Vigano letters, which were the only genuine revelations in Vatileaks, but critical because they began the media blow-up of the whole episode). In short, 'the Roman Curia' was made the convenient catch-all scapegoat for the specific problems raised by the Vatileaks documents.]

It is an older program. Much older. From thirty years before even Vatican Council II.

To understand better how the problems and criticisms of the Roman curia did not emerge with Pope Benedict XVI, it is enough to leaf through a recently published book, a miscellany in honor of the Jesuit historian Marcel Chappin for his 70th birthday, edited by the professors Paul van Geest, Dutch, and Roberto Regoli, Italian.

The work in question, in fact, published by the Vatican Secret Archive, of which Chappin was vice-prefect in recent years, hosts a curious and interesting contribution from Hans de Valk that analyzes an anonymous document compiled in 1931 and entitled “De quibusdam rebus in ecclesiastico regimine emendandis” (Some matters that should be improved in the government of the Church).

It is a text of around twenty pages that scholars found in certain ecclesiastical archives (including the Vatican Secret Archive) in Latin and German versions, bearing the signature of “Paulus Bernardus a S. Catharina," a pseudonym believed to conceal - although the proofs are not definitive - the Dutch Willem Marinus van Rossum (1854-1932), a Redemptorist, made a cardina by Pius X in 1911 and prefect of “Propaganda Fide" (Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples) under Benedict XV and Pius XI.

"Proposals for a reform of the curia, however" – de Valk writes in his essay – “are as old as the seven hills" of Rome. And in effect, before analyzing the document from 1931, he recalls how already at the beginning of the twentieth century there had blossomed programs for the reform of the curia. And he emphasizes how they came from both progressive and traditional circles.

The depiction of the ecclesiastical hierarchy that emerges from the document of 1931 is merciless. Here is how de Valk summarizes it:

---

Most of the bishops, instead of being the strong characters presently needed, dynamic and active personalities, even if indeed pious and religious men are in effect at the same time mediocre, or even below mediocrity. Some are apathetic, timid, indolent or vain; others are conformists, bureaucrats or introverts; many are ignorant and clumsy administrators. […]. Sometimes the whole episcopate of a country looks like a bunch of cripples.

---

[Obviously, the criticism was not limited to bishops of the Curia but to all bishops including those who head the dioceses. Which was one of my great objections to all the sanctimony expressed by the chattering cardinals who came to the 2013 Conclaves, who all spoke, and continue to speak, as if they themselves bore no responsibility at all in the governance of the Church - when in fact, the governance of the universal Church is to a large part determined by and is the sum of their governance of their local Churches. Nothing laid down by the Vatican gets done unless the individual bishops cooperate and do their part.

I must once again cite the example of Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, whom they upheld as a paragon and elected Pope after four ballotings. Whatever his specific criticisms may have been of 'the Roman Curia' (which I have not seen articulated anywhere) did not seem to keep him at all from running his diocese as he thought best to advance the mission of the Church. What do all the grandly critical cardinals have to say for themselves? To blame the Curia in Rome for 'hindering' their work is an abdication of responsibility. The Curia does not run the dioceses! They do, with full autonomy.]

De Valk reproduces in a footnote the original Latin, which is even more colorful:

---

Aliquando autem totus episcopatus alicuius nationis ita est compositus, veluti si coecorum, claudorum et infirmorum omne genus esset refugium. (Sometimes, however, the whole of the episcopate of a country is composed as though it was a place of refuge for the blind, the lame, and the sick of all kinds).

---

And he adds that “the problem is aggravated by the Holy See’s tendency to appoint only obedient and complacent prelates." [Much has obviously improved since the 1930s in the selection of bishops, even if it still remains a papal prerogative (one contested by progressivists who believe the community itself should choose their bishops). Benedict XVI's careful examination of the dossiers for candidate bishops was intended to make sure that the bishops he did name were above all, morally upright and personally qualified, but also persons whose doctrine and practice were orthodox, as the Pope (any Pope, not just because he was Joseph Ratzinger) necessarily is.]

Just as merciless is the depiction that the document makes of the college of cardinals. De Valk reports:

---

As for the cardinals, the senate of the Church and the electors of the pope, here the situation is even worse, particularly in the case of those attached to the Roman curia. The sacred college contains too many non-entities who have reached their rank by never asking awkward questions. The merit of many eminences is not their excellent pastoral experience or learning, but that of having staffed a Vatican desk for a very long time. Without any real knowledge of the world or the life of the universal Church, they are nevertheless automatically promoted and placed in executive jobs far above their modest talents.

---

[A review of their biodata alone would show that this description obviously does not apply to any of the cardinals named by Benedict XVI (nor for most, I daresay, of those named by the Popes before him starting with Pius XII). Since they are the only ones whose nomination I have been able to follow, none of the cardinals named by Benedict XVI has been criticized by the media for being unqualified or incompetent. The criticism has been for those who are Italian (as if that were a disqualification, per se) or were Curial heads instead of being diocesan bishops.]

Particularly ferocious is the criticism of the excessive Italian composition of the curia. De Valk reports:

---

Almost half of the cardinals and the great majority of the curial ones are Italians, as if the Holy Ghost had a distinct preference for the Italian nation ("veluti si solos Italos Spiritus Sanctus dignos invenerit ut eos tamquam S. Pontificis et proximos consultores et electores illustraret"). This only aggravates the matter, for even if Italians may have many talents, they are certainly not noted for their organizational skills. For the universal Church, this is at the same time both an insult and an injustice. The few excellent foreign prelates present in the curia are examples of what the alternative might look like.

---

[For context, the writer of this article ought to have mentioned the composition of the College of Cardinals in 1931. The college did not begin to be truly international until the 1950s with Pius XII, and the process had to be gradual as the Catholic countries of the Third World started to develop a 'bench' of potential cardinals, compared to Europe which, because of history, had been for centuries the nursery for leaders of the Church.]

The document of 1931 does not spare even the pontiffs, seeing that “since the nineteenth century the papal throne has been graced by a series of mediocre popes with the possible exception of Leo XIII." ][I am surprised Magister allows this without comment at all, since the historical consensus so far is that the Popes since Blessed Pius IX have been remarkably remarkable, each one with his corpus of achievements as Pope. In 1931, the Dutch critic would have been referring to Pius IX, Pius X, Benedict XV and Pius XI - none of them could be described in any way as mediocre.]

But in the face of this picture, what are the proposals for reform delineated by “Paulus Bernardus," that is (perhaps) Cardinal van Rossum?

Here is how de Valk presents them, for the bishops: "Radical changes are needed in the system of recruitment or election [of the bishops and cardinals]. The appointment of bishops should not be left exclusively to the Holy See, where generally the candidates are little known, while the information provided is often biased or unreliable." [The selection process now involves the apostolic nuncio in each country taking the consensus of the national bishops and on that basis, preparing a short list of candidates for the Vatican to consider, while providing the Congregation for Bishops all the information relevant to each of the candidates. The Congregation reviews the information, asks for more when necessary, and then the dossiers are forwarded to the Pope for his decision.

The risk of relevant information being withheld has been greatly reduced with the possibility of checking out any information available online - although this failed most notoriously in the case of Bishop Williamson, who was not however being nominated. The other notorious case of incomplete (or withheld) information leading to an unfortunate nomination (that was subsequently withdrawn) was that of Mons. Wielgus, who turned out to have been an active collaborator of the Communist secret police in Poland. Both cases took place under Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re - one of John Paul II's most influential associates and apparently never a friend to Cardinal Ratzinger - as Prefect of Bishops. His retirement enabled Benedict XVI to name Cardinal Marc Ouellet in his place. Not that the Congregation for Bishops was the sole culprit here. The Secretariat of State also was - in the Williamson case, because it prepared the announcement for the Vatican; and in the Wielgus case, because it failed to check the competence of the Apostolic Nuncio in Poland, who either ignored or glossed over the issue of Wielgus's collaboration in furnishing his dossier.]

And for the cardinals:"To emphasize the universal character of the Church, the sacred college should be internationalized by spreading its membership more evenly, while the number of Italian cardinals needs to be reduced drastically. [An idea that openly prejudices Italian prelates who are deserving and competent, just because they are Italian.] The international character of the Roman curia as a whole should be promoted. Next, the so-called 'loca cardinalitia' must be abolished. [This refers to dioceses which are traditionally led by a cardinal, but it could refer as well to Curial positions. In other words, being named bishop of such a diocese or head of a 'cardinalatial' Curia will not become an automatic ticket for the red hat. While this may sound good in theory, it may not work out so well in practice, because a cardinal's clout may often be necessary to be able to impose governance in these major dioceses, and certainly, as a Curial head.] Only real princes of the Church, known for their outstanding qualities, should be raised to the scarlet: that is, learned, pious and zealous men, who know the world, are experienced, well-informed and therefore able to act as real counsel to the pope." [These criteria have certainly been followed in all of the cardinal choices Benedict XVI made - and in general by those of his postwar predecessors, whose cardinal choices made it possible for John XXIII, Paul VI, John Paul I, John Paul II, Benedict XVI and Francis to become Pope in their turn.]

As for the governance of the universal Church, the anonymous drafter of the document complains that “the pope, the secretary of state or his substitute decide everything, thus providing them with a workload humanly impossible to finish. Combined with the ever-growing amount of business and the exaggerated propensity for secrecy, this can only result in delaying even the most urgent affairs." [Whatever reforms are to be carried out, the Pope will still have the final say on all the matters for which he alone has the competency. No one else will decide for hi,]

Among the remedies, the document of 1931 expresses the hope that “more space, therefore, should be given to the time-honoured [????Since when?] system of the collegial government."

Moreover, the curial staff "should be increased by adding internationally selected experts, so that they can act and react quickly; new channels of communication will be opened up as well, to prevent that only one-sided and biased information reaches the Holy See. In this way, the state of affairs in the universal Church can be monitored more closely and it will be easier to communicate with the bishops, leading and admonishing them if necessary." [The document was written in 1931, before the age of communications technology we now have, when information flow is instantaneous and comprehensive. Of course, it still depends on whether and how the bureaucracy at all levels makes use of all the information tools available.]

This is a matter of proposals for reform that now date back to more than eighty years ago. Vatican Council II made some of them its own.

For his part, de Valk writes that Paul VI in 1967 and John Paul II in 1988 with their restructurings of the Roman curia “have indeed carried out several of these reforms" called for in the document of 1931.

Many, but not all. Will it be Pope Francis who realizes those which are lacking?

Friday, April 26, Fourth Week of Easter

Extreme right, John Paul II at San Pedro's Canonization Mass.
ST. PEDRO DE SAN JOSE BETANCUR (b Canary Islands 1626, d Guatemala 1667)
Lay Franciscan, founder of the Bethlehemite Fathers and Sisters
He is both the first saint from the Canary Islands (Spain) and of Guatemala. Hermano Pedro (Brother Pedro), as he is
familiarly called, lived as a poor shepherd on Tenerife, the main Canary island, until he was 27, when he left to join
a relative in Guatemala. He first landed in Cuba where he worked until he could earn enough to go on to Guatemala. He
enrolled in a Jesuit school but could not keep up academically. He joined the secular Franciscan order at age 29, and
managed somehow to open a hospital for the convalescent poor, a shelter for the homeless, and a school for poor children,
not hesitant to knock at the door of rich Guatemalans for their aid. It led him to set up the Order of the Bethlehemite
Fathers, whose rule was approved after his early death (he was only 41), along with an Order of Bethlehemite Sisters.
He is credited with originating the tradition of the Christmas Eve 'posadas' procession now observed in many Latin
American countries, during which the faithful commemorate Mary and Joseph's efforts to find lodgings in Bethlehem.
Hermano Pedro was beatified in 1980, and John Paul II canonized him during his visit to Guatemala in 2002.
Readings for the day's Mass: www.usccb.org/bible/readings/042613.cfm


AT THE VATICAN TODAY

Pope Francis met at the Apostolic Palace with

- G.E. Andry Nirina Rajoelina, President of the High Transitional Authority of Madagascar (Africa) and his delegation

= Cardinal Fernando Filoni, Prefect of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples

- Mons. Salvatore Fisichella, President of the Pontifical Council for Promoting the New Evangelization

And in the afternoon, at the Domus Sanctae Marthae -

- Italian Senator-for-life Mario Monti, outgoing President of Italy's Council of Ministers, on a farewell visit.




One year ago today...
- Benedict XVI met with Mons. Salvatore Fisichella, President of the Pontifical Council for Promiting New Evangelization; Mons. François Bacqué, a newly-named Apostolic Nuncio (assignment not given), and six bishops from the states of Washington, Idaho and Montana, on ad limina visit.

= The Vatican released a communique from the Papal Commission that Pope Benedict XVI formed to keep track of the situation of the Catholic Church in China whic held its fifth annual plenary meeting from April 23-25.

This time in 2011...
Preparations for the May 1 beatification of John Paul II made up the bulk of news from Rome and the Vatican. Pope Benedict was in Castel Gandolfo for his traditional rest days after Holy Week and the Easter observances and would be returning to the Vatican for the huge weekend celebrations devoted to his predecessor.

I missed posting this yesterday but will do so now, for the substance of the GA catechesis on April 25, 2012, and for the amazing photos:



GENERAL AUDIENCE
April 25, 2012





Prayer, good works
both important but
prayer has primacy

April 25, 2012

Pope Benedict XVI continued his series on the Christian school of prayer this Wednesday with a reflection on the importance of prayer and works of charity in the life of the Church. Here is how he synthesized the catechesis in English:

---

In our catechesis on Christian prayer, we now consider the decision of the early Church to set aside seven men to provide for the practical demands of charity (cf. Acts 6:1-4).

This decision, made after prayer and discernment, provided for the needs of the poor while freeing the Apostles to devote themselves primarily to the word of God.

It is significant that the Apostles acknowledge the importance of both prayer and works of charity, yet clearly give priority to prayer and the proclamation of the Gospel.

In every age the saints have stressed the deep vital unity between contemplation and activity. Prayer, nourished by faith and enlightened by God’s word, enables us to see things in a new way and to respond to new situations with the wisdom and insight bestowed by the Holy Spirit.

In our own daily lives and decisions, may we always draw fresh spiritual breath from the two lungs of prayer and the word of God; in this way, we will respond to every challenge and situation with wisdom, understanding and fidelity to God’s will.

---

In the main catechesis, he said the Church has the "primary need" to proclaim the Word of God, but it also has "the duty of charity and justice": between the two there is no opposition, because charity "must be permeated by the spirit of contemplation of God", "without daily prayer our action is empty, it looses its deep soul, resulting in a simple activism that eventually leaves unsatisfied".

The Pope was inspired by the Gospel of Luke where it is said that the number of disciples were increasing, but those of the Greek language were complaining because their widows were being neglected compared to those of Jewish origin.

The English service of Vatican Radio translated a substantial part of the catechesis:

---

Faced with this urgency that involved a fundamental aspect in the life of the community, charity towards the weak, the poor, the powerless, and justice, the Apostles summoned the entire group of disciples.

In this time of pastoral emergency the Apostles discernment stands out. They are faced with the primary need to proclaim the Word of God according to the mandate of the Lord, but even if this is the primary need of the Church, they considered with equally seriousness the duty of charity and justice, that is their duty to assist widows, the poor, with love to respond to situations of need in which their brothers and sisters find themselves, to respond to Jesus' commandment: love one another as I have loved you (cf. Jn 15,12.17) .

So the two realities that have to live in the Church - preaching the Word, the primacy of God, and practical charity, justice - are creating difficulties and a solution must be found so that both can have its place, its necessary relationship.

And the reflection of the Apostles is very clear. They say, as we have heard: "It is not right for us to neglect the word of God to serve at table. Brothers, select from among you seven reputable men, filled with the Spirit and wisdom, whom we shall appoint to this task, whereas we shall devote ourselves to prayer and to the ministry of the word"(Acts 6.2 to 4).

Two things appear: first from that moment a ministry of charity exists in the Church. The Church must not only proclaim the Word, but also realize that the word is love and truth.

And the second point: these men must not only enjoy a good reputation, but they must be men filled with the Holy Ghost and wisdom. That is, they can not just be organizers who know what they are doing, but they must do so in the spirit of faith, with the light of God, in the wisdom of the heart and therefore their function, although mainly practical, however, is a spiritual function. Charity and justice are not only social actions, but they are spiritual actions made in light of the Holy Spirit...

So we can say that this situation is addressed, with great responsibility on the part of the Apostles, who make this a decision: seven men of good reputation are chosen, the apostles pray to ask for the strength of the Holy Spirit and then impose their own hands so that they devote themselves especially to the service of charity.

Thus, in the life of the Church, in the first steps it takes, is reflected in a certain way, what happened during Jesus's public life, at the house of Martha and Mary of Bethany. Martha was distracted by offering hospitality to Jesus and his disciples, Mary, however, is devoted to listening to the Word of the Lord (cf. Lk 10:38-42).

In both cases, the moments of prayer or and listening to God and daily activities, the exercise of charity are not opposing. The call of Jesus: " Martha, Martha, you are anxious and worried about many things. There is need of only one thing.

Mary has chosen the better part and it will not be taken from her" (Lk 10.41 - 42), as well as the reflection of the Apostles: "... we shall devote ourselves to prayer and to the ministry of the word" (Acts 6.4), show, the priority that we must give to God.

I do not want interpret this Martha-Mary pericope now: however, activity for another should not be condemned, but it must be stressed that even inwardly it must be penetrated by the spirit of contemplation.

On the other hand, St. Augustine says Mary’s reality is a vision of our situation in heaven, which we can never have completely here on earth, rather a little anticipation that contemplation of God must be present in all our activities.

We must not lose ourselves in pure activism, but always allow ourselves and our activities to be penetrated by the Word of God and thus learn true charity, true service to others which does not need many things: it certainly needs necessary things, but above all it also needs the affection of our heart, the light of God”.

In every age the saints have stressed the deep vital unity between contemplation and activity. Prayer, nourished by faith and enlightened by God’s word, enables us to see things in a new way and to respond to new situations with the wisdom and insight bestowed by the Holy Spirit...

Every step of our lives, every action, even of the Church, must be made before God in prayer, in the light of his word... prayer to defend themselves from the dangers of a hectic life which, says St. Bernard, is likely to harden the heart.

When the prayer is nourished by the Word of God, we can see reality with new eyes, the eyes of faith and the Lord who speaks to the mind and heart, gives new light to our path at all times and in every situation...

In our own daily lives and decisions, may we always draw fresh spiritual breath from the two lungs of prayer and the word of God; in this way, we will respond to every challenge and situation with wisdom, understanding and fidelity to God’s will.

---

Such endearing snapshots of our boyish 85-year-old Pope!

Apparently there was much more to Father Federico Lombardi's interaction with newsmen yesterday at the headquarters of Rome's Foreign Press Association than that reported by Vatican Radio.

Some of it is certainly eyebrow-raising at the very least - though this is not the first time the good father has raised eyebrows - for being unnecessary as an expression of his own opinions and speculation. Especially since the media are not often likely to distinguish between his personal statements and the official position of the Vatican (read 'the Pope'), considering that he is widely considered the 'Vatican spokesman' (in the same way that they always report anything printed in L'Osservatore Romano as the Vatican position, or even the Pope's, even if it is something as obviously outside Vatican or papal competence such as an OR writer's views about the Beatles or the Blues Brothers).

Thanks to Lella for posting this item from the blog of a northern Italian journalist who was once editor of the online journal Il Consulente Re...


Fr. Lombardi and some perplexing
remarks to the foreign press in Italy
by GIUSEPPE RUSCONI

www.rossoporpora.org
April 25, 201

Introduced by the new president of the Foreign Press Association in Italy, Fr. Federico Lombardi ran the gauntlet Wednesday afternoon, April 24, in answering questions at the FPA headquarters on Rome's Via d'Umilta. The questions were mostly about the person and actions of Pope Francis.

When asked for an evaluation of the French National Assembly's final approval of a law recognizing same-sex 'marriage', which constitutes an anthropological revolution in terms of the concept of family, Fr, Lombardi answered: "It is good that a child knows he has a father and a mother, and that "it must be made clear that marriage between a man and a woman is a specific and fundamental institution in human history, but this must not discount that other forms of union between two persons may be recognized".

[For a spokesman of the Church, if not of the Pope himself, to say something as stark as that, is shocking. Would he have said anything like that while Benedict XVI was Pope? He did not - and if had done so, the CDF would surely have stepped in promptly to point out that Lombardi's personal opinion does not represent the position of the Church. The fact that he expresses himself openly now seems to imply either that he does not fear being reprimanded or rebutted by anyone in the Vatican, or that he has bought uncritically into the reports that as Cardinal Bergoglio, Pope Francis had expressed himself in favor of recognizing civilian forms of same-sex union. although his personal position was overridden by the objection of the majority of bishops in the Argentine bishops' conference of which he was the president, and he respected their decision. Regardless of what motivated him, Fr. Lombardi's statement was an outright indiscretion, to use the 'English cognate for a term the Italian media often use for gossip.]

Fr. Lombardi said approval of the French law displeased him ("It does not make happy"), and cited the statement of the French bishops' conference which expressed 'profound sorrow' at the development.

As for Pope Francis's reaction to the new law, he said, "It is the Pope who should speak about it. Let him speak about it". [All the more reason why he, Lombardi, should not have expressed his personal opinion about same-sex unions in general.]

With respect to Pope Francis himself, the Vatican spokesman pointed out some 'stylistically new' aspects of major or minor importance.

For now, the Pope will continue to live at the Domus Sanctae Marthae, even if, over time, he said, it is possible that logistical considerations - such as the flow of communications with the Secretariat of State [with e-mail, that should not be a problem!] - may lead him to consider other possibilities. [There is only one other possibility - occupy the papal apartment in the Apostolic Palace as his predecessors did, even if he decides to close off some of the seven rooms it has, since he thinks it is 'much too large'. Actually, one of the absurd rationales given by the adulatory media for Francis's decision not to live in the papal apartment was that it would "liberate him from pressures exerted by the Secretariat of State". How? By placing a greater physical distance between SecState and the papal apartment? It is as not as if SecState officials, or any other persons, could just drop in and importune the Pope anytime they wanted to! Unless Pope Francis intends to keep an 'open house' daily. ]

He added that the Pope 'feels at home at Santa Marta' where he lives n contact with the hotel residents and with guests, "which allows him to directly have information about the life of the Church".

[This is the second absurd rationale presented for the decision not to live in the papal apartment. Even if the residents of the hotel = mostly bishops and priests who work in the Vatican constituting no more than a hundred persons - had the chance to walk up to the Pope whenever they wanted to, they are hardly representative of the Church. It is the guests that the Pope chooses to receive who can give him a better, wider sense of what is happening not just in the world but in the Church, because they include heads of state or government and ambassadors for the secular view of things, but also the visiting bishops and apostolic nuncios from which he can get a direct account of the state of the Church where they come from. Besides that, he also gets, through the Secretariat of State, regular reports from the Apostolic Nuncios. And, of course, any cardinal, bishop, priest or layman is free to write the Pope, and if the Pope has a competent secretary who can select the letters he ought to see, regardless of the importance or lack thereof of the writer, he will get to see what needs to see. He can read newspapers other than L'Osservatore Romano and watch RAI-1 for what is typically being reported about the Church and how, as Benedict XVI did.]

Pope Francis goes to the Apostolic Palace, Fr. Lombardi said, only for the morning audiences and for the Sunday Angelus. The rest of the day, he spends at Casa Santa Marta.

In his 'modest' suite on the second floor of the hotel (facing the dome of St. Peter), Pope Francis has the assistance of Mons. Alfred Xuereb as his private secretary; of a priest from Buenos Aires, Fr. Fabian Pedacchio, for his correspondence with Argentina; and for relations with Argentines living in Rome, the help of one of the papal liturgical assistants, Fr. Guillermo Karcher.

Fr. Lombardi adds that the Pope reads 'some newspapers' in the morning, the Vatican newspaper when it comes off the press in the afternoon, and always receives a selection of news clippings prepared daily by the Secretariat of State.

He says the Pope is "not a great (Internet) navigator nor particularly tech-savvy, but rather depends more on handwriting". {Initial reports after his election said he uses a typewriter.]

One evident novelty introduced by Pope Francis are his daily Masses at the chapel of the Casa Santa Marta. Fr. Lombardi said that the Pope does not wish his homilies at these Masses to be published because "he wants to keep his spontaneity of expression and reflection without worrying that what he says will be published".

[Why then have all the language services of Vatican Radio led off their reporting every day by quoting extensively from these mini-homilies, which are then reported in the next day's issue of the OR and in all the other communications outlets of the Vatican? Are they deliberately disobeying the Holy Father's wishes? As to "worrying that what he says will be published", everything a Pope says is reportable, if not newsworthy, and anything he says in the presence of reporters - even if they are Vatican reporters - becomes reportable. The Pope surely realizes that these daily homilies have become news staples of his Pontificate, and rightly so. Therefore, I doubt that Fr. Lombardi is presenting this situation correctly.]

Fr. Lombardi says he has met several times with Pope Francis. This takes place regularly after he meets with foreign heads of state or government in order to draft the official communique. The novelty, he said, is that afterwards, the Pope responds gladly to any questions that Lombardi may ask. [Excuse me! As if Benedict XVI would not have replied if Lombardi has posed any questions at all. In fact, I had been questioning why Lombardi apparently never took the initiative of calling Georg Gaenswein to say he had questions for the Pope when he needed to - all the time he needed to because of the relentless media assault on Benedict XVI! The 'novelty' I see is that Lombardi now appears to be included in the discussion that precedes the issuance of an official communique after a VIP visit, where before, one had the impression that he merely released what was prepared by the Secretariat of State.]

Fr. Lombardi said he did not think that 'musica sacra' was among the Pope's more important concerns; that it would be 'difficult' for the Pope to attend the announced 'triangular football match' at the Olympic Stadium on August 10 among the Pope's hometown team of San Lorenzo di Almagro and the teams of Rome and Lazio; and that no one should be surprised if Pope Francis decides not to spend the summer at Castel Gandolfo (and that it was more likely, Benedict XVI would do so).

About the emeritus Pope, Fr. Lombardi said that nothing precludes his return to the Vatican to take up residence at the Mater Ecclesiae monastery as scheduled at the end of the month. He confirmed that a German-speaking Flemish deacon was taken on to assist Benedict XVI in the daytime while Mons Gaenswein is at work as Prefect of the Pontifical Household.

[A thought about Fr. Lombardi's comment regarding the Pope's attitude to 'musica sacra' (I cannot imagine how and why the topic was brought up at all). The comment appears to betray a lack of awareness by Fr. Lombardi of what Vatican II specifically says about sacred music in the liturgy in Sacrosanctum concilium, the Dogmatic Constitution on the Liturgy. Not a minor matter at all, though perhaps it may appear to be, compared to the 'monumental' and primordial importance given by the media and the outspoken members of the Church hierarchy to the 'reform of the Curia'. Also, I have read accounts that Papa Bergoglio loves opera, so he is apparently not indifferent to music.]



The following, however, is the kind of news one expects Fr. Lombardi to give )he could have volunteered it to the Foreign Press Association, for example). But it does not even appear at all in the official Vatican news bulletin - only in the following one-sentence report in the Italian news service of Vatican Radio, which does not even bother to identify the photo that goes with it (Mons, Vincenzo Paglia, president of the Pontifical Council for the Family).

---

VATICAN: No document being prepared
on communion for remarrived divorcees
Unfounded news. The Pontifical Council for the Family has taken a stand, declaring in a brief official note that "there is no basis whatsoever (for) the news disseminated by some newspapers that a document on communion for remarried divorcees is in preparation.

---

ZENIT appears to have been the only news agency to pick it up:

Vatican denies news reports
that the Church is preparing
to allow remarried Catholic
divorcees to receive communion
by Junno Arocho Esteves


Vatican City, April 25, 2013 (Zenit.org)- A recent news report stating that the Pontifical Council for the Family is working on a document on distributing Communion to divorced people who have sought to re-marry (or who have remarried) prompted a denial from the Holy See.

An article by an Italian news agency claimed that Pope Francis appointed Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia, president of the Pontifical Council for the Family, to draft a document to find “a solution” for those who are "remarried divorced Catholics" to receive Communion. The report also claimed that the Holy Father’s move was prompted by requests from “many Italian bishops.”

The report spread throughout various news and media agencies in the country.

In a statement released by the Holy See Press Office [I wish! But there was no such statement!], the Pontifical Council for the Family denied the bogus reports.

“The Pontifical Council for the Family declares that there is no basis to the news, circulated by some press agencies, that a document on distributing Communion to remarried divorced persons is being prepared,” the communique stated.

In 1982, Cardinal Ratzinger wrote
that an advisory council to a bishop
is very much in line with Church tradition
From Volume XII of Joseph Ratzinger's 'Collected Writings'
just published in Italian edition
by Andrea Tornielli
Translated from the Italian service of

April 26, 2013

"We must remember that the idea of a council associated with the bishop is very much in line with the ancient Tradition of the Church, and even the monastic tradition has always given great importance to the 'Chapter'. It goes without saying that such 'councils' can change in form and must be adapted to the conditions of the moment".

Thus wrote Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger in 1982, shortly after assuming office as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, in a preface to a volume of writings in honor of Mons. Joannes Gijsen [Dutch bishop (born 1932) who was at the time Bishop of Roermond, later named in 1996 to be the Bishop of Reykjavik, Iceland].

The text appears in Volume XII of Joseph Ratzinger's Opera Omnia)Collected Writings) published by the Regensburg-based Institut Papst Benedikt XVI and edited by Mons. Ludwig Mueller, currently CDF Prefect. This was published in 2010 in the original German, and has now been published in Italian by the Vatican publishing house. [Quite unlike Tornielli not even to mention the title of the volume, but from the listing of the 16 volumes in the Opera Omnia, Volume XII is entitled in German Künder des Wortes und Diener eurer Freude: Zur Theologie und Spiritualität des Ordo (Announcers of the Word and Servants of your Joy: The theology and spirituality of the Ordo). 'Ordo' refers to the three orders of ministry in the Catholic church - the episcopal order, the priestly order, and the diaconal order. The title of the volume comes from the spiritual motto taken by Joseph Ratzinger for his priestly ordination, from a passage by St. Paul ""Not that we lord it over your faith; rather, we work together for your joy" (1Cor 2, 24) - it is his view of the priestly ministry.]

The future Pope began his Preface this way:

---

Some time ago, a theologian friend told me, with the sarcastic tone that was typical of him, that bishops today are nothing more than bureaucrats who happen to wear a miter. Even he would admit it is an exaggeration. But it is precisely through exaggeration that one often gets to take note of a dangerous reality, just as sometimes, the gravity of a historical moment is highlighted most acutely by what seems to be a witticism...

Today, whoever is invested with the episcopal ministry is conscious of the dilemma that is manifest here: all the realities of the administrative tasks in which he is involved by his responsibility as bishop can become a tangle in which he is caught and imprisoned.

---

Ratzinger denounces the risk today of "diluting the personal responsibility of the bishop in the anonymity of collective decisions that is unprecedented in the history of the Church". [He was referring specifically to one of the undesirable consequences of the post-Vatican II national bishops' conferences, which he pointed out, have no theological nor historical basis.] In contrast, he points out that having an advisory council which helps the bishop make his decisions is part of Church Tradition.

"In a serious consideration of the objective facts in a given situation", he wrote, "such an advisory council becomes a dialog between two free entities. It does not annul the moral responsibility of the person to whom advice is given, but it helps him to decide and to take personal responsibility for the decision he takes. It does not transform his personal decision into a collective resolution but legitimizes it."

Ratzinger goes on to explain the meaning of the traditional definition of a 'monarchical episcopate'.

---

The ultimate responsibility of the person who makes the decision is an inseparable and inalienable part of the constitutive structure of the Church. The decision is ultimately not presented itself through a collective, but through an individual who in presenting his decision also guarantees it. This personalism, which extends even to the institutional level, belongs to the art of Christian personalism and cannot be ignored nor annulled, even today.

---

The future Pope, in this essay, was referring to an sdvisory council for a bishop, and to the relationship between the individual bishop and his episcopal conference. But his words can also be applied to the decision of Pope Francis to name a group of eight cardinals to help him in the governance of the Church and in the reform of the Roman Curia.

Papa Bergoglio chose the eight personally from within the College of Cardinals, without creating a new organism or a new structure. His action comprehends both the intention of collegiality as well as the ultimate personal responsibility of the bishop.

[I might have known that Tornielli would choose to cite the Ratzinger excerpts he did to 'justify' the creation of the Council of 8, not that it has to be justified at all - indeed it might serve as an a priori endorsement by Joseph Ratzinger of the Council of 8.

But to say that the Council is not a new organism or a new structure is disingenuous. The Council is a special group picked out from among the College of Cardinals, with specific functions that the other cardinals are not given. Obviously, the cardinals chosen to represent worldwide Catholicism's main geographical regions will each need some sort of staff (personnel) to enable them keep in touch with the bishops and clergy of each region - even if most of the contact can be done online - in order to be aware of their specific concerns and report these appropriately to the Pope, along with their corresponding advice. They cannot be offering advice merely on the basis of their assumptions or perceptions, as we already know how faulty those can be, in their blanket condemnation of the Roman Curia without conceding it one iota of value!]

Surprise, surprise! What have we here? A cold shower of realism from John Allen, no less, despite his flights of enthusiasm from his recent fact-finding trip to Buenos Aires to learn more about the man who is now Pope Francis...

Francis and the risk
of overheated expectations

April 26, 2013

Despite the popular impression that Pope Francis represents a strong break with the past, those who remember the early days of Benedict's papacy can't help but be struck by some obvious parallels by what we've seen over the past month. ['Obvious' parallels? Not by a long shot, Benedict XVI was never given a 'honeymoon' by the media who simply ramped up all the hostility they had shown to him in the preceding two decades before he became Pope, and even what Allen cites here as 'humanizing' anecdotes about B16 in the early days were never really played up or even reported at all. For example, it's the first time I am reading that when B16 went back to his old apartment after his election, he rang each of his neighbors' doorbells to say goodbye to their housekeepers!]

Then, as now, people were talking about a demystification of the papacy. Benedict famously appeared on the balcony of St. Peter's Square still swearing an ordinary black sweater under his new vestments and declared himself "a simple and humble worker in the vineyard of the lord."

Shortly after his election, Benedict went by his old apartment in Rome's Piazza Leonina to pack his own belongings. The residence is on the same floor with those of three other cardinals, and as he left, the Pope rang their doorbells to thank the startled religious women who act as household staff for being such good neighbors.

The gestures seemed to bespeak an ordinary person who didn't allow his new role to override his humanity. [Why 'seemed to bespeak'? This was the same Joseph Ratzinger who for more than 23 years walked to work and walked around his neighborhood like anyone else! Not even the media has claimed that after he became Pope, he became a different person. And yet, there are those among them who continuously fed the unfounded myth that he was selfish and self-isolated, preferring to attend to his own personal interests than to his duties as Pope.]

Then, as now, the new Pope also moved swiftly to ratify a desire expressed during the general congregation meetings of cardinals prior to the conclave. Today, Francis has created an advisory body of eight cardinals from around the world to foster better collaboration with local churches; eight years ago, Benedict acted on a petition to dispense with the normal waiting period to open the beatification process for John Paul II. [One cannot help noting that then, as now, the cardinals appeared to focus with monomaniacal obsession on the symbolic - canonization of the dead Pope, 'reform of the Curia' - rather than on the substantial problems of the faith!]

In both cases, the new Pope understood himself to be performing a collegial act based on what the cardinals who elected him said they wanted.

In light of these and other similarities, one can't help wondering if Francis will also trip over another parallel from the early period of Benedict's papacy: the risk of overheated expectations.

Eight years ago, excitement about the new Pope was most feverish in certain quarters of the Catholic right, many of whom prophesied a new era of doctrinal clarity, ecclesial discipline and a liturgical "reform of the reform." [An 'excitement', needless to say, that MSM did not deign to report, and that one could glean only from traditionalist sites and blogs.]

Before long, Benedict proved too gradual and too restrained for some of those early enthusiasts. Less than a year into the papacy, Fr. Richard John Neuhaus (who died in January 2009) famously gave voice to what he called "palpable uneasiness" that the Pope wasn't putting any real muscle behind his doctrinal stands, allowing dissent and disobedience to go basically unchecked.

Today, the Church's conservatives are not the ones most enchanted with the new Pope. Indeed, some are openly alarmed.

On April 19, Italian liturgy writer Mattia Rossi published a piece in the daily Il Foglio suggesting that Francis's decision to convene an advisory body of cardinals represents a step toward the "demolition of the papacy" because it replaces the notion of a divinely instituted authority with a fuzzy concept of collegiality, thereby transforming the papacy, according to Rossi, from primus super paress to primus inter pares. [Although I translated Rossi's earlier piece about the new Pope's liturgical choices, I chose not to translate the one about the Council of 8 because I felt it was too extreme.]

For those following Italian affairs, Rossi actually calls what Francis is doing a form of "Vatican Grilloism," referring to the anti-establishment populist insurrection led by former Italian comic and blogger Beppe Grillo, which has scrambled the political scene here for months. (Rossi derisively asked if these cardinals who are supposed to reform the Curia could even find its bathrooms.)

At the other end of the Catholic spectrum, liberals may feel more simpatico with Francis than with either of his immediate predecessors, but they're inoculated from overheated expectations of any Pope by their low view of hierarchs.

Moderates in the Catholic fold, however, seem almost giddy with enthusiasm, and that's where the danger of exaggerated expectations is most acute.

Advocates of defusing the culture wars over gay marriage have felt emboldened to speak out in favor of civil unions, for instance, knowing that then-Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio took a similar line when he was the archbishop of Buenos Aires in Argentina.

Ecumenists are openly talking about hopes for a great leap forward toward Christian unity, as they believe the "new way" of exercising the papacy talked about by John Paul II in 1995's Ut unum sint is becoming visible under Francis. [How exactly? Because he never refers to himself as Pope? And why are these 'ecumenists' ignoring the great progress made during Benedict XVI's Pontificate by the Mixed International Commission for Theological Dialog between the Roman Catholic Church and the Orthodox Churches, which has actually started studying the form taken by the papacy in the undivided Church of the first millennium! That's actual concrete progress compared to the rather artificial ploy of not calling yourself Pope when the whole world calls you Pope. Sorry, Your Holiness!]

Supporters of greater collegiality in the Church are predicting that Francis will finally deliver the much-ballyhooed decentralization of power endorsed by the Second Vatican Council (1962-65). [Hey, hey! Didn't the national bishops' conferences already start that off - with the result that each of the bishops' conferences have been acting like mini-Vaticans who do not need the Pope at all, thank you very much!]

Champions of liberation theology and the option for the poor have been thrilled by pretty much everything -- including, most recently, news that Francis has "unblocked" the path to beatification for Archbishop Oscar Romero of El Salvador. [One of the major new offenses committed against Benedict XVI by MSM, with the Vatican Press Office merely sitting back and allowing the falsehood to simmer - as if Benedict XVI and/or the Congregation for the Causes of Sainthood under him had somehow 'blocked' that path in any way! And yet, all the reporting about the Romero cause in recent days has been along the line that Pope Francis has now 'unblocked' some unstated hindrance put in the way by his predecessor! I plead guilty to being disgusted to the point of inaction, not having posted anything about this issue before.]

Similarly high expectations surround Francis's relationship with women religious, including the endgame from the Vatican's visitation of American nuns and the doctrinal congregation's investigation of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious. Across the board, what one hears these days from moderates sympathetic to the nuns is "Give him time" -- the implied suggestion being he'll eventually make things right. [Yeah, right! No Pope can possibly tolerate doctrinal dissent that openly and deliriously proclaims 'We are beyond the Church and beyond Jesus'. My grandfather used to quell any unrealitic enthusiasm on my part by citing the Spanish saying "Mi gozo en un pozo' (literally, my wish fell down a deep well). I would equally caution the deliriously deluded sisters!]

(As a footnote, word is that Francis is likely to meet with the International Union of Superiors General, the umbrella group for women's orders, when they gather in Rome in early May. It would be his first official encounter with women religious since taking office and potentially an important signal of things to come.) [What signal does Mr. Allen expect? That the Pope will sanction doctrinal dissent on some of the most essential articles of the faith???? That the Holy Spirit will abandon the Vicar of Christ when push comes to shove? ]

Francis may well move the ball on all these fronts, and signs of change are clearly in the air.

This week, Cardinal Francesco Coccopalmerio, president of the Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts, floated the notion of naming a "moderator of the Curia" who could support and coordinate the work of the Vatican's various departments, trying to curb their tendency to duplicate efforts and work at cross-purposes. Some like the idea, though others wonder what the difference would be from the functions traditionally performed by the Sostituto, or "substitute," in the Secretariat of State. [I don't know why the Anglophone Vaticanistas stubbornly refuse to use the correct translation for 'Sostituto' in this case, which is 'deputy', as in Deputy Secretary of State.]

Whatever comes of Coccopalmerio's proposal, it's telling that veteran insiders seem to be trying to get ahead of the reform curve rather than resisting it.

Yet it's an open question whether Francis will move fast enough and far enough to satisfy the moderates most elated by his election and who have already projected a fairly elaborate set of hopes and dreams onto his embryonic pontificate.

The truth is, in some ways it's surprising wariness hasn't already set in.

In his very first homily, in the Mass celebrated with the cardinals in the Sistine Chapel the day after his election, Francis quoted the French novelist Léon Bloy: "Anyone who does not pray to the Lord prays to the devil." Had someone been so inclined, that line could have been seen as spectacularly insensitive to non-Christians.

If it had been the Pope who came into office carrying the baggage of being "God's Rottweiler" rather than a man who was already drawing rave reviews for humility and simplicity, it's not difficult to imagine the contretemps that would have ensued.

On Tuesday, Francis celebrated Mass in the Pauline Chapel for his name day, the feast of St. George, and included this line: "It is not possible to find Jesus outside the Church." Once again, it's easy to imagine how that would have played had it been Benedict. [Oh, we don't have to imagine it! He already got the brunt of sanctimonious opprobrium from progressivist Catholics and narrfow-minded non-Catholic Christians with Dominus Iesus in 2000, when he stated in a well-reasoned theological presentstion, what any well-raised Catholic would say, and what Francis said to such acclaim!]

In reality, it's unlikely that on most matters of faith and morals Francis will represent any real departure from either John Paul II or Benedict XVI, and sooner or later, he'll likely draw the same mixed reactions, even if the most intense disappointment in his case comes from another quarter.

Capuchin Fr. William Henn hinted at this danger April 19 during a roundtable on Francis at the one-month mark sponsored by Rome's Jesuit-run Gregorian University. Henn had been asked to say a few words about reaction in the United States and offered the view that the new Pope's humility plays well with the egalitarian instincts of Americans.

Henn then added a note of caution: "Naturally, his doctrine on different questions will be faithful to the official teaching of the Catholic Church in recent years, and that won't be well accepted by the press and certain sectors of society, or even by some groups within the Church itself."

Needless to say, that's hardly a caution that applies only to the States.

{And when that happens - and it will inevitably, to some degree - we will perhaps find the phenomenon of what I call 'accommodating compensation' (although I am sure there must be a technical term for it in psychology) similar to what is happening with the American media cheering Obama right or wrong, and seeking to explain away all his most obvious errors, simply not to admit that they were wrong about their 'overheated expectations' in their messiah... Anyway, I am grateful to whatever it was that motivated John Allen to administer this dose of realism.]

Many thanks to Beatrice and her Spanish collaborator and translator Carlota for leading me to this delightful interview. I am so pleased with the insight of this Spanish priest who gives an original perspective to the comparisons that others have already made of Benedict XVI to Leo the Great - except that the earlier comparisons were on the basis of their common greatness as preachers and teachers of the faith. This also compares them on the basis of Leo's singular act of heroism in going forth to meet Attila the Hun and turning him back from the gates of Rome.

As much as Raphael's painting of that meeting is impressed in my mind - with the hovering figures of Peter and Paul sending Attila and his horse rearing back - it never once occurred to me to see the quite obvious contemporary analogy in Benedict XVI's stand against the barbarisms of unreason and relativism. I must learn to stand back more from the subject, Benedict, so I do not miss the forest for the trees...


Meeting between Leo the Great and Attila, Raphael, 1514, Fresco, Standa di Eliodoro, Vatican Apostolic Palace.

Like Leo the Great, Benedict XVI
stopped the barbarians at the gate
Interview by J. MORÁN
Translated from

April 24, 2013

The former rector of the Basilica del Sagrado Corazon (Sacred Heart Basilica) in Gijon, Julián Herrojo, gave a lecture yesterday at the Ateneo Jovellanos on "Benedict XVI, assessment of a Pontificate".

Fr. Herrojo, now parish priest of the Cristo de las Cadenas church in Oviedo, highlighted the role that Benedict XVI played in society at large before he renounced the Papacy on February 29. We interviewed him about this.

How would you summarize the Benedict XVI Pontificate in short?
Benedict XVI is the Pope - if not the greatest in history because that is difficult to judge - who has been the most profound in the history of the Church, and I make a symbolic parallel between him a St. Leo the Great who kept Attila and the Huns from conquering Rome when the barbarians invaded most of Europe.

Benedict XVI likewise kept back the barbarism of irrationality that had been expanding through Europe in the past two to three decades. And that is why some works which have anthologized his teachings or commentaries about his teachings, have had titles like Dios salve la razon (God save reason!) by Gustavo Bueno. All this attest to his most courageous stand against the barbarities of irrationality and relativism.

What was his central message?
It appears me that likewise, Benedict XVI has been the Pope that in the whole history of the Church has sought most to approach and address the world outside the Church. Obviously, a Pope's first mission is to govern the Church and look after the faithful, but without ignoring the Church's mission to evangelize the world.

In this sense, It is Benedict XVI who has most addressed the outside world to show them the value that the Christian faith can have, even for the non-believer and for the rest of the world, precisely because it rests on reason.

For example, something particularly luminous in his teaching is to insist repeatedly that the Church did not invent natural law but that she could make a philosophy out of it compatible with Christ's teaching, and that therefore, what the Church proposes to the world, to society and to states, all derive from reason, from nature, and from natural law, which everyone recognizes.

[I must confess that I have more or less taken Benedict XVI's discourses 'for granted' in the sense that he has been so consistent in everything he says, so one is not surprised, but he always finds new ways to say them, which is always an exhilarating experience. But I have never really stood aside to consider how his ideas may be received by minds that are not necessarily receptive to Christian ideas and may even be hostile to begin with. Yet what thinking mind could argue with natural law and reason as common ground we can all stand on while arguing our differences? Nor did it really occur to me what Fr. Herrojo points out that B18 was the first Pope to address himself directly to the secular world - not once but repeatedly, not in passing but in magisterial presentations, and in terms they could relate to, without taking offense at any irruption of religion into the discourse, but terms which are nevertheless part of the bedrock of Christian faith. And I thank God that there are better ways to be remembered for and celebrated than, say, refusing to live in the Apostolic Palace. My apologies, Your Holiness, who I am sure will be remembered and celebrated for much more than that!]

And was he successful?
One gets an idea of what he conveyed to the world in the words of Nobel Prize winner Mario Vargas Llosa who said, upon the announcement of Benedict XVI's renunciation, that he was the only Pope he would read with great enjoyment and satisfaction, without getting bored, and considering the fact that he, Vargas Llosa, is an agnostic.

And compared to Papa Wojtyla?
John Paul II took away our fear of proclaiming ourselves Catholics, and Benedict XVI made us proud to call ourselves Catholics and to proclaim it. He is a great figure for me, and so I was very thankful for the invitation to speak about him because I have wanted to say these things about this great Pope in public.

Which of Benedict XVI's interventions would you cite in particular?
The three which I would consider most substantial - outside of his three encyclicals - are those that I call his magisterial lectures. In chronological order, the lecture on faith and reason at the University of Regensburg, which provoked a wave of Muslim protests because of the words he quoted from a Byzantine emperor.

Then, there was the address he gave in Westminster Hall during his visit to England in 2010, in which his principal theme was the Christian presence in the public sphere and the need for an ethical basis for the State and for society. I thought it was very brilliant, as did the British media and elite who were unanimous in their praise.

And the third one, which some think was the best of all, was his address to the German Bundestag, where he spoke of Natural Law, and of the use of reason in law.

The underlying thread for all three was reason and natural law as the sources for manmade laws, the basis for coexistence in civilian society, and as the contribution of Catholics and the Church to public life.

[For some reason, Fr. Herrojo omits the address at the College des Bernardins in Paris, but perhaps because it was not strictly secular. In fact, it was about how the search for God that underlay the vocation of the medieval monks enabled them not just to save Western civilization in the Dark Ages but even to enrich it through 'ora et labora', prayer and work.]

What do you think of Pope Francis?
It's too early to say, but I am hopeful. In the past two centuries, the Church has had extraordinary figures in her Popes, and I have no doubt Francis is one. Obviously each Pope has his own style and his own contribution to the Church and to the world.

Much has been made of his simplicity and humility, reflected even in the papal name he chose, and so the mark he leaves will be along those lines. But rather than speaking of humility, I prefer to speak of his simplicity which is a means of establishing close contact. One thinks of St. Francis bringing the Gospel to the Sultan of Egypt and he did so in all simplicity.

And Papa Bergoglio compared to Papa Ratzinger?
Benedict XI is also an extraordinarily humble man - no one can ignore that. In fact, there was an article in the German newspaper Die Welt after his resignation which called him "too holy, too innocent, too pure" but still very human. He, too, when he was a cardinal in Rome, was not above traveling by bus, as Cardinal Bergoglio did in Buenos Aires. I think such gestures, rather than acts of humility, are simply signs of being natural, being simple, like normal persons are. And they are important because they condense an idea into an image. Behind every gesture that is natural and not put on, there is a way of being and the ideas that go with it. I expect much from Francis, as does the Church and the world. And I have no doubt that his election was the right thing.

How did you experience the transition from the Basilica of Gijon to the Cristo de las Cadenas in Oviedo?
They are both very different. I won't deny that it cost me much effort because I spent long and intense years in Gijon, years that I will always carry in my soul and in my memory. It was like a pain that assails you all of a sudden, without expecting it. But then it goes, and everything is back to normal. The truth is that after six months, I am settling down and happily.

In her footnotes, Carlota says Fr. Herroo is a distinguished intellectual figure in Spain, is a great Biblical scholar who lived for years in Jerusalem,, and an expert on medieval history. The Basilica in Gijon where he was rector is the contemporary successor of a cathedral that was destroyed during the Spanish civil war with the death of 340 martyrs to the faith who were imprisoned in the church and then killed.

4/27/13 P.S. I was intending to run the following as part of a three-article post in a lookback feature for today, but this article by Sandro Magister on 4/27/12 is, serendipitously, a companion piece to the above, in that Magister develops here his comparison of Benedict XVI to Leo the Great as a master homilist. (Just as serendipitously, the Magister piece is accompanied by another great Raphael fresco in the Vatican.) This article was a belated tribute to B16 on his 85th birthday/7th anniversary as Pope...





Sandro Magister also finally filed his seventh anniversary tribute to the Pope, but I find it flawed by his failure to check a few basic facts (trusting his memory instead) and by a couple of conclusions that I respectfully disagree with.

What distinguishes Benedict XVI
after seven years as Pope -
He will perhaps be remembered more for his homilies than his encyclicals
And for his daring moves which are usually far from mainstream.
As in the Madrid WYD, during a sudden and violent thunderstorm...

ROME, April 27, 2012 – No one said it last week in the flood of tributes to Benedict XVI on his seventh anniversary as Pope. But the element which most revealed the profound sense of his Pontificate was a summer thunderstorm.



It was a torrid night in Madrid in August 2011. In front of Pope Benedict, on the vast esplanade of a disued airportm a nkllion and a half young people, average age 22, largely 'unknown'.

Suddenly, a torrent of rain with thunder, lightning and huge winds struck the assembly, out in the open, without refuge. Clusters of spotlights fell off their moorings, posters and other light items were blown away, and even the Pope appeared drenched [despite the huge umbrellas his aides vainly tried to shield him with].

But he stayed where he was, to the explosive jubilation of his audience, their spirits undampened by the unexpected manifestation from the heavens.

When the wind and rain ceased, after about 20 minutes, the Pope disposed of his prepared text and spoke briefly to the soggy assembly. [Actually, he then left the stage briefly to change into vestments for the Eucharistic Benediction and Adoration, while stage crew checked out there was no structural damage to the stage and its hangings.]



He asked them to look to Jesus, living and present in the consecrated host, the Blessed Sacrament on the altar. World Youth Day 2010: the Eucharistic Adoration.

And he knelt in worshipful silence. The cue for his congregation to kneel on the soggy ground. And so they remained in total silence. For as long as their Pope led them.

[Later, before leaving them for the night, he said the following: “Dear young people we have lived an adventure together; firm in our faith in Christ we have resisted the rain! Before I go I would like to wish you all a good night. Thank you for your joy and your resistance! Thank you for the incredible example you have given. Like this night with Christ. you can always overcome life’s trials, never forget this!” A most fitting end to an episode unprecedented in papal annals.]

This was not the first time that Benedict XVI had set the example for Eucharistic Adoration at World Youth Day. He did it at the first one he attended in Cologne in 2005, to the wonder of many. [For the first time the world saw almost a million young people kneel in silent worship of the Eucharist, on that field in Marienfeld. And it would happen again on a racetrack outside Sydney at WYD 2008. On a smaller scale, with the Catholics of London in Hyde Park, September 2010, and with the youth of Croatia in Zagreb in 2011.]

In evaluating this Papacy, few have understood the audacity of these actions which are far from mainstream. But when Benedict XVI does them and explains why, he does so with the calmness of someone who is not inventing anything of his own, but is simply going into the depth of human adventure and Christian mystery.



Five centuries ago, Raphael, in his sublime fresco entitled "Disputation over the Blessed Sacrament' found in the Apostolic Palace, had placed the consecrated host in the center of his composition, on the altar of a grand cosmic liturgy in which the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit interact with the earthly and cedlestial Church, in time and eternity.

When Benedict XVI convoked his first Assembly of the Bishops' Synod in 2005, he dedicated it to the Eucharist. [I don't know how Magister can make this mistake about a fact I had supposed everyone covering the religious beat would know: The Synodal Assembly was convoked the previous year by John Paul II, who decided it would be dedicated to the Eucharist. Benedict XVI did 'benefit' enormously from inheriting the Synodal Assembly, for which he then wrote that amazing Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation that remains one of the best texts of his Pontificate - in an embarrassment of great texts - but it is simply wrong to say he convoked it.]

It was his idea to have an image of that very fresco by Raphael projected on the wall screens in the Synod Hall for the benefit of all the bishops of the world.

A great deal of discussion ahs been generated by Benedict XVI's erudite lectures at the Unviersity of Regensburg and the College des Bernadins in Paris, at London's Westminster Hall and in the German Bundestag.

But it will be shown one day that the true distinction of this Pope are his homilies, as they had been centuries ago for Pope Leo the Great, the Pope who stopped Attila the Hun at the gates of Rome.

[Magister is probably biased by the fact that he has made it his admirable task to compile Benedict XVI's homilies and Angelus messasges throughout the liturgical year for the past three years now and will probably continue. But IMHO, Benedict XVI is distinguished by - and will be remembered long after - for more than just his homilies, but for the extraordinary richness of his writing in all genres of papal documents and secular texts. Of course, his homilies are great, and would tend to be remembered more, or quoted more, because they are brief. But how can anyone say that the text of JESUS OF MAZARETH or of Spe salvi or Sacramentum caritatis or Verbum Domini, or the Regensburg and Bernardins lectures, just off the top of my head (because they happen to be my favorite texts), are any less great and memorable???? Nor can one discount the other texts addressed primarily to the secular world, because I have not come across any Church historian pointing to any precedent or parallel text from previous Popes.]

Benedict XVI's homilies are those that attract the least notice. He says them during Mass [or Vespers]/ Thus, perilously near [why 'perilously?] Jesus whom he indicates to all as present in the bread and wine - the Jesus whom, as he preaches tirelessly, was the very same who had explained the Sacred Scriptures to the two disciples on the road to Emmaus, who were so similar to the disoriented men today, the Jesus who revealed himself to them when he broke the bread - as in Caravaggio's famous painting at the National Gallery in London - and who vanished from sight as soon as they recognized him. Because that is how faith is, it is never a view that is geometrically complete, but the inexorable play between freedom and grace.

To the little or no faith of so many men today, to the Masses that have been trivially reduced to peace 'embraces' and brotherly assemblies, Pope Benedict instead offers a palpable faith in the God who makes himself near to us, who loves and forgives, and who gives us himself so we may partake of his Body and Blood.

This was the faith of the early Christians, as Benedict XVI recalled in his Angelus homily two Sundays ago. The designation of Sunday as 'the Lord's Day', he said, was a gesture of revolutionary daring by the Apostles, because the event that it recalled had been so extraordinary and overwhelming: the resurrection of Jesus, as well as his subsequent appearances as the Risen Lord among his disciples, which fell on the 'first day of the week', the day God began Creation.

The earthly bread that becomes communion with God, Benedict said in another homily, "is the start of the transformation of the world - into a world of resurrection, a world of God".

Now, a further reservation about Magister's primary statement. The extraordinary fact of what took place at Cuatro Vientos in August 2011 was not that the Pope had stayed despite the near-Biblical tempest - I cannot imagine any other Pope who would not have done what he did.

The extraordinary thing was for the Eucharistic Adoration to take place as it did, for Benedict XVI to have decided not to forego the high point of the program - literally, come hell or high water - out of any misplaced 'consideration' for his congregation ("The poor dears - they're wet and cold and uncomfortable. Let's not put them through another half hour in their condition!").

He judged correctly that these hundreds of thousands who had kept him company for three days already, had not come to Madrid to be 'comfortable' but to find their faith, to show their faith, and to be proven in their faith. So, of course, they had no problem joining him in Eucharistic Adoration. That, to me, after the compelling reality of one and a half million people kneeling on the mud for Eucharistic Adoration, was the other extraordinary thing - the Pope's faith in this young people, and his confidence that his faith in them is not misplaced.

Note from the Patrons of the Vatican Museums about the Raphael fresco:

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The Disputation over the Blessed Sacrament (or more appropriately, The Triumph of Religion), painted by Raphael between 1508 and 1511, represents Christianity’s victory over and the transformation of the multiple philosophical tendencies shown in the School of Athens fresco on the opposite wall. The theologians of the Disputation are not gathered in a vaulted temple like the philosophers of the School. Instead, their bodies make up the Church’s architecture. They form one body, united in an ethereal apse flanking the Trinity and the Eucharist, that when consecrated becomes the body of Christ.

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P.S. I apologize for my carelessness. I never remember to check back promptly that I have posted things right, so for several hours I had two duplicate posts on this page that I had not realized - this is not the first time it has happened - which resulted in the last two posts going on to the next page. (Each page accommodates only 20 posts, no matter how long or how short each post is). I have now removed the duplicates, and the two last posts are where they should be. Mea maxima culpa.