NEWS ABOUT BENEDICT

[Seems to be the right time to send this former missionary priest back to the missions.]


Benedict XVI cannot match John Paul II, Italian journalist says

Rome, May. 18, 2007 (CWNews.com) - An Italian priest-journalist has criticized Pope Benedict XVI for imitating the style of his predecessor, but failing to achieve the same results, during his visit to Brazil last week.

"Wojtylism is useless without Wojtyla," wrote Father Filippo Di Giacomo in a column for the daily La Stampa. The former missionary said that attendance at the opening session of the CELAM meeting in Aparecida-- about 200,000, rather than the 1 million organizers had anticipated-- showed a failure to match the popularity of Pope John Paul II. (A congregation estimated at about 1 million had gathered in Sao Paulo earlier when the Pope presided at the canonization of Frei Galvao.)

Di Giacomo argued that Pope Benedict had engaged in disputes with the bishops of Latin America during his trip-- another reason, he said, that the papal journey had been a disappointment.

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I must comment - because the article referred to in the story is one of those that I marked out for possible translation - that the CWN reporter only wrote about the first part of the article, which was a naked, gratuitous, uncharitable and unfair 'comparison' yet again of JPII and B16, specifically of the 3 Brazil visits made by the first and the single one made by Benedict. In fact the title of the article itself was "Behind the Papal flop in Brazil" (Dietro il flop papale in Brasile - using the English term 'flop'!).

However, the second part of the article commended Benedict for his realistic assessment of the situation in Brazil and Latin America and for conveying his sense of it to the bishops of Brazil.

I will post a translation of the article in APOSTOLIC VOYAGE TO BRAZIL as soon as I have a chance to translate it. By the way, it came out in LA STAMPA on 5/16/07.

TERESA

5/21/07 P.S. I have now posted the entire article - translated and thoroughly fisked - in APOSTOLIC VOYAGE TO BRAZIL.

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 22/05/2007 14.14]

...now that Hugo Chavez has joined this faux-fray that is starting to reek of post-Regensburg 'sulfur and brimstone':



Chavez demands Pope apologize for Indian comments


CARACAS, May 19 (Reuters) - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez demanded Pope Benedict apologize to Indians in Latin America for saying this month in Brazil that the Roman Catholic Church purified them.

Chavez, who regularly clashes with the Catholic Church in Venezuela but had not directly criticized the Pope before, accused the Pontiff on Friday of ignoring the "holocaust" that followed Christopher Columbus's 1492 landing in the Americas.

"With all due respect your Holiness, apologize because there was a real genocide here and, if we were to deny it, we would be denying our very selves," Chavez said at an event on freedom of expression.

In a speech to Latin American and Caribbean bishops at the end of a visit to Venezuela's neighbor Brazil, the Pope said the Church had not imposed itself on the indigenous peoples of the Americas.

Indian leaders in the region were outraged by the comments.

Millions[???Has this journalist even bothered to look at estimates of how many Indians there were in South America in the 16th century???] of tribal Indians are believed to have died as a result of European colonization backed by the Church, through slaughter, disease or enslavement. [Someone better find an authoritative history of the Spanish-Portuguese colonization of South America to counter this new and determined attempt to perepetrate a totally black myth about Latin American history, a black myth almost as terrible as that about the Crusades.]

Chavez, who has expanded the rights of indigenous peoples from the Amazon rainforest to the Caribbean, said he felt he was Indian because Venezuelans are a mix of the European race and indigenous peoples.

Chavez spoke only days after Venezuelan media interpreted other comments from the Pope as singling out Chavez as a danger to Latin America when he warned of autocrats in the region.

Chavez, who regularly criticizes world figures such as U.S. President George W. Bush, describes himself as Christian, grew up expecting to become a priest and says his socialist policies have roots in the teachings of Jesus Christ.

===============================================================

The reaction of some groups claiming to represent the indigenous peoples of Latin America has been a Regensburg-reflex expression of indignation that has not really looked at what the Pope actually said [which I have reproduced in the post below, for easy reference].

For now, as far as Chavez's reaction above, I would only wish to ask him and other self-righteously indignant elements:

Did not Christianity put an end to the bloodlust human sacrifices that were a common element of the pre-Colombian religions, even of the great cultures like the Aztec, Maya and Inca???? Was that not a purification of those cultures?

Did the culture of the European conquest snuff out what was good and admirable about the great pre-Colombian cultures, or did their historians and scholars (who in the first centuries of colonization were generally priests and missionaires) not take admirable pains to document and preserve those cultures for posterity?

Just think of the many histories available of the pre-Colombian cultures [which practically did not exist in written form before the conquest], the great museums of pre-Colombian cultures to be found all over Latin America and the travelling exhibits of pre-Colombian culture that have enriched the outside world's appreciation of indigenous South American cultures. Would any of that exist today if indeed the conquistadores had been as totally evil as they are now made out to be?

If I understand correctly, the Pope specifically framed the statements he made to CELAM (see below) because of a current 'movement' by misguided elements advocating a 'return to pre-Colombian religions'. As I have not yet read any actual literature from such elements, I can only ask whether they also intend a return to the human sacrifices that were such an integral part of those religions! Or, for that matter, to the extremely hierarchic and stratified social structure of those cultures.

JUST ANOTHER CAVEAT: Reuters originated this story in the Anglophone wire services. Just remember that Reuters had the most negatively tendentious reporting during the Brazil visit - so malicious that at one point I remarked when posting a Reuters report that its coverage was starting to sound like its coverage of the Iraq war in which it sees absolutely not a single good thing!

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 19/05/2007 14.51]

Just for quick reference, in case this 'controversy' reaches Regensburg proportions, here is what the Pope said in his opening address to the CELAM conference in Aparecida:


Yet what did the acceptance of the Christian faith mean for the nations of Latin America and the Caribbean? For them, it meant knowing and welcoming Christ, the unknown God whom their ancestors were seeking, without realizing it, in their rich religious traditions. Christ is the Saviour for whom they were silently longing.

It also meant that they received, in the waters of Baptism, the divine life that made them children of God by adoption; moreover, they received the Holy Spirit who came to make their cultures fruitful, purifying them and developing the numerous seeds that the incarnate Word had planted in them, thereby guiding them along the paths of the Gospel.

In effect, the proclamation of Jesus and of his Gospel did not at any point involve an alienation of the pre-Columbus cultures, nor was it the imposition of a foreign culture.

Authentic cultures are not closed in upon themselves, nor are they set in stone at a particular point in history, but they are open, or better still, they are seeking an encounter with other cultures, hoping to reach universality through encounter and dialogue with other ways of life and with elements that can lead to a new synthesis, in which the diversity of expressions is always respected as well as the diversity of their particular cultural embodiment.

Ultimately, it is only the truth that can bring unity, and the proof of this is love. That is why Christ, being in truth the incarnate Logos, "love to the end", is not alien to any culture, nor to any person; on the contrary, the response that he seeks in the heart of cultures is what gives them their ultimate identity, uniting humanity and at the same time respecting the wealth of diversity, opening people everywhere to growth in genuine humanity, in authentic progress. The Word of God, in becoming flesh in Jesus Christ, also became history and culture.

The Utopia of going back to breathe life into the pre-Columbus religions, separating them from Christ and from the universal Church, would not be a step forward: indeed, it would be a step back. In reality, it would be a retreat towards a stage in history anchored in the past.

The wisdom of the indigenous peoples fortunately led them to form a synthesis between their cultures and the Christian faith which the missionaries were offering them. Hence the rich and profound popular religiosity, in which we see the soul of the Latin American peoples...

............

And, finally at the end of the speech, this prayer (which none of the 'protestors' has bothered to look at - having stopped at the paragraphs quoted above, which come - like the Manuel II Paleologos citation in REgensburg - at the very start of the speech:



Remain, Lord, with those in our societies who are most vulnerable; remain with the poor and the lowly, with indigenous peoples and Afro-Americans, who have not always found space and support to express the richness of their culture and the wisdom of their identity.

For the record, anyway...

Cardinal: Pope to relax Latin Mass rules
By NICOLE WINFIELD



VATICAN CITY, May 18 (AP) - A Vatican official has confirmed that Pope Benedict XVI plans to loosen restrictions on celebrating the old Latin Mass, reviving a rite that was essentially swept away by the revolutionary reforms of the Second Vatican Council.

Cardinal Dario Castrillon Hoyos told a meeting of Latin American bishops in Brazil this week that Benedict wanted to give all Catholics greater access to the so-called Tridentine Mass because of a "new and renewed interest" in the rite.

Benedict is also acting in a bid to reach out to an ultraconservative schismatic group, the Society of St. Pius X, and bring it back into the Vatican's fold, Castrillon Hoyos said Wednesday, according to a copy of his speech posted on the meeting's Web site.

The late Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre founded the society in 1969 in Switzerland, opposed to the liberalizing reforms of the 1962-65 Second Vatican Council, particularly its reform of the Tridentine Mass into the modern liturgy celebrated today in the vernacular.

The Vatican excommunicated Lefebvre in 1988 after he consecrated four bishops without Rome's consent. Benedict has been keen to reconcile with the group, which has demanded freer use of the old Mass as a precondition for normalizing relations.

The 1962-65 Second Vatican Council was a landmark event in the Roman Catholic Church, modernizing the liturgy and its relations with other faiths. Benedict attended the council as a young theological expert, and has long lamented what he considers the erroneous interpretation of its work.

He has made clear he greatly admires the 16th century rite and in a recent document urged seminarians and the faithful alike to learn Latin prayers.

The Tridentine Mass differs significantly from the new Mass: It is celebrated in Latin, with the priest facing the altar away from the faithful. The rank and file do not participate actively in the service.

Castrillon Hoyos stressed that Benedict's plans to revive the Tridentine rite did not represent a "step backward, of a regression to times before the reforms." Rather, it is an offer to the faithful to have greater access to what he said was a "treasure" of the church.

"For this reason, the Holy Father intends to extend to the entire Latin church the possibility of celebrating the Holy Mass and the sacraments" according to the latest version of the Tridentine Mass, from 1962.

The pope would decree it an "extraordinary form of the unique Roman rite," he said.

Castrillon Hoyos noted that the Tridentine liturgy had never been abolished. Currently, local bishops must grant permission for priests to celebrate it — a bureaucratic obstacle that fans say has greatly limited its availability.

Castrillon Hoyos was the second Vatican official to confirm the pope's plans in as many months. In late March, the Vatican secretary of state, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, told Le Figaro magazine that Benedict believed there was no reason not to give the priests around the world the right to celebrate the old Mass.

Castrillon Hoyos gave no date of when the pope's document would be released. It remains unclear whether Benedict will remove the requirement that bishops must approve each celebration.

Castrillon Hoyos heads a Vatican commission, Ecclesia Dei, which was created to try to reconcile with Lefebvre's followers. Castrillon Hoyos said Benedict wanted the office to be converted into an office to "conserve and maintain the value of the traditional Latin liturgy."

Normally, I would post this in NEWS ABOUT THE CHURCH, but in view of the potential blow-up about the Pope's statements on the indigenous religions of Latin America, it is a very opportune post for this section. I must apologize that I did not post it yesterday when the Vatican Press Office first placed it online.

These were the remarks delivered on May 16 by the Holy See's permanent observer to the United Nations, Mons. Celestino Migliore, to the sixth session of the Permanent Forum on indigenous problems of the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) on ths special issue of "Territories, lands and natural resources." The remarks were delivered in English.

================================================================


Madam Chair,

First of all, my delegation would like to congratulate you and all the officers elected this year and to wish you well in the important task of maintaining the forward momentum in favour of indigenous peoples already achieved by this Permanent Forum since the start of this century.

From the time the Forum met last year, much has happened regarding steps to improve the exercise of the rights of indigenous peoples at the national and international levels, particularly in light of the Forum’s special theme this year of Territories, lands and natural resources.

The postponement of the adoption of the draft Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (DRIP) marked a disappointing moment.

After 24 years’ discussion in a working group of the Commission on Human Rights, the draft Declaration was taken up at the first session of the Human Rights Council and, after a recorded vote, was duly sent to the General Assembly for adoption as part of the first Report of the Human Rights Council.

My delegation would like to express its regret that the adoption of the draft Declaration was postponed. In this regard, we would like to draw attention to the benefits which the existence of such a human rights instrument would entail especially for the very poorest living in rural areas, often of indigenous origin and often marginalized by the modern world, and those who could be empowered to contribute much more to the political and economic life where they live.

Various objections have been raised against the draft Declaration as it currently stands. Some say that the DRIP contradicts national constitutions and that self-determination only concerns those who used to live under colonial rule.

Others suggest that the DRIP is unclear on what constitutes "indigenous people", while still claiming to support the Declaration, in spite of substantive concerns.

While respecting the motivations behind each position, the Holy See wishes to reiterate the particular importance it attaches to the Instrument under consideration and encourages UN member States to show flexibility and social farsightedness with a view to reaching an agreement during the present session of the General Assembly.

My delegation believes that such a political gesture would not only profit the poorest and most excluded citizens in both rich and poor countries of the world, but would also enhance peace among peoples and foster the just and equitable enjoyment of human rights by all.

To judge by events in the Third Committee last autumn, there appear to exist genuine concerns that the DRIP could lead to demands that might break the fragile links forged at great cost among disparate tribal groups born as states within the last fifty or so years.

Some also seem to fear that the Declaration may become a threat to sovereignty or to state revenues from natural resources. Such concerns however should not marginalize the best interest of the poorest peoples in such resource-rich territories; nor should states be oblivious to the economic progress for all that could be achieved by a greater regard for the particular genius of indigenous peoples and what they may be willing to contribute when their good will, not just their free, prior and informed consent, is sought and received.

The rush to exploit resources which we are witnessing in many places not only puts the natural habitat under stress; there is sometimes little evidence of any good in political, social or economic terms, in favour of the peoples where such resources are found. Given the universal destination of the world’s goods, it is hardly surprising when peoples react to the departure of resources from their lands, while they see little coming back to those lands in return.

Madam Chair, this is why the Holy See believes that we should all work towards a consensus adoption of the Declaration; but even the absence of such a consensus should not be a pretext for delaying the vindication of the legitimate concerns of indigenous peoples.

States have legitimate concerns regarding sovereignty, citizenship, equality and the sane and equitable exploitation of natural resources, but these questions should not allow progress on indigenous peoples’ equally legitimate rights and concerns to be postponed sine die.

Thank you, Madam Chair.


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Now it remains for a conscientious reporter at the United Nations to check out the position of the various Latin Americna governments on DRIP [what an unfortunate acronym!] - and let's see who is genuinely in favor of protecting and supporting the interests of the indigenous peoples (and compare their actual concrete policies to the expressions of outrage we now hear directed against the Pope).

On May 14, Giuliano Ferrara - who, as regular Forum readers know, is an ex-Communist and an atheist - wrote this editorial in the newspaper he edits, Il Foglio. The direct occasion for the editorial was the then just-concluded Papal visit to Brazil, but it is obviously intended in a general sense.

'How to co-exist secularly with an 'iron' Papacy without losing one's way is the rather clunky title given by the newspaper to the editorial, but I will take the liberty of giving it another title, which I am picking from Ferrara's own text:



Why I am a Papist
By Giuliano Ferrara


A Bavarian Pope, who is also heir to the stability and order of the Wittelsbach monarchs.

A Pope who has studied and worked a quarter of a century in Rome - where he has ended up in the third millennium as successor to a fisherman from the shores of Lake Galilee.

A Pope who communicates directly with the 'sources Chretiennes' - the original sources of Christian doctrine; who knows his Greek and Latin; who is himself hellenized and latinized as Europeahn history is.

A philosopher-Pope who is Platonic and Augustinian, not without acknowledging Thomas Aquinas, man of holy genius who taught Western Christianity how to reason out everything from human anatomy to the Holy Spirit.

It is this Pope who spoke in Brazil to the great world of simple folk with major problems - and with what adamantine clarity he spoke, to make this points:

o The Pope is the Bishop successor to Peter, and outside of communion with him, there is no Catholic tradition or heritage.

o Priests must dedicate themselves primarily to the spiritual care of their flock.

o Pre-marital chastity is a standard to raise not to ridicule.

o The family is one only - man and woman united in matrimony, and their children. Divorce ruins its very meaning.

o Abortion kills not only the unborn child but the very idea of maternity.

o The social commitment of the Church is a right to be be exercised.

o The space for God includes public life.

o The liturgy is not 'owned' by anyone - it just 'is'.

o Faith which is not adequately evangelized and catechized cannot resist the challenges of 'do-it-yourself' sects.

o And the center of the Church's universal message is to facilitate the encounter of every Christian with Christ himself.

To all of which the modern secularized spirit would say: "What reactionary nonsense! What an anti-modern Pope! What havoc he could wreak on our happy coexistence with the liberal ideology that governs our lives today! How divisive! How dare he wield his broadsword in the public arena?"

And there are those like the respected Catholic leftist Alberto Melloni who will say: "What a historical and theological error! The Church should take on secularism, embrace its lifestyle and habits as prophetic signs of the time, present itself as the mediator of worlds, purify itself in the new Pentecost of Vatican-II of its arrogance, of its residue of temporalism, of the logic of power and Constantinian trade-offs which gravely limit its capacity to speak of faith - that which is private, yet of the community of the people of God, in the Augustinian sense, but is homeless, lives on the street and feels free to be what it pleases, by itself, with its own prophetic sense."

I respect what others think, even as I expect that others should develop respect for the thinking and the magisterium of a Pope whom I like, who knows to say what needs to be said, with genuine reason, not abstract rationalism.

I am not a Papist who wants to 'exploit religion' (in the banal formulation of the Honorable Prime Minister and all his brothers).

I am Papist because I feel with increasing clarity that something serious and profound does not work in our way of life today, and that the freedom to live as anyone wishes [provided one does not harm others] - which is sacred as a principle - has been overturned into an obligation to live according to the prevailing secularist ideology.

One can speak freely, for instance, of pre-marital chastity, even if it sounds like ideological ruralism and shocking prohibitionism against precocious sensual pleasures, as it must have sounded to those who were celebrating de-facto unions and divorce at Piazza Navona on May 12.

But one saying what the Pope says must at least be respected, his words received civilly without the usual ridicule that greets everything that the Catholic Church and other religions now say in the public discourse [think of the recent statements by the Chief Rabbi of Rome about homosexuality].

Secularists have a choice: They can open up rationally to world views that are different from theirs; or continue paving the ugly road of self-righteous intolerance and of ideological rigidity for whoever wins in the end...And we know full well that their victory rides on the open wings of mass media and advertising, of a super-secularized mass culture.

But for genuine secularists, a dishonest victory earned by shirking confrontation, a victory without the force that could be gained by confronting the ancient, well-established, principled culture of Christianity, is no prize at all. It is a condemnation.

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 19/05/2007 21.19]

Wow!! A great piece by the atheist, Ferrara. One wishes this could be translated and published in every major newspaper in the world. I certainly wish it could be read in my own country.

Thank you very much for the translations and the posting of so many stimulating articles and opinions in this thread.

About the anger in Latin America about the Pope's words regarding pre-Columbian indigenous culture (etc.) When I first read the PRESS-quotations I thought to myself: "Oh no! Did he really say this? He is certainly looking for trouble! Not everyone has read his books, they do not know that this utterance is perhaps a condensation of a major theological leitmotiv of Ratzinger, as can be seen in his "Introduction to Christianity" and other Ratzinger-works. People will just read this and think Christians are arrogant!"

I am most thankful for your post which give us the full context for these quotations. It is, IMHO, a short summary of his main thesis on Christianity and cultures. To fully grasp his thoughts on this issue one should know his writings and even this (his) summary could PERHAPS lend itself to misunderstanding. But, again, he spoke to Bishops who have the necessary background (hopefully!) to grasp the theological, and ultimately, evangelical implications of his words.

Is it really necessary that every single word spoken by a Pope, even with colleagues, should be made available to the world? I'm just wondering. It makes it nearly impossible to speak freely and intelligently!

Now that the major trip of 2007 is done, the Italian news agency APCOM has a reminder article of the known Papal trips scheduled so far, and other possible trips in the foreseeable future:

VATICAN CITY, May 19 (Apcom) - Pope Benedict XVI intends to visit New York, Fatima and Strasbourg (France) in the future - New York to address the United Nations, Fatima to pay tribute to Our Lady of Fatima, and Strasbourg to address the European Parliament.

These are commitments he has accepted (New York and Strasbourg) or made (Fatima) recently, but it is held unlikely that any of them will take place this year.

His only other scheduled foreign trip in 2007 is a visit to Austria on September 7-9 on the occasion of the 850th anniversary of the Marian shrine in Mariazell. The Pope plans to attend World Youth Day in Sydney in July 2008.

So far, he has two scheduled trips within Italy this year, following his April pastoral visits to Vigevano and Pavia: Assisi on June 17; and Loreto, another Marian shrine, on September 2, for a youth assembly.

Not ruled out yet is a trip to Ravenna in central northeastern Italy in the autumn for the next session of the Mixed Theological Commission of the Roman Catholic and Orthodox Churches.

Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I has proposed that both he and the Pope attend the opening of that session to further underscore progress towards eventual Christian reunification.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who extended the UN invitation when he met the Pope at the Vatican last month, says the Pope accepted to make the visit "at a time that is convenient for both sides."

As for Fatima, former Vatican Secretary of State, Cardinal Angelo Sodano, told the Portuguese last week that he was sure the Pope will visit the Marian shrine one day.

Sodano was the Pope's representative at the 90th anniversary celebration of the first Marian apparition in Fatima last May 13th, and he quoted the Pope as telling him "I hope one day, if God keeps me in good health, to go to Fatima."

The invitation to address the European Parliament in Strasbourg was first extended to Benedict last year by the president of the Council of Europe, Rene van Linden. It was reiterated at his recent visit to the Vatican by Hans-Gert Poettering, current president of the European Parliament.

Two possible trips known to be close to the Pope's heart are a trip to the Holy Land ('when peace conditions allow it') and a trip to meet the Patriarch of Moscow, Alexei II, not necessarily in Moscow, but probably in a neutral country like Hungary or Austria.

A full translation of the Pope's remarks has been posted in AUDIENCE AND ANGELUS TEXTS.



Pope: stop the 'tragic violence'
in the Gaza Strip and against Israeli cities


Vatican City, May 20 (AsiaNews) – At the end of the Regina Coeli prayer today, Benedict XVI launched a strong appeal for an end to “clashes between Palestinian factions in the Gaza Strip and the launching of rockets against the populations of neighbouring Israeli cities”.

The Pope underlined that these actions – which include “the armed intervention” by Israel - “are provoking the bloody deterioiration of the situation, and causing serious suffering”.

“Once agian – he said – "in the name of God, I urge an end to this tragic violence, while I express my solidarity with and closeness to the tried Palestinian and Israeli populations, whom I assure have a place in my prayers”.

He then added: “I appeal to all of the Palestinain uthorities, to their sense of responsability so that, through dialogue and with determination, they may return to the arduous journey of mutual understanding, and in doing so neutralize those who promote violence. I invite the Israeli government to moderation and I exhort the international community to multiply its efforts to relaunch peace negotiations. May the Lord inspire and support those who work for peace!”.

In his first meeting with the faithful of Rome since his journey to Brazil (May 9 – 14) and a brief period of respite in Castel Gandolfo, Benedict XVI thanked God for the outcome of the papal voyage and those who accompanied him with their prayers.

He also promised : “I hope to return to this voyage at length next Wednesday, during my general audience. In the interim I invite you all to continue to pray for the Conference underway in Aparecida and for the journey of God's people who live in Latin America”.

Today marks the feast of the Ascension of the Lord in Italy, one of the countries which has moved the observance from the traditional Thursday 40 days after Easter to the Sunday following it.

For the past many years, Ascension Sunday is also dedicated by the Church to the World Day for Social Communications, which this year has as it's theme: “Children and the Media: A Challenge for Education".

In his reflections before the Marian prayer, the Pope also dwelt on the mass medai and its influence which all too often - the Pontiff noted - “competes against the school, the Church and even the familiy”.

Benedict XVI maintains that “a suitable education to the correct use of the media is essential: parents, teachers and the ecclesial community are called to work together in educating children and teenagers to be selective in their use of the media and to nurture a critical capacity which cultivates their taste for what is esthetically and morally valid”.

But, he added, the media too must take on an educative role by “promoting human dignity, marriage and the family, society's conquests and its objectives. Programs which favour violence and anti-social behaviour or those which vulgarize human sexuality are unacceptable, above all when they are aimed at the young”.

The Pope called on the industry leaders and those who work in the field of communications to “safeguard the common good by respecting the truth and protecting dignity of the human person and of the family”.

Before a crowd of over 20,000 people gathered in the square, the Pontif recalled the liturgical feast of the Ascension: “The Risen Christ returns to the Father, thus opening for us the way to eternal life and gifting us the Holy Spirit. As the Apostles did then we too gather ourselves in prayer after the Ascension to envoke the coming of the Spirit, in spiritual union with the Virgin Mary (cfr At 1,12-14). May her intercession grant a renewed Pentecost for the entire Church”.

Finally, Benedict XVI greeted pilgrims in many languages. He had a special greeting for “over one thousand young people from the Archdiocese of Genoa who have been or are about to be confirmed in their faith.”

The young boys and girls were accompanied by their Archbishop Angelo Bagnasco, president of the Italian Conference of Catholic Bishops and by Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, former Archbishop of Genoa.

============================================================

Reuters reports on the media angle:


Pope condemns sex, violence in media

VATICAN CITY, May 20 (Reuters) - Pope Benedict on Sunday criticized media that transmitted anti-social and violent programs as well as images that "vulgarize human sexuality."

The Pope made his comments in a message for the Roman Catholic Church's World Day of Communications, whose theme this year is "Children and the Media: A Challenge for Education."

"Programs that instill violence or anti-social behavior or vulgarize human sexuality are unacceptable, more so if they are presented to minors," the Pontiff said, addressing crowds of faithful in St. Peter's Square.

The Pontiff further called on the heads of the media industry to "promote human dignity, marriage and the family."

The Pope's comments followed a written message for the World Day of Communications released earlier this year which criticized animated films and video games, among other products, that exalt violence and trivialize sexuality.

"How could one explain this 'entertainment' to the countless innocent young people who actually suffer violence, exploitation and abuse?" he asked in the message.

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 21/05/2007 1.51]

The difference between the AsiaNews title & article from the Reuters article just made me laugh. Wonder when they'll get tired of having articles that say: Pope condemns "insert anything here." Glad to know he's back from Castel Gandolfo. Thanks Teresa for the articles.

I'm glad CNS picked up this story from the Pope's meeting Saturday with the Centesimus Annus foundation. The Pope's address to the group, delivered in English, is posted in HOMILIES, DISCOURSES, MESSAGES.

Pope: If it doesn't help the poor,
globalization can't bring peace and prosperity
By Cindy Wooden
Catholic News Service

VATICAN CITY, May 21 (CNS) - Without a marked increase in assistance to the poor and attention to the environment, economic globalization cannot bring peace and prosperity to the world, Pope Benedict XVI said.

"It appears evident that only a globalization process attentive to the requirements of solidarity can assure for humanity a future of authentic well-being and stable peace for all," the pope said in a May 19 address.

Members of the "Centesimus Annus" Foundation, a group promoting the study and application of Catholic social teaching, met the pope at the end of a May 18-19 conference on the economic, social and cultural consequences of economic growth in Asia and Africa.

The foundation, which also raises money for papal charities, is named after Pope John Paul II's 1991 encyclical on Catholic social teaching.

Pope Benedict said the Asian markets are "characterized by strong dynamics of economic growth, which do not always lead to a real social development."

As for Africa, he said, "economic growth and social development encounter many obstacles and challenges."

Economic development programs must focus on the good of individuals and society as well as on generating profits, the pope said.

"Attention to the real needs of the human being, respect for the dignity of each person and seeking the common good are the inspiring principles that should be taken into consideration when planning the development of a country," he said.

Unfortunately, he said, such attention is rare in the current race for economic growth.

The problems connected with modern progress, he said, also include "elevated pollution and the irresponsible consumption of natural and environmental resources," jeopardizing the well-being of local residents as well as future generations.

"I want to reaffirm that only an ordered combination of the three essential ingredients of development - economic, social and human - can give birth to a free society marked by solidarity," the pope said.

EAST TIMOR:
FACING THE FUTURE WITH CONFIDENCE





VATICAN CITY, MAY 21, 2007 (VIS) - This morning in the Vatican, the Pope received the Letters of Credence of Justino Maria Aparicio Guterres, the first ambassador from the Democratic Republic of East Timor. The Holy See established diplomatic relations with the country on the same day that East Timor declared its national independence, May 20, 2002.

In his talk to the diplomat the Pope expressed the view that the large turnout in recent presidential elections, won by Nobel Peace Prize-winner Jose Ramos Horta, "demonstrate the great civic maturity of the people of Timor, and the hope they have in the process of constructing a democratic State."

"Those in charge of the political, social and economic life of East Timor," he said, "face an arduous journey not without obstacles: there is no lack of internal and external misunderstandings; resources are insufficient to answer the many needs of health, education and employment; and not everyone is ready to abandon their personal or party interests."

The Church and her pastors in East Timor, where 98 percent of the population is Catholic, said the Holy Father, "inspires and promotes a culture of solidarity and peaceful coexistence in justice, encouraging people to collaborate in favor of progress and the common good, without forgetting the attention due to the poorest and least privileged."

After recalling how on Easter Sunday this year he had mentioned the population of East Timor's "need of reconciliation and peace," the Pope launched an appeal to the authorities in the country "to do everything possible to restore public order effectively, using legal means, and to ensure security for citizens in their daily lives, thanks also to a renewed confidence in the legitimate institutions of the State."

The Holy Father also emphasized how the Church, "in enlightening the moral conscience of political, economic and financial leaders," highlights "the principle of solidarity as the basis for a true economy of communion and distribution of wealth, both in the international and the national spheres. Such solidarity requires that the efforts to resolve problems of underdevelopment, and the sacrifices necessary to overcome economic and political crises, be shared equally, bearing in mind the needs of those least able to defend themselves."

"By means of technical assistance and appropriate training, it is vital to help those countries that are coming out of difficult periods to support stable democratic institutions, and to use their wealth for the good of all inhabitants, ensuring people a dignified moral, civic and intellectual education. ... Through the integral promotion of people, it will be possible to help countries develop, and to help them become the main players in their own progress and partners in international life, facing the future with confidence."

Benedict XVI concluded by giving assurances that bishops, priests and lay faithful in East Timor "will tirelessly continue their mission of evangelization, assistance and charity, ... bearing witness of selfless commitment to the most needy."


PAPAL MESSAGE FOR
ANNIVERSARY OF RWANDA GENOCIDE

VATICAN CITY, MAY 21, 2007 (VIS) - Made public today was a Message, dated April 3, from the Holy Father to Paul Kagame, president of the Republic of Rwanda, for that country's annual day of national mourning to mark the beginning of the 1994 genocide. The anniversary day fell on April 7, Easter Saturday.

"I wish to participate," writes the Pope in his Message, "in the national mourning and especially in the prayers for all the victims of that horrendous bloodbath, without distinction of creed, ethnicity or political opinion."

The Holy Father also expresses his hope "that all Rwandans, guided by their civil and religious authorities, commit themselves with greater generosity and effectiveness in favor of national reconciliation and the building of a new country, in truth and justice, in fraternal unity and peace."

"Religious motivations, which are the foundation of Catholics' commitment to family and social life, and the moral principles that derive therefrom, represent a point of encounter for Christians and for all men and women of good will."

Benedict XVI concludes his message by affirming that "the Christian faith, which is shared by the majority of Rwandans, if lived coherently and fully, is a real help in overcoming a past of errors and death, the culminating point of which was the 1994 genocide. At the same time, such faith stimulates trust in the possibility offered to all Rwandans, reconciled to one another, to build a better future together, rediscovering the novelty of love which is the only power that can lead to personal and social perfection and orient history towards good."

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 22/05/2007 18.34]

PETRUS has posted an Italian news agency item on a report in the Moscow newspaper Moskovski Komsomolets that the historic meeting between Pope Benedict XVI and the Patriarch of Moscow, Alexei II, could take place in Strasbourg, France, this September.

The newspaper cited sources at the Patriarchate of Moscow, saying the immediate agenda was the situation of the Uniates in the Ukraine, an Orthodox Church that has declared its loyalty to the Pope.

The Pope has a standing invitation to address the European Parliament in Strasbourg.

There has been much speculation about this first meeting. The only common assumption has been that it must be held in a 'neutral place'. Austria and Hungary have been most mentioned, but also Ravenna and Bologna in Italy. [The Pope is also Primate of Italy. Would Italian cities outside Rome be considered neutral ground?]

The Patriarch of Moscow has always refused a meeting with the head of the Roman Catholic Church because of the primacy question, but the atmosphere appears to have changed since Benedict VXI became Pope.

Nevertheless, the last official statement by a Patriarchate representative stressed that no meeting could take place "until fundamental questions are settled."

Besides the primacy question, Moscow also accuses Rome of proselytizing in Russia. The third issue is the Uniates, whose church properties are claimed by the Russian Orthodox Church.

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 22/05/2007 18.13]

Gianluca Barile, editor of PETRUS, sees in events like the BBC's fallaciously malicious documentary "Sex Crimes and the Vatican" an attempt by anti-Church elements of society to smear the Pope and the Church, as did the 1960s play "The Deputy" by German playwright Rolf Hochhuth which planted the myth, based on Soviet propaganda, that Pope Pius XII chose to do nothing about the Jewish problem in Nazi Germany during the Second World War.


Media manipulators:
They're trying to do to Benedict XVI
what they did with Pius XII
but they won't succeed this time
By Gianluca Barile


Benedict XVI as Pius XII. In the role of media victim, that is.
The BBC documentary alleging that Joseph Ratzinger covered up for sex-offender priests is much like the play "The Deputy" about the alleged silence of Pius XII in the face of Nazi genocide against the Jews.

In 2007 as in the 1960s, the same attempt to sling mud at the Church, striking its very heart, in an attempt to manipulate public opinion with unfounded accusations against the Pope which have no leg to stand on and which will certainly not resist the force of truth.

Nevertheless, it's out there - a documentary produced by a once-unassailable bastion of journalism, the BBC, which judges and condemns (on the basis of wildly misused texts) the present Pope of having protected priests responsible for sex abuses against minors when he was Prefect of the Congregation for the
Faith.

A documentary that belongs to the trash bin, not just because it is patently unfounded, but because every man of goodwill - friend or foe, hawk or dove, believer or not - recognizes the moral stature and intellectual honesty of a true Christian that has always characterized the man, the academic, the theologian, the bishop, the Cardinal and now Pope Joseph Ratzinger.

And today, where are we? RAI has been pressured by one of its TV hosts, Michele Santoro, into acquiring the rights to air the BBC documentary so he can use it on his program AnnoZero(Year Zero).

In 1963, Rolf Hochhuth's play "The Deputy" was first staged in Berlin. The title referred to Christ's Vicar on earth, in that case, specifically Pius XII, Eugenio Pacelli, who was mercilessly vilified for allegedly not lifting a finger or saying a word against the Holocaust.

Much evidence found since then has proven that a falsehood. But it is the same magnitude of falsehood that the BBC has sought to pin on Joseph Ratzinger. The Pope who issued instructions that seminaries should be careful about homosexual candidates for the priesthood; who addressed Irish bishops about the 'abominable crimes' committed by priests who abuse minors; who sanctioned the founder of the Legionaries of Christ who has been accused of multiple sex offenses committed in the past.

But going back to "The Deputy." In Italy, after the Italian translation was published in 1965, it was staged in Milan. Only for one night. Because after that, it was censored, along with
threats of excommunication supposedly made by the Vatican.

That resulted in a wave of negative public opinion against Pius XII, especially by Jewish and anti-clerical circles, to such a degree that the beatification of this Pope, who was known in his lifetime as 'Prince of God', has been so much delayed.

Times have changed in terms of freedom of expression, and now RAI, Italian state television, has acquired the BBC documentary and Santoro will be free to use it.

Mons. Giuseppe Betori, secretary-general of the Italian bishops conference, said there is no question of censorship, but the Church only wants to prevent the dissemination of lies.

We will see what happens. [It appears RAI is trying to arrange that the Church will have a chance to present its side at the time the documentary is shown.]

But to all who would participate in calumny against the Holy Father, let it be said that we are ready to use all peaceful and democratic means of exposing and dismantling the BBC lies one by one.

This is not a threat but a declaration of intention: the Catholic world will not and should not continue to tolerate the daily attempts by secular and anti-clerical elements to defame the Pope.

To all Christians, Catholic, apostolic and Roman, but also to all men of goodwill and common sense, who will not let themselves be manipulated by the blasphemy of the day, nor influenced by facile talkers on public TV who have become persecutors, an invitation - perhaps obvious but necessary -
to commit themselves at home, at work, in school, on the streets, in the media, to a defense of the person and office of the Holy Father.

And an appeal to the conscience of all and of everyone, with the force of truth that shines from the Word of Christ and from the figure of this Pope - our shepherd of faith and love -
let us do what we can so that the enemies of the Church will not succeed in making of Benedict XVI the victim that they did of Pius XII.

Pope to visit Lourdes for 150th anniversary?


Rome, May. 22, 2007 (CWNews.com) - Pope Benedict XVI (bio - news) has accepted an invitation to visit France, the Roman news agency I Media has reported. The Holy See has not confirmed the report.

I Media reports that the Pope has accepted an invitation extended by Cardinal Jean-Pierre Ricard, the president of the French bishops conference, and by Bishop Jacques Perrier of Tarbes and Lourdes.

The invitation reportedly calls for the Pope to visit Lourdes in May 2008 for the 150th anniversary of the Virgin Mary's apparitions to St. Bernadette Soubirous.

If it is confirmed, the visit would be the first by Pope Benedict to France since his election in April 2005.

By GARY STERN
THE JOURNAL NEWS

(Original publication: May 23, 2007)

NEW ROCHELLE - The life story of Catholic philosopher Dietrich von Hildebrand cries out for a movie script, even if he is virtually unknown outside of the ivory halls of seminaries and universities.

But the profile of this courageous and prolific intellectual, perhaps the first German figure to publicly oppose the Nazis, is about to get a boost.

Von Hildebrand's widow, Alice, a renowned philosopher in her own right, has enlisted the help of a notable von Hildebrand fan as she seeks to have many of her husband's works translated into English and published for a new audience.

This fan, a German philosopher himself, lives in Rome these days and has something of a worldwide audience.

"When I saw Pope Benedict, I thanked him profusely for his support," Alice von Hildebrand said recently at her longtime New Rochelle home. "He said to me, 'I think your husband's work is so important.' It is hard to get a private audience with this pope. He is very shy, not like John Paul II. But he is a great supporter of my husband's work."

Benedict XVI has already personally secured a grant for the translation of von Hildebrand's writings. And he has promised to write a letter of general support - a papal stamp of approval - for Alice von Hildebrand's goals.

Alice von Hildebrand, 84, remains passionately dedicated to her husband's work and the moral example of his life. He died in 1977 at 88. She continues to travel the world to speak for him.

"I don't have his genius, but I can communicate it," she said.

Dietrich von Hildebrand was born in 1889 to the famed German sculptor Adolf von Hildebrand and was given an education of the privileged. He studied under the philosopher Edmund Husserl and later converted to Catholicism. He became a prominent philosopher in Munich during the 1920s.

Six weeks after Adolf Hitler came to power in January 1933, von Hildebrand gave up everything and left Germany for Austria.

"No one detected the evil of Nazism earlier than my husband," Alice von Hildebrand said. "He immediately sensed they were poison. He said, 'I cannot teach ethics and not oppose these people.' He believed that if you see evil, you must oppose it."

Von Hildebrand founded an anti-Nazi newspaper in Vienna, becoming a wanted man by the Nazis. His ally, the Austrian Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss, was killed by Nazi agents the following year.

When Germany invaded Austria in 1938, von Hildebrand and his first wife fled on a train filled with Jews. Austrians were stopped, but the von Hildebrands got through only hours before the borders were closed.

Von Hildebrand, his wife and their son became fugitives, moving among several nations before making it to Portugal. From there, with the help of the Rockefeller Foundation, they came to the United States in 1940.

Von Hildebrand taught philosophy at Fordham University until his retirement in 1960, continuing a pursuit of truth in life and art that has made him an intellectual hero to his following.

His story brings to mind that of a fellow German, the famed Lutheran theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer. He became an anti-Nazi leader, participated in an attempt to kill Hitler and was hanged in a concentration camp in 1945.

Von Hildebrand may have met the same fate had he not left Germany.

"Dietrich von Hildebrand was not just a great philosopher, but someone you could follow, model your life on," said John Henry Crosby, a writer and translator who founded the Dietrich von Hildebrand Legacy Project in 2004, seeking to bring his story and work to a wider audience. "He acted with such courage and in such a compelling way that you want to emulate him."

Last year, the Legacy Project secured a $45,000 grant from the Papal Foundation, which supports Vatican initiatives. Crosby got to thank the pope in June.

"He looked at me and said, 'I put that through myself,' " Crosby said.

With this grant and others, the Legacy Project has been working toward the publication in English of von Hildebrand's major work, "The Nature of Love," as well as a collection of his anti-Nazi writings and his memoirs. The memoirs were written as a personal letter to Alice, who was his student at Fordham and married him after the death of his first wife.

"It was a wonderful marriage," she said. "One day I said to him, 'It is terribly sad there is a large part of your life that I didn't share with you.' He started working on his life story."

Alice von Hildebrand and Crosby met the pope last month at a private audience to thank him for his help. He promised to issue a general letter of support when he receives a formal request, which the Legacy Project is completing.

The pope and Dietrich von Hildebrand, who met many years ago when Benedict was a young priest named Joseph Ratzinger, are kindred philosophical spirits in many ways.

Benedict has famously warned of the dangers of relativism, which elevates the man-made philosophy of the moment and seeks to block out religious and moral truths. His address to the world's cardinals about a "dictatorship of relativism" after John Paul's death is widely credited with building momentum toward his election as pope.

Von Hildebrand, much earlier, railed against relativism and fashionable trends of thinking, calling for a sustained pursuit of moral, spiritual and aesthetic truth. In a noted essay about Mozart, he wrote: "To our age so lacking in reverence, Mozart's chamber music reveals the true spirit of reverence toward God and all high values, the conscious 'yes' to our state as creatures."

In addition to focusing on truth, von Hildebrand wrote reverently of Catholic teachings such as the centrality of marriage. His writings on sexuality in marriage greatly influenced John Paul II.

"The key idea is that the religious response is a response to something that is objective, that is true," said Monsignor Kevin O'Brien, spiritual director at St. Joseph's Seminary in Yonkers.

Much of von Hildebrand's focus, like that of his wife, would today be described as socially conservative.

"In our society, marriage is practically abolished. We have witnessed the breakdown of the family," said Alice von Hildebrand, who taught philosophy at Hunter College for 37 years before retiring.

"I don't think the limelight is good for women," she said. "I think men can take it better. I see the mission of women is to love and to nurture, to create an atmosphere of peace and understanding."

She has the greatest respect for Pope Benedict, who in 2000 wrote the foreword for her biography of her husband, "The Soul of a Lion."

He wrote: "I am personally convinced that, when, at some time in the future, the intellectual history of the Catholic Church in the 20th century is written, the name of Dietrich von Hildebrand will be most prominent among the figures of our time."

The translation of the Holy Father's address in today's audience has been posted in AUDIENCE AND ANGELUS TEXTS.



The Pope wore the Papal hat called 'galero' today against the sun.


Here is the AsiaNews report on the audience:


Pope: Christians must be disciples
and missionaries of Christ


Vatican City, May 23 (AsiaNews)- "An evangelization of...renewed enthusiasm, methods and expression," following the guidelines set out by John Paul II to the Episcopal Council of Latin America in 1983, was the primary objective of Benedict XVI's voyage to Brazil from the 9th to the 14th of this month.

The Pope underscored this element of his recent trip in his address to over 40,000 pilgrims and visitors gathered in St Peter's square for his general audience. An evangelizing journey which, in the Pope's own words, must be undertaken in the light of the 'theological and social' aspects of a love which gives to others, as indicated in Deus caritas est.

A central point of the voyage was the opening of the V General Conference bishops from Latin America. Today as then, the Pope underscored the theme 'Disciples and Missionaries of Christ'.

The coupling of these terms, he said "corresponds to Mark's Gospel where the apostles are given their mandate." The word disciple, he added "recalls the formative dimension of the follower to be in communion with and a friend of Christ", by being "an obedient pupil of his teachings", while "the term missionary expresses the fruit of discipleship", in short the shared witness of the Gospel experience.

He said this meant "recover(ing) the spirit of the early Christian community, assiduous in its catechesis, in its sacramental life and in its charitable works", in order to "present the faith clearly without reducing it", through the constant promotion of a social development which forms lay Catholics to take on responsibility in both the political and social spheres.

In his address, Benedict XVI evoked various highlights of his journey, during which he said he aimed to impress the theme of the relationship between faith and culture, which in the Latin American continent has created history, life experiences and art.

But, he added, "Memories of the glorious past cannot ignore the shadows which accompany the history of evangelization. We cannot ignore the suffering and injustices imposed on the indigenous populations", as already condemned, he recalled, by theologians such as Bartholomew de Las Casas.

Thus, within the continent the Gospel "has expressed and continues to express the identity of the peoples in this region and provides inspiration to address the challenges of our globalized era".

"The Catholic identity is the most adequate (response) because it is animated by the principles of the Church's Social Doctrine" and the Church in order to contribute to resolving socio-economic problems, must mobilize all of its strength to converge with others who work for the common good".

In fact, "Brazil is an example for other countries of this new model for development" and "Christian culture can animate 'reconciliation' between mankind and creation, starting from a recovery of human dignity in relation to God the Father."

A final mention went to the Youth Meeting of Sao Paolo, which he defined today as "a sign of hope for the present and future Church." Recalling that encounter, he reiterated that today the Church offers the commandments as a journey of education towards freedom and personal well-being", adding that "above all, the first commandment of love must be a constant, because without love none of the commandments make sense or lead to a full and happy life.

"I invited the young people to be apostles to their contemporaries, use their rich gifts in the service of the new evangelization" and "to respect marriage." In short, he concluded,"I encouraged them to invest in the tremendous wealth of their youth."

================================================================

Here is the first wire-service story on the Pope's report about his Brazil trip - and it is all so predictable of MSM. First, they misinterpreted what the Pope actually said in Aparecida, report protests to it without clarifying (or even simply quoting) what he actually said, and now this...


Pope acknowledges colonial injustices in Americas
By Phil Stewart


VATICAN CITY, May 23 (Reuters) - Pope Benedict, under fire in Latin America for saying the Catholic Church had purified Indians, acknowledged on Wednesday that injustices were committed during the colonialization of the Americas.

But he stopped short of apologizing as demanded by some leaders, including Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez.

"While we do not overlook the various injustices and sufferings which accompanied colonization, the Gospel has expressed and continues to express the identity of the peoples in this region," the Pope said on Wednesday.

In a speech to Latin American and Caribbean bishops at the end of a visit to Brazil earlier this month, the Pope said the Church had not imposed itself on the indigenous peoples of the Americas.

He said they had welcomed the arrival of European priests at the time of the conquest as they were "silently longing" for Christianity.

Chavez has accused the Pope of ignoring the "holocaust" that followed Christopher Columbus's landing in the Americas in 1492. Indian leaders in Brazil have said they were offended by the Pope's "arrogant and disrespectful" comments.

Millions of tribal Indians are believed to have died as a result of European colonization backed by the Church, through slaughter, disease or enslavement.

It was not the first time the German-born Pontiff's comments sparked controversy.

Benedict infuriated Muslims worldwide in September with a lecture that seemed to depict Islam as an irrational religion tainted with violence.

He later expressed regret at the pain his comments caused and defused tensions during a trip to Turkey, where he prayed at a mosque and called Islam a peaceful faith.

================================================================

Evangelization a blessing to Latin America,
Pope insists

Vatican, May. 23, 2007 (CWNews.com) - Pope Benedict XVI acknowledged that serious injustices had occurred during the European conquest of Latin America, but maintained that the evangelization of the continent had brought great blessings to its people, during his weekly public audience on May 23.

Following his usual practice after a voyage abroad, the Holy Father devoted his Wednesday audience to a reflection on his trip. Speaking to over 35,000 pilgrims gathered in St. Peter's square on a sunny day, the Pope mentioned the highlights of his trip to Brazil to open the general assembly of the Latin American bishops' conference.

Once again paying tribute to the Christian tradition in Latin America, and "the faith that has shaped their cultures for over 500 years," Pope Benedict responded to criticism that he had glossed over the violence that marked the European arrival.

He recognized "the suffering and injustices inflicted by the colonizers on the indigenous peoples whose fundamental human rights were often trampled underfoot." But he noted that these crimes were committed by soldiers and government officials, and were " condemned even at the time by missionaries like Bartolomeo de las Casas and theologians such as Francisco de Vitoria."

Moreover, the Pope continued, the injustices that occurred alongside the work of evangelization "must not prevent us from recognizing with gratitude the marvelous work achieved by divine grace among those peoples over the course of the centuries."

Speaking particularly about Brazil, the Pontiff said that country "holds profoundly rooted Christian values, but it also suffers enormous social and economic problems." He mentioned his emotional visit to Fazenda da Esperança, a treatment center for drug addicts, where he saw "a symbol of that spiritual recovery that our world truly needs."

The highlight of the trip, the Pope continued, was his opening address to the Latin American bishops. Their meeting in Aparecida, Brazil, was dedicated to "addressing our need to be convinced disciples and missionaries of Christ and his love," he said.

Pope Benedict concluded with the observation that after meeting with young people in Brazil he felt "confident that they will be apostles to their contemporaries," and ended his trip with greater confident that - as he had said before he began the voyage - Latin America is the "continent of hope."

===================================================================

Here's the AP report -

By FRANCES D'EMILIO


VATICAN CITY, May 23 (AP) - Pope Benedict XVI, who has been criticized by Indian rights groups, said Wednesday the church does not gloss over the injustices that accompanied the Christian colonization of Latin America and lamented that indigenous peoples' basic rights were often trampled upon by missionaries.

"While we do not overlook the various injustices and sufferings which accompanied colonization, the Gospel has expressed and continues to express the identity of the peoples in this region and provides inspiration to address the challenges of our globalized era," Benedict told English-speaking pilgrims in St. Peter's Square as he talked about his trip to Brazil earlier this month.

Benedict said that his visit to Brazil, his first papal voyage to Latin America, "embraced not only that great nation, but all Latin America, home to many of the world's Catholics." He described the trip as being "above all, a pilgrimage of praise to God for the faith which has shaped their cultures for over 500 years."

"Certainly, the memory of a glorious past cannot ignore the shadows that accompanied the work of evangelizing the Latin American continent," the pope said.

Benedict's remarks to Italian-speaking pilgrims at his general audience in the square were even stronger than the comments in English.

"It is not possible, indeed, to forget the sufferings and injustices inflicted by colonizers on the indigenous populations, whose fundamental human rights were often trampled on," Benedict said.

The pontiff said he was making a "dutiful mention of such unjustifiable crimes" and said some missionaries and theologians in the past had condemned them.

Indian rights groups in Brazil criticized Benedict for his insistence that Latin American Indians wanted to become Christian before European conquerors arrived centuries ago.

During the trip, the pontiff told a regional conference of bishops in Brazil that pre-Columbian people of Latin America and the Caribbean were seeking Christ without realizing it.

Paulo Suess, an adviser to the church-backed Brazil's Indian Missionary Council, said at the end of the trip that Benedict's comments failed to take into account that Indians were enslaved and killed by the Portuguese and Spanish settlers who forced them to become Catholic.

Marcio Meira, in charge of Brazil's federal Indian Bureau, said Indians were forced to convert to Catholicism as the result of a "colonial process."

The pope in Brazil told the bishops that, "the proclamation of Jesus and of his Gospel did not at any point involve an alienation of the pre-Columbus cultures, nor was it the imposition of a foreign culture."

In 2000, during the Vatican's Holy Year, the Catholic Church apologized to Brazil's Indians and blacks during a ceremony in Brazil for the "sins and errors" committed by its clergy and faithful in the past 500 years.

A Vatican cardinal representing Pope John Paul II participated in the ceremony, which saw the head of Brazil's bishops conference ask God for forgiveness for the sins committed against brothers, especially the Indians.


Benedict XVI corrects the record
on colonization of Latin America
By JOHN L. ALLEN JR.
New York

In apparent response to criticism of his May 13 speech in Brazil in which the pope asserted Christianity was not an "imposition of a foreign culture" on indigenous peoples of the New World, Benedict XVI today acknowledged "the shadows that accompanied the evangelization of the Latin American continent."

The pope said "the sufferings and the injustices inflicted by the colonizers on the indigenous populations, who often saw their fundamental human rights trampled upon," cannot be forgotten.

Benedict was speaking during his regular Wednesday General Audience in Rome, which he devoted to the Brazil trip.

Last Sunday, in an address to the bishops of Latin America and the Caribbean gathered in Aparecida, Brazil, for their Fifth General Conference, Benedict argued that Christianity was not imposed upon native peoples, but rather it was the fulfillment to which their religious experience pointed.

"The Utopia of going back to breathe life into the pre-Columbian religions, separating them from Christ and from the universal Church, would not be a step forward," Benedict said in Aparecida. "Indeed, it would be a step back. In reality, it would be a retreat towards a stage in history anchored in the past."

Afterwards, spokespersons for indigenous groups complained that the pope appeared to be denying the troubled history of European colonization.

Paulo Suess, an adviser to Brazil's Indian Missionary Council, said the pope "is a good theologian, but it seems he missed some history classes." Marcio Meira, who heads Brazil's federal Indian Bureau, said, "As an anthropologist and a historian I feel obliged to say that, yes, in the past 500 years there was an imposition of the Catholic religion on the indigenous people."

In that light, the pope"s comments today suggest that when Benedict said on Sunday that Christ was not an 'imposition,' he meant the teachings of Christianity, not the concrete behavior of Christian colonizers whom, Benedict admitted, were sometimes guilty of "unjustifiable crimes."

At the same time, Benedict said, there were also Christian missionaries and theologians who defended the natives, such as Bartolomeo de Las Casas and Francesco da Vitoria of the University of Salamanca. Acknowledging the mixed historical record, he said, "must not prevent us from noting with gratitude the marvelous work performed by divine grace among these populations in the course of the centuries."

"Today, in the epoch of globalization, this Catholic identity still presents itself as the most adequate response," Benedict XVI said, "provided that it is animated by a serious doctrinal formation and by the principles of the social doctrine of the church."

Because of the much-belated furor in Italy about a distorted and defamatory documentary by the BBC mainly targeted at Pope Benedict XVI and aired in the United Kingdom last October, Sandro Magister in his blog today refers to previous rebuttals of the BBC falsehoods, including an overview he wrote in November 2006 about what the Church has done with regard to sex-offender priests.

It is worth re-posting it today:

Abuse of Minors by Priests:
An Assessment of the “Purification” Underway

They are “heart-rending” crimes, an increasingly severe and demanding Benedict XVI said to the bishops of Ireland.
A summary of two years of repression: what has been done, and what is left to do

by Sandro Magister


ROMA, November 20, 2006 – To the Irish bishops gathered before him at the Vatican at the end of October, Benedict XVI clearly said that this is a “time of purification.”

It is a time of purification from the “filth” he denounced in the memorable Via Crucis at the Colosseum on Good Friday two years ago, shortly before being elected pope, a filth made up of the “many heart-rending cases of sexual abuse of minors. These are all the more tragic when the abuser is a cleric (1).”

Pope Joseph Ratzinger is very severe and demanding in this area, more so than his predecessor John Paul II. In the year and a half of his pontificate, he has not hesitated to use the lash even against churchmen held to be untouchable by the previous pope.

Along with the United States, Ireland is the country where the Church has created the greatest scandal. The archbishop of Dublin, Diarmuid Martin, 68, confirmed in an interview with Avvenire that Benedict XVI, in receiving the Irish bishops, not only denounced the horror of abuse, but dictated to them “precise indications” on how to clean up – with sanctions that are sometimes more rigid than the ones handed down by civil tribunals.

In Ireland, the bishops have verified that in sixty years, from 1945 to 2004, 105 priests – almost 4 percent of the total – have been implicated in sexual abuse against minors under 18 years old, with around 400 victims. Of those still alive, 8 have been condemned to prison after a penal trial, and another 32 are undergoing civil trials. Still others have received no judicial sentence because of the impossibility of proving acts too far removed in time.

But with these, too, the hierarchy of the Church reacts today by excluding them from pastoral activity. And in any case it asks all the priests targeted by accusations to suspend all of their duties, even before investigations begin.

It can therefore happen that these sanctions temporarily punish persons who later turn out to be innocent: “But unfortunately, experience has obliged us to apply these painful but indispensable provisions,” archbishop Martin affirms. The prevailing policy is that it is better to be too severe than to risk the contrary.

It’s the same in the United States. There, too, it has been verified that the priests who have committed sexual abuse against minors in the past half century are around 4 percent of the total: 4,392 out of 110,000 diocesan and religious priests. Three fourths of the crimes took place between 1960 and 1984, when the customary practice was simply to transfer the guilty party from one post to another, perhaps after psychotherapy sessions that in reality didn’t change anything.

This irresponsible and indulgent practice, even with the phenomenon in decline, was protracted until very recent times, when in 2002 the scandal exploded in the media and everything was discovered. The bishops of the United States reacted to their own previous weaknesses with a new “zero tolerance” policy. A great number of cases have flooded the civil courts, and exorbitant requests for compensation have fallen upon the dioceses.

Even some bishops have been upended, not only for having covered up abuse, but for having committed it themselves. One of these, Anthony O’Connell of Palm Beach, Florida, made a revealing admission in 2002. He said that in doing these things, he felt the influence of the spirit of the 1970’s, “when the Masters and Johnson report laid down the law, and a climate of sexual transgression reigned.”

In some courts in the United States, it has come to the point of citing the Holy See as an accomplice in the crimes under review. The last request of this sort came last May from a tribunal in Oregon. But until now, they have all been blocked on account of the Holy See’s immunity as a sovereign state.

On February 8, 2005, receiving Condoleezza Rice at the Vatican, then-secretary of state Angelo Sodano asked his counterpart from the United States to intervene in defense of the immunity of the Holy See, which had been called to court by a tribunal in Kentucky. The intervention came.

In Italy, the numbers on sexual abuse committed by priests are less startling than in the United States and Ireland. But there is an increasing severity on the part of the Church hierarchy here, too.

The general secretary of the episcopal conference, Giuseppe Betori, who in 2002 described the phenomenon as “so insignificant as not to merit specific attention,” today promotes the establishment in every diocese of a Meter center, the association founded by Fr. Fortunato Di Noto to combat pedophilia (4).

Ratzinger as well, when he was prefect of the congregation for the doctrine of the faith, was less insistent than he is today. Offenses against the sixth commandment were the exclusive domain of his congregation, but in a number of cases, even very circumstantiated denunciations were never pursued.

Still in November of 2002, when the scandal in the United States was at its acme, Ratzinger minimized the number of guilty priests: “less than 1 percent,” and he attributed the explosion of the scandal above all to “the desire to discredit the Church.”

But then he changed course. It was the autumn of 2004, and Ratzinger ordered the promoter of justice at the congregation for the doctrine of the faith, Charles J. Scicluna of Malta, to retrieve from the files all the cases concerning the sixth commandment.

The order was: “Every case must take its normal course.” In other words: no one could be held as untouchable anymore, not even those protected by the then extremely powerful cardinal Sodano, and not even the favorites of the reigning pope, John Paul II.

And so among the other investigations were begun, or restarted, the investigations against the two founders of religious orders with strong support in the curia: Gino Burresi, Italian, founder of the Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, and Marcial Maciel Degollado of Mexico, founder of the Legionaries of Christ, both accused of sexual abuse against their young seminarians and followers, and of extremely serious violations of the sacrament of confession.

The death John Paul II, and the following election of Ratzinger as pope, did not bring to a halt the investigations ordained by the latter. On the contrary.

In May of 2005, the first act signed by the new prefect of the congregation of the faith, William J. Levada of the United States, was precisely the condemnation of Gino Burresi, the first of the two founders of religious orders cited above. The condemnation had the approval of Benedict XVI “in specific form,” which does not admit appeal.

The sentence on the founder of the Legionaries of Christ required more time, and had to overcome more resistance. When L’espresso, on May 20, 2005, gave a detailed report of the interrogations of dozens of accusing testimonies, the Vatican secretariat of state responded by asserting that “there is no canonical proceeding underway in regard to Fr. Maciel, nor is one foreseen for the future.”

What was really at the heart of the apparent denial was that the congregation for the doctrine of the faith was sparing Maciel from a canonical process for reasons of health and age – he was 86. But the condemnation came relentlessly one year later: the revocation of all public ministry, and “a retired life of prayer and penance.”


==============================================================

What Magister's article lacks is a direct confrontation of the BBC accusations that Ratzinger covered up the sex crimes, blatantly misrepresenting documents issued by the CDF to make its point. This aspect is thoroughly discussed in articles found in the thread LAWSUIT VS. RATZINGER, along with the texts of the documents in question.

Although the views expressed here consider the issue in terms of the Church as a whole, I have decided to post this article here because it is occasioned by the BBC documentary which is directed at the person of the Pope as much as it is against the sex crimes it denounces.

Here is a translation of an article from Il Foglio today:

WASP bigotry:
The target is not so much pedophile priests
but the very principle of priestly celibacy


ROME - The English philosopher Roger Scruton says that the BBC documentary on pedophilia is the final chapter in the campaign called "God's clean hands", as the scandal has been called in the United States.

The cultural war over sexual offenses committed by priests has to do with something more profound than the abuses themselves, according to Scruton, professor at Princeton University's Institute for the Psychological Sciences.

"Secularism is so obsessed with sex that it cannot stand what it considers the true 'scandal' of our times: priestly celibacy. They cannot believe that a priest can renounce sex because sexual fantasies are supposed to be a universal human condition. And whoever questions the rightness of promoting homosexuality in schools is labelled homophobic. An attack against the concept of sin also implies a negation of the concept of shame."

The BBC accused Benedict XVI of being part of a cover-up of scandals involving priests - specifically, that he applied a 'secret' document from 1962, Crimen sollecitationis, for such a cover-up.

In Italy, a TV host known for headline-baiting, is planning to show this documentary in prime time. Avvenire, the newspaper of the Italian bishops conference, has dismissed it as 'trash.'

"Every civilization has surrounded the sexual act with a veil of mystery," Scruton continues. "In the world of 'safe sex,' children are being sexualized while the family is marginalized. Secularism considers whoever shows interest in a child will exploit the child sexually. Of course, there will always be priests or teachers who may have this tendency, but they are exceptions, not the rule."

Scruton describes the BBC as an agency that disseminates a culture of emptiness while it moralizes about the Church.

"BBC shows children how to use condoms. It has documentary guide entitled "Say Yes, Say No, Say Maybe' which explains the various sexual positions. It regularly shows video with children in provocatory poses. Liberal intelligence has become incapable of perceiving any danger in such social entropy. Its hysteria over pedophilia is a sign of a society on the verge of self-destruction. There is a vehemence reminiscent of the Salem witch hunts. Liberals cannot accept that there is a way out of sexual folly, a way of renunciation that is able to live in the world but not of it."

At the peak of the scandal of priest abuses in Boston, Christian Ministry Resources reported an average of 70 new complaints filed every week. Cardinal Bernard Law, then Archbishop of Boston, was considered in the media as the symbol of Church arrogance. And yet, of the 60 Boston-area priests who were investigated, only 3 were found guilty as charged.

The archdiocese of Portland, Oregon, declared bankruptcy after paying victims court damages for its guilty priests. The media and law firms had found a meaty bone to feed on, and Protestant secular culture played up the "Papist enemy.'

Time and Newsweek devoted cover stories to 'sex, shame and the Catholic Church.' Dozens of American dioceses were forced to take out loans or sell properties to meet legal claims.

Three years ago, we published a survey by the Wall Street Journal called 'The story of a priest mired in mud'. Just one of several similar stories. Earlier, Cardinal Ratzinger had spoken about a "deliberate campaign...to discredit the Church." Historian Philip Jenkins denounced 'liberal bigotry.'

The media attacked not just the Church hierarchy but Catholic doctrine itself, starting with priestly celibacy and chastity. They advocated married priests, women priests, homosexual priests and bishops.

With the death of Cardinal Bernardin who had been head of the US bishops conference for years, the reins passed to Los Angeles Cardinal Roger Mahoney, theoretician of 'optional celibacy.' It was the National Catholic Reporter, the main US organ of Catholic progressivists, that coined the term 'pedophile priests.'

Theologian George Weigel agrees with Scruton: "There is an attempt to paint the Church as isolated in time. A pedophile priest is a contradiction in terms. He does not belong in the ministry. The Church cannot be what it is not: celibacy is a gift as well as an essential requirement for priests. Most of the abuses took place in the 1960s to the 1980s, the years of
a dominant culture of 'dissension' in seminaries and theological faculties. The true reform that the Catholic Church needs is to become more Catholic, not less."

In 2002, Papa Wojtyla, he said, spoke clearly to American priests in these terms: "So much sorrow, so much unpleasantness, should lead to a more holy priesthood, a more holy episcopate, and a more holy Church."

Three years later, Joseph Ratzinger would distinguish his last Via Crucis meditations as cardinal by calling on his fellow priests to clean the Church of 'filth.'


Il Foglio, 23 maggio 2007

At 5:45 p.m. today, the oratorio Resurrexit was performed at the Aula Paulo VI as a special presentation to the Holy Father by the Italian bishops' conference.

The CEI commissioned composer Alberto Colla and poet Roberto Mussapi to to execute the work for soloists, prose reciters, chorus and orchestra, for the fourth National Congress of the Italian Church held in Verona last October.

VIS later reported:

Yesterday evening in the Paul VI Hall, the Holy Father attended a performance of the "Resurrexi" Oratorio, presented in his honor by prelates of the Italian Episcopal Conference (CEI) for his 80th birthday, which fell on April 16.

"This evening," said the Pope at the end of the concert, "we have had another opportunity to meditate upon the marvelous event of Christ's Resurrection."

He expressed his thanks to the composer and to the performers - the choir and the orchestra of the Arena of Verona - pointing out how the Oratorio evoked "figures and episodes from the Gospel which lead us back to the central mystery of our faith, the Resurrection of the Lord."

"Easter," Pope Benedict went on, "is the heart of Christianity. For all believers and all ecclesial communities the meeting with Christ, crucified and risen, has great importance. Without this individual and community experience, without an intimate friendship with Jesus, faith remains superficial and sterile."

Recalling the fact that Archbishop Angelo Bagnasco of Genoa assumed the presidency of the CEI just a few months ago, Benedict XVI gave assurances of his "best wishes and constant prayer for the high office he is called to fulfill in the service of the Church in Italy."

Get your tickets now, ladies!!!


No rush for tickets to see Pope Benedict XVI in Austria

By DPA
May 23, 2007, 11:39 GMT

Vienna - Austria's enthusiasm for the visit of Pope Benedict XVI in early September was lower than expected, Austria's ORF reported on Wednesday, quoting church insiders.

A month after the introduction of free numbered admission tickets that will allow the faithful to follow the pope on his pilgrimage to the shrine in Mariazell, the anticipated rush for tickets.

Only the city of Vienna, which recorded 3,000 registrations was content with the response.

A possible reason for the lack of enthusiasm was the growing number of Austrians who were sceptical of the Catholic Church.

Moreover, many pilgrims were afraid of chaotic conditions in Mariazell, church officials were quoted as saying.

Austria's Bishops' Conference, the organizers of the pope's visit, on the other hand, remained optimistic, saying it was too soon to jump to conclusions.

Conference press spokesman Paul Wuthe told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa that registrations from individuals were satisfactory, but there was still little information on group attendance and pilgrims from abroad.

The tickets were introduced due to the remote location and difficult access to Mariazell, a key destination for pilgrims from Europe and further afield.

'We know from past experience that several 10,000 can celebrate at Mariazell,' Wuthe said. More than 50,000 pilgrims, however, would make access more than challenging, he added.

Benedict will visit Austria from 7 - 9 September. Apart from celebrating the 850th anniversary of the Mariazell shrine, he was due to visit Vienna and Heiligenkreuz monastery.

Italian bishops insist on air time to rebut BBC program on sex abuse
By Cindy Wooden
Catholic News Service

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Church officials must have an opportunity to comment on-air if Italy's state-run television airs a British documentary about the priest sex abuse crisis, said an Italian bishops' conference official.

"We do not want any censorship," Bishop Giuseppe Betori, general secretary of the Italian bishops' conference, told reporters May 22 in the midst of a very public debate over whether RAI, the state-run television network, should broadcast "Sex Crimes and the Vatican," a 2006 documentary of the British Broadcasting Corp.

Officials at RAI announced late May 22 that they would permit the program to be broadcast, but said the 40-minute documentary would be aired within the context of a talk show, and the guests would include officials from the Italian church.

Bishop Betori said it was essential that someone, either at RAI or the bishops' conference, explain to the public "all of the falsities it seems to contain" when the program airs, probably May 31.

He said the program implies that when Pope Benedict XVI, as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, was head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, he issued norms for handling clerical sex abuses cases aimed at covering up the crimes.

The documentary said that in 2001 then-Cardinal Ratzinger issued an updated version of a 1962 Vatican document, "Crimen Sollicitationis" ("The Crime of Solicitation"), which the documentary said laid down the rules for covering up sexual scandals.

After the documentary aired Oct. 1 in Great Britain, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor of Westminster lodged a formal complaint with the BBC, saying that while no one could deny the "devastating effects of child abuse in our society," particularly when committed by a priest, the documentary "sets out to inflict grave damage on Pope Benedict."

"The main focus of the program is to seek to connect Pope Benedict with (the) cover-up of child abuse in the Catholic Church," the cardinal said. "This is malicious and untrue and based on a false presentation of church documents."

Archbishop Vincent Nichols of Birmingham, England, had criticized the documentary as a "deeply prejudiced attack on a revered world religious leader," misrepresenting the two Vatican documents.

"The first document, issued in 1962, is not directly concerned with child abuse at all but with the misuse of the confessional," he said. "The second document clarified the law of the church, ensuring that the Vatican is informed of every case of child abuse and that each case is dealt with properly. ... It is a measure of the seriousness with which the Vatican views these offenses."

Here is a translation of a composite on Lella's blog from various news agency reports today:

...And Cardinal Martini presents
the book in Paris today

The publishing house Rizzoli, which is responsible for worldwide publication of JESUS OF NAZARETH, under contract with the Vatican,
says the book has now sold more than 1.5 million copies in the Italian, German, Polish and English editions that are out so far.

Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini was scheduled to present the book today at UNESCO headquarters in Paris, the day before the French edition goes on sale tomorrow.

The retired Archbishop of Milan wrote about the book recently:
"This is different from many others, because it employs the historico-critical method without the skepticism that has always been linked with it, a method which when it becomes, as it has been described, 'imperial' - meaning that it does not allow other methods to be considered - simply casts more obscurity on the life of Jesus. So, some exegetes now claim we know practically nothing about Jesus.

"The Pope, on the other hand, finds enough historical foundation about the life of Jesus, from which, with faith in Jesus, he discovers great treasures and richness about Jesus, Son of God."

Tomorrow, there will be a special presentation in Athens of the Greek edition, which carries a special 'post-face' by Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I, who writes:

"Academic knowledge is not enough but necessary. Feeling is not the dominant element, but it is very necessary...As the mystic Fathers say very descriptively, it is necessary that reason enters the heart."

The Patriarch expresses the wish that the Pope's book may help the theological dialog between the Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches to posper "in the hope of definitively overcoming our millennial division" and so that "the two Churches and their faithful may reunite not only in charity but also in faith and in the sacraments."

The Athens presentation will take place at the Archeological Society headquarters, with the participation of Archbishop Patrick Coveney, Apostolic Nuncio to Greece; Mons. Franghiskos Papamanolismons, Bishop of Syros and president of the Synod of the Church of Greece; the Archbishop of Athens, Nikolaos Foscolos; the Bishop of Corfu, Ioannis Spiteris; and Prof. Evangelos Theodory of the University of Athens.

Reconciliation and reproach - Only faith in God can truly heal humanity's wounds, Benedict argued in Brazil

By John L. Allen Jr.
5/22/2007
National Catholic Reporter --

APARECIDA, Brazil - Taken at face value, the three news flashes from Pope Benedict XVI's May 9-13 trip to Brazil - comments about excommunication for pro-choice politicians, a condemnation of drug dealers, and a stinging critique of both capitalism and Marxism  may not seem to have a great deal to do with one another.

In the mind of the pope, however, there's a scarlet thread running through them all.

For Benedict, abortion, drug abuse and false ideological promises all illustrate what happens when a society forgets about God. His basic argument in Brazil was that only faith in God, revealed in Jesus Christ, can truly heal humanitys wounds.

Only from the saints, only from God, does true revolution come, the definitive way to change the world, Benedict said during the May 11 Mass in which he canonized Antônio de SantAna Galvão, popularly known as Frei Galvão, the first saint born in Brazil. It was a line from his homily at World Youth Day in Cologne in 1995.

Thats a message Joseph Ratzinger has been waiting 30 years to bring to Brazil. Arguably, no pope has ever been more theologically prepared for a foreign trip than Benedict was for this one.

It was in 1968 that the bishops of Latin America, meeting in their Third General Conference in Medellín, famously declared a preferential option for the poor, and no country seized that idea with greater gusto than Brazil. The largest Catholic country on earth, Brazil was the laboratory in which liberation theology took shape. Many of liberation theologys great thinkers, such as Leonardo Boff and Frei Betto, and its most stalwart episcopal defenders, such as Bishops Hélder Câmara and Pedro Casaldáliga, as well as Cardinals Paulo Arns and Leo Arlinder Lorscheider, are Brazilians.

Though the battles over liberation theology have long passed, Pope Benedict has never stopped mulling over the issues they raised, which he believes have mutated but never really gone away. In essence, his conviction is that whenever a theological movement tries to recast the faith in order to serve some social good, it not only distorts the churchs tradition, it also fails to deliver on its promised utopia.

The pope always insisted that putting Christ first did not mean he was insensitive to urgent social challenges, and certainly over his five days in Brazil  where the gap between rich and poor is among the widest on the planet  he repeatedly demonstrated that concern.

Benedict began the trip by saying that he believes the late Archbishop Oscar Romero of El Salvador, an icon of the liberation theology movement, merits beatification. On May 12, he visited a rural center for the victims of Latin Americas growing drug scourge, and warned dealers that God will hold them accountable for the evil they have done. He repeatedly urged Christians to work to build a more just and humane society. On the last day of his trip, Benedict tore into the inequities of global capitalism, citing the risk of vast monopolies and of treating profit as the supreme value. He also endorsed the preferential option for the poor, saying it is implied in faith in Christ who became poor for us.

Nevertheless, Benedict insisted that the best service the church can offer is to affirm the centrality of Christ, the sacraments and the spiritual life. Failure to keep those priorities clear, he suggested in a tough address to Brazilian bishops May 11, goes a long way toward explaining the losses of the Catholic Church to Pentecostal and evangelical sects.

His most extended reflection came on the last day of the trip, May 13, in a 6,000-word speech for the opening of the Fifth General Conference of the Bishops of Latin America and the Caribbean (CELAM) in Aparecida. Benedict conceded that his accent on traditional teaching about Christ could seem like putting his head into the sand in face of Latin Americas urgent social problems.

Could this priority not perhaps be a flight towards emotionalism, towards religious individualism, an abandonment of the urgent reality of the great economic, social and political problems of Latin America and the world, and a flight from reality toward a spiritual world? he asked rhetorically. Precisely those accusations were sometimes made by liberation theologians against traditional forms of Catholic piety.

In fact, Benedict argued, the question presupposes a vision of reality that marginalizes God.

This was precisely the great error of the dominant tendencies of the last century, a most destructive error, as we can see from the results of both Marxist and capitalist systems, he said. They falsify the notion of reality by detaching it from the foundational and decisive reality, which is God. Doing so, he warned, is a recipe for destruction.

Not mincing words

Thats the context for understanding his comments on abortion and excommunication during an airborne news conference on the papal plane May 9. Benedict was asked twice about recent developments in Mexico City, where abortion has been legalized, and church spokespersons have invoked the specter of excommunication for legislators who voted in favor. The first time the pope didnt engage the question, preferring to speak instead about the churchs engagement on behalf of the family. The second time around, however, he minced no words.

Yes, this excommunication was not something arbitrary, but its part of church law, he said. Its based simply on the principle that the killing of an innocent human child is incompatible with going in communion with the body of Christ.

While the comments suggest that the pope personally believes Catholic politicians who vote in favor of abortion rights should not receive Communion, it remains to be seen whether he will impose this as a matter of policy on bishops who take another pastoral course. In July 2004, then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger supported a vote of the U.S. bishops to leave the matter in the hands of individual bishops.

The popes position on abortion was of a piece with his revulsion at those who ply young and vulnerable people with drugs; both, in his view, reflect a society without an adequate moral compass.

The proper role of the church, Benedict said, is to shape a moral consensus in society, not to offer direct political solutions.

If the church were to start transforming herself into a directly political subject, she would do less, not more, for the poor and for justice, the pope said, because she would lose her independence and her moral authority, identifying herself with a single political path and with debatable partisan positions. The church is the advocate of justice and of the poor precisely because she does not identify with politicians nor with partisan interests.

Against the backdrop of dramatic Catholic losses across Latin America to Pentecostal and evangelical movements, as well as growing numbers of people who say they have no religious faith at all, Benedict issued an impassioned appeal to stick with the church.

At the largest Marian sanctuary in the Southern Hemisphere, Our Lady of Aparecida, Benedict thundered, The church is our home! This is our home!

The pope recommended a renewed focus on the Bible, stronger catechesis and faith formation, greater use of the media, a deeper devotion to the Eucharist and commitment to Sunday Mass as ways to revitalize Catholicism.

At the same time, however, Benedict indirectly advised Latin American bishops not to mimic too closely the strategies of their Pentecostal competitors. The church should not engage, he said, in proselytism, but rather it must grow by attraction, through spiritual and practical imitation of Christ.

Brazilian observers seemed broadly pleased, especially since it was a personal choice of Benedict to hold the CELAM meeting in Brazil. At the same time, some were skeptical that the popes visit would have dramatic results, at least in the short run.

Religious phenomena develop over a long arc of time, said Father José Oscar Beozzo, a priest of the Lins Diocese in Brazil and a respected historian of religion in the country. Isolated events, even the most important, generally have only a small impact. They cant really change the underlying social fabric.

If change is going to come, Beozzo told National Catholic Reporter in a May 10 interview, it must be the result of long-term, grass-roots efforts that unfold in the lives of the people.

Its not clear that Benedicts firm defense of tradition played especially well in a country scarred by memories of a military dictatorship, where conservative and right-wing are almost pejorative terms.

This pope delivered all his messages with a harsh tone of reproach, an editorial in Folha de São Paulo, the most important newspaper in Brazils financial capital, asserted.

A new beginning

Yet the popes core audience, at least, seemed cheered. Sister Rosely Guarnieri, a member of the Apostles of the Sacred Heart, voiced optimism.

His presence is very important for Brazil, she said during the May 11 canonization Mass of Frei Galvão. This will be a new beginning.

In one sense, Beozzo agreed. Noting that for 30 years Brazilian Catholicism and Joseph Ratzinger have been seen as antagonists, Beozzo said the popes desire to come here marks a gesture of reconciliation.

This visit normalizes Brazils situation within the universal church, Beozzo said.

While the crowds that greeted Benedict in Brazil were generally enthusiastic, they were small by the standards of the largest Catholic country on earth. The canonization Mass in São Paulo drew between 600,000 and 800,000, roughly 2.5 percent of the population of the second-largest Catholic city in the world, after Mexico City. Only 150,000 attended the popes open-air Mass in Aparecida May 13, even though the Vatican had predicted more than 1 million.

Brazilian observers said the lower-than-expected turnout was probably a combination of the laid-back ethos of Brazilian Catholicism, along with the fact that since Pope John Paul II visited the country four times, a papal trip is no longer a novelty. In addition, they say, Benedict XVI may be admired, but he doesnt have the star power of his predecessor.

The Fifth General Conference of CELAM in Aparecida concludes May 31, and observers will be waiting to see if the bishops come up with imaginative new pastoral plans to flesh out Benedicts broad orientations.

=====================================================================

Benefan - As you can see, the updated FFZ system does not 'read' all imported texts the same way. I noticed it with an AsiaNews report earlier today, and now with the John Allen piece you post here. You see squares where there should be apostrophes or quotation marks.

I would request everyone from here on to check their posts and see if this happens, so you can then go in and make the changes (replace all the squares with an apostrophe or a quotation mark as needed). I did that with the AsiaNews report as soon as I noticed.

TERESA

The title given to this piece, translated from today's issue of Il Foglio, is much too kind. It is not so much ignorance - and if it is, then it is deliberate ignorance, because this is not nuclear physics - rather, it is genuine, active malice against the Church and against the Pope that is behind all this furor. There is a conspiracy (even if not formal) of malice and prejudice, not ignorance, as one can tell even by the posts of the resolute anti-Church members of this Forum (the Italian section) who have been saying the same things over and over for the past two years on this issue, without ever once replying to the factual and textual evidence, which they obviously refuse to look at.



A conspiracy of the ignorant
By Massimo Introvigne



Only secular rage after the success of Family Day could explain why suddenly BBC's October 2006 documentary "Sex Crimes and the Vatican" started circulating on the Internet with Italian subtitles, and TV talkshow host Michele Santoro got into the act.

The documentary itself was almost immediately shown to be 'damaged goods' after it was first aired. Its patently false claims were easily shredded by canon law experts who showed how it deliberately failed to distinguish between Church law and civil law.

The Church has its own penal law for its priests, where sanctions and penalties applied to offenders have nothing to do with the civil law, even if a priest could be found guilty of an offense under both canon law and civil law. In which case, the Church would either suspend the offender from exercising his ministry, return him to secular status or excommunicate him, depending on the severity of the offense. And the State would fine and/or imprison him.

On April 30, 2001 Pope John Paul II published the Apostolic Letter "Sacramentorum sanctitatis tutela», which contained a series of norms about which canonical penal proceedings were reserved to the jurisdiction of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, and which ones to other Vatican or diocesan tribunals.

The letter «De delictis gravioribus» signed by Joseph Ratzinger as CDF Prefect on May 18, 2001 - which the BBC presented as a 'secret' document - constituted the rules applying the norms stated by the Pope. This 'secret' document was, in fact, immediately published in the official bulletin of the Holy See and on the Vatican site.

In Paragraph 3 of the letter from Ratzinger, he cites the instruction «Crimen sollicitationis» issued by the CDF on March 16, 1962, when it was still known by its traditional name, the Holy Office, and 20 years before Ratzinger came to the CDF.

This long-forgotten document - which resurfaced precisely because of Ratzinger's letter - dealt with the old problem of priests who abuse the sacrament of confession to start a sexual involvement with someone in their flock.

The 1962 instruction does not hide that abuse but rather makes clear that any priest who becomes aware of such things should report it, and that failing to do so could be ground for excommunication.

It also provides that charges and investigations should not be made public prematurely to protect the privacy of witnesses and that of the person charged who, as in civil law, is presumed innocent until proven guilty.

Ratzinger's 2001 letter, contrary to what the documentary charges, in fact sets up more severe sanctions for cases of sexual abuse of minors, extending the statute of limitations beyond the normal, up to when whoever claims to have been a victim reaches the age of 28.

The severity of the Church against priests accused of abusing minors was stepped up since Benedict XVI became Pope. Archbishop William Levada, whom he named to succeed him at CDF, has had first-hand experience in dealing with cases of abusive priests. [Two major Church figures have been sanctioned so far under Benedict for sex offenses - the Italian Gino Burresi and the Mexixan Maciel Macias.]

All the norms spelled out in these documents have to do with canon law (Church law) and have nothing to do with civil law. Nor do they affect the general principle that anyone in the Church who learns something, outside the confessional, of offenses punishable by civil law, has the duty to report this to the proper civilian authorities.

The deliberate misinformation - clearly aimed to sling mud against the Pope - is simply the fruit of prejudice and ignorance.


Il Giornale, 23 maggio 2007


A word about Massimo Introvigne, whose articles we have translated here on several occasions:

He is the managing director of the Turin-based CESNUR, the Center for Studies on New Religions, established in 1988 by a group of religious scholars from leading universities in Europe and the Americas. Introvigne has taught sociology and history of religion in a number of Italian universities.

He is the author of twenty-three books and the editor of another ten in the field of religious sciences. In 2006, he published two books, "Il dramma dell'Europa senza Cristo" (The tragedy of Europe without Christ) and "La Turchia e l'Europa: Religione e politica nell'Islam turco" (Turkey and Europe: Religion and politics in Turkish Islam), as well as a book translated to English, "Beyond the Da Vinci Code: History and myths of the Priory of Sion".

CESNUR is quite active as one can see from a visit to their site
www.cesnur.org/default.htm

Patrice de Plunkett has reported promptly in his blog today about Cardinal Martini's presentation of the Pope's book JESUS OF NAZARETH which he attended at UNESCO headquarters this morning. Here is a translation:


Cardinal Martini presents
the Pope's book;
the French edition comes out
By PATRICE DE PLUNKETT


Before hundreds of journalists as well as academics and diplomats, a round-table discussion was held this morning at UNESCO headquarters in Paris on Benedict XVI's JESUS OF NAZARETH.

The interventors were Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini, Biblical exegete and emeritus Archbishop of Milan; and Mons. Joseph Doré, theologian and emeritus Archbishop of Strasbourg.

Cardinal Martini's views were particularly awaited because the media had presented Martini as the liberal anti-dogmatic counterpoint to Joseph Ratzinger at the 2005 Conclave.

But what they heard was warm praise for the Pope's book from Martini who said: "I had thought to write a book of Jesus Christ towards the end of my days, and I haven't done it. I am very happy about the book we have here today. It answers my desires and my expectations, and I wish you the same joy that I had in reading it."

The cardinal pointed out some particular merits he found in Ratzinger's investigation into Jesus of Nazareth: above all, showing that Jesus is not a myth but a flesh-and-blood being who is present in history, and whose influence cannot be explained except by what appeared mysterious (or unacceptable, depending on your point of view) during his public life - Jesus's manifestation of the 'most profound theme of his preachings', which was 'his own mystery', the mystery of his union with the Father, a mystery that was 'always present' in his acts and gestures, which is the key to everything - is how the cardinal summarized it. And this, he said, was the decisive point of Ratzinger's argument.

Martini also underscored other lessons from the book, such as the injunction to read the Bible "as a unity and a totality, as the word of God that is consistent in all its historical levels."

He remarked on the modernity of Ratzinger's intellectual approach which uses fully all that has been learned by historico-critical research while "refusing to allow this to invade the entire field of reflection (and thus destroying the object of its investigation by making it incomprehensible)".

Mons. Doré looked at the structure of the book as an investigation that shows:
- that Jesus made himself 'central' (presenting himself as the new Torah);
- that this centrality is anchored in the completely unique character of his personal relationship with the Father;
- Jesus's uniqueness which called for a radical response from his disciples when he told them. "Follow me" [it was this 'me' that seemed a blasphemous presumption to the Jewish high priests]; and
- this totality (centrality + uniqueness + radicality) is the almost tangible fact through which Jesus becomes intelligible and consistent on the historical level as well as on the level of faith: and that from this perspective, everything that one takes to be enigma or contradiction in the New Testament is resolved.

Mgr Doré underscored the profound originality of this study: in which Joseph Ratzinger does not call on the teaching of the Magisterium, nor on historical science, nor on human psychology (in terms of desires-expectations). He starts from the givens of the New Testament, transmitted by authors/editors who were objectively sure of what they were narrating, and received by all succeeding Christian generations. And he tells us why we can rely on these givens, take the accounts of the disciples seriously, understand why the very happening of Jesus was revolutionary.

As for the somewhat polemical aspects of the book, Mgr Doré justified it, saying: If there are some scathing passages against some interpretative tendencies in the last 50 years, they are driven by the impulse of a man who loves Jesus, but it is also the reaction of a specialist who is outraged that history can be amputated; above all, it is the concern of a pastor who wants to let his people have access to what is essential, an access that is obstructed by such tendencies.

With this book, he said, Joseph Ratzinger provides every reader with the means to evaluate the subject and then take a personal stand.

This line was already implicit in the earlier Reuters and AP reports about the Pope's address at the general audience yesterday, but it is made explicit here - as explicit as an item yesterday in the French Catholic newspaper La Croix entitled "The habitual turnaround Pope" ("Un pape 'coutumier des revirements'), which also rehashed Regensburg and Auschwitz as this story does.


At the general audience yesterday, 5/23/07.


Pope once again in damage control mode
by Gina Doggett



VATICAN CITY, May 23 (AFP) - Pope Benedict XVI, acknowledging the "suffering" of indigenous Latin Americans, moved Wednesday to control damage caused by remarks made during his trip to Brazil, eight months after roiling the Muslim world with comments linking Islam to violence.

One cannot "ignore the suffering and the injustices inflicted by the colonisers on the indigenous populations (whose) fundamental human rights were often trampled on," Pope Benedict said during his weekly general audience.

The pope had said on the last day of his May 9-13 trip to Brazil that "Christianity was not imposed by a foreign culture," [This is an inexact and misleading paraphrase of what he actually said!] drawing a sharp reaction from leaders of indigenous groups to whom the remark smacked of revisionism.

"Christ was the Savior (America's natives) silently yearned for," the intellectual pope told Latin American bishops in the speech in the Marian shrine town of Aparecida.

The 80-year-old Pope Benedict also called the resurgence of pre-Columbian religions "a step backward," offending native peoples as far away as Mexico. [He never used the word 'resurgence' - he said going back to pre-Colombian times would be a 'step backward', and is that not literally adn figuratively true. Everytime MSM reports these so-called 'corrections,' they make things worse by misreporting what was originally said, to begin with!?]

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez demanded an apology following Pope Benedict's trip, his first to the Americas since his election as pope two years ago.

Indigenous and missionary groups in Brazil praised Pope Benedict XVI for revising his controversial remark.

"He shows honor and courage by backtracking and recognising the unjustified crimes of the colonisers and how they trampled the fundamental rights" of indigenous people, Paulo Suess, religious advisor to the Indigenous Missionary Council of Brazil, told AFP in Brasilia.

The Brazilian Justice Ministry's National Indian Foundation gave "a positive review to the pope's retraction" and welcomed that "he recognises the somber past" of Spanish colonisation.

The pontiff is sometimes "remarkably tone-deaf to how his pronouncements may sound to people who don't share his intellectual and cultural premises," said Vatican expert John Allen of the US-based National Catholic Reporter in an on-line editorial.

In fact, Pope Benedict's reasoning was that "because Christ came for all (humankind) ... Christianity was not alien to pre-Columbian cultures; it was the fulfillment to which their religious experience pointed," Allen said.

Pope Benedict did not "bend over backwards" to recall the brutality of Spain's conquistadors while converting native peoples to Christianity, he noted.

By contrast, Pope Benedict's media-savvy predecessor John Paul II, during a 1992 visit to the Dominican Republic, asked for forgiveness from indigenous peoples for the suffering inflicted by Spanish colonisers.

More generally, Pope Benedict and John Paul II, while sharing deeply conservative views, could not be more different in their sensitivity to public opinion.

The gaffe in Brazil recalled the fury of Muslims all over the world after the pope seemed to link Islam to violence, and anger among Jewish leaders over remarks he made at Auschwitz during a visit to Poland.

In an intellectual speech at the University of Regensburg in his native Germany last September, Pope Benedict quoted a medieval Christian emperor who criticised some teachings of the Prophet Mohammed as "evil and inhuman".

The lecture sparked days of sometimes violent protests in Muslim countries, prompting the pontiff to say that he was "deeply sorry" for any offence and to attribute Muslim anger to an "unfortunate misunderstanding".

But he stopped short of apologising for the remarks, and the Vatican website posted an annotated version of the speech, in which Pope Benedict wrote that the offending phrase "does not express my personal opinion on the Koran, for which I feel the respect that is due to the holy book of a great religion."

During his first trip to a Muslim country as pontiff - to Turkey in November -- the pope made a stunning conciliatory gesture by stopping for a moment of prayer inside Istanbul's Blue Mosque.

The move buried the controversy for many Muslim leaders.

Four months earlier, many Jews took umbrage when Pope Benedict referred during a visit to the Nazi death camp in Auschwitz to the "six million Polish victims" of World War II without mentioning that half of them were Jewish.

Pope Benedict, an unwilling member of the Hitler Youth during the war, also seemed to absolve ordinary Germans of responsibility for Nazi crimes, attributing them to a "ring of criminals (who) rose to power by false promises of future greatness ... but also through terror and intimidation."

Three days later, back in the Vatican, Pope Benedict spoke of the "some six million Jews" who were slaughtered in Nazi death camps, though he did not address the issue of responsibility.

The Holy Father today addressed the current general asembly of the Italian bishops conference which began Monday and ends tomorrow. The full text may be found on HOMILIES, DISCOURSES, MESSAGES. It should be read in full - it's not lengthy, but very personal and pastoral.



AP filed the first story, and picked out only his 'topical' references:


Pope praises traditional family
By NICOLE WINFIELD

VATICAN CITY, May 24 (AP) - Pope Benedict XVI on Thursday praised a recent demonstration in Rome against proposed legislation granting legal rights to unmarried couples, including gay ones, saying it showed that traditional family was at the core of Italian society.

Benedict called the May 12 Family Day rally, organized by Catholic groups and family associations, a "great and extraordinary popular festival."

Hundreds of thousands [1.7 million was the police figure!] of people turned out for the demonstration to protest a bill that would grant legal rights to unmarried couples, including hospital visits and inheritance rights. The bill does not legalize gay marriage, as was done in other European countries, such as Spain.

The bill has angered the Vatican, which under Benedict has been conducting a fierce campaign to protect traditional family based on marriage between man and woman.

In a speech to Italian bishops, Benedict said he respected the distinction between the church and politics. But he added that the church cannot ignore "what is good for man ... what is good for the common good of Italy."

He said the Family Day rally "confirmed that the family itself is profoundly rooted in the heart and life of Italians."

Benedict's speech came as the government opened a conference on the family in Florence to help it create family policies that are, according to organizers, "more European and more modern." The conference was organized by the two Cabinet ministers spearheading the legislation on legal recognition for unmarried couples.

In a keynote speech, Italian President Giorgio Napolitano urged lawmakers to listen to the church and not create an artificial confrontation between Catholics and laity. But he said that de facto unions were "a reality" that had to be taken into account.

The number of official marriages celebrated in Italy has declined steadily since the early 1970s with an ever increasing number of de facto unions taking their place. The national statistics bureau, Istat, estimates there were about 592,000 such unions in Italy in 2005, or about 4.1 percent of all heterosexual couples.




The report from VIS (Vatican Information Services):

BENEDICT XVI ADDRESSES THE ITALIAN EPISCOPAL CONFERENCE

VATICAN CITY, MAY 24, 2007 (VIS) - At midday today in the Vatican's Synod Hall, the Holy Father met with participants in the 57th general assembly of the Italian Episcopal Conference, which is being held this week.

The Pope noted how the meetings he had held with Italian bishops during their "ad limina" visits over recent months had served to corroborate his "conviction that in Italy the faith is alive and profoundly rooted, and that the Church is an organization of the people, a capillary network close to individuals and families. ... The Catholic faith and the presence of the Church remain the great unifying factor of this beloved nation and a precious reservoir of moral energies for the future."

Apart from these "positive elements," Benedict XVI also noted "the difficulties and snares" which, he said, "can grow with the passage of time and of the generations."

In this context he warned against "a culture marked by moral relativism, poor in certainties and rich in demands, at times unjustified demands. We also feel the need to reinforce Christian formation through a more profound catechesis, and to this end the Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church can be of great service.

"There is also need," he added, "for a constant commitment to place God always at the center of the lives of our communities, giving primacy to prayer, to personal friendship with Jesus and, hence, to the call to sanctity. In particular, great concern must be shown for vocations to the priesthood and to consecrated life."

The Pope noted the connection between the theme of this general assembly - "Jesus Christ, the only Savior of the world: the Church on her mission, 'ad gentes' and among us" - and the goals of the Ecclesial Congress of Verona, held in October 2006.

What is important, he said, is "to announce and bear witness to Jesus Christ," to "those peoples who are opening to the faith for the first time, to the children of the peoples who now live and work in Italy, and to our own people who at times have abandoned the faith and who are anyway subject to the pressure of the secularizing tendencies that seek to dominate the society and culture of this country."

"Today too, as the Declaration 'Dominus Iesus' reaffirmed, we must be fully aware that from the mystery of Jesus Christ, true God and true man living and present in the Church, comes the salvific unicity and universality of Christian revelation and, consequently, the essential task of announcing Jesus Christ to everyone."

"Esteem and respect towards other religions and cultures, with the seeds of truth and goodness they contain, ... are especially necessary in our own times," said the Holy Father. "However, there must be no reduction in our awareness of the originality, fullness and unicity of the revelation of the true God Who in Christ was definitively given us, and nor can the Church's missionary vocation be diminished or weakened."

The Pope then went on to refer to the bishops' "specific responsibility, not only towards the Churches entrusted to you but also towards the entire nation."

And he added: "While fully and cordially respecting the distinction between Church and politics, between what belongs to Caesar and what belongs to God, we cannot but concern ourselves with what is good for mankind," and specifically with "the common good of Italy."

In this context the Pope mentioned "the Note approved by the Permanent Episcopal Council dealing with the family founded on marriage and with legislative initiatives concerning de facto unions," in which he identified "full harmony with the teaching of the Apostolic See."

A recent demonstration in support of the family organized in Rome "at the initiative of the Catholic lay faithful but attended by many non-Catholics," said the Holy Father, "certainly contributed to making everyone more aware of the significance and role of the family in society, ... in the face of a culture that deludes itself that it favors happiness by a unilateral insistence on individual freedom."

The Pope mentioned the "daily service to many forms of poverty, old and new, visible and hidden," and praised the work of Caritas and of volunteer organizations. He invited bishops to promote this service so that "everyone can see there is no separation between the Church, custodian of moral law, ... and the Church that invites the faithful to become good Samaritans and recognize a brother in each suffering person."

Finally, Pope Benedict recalled the pastoral initiatives underway in preparation for the next World Youth Day, due to be held in Sydney, Australia in 2008. "We well know," he said, "that the Christian formation of the new generations is perhaps the most difficult, but the most supremely important, task the Church has to face."



From AsiaNews:

Pope: to counter rising relativism,
the Church must renew its missionary vocation


Vatican City, May 24 (AsiaNews) "In modern society, where the tide of relativism is rising, the Church cannot renege on announcing the Gospel," neither can it "reduce or weaken its missionary vocation" or above all give up on formation especially of the young, "perhaps the most difficult task, but certainly its most important."

At the same time, the Church cannot falter in standing up for 'the good of mankind', such as safeguarding the family - "the Church appreciates and encourages the State to work in its favour" - and the "daily service to the many poor, old and new, visible and invisible."

The Church's actions in favour of mankind, from both the spiritual and material point of view, were at the heart of Benedict XVI's speech to the Italian bishops, who were gathered today in the Vatican for their 57th general assembly.

"We note on a daily basis,' said the Pope, "the weight of a culture that is imbued with moral relativism, lacking in certainties but rich in unjustified accusations." As a result, "there is a need to strengthen our Christian formation: which according to the Pope's address is first among the Church's priorities, with the spreading of the Gospel.

The Pope affirmed that "esteem and respect toward other religions and cultures, with the seeds of truth and goodness that are present in them and which represent a preparation for the Gospel, are particularly necessary today in a world that is growing closer".

At the same time however, this "respect for others cannot diminish awareness of the originality, fullness and uniqueness of the revelation of the true God definitively given in Christ":

An added responsibility for the bishops is their duty to towards the nation. "Dear friends," he said, "you have a precise responsibility not only to the Church but also towards the entire nation." A responsibility, "which fully respects the distinction between the Church and politics, between what belongs to Cesar and what belongs to God, we cannot help concerning ourselves with that which is good...for the person, created in the image of God; in short for Italian society".

On examining the concrete aspects of the Churches active life, Benedict XVI had words of praise for Family Day, the demonstration in support of the family promoted by Catholic associations, "but also shared by many non Catholics," which he described as "an extraordinary popular celebration which shows how the family is deeply rooted in the hearts and lives of Italians."

He noted how it "helped make plain for all to see that role which the family has in society and which today really needs to be understood and recognised, in the face of a culture that deceives itself that it is promoting people's happiness by insisting unilaterally on the freedom of individuals."

This is why the Pope maintains that "all initiatives undertaken by the State in favour of the family must be appreciated and encouraged."

"A similar attention to the real needs of the people," he said, "is seen in the daily acts of charity towards the many poor, old and new, visible and invisible."

Recalling the pastoral activities of the parishes, diocese and Caritas, and urging the bishops to "promote and animate this service," Benedict XVI said such service should make it clear that there is no separation whatsoever "between the church which is the custodian of moral law, written by God in man's heart, and the Church which invites the faithful to become good Samaritans, recognising their brethren in those who suffer."

---

PAPA: 50 MILA FEDELI LO ACCLAMANO IN PIAZZA SAN PIETRO

Una folla grandissima e imprevista ha accolto questa mattina Benedetto XVI in piazza San Pietro per l'Udienza Generale. La Prefettura della Casa Pontificia aveva distribuito nei giorni scorsi "solo" 25 mila biglietti per l'appuntamento di oggi, ma sono presenti almeno 50 mila fedeli, come mostrano le riprese dall'alto della Piazza, gremita e festante. Al suo arrivo il Pontefice ha girato i diversi settori con la jeep bianca scoperta, salutando e benedicendo la folla.

Repubblica.it

---

This appeared on Repubblica online yesterday, although that newspaper is generally unfriendly to the Pope. In fact, the figure is not mentioned at all in their correspondent Marco Politi's report today about the general audience - oh no!, like most of MSM, he only reports Benedict's crowds when they are in 'low numbers' as supposedly registered in Aparecida.



Anyway, the simple translation of the above:

A huge unexpected crowd welcomed Benedict XVI this morning at St. Peter's Square for the general audience. The Prefecture of the Papal Household had distributed 'only' 25,000 tickets for the audience, but there were at least 50,000 present, judging from aerial views of the Square, which was crowded and festive. On his arrival, the Pontiff went through the various sectors in his open white jeep to greet and bless the crowd.

=================================================================

The Pope's first public activity yesterday took place before the general audience, according to a story from ZENIT's Spanish service,
with pictures posted by Paparatzifan:



Here's a translation of the ZENIT report:

The 'saint of the family'
at St. Peter's Basilica


ROME, May 23 (ZENIT.org).- Benedict XVI blessed Wednesday a statue of St. José Manyanet y Vives (1833-1901), a Spanish (Catalan) priest who contributed in his time to the renewal of family and society by preaching the example of the Holy Family of Nazareth.

The ceremony took place before the Pope went to St. Peter's Square for his Wednesday general audience. The statue is located in an external niche of St. Peter's Basilica near those honoring other founders of religious orders and church movements.

Mayanet, who was canonized by John Paul II on May 16, 2004, funded two religious orders: the Sons of the Holy Family Jesus, Mary and Joseph (1864) and the Missionary Daughters of the Holy Family of Nazareth (1874).

Present at the ceremony were the superiors-general of the two orders; the Spaniard Luis Picazo Ustrell and the Venezuelan Edith Gutierrez Zarraga.

Also present were the Archbishop of Barcelona, Mons. Lluís Martínez Sistach; the bishop of Urgel, Joan Enric Vives; and the ambassador of Spain to the Holy See, Francisco Vázquez.

Mayanet was one of the major inspirations behind the construction of the Holy Family temple in Barcelona, the unfinished but universally recognized architectural triumph of the Antoni Gaudi, who is himself in the process of beatification.

The mission of the orders founded by Mayanet is to 'imitate, honor and propagate the cult' of the Holy Family of Nazareth and to promote Christian formation of families, principally through Catholic instruction and education from infancy, and through the priesthood.

Both orders have branches in Europe, Latin America, Africa and the United States, with a present membership of about 300 priests and 500 nuns.

DELEGATIONS FROM BULGARIA AND MACEDONIA VISIT THE POPE


Pope Benedict with Bulgarian Parliament president Pirinski (left photo), and Macedonian Parliament president Georgievski (right).


VATICAN CITY, MAY 24, 2007 (VIS) - In the Vatican today at 11 a.m., Benedict XVI received Georgi Pirinski, president of the parliament of the Republic of Bulgaria. Later, at 11.30 a.m., he received Liubisha Georgievski, president of the parliament of the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. Both men, leading delegations from their respective countries, have come to Rome for the commemoration of Sts. Cyril and Methodius.

Addressing the Bulgarian delegation, the Pope noted how their visit was an expression "of the desire to reaffirm their own European traditions, profoundly steeped in Evangelical values. Of course, given its origins, the history of Bulgaria precedes Christian revelation, however there can be no doubt that in the Gospel the country found a source of values capable of reinforcing the culture, identity and genius typical of its people."

"Following the sad and austere period of communist domination," the Pope continued, "Bulgaria today is moving towards full integration with other European nations. ... It is my fervent wish that the cultural and spiritual foundations present in Bulgarian society may continue to be cultivated within the country, and that they ... may be proposed and defended in those organizations of which she is already an authoritative member. I particularly hope that Bulgaria and her people may conserve and promote the Christian virtues that came down to them from Sts. Cyril and Methodius, still pertinent and necessary today."

The Holy Father told the Macedonian delegation that he shared their desire, "not only that the spiritual patrimony you have inherited be shared, but also that your particular identity be granted its due consideration by the other European peoples who are close to you in terms of tradition and culture."

"My cordial wish," he concluded, "is that you will be able to conserve, always and faithfully, the heritage of your two saintly protectors, so that your voice, both in the civil and religious field, may be heard and given just consideration."

With Pirinski of Bulgaria