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BENEDICT XVI: NEWS, PAPAL TEXTS, PHOTOS AND COMMENTARY

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Companions on the road to Easter
by George Weigel

April 20, 2011


ROME — For the past six weeks, I’ve had the privilege of participating in the station church pilgrimage of Lent, a Roman tradition that dates back to Christian antiquity.

From at least the early fourth century, the Pope celebrated Mass during Lent with his clergy and the Roman Christian community at a designated “station” church. As Christianity became a more public faith, these “stations” were often basilicas built to honor Roman martyrs, constructed atop or around a former house church.

Pope St. Gregory the Great fixed the order of the Roman station church pilgrimage in the sixth century, although further stations were added later as the Roman Church began to celebrate Mass on every one of the Forty Days.

The classic station church pilgrimage died when the Popes moved to Avignon in the 14th century. But strong echoes of the ancient pilgrimage remained in the liturgy, for the Mass texts and prayers of Lent frequently reflected the Roman station church of the day and the saint honored there.

Those echoes continue, if in more muted form, in the post-conciliar Lenten liturgy. What has been revived, however, and in a very dramatic way, is the station church pilgrimage itself. And the revival has been largely an American affair.

In the mid-1980s, students from the Pontifical North American College, the U.S. seminary on Rome’s Janiculum Hill, began to follow the ancient custom of walking to the station church traditionally appointed for that day, each day of Lent.

The practice caught on among other English-speakers in the city, so that, in Lent 2011, as many as 500 Anglophones have come to the traditional station church of the day at 7 a.m. for Mass. Many walk. Others take buses, or the Metro, or drive.

But on any given day of Lent, Monday through Saturday, you’ll find hundreds of English-speakers at the station church of the day, keeping faith with the traditions of the first millennium.

I was introduced to this happy custom in the mid-1990s, while working on the biography of Pope John Paul II, and over the past 17 years it has been a rare Lent when I have not been able to make at least a part of the station church pilgrimage.

This year, I’m doing the entire pilgrimage while preparing a book on this remarkable tradition in cooperation with Elizabeth Lev, a brilliant art historian, and my son, Stephen, a gifted photographer.

We hope to have The Station Churches of Rome: A Pilgrimage of Conversion available by Lent 2013 in formats ranging from a traditional hardback to an iPhone app: as a means of discovering many unknown riches of Roman church art and architecture; as a companion with which to “make” the station church pilgrimage at home; as an invitation to try a part of the pilgrimage in person; and, we hope, as a literary and visual deepening of the Lenten experience, wherever one lives the Forty Days.

Along with some classic studies of the liturgy, one new book has been an invaluable companion on this year’s station church walk: Pope Benedict XVI’s recently published study, Jesus of Nazareth: Holy Week: From the Entrance into Jerusalem to the Resurrection (Ignatius Press).

Father Raymond de Souza has written that this second volume of the Pope’s projected three-volume masterwork on Jesus firmly establishes Joseph Ratzinger as the most learned man in the world. It’s a title the Holy Father would doubtless dismiss with his usual shy smile. A close reading of the book suggests that Father de Souza was not exaggerating.

There is an astonishing amount of learning, distilled over a lifetime of reading and prayerful reflection, gathered here. Benedict XVI is fully in command of contemporary biblical scholarship. Rather than dissecting the biblical text, though, he deploys that critical historical knowledge in a richly theological and spiritual presentation of the Passion narratives that invites the reader into the mystery of Jesus Christ, crucified and risen - and does so in a way that is accessible to everyone.

For which he deserves the gratitude of the entire Christian world.

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April 21, MAUNDY THURSDAY


Today's saint:

ST. ANSELM OF CANTEBRURY (ANSELMO D'AOSTA) (b Italy 1033, d England 1109)
Benedictine monk, Abbot, Archbishop of Aosta, Archbishop of Canterbury, Doctor of the Church
Anselm first wanted to be a priest at 15 but his rich father opposed him, and so he spent the next 12 years of his life enjoying life to the full. During a trip to France, he came to the Benedictine monastery of Bec in Normandy, and joined the order at age 27. Within 15 years, he became its abbot, succeeding Lanfranc, who had been his mentor, quickly transforming Bec into a famous monastic school. He also started publishing his philosophical and theological works which were likened to St. Augustine's, in which he sought to analyze and illumine the faith through reason. Meanwhile, Lanfranc had been sent to England to help the English clergy in a much-needed renewal. As Archbishop of Canterbury, he asked Anselm to help him, and when Lanfranc died, Anselm was named to succeed him. It was 1093 and he was 60 years old. He spent the rest of his life fighting to defend Church freedom in England. Twice he was exiled by two kings for his opposition to them. Finally in 1106, King Henry I renounced his right to the conferral of ecclesiastical offices, the collection of taxes and the confiscation of Church properties. Anselm returned to England in triumph, devoting himself to moral formation of the clergy and carrying on his own theological studies. He is considered the father of Christian scholasticism. He died in 1109. He was canonized in 1492 and proclaimed a Doctor of the Church in 1720. Benedict XVI devoted a catechesis to him on Sept. 23, 2009
www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/audiences/2009/documents/hf_ben-xvi_aud_20090923...
Readings for today's Mass:
www.usccb.org/nab/readings/042111.shtml



OR today.

At the General Audience, Benedict XVI speaks of the Paschal Triduum:
'Christ brings human poverty to the level of God'
A Page 1 editorial pays tribute to Benedict XVI, 'The simple worker in the vineyard of the Lord', as he begins the seventh year of his Pontificate (translated and posted in the preceding page of this thread), and the OR announces that on April 27, it will issue a 100-page full-color supplement as a tribute to Blessed Karol Wojtyla/John Paul II, Christian and Bishop of Rome. Page 1 international news: The UN asks international aid for 800,000 Libyans in need of humanitarian services; and China raps the US government for putting international investors at risk by its improvident spending.


AT THE VATICAN TODAY

The Holy Father presides at the celebration of

- The morning Chrismal Mass, at St. Peter's Basilica

- The evening Mass of the Lord's Supper, at the Basilica of St John Lateran

The Vatican has already posted the Chrismal Mass homily in all the seven official languages of the Holy See.

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OR special magazine
for the beatification

Translated from the 4/21/11 issue of


A special issue of 100 pages with full-color illustrations is the dutiful and staunch tribute to Karol Wojtyla - Pope John Paul II from 1958 to 2005 - which our newspaper has produced for his beatification on May 1 as an offering to believers and non-believers.

Printed in seven language editions (Italian, Polish, English, Spanish, German, French and Portuguese), the magazine will also be printed in seven countries on four continents - Australia, Brazil, Canada, India, Italy, the United Kingdom and Spain, with a total printing of almost 400,000.

In Italy, it will be available in newspaper kiosks starting April 27, and will also be distributed as a supplement to three newspapers of the Quotidiano Nazionale group: Il Resto del Carlino of Bologna; La Nazione of Florence; and Il Giorno of Milan.

In addition to John Paul II's spiritual testament and the funeral eulogy of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the magazine will contain the homilies that Benedict XVI has given about his predecessor; texts by Karol Wojtyla, and a selection of articles and interviews about him, with a detailed chronology of his life and Pontificate.

This is our homage to an exemplary Christian and great Bishop of Rome whose Pontificate already has a place in history. The magazine is a true collector's issue illustrated with rare and beautiful photographs.



Today, Vatican Radio's English service features a talk with John Paul II's leading English biographer George Weigel...

John Paul's beatification:
'The Church confirms
the people's acclamation'


April 21, 2011

With just over 10 days to go before the beatification of John Paul the Second, we are shining the spotlight more brightly than before on the incredible legacy of this Polish-born Pope, who during his long pontificate set record after record and made history time after time.

One person who became a personal friend of Pope John Paul and had numerous private interviews and meetings with him is U.S. Catholic Scholar George Weigel who wrote a best-selling biography of the Pope entitled Witness to Hope published in 1999.

More than a decade later, Weigel wrote a sequel to that biography called The End and the Beginning. Covering the last six years of the pope’s life, this book sheds new light on John Paul’s fight against communism and explores his vast legacy.

Weigel is one of the hundreds of thousands of people who will be attending John Paul's beatification ceremony in St Peter's Square on May 1st and Susy Hodges asked him to share with us his thoughts about this keenly awaited event.

He says of the beatification: "I think this is a moment where the official judgement of the leadership of the Catholic Church is confirming the judgement of the people of the Church which was registered at the Pope's funeral in 2005, namely that this was a life of heroic virtue, this was a man who can and should be held up as an example.."

When it comes to Pope John Paul's place in the history books of the late 20th century, Weigel has no doubts about his vital role: "it's now being widely recognised that Pope John Paul was the pivotal figure in the collapse of communism in central and eastern Europe."

Weigel says on a spiritual level, Pope John Paul "made the Christian proposal interesting and dynamic in a world that had imagined that it had outgrown the need for religious faith of any sort and that's an extraordinary accomplishment."

He also says his appeal stretched far beyond the boundaries of the Catholic Church: "I think his beatification is going to be an ecumenical and inter-religious affair, not simply a Catholic affair."


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The New Oxford Review is a Berkeley(US)-based monthly journal of orthodox Catholicism which began as an Anglo-Catholic magazine in 1997 but became Roman Catholic in 1983. It takes its name from the New Oxford Movement in the Anglican Church of the early 19th century of which Blessed John Henry Newman was a leading member before he converted to Catholicism.

The Pope's 'problem':
He does not communicate in sound-bites

by Andrew M. Seddon

Issue of April 2011

Even popes have problems. And Pope Benedict XVI is no exception.

His Regensburg lecture raised the ire of the Muslim world and provoked spasms of violence when he quoted the words of a Byzantine emperor.

More recently, the comments the Holy Father made about condom use in Light of the World, a book-length interview with Peter Seewald, elicited outbursts of concern throughout the Western world.

Yes, the Pope has a problem: He expects something from his listeners and readers.

As a professor and theologian of many years’ standing, he’s accustomed to addressing educated audiences — audiences able to employ logical and rational skills, audiences that grasp subtleties and interpret remarks within their proper contexts, that take the time to evaluate and consider comments at length and don’t resort to knee-jerk reactions.

Pope Benedict realizes his problem. In Light of the World, he said, “I had conceived and delivered the [Regensburg] lecture as a strictly academic address without realizing that people don’t read papal lectures as academic presentations, but as political statements.”

In the case of his Regensburg lecture, Benedict was addressing an academic audience — he was speaking on the campus of the university where he had been a professor of dogmatics for nearly a decade.

He quoted the words of Byzantine emperor Manuel II Paleologus in conversation with an educated Persian Muslim. The emperor, a vassal of the Ottoman Empire, didn’t dare attack Islam directly, but rather posed questions in the context of an educated dialogue.

But when Benedict’s words were reported outside that venue, the context was lost, and Muslims, acting on truncated news reports, reacted with outrage and violence toward what was perceived as a gratuitous insult.

Benedict, instead, was making the point that faith and reason are connected, and that violence has no place in reasoned religious discourse. He was calling the Islamic world to examine its attitude and actions in this regard.

But to the hypersensitive Muslim mind, any critique — such as the Regensburg lecture or the Danish cartoons — is perceived as a direct attack on Islam. Frequently, the result is unconscionable violence. People who had neither the inclination nor ability to examine the Pope’s remarks in context ironically proved his point that Islam needs to take a deep, introspective look at its relationships to reason and violence.

The second case, that of condom use, provoked letters to the editor in various magazines from Catholics concerned that the Pope was reversing the Church’s longstanding moral teaching. Many either did not read his words accurately or again relied on media reports condensing and misinterpreting his remarks.

The Pope was commenting on the “fight against the banalization of sexuality,” and in this context noted that use of a condom by a male prostitute could be “a first step in the direction of a moralization, a first assumption of responsibility, on the way toward recovering an awareness that not everything is allowed and that one cannot do whatever one wants.”

He was not saying that prostitution with a condom was somehow less sinful than prostitution without. Prostitution is sinful either way.

The situation is perhaps analogous to a criminal who commits armed robbery of a bank with an empty gun. The underlying crime — bank robbery — is unchanged. But by having an empty gun, the robber indicates that he possesses at least something of a moral conscience by making sure that he doesn’t commit murder in the course of the robbery.

“Come, let us reason together, says the Lord.” Alas, we are apt to rely overly on emotion and preconceived judgments. We feast on chunks of fast food rather than digesting a proper meal.

Anybody who’s read any of Pope Benedict’s books knows that he doesn’t communicate in sound bites. Unfortunately, that’s what public discourse has been reduced to today.

Many magazines have folded as people prefer quick snippets to extended arguments. The constant TV flashing from scene to scene, and from item to item, appeals to a viewership that has lost its power of extended concentration.

Educational standards are no longer what they used to be. Far too many high-school graduates have no grounding in history, logic, the classics — things that used to be considered foundational to education. Across the Atlantic, Europe seems to be endeavoring to erase any acknowledgment of its Christian heritage from public consciousness.

These trends don’t bode well for the future.

And among Catholics, how many are familiar with — or have even read — the Catechism of the Catholic Church? How many have more than a sound-bite knowledge and understanding of Church doctrine and teaching? All too many people, in this day and age, are poorly catechized and have only a nodding acquaintance with the faith.

Most of us aren’t academics. We aren’t professional theologians or philosophers. We aren’t conversant with academic literature. But we should at least be able to follow arguments written by scholars intended for popular audiences. We should know better than to rely on the often inadequate reports of the secular media for information related to aspects of our faith.

Yes, the Pope expects something from his readers. And we owe it to ourselves — and to our society and our world — to make full use of our intellectual faculties. The future of the faith depends on it. We cannot rely on the sound bites that now pass for public discourse. If we do, then it is not only the Pope who has a problem.

Andrew M. Seddon, a native of England, writes both fiction and nonfiction, with over one hundred publication credits, including three novels: Red Planet Rising (Crossway Books, 1995), Imperial Legions (Broadman & Holman, 2000), and Iron Scepter (Xlibris, 2001). He is co-author of the devotional Walking With the Celtic Saints (Crossroad, 2004). He was editor of articles and columns for Christian Library Journal from 1998-2003; contributing editor of The Christian Communicator from 1998-2000; a book reviewer for Ethics & Medicine; and is a current member of the Authors’ Guild. Dr. Seddon is a family-practice physician in Billings, Montana.


The 'problem' faced by a teacher-catechist like Benedict XVI in a sound-bite world is best illustrated by his largely off-the-cuff catechesis yesterday on the Paschal Triduum. The OR headline for it today, 'Human poverty raised to the level of God' (which I modified in translation to 'Christ brings human poverty to the level of God', is too generic even if it is a quotation from the catechesis, and it can only be understood in its fullness if one reads the entire catechesis from which it is lifted [I posted a full translation in the preceding page in the GA post].

It is a masterpiece of catechesis and preaching - particularly awesome when one listens to it as he delivered it, so fluidly and cohesively in a language that is not his own! It does not take long to read - none of the Pope's homilies or catecheses do - and it reads easily because his thought flows linearly and clearly, and he is able to convey the theological, spiritual and practical import of his reflections on Christ in everyday language.

The bishops, priests and catechists of the world owe it to the faithful to pass on the Pope's teachings in his own words because no one today can shed more light on Gospel and Scripture than he does
.
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MAUNDY THURSDAY
Chrismal Mass




At 9:30 this morning, the Holy Fahter, Benedict XVI, presided at the Chrismal Mass of Maundy Thursday at St. Peter's Basilica.
It is a liturgy celebrated today in all Catholic cathedral churches around the world.



The Holy Father concelebrated with cardinals, bishops and priests present in Rome. During the Eucharistic celebration, all priests and prelates renewed their priestly vows, after which the Pope blessed the oils to be used in the liturgical year for baptism, confirmation, holy orders and anointing of the sick.

Here is the text of the Pope's homily this morning in the official English translation from the Vatican:


Dear Brothers and Sisters,

At the heart of this morning’s liturgy is the blessing of the holy oils – the oil for anointing catechumens, the oil for anointing the sick, and the chrism for the great sacraments that confer the Holy Spirit: confirmation, priestly ordination, episcopal ordination.

In the sacraments the Lord touches us through the elements of creation. The unity between creation and redemption is made visible. The sacraments are an expression of the physicality of our faith, which embraces the whole person, body and soul.

Bread and wine are fruits of the earth and work of human hands. The Lord chose them to be bearers of his presence. Oil is the symbol of the Holy Spirit and at the same time it points us towards Christ: the word "Christ" (Messiah) means "the anointed one".

The humanity of Jesus, by virtue of the Son’s union with the Father, is brought into communion with the Holy Spirit and is thus "anointed" in a unique way, penetrated by the Holy Spirit.

What happened symbolically to the kings and priests of the Old Testament when they were instituted into their ministry by the anointing with oil, takes place in Jesus in all its reality: his humanity is penetrated by the power of the Holy Spirit.

He opens our humanity for the gift of the Holy Spirit. The more we are united to Christ, the more we are filled with his Spirit, with the Holy Spirit. We are called "Christians": "anointed ones" – people who belong to Christ and hence have a share in his anointing, being touched by his Spirit.

I wish not merely to be called Christian, but also to be Christian, said Saint Ignatius of Antioch. Let us allow these holy oils, which are consecrated at this time, to remind us of the task that is implicit in the word "Christian", let us pray that, increasingly, we may not only be called Christian but may actually be such.

In today’s liturgy, three oils are blessed, as I mentioned earlier. They express three essential dimensions of the Christian life on which we may now reflect. First, there is the oil of catechumens. This oil indicates a first way of being touched by Christ and by his Spirit – an inner touch, by which the Lord draws people close to himself.

Through this first anointing, which takes place even prior to baptism, our gaze is turned towards people who are journeying towards Christ – people who are searching for faith, searching for God. The oil of catechumens tells us that it is not only we who seek God: God himself is searching for us.

The fact that he himself was made man and came down into the depths of human existence, even into the darkness of death, shows us how much God loves his creature, man. Driven by love, God has set out towards us. "Seeking me, you sat down weary ... let such labour not be in vain!", we pray in the Dies Irae.

God is searching for me. Do I want to recognize him? Do I want to be known by him, found by him? God loves us. He comes to meet the unrest of our hearts, the unrest of our questioning and seeking, with the unrest of his own heart, which leads him to accomplish the ultimate for us.

That restlessness for God, that journeying towards him, so as to know and love him better, must not be extinguished in us. In this sense we should always remain catechumens. "Constantly seek his face", says one of the Psalms (105:4).

Saint Augustine comments as follows: God is so great as to surpass infinitely all our knowing and all our being. Knowledge of God is never exhausted. For all eternity, with ever increasing joy, we can always continue to seek him, so as to know him and love him more and more.

"Our heart is restless until it rests in you", said Saint Augustine at the beginning of his Confessions. Yes, man is restless, because whatever is finite is too little.

But are we truly restless for him? Have we perhaps become resigned to his absence, do we not seek to be self-sufficient? Let us not allow our humanity to be diminished in this way! Let us remain constantly on a journey towards him, longing for him, always open to receive new knowledge and love!

Then there is the oil for anointing the sick. Arrayed before us is a host of suffering people: those who hunger and thirst, victims of violence in every continent, the sick with all their sufferings, their hopes and their moments without hope, the persecuted, the downtrodden, the broken-hearted.

Regarding the first mission on which Jesus sent the disciples, Saint Luke tells us: "he sent them out to preach the kingdom of God and to heal"
(9:2).

Healing is one of the fundamental tasks entrusted by Jesus to the Church, following the example that he gave as he travelled throughout the land healing the sick.

To be sure, the Church’s principal task is to proclaim the Kingdom of God. But this very proclamation must be a process of healing: "bind up the broken-hearted", we heard in today’s first reading from the prophet Isaiah
(61:1).

The proclamation of God’s Kingdom, of God’s unlimited goodness, must first of all bring healing to broken hearts. By nature, man is a being in relation. But if the fundamental relationship, the relationship with God, is disturbed, then all the rest is disturbed as well.

If our relationship with God is disturbed, if the fundamental orientation of our being is awry, we cannot truly be healed in body and soul. For this reason, the first and fundamental healing takes place in our encounter with Christ who reconciles us to God and mends our broken hearts.

But over and above this central task, the Church’s essential mission also includes the specific healing of sickness and suffering. The oil for anointing the sick is the visible sacramental expression of this mission.

Since apostolic times, the healing vocation has matured in the Church, and so too has loving solicitude for those who are distressed in body and soul. This is also the occasion to say thank you to those sisters and brothers throughout the world who bring healing and love to the sick, irrespective of their status or religious affiliation.

From Elizabeth of Hungary, Vincent de Paul, Louise de Marillac, Camillus of Lellis to Mother Teresa – to recall but a few names – we see, lighting up the world, a radiant procession of helpers streaming forth from God’s love for the suffering and the sick. For this we thank the Lord at this moment.

For this we thank all those who, by virtue of their faith and love, place themselves alongside the suffering, thereby bearing definitive witness to the goodness of God himself. The oil for anointing the sick is a sign of this oil of the goodness of heart that these people bring – together with their professional competence – to the suffering. Even without speaking of Christ, they make him manifest.

In third place, finally, is the most noble of the ecclesial oils, the chrism, a mixture of olive oil and aromatic vegetable oils. It is the oil used for anointing priests and kings, in continuity with the great Old Testament traditions of anointing. In the Church this oil serves chiefly for the anointing of confirmation and ordination.

Today’s liturgy links this oil with the promise of the prophet Isaiah: "You shall be called the priests of the Lord, men shall speak of you as the ministers of our God"
(61:6).

The prophet makes reference here to the momentous words of commission and promise that God had addressed to Israel on Sinai: "You shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation" (Ex 19:6).

In and for the vast world, which was largely ignorant of God, Israel had to be as it were a shrine of God for all peoples, exercising a priestly function vis-à-vis the world. It had to bring the world to God, to open it up to him.

In his great baptismal catechesis, Saint Peter applied this privilege and this commission of Israel to the entire community of the baptized, proclaiming: "But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, that you may declare the wonderful deeds of him who called you out of darkness into his marvellous light. Once you were no people but now you are God’s people"
(1 Pet 2:9f.)

Baptism and confirmation are an initiation into this people of God that spans the world; the anointing that takes place in baptism and confirmation is an anointing that confers this priestly ministry towards mankind.

Christians are a priestly people for the world. Christians should make the living God visible to the world, they should bear witness to him and lead people towards him.

When we speak of this task in which we share by virtue of our baptism, it is no reason to boast. It poses a question to us that makes us both joyful and anxious:

Are we truly God’s shrine in and for the world? Do we open up the pathway to God for others or do we rather conceal it?

Have not we – the people of God – become to a large extent a people of unbelief and distance from God? Is it perhaps the case that the West, the heartlands of Christianity, are tired of their faith, bored by their history and culture, and no longer wish to know faith in Jesus Christ?

We have reason to cry out at this time to God: "Do not allow us to become a ‘non-people’! Make us recognize you again! Truly, you have anointed us with your love, you have poured out your Holy Spirit upon us. Grant that the power of your Spirit may become newly effective in us, so that we may bear joyful witness to your message!

For all the shame we feel over our failings, we must not forget that today too there are radiant examples of faith, people who give hope to the world through their faith and love.

When Pope John Paul II is beatified on 1 May, we shall think of him, with hearts full of thankfulness, as a great witness to God and to Jesus Christ in our day, as a man filled with the Holy Spirit.

Alongside him, we think of the many people he beatified and canonized, who give us the certainty that even today God’s promise and commission do not fall on deaf ears.

I turn finally to you, dear brothers in the priestly ministry. Holy Thursday is in a special way our day. At the hour of the last Supper, the Lord instituted the new Testament priesthood.

"Sanctify them in the truth"
(Jn 17:17), he prayed to the Father, for the Apostles and for priests of all times. With great gratitude for the vocation and with humility for all our shortcomings, we renew at this hour our "yes" to the Lord’s call: yes, I want to be intimately united to the Lord Jesus, in self-denial, driven on by the love of Christ. Amen.



Pope warns of falling
belief in the West



VATICAN CITY, April 21 (Reuters) - Pope Benedict lamented the widespread abandonment of religion in Western countries in a Holy Thursday homily, saying the heartlands of Christianity were turning away from their faith.

The 84-year-old German-born Pontiff said it sometimes seemed as if the West had become bored by its own history and culture.

"Have not we -- the people of God -- become to a large extent a people of unbelief and distance from God?" he said during a ceremony in St. Peters Basilica.

"Is it perhaps the case that the West, the heartlands of Christianity, are tired of their faith?"

Approaching the sixth Easter of his pontificate, the Pope said the beatification of his Polish predecessor, John Paul II, on May 1 would be a chance to remember a man with great faith.

"For all the shame we feel over our failings, we must not forget that today too there are radiant examples of faith, people who give hope to the world," Pope Benedict said.

John Paul's beatification is set to be the biggest event in Rome since the death of the charismatic and highly popular pope in 2005, when millions came to view his body or attend his funeral.

Vatican officials expect at least 300,000 people -- including tens of thousands from his native Poland -- to come to the Italian capital for the three days of events during which he will be declared "blessed," the last step before sainthood.

Pope Benedict was speaking at a Holy Thursday service to mark Christ's founding of the priesthood at the Last Supper on the night before he died.

Later Thursday the Pope will wash and dry the feet of 12 men at another traditional service commemorating Christ's gesture of humility to his apostles.

Pope praises John Paul II


VATICAN CITY, April 21 (AP) — Pope Benedict XVI has warmly praised his predecessor Pope John Paul II in a Holy Thursday address days before John Paul's May 1 beatification.

Benedict said that "for all the shame we feel over our failings" the world must not forget what he called radiant examples of faith such as John Paul.

The Pope cited John Paul after reflecting in his homily in St. Peter's Basilica that people in the West seemed tired of their faith and bored with their Christian traditions.

Later Thursday the Pope is to wash the feet of 12 priests in a ceremony symbolizing humility and commemorating Christ's last supper.

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MAUNDY THURSDAY
Mass of the Lord's Supper



Libretto cover: The Last Supper, Psalter(1255-1260), Benedictine Abbey of Melk, Austria.

At 6 p.m. today, the Holy Father presided at the Mass of the Lord's Supper and Adoration of the Eucharist at the Basilica of St. John Lateran, seat of the Bishop of Rome.

His principal co-celebrants were three of the Vatican's senior retired Cardinals: Angelo Sodano, Giovanni Batista Re, and Camillo Ruini.

The Mass commemorates the institution of the Eucharist and the priestly ministry by Christ at the Last Supper. It also featured the traditional washing of the feet, in which the Vicar of Christ washed the feet of 12 Roman priests as Jesus washed the feet of his Apostles on that occasion.



Here is the Vatican translation of the Holy Father's homily at the evening Mass:

Dear Brothers and Sisters!

“I have eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer” (Lk 22:15).

With these words Jesus began the celebration of his final meal and the institution of the Holy Eucharist. Jesus approached that hour with eager desire.

In his heart he awaited the moment when he would give himself to his own under the appearance of bread and wine. He awaited that moment which would in some sense be the true messianic wedding feast: when he would transform the gifts of this world and become one with his own, so as to transform them and thus inaugurate the transformation of the world.

In this eager desire of Jesus we can recognize the desire of God himself – his expectant love for mankind, for his creation. A love which awaits the moment of union, a love which wants to draw mankind to itself and thereby fulfil the desire of all creation, for creation eagerly awaits the revelation of the children of God
(cf.Rom 8:19).

Jesus desires us, he awaits us. But what about ourselves? Do we really desire him? Are we anxious to meet him? Do we desire to encounter him, to become one with him, to receive the gifts he offers us in the Holy Eucharist? Or are we indifferent, distracted, busy about other things?

From Jesus’s banquet parables we realize that he knows all about empty places at table, invitations refused, lack of interest in him and his closeness. For us, the empty places at the table of the Lord’s wedding feast, whether excusable or not, are no longer a parable but a reality, in those very countries to which he had revealed his closeness in a special way.

Jesus also knew about guests who come to the banquet without being robed in the wedding garment – they come not to rejoice in his presence but merely out of habit, since their hearts are elsewhere.

In one of his homilies, Saint Gregory the Great asks: Who are these people who enter without the wedding garment? What is this garment and how does one acquire it? He replies that those who are invited and enter do in some way have faith. It is faith which opens the door to them.

But they lack the wedding garment of love. Those who do not live their faith as love are not ready for the banquet and are cast out. Eucharistic communion requires faith, but faith requires love; otherwise, even as faith, it is dead.

From all four Gospels we know that Jesus’s final meal before his passion was also a teaching moment. Once again, Jesus urgently set forth the heart of his message. Word and sacrament, message and gift are inseparably linked.

Yet at his final meal, more than anything else, Jesus prayed. Matthew, Mark and Luke use two words in describing Jesus’s prayer at the culmination of the meal: “eucharístesas” and “eulógesas” – the verbs “to give thanks” and “to bless”.

The upward movement of thanking and the downward movement of blessing go together. The words of transubstantiation are part of this prayer of Jesus. They are themselves words of prayer.

Jesus turns his suffering into prayer, into an offering to the Father for the sake of mankind. This transformation of his suffering into love has the power to transform the gifts in which he now gives himself.

He gives those gifts to us, so that we, and our world, may be transformed. The ultimate purpose of Eucharistic transformation is our own transformation in communion with Christ. The Eucharist is directed to the new man, the new world, which can only come about from God, through the ministry of God’s Servant.

From Luke, and especially from John, we know that Jesus, during the Last Supper, also prayed to the Father – prayers which also contain a plea to his disciples of that time and of all times.

Here I would simply like to take one of these which, as John tells us, Jesus repeated four times in his Priestly Prayer. How deeply it must have concerned him! It remains his constant prayer to the Father on our behalf: the prayer for unity.

Jesus explicitly states that this prayer is not meant simply for the disciples then present, but for all who would believe in him

(cf. Jn 17:20). He prays that all may be one “as you, Father, are in me and I am in you, so that the world may believe” (Jn 17:21).

Christian unity can exist only if Christians are deeply united to him, to Jesus. Faith and love for Jesus, faith in his being one with the Father and openness to becoming one with him, are essential.

This unity, then, is not something purely interior or mystical. It must become visible, so visible as to prove before the world that Jesus was sent by the Father.

Consequently, Jesus’s prayer has an underlying Eucharistic meaning which Paul clearly brings out in the First Letter to the Corinthians: “The bread that we break, is it not a sharing in the body of Christ? Because there is one bread, we who are many, are one body, for we all partake of the one bread”
(1 Cor 10:16ff.).

With the Eucharist, the Church is born. All of us eat the one bread and receive the one body of the Lord; this means that he opens each of us up to something above and beyond us. He makes all of us one.

The Eucharist is the mystery of the profound closeness and communion of each individual with the Lord and, at the same time, of visible union between all.

The Eucharist is the sacrament of unity. It reaches the very mystery of the Trinity and thus creates visible unity. Let me say it again: it is an extremely personal encounter with the Lord and yet never simply an act of individual piety.

Of necessity, we celebrate it together. In each community the Lord is totally present. Yet in all the communities he is but one. Hence the words “una cum Papa nostro et cum episcopo nostro” - one with our Pope and our bishop - are a requisite part of the Church’s Eucharistic Prayer.

These words are not an addendum of sorts, but a necessary expression of what the Eucharist really is. Furthermore, we mention the Pope and the Bishop by name: unity is something utterly concrete, it has names. In this way unity becomes visible; it becomes a sign for the world and a concrete criterion for ourselves.

Saint Luke has preserved for us one concrete element of Jesus’s prayer for unity: “Simon, Simon, behold, Satan demanded to have you, that he might sift you like wheat, but I have prayed for you, that your faith may not fail; and when you have turned again, strengthen your brethren”
(Lk 22:31).

Today we are once more painfully aware that Satan has been permitted to sift the disciples before the whole world. And we know that Jesus prays for the faith of Peter and his successors. We know that Peter, who walks towards the Lord upon the stormy waters of history and is in danger of sinking, is sustained ever anew by the Lord’s hand and guided over the waves.

But Jesus continues with a prediction and a mandate. “When you have turned again…”. Every human being, save Mary, has constant need of conversion. Jesus tells Peter beforehand of his coming betrayal and conversion.

But what did Peter need to be converted from? When first called, terrified by the Lord’s divine power and his own weakness, Peter had said: “Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!”
(Lk 5:8).

In the light of the Lord, he recognizes his own inadequacy. Precisely in this way, in the humility of one who knows that he is a sinner, is he called. He must discover this humility ever anew.

At Caesarea Philippi Peter could not accept that Jesus would have to suffer and be crucified: it did not fit his image of God and the Messiah. In the Upper Room he did not want Jesus to wash his feet: it did not fit his image of the dignity of the Master. In the Garden of Olives he wielded his sword. He wanted to show his courage.

Yet before the servant girl he declared that he did not know Jesus. At the time he considered it a little lie which would let him stay close to Jesus. All his heroism collapsed in a shabby bid to be at the centre of things.

We too, all of us, need to learn again to accept God and Jesus Christ as he is, and not the way we want him to be. We too find it hard to accept that he bound himself to the limitations of his Church and her ministers. We too do not want to accept that he is powerless in this world.

We too find excuses when being his disciples starts becoming too costly, too dangerous. All of us need the conversion which enables us to accept Jesus in his reality as God and man. We need the humility of the disciple who follows the will of his Master.

Tonight we want to ask Jesus to look to us, as with kindly eyes he looked to Peter when the time was right, and to convert us.

After Peter was converted, he was called to strengthen his brethren. It is not irrelevant that this task was entrusted to him in the Upper Room. The ministry of unity has its visible place in the celebration of the Holy Eucharist.

Dear friends, it is a great consolation for the Pope to know that at each Eucharistic celebration everyone prays for him, and that our prayer is joined to the Lord’s prayer for Peter.

Only by the prayer of the Lord and of the Church can the Pope fulfil his task of strengthening his brethren – of feeding the flock of Christ and of becoming the guarantor of that unity which becomes a visible witness to the mission which Jesus received from the Father.

“I have eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you”. Lord, you desire us, you desire me. You eagerly desire to share yourself with us in the Holy Eucharist, to be one with us.

Lord, awaken in us the desire for you. Strengthen us in unity with you and with one another. Grant unity to your Church, so that the world may believe
. Amen.



Libretto illustrations: Passion of Christ, scenes from an Altarpiece (ca 1550), Benedictine Abbey of Melk, Austria


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Say a prayer for him...

91-year-old dean of Vaticanistas dies in Rome:
'He will be a great Pope', he said in 2005
when Joseph Ratzinger became Benedict XVI

Translated from


VATICAN CITY, April 21 - Arcangelo Paglialunga, who was considered the dean of Vatican correspondents, died yesterday in Rome at age 91. He suffered a stroke while walking, was brought to the Santo Spirito hospital, but entered into profound coma. He died at 17:52.

Paglialunga reported on the Vatican since the days of John XXIII to the present for the Gazzettino di Venezia, and was considered one of the most informed and observant of Vatican correspondents. In April 2005, he prognosticated the 'excellent probability' that Joseph Ratzinger would be elected Pope.

He developed a special rapport with the present Pope when he was Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, since they used to join up while walking across St. Peter's Square every morning to their respective offices.

Paglialunga recounts how in March 1991, he informed Cardinal Ratzinger on their morning walk that Mons. Marcel Lefebvre had died. When the cardinal reached his office, his staff was surprised that he already knew about it.


The day after the April 2005 Conclave, the following article about Paglialunga came out in an Italian newspaper. One of the Italian girls at PRF posted it but without specifying the source. I translated it for the APRIL 19, 2005 thread of the English section (which, by the way, is a convenient compendium of articles, photos commentary and recollections of those unforgettable days in April leading to and shortly after the Conclave:http://freeforumzone.leonardo.it/discussione.aspx?idd=354517

This time, the Holy Spirit
read the newspapers

April 20, 2005

To whoever asked him in the past few days for a name, he replied invariably: “No predictions. Luckily, the Holy Spirit does not read the papers.” Clarifying immediately thereafter, however, that the line isn’t his – it was famously said four decades ago by Cardinal Agaganian, one who knew about Conclaves.

Arcangelo Paglialunga, 85 years old, of the Gazzettino di Venezia, wished to stick to his personal rule during this, the fifth Conclave he has covered. Although, in his heart, he must have rooted for Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, whom he often met mornings on St. Peter’s Square. The dean of the College of Cardinals would be on his way to work at the Palazzo Sant’Uffizio, the dean of Vatican journalists on his way to the Vatican Press Office.

It was to Paglialunga that Ratzinger had confided, years before the text was publicly revealed: “There is nothing catastrophic about the third secret of Fatima.”

With Paglialunga, who was a friend of the composer Perosi, the cardinal, who loves Gregorian chant, often discussed church music.

It was from him the cardinal learned that Monsignor Lefebvre had died. That morning, the cardinal had not yet seen the papers.

Paglialunga says jestingly, now that “his” cardinal, one of the favored candidates before the Conclave, has become Benedict XVI, “Well, maybe the Holy Spirit does read the papers sometimes.”

And he, who had steadfastly refused to be drawn into any predictions, says simply: “He will be a great Pope, because Joseph Ratzinger is an extraordinary man.”

IT is an opinion from someone who can be trusted. Because he has truly seen a lot in the five Conclaves of his career.

Starting with the “duel” between Cardinals Agaganian and Roncalli (who became John XXIII). “I remember that we attended a Mass said by the Armenian Cardinal,” he says. “After the Mass, probably noting our presence, he said, 'Fortunately, the Holy Spirit does not read the papers.’”

That time, however, the Cardinal was right. Entering the Conclave as Pope, he came out, as the saying went, still a cardinal. The choice fell on the less-predicted Cardinal Roncalli, Patriarch of Venice. Who, later, visiting his Armenian colleague in Rome, would describe, with his customary good-natured irony, that extraordinary electoral battle with the Armenian.

John XXIII said, “Our names bobbed up and down (that is, they alternated in the lead) like chickpeas in boiling water.” Perhaps because of that lengthy head-to-head contest, recalls Paglialunga, even the pontifical master of ceremonies at that time, Monsignor Dante, instead of opening the box holding the large cassock (for Roncalli) opened the box with the small one (which would have fit Agaganian).

After a few months, Papa Roncalli himself, meeting with journalists, added a footnote to the Conclave: “He told us that the night after his election, not being able to sleep, he asked to see the newspapers from the day before. ‘None of you guessed the outcome,’ he said, ‘but I forgive you all anyway.'” That was Papa Roncalli.

The journalists did better five years later with Paul VI. But that time, Paglialunga jests, “I also changed my sources.” Forget about other journalists. Better go with vox populi.

“I was working for Momento Sera then. Our editor asked us to find out what people were saying at St. Peter’s Square, and I interviewed dozens of people. 'Who do you want to be Pope?' The consensus was in favor of Montini. So I called my editor and told him.

When Montini did become Pope, the editor thanked me, saying it was only after I called that they prepared something about the Archbishop of Milan (Montini), in addition to what they already prepared on Cardinal Ottaviani and other so-called conservatives.” Vox populi, vox Dei in this case.

For John Paul I 15 years later, the voice was a technician from Radio Vatican. He was assigned to prepare the microphones in the central Loggia of the Basilica. Not aware that the intercom to the Press Room was open, the technician remarked, “I have been sent to prepare the microphone lines because the new Pope is about to give his blessing.”

That is how the journalists learned before the white smoke was seen that a new Pope had been chosen (Albino Luciani, the Patriarch of Venice).

Other times, other memories. Yesterday, in this age of digitals, cell phones and the Internet, none of the above happened. But it needed the bells of St. Peter’s to clear away any doubts about the color of the smoke!

Casa Santa Marta, the comfortable hotel which houses the Conclave participants, has improved Conclave conditions greatly. This avoids a situation where a cardinal who needs a special diet has to order out for his meals, as did a Chinese cardinal during the conclave that elected John XXIII. “A young priest was assigned to make sure that every day he would get a bowl of chicken soup.”

Or that someone, like Cardinal Suenens in the first Conclave of 1978, finds himself responding to another cardinal who knocks on his cell in a bathrobe and asks to take a shower in his room because there was none in his own cell.

John Paul II, who had lived through those two conclaves of 1978, had Casa Santa Marta built to improve those conditions.

"Even in that, he was an innovator," Paglialunga remarks.



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Another papal 'first':
Benedict XVI to speak to
Italian astronauts in space



VATICAN CITY, April 21 (AP) — Pope Benedict XVI will be in satellite contact with two Italian astronauts aboard the International Space Station in what would be the first papal call to space.

The Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano reported Friday that the hookup will happen on May 4 when Shuttle Endeavor docks with the station.

Two Italian astronauts will be meeting up, one a space station resident; the other, a visitor from the shuttle.

One of the two Italians will be carrying a silver medal donated by the pope. Others on the space station are Russian and American
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Herewith part of the penance the Church must endure in Holy Week...

Brace yourself for the annual
media assault on the Church

by Phil Lawler


All eyes will turn toward the Church during this coming week. For believing Christians, that means an intense period of prayer. For most major media outlets, it means another chance to throw darts at a favorite target.

Each year, as Easter looms on the horizon, ambitious scholars and journalists and publicity-seekers seize the opportunity to debunk Christianity in general, or criticize the teachings of the Catholic Church in particular. This year will be no different.

This is the time of year when the “Jesus Seminar” often trots out a new theory about what the “historical Jesus” really said. No matter how slim the evidence is to support this theory, and no matter how transparently the scholars put their own pet ideas in the Lord’s mouth, and no matter how thoroughly the real historical evidence (which matches the Gospel narratives) belies the theory, the story captures headlines.

Why? For two reasons. First, most workaday journalists are so ignorant about Christianity, they don’t realize how preposterous the theory really is. Second, many journalists are delighted to thumb their noses at Christian orthodoxy.

This is the time of year when an archeologist announces that he has made some amazing new discovery, which—he claims—overthrows important assumptions about the Christian faith and/or the early Church.

This year we already have one contender in this category: an Israeli researcher who wants us to believe that he has found the nails with which Jesus was fixed to the Cross. To be fair, this claim is not necessarily offensive to Christian beliefs.

But the claim is also viewed with skepticism (to put it mildly) by serious scholars. The same researcher made the same claims months ago, without attracting much attention. It’s no coincidence that the story is circulating again now, as Holy Week draws near and journalists look for new angles.

This is the time of year when commentators prepare their own essays on what they see as the inadequacies of the Christian faith, and especially the Catholic Church.

Just as surely as the Pope delivers his Urbi et Orbi message on Easter Sunday morning, the pundits will deliver their thoughts on what the Pope should have said and done to reform the Church. This year, regrettably, the critics will have plenty of ammunition.

The astonishing insensitivity of Bishop Vangheluwe, coupled with his hideous betrayal of trust, has provoked justifiable outrage in Belgium, and stoked the fires of the sex-abuse scandal once again.

In Ireland, a new report is expected any day now on the mishandling of abuse complaints in the Cloyne diocese; we have every reason to believe that the report will be harsh.

Here in the US we have the new outcropping of the same scandal in Philadelphia. We already know that the PBS show “Frontline” will examine one flagrant case of abuse and cover-up. You can be sure there will be other such reports.

Don’t be surprised by the media onslaught. It’s coming; you can count on it. Be prepared: not just intellectually but spiritually. Don’t let the negative stories upset your equanimity, or distract your focus from the real business of Holy Week.

Yes, the Church will suffer once again from the scorn of the pundits. But isn’t this the appropriate time for us all to accept the suffering, as our Lord accepted the Cross?

Keep in mind, too, that after the sneering and the spitting and the mocking and the shouting we arrive at the glorious triumph of Easter.



The following story falls into the bash-the-Catholics-especially-on Holy-Week mindset described by Mr. Lawler. The timing of the book release cannot have been coincidental. Not that anyone would deny that throughout history, some priests have been in sinful relationships, pedophile and adult, that clearly violate their priestly vows.

But like most of MSM, the book's author - who published an article last year in one of Italy's most widely-read newsweeklies to detail his experience tracking the nighttime gay play of these seemingly unconcerned priests he claimed to work in the Roman Curia, (whom the reporter baited with a male prostitute he hired for the purpose) - deliberately gives the impression that the extent of such sinning priests is one that should boggle the mind. And if the 'statistics' he supposedly cites for the United States are anywhere hear the mark, then it would be calamitous indeed. It does not help that the Telegraph reporter clearly relishes providing this report.


Thousands of priests 'in illicit
relationships with men and women'

by NIck Squires


Thousands of Catholic priests are in illicit relationships with both men and women in contravention of the Vatican's teachings on celibacy and homosexuality, a new book by an investigative journalist has claimed.

Some priests pay ex-lovers hush money so as not to be found out while others covertly support their illegitimate children through school, the book claims.

Carmelo Abbate spent months undercover documenting a "hidden world" in which heterosexual priests have children with women who can never be their wives, and gay priests of many different nationalities visit nightclubs in Rome and pay for sex with escorts.

His book, Sex and the Vatican: a secret journey in the reign of the chaste", was published in Italian yesterday.

Two British publishers are interested in buying the rights.

"The purpose of the book is not to shame Catholic clergy, it is to expose the hypocrisy and double standards of the Church," Mr Abbate, an award-winning investigative reporter, told The Daily Telegraph.

"There are priests with children but the kids cannot talk to their fathers in public for fear of their situation being discovered.

"There is a culture of 'omerta' (silence) in which the Church pretends not to know about any of this. If the authorities do find out, they just cover it up so as to avoid any scandal."

The book developed from an investigation conducted by Mr Abbate last year in which he used hidden came church services. [It is noteworthy that Squires omits the fact that Abbate hired a male prostitute to bait the priests and to be able to film their sexual encounters. Abbate is not exactly untainted in this sordid story, if not of deliberate malice, at least of active prurience.]

"At the time the Church said that these were just isolated incidents. I wanted to explore whether that was true and what I was found was that the phenomenon is much, much wider," he said.

He cited research which suggests that as many as a third of Catholic priests in the United States are gay and a quarter are in heterosexual relationships with women. Similar statistics have been reported in Germany and Austria.

[Yes, but why does he cite 'statistics' from other countries, but not from Italy itself, where he supposedly conducted his 'investigations'??? Even in Italy, there cannot be 'thousands' of such priests.

God knows Italy is teeming with anti-Catholic politicians and media workers who would only be too happy to blow off any widespread cover-up of such goings-on.But even in the pedophile priest ecandals, they have not managed to come up with anything beyond the notorious cases that the Church itself has uncovered and investigated. AP itself - which one would never accuse of downplaying any abuse report -said in a 2010 story that less than 100 such cases had been reported.

Squires, reporting out of Italy for years now, surely should know that - wouldn't he himself have blown the lid off if he had any suspicion that the sexual and moral conduct of Italian priests were far more scandalous than is 'usual' in any religious institution?

It is typical of current journalistic irresponsibility to simply take the word of a reporter as gospel truth without seeking his own independent corroboration. It is not enough to simply say, "I am only quoting what he says" - the reporter has the obligation to find other sources, preferably unbiased, to give a balanced account to the reader, especially in the face of the sweeping generalizations that Abbate makes. Whether independent figures and reports bear out Abbate or not, the reporter, in this case Squires, performs the service he is supposed to do.]


Women made pregnant by priests told him of being forced to have abortions, or having to put their children up for adoption in a desperate attempt to keep their relationships secret.

Some priests pay ex-lovers hush money so as not to be found out while others covertly support their illegitimate children through school, the book claims.

"For a lot of priests, the Church's teachings on sexual relations are a prison," said Mr Abbate.

The Vatican declined to make any comment on the book, while a spokesman for the Italian Bishops Conference said: "We can't react to all books that speak badly of the Church."


For the record, Abbate's magazine expose last year of the 'homosexual Curia priests' failed to gain traction and more than three days' notice even among Italy's virulently anti-Catholic media. I am almost sure his book will be no more than a seven-day 'itch' itself, although it may well provide 'chapter and verse' to be trotted out by the enemies of the Church as they see fit.

However, the Italian media also failed to follow up on whether the Vatican did anything about the three Curial priests - nor did the Curia itself, evidently - and that is just as reprehensible on both sides as the original report.


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GOOD FRIDAY, April 22

The Crucifixion, from left: Giotto, 1304-1305; Masaccio, 1426; Michelangelo (sculpture), 1492; Raphael, 1502; and Van der Weyden, Entombment of Christ, 1451.[
Readings for today's liturgy:
www.usccb.org/nab/readings/042211.shtml


Today's saint:

ST. ADALBERT (WOJTECH) OF PRAGUE (b Bohemia 956, d Poland 997)
Bishop, Missionary and Martyr
Born to a noble family in Bohemia, the future saint was educated by St. Adalbert of Magdeburg,
and at the age of 27 was named of Bishop of Prague. Eight years later he was exiled at the
instigation of those who opposed his clerical reforms. Popular clamor brought him back but
he was exiled once again because he excommunicated the murderers of a woman accused of
adultery who had sought sanctuary in a church. He went to Hungary first to preach and then
carried his mission to the peoples along the Baltic Sea. For chopping down some oaks sacred
to the local pagans, he was killed by pagan priests in what was then part of Prussia (now
part of Poland). His body was ransomed by Poles who buried him in Gniezno Cathedral, but
his remains were taken to St. Vitus Cathedral in Prague in the mid-11th century. He is
highly venerated in the Czechoslovakian lands, Poland, Hungary and Germany.



OR today.

As the pope celebrates the Chrismal Mass at St. Peter's Basilica, he tells the clergy and the faithful:
'We are Christians not to boast but to open the world to God"
This issue does not include the other Maundy Thursday Mass which took place after the newspaper went to press, but it has an item about the Pope's answers to seven questions sent by TV viewers for the zpscial telecast today of the current affaris program, 'A Sua Immagine' on Italian state TV, also carried by the TV network of the Italian bishops' conference and Sky-TV in Italy. Other Page 1 stories: An analysis of the recent warning by Standard and Poor to the US government regarding its debt exposure by the newspaper's Washington correspondent - he starts out sounding like the apologist for the Obama administration that he has often sounded in the past but ends by acknowledging that the warning cannot just be shrugged off; more than 200 dead and 40,000 displaced persons as a result of post-election violence in Nigeria, even if the polls were judged fairly clean by international observers; and two Western journalists are killed in a government mortar attack on the besieged Libyan city of Misurata.


WITH THE POPE TODAY

05:00 pm Liturgy of the Word to commemorate the Passion of Jesus
St. Peter's Basilica

09:15 pm Stations of the Cross
Roman Colosseum


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VIA CRUCIS 2011

Until late yesterday, the English version of the libretto for ttttonight's Via Crucis at tHE Colosseum had not been posted on the Vatican site although the other language editions were. Following is the Presentation that accompanies the libretto, whose full text is on:
www.vatican.va/news_services/liturgy/2011/documents/ns_lit_doc_20110422_via-crucis...


"If someone were to catch sight of his homeland from afar, separated by the sea, he would see his destination but lack the means of reaching it. So it is with us… We glimpse our goal across the sea of the present age… But to enable us to go there, the One who is our goal came to us… he brought us the plank by we can make the passage. No one may cross the sea of his age, unless he be carried by the cross of Christ… So do not forsake the cross, and the cross will carry you.”

These words of Saint Augustine, taken from his Commentary on John’s Gospel (2,2) introduce us to the prayer of the Way of the Cross.

The Way of the Cross is meant to help us cling to the wood of Christ’s cross through the seas of life. It is not merely a sentimental, popular devotion; rather, it expresses the core of the Christian experience: “If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me” (Mk 8:34).

For this reason each Good Friday the Holy Father makes the Way of the Cross before the whole world and in communion with it.

This year, Pope Benedict XVI turned to the world of Augustinian Nuns for the texts of the prayer, entrusting their composition to Sister Maria Rita Piccione, O.S.A., Mother President of the Our Lady of Good Counsel Federation of Augustinian Monasteries in Italy.

Sister Mary Rita is a member of the Augustian hermitage of Lecceto, near Siena, one of the Tuscan convents of the thirteenth century and a cradle of the Order of Saint Augustine. She is currently a member of the community of the Santi Quattro Coronati in Rome, the site of the house of formation for all Augustinian novices and professed sisters in Italy.

The texts are thus the work of an Augustinian nun, but the illustrations also draw their form and colour from a feminine and Augustinian artistic sensibility. Sister Elena Maria Manganelli, O.S.A., of the hermitage of Lecceto, formerly a professional sculptress, created the pictures which illustrate the various stations of the Way of the Cross.

This interplay of word, form and colour gives us a taste of Augustinian spirituality, inspired by the early community of Jerusalem and based on communion of life.

The preparation of this Way of the Cross was born, then, of the experience of nuns who “live together, reflect, pray and dialogue”, to cite Romano Guardini’s lively and insightful description of an Augustinian monastic community.

Each station is announced by its traditional title, followed by a short phrase which offers a starting-point for meditation on that station. We can imagine these words as spoken by a child, as a reminder of the simplicity of the little ones who see to the heart of things, and a sign of openness, in the Church’s prayer, to the voice of childhood, at times abused and exploited.

The readings from the Word of God are drawn from the Gospel of John, except for those stations which lack a corresponding text or where the text is found in other Gospels. This shows a desire to emphasize the message of glory proclaimed by the cross of Jesus.

The biblical text is then illustrated by a reflection which is brief, clear and original.

The prayer, addressed to “Jesus most humble” – an expression dear to the heart of Augustine (cf. Conf. 7, 18, 24) – abandons the adjective humble at the crucifixion-exaltation of Christ, and is the avowal which the Church as Bride makes to her Bridegroom.

This is followed by an invocation to the Holy Spirit who guides our steps and pours the love of God into our hearts (cf. Rom 5:5): here the Apostolic-Petrine Church knocks at the door of God’s heart.

Each station takes up a particular footprint left by Christ along the Way of the Cross, a footstep in which the believer is called to tread. The steps which mark the Way of the Cross, then, are truth, honesty, humility, prayer, obedience, freedom, patience, conversion, perseverance, simplicity, kingship, self-giving, maternity, silent expectation.

The pictures of Sister Elena Maria – austere in form and colour – present Jesus, alone in his passion, as he passes through the arid land digging a furrow and watering it by his grace. A ray of light, ever present and set in the form of a cross, alludes to the gaze of the Father, while the shadow of a dove, the Holy Spirit, recalls that Christ “through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God” (Heb 9:14).

In offering this prayer of the Way of the Cross, the Augustinian Nuns wish to render a homage of love to the Church and to the Holy Father, in full harmony with the particular devotion and fidelity to the Church and the Popes professed by the Augustinian Order.

We are grateful to Sister Maria Rita and Sister Elena Maria who, nourished by constant meditation on the Word of God and the writings of Saint Augustine, and sustained by the prayer of the Communities of the Federation, agreed to share with utter simplicity their experience of Christ and the Paschal Mystery in a year when Easter falls on 24 April, the anniversary of the Baptism of Saint Augustine.


INTRODUCTION

Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example, that you should follow in his steps.

Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

This evening we gather against the evocative backdrop of the Roman Colosseum. We are summoned by the Word just proclaimed to join Pope Benedict XVI along Jesus’s Way of the Cross.

Let us turn our inward gaze to Christ and implore him with hearts afire: “I beg you, Lord: Say to my soul: I am your salvation! Say it, that I may hear it!”

Christ’s comforting voice blends with the delicate thread of our “yes”, and the Holy Spirit, the finger of God, weaves within us the solid web of a faith full of consolation and guidance.

To follow, to believe and to pray: these are the simple and sure steps which guide our journey along the Way of the Cross, and gradually enable us to glimpse the path of Truth and Life.


OPENING PRAYER

The Holy Father:
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
R. Amen.

The Holy Father:
Let us pray.

[A moment of silence follows]

Lord Jesus,
you invite us to follow you
in this, your final hour.
In you, each one of us is present
and we, though many, are one in you.
In your final hour is our life’s hour of testing,
in all its harshness and brutality;
it is the hour of the passion of your Church
and of all humanity.

It is the hour of darkness:
when “the foundations of the earth tremble”
and man, “a tiny part of your creation”,
groans and suffers with it;
an hour when the various masks of falsehood
mock the truth
and the allure of success stifles the deep call to honesty;
when utter lack of meaning and values
brings good training to nought
and the disordered heart disfigures the innocence
of the small and weak;
an hour when man strays from the way leading to the Father
and no longer recognizes in you
the bright face of his own humanity.

This hour brings the temptation to flee,
the sense of bewilderment and anguish,
as the worm of doubt eats away at the mind
and the curtain of darkness falls on the heart.

And you, Lord,
who read the open book of our frail hearts,
ask us this evening,
as once you asked the Twelve:
“Do you also wish to leave me?”

No, Lord, we cannot and would not leave you,
for you alone “have the words of eternal life”,
you alone are “the word of truth”
and your cross alone
is the “key that opens to us the secrets
of truth and life”.

“We will follow you wherever you go!”

Following you is itself our act of worship,
as from the horizon of the not yet
a ray of joy
caresses the already of our journey.

R. Amen.


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It seems that after all the hype in the Italian media the past several days, the special telecast at mid-afternoon today of the current affairs TV program 'A sua immagine' by Italian state TV - also carried by TV2000 of the Italian bishops' conference and Sky-TV in Italy - did not exactly come out as advertised,

because the Pope's segment on the program was treated like any ordinary segment, and 'diluted' in the usual mindless chatter that characterizes commercial TV programs. One of the commentators on La Bussola Quotidiana has promptly denounced it...



No way to treat the Pope
by Riccardo Cascioli
Translated from

April 22, 2011

Can the Pope be used to promote a program? Unfortunately, yes, and it has happened - on Good Friday, no less - in RA-1's telecast of 'A sua immagine', which was supposed to do exactly the opposite, namely, to serve the Pope's words.

For days, the newspapers have been full anticipatory news about this telecast which was presented as "The Pope answers questions from the people". There was the programmed release of some excerpts of the Pope;s answers, in part or in full, to issues like the earthquake in Japan and persons in a vegetative state.

And so. most of Holy Week was a whetting of the public appetite for a TV event expected to attract millions of viewers.

Most of whom would have been greatly disappointed and perhaps deceived. Obviously not with the Pope, who was as usual precise and sensitive in his answers, which were understandable and reasonable to every type of question.

Rather, it was because it was obvious that the Pope's segment was treated as merely a side dish on a program menu that was largely set in the studio, with various other guests answering questions from viewers that had nothing to do with what the Pope had said.

Thus, the Pope's part was drowned in a sea of other words, mostly useless, as well as by the way the program was conducted, in a way more appropriate to the routine fare on commercial TV than for the flagship of Italian state TV. Not to mention the skits that were used to introduce the questions asked of the Pope!

A spectacle that, to say the least, left the viewer perplexed, and opens up two questions:

On the one hand, TV's indiscriminate lack of scruples in exploiting the Pope in this way. And on the other, how the Vatican itself 'manages the image' of Benedict XVI.

The Pope's participation in the program was a 'first' which, of course, deserved to have great resonance. It is logical to expect that the Pope's close collaborators should have requested precise conditions and guarantees to make sure that the entire program itself and the intentions of its host would be in keeping with the Pope's participation. One has the impression that none of that took place.

It was equally evident that the management of RAI itself had never thought of it, and simply left it to the pure discretion of the program host how best to present the Pope's segment, instead of treating him like he had been an ordinary subject to which the program had deigned to devote a segment.

With the disconcerting result that millions of viewers can testify to!


John Allen, who has not written a word about the ope's recent birthday and anniversary, has filed a prompt report on the telecast, obviously focusing only on the Pope's segment:


Thoughts on Benedict’s Good Friday Q&A
by John L Allen Jr

April 22, 2011



In a move without any direct precedents, Pope Benedict XVI went on Italian television today to respond to seven questions chosen from among 3,000 submitted by ordinary people from all over the world. Although this was certainly not a hard-hitting “Meet the Press”-style encounter, the Pope’s answers nevertheless inevitably carry news interest.

The following are three quick observations about the importance of Benedict XVI’s television outing.

Communications Strategy

A Pope responding to questions from the general public on TV is a bit reminiscent of what Samuel Johnson once said of a dog walking on its hind legs – what’s striking is not so much how well he does it, but that he does it at all.

Similarly, at one level the important thing about Benedict’s TV appearance isn’t so much what he said, but the fact it happened.

In a nutshell, today’s television appearance – like Benedict offering the “Thought for the Day” on the BBC for Christmas eve, or the recent launch of a Facebook page for the beatification of John Paul II, or the new youth catechism – reflects the plain-as-potatoes fact that the Vatican has a communications problem, and is trying, in fits and starts, to do something about it.

It’s also a reflection of the Vatican’s understanding that Benedict XVI, left to his own devices, is often a very effective communicator. As a result, they’re looking for ways to showcase him – especially in venues in which the agenda isn’t set by the media, and in which the Pope’s words aren’t sliced and diced by a media filter.

One of Benedict’s gifts is the ability to express complex theological ideas in ways that don’t require a Ph.D. to grasp. Today, for instance, an Italian woman whose son has been in a vegetative coma for two years asked the Pope what happens to her son’s soul.

In response, Benedict XVI offered a homespun analogy: The soul is still present in the body, even if the body can’t express it – like a guitar, he said, with broken strings.

Benedict went on to express confidence that the son can still sense his mother’s love, and said her presence at his side is a great witness to faith in God and in life.

In terms of method, today’s broadcast thus can be understood as part of an emerging Vatican communications strategy to find opportunities for the Pope himself to speak about the essentials of the faith – apart from, and in addition to, trying to put out fires related to various crises in Catholic life.

The idea is to project a different and more positive storyline, taking advantage of the Pope’s chops as a communicator and his celebrity status as a newsmaker.

Outreach to Islam

Benedict’s post-Regensburg effort to reach out to Muslims was also palpable in today’s broadcast.

[But the Regensburg lecture itself was a message to Muslims about faith and reason! Except teh media hijacked the message and the Muslim world never saw beyond the quotation of Manuel II Paleologue!]

Benedict’s speech in Regensburg, Bavaria, in September 2006, memorably set off a firestorm of protest across the Islamic world for appearing to link Muhammad with violence. In the years since, Benedict has made outreach to the Islamic world a clear inter-faith priority.

Today, in response to a question from Iraq, Benedict XVI said he is praying for the persecuted Christians of Iraq and hopes they’ll find a way to stay rather than to emigrate.

Yet he says the Vatican is concerned not only for Iraq Christians but Muslims too, both the Shi’ite and Sunni communities, and says that the church wants to play a role in the construction of an Iraq based on diversity and dialogue.

Benedict also took a question from a Muslim woman in the Ivory Coast, the only one of the seven questions explicitly identified as coming from a non-Christian. The question dealt with the violence currently scarring that African nation.

In response, Benedict said that Jesus was a man of peace and that the Church wants to support peace initiatives, recalling that he has dispatched Cardinal Peter Turkson of Ghana, President of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, as his personal envoy to the Ivory Coast to try to mediate the conflict.

It’s striking that the only non-Christian groups Benedict mentioned by name were Muslims, and the Vatican went out of its way to identify one of the questions as coming from a Muslim. [It would have been a genuine surprise if any Jews had sent in any questions at all since the questions were supposed to be about Jesus. Also, why would the Pope bring themp up at all, consiering that one of their issues against him is the Good Friday prayer for the Jews in teh traditional Missal. An issue, by the way, tat they never raised, or at least not with such virulence, against other Popes like John XXIII and John Paul II who used 'stronger' versions of the Good Friday prayer.]

All this reflects the importance Benedict attaches to what he defined during his May 2009 trip to the Holy Land as an “Alliance of Civilizations” with Islam, especially vis-à-vis Western secularism.

A theologian, not a mystic

We also caught glimpses today of the fact that while Benedict XVI is a gifted theologian and a man of deep faith, he’s no mystic.

[A non sequitur conclusion, even if Benedict XVI himself flatly stated "I am no mystic' in the interview with Peter Seewald. Just because he chooses to answer 'folk questions' in practical down-to-earth terms does not necessarily mean he is not a mystic. John Paul II, whom most consider a mystic, would not have anwered such questions with high-flown mysticism either!]

The final three questions – about Jesus’s descent into Hell, his post-resurrection body, and the prospect of another papal consecration of the world to Mary – gave Benedict the chance to engage in some cosmic rumination or end-time speculation, and each time he demurred.

On the descent into Hell, Benedict said in effect that we shouldn’t get hung up on the details, that this was a journey of the soul rather than a physical movement across space. The point, he said, is that the salvation of Christ embraces all people regardless of when they lived – its effectiveness didn’t begin, he said, in the year 0 or 30.

Benedict also resists speculating much about the post-resurrection body of Jesus, preferring instead to focus on the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist.

Finally, in reply to the question on Mary, we got a further example of Benedict’s famed “Marian cool”.

Other Popes, he said – Pius XII, Paul VI, and John Paul II – all engaged in dramatic public consecrations of the world to Mary. Though he didn’t add the point himself, those actions usually came in response to pleas for such a consecration associated with great Marian apparitions, such as Fatima in Portugal.

At this stage, Benedict said, there’s no need for another “great act” of consecration. [Characteristically, the Holy Father does not mention, of course, that he did perofrm such an Act of Consecration in May last year at Fatima!]

Instead, he said, what’s important is allowing our own hearts to be entrusted to Mary. Because Mary is the image of the church, he said, that also implies entrusting ourselves to the church, loving the church as a mother.

In all three instances, Benedict took questions that seemed to invite an esoteric response and turned it into an occasion for delivering a fairly simple pastoral message. [Again, Benedict XVI knows the questions are 'pastoral' rather than didactic in nature, and he knows the general audience that the program is intended for. Why would he even think of givng an esoteric response???? Even the most 'technical' parts of his books are presented adn explained so that they do not sound esoteric! ]

That, too, could be seen as an expression of his desire to communicate effectively – and his ability to do so, at least when the time, place and subjects are basically under his control.

Allen made some good points in his article, but he has a tendency to over-analyze. Joseph Ratzinger never had any difficulty communicating effectively all his life - they didn't call him Goldmund at university for nothing.

The Regensburg lecture was delliberately distorted in the reporting, and if he had been able to announce 'informally' the lifting of excommunication from the FSSPX bishops - rather than through teh formal decree alone] - he would have made clear the process of excommunication, when it is done, that it is tied to a specific action or circumstance by the excommunicated individual and not to the totality of their being, the specific reason that these four bishops were excommunicated, and and what the revocation of excommunication means in their individual cases.


[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 23/04/2011 04:27]
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The English service of Vatican Radio has now published a full translation of the Holy Father's Q&A on 'A Sua Immagine'.... And so sorry I cannot do more about the bluish hue of the Pope's side of the split screen captured from the YouTube videos of the Q&A...


The Pope's Q&A
with TV viewers


April 22, 2011

Pope Benedict XVI made papal broadcast history today, Good Friday, as the first pope to appear on a question-and-answer segment within a commercial TV show.

The pre-recorded papal segment for the program "In His Image", broadcast on Italy's RAI-1, showed the Pope replying to seven questions submitted from around the world, that included a young Japanese girl, a Muslim mother from the Ivory Coast and seven Christian students from Iraq.

The following is a translation of the Pope's segment:

Program Host ROSARIO cARELLO: Holy Father, I want to thank you for your presence here, which fills us with joy and helps us remember that today is the day in which Jesus showed His love in the most radical way, that is, by dying on the cross as an innocent.

It is precisely on this theme of innocent sorrow that is the first question that comes from a seven-year-old Japanese child who says: "My name is Elena. I am Japanese and I am seven years old. I am very frightened because the house where I felt safe really shook a lot and many children my age have died. I cannot go to play at the park. I want to know: why do I have to be so afraid? Why do children have to be so sad? I'm asking the Pope, who speaks with God, to explain it to me".




THE HOLY FATHER: Dear Elena, I send you my heartfelt greetings. I also have the same questions: why is it this way? Why do you have to suffer so much while others live in ease? And we do not have the answers but we know that Jesus suffered as you do, an innocent, and that the true God who is revealed in Jesus is by your side.

This seems very important to me, even if we do not have answers, even if we are still sad; God is by your side and you can be certain that this will help you. One day we will even understand why it was so.

At this moment it seems important to me that you know "God loves me" even if it seems like He doesn't know me. No, He loves me, He is by my side, and you can be sure that in the world, in the universe, there are many who are with you, thinking of you, doing what they can for you, to help you.

And be aware that, one day, I will understand that this suffering was not empty, it wasn't in vain, but behind it was a good plan, a plan of love. It is not chance. Be assured, we are with you, with all the Japanese children who are suffering. We want to help you with our prayers, with our actions, and you can be sure that God will help you. In this sense we pray together so that light may come to you as soon as possible.

The second question presents us with a Calvary because we have a mother under her son’s cross. This mother is an Italian named Maria Teresa and she asks you: "Your Holiness, has the soul of my son Francesco, who has been in a vegetative coma since Easter Sunday 2009, left his body, seeing that he is no longer conscious, or is it still near him?"



Certainly his soul is still present in his body. The situation, perhaps, is like that of a guitar whose strings have been broken and therefore can no longer play. The instrument of the body is fragile like that, it is vulnerable, and the soul cannot play, so to speak, but remains present.

I am also sure that this hidden soul feels your love deep down, even if unable to understand the details, your words, etc. He feels the presence of love. Your presence, therefore, dear parents, dear mother, next to him for hours and hours every day, is the true act of a love of great value, because this presence enters into the depth of that hidden soul.

Your act is thus also a witness of faith in God, of faith in man, of faith, let us say, of commitment, to life, of respect for human life, even in the saddest of situations.

I encourage you, therefore to carry on, to know that you are giving a great service to humanity with this sign of faith, with this sign of respect for life, with this love for a wounded body and a suffering soul.

The third question takes us to Iraq, to the youth of Baghdad, persecuted Christians who send you this question; "Greetings from Iraq, Holy Father", they say. "We Christians in Baghdad are persecuted like Jesus. Holy Father, in your opinion, in what way can we help our Christian community to reconsider their desire to emigrate to other countries, convincing them that leaving is not the only solution?"



First of all I want to cordially greet all the Christians of Iraq, our brothers and sisters, and I have to say that I pray every day for the Christians in Iraq.

They are our suffering brothers and sisters, as those who are suffering in other lands are too, and therefore they are particularly dear to our hearts and we must do whatever we can so that they might be able to stay, so that they might be able to resist the temptation to emigrate, which is very understandable in the conditions they are living in.

I would say that it is important that we are near to you, dear brothers and sisters in Iraq and we also want to help you, when you come, to truly receive you as brothers and sisters.

Naturally, all the institutions that truly have the possibility to do something in Iraq for you should do it. The Holy See is in permanent contact with the diverse communities, not only the Catholic community and the other Christian communities, but also with our Muslim brothers and sister, Shi‛ites and Sunni.

We want to create reconciliation and understanding, with the government as well, to help in this difficult journey of rebuilding a torn society. Because this is the problem, that the society is profoundly divided, torn, there is no longer the awareness that "In our diversity we are one people with a common history, where each has its place".

This awareness needs to be rebuilt: that in diversity, they have a common history, a common determination. In dialogue, precisely with the various groups, we want to assist the process of reconstruction and encourage you, dear brothers and sisters in Iraq, to have faith, to be patient and have faith in God, to collaborate in this difficult process. Be assured of our prayers.

The next question comes to you from a Muslim woman from the Ivory Coast, a country that has been at war for years. This lady's name is Bintu and she greets you in Arabic, saying "May God be in all the words that we say to one another and may God be with You". It is an expression that they use when beginning an address.

She then continues in French: "Dear Holy Father, here in the Ivory Coast we have always lived in harmony between Christians and Muslims. Families are often formed by members of both religions. There also exists a diversity of ethnicities but we have never had problems. Now everything has changed: the crisis we are living under, caused by politics, has sown division. How many innocents have lost their lives! How many persons have been displaced, how many mothers and how many children traumatized! The messengers have exhorted peace, the prophets have exhorted peace. As an ambassador of Jesus, what do you advise for our country?




I would like to respond to your greeting: May God also be with you and help you forever. I have to say that I have received heartbreaking letters from the Ivory Coast in which I see the sorrow, the depth of suffering, and I am saddened that I can do so little.

We can do one thing always: remain in prayer with you and, as much as possible, we can offer works of charity. Above all we want to help, as much as is in our power, the political and human contacts.

I entrusted Cardinal Turkson, who is the president of our Council for Justice and Peace, to go to the Ivory Coast to try to mediate, to speak with the various groups and various persons to encourage a new beginning.

Above all we want to make the voice of Jesus, whom you also believe in as a prophet, heard. He was always a man of peace. It could be expected that, when God came to earth, He would be a man of great power, destroying the opposing forces. That He would be a man of powerful violence as an instrument of peace.

Not at all. He came in weakness. He came with only the strength of love, totally without violence, even to going to the cross. This is what shows us the true face of God, that violence never comes from God, never helps bring anything good, but is a destructive means and not the path to escape difficulties.

He is thus a strong voice against every type of violence. He strongly invites all sides to renounce violence, even if they feel they are right. The only path is to renounce violence, to begin anew with dialogue, with the attempt to find peace together, with a new concern for one another, a new willingness to be open to one another.

This, dear lady, is Jesus's true message: seek peace with the means of peace and leave violence aside. We pray for you, that all sections of your society might hear Jesus' voice and thus that peace and communion will return.

Holy Father, the next question is on the theme of Jesus's death and resurrection and comes from Italy. I will read it to you: "Your Holiness, what wass Jesus doing in the time between His death and resurrection? Seeing that in reciting the Creed it says that Jesus, after His death, descended into Hell, should we think that that will also happen to us, after death, before going to heaven?"



First of all, this descent of Jesus's soul should not be imagined as a geographical or a spatial trip, from one continent to another. It is the soul's journey. We have to remember that Jesus's soul always touches the Father, it is always in contact with the Father but, at the same time, his human soul extends to the extreme borders of humanity.

In this sense it goes into the depths, into the lost places, to where all who do not arrive at their life's goal go, thus transcending the continents of the past.

This word about the Lord's descent into Hell mainly means that Jesus reaches even the past, that the effectiveness of the Redemption does not begin in the year 0 or 30, but also goes to the past, embraces the past, all men and women of all time.

The Church Fathers say, with a very beautiful image, that Jesus takes Adam and Eve, that is, humanity, by the hand and guides them forward, guides them on high. He thus creates access to God because humanity, on its own, cannot arrive at God's level.

He himself, being man, can take humanity by the hand and open the access. To what? To the reality we call Heaven. So this descent into Hell, that is, into the depth of the human being, into humanity's past, is an essential part of Jesus's mission, of His mission as Redeemer, and does not apply to us.

Our lives are different. We are already redeemed by the Lord and we arrive before the Judge, after our death, under Jesus's gaze. On one had, this gaze will be purifying: I think that all of us, in greater or lesser measure, are in need of purification. Jesus’s gaze purifies us, thus making us capable of living with God, of living with the Saints, and above all, of living in communion with those dear to us who have preceded us.

The next question is also on the theme of Resurrection and comes from Italy. "Your Holiness, when the women reach the tomb on the Sunday after Jesus's death, they do not recognize their Master but confuse him with another. It also happens to the apostles: Jesus shows them his wounds, breaks bread, in order to be recognized, precisely by his actions. He has a true body, made of flesh, but it is also glorified. What does it mean that His risen body didn't have the same characteristics as before? What, exactly, does a glorified body mean? Will the Resurrection also be like that for us?"



Naturally, we cannot define the glorified body because it is beyond our experience. We can only note the signs that Jesus has given us to understand, at least a little, in which direction we should seek this reality.

The first sign: the tomb is empty. That is, Jesus did not leave his body behind to corruption. This shows us that even matter is destined for eternity, that it is truly resurrected, that it does not remain something lost. But he then assumed this matter in a new condition of life.

This is the second point: Jesus is no longer dead, that is, He is beyond the laws of biology and physics, having survived this one death. Therefore there is a new condition, a different one, that we do not know but which is shown in the fact of Jesus and which is a great promise for all of us: that there is a new world, a new life, toward which we are on a journey.

Being in this condition, Jesus had the possibility of letting himself be felt, of offering his hand to his followers, of eating with them, but still of being beyond the conditions of biological life as we live it.

We know that, on the one hand, He is a real man, not a ghost, that he lives a real life, but a new life that is no longer submitted to the death that is our common expectation.

It is important to understand this, at least as much as we can, for the Eucharist. In the Eucharist, the Lord gives us His glorified body, not flesh to eat in a biological sense. He gives us Himself, this newness that He is in our humanity, in our being as person, and it touches us within with His being so that we might let ourselves be penetrated by His presence, transformed in His presence.

It is an important point because we are thus already in contact with this new life, this new type of life,\ - since He has entered into me and I have gone out of myself and am extended toward a new dimension of life.

I think that this aspect of the promise, of the reality that He gives Himself to me and pulls me out of myself, toward on high, is the most important point. It is not about noting things that we cannot understand but of being on a journey to the newness that always begins again anew in the Eucharist.

Holy Father, the last question is about Mary. At the cross we witness a poignant dialogue between Jesus and his mother in which Jesus says to Mary: “Behold your son”, and to John, “Behold your mother”. In your latest book, Jesus of Nazareth, you define it as “Jesus’s final provision”. How are we to understand these words? What meaning did they have at that moment and what do they mean today? And, on the subject of entrusting, do you intend to renew a consecration to the Virgin at the beginning of this new millennium?

These words of Jesus are, above all, a very human act. We see Jesus as a true man who makes a human act, an act of love for His mother, entrusting the mother to the young John so that she might be safe. A woman living alone in the East at that time was an impossible situation. He entrusts his mother to this young man, and to this young man he gives his mother, therefore Jesus actually acts as a human with a deeply human sentiment.

This seems very beautiful to me, very important, that before any theology, we see in this act the true humanity of Jesus, his true humanism. Naturally, however, this has several dimensions, not just about this moment but regarding all of history.

In John, Jesus entrusts all of us, the whole Church, all future disciples, to His mother and His mother to us. In this the course of history is fulfilled. More and more, humanity and Christians have understood that the mother of Jesus is their mother and more and more they have entrusted themselves to the Mother.

Think of the great sanctuaries, think of this devotion for Mary in which more and more people feel “This is your mother”. And even some who have difficulty reaching Jesus in his greatness, the Son of God, entrust themselves without difficulty to the Mother.

Someone said, “But this doesn’t have any Biblical foundation!” To this I reply, with St. Gregory the Great: “In reading”, he says, “grow the words of Scripture.” That is, they develop in lived reality. They grow and more and more in history this Word develops.

We see how we can all be grateful because there is truly a Mother; we have all been given a mother. We can also go to this Mother with great confidence because she is also the Mother of every Christian.

However, it is also true that this Mother expresses the Church. We cannot be Christians alone, following a Christianity based on our own ideas. The Mother is the image of the Church, the Mother Church, and entrusting ourselves to Mary means we must also entrust ourselves to the Church, live the Church, be the Church with Mary.

And so we arrive at the meaning of entrusting ourselves: the Popes —whether it was Pius XII, or Paul VI, or John Paul II
— have made a great act of entrusting the world to the Madonna and it seems to me, as a gesture before humankind, before Mary herself, that it was a very important gesture.

I believe that now it is important to internalize this act, to let ourselves be penetrated, and to bear it out in ourselves. In this sense I have gone to some of the great Marian sanctuaries of the world: Lourdes, Fatima, Czestochowa, Altötting…, always with this sense of making real, of interiorizing this act of entrustment, so that it might truly become our act.

I think that the great, public act has been made. Perhaps one day it will be necessary to repeat it again, but at the moment it seems more important to me to live it, to make it real, to enter into this entrusting so that it might truly be our own.

For example, at Fatima I saw how the thousands of persons present truly entered into this entrustment. In themselves, for themselves they entrusted themselves to her; they made this made this trust real within them. It thus becomes a reality in the living Church and thus also the Church grows.

The common entrustment to Mary, letting ourselves be penetrated by this presence, creating and entering into communion with Mary makes the Church, make us together with Mary, truly the Bride of Christ.

Thus, at the moment, I do not intend to make a new act of public entrustment, but I would rather invite you to enter into this entrustment that has already been made, so that we might truly live it every day, and thus that a truly Marian Church might grow, a Church that is Mother, Bride, and Daughter of Jesus.

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COMMEMORATING THE PASSION OF OUR LORD
Liturgy of the Word, Veneration
of the Cross, and Holy Communion



Libretto cover: The Crucifixion, by Meister Sigmund (Master of the Visitation), 1475.
Gift of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger to the Diocesan Museum of Freising, 1982.





Pope Benedict marks Good Friday
at rites in St.Peter's Basilica

Adapted from

April 22, 2011

Pope Benedict XVI led the faithful in the Passion liturgy and veneration of the Cross on Good Friday today in St. Peter’s Basilica.

[Wearing a gold-patterned red Roman chasuble, the Holy Father was assisted today by Cardinals Leonardo Sandri and Raymond Burke from the Roman Curia.

In the first part of the liturgy, three sub-deacons chanted the Passion from teh Gospel of St. Jon in Latin. This was followed by the homily delivered by the preacher of the papal household, Capuchin Fr. Raniero Cantalamessa.]

The papal preacher reflected on the words of the centurion in Matthew’s Gospel after Christ’s death: “Surely, this man was son of God.(Mt. 27:54)”

“The cross is not only God’s judgement on the world and its wisdom,” said Fr. Cantalamessa. “It is more than the revelation and condemnation of sin. It is not God’s NO to the world, it is the YES God speaks to the world from the depths of his love.”

The preacher of the papal household went on to quote from the Pope’s recently released 2nd volume of Jesus of Nazareth, saying “[E]vil cannot simply be ignored; it cannot just be left to stand. It must be dealt with; it must be overcome. Only this counts as true mercy. And the fact that God now confronts evil himself, because men are incapable of doing so - therein lies the ‘unconditional’ goodness of God.(Jesus of Nazareth II, p.133)”

Fr. Cantalamessa went on to say, “The One whom we contemplate on the cross is God “in person”.

He is also the man Jesus of Nazareth, but that man is one person with the Son of the Eternal Father.

“Jesus Christ is the Son of God, and is himself God, of one substance with the Father,” said Fr. Cantalamessa, “As long as the fundamental dogma of the Christian faith is not recognised and taken seriously, he said, “human suffering will remain unanswered.”

[Afterwards, the Holy Father led in the ritual Veneration of the Cross. He uncovered a Crucifix brought to him with the image of Christ wrapped in red velvet.

After the Cross was set on a pedestal in front of the main altar, the Pope returned to his papal chair, where he took off his chasuble and his shoes and walked back to the altar on stockinged feet to venerate the Cross. He genuflected then reached up to kiss the feet of the image. The other cardinals and bishops present then went up the altar to venerate the Cross one by one.

In the last part of the liturgy, the Holy Father led in giving Holy Communion to those present.]

(I added the parts in brackets, based on what I saw in the televised event.)


Libretto illustrations: Scenes from the passion of Christ, Meister Sigmund, 1450, Diocesan Museum of Freising.

It would be most interesting to learn how Cardinal Ratzinger came to acquire the Crucifixion by Meister Sigmund, which is dated 25 years later than the Scenes from the Passion above. Obviously, he knew it would complete the set owned by the Freising museum.

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VIA CRUCIS AT THE COLOSSEUM






Here is a translation of the Holy Father's words at the end of the Stations of the Cross tonight:

Dear brothers and sisters,

Tonight we accompanied in faith Jesus as he walked through the last stage of his earthly journey, the most sorrowful part of it, the path to Calvary.

We heard the cries of the mob, the words of condemnation, the mocking of the soldiers, the weeping of the Virgin Mary and the other women.

Now we are immersed in the silence of this night, the silence of the Cross, the silence of death. It is a silence that is laden with all the weight borne by the man who is rejected, oppressed, crushed, , the weight of sin that disfigures his face, the weight of evil.

Tonight, in the depths of our hearts, we have relived the drama of Jesus, so laden with pain, with evil, with man's sin.

And what remains before our eyes? There remains a Crucifix - a cross raised on Golgotha, a Cross which seems to mark the definitive defeat of He who spoke of the power of forgiveness and mercy, who had asked his listeners to believe in God's infinite love for every human being. "Spurned and avoided by men", we have before us the "man of suffering... from whom men hide their faces"
(Is 53,3).

But let us look well at the man crucified between heaven and earth, let us contemplate him more profoundly, and we will discover that teh Cross is not the sign of the victory of death, or sin or evil, but the luminous sign of love, indeed, the vastness of God's love, which we could never have imagined, ask or hope for:

God stooped down to us, he humbled himself in order to reach the darkest corners of our lives to hold out his hand to us and draw us to himself, to bring us to himself.

The Cross speaks to us of God's supreme love and invites us to renew today our faith in thE power of that love, to believe that in every situation of our life, of history, in the world, God can triumph over death, sin, evil, and give us a new life, resurrected.

In the death on thE Cross of the Son of God, is the seed of new hope of life, like the seed that first dies in the earth.

On this night heavy with silence, heavy with hope, there resounds the invitation that God extends to us through the words of St. Augustine:

Have faith! You will come to me and enjoy the good things at my table, just as I have not refused to taste the bad things at your table .. I promised you my life... As a token, I have given you my death, to say, 'Here, I invite you to take part in my life'...

It is a life where no one dies, a truly blessed life, that offers incorruptible food, food which restores and never falls short...
The life to which I invite you is this... friendship with the Father and the Holy Spirit: it is the eternal banquet, it is communion with me... participating in my life.
(cfr Discourse 211,5).

Let us fix our gaze on Jesus crucified and ask him in prayer: "Enlighten, Lord, our hearts so that we may follow you along the way of the Cross, and let the old person die in us, the one who is bound to selfishness, to evil, to sin. Make us new beings, holy men and women, transformed and animated by your love".


4/23/11
P.S. I have now had a chance to review the dozens of pictures taken at the Colosseum by various agencies, and not having seen the telecast (I was on EWTN practically the whole day Friday and they did not air it) - I surmise that the Pope did not enter the Colosseum at all, nor 'carry the Cross' as he did in previous years, but proceeded straight to the tribunal that had been arranged for him overlooking the scene. The tinge of regret one feels about any indication of our Holy Father's physical aging is immediately replaced by a feeling of gratitude that he has taken care to be very prudent about pacing himself and conserving his forces so he may more optimally carry out the things he must do (versus the things he might want to do but are really non-essential). God keep his Vicar on earth healthy and well for many many more years to come....

Pope Benedict XVI leads
Good Friday 'Via Crucis'



Rome, April 22 (dpa) - Pope Benedict XVI presided over Rome's traditional Good Friday Way of the Cross procession, reminding the faithful how earthly temptations such as an obsession with personal success can make people lose their sense of humanity.

In his opening prayer, the ontiff referred to the suffering inflicted on 'the youngest and weakest,' without directly referring to the widespread revelations that have emerged in recent years of sexual abuse of children by priests.

'It is the hour of darkness ... when an emptiness of sense and values nullifies the act of education and the disorder of the heart disfigures the ingenuousness of the youngest and the weakest,' Benedict said.

During the procession, also known as Via Crucis, thousands of people, many carrying candles, wound their way round the Colosseum as they marked the 14 Stations of the Cross, which commemorate the last hours leading to Jesus' crucifixion.

The 84-year-old Benedict followed proceedings by kneeling down on a platform situated on the Palatine Hill overlooking the ancient Roman amphitheatre.

Volunteers, a disabled man in a wheelchair, and two families - one from Ethiopia and one from Rome - took turns carrying a wooden cross at the head of the procession, while prayers and meditations were read aloud at each of the 14 intervals.

Both families included children - five in the case of the Roman family, with a set of 6-year-old triplets and another of 2-year-old twins.

This year the meditations were penned by an Italian Augustinian nun, Sister Maria Rita Piccione. It marked the first time the Pontiff [Benedict XVI, that is'; John Paul II twice assigned it to women - one nun, and one Protestant] has entrusted the task to a woman.

In an interview, Piccione said that as a special tribute to childhood, she had added a short sentence to be read by a child at the beginning of each station.

'I would like for a child to read this for two reasons: first, to reclaim the simple gaze that immediately captures the heart of reality. Also to include the voice of children who have been exploited, hurt and offended,' Piccione told Catholic television news agency Rome Reports.

Earlier Friday, Benedict himself made broadcasting history when he became the first ontiff to appear on television to answer several questions from the public, including from a child who survived the recent earthquake in Japan and a Muslim woman from strife-torn Ivory Coast.

The pontiff told 7-year-old Japanese girl Elena that he did not know why people are made to suffer, but that consolation should be drawn from Jesus, who 'stands by our side' and suffered on the Cross.

Benedict, who frequently reminds the faithful that according to Catholic teachings euthanasia is wrong, told a mother that her spending hours everyday by the side of her vegetative, coma-stricken son was an act of faith in God and of 'respect for human life, even in the saddest of situations.'

In other questions posed to him, including by several Christian students from Iraq, Benedict stressed the need for peace and religious tolerance around the world.

The Pontiff is scheduled to lead an Easter vigil on Saturday at the Vatican.

On Sunday, he is due to celebrate Easter Mass in St Peter's Basilica before delivering his Urbi et Orbi message and blessing 'to the city and the world.'

Easter celebrates the resurrection of Jesus Christ and is regarded by Christians as their most important religious feast.
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April 23, Holy Saturday

Greek Orthodox icons: From left, Jesus is prepared for burial, with the Magdalene, the Virgin Mary, the Apostle John and Joseph of Arimathea; other icons show Jesus's descent to Hades.
Holy Saturday is celebrated with elaborate rituals in the Orthodox Church.


Let us return once more to the night of Holy Saturday. In the Creed we say about Christ’s journey that he “descended into hell.” What happened then?

Since we have no knowledge of the world of death, we can only imagine his triumph over death with the help of images which remain very inadequate.

Yet, inadequate as they are, they can help us to understand something of the mystery. The liturgy applies to Jesus’ descent into the night of death the words of Psalm 23[24]: “Lift up your heads, O gates; be lifted up, O ancient doors!”

The gates of death are closed, no one can return from there. There is no key for those iron doors. But Christ has the key. His Cross opens wide the gates of death, the stern doors. They are barred no longer. His Cross, his radical love, is the key that opens them. The love of the One who, though God, became man in order to die – this love has the power to open those doors. This love is stronger than death.

The Easter icons of the Oriental Church show how Christ enters the world of the dead. He is clothed with light, for God is light. “The night is bright as the day, the darkness is as light” (cf. Ps 138[139]12).

- Benedict XVI, Easter Vigil homily, 2007


Today's saint:

ST. GEORGE (b Roman Palestine 281, d Nicomedia [now part of Turkey] 303), Soldier and Martyr
One of the most popular saints especially in the Orthodox world, he is probably also the best-known of military saints.
His father was a famous Roman commander in Palestine in the time of Emperor Diocletian, and his mother was Judean,
but the family was Christian. George presented himself to the Emperor Diocletian in Nicomedia, then the eastern capital
of the Roman Empire, to be a soldier, and he soon became a member of his Palace Guard. However, the emperor decreed
in 302 that all Christians in the Roman army be arrested and offer sacrifices to the pagan Gods. George refused and
professed his faith before the emperor, who sought to bribe him with money and lands to change his mind. Diocletian
had no choice but to order his execution. He underwent many tortures including being dragged through the streets
before he was beheaded. His body was brought back to Palestine where Christians venerated him as a martyr. His cult
spread throughout the eastern Roman Empire and reached the west in the 5th century. He was canonized by Pope Gelasius I
in 494. The Crusades brought him new fame when the Crusaders rebuilt the fourth century basilica erected in his honor.
Chivalric orders dedicated to him sprung up all over Western Europe. England's Edward II put the Order of the Garter
under St. George's patronage, and by the 12th century, England's ships were flying the Cross of St. George. His name was
an English battlecry during the Hundred Years War. Today he is the patron saint of England, Greece, Portugal, and
Russia, among others. Images of St. George are all based on the legend of St. George and the dragon, akin to ancient
fables of a hero slaying a dragon to save a princess from death.



OR today.

Illustration: Crucifix, designed by Marko Rupnik, executed by Gilberto Proletto.
The main papal story in this issue is the historic broadcast participation of Benedict XVI yesterday when he answered seven questions sent in by viewers on a popular religious affairs program of Italian state TV. OR publishes the full transcript of the Q&A as well as an editorial on Christian communication. The second papal story is the Mass of the Lord's Supper Thursday evening. Page 1 international news: The dollar reaches a new low against the euro following the S&P warning about the risk to the US government's credit rating in the world financial market; concern for worsening post-election violence in Nigeria, Africa's most populous country and second leading oil producer; Japan orders preventive evacuation of five cities around the damaged Fukushima nuclear plant outside the current 20-km danger radius; and Moscow expresses concern over extension of the Libyan conflict as some Western nations send military advisers to help out anti-Qaddhafi rebels.


WITH THE POPE TODAY

9pm EASTER VIGIL MASS
St. Peter's Basilica

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Christian tradition
and communication

Editorial
by Giovanni Maria Vian
Translated from the 4/23/11 issue of


A central dimension of Christianity, Tradition - a theological term and concept not surprisingly often misunderstood by extreme viewpoints that are diametrically opposite - also includes, obviously, the communicative transmission of the faith.

"One must know how to be ancient and modern - to speak according to Tradition but conforming to present sensibility. What does it serve to say what is true if men in our time do not understand it?", Mons. Giovanni Battista Montini (the future Paul VI) told the French writer Jean Guitton in 1950.

His reflection was perfectly in line with a very long history that started with Christian proselytizing in the first centuries, which was creative and sustained by an intense circulation of written material.

Thus even in this, despite rooted stereotypes, the Church has been constantly concerned about effectively transmitting that most revolutionary of all news, best summed up in the Easter greeting of the Oriental Christians: "Christ is risen - yes, he is truly risen!"

In the face of modern communications, the Church of Rome and the Popes have been in the vanguard. From the interview given by Leo XIII published on Page 1 of Le Figaro on August 4, 1892 - the first ever press interview by a Roman Pontiff, which, moreover, was given to a lady journalist with socialist leanings - to the pastoral wisdom of St. Pius X, who had personally given catechism lessons to children from Roman parishes in the Vatican's Cortile di San Damaso, to the innovative decisions on the use of mass media by Pius XI and Pius XII at the beginnings of radio, film and television.

In this area, Vatican II and the Popes who prepared for it, decreed it and saw it through - Pius XII, John XXIII, and Paul VI - marked a new turning point.

With the growing media visibility of the Papacy, starting with the travels of Paul VI to the five continents, and culminating with the incessant worldwide itinerary of John Paul II, to 'show the Cross' beyond mere metaphor in the dramatically changing panorama of the world: Stat crux dum volvitur orbis - The Cross is steady while the world turns.

For six years, Benedict XVI - who has dedicated his life in the service of truth and because of this wants the Vatican media to be more effective and relevant - has worked at explaining the Tradition of the Church, in a way that can be understood by young and old, journalists and laymen, intellectuals and politicians.

He has just done so again, replying for the first time to questions from laymen around the world - in a way that brings faith Adan reason together, with friendship for everyone. And in the continuity of the Christian Tradition.


Vittorio Messori's commentary in Corriere della Sera today benefits from his personal experience as the only journalist who has published an interview book with two Popes....


The Pope on TV:
An hour of solid, healthy catechism

by Vittorio Messori
Translated from

April 23, 2011

Beyond the enthusiasm of some clerical circles that are a bit ingenuous - those for whom anything the Vatican does, even if merely pastoral, must always be applauded - is it really positive that a Pope goes on TV to be interviewed?

Is this positive, in the late of the great principle that should guide every activity of the Church, which, not by chance, concludes the Code of Canon Law, namely, "The salvation of souls myst be the supreme law for the Church"?

Does this goal of salvation truly gain by the use of every technique and technology?

If we look at history, the answer would seem to be broadly positive. That Church which has often been accused of mistrusting progress actually introduced printing in Italy with a printing press at the famous Benedictine abbey at Subiaco.

Pius IX quickly adopted photography, having his picture reproduced in tens of thousands to become the first Pope to be recognized by the faithful not only through rare prints and paintings which were often inaccurate likenesses.

Don Bosco, encouraged by the Popes of his time, produced the first great Italian bestsellers on religion in his series on Catholic readings and the popular almanac called Il galantuomo.

Don Alberiono, who founded San Paolo publications, created not just widely circulated newspapers but also a film production arm with films ditributed worldwide.

Pius XII was the Pope of radio, which he used to convey his most important messages. Paul VI was the Pope of black-and-white TV at a time when Italy only had two TV stations, both state-run.

And John Paul II, among whose many charisms was that of a theatrical presence, became familiar in full color to audiences around the world through hundreds of commercial and state TV stations broadcasting news from the Vatican and his own prodigious travels.

But beyond the new communications technology that has been welcomed by the Church as a means for carrying out its apostolate, is it right that the Pope himself should use them, particularly in the form of an interview?

If I may be allowed a personal reference, I remember when, with conviction as great as my respect, I expressed my opinion about this to John Paul II, when he called me to discuss what would have been the first televised interview with a Pope lasting a full hour.

Since he asked what I thought about it, I said, "Holiness, I will speak on the basis of my experience in the field of information. To agree to an interview, which is the journalistic form par excellence, means accepting its rules - which go by 'I think...' or 'In My opinion...' - because the information game these days prefers opinions only, and certainly will not accept 'dogma' in any form. And I think that, now more than ever, we believers, as well as non-believers who sincerely seek answers, do not need one more opinion (there are too many already), and what we do need is a teacher. One who does not say 'In my opinion...' but speaks with authority and has the courage to say, 'According to what God has revealed...'"

Perhaps I was wrong. But also, perhaps because of it, a few hours before the interview was to be filmed - as director Pupi Avati was putting the last touches to the papal study in Castel Gandolfo that was to be our set - we were informed unexpectedly that the Pope had cacelled the filming.... It was later taken up eventually in a different form, at the Pope's initiative, as an interview done in writing that would be published as a book [Crossing the Threshold of Hope, 2000?]

I thought that the problem did not exist - or if it did, only in very attenuated form - with the 'Domande su Gesu' (Questions on Jesus)
that aired yesterday on Italian TV, moderated respectfully by the young program host Rosario Carello and his 'A Sua Immagine' team.

Rather than an interview, it was presented as seven questions addressed to the Pope from 'ordinary people', which had been pre-selected by RAI and passed on to Benedict XVI.

Rather than a journalistic exercise, it became an excellent example of catechesis. In which Joseph Ratzinger brought to fruition once more his specific charism as a great theologian who never forgets that it is also his duty to be a pastor = an intellectual who knows and says profound things, but in a way that everyone will understand.

Among the things that has surprised those who only judged him by stupid prejudices (Grand Inquisitor, Panzerkardinal, unyielding Teutonic drillmaster...) is his ability and attentive care to communicate not only with young people but even with children, to whom he gives answers of wise simplicity.

The problem of natural catastrophes, the young man in coma for years, the horrors of war, the persecution of Christians, the Resurrection of Jesus and eternal life, the role of Mary in Christian life - these were the 'catechetical' issues that Benedict XVI sought to answer briefly yesterday - according to traditional Church teaching but made more clear by striking expressions [the comatose young man likened to a guitar whose strings have been broken) or by appropriate citations from the Church Fathers [Gregory Nazianzene: 'The words of Scripture grow the more they are read", or St. Augustine: 'One must know in order to love'].

Not a single "in my opinion..,", and therefore, no risk that the Pope could be quoted as if he were just another newspaper opinionist.

It was a reassuring hour, and perhaps for many who may have been rather ignorant of Christian ABCs, certainly illuminating. So much that one hopes for another such program, perhaps even, on a regular basis.

Perhaps even secularists will not be averse to experience how a professor who has become Pope reads and explains the catechism of his Church.


It is too bad that the general public is mostly unaware that the Q&A in direct interaction with various groups of faithful - children, university students, priests, seminarians - has been one of Benedict XVI's outstanding innovations in papal communications. Even in Italy, the occasions on which these events were televised were always within the context of 'papal programming', i.e., likely to reach only those who follow papal activities in particular. Even the BBC, in its report on yesterday's program, said it was his first Q&A other than the inflight ones with journalists on his foreign trips....

And if I were Italian who knew little about Benedict XVI, I would have been impressed and amazed by his fluency and fluidity in the language (so different from the necessarily deliberate and slower way he reads his prepared texts); by his cohesive, orderly and expressive presentation of difficult concepts in the time allowed him (mo more than three minutes at a time, I thought); by the way he gets to the point without evasions or circumlocutions; and by the reassuring certainty of someone who obviously speaks with full authoritativeness and mastery of his subject matter. And all that without a single .'Uh...' or 'Er...'


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Easter has traditionally been the time for welcoming new Catholics into the fold, for mass baptisms. And this year will be the first such Easter for former Anglicans who haev chosen to 'return to Rome'... There has been no such systematic conversion en bloc to Roman Catholicism in modern times, and I consider it a continuing wonder that all this is happening now, under Benedict XVI, who hsa made it possible....

'Where will you have us prepare
for you to eat the Passover?':
A homily for new Catholics
of the Oxford Ordinariate group

By Anna Arco

on Thursday, 21 April 2011

Over the course of this week, which began with the receptions of the first groups of Anglicans into the Church, the Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsinham has grown in size. From fewer than 20 members it was set to grow to between 900 and 1000 people.

Mgr Keith Newton, the ordinary, received a group in St George’s Cathedral Southwark on Monday. Groups in South Benfleet and Walthamstowalso entered into full Communion on Monday. On Tuesday and Wednesday groups from Tunbridge Wells, Deal, and Oxford and at Newman House in central London entered into full Communion with the Church. More groups are expected to be received tonight, including the ordinariate group in Sevenoaks.

Mgr Andrew Burnham, the former Anglican bishop of Ebbsfleet, preached at the reception at the Oxford Oratory. His homily outlined two future scenarios for the Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham: one in which the structure would be simply forgotten with the passage of time, the other one in which the ordinariate played an important role in enriching the Church through the mutual exchange of gifts. It was a very interesting homily, so here it is in full:


Now on the first day of Unleavened Bread the disciples came to Jesus, saying, ‘Where will you have us prepare for you to eat the Passover?’(Matthew 26:17)

The visit of the Holy Father, Pope Benedict, last September continues to inspire us and, this Easter, unsurprisingly, the Catholic Church in this country has the largest number of recruits for some time.

Many of these will be baptised and confirmed at the Easter Vigil, in cathedrals and churches up and down the land, and, of those baptised, most will be converts to Christianity as well as converts to the Catholic Faith.

The Pope, reflecting on his visit, remarked how ‘deep a thirst there is among the British people for the Good News of Jesus Christ’.

What has undoubtedly swelled the figures is the coming into the Catholic Church this week of between 900 and 1,000 former Anglicans, such as those being received this evening, here in the Oratory.

Strictly speaking, none of these people is a convert: although such is the custom that, until our dying day, we former Anglicans will be called ‘converts’. A convert is someone turns to Christ, rather as St Paul did on the Damascus Road. Most of us have been Christians all our lives.

But what we are learning to ask again is the question ‘Where will you have us prepare for you to eat the Passover’? the question the disciples asked of Jesus. We have come to believe that the Lord asks that we should share his Passover here in the Catholic Church.

Only in the Catholic Church, we have come to believe, is the full meaning of the Paschal mystery revealed, safeguarded, and celebrated. Supper, Sacrifice, Death, Burial, Resurrection, Transformation: these are themes that we shall continue to reflect on in the coming days.


Tonight I would have us reflect not on these themes but on the question of numbers. Twenty or thirty groups of former Anglicans, perhaps 60 clergy and 900 or 1,000 people nationally. This is surely small beer. None of these figures is statistically significant. Every time we hear a set of national statistics, even the statistics for rare diseases, the numbers seem to be in the 1000s and tens of thousands. What significance have twenty or thirty, 60, 900 or 1000?

There is clearly a scenario – a dangerous one – that, like the many converts this Eastertide, the groups of incoming Anglicans will simply melt into the crowd. This Church, and several like it, may have a slightly larger roll, but nothing too dramatic, and the Pope’s imaginative and prophetic gesture in Anglicanorum cœtibus will have come to nothing. The most that will be said, in years to come, is that it became a bit easier for Anglicans to convert, for former Anglican clergy to become Catholic priests.

But there is a much more exciting scenario which could unfold. And here we need to go back to the first Easter. Even smaller numbers than now were involved. By the end of the Last Supper the disciples were down to eleven. By the time Jesus died on the cross there were only two there – Our Blessed Lady and John the Beloved Disciple. At the Garden of Resurrection there were ones and twos.

St Paul reports with great excitement that 500 of the brethren saw the Risen Lord. But even that larger figure is only half the number of those coming into the Catholic Church because of Anglicanorum cœtibus.

From those small beginnings, Christianity moved from being a small suspiciously-Galilean, rather unfashionable Jewish sect to becoming the official religion of the known world. And not entirely successfully at first: there is no Epistle to the Athenians.

I don’t want to make claims tonight about the influence of incoming Anglicans. I pray that that elusive character – the’ mutual exchange of gifts from our respective spiritual patrimonies which will serve to enrich us all’ – as Pope Benedict put it – may indeed be a mutual enrichment. I pray that groups of former Anglicans, as here in Oxford, may grow and flourish within the fertile soil of the Catholic Church.

But the larger point is this – and it applies to every single Catholic, and every single convert this Easter time, as well as to former Anglicans – is the importance for the spread of the Gospel of Jesus Christ of the contribution of each one of us.

Blessed John Henry Newman, beatified by Pope Benedict XVI at Cofton Park last September, has been profoundly influential on the Holy Father. Newman was founder of the Oratory movement in England, and it is by his prayers that this Oratory Church has come into being.

Formerly Vicar of the University Church, here in Oxford, Newman also longed to see his fellow Anglicans reconciled to the Church. In that sense, we can be sure that Anglicanorum cœtibus and all it entails is a miracle in response to his prayers. Indeed this may be the second miracle needed for a canonisation – not that a second miracle would be necessary if he were declared a doctor of the Church.

At this historic moment I hope that the sentiments of this prayer of Blessed John Henry Newman will be on the lips and hearts of all who come into the Church at this time.

God has created me to do him some definite service; he has committed some work to me which he has not committed to another. I have my mission – I may never know it in this life, but I shall be told it in the next. I am, a link in a chain, a bond of connection between persons. He has not created me for naught. I shall do good, I shall do his work; I shall be a preacher of truth in my own place, while not intending it, if I do but keep his commandments and serve him in my calling.

Therefore, my God, I will put myself without reserve into your hands. What have I in heaven, and apart from you what do I want upon earth? My flesh and my heart fail, but God is the God of my heart, and my portion for ever.


23/04/2011 21:11
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One day late, but an acknowledgment nonetheless from AP of the Holy Father's history-making participation in a commercial TV program yesterday.... I have left the headline as is, which is perplexing, to say the least, since it bears no relation at all to what the report says, nor for that matter, to what the Pope said...


Multimedia allows Pope to put
modern spin on Good Friday

by Nicole Winfield


VATICAN CITY, April 23 (AP) - Pope Benedict XVI consoled a 7-year-old Japanese girl, reassured a mother about her ailing son's soul and advised a Muslim woman that dialogue was the way to peace in Ivory Coast.

In a push to engage the world online, the Pontiff fielded their questions during an unusual Good Friday appearance on Italian TV. It was hardly a casual or spontaneous chat: Seven questions were selected from thousands that poured in via RAI television's website, and Benedict recorded his answers last week.

He seemed a bit stiff, sitting all alone in a big white chair behind his desk inside the Apostolic Palace as an unseen interviewer read out the letters to him.

But the teacher and pastor in the 84-year-old Benedict came through as he fielded the questions, which all dealt with suffering and Jesus' death, which Christians recall on Good Friday, and his resurrection, celebrated on Easter Sunday.

The first question came from young Elena, who asked the Pope why she felt so afraid after Japan's earthquake shook her house and killed so many children.

"Why do children have to be so sad?" the girl asked. "I'm asking the Pope, who speaks with God, to explain it to me."

Speaking simply as if Elena were right there, Benedict responded that he too wondered why so many innocent people suffer, but that she should take heart in knowing that Jesus had suffered, too.

"You can be sure that in the world, in the universe, there are many people who are with you, thinking of you, doing what they can for you to help you," Benedict said. "Be assured, we are with you, with all the Japanese children who are suffering."

He then turned to a question from an Italian mother, Maria Teresa, who worried about her son, Francesco, who has been in a vegetative state since Easter 2009. She asked if Francesco's soul still remained.

"He feels the presence of love," Benedict told her, praising her for keeping her vigil as a "true act of love.

"I encourage you, therefore, to carry on, to know that you are giving a great service to humanity with this sign of faith, with this sign of respect for life, with this love for a wounded body and a suffering soul," he said.

Monsignor Paul Tighe, the No. 2 in the Vatican's social communications office, said the decision to have the Pope participate in the televised event stemmed from the realization that Benedict must engage more with the public to ensure his message is received.

"This is a very simple beginning of what you could call inter-activity," Tighe said in a recent interview. "It's launching something new for us."

In the past, Benedict has taken pre-selected questions from carefully chosen Catholics, responding live in St. Peter's Square, such as when he meets annually with university students. He also regularly answers questions submitted beforehand by journalists when flying to foreign countries and has fielded questions from groups of priests.

But the Good Friday session was the first time he had taken questions from the general public - and not necessarily even the Catholic public.

"The advantage of this is it opens up the possibility to people who couldn't hope or aspire to having a direct meeting with the Pope, but through the Internet can put their questions there," Tighe said.

That was certainly the case for Bintu, a Muslim woman who greeted the Pope in Arabic and asked him in French for his advice on bringing peace to Ivory Coast, which has been wracked by political violence.

"How many innocents have lost their lives!" she said. "How many mothers and how many children traumatized!"

Benedict told her he was grieved that he could do so little, saying he had tasked the head of the Vatican's justice and peace office, Cardinal Peter Kodwo Turkson, to try to mediate between the country's opposing factions.

"The only path is to renounce violence, to begin anew with dialogue, with the attempt to find peace together, with a new concern for one another, a new willingness to be open to one another," the Pontiff said.


The best account I have seen of the program is by Frederic Mounier, writing for La Croix, who does not only report the Q&A itself, but also the 'side show' that came between each of the seven Q&As, which were presented one by one, then commented uon by studio guests and supplemented with man-on-the-street interviews. It's lengthy but maybe I will translate it for the record,. I now see more clearly what Riccardo Cascioli of Bussola objected to - objections shared by Andrea Tornielli (to be translated) and a couple of other Italian commentators.

It obviously was not the best format in many ways, but it did take place, it was well publicized, and I hope, well-watched. Other than RAI-1, the Italian bishops' TV 2000 and Sky-TV, it was also made available on Eurovision by CTV.

It should provide valuable lessons for what I hope will be a similar program - say once a month - of Q&A qith the Pope, but without the 'talk show' accessories, or at least, better thought-out features that support the Pope's catecheses and do not drown them out.

24/04/2011 03:24
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MASS OF THE EASTER VIGIL


Libretto cover: From the altar of Bikolaus von Verdun, Benedictine Abbey of Klosterneuburg, Austria.


Pope leads thousands in
'the mother of all vigils'


April 23, 2011





“The Church is not some kind of association that concerns itself with man’s religious needs but is limited to that objective”, rather she brings man into contact with God as Creator, and so “we have a responsibility for creation,” said Pope Benedict XVI Saturday night as he led celebrations of the ‘Mother of all Vigils’, the Easter vigil.

Tens of thousands of people had patiently queued for hours to fill the basilica, thousands more stood in the darkened square before giant screens and watched as the flickering flame of the Pascal Candle slowly illuminated the vast vaults of St Peter’s to the chant “Lumen Christi”, the Light of Christ. .

The Easter Proclamation was chanted and then Liturgy of the Word began. After the Holy Father's homily, he proceeded to baptize and confirm six adults, and then led the congregation in a reaffirmation of heir baptismal faith.




Here is the official Vatican translation of the Holy Father's homily tonight:

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

The liturgical celebration of the Easter Vigil makes use of two eloquent signs.

First, there is the fire that becomes light. As the procession makes its way through the church, shrouded in the darkness of the night, the light of the Paschal Candle becomes a wave of lights, and it speaks to us of Christ as the true morning star that never sets – the Risen Lord in whom light has conquered darkness.

The second sign is water. On the one hand, it recalls the waters of the Red Sea, decline and death, the mystery of the Cross. But now it is presented to us as spring water, a life-giving element amid the dryness. Thus it becomes the image of the sacrament of baptism, through which we become sharers in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Yet these great signs of creation, light and water, are not the only constituent elements of the liturgy of the Easter Vigil. Another essential feature is the ample encounter with the words of sacred Scripture that it provides.

Before the liturgical reform there were twelve Old Testament readings and two from the New Testament. The New Testament readings have been retained. The number of Old Testament readings has been fixed at seven, but depending upon the local situation, they may be reduced to three.

The Church wishes to offer us a panoramic view of the whole trajectory of salvation history, starting with creation, passing through the election and the liberation of Israel to the testimony of the prophets by which this entire history is directed ever more clearly towards Jesus Christ.

In the liturgical tradition all these readings were called prophecies. Even when they are not directly foretelling future events, they have a prophetic character, they show us the inner foundation and orientation of history. They cause creation and history to become transparent to what is essential. In this way they take us by the hand and lead us towards Christ, they show us the true Light.

At the Easter Vigil, the journey along the paths of sacred Scripture begins with the account of creation. This is the liturgy’s way of telling us that the creation story is itself a prophecy. It is not information about the external processes by which the cosmos and man himself came into being.

The Fathers of the Church were well aware of this. They did not interpret the story as an account of the process of the origins of things, but rather as a pointer towards the essential, towards the true beginning and end of our being.

Now, one might ask: is it really important to speak also of creation during the Easter Vigil? Could we not begin with the events in which God calls man, forms a people for himself and creates his history with men upon the earth?

The answer has to be: no. To omit the creation would be to misunderstand the very history of God with men, to diminish it, to lose sight of its true order of greatness. The sweep of history established by God reaches back to the origins, back to creation.

Our profession of faith begins with the words: “We believe in God, the Father Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth”. If we omit the beginning of the Credo, the whole history of salvation becomes too limited and too small.

The Church is not some kind of association that concerns itself with man’s religious needs but is limited to that objective. No, she brings man into contact with God and thus with the source of all things.

Therefore we relate to God as Creator, and so we have a responsibility for creation. Our responsibility extends as far as creation because it comes from the Creator. Only because God created everything can he give us life and direct our lives.

Life in the Church’s faith involves more than a set of feelings and sentiments and perhaps moral obligations. It embraces man in his entirety, from his origins to his eternal destiny.

Only because creation belongs to God can we place ourselves completely in his hands. And only because he is the Creator can he give us life for ever. Joy over creation, thanksgiving for creation and responsibility for it all belong together.

The central message of the creation account can be defined more precisely still. In the opening words of his Gospel, Saint John sums up the essential meaning of that account in this single statement: “In the beginning was the Word”.

In effect, the creation account that we listened to earlier is characterized by the regularly recurring phrase: “And God said ...”

The world is a product of the Word, of the Logos, as Saint John expresses it, using a key term from the Greek language. “Logos” means “reason”, “sense”, “word”. It is not reason pure and simple, but creative Reason, that speaks and communicates itself. It is Reason that both is and creates sense.

The creation account tells us, then, that the world is a product of creative Reason. Hence it tells us that, far from there being an absence of reason and freedom at the origin of all things, the source of everything is creative Reason, love, and freedom.

Here we are faced with the ultimate alternative that is at stake in the dispute between faith and unbelief: are irrationality, lack of freedom and pure chance the origin of everything, or are reason, freedom and love at the origin of being?

Does the primacy belong to unreason or to reason? This is what everything hinges upon in the final analysis. As believers we answer, with the creation account and with John, that in the beginning is reason.

In the beginning is freedom. Hence it is good to be a human person. It is not the case that in the expanding universe, at a late stage, in some tiny corner of the cosmos, there evolved randomly some species of living being capable of reasoning and of trying to find rationality within creation, or to bring rationality into it.

If man were merely a random product of evolution in some place on the margins of the universe, then his life would make no sense or might even be a chance of nature.

But no, Reason is there at the beginning: creative, divine Reason. And because it is Reason, it also created freedom; and because freedom can be abused, there also exist forces harmful to creation.

Hence a thick black line, so to speak, has been drawn across the structure of the universe and across the nature of man. But despite this contradiction, creation itself remains good, life remains good, because at the beginning is good Reason, God’s creative love.

Hence the world can be saved. Hence we can and must place ourselves on the side of reason, freedom and love – on the side of God who loves us so much that he suffered for us, that from his death there might emerge a new, definitive and healed life.

The Old Testament account of creation that we listened to clearly indicates this order of realities. But it leads us a further step forward. It has structured the process of creation within the framework of a week leading up to the Sabbath, in which it finds its completion.

For Israel, the Sabbath was the day on which all could participate in God’s rest, in which man and animal, master and slave, great and small were united in God’s freedom.

Thus the Sabbath was an expression of the Covenant between God and man and creation. In this way, communion between God and man does not appear as something extra, something added later to a world already fully created.

The Covenant, communion between God and man, is inbuilt at the deepest level of creation. Yes, the Covenant is the inner ground of creation, just as creation is the external presupposition of the Covenant.

God made the world so that there could be a space where he might communicate his love, and from which the response of love might come back to him. From God’s perspective, the heart of the man who responds to him is greater and more important than the whole immense material cosmos, for all that the latter allows us to glimpse something of God’s grandeur.

Easter and the paschal experience of Christians, however, now require us to take a further step. The Sabbath is the seventh day of the week. After six days in which man in some sense participates in God’s work of creation, the Sabbath is the day of rest.

But something quite unprecedented happened in the nascent Church: the place of the Sabbath, the seventh day, was taken by the first day. As the day of the liturgical assembly, it is the day for encounter with God through Jesus Christ who as the Risen Lord encountered his followers on the first day, Sunday, after they had found the tomb empty.

The structure of the week is overturned. No longer does it point towards the seventh day, as the time to participate in God’s rest. It sets out from the first day as the day of encounter with the Risen Lord.

This encounter happens afresh at every celebration of the Eucharist, when the Lord enters anew into the midst of his disciples and gives himself to them, allows himself, so to speak, to be touched by them, sits down at table with them.

This change is utterly extraordinary, considering that the Sabbath, the seventh day seen as the day of encounter with God, is so profoundly rooted in the Old Testament.

If we also bear in mind how much the movement from work towards the rest-day corresponds to a natural rhythm, the dramatic nature of this change is even more striking. This revolutionary development that occurred at the very the beginning of the Church’s history can be explained only by the fact that something utterly new happened that day.

The first day of the week was the third day after Jesus’s death. It was the day when he showed himself to his disciples as the Risen Lord. In truth, this encounter had something unsettling about it.

The world had changed. This man who had died was now living with a life that was no longer threatened by any death. A new form of life had been inaugurated, a new dimension of creation.

The first day, according to the Genesis account, is the day on which creation begins. Now it was the day of creation in a new way, it had become the day of the new creation.

We celebrate the first day. And in so doing we celebrate God the Creator and his creation. Yes, we believe in God, the Creator of heaven and earth. And we celebrate the God who was made man, who suffered, died, was buried and rose again.

We celebrate the definitive victory of the Creator and of his creation. We celebrate this day as the origin and the goal of our existence. We celebrate it because now, thanks to the risen Lord, it is definitively established that reason is stronger than unreason, truth stronger than lies, love stronger than death.

We celebrate the first day because we know that the black line drawn across creation does not last for ever. We celebrate it because we know that those words from the end of the creation account have now been definitively fulfilled: “God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good”
(Gen 1:31). Amen.


Other libretto illustrationss from the altar of Bikolaus von Verdun, Benedictine Abbey of Klosterneuburg, Austria.


What a magnificent homily! The analogy between creation and the Resurrection is jawdroppingly stunning! Benedict XVI has the philosophical-theological originality of the early Church fathers, and he deploys it when one expects it least. After all the original ideas in Jesus of Nazareth, he tops it with this! By the way, which of the Church Fathers [and doctors of the Church] lived to be 84, still producing original insights?




Pope marks Easter vigil -
Holiest night of the Christian year



VATICAN CITY, April 23 (AP) - Pope Benedict XVI is marking the holiest night of the year for Christians with an Easter vigil service in St. Peter's Basilica during which he baptized and confirmed six adults.

Benedict began Saturday night's ceremony by lighting a candle that symbolizes the resurrection of Christ, which the faithful mark on Easter Sunday.

After he walked down a darkened central aisle of St. Peter's in silence, the hundreds of faithful in the pews shared the flame from candle to candle until the basilica twinkled and the lights came on.

This year, students of the Legion of Christ, the conservative order undergoing a major Vatican-mandated overhaul, assisted at the liturgical service. The Vatican took over the Legion last May 1 after confirming its founder was a pedophile.



[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 24/04/2011 11:55]
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