BENEDICT XVI: NEWS, PAPAL TEXTS, PHOTOS AND COMMENTARY

See preceding page for earlier entries today, 5/12/12.




Saturday, May 12, Fifth Week in Easter

ST. PANCRATIUS (Pancras) (b Phrygia ca 290, d Rome 304), Martyr
Little is known about this early Christian boy martyr who, however, quickly became one of the most popular saints in his time, with a basilica erected by a Pope over his tomb as early as the fourth century. Located on the Gianiculum hill overlooking the Vatican, it continues to be a popular pilgrimage site, especially for those looking for a job. Pancratius was born in Phrygia (now in present-day Turkey) to noble pagan parents, but was brought to Rome by an uncle when he was orphaned early. In Rome, he was exposed to Christians and chose to be baptized, after which he became a zealous exponent of the faith. During the wave ov persecutions by the emperor Diocletian, he refused to denounce his faith, for which he was beheaded. He was only 14. A cult quickly developed at the tomb where he was buried, with many miracles reported. Since then, he has been one of Rome's most popular local saints/ In the English-speaking world, he is best known because one of London's major train stations, St. Pancras, is named for him. When Augustine of Canterbury (a Benedictine) came to England, he named the first church he erected after Pancras.
Readings for today's Mass:
usccb.org/bible/readings/051212.cfm


AT THE VATICAN TODAY

The Holy Father met today with

- Cardinal Fernando Filoni, Prefect of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples (regular meeting)

- Cardinal Agostino Vallini, the Pope's Vicar-General for the Diocese of Rome

Beatrice on her site

revives a December 2005 article by Jeff Israely written when TIME magazine chose Benedict XVI - not as their Man of the Year (the honor went jointly to singer Bono and to Bill and Melinda Gates for their philanthropic work) - but 'European Newsmaker of the Year'. This was among the earliest articles I posted during our first month at PAPA RATZINGER FORUM, on Page 5 of the NEWS ABOUT BENEDICT thread.

As Beatrice points out, nothing can be subtracted from what Israely thought at the time - obviously after six years, there is much more that is unprecedented and positive to add to it. The wonder is to see how far Israely has since distanced himself from what he thought in December 2005 (and when he wrote the text for the late Gianni Giansanti's wonderful picture book entitled The Dawn of a Papacy) to his increasingly critical and biting positions about this Pope, in whom he now sees nothing positive at all. It is always puzzling how journalists today seem to think that readers share their own personal selective amnesia about positions they have taken in the past and have come to overturn. How does Israely reconcile his views today with what he wrote in 2005? Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI has not changed, nor have his positions as a Christian and as a man of the Church which have always been clear and firm.

It is very pertinent to bring up Israely's December 2005 article now to mark the seventh anniversary of Benedict XVI's Pontificate.

A man on a mission
by Jeff Israely

December 18, 2005



The man who would become Pope Benedict XVI began the year behind a desk. Granted, Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger was no ordinary shuffler of Vatican papers; indeed, he had long been celebrated by Church conservatives as the architect of Pope John Paul II's doctrinal policy and vilified by progressives as the Panzerkardinal who defended Catholic orthodoxy with the impenetrability of a tank.

Yet Ratzinger's quotidian reality was essentially that of an exalted Catholic Church bureaucrat. Working the day shift at Church headquarters for 23 years meant studying and safeguarding the Gospels, not preaching it. [He preached enough, too! There are a considerable number of significant homilies he delivered in those years that were reported and eventually published in any number of anthologies of his writings. Not to mention his weekly Masses at the Campo Teutonico chapel in the Vatican where he preached every Thursday for 23 years as long as he was in Rome.]

On March 31, Ratzinger was in his Vatican office when the phone rang with bad news. John Paul's long and brave battle with failing health looked to be nearing its end, and as the dean of the College of Cardinals, it would be Ratzinger's duty to formally notify his brother Cardinals once the Pope had died.

Ratzinger hurried into a black Mercedes and was driven from the office of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, around the one-lane road behind St. Peter's Basilica, to the elevator that would bring him up to the Pope's private quarters.

It was around noon when the Cardinal approached the Holy Father's bedside. John Paul's condition had deteriorated that morning. The same throat infection that had twice sent him to Gemelli hospital had begun to spread through his body.

Apart from his curial position, Ratzinger was there as one of the Pope's dearest friends, and Vatican insiders have quietly speculated about this final encounter between the two men. Some, according to Vatican sources, actually believe the Pope prophesied to Ratzinger that the German would be his successor. Whatever form the conversation took, the Church administrator was indeed chosen three weeks later by his brother Cardinals to succeed John Paul II.

The new Pope has stepped onto the world stage with grace, warmth and an understated clout, qualities that make him our choice for European Newsmaker of the Year. A man often described as methodical and contemplative — even downright shy — has created a charisma all his own, one that seems to defy our turn-up-the-volume, look-at-me times.

At 78, Benedict is the archetype of the quiet, lifelong believer who suddenly sees it is his turn to speak up, a rejuvenated old soul surprisingly well-equipped for his final mission.

Father Joseph Fessio, who has known the Pope since the 1970s, said his former professor "actually seems healthier, younger, more radiant, more at peace" since assuming the papal throne.

Yet Ratzinger's peaceful countenance belies an energetic soul. The new Pope is a man on a mission, determined to reassert Catholic orthodoxy in the face of the challenge of modern times, and to make the Church once again a central part of the life of Europe, a geographical entity once coterminous with Christendom but now the most secular place on earth.

Ratzinger's public image may be more cuddly than many expected it would be, but his beliefs have not budged. He has made it clear that traditional Church teachings on abortion, female clergy and homosexuality will not be challenged so long as he's in charge.

After the release of a new Vatican document that would prohibit any person who was openly gay — even if celibate — from becoming a priest, the writer Andrew Sullivan, a gay Catholic, said Benedict "has identified a group of people and said, regardless of how they behave or what they do, they are beneath serving God. It isn't what they do that he is concerned with. It's who they are."

Yet away from the most controversial issues, the Pope has shown an ability to preach eloquently about the core issues of modern existence — good and evil, charity and consumerism, and the slippery slope of instantaneous self-fulfillment.

Ratzinger, says a top aide to a progressive European Cardinal, "has a brilliant way of summing up a concept in a single sentence. He can clean off the window of modern history, and give you a clear vision of what's wrong with our society."

The new Pope's mission is the same one that has driven him since he was ordained in his native Bavaria. But Ratzinger's essential beliefs were rarely seen more clearly than during — and after — his predecessor's final hours.

On the evening of April 1, a veteran aide to Ratzinger recounted how, that morning, his boss had gathered together employees in the doctrinal office for a reciting of the rosary, and then informed them of his visit to see John Paul. "I've never seen him that emotional," the Vatican official said. Ten days later, it fell to Ratzinger to lead the service for John Paul's funeral.

It may have been the most-watched such ceremony in human history, with over 1 million faithful and dozens of world leaders jammed in and around St. Peter's Square, and tens of millions more watching on television. [Which is why I have always pointed out that no Pope before him ever had such massive worldwide exposure before he became Pope - and all men of goodwill who watched that funeral Mass could not have come away unmoved by Cardinal Ratzinger's humble manner and powerful homily paying tribute to his predecessor's exceptional Christian witness. In other words, more people had an extraordinary preview of the next Pope and his mettle than any other in history, so he was hardly entirely an unknown individual to them when he ended up being the Pope.]

Ratzinger was a study in serenity, guiding the elaborate liturgy with poise, and delivering a moving, plainspoken homily. It was the first public proof to the faithful — and to voting Cardinals — that he was a man who could shepherd a worldwide flock.

In the days that followed, Ratzinger was called upon to lead a series of closed-door, pre-conclave meetings with his fellow Cardinals, who would later speak of his attentiveness and multilingual skills, and even a sense of humor.

For the good of the Church, there could be no angling for the papacy while he was called upon to be the sole pilot for an institution that momentarily had no one in charge. Rather, there was an assumption of responsibility.

"After John Paul died," a Rome-based Cardinal recalled recently, "Ratzinger seemed to be carrying the entire Church on his shoulders."

Hours before the voting was to begin, he gave his last speech as Cardinal, an impassioned defense of orthodoxy in which he denounced "the dictatorship of relativism." The next day, he was Pope.

Beaming from the loggia above a drizzly St. Peter's Square, Papa Benedetto XVI told the world that the Cardinals had elected "a humble worker in the vineyard of the Lord."

He quickly got down to business. Benedict fast-tracked John Paul's road toward sainthood, named his own successor in the doctrinal office and prepared his first encyclical (due out around Christmas).

In August, he visited his native Germany for World Youth Day, where he made a historic visit to the Cologne synagogue, spoke out forcefully against terrorism in a meeting with German Muslim leaders, and won over some 1 million young people — many of whom had originally signed up to see their beloved John Paul.

It was then, perhaps, that the world appreciated that the new head of the Catholic Church would not be a mere caretaker.

Benedict's public appeal comes from a manner that is always composed. His voice has a singsong cadence and his smile lights up his aging face.

He doesn't mince words. "True revolution can only come from God," he told the youth gathering in Cologne.

The new Pope has managed to fill John Paul's shoes without trying to match his oversized magnetism, and in so doing has revealed a side of his character that perhaps he didn't even know he had.

Angelo Cardinal Scola of Venice, who has known Ratzinger since 1971, says the papacy has brought out the best in his mentor. Ratzinger, Scola told Time, "has the gift to be able to speak, at the same time, to the most simple and the most cultured of people. In 35 years, every single time I have seen or heard him, I have learned something new."

The new Pope himself seems ready to learn. Over the summer, he met in a one-month span with the leaders of the ultratraditionalist Lefebvrites and then with Hans Küng, a Swiss-born progressive theologian who has loudly disagreed with much of Cardinal Ratzinger's doctrine. He showed no sign of giving ground on either flank, but he listened.

At October's Synod of Bishops, he introduced the first-ever open discussion period, and took part in it. "That the Pope himself spoke up was evidence that he wants a direct and immediate dialogue with his brother Bishops — a precious sign of a healthy collegiality," says Scola, whom Benedict picked to preside over the three-week-long meeting.

And he reaches out, above all, to his flock. Benedict has already produced a series of penetrating homilies, using language that often doesn't quite sound like it should come from a Pope. In a passage on sin, he wrote of the temptation to "think that bargaining a little with evil, reserving some freedom against God, is good, perhaps even necessary. But if we look at the world, it is not so. Evil always poisons." His predecessor's poetic touch made the world take notice. Benedict will connect by the power of his prose.

But for all his learning and his sense of mission, the great surprise of Benedict's papacy so far — at least to those who didn't personally know him — has been a quiet humanity.

At the end of a general audience in August, the Pope had set aside time for a long line of the ill and elderly to personally greet him. A girl, perhaps 9 or 10 years old, approached, holding her mother's hand and gripping a teddy bear. Her hair was cut short and her face was puffy from medication. The Pope looked straight in the little girl's eager eyes, and brushed his hand with a blessing across her forehead. And then, without missing a beat, he reached over and blessed the teddy bear in the same way. [In memory of all the teddy bears 'Pepperl' has ever loved!]

Among those for whom doctrine is key, Benedict's unshakable convictions will earn him both fans and foes. For those of us less sure of our faith — and even those with none at all — the new Pope reminds us, simply, that a missionary's work is never done.

Head of pontifical academy offers apology
to protesting members and affirms
full commitment to 'Gospel of life'
By Benjamin Mann


Vatican City, May 11, 2012 (CNA) - The president of the Pontifical Academy for Life has expressed his full commitment to the “Gospel of Life,” and apologized for communications that were seen as dismissing members' ethical concerns.

On May 8, Bishop Ignacio Carrasco de Paula acknowledged that an April 2012 letter, criticizing “some pro-life activists” who objected to aspects of a planned Vatican conference on stem cells, “contained unfortunate phrasing which, if misunderstood, could have offended the sensibilities of some persons.”

In Tuesday's letter to academy members, the bishop and academy president assured them that the offending words were not meant “to show any disrespect, and certainly not to those with whom we have been collaborating closely and gratefully for years in favor of human life and of its defense.”

“The fulcrum of our academy has always been and is, now more than ever, the Gospel of Life,” Bishop Carrasco de Paula told members.

His message came four days after a letter addressed to the bishop was made public, in which academy member Professor Josef Seifert sharply criticized the organization's recent decisions about holding conferences. According to Seifert, some members were calling for resignations among the academy's leadership.

The controversy began with a February 2012 conference on infertility at the Vatican, in which the pontifical academy played a non-organizing role. The event drew criticism within the academy, for hosting speakers who appeared to endorse techniques and methods condemned by the Church.

In April, the academy announced it was canceling a conference on adult stem cells, which would have featured experts who also specialize in embryonic research. In two sets of letters, officials gave different reasons for the cancellation, and disparaged the objections of “some pro-life activists.”

On May 10, two days after Bishop Carrasco de Paula's letter, a senior member of the Pontifical Academy for Life offered CNA his thoughts on recent events at the academy as well as its present needs and future direction.

The senior member confirmed that neither the February conference on infertility, nor the canceled gathering on adult stem cells, was organized by the Pontifical Academy for Life. It remains unclear who did organize February's conference, though there are suggestions that it was the work of a Catholic medical school.

“Dismay” over the infertility conference was “expressed by all members of the Governing Council” of the pontifical academy, the member said.

He recalled that after the “dreadful infertility conference,” and another “unfortunate” conference held several months earlier, “attention came to be focused on the upcoming stem cell conference with sensitivities and sensibilities heightened.”

In the view of this senior member, the April 2012 adult stem cell conference “might have worked – even with speakers who did not agree with the Church – if the entire program were placed within the anthropological and moral vision of the Church from the beginning, at the end, and with interventions from representatives of the Church's position if a speaker proposed or advocated anything immoral.”

Nonetheless, other speakers “could have been invited with a high level of expertise who were not involved in embryo destruction.”

The senior member said it was “madness to invite speakers who had openly and publicly opposed the Church and her leaders.” While “in principle, there was absolutely nothing wrong with such a conference,” the “big issue was the risk of scandal.”

“As I understand it, the conference on morally licit adult stem cell research was also being organized by someone else, and the Pontifical Academy for Life was providing the patronage for it without actually putting it together,” he explained. “I hope some hard lessons have been learned there!”

In the future, he said, the academy staff “has to be more directly involved in planning conferences. It simply cannot turn the planning of events over to outside groups … If an outside group is involved in planning there has to be vigilant oversight.”

“Better management,” he said, could do much to prevent incidents like February's infertility conference.

The senior member also highlighted the example of past leaders' efforts to safeguard the academy's moral vision.

“When Cardinal (Elio) Sgreccia was President of the Academy, he would call all the speakers to Rome four months before the conference. Each speaker would have to present his or her complete finished paper, as it was going to be delivered. That way there were no surprises.”

“Cardinal (Fiorenzo) Angelini, who preceded Sgreccia, would actually intervene if a speaker said anything contrary to moral truth and point out forcefully to the speaker and the audience that what was just said was contrary to Catholic teaching or morality.”

“As Catholics we have to be engaged with the broader society,” the senior academy member stated.

Simultaneously, he said, “we must always call those who are involved in scientific research, or manufacturing, or government to do everything in accord with the moral vision of the human person articulated and clearly taught by the Church.”

One blogger remembered Salvador Dali's birthday yesterday with this little-known connection...

About Dali's famous Crucifix and
the vision of St. John of the Cross
by Thomas L. McDonald

May 11, 2012


Left, the Dali Crucifix; right, sketch by San Juan de la Cruz (John of the Cross).

Dali’s painting was inspired by a sketch done by St. John while he was chaplain of the monastery of the Incarnation in Avila. One day, while praying in a loft overlooking the sanctuary, he was struck by a vision, and hastily made a sketch in pen (sketch at right in photo).

(He saw) Christ, weighed down by the sins of the world and his own suffering, as if seen from the perspective of the Father. It’s a unique and powerful perspective.

St. John was suspicious of visions, and didn’t think much of it. The sketch was given to one of his penitents, and passed on to her prioress after her death. It was displayed in a monstrance until 1968, when it was removed to be studied and restored, before being returned to the monastery.

Dali had this to say about his version of the painting:

---

In the first place, in 1950, I had a ‘cosmic dream’ in which I saw this image in color, and which in my dream represented the ‘nucleus of the atom’. This nucleus later took on a metaphysical sense; I considered it ‘the very unity of the universe’, the Christ!

In the second place, when thanks to the instructions of Father Bruno, a Carmelite, I saw the Christ drawn by Saint John of the Cross, I worked out geometrically a triangle and a circle, which ‘aesthetically’ summarized all my previous experiments, and I inscribed my Christ in this triangle.

---

How the Ordinariate is healing
England’s cultural wounds
400 years after the bitter conflicts of religion,
the Church is posthumously re-Catholicising
By Fr Alexander Lucie-Smith

Friday, 11 May 2012

Yesterday I was in a cathedral city in the south of England, and having time to spare, and because it was raining, I decided to visit the cathedral and stay for Evensong. I am, like so many in this country, familiar with Evensong; I find it both beautiful and alien at the same time. I both love it and hate it. I only go to Evensong to listen to it, never to take part.

Evensong’s beauties are the work of Coverdale and Cranmer, two men who led the revolt against the unity of the Church, and overthrew the great work of time, the historic faith of this country.

Cranmer’s liturgical reforms were not reforms in any true sense, they were a wrecking of the monastic offices and their replacement with something superficially like yet utterly alien.

The Cranmerian Prayer Book provoked rebellions in England, let us remember. The West Country rebels of 1549 protested that they found the Cranmerian service that replaced the Mass no more than “a Christmas game”.

The Northern Rebels who entered Durham in 1569 tore Up the Prayer Book and had the Mass celebrated in the Cathedral once more. In 1596 one of my collateral ancestors, the Blessed George Errington, was hanged, drawn and quartered at York, along with three other martyrs, because of his Catholic faith, a faith he and many others simply could not recognise in the Cranmerian Prayer Book.

Thus the experience of Cranmerian English leaves me feeling conflicted. I love it and I hate it, and I feel I ought to love it, as it is so beautiful, and because it has inspired so many of our great poets, not least among whom is T.S. Eliot.

That’s why I am profoundly pleased by something that happened earlier that day in London. I attended a meeting about the Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham, at which Mgr Burnham, the assistant to the Ordinary, told the assembled guests that a Customary is in preparation.

This is essentially what we might call an office book, with various readings drawn from the English spiritual tradition, such as Newman’s writings from his Anglican days; but it also draws on those fine psalms and prayers used by Cranmer, with some doctrinal alterations. Mgr Burnham also spoke of the growing popularity of Evensong and Benediction amidst Ordinariate congregations.

What this Customary will do, it seems to me, is posthumously re-Catholicise Cranmer and reclaim him for our tradition; it will make the Cranmerian liturgy, which I find a cause of division and conflict, into something that will bring about unity. It will mean that from now on, I need not find Evensong alien.

Perhaps Dr Cranmer himself would approve. I hope so! It certainly promotes the healing of a cultural and religious wound.

The Ordinariate, which I greatly welcome, is already enriching us in many ways. Long may it continue to grow and flourish.

As countdown nears to a likely reconciliation,
Fellay indicates acceptance of Pope's good will
despite internal dissent in the FSSPX
by Andrea Tornielli
Translated from the Italian service of

May 12, 2012

The coming week is crucial for the relationship between Rome and the FSSPX. The cardinals and bishops who constitute the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith will be discussing the society's final response, presented on April 17, to the Doctrinal Preamble proposed by the Vatican as a formula for bringing back the FSSPX into full communion with Rome.

It is a delicate moment, especially considering the leak earlier this week of the letter sent to their Superior-General, Mons Bernard Fellay, by his three fellow FSSPX bishops protesting any reconciliation with Rome, and Fellay's reply to them.


CNS photo of Mons. Fellay at FSSPX headquarters in Menzingen, Switzerland, taken earlier this week.

Fellay has been conducting the negotiations with Rome and it appears he has decided to accept Rome's olive branch. [One must note however that one of the three dissenting bishops, Mons. Alfonso de Galarreta, led the FSSPX theological panel which conducted doctrinal discussions with a CDF panel from October 2009 to April 2011. It says much of Mons. Fellay's good faith in the negotiations that he and his assistants on the FSSPX General Council did not seem to be influenced by Mons. Galarreta's fundamental objection to any rapprochement with Rome.

Mons. Fellay's response to his fellow bishops made clear the decisive role played by Benedict XVI in this reconciliation process. He wrote: "The Pope has let us know that concern to regularize our status for the good of the Church is at the heart of his Pontificate, even though he knew it would have been easier for him and for us to just leave things as they are. He has expressed himself decisively and rightly so".

We cannot know how and when the Pope made this known to the FSSPX superior, but it was very likely decisive to the change of attitude that Fellay has demonstrated in recent months.

This element also places the proper context for the consideration by the CDF plenary of the 'non-substantial' modifications suggested by Fellay to the Doctrinal Preamble before he signs it. In fact, the CDF must then pass on its recommendation to the Holy Father, who holds the final decision.

Benedict XVI is expected to approve, despite the fact that some at the Vatican - and in the FSSPX - are hoping against it.

In any case, a reconciliation would have consequences: Yhere is definitely an internal split in the FSSPX [we have no idea of the exact division of strengths, but Fellay must be confident he has more influence over the society's priests and faithful than the other three bishops], even without referring to the leaked letters, because of letters and editorials that have been published in recent days from various FSSPX district leaders and the traditionalist media.

"I cannot exclude that there might be a split" in the FSSPX after the fact, Fellay told Catholic News Service.

Likewise, one can predict internal reactions against the Pope's eventual 'Yes'. on the part of those who are ready to accuse him of 'wishing to invalidate Vatican-II' by welcoming the FSSPX to full communion.

But the tone and contents of Fellay's letter, quite different from what he has used in the past, indicate that he and those who think like him understand the Pope's good will, his concern for the unity of the Church, his call for reconciliation, and above all, his interpretation of Vatican II.

The Sunday issue (5/13/12) of L'Osservatore Romano carries the texts of both the greeting of Italian President Napolitano to the Holy Father, and the Holy Father's remarks after the Friday evening concert offered by the President as his annual tribute on the anniversary of Benedict XVI's election. It also carries photos of the two most important highlights of the evening (both, unfortunately, quite technically deficient pictures, a habitual OR failing that, in these days of digital photography, I am completely unable to explain). First, here is the translation of President Napolitano's remarks:



President Napolitano:
'A profound sharing of concerns and intentions
between the Italian state and the Holy See'

---

Holiness,

Since the first time we manifested the desire to dedicate a homage fon the anniversary of your election to the Pontificate and you agreed to welcome it in the solemn setting of this Hall, four years have passed.

Since then, these concerts - the art form dearest to you that we have chosen for our homage - have followed an increasingly intense flux of thoughts, feelings and propositions among the representative institutions of the Italian nation and the Holy See.

Today, on the occasion of what will now be our fifth such appointment in May, we can measure the profound sharing of concerns and intentions that have become established between two spheres that have such distinct responsibilities that are not comparable.

Concerns for the problems of a world which has presented and continues to present - whether seen from a national and European perspective, or from the inherently universal perspective of the Chair of Peter - currents of progress and hope, along with the persistent of ancient scourges and burdensome regressions.

This is a situation that is also apparent in the Middle East. Wherever it is manifested, we are alarmed by the signs of a return to the worst of the past in the persecution of Christian communities.

But the concerns that we share for the fate of our continent are no less heavy, as a result of the crisis that has has struck the nations with the most advanced economies and the most widespread material wellbeing.

In this difficult phase, Holiness, we are greatly comforted by your sensitivity and attention to the cause of European unity, as well as for the ethical and cultural dimension of a crisis that must be overcome by looking at new parameters of social and civilian wellbeing to be pursued.

We especially feel, Holiness, your solicitude for the fate of Italy, your confidence in the many positive energies present in our society, and therefore in the prospects of renewed unity and cohesion in our nation.

In expressing our most fervent wishes for the start of the eighth year of your Pontificate, we are happy to offer you tonight a concert that is Italian in every aspect.

Italian in the prestigious figure of Maestro Riccardo Muti; Italian in the entirety of the performers, soloists, orchestra and chorus of our capital's Teatro dell'Opera; Italian in the superb creations of two supreme composers like Antonio Vivaldi and Giuseppe Verdi; Italian in the instruments crafted by our greatest fiddlemakers and made available for this special concert.

We wish you happy listening, Holiness, and the continued happy fulfillment through the years of your high and arduous mission.

---

The Holy Father:
'In you, Lord, I repose my hope...'

Here is a translation of the Holy Father's remarks after the performance:

---

Mr. President of the Republic,
Eminences,
Honorable Ministers and Authorities,
Venerated Brothers in the Episcopate and Priesthood,
Ladies and Gentlemen:

My sincere and deferential greeting to the President of the Italian Republic, the Honorable Giorgio Napolitano, and to his kind lady, to which I add my sincere gratitude for his kind words, and for the gifts of a violin and a precious music score, and for this concert of sacred music by two great Italian composers.

These are signs that manifest once more the ties between the Successor of Peter and this beloved nation.

I also greet the President of the Council of Ministers, Sen. Mario Monti, and all the authorities present.

My sincere thanks to the Orchestra and Chorus of the Teatro dell'Opera of Rome, to the two sopranos, and most especially, to Maestro Riccardo Muti, for their intense interpretation and execution of the music.

Maestro Muti's sensitivity for sacred music is well-known, as is his commitment so that the rich repertoire that expresses the faith of the Church in music may be better known. It is for this, among other things, that I am pleased to confer on him a pontifical honor.

I am grateful to the Commune of Cremona, to the Centro di Musicologia Walter Stauffer, and to the Fondazione Antonio Straadivari-La Triennale, for having made available for the first section of the Orchestra some antique and valuable instruments from their own collections.

Antonio Vivaldi was a great exponent of Venetian musical tradition. Who does not know, among his works, at the very least, the Quattro Stagioni (Four Seasons)? But his output of sacred music remains not very well-known, though it occupies a significant part of his work and is of great value, especially as it expresses his faith.

The Magnificat that we heard is the song of praise of Mary and all the humble of heart who acknowledge and celebrate with joy and gratitude the action of God in their own lives and in history - praise of God whose 'style' is unlike man's because he places himself alongside the very least to give them hope.

Vivaldi's music expresses this praise, exultation, gratitude and even wonder before the work of God, with an extraordinary wealth of sentiments: from the solemn chorale at the beginning, in which the whole Church exalts the Lord, to the spirited 'Et exultavit', to the most beautiful choral expression 'Et misericordia', on which he lingers with audacious harmonies, rich with unexpected modulations, inviting us to meditate on the mercy of God who is faithful and who reaches out to all generations.

The register changes, so to speak, with the two sacred pieces by Giuseppe Verdi. We find ourselves confronting the sorrow of Mary at the foot of the Cross - 'Stabat mater dolorosa...' (The grieving mother stood there).

The great Italian opera composer, just as he had investigated and expressed the drama of so many personages in his operas, deals here with that of the Virgin who looks up at her Son on the cross. His music becomes essential, almost as if it were 'grasping' onto the words in order to express their meaning in the most intense way possible, through a wide range of feelings.

The sorrowful sense of 'pieta' (mercy) which begins the sequence, the dramatic 'Pro peccatis suae gentis'(For the sins of his people), the murmured 'dum emisit spiritum' (till he sent forth his spirit), to the choral invocations laden with emotions but also with serenity, addressed to Mary 'fons amoris' (fountain of love), which allow us to participate in her maternal grief and make our own hearts burn with love for Christ; to the final stanza which is an intense and powerful supplication to God that the soul may be granted the glory of Paradise, which is mankind's ultimate aspiration.

Verdi's Te Deum is also a succession of contrasts, and his attention to the sacred text is very detailed, giving it a reading other than traditional. He does not so much see it as a chant celebrating victories or coronations, but, he writes, as a succession of situations: the initial exultation - 'Te Deum', 'Sanctus'; the contemplation of Christ incarnate who liberates and opens up the Kingdom of Heaven; the invocation to the 'Judex venturus' (he who will come to judge) that he may have mercy; and finally, the repeated cries of the soprano and the chorus, "In te, Domine speravi" (you have trusted in the Lord) that closes the piece, which is almost like a plea from Verdi himself for hope and light in the last stage of his life.

What we heard tonight were the last pieces written by the composer, who did not intend them for publication, but who wrote them for himself. Indeed, he wished to be buried with the score of the Te Deum.

Dear friends, I hope that this evening we can repeat to God, with faith: In you, Lord, I joyfully repose my hope; make me love you as your Blessed Mother does, in order that at the end of my journey, my soul may be given the glory of Paradise.

To the President of the Republic, to the soloists, to the Orchestra and Chorus of the Teatro dell'Opera di Roma, to Maestro Muti, to the organizers and to all who are present, I say thank you once more. May the Lord bless you and those dear to you. I thank you from the heart.

---

The Pope presents Maestro Muti with the Grand Cross of St. Gregory the Great*.
[Note the difference in quality between the news agency photo, top, and the OR photo, bottom, in which, for instance, no amount of Photoshop adjustment can make the men's black suits look black, let alone get the skin tones right!]

*The Pontifical Equestrian Order of St. Gregory the Great was established in 1831 by Pope Gregory XVI. It is one of the five orders of knighthood of the Holy See. The order is bestowed on Catholic men and women (and in rare cases, non-Catholic men) in recognition of their personal service to the Holy See and the Church, unusual labours, support of the Holy See, and the good example set in their communities and country.

THE POPE IN AREZZO:
'Welcome to history among
the Churches of Tuscany'
by Cardinal Giueseppe Betori
Archbishop of Florence
President, Tuscan Bishops' Conference
Translated from

May 12, 2012

The Holy Father Benedict XVI will be arriving among us in a significant act of his Petrine ministry for the people of Tuscany.

His presence in the territory of the Diocese of Arezzo-Cortona-Sansepolcro, with encounters and celebrations in the city of Arezzo, the hermitage of La Verna, and the city of Sansepolcro is, in fact, a gift not just to that territory, but an event which will enrich the experience of faith in all the dioceses of Tuscany.

The significance of this pastoral visit must be seen in the horizon of faith, as an act in which the Pastor of the Universal Church comes to encounter the conditions and the expectations of faith in a local Church and her sister Churches in the region, to reinforce in them their awareness of believing, to express liturgical praise with the community, to reaffirm the reasons for bearing witness to the Gospel as a grace offered to all men and women in these lands.

It is a ministry that Benedict XVI is carrying out with a luminous Magisterium, proposing a profound spirituality, along with a precise awareness of the issues of the present.

By welcoming him to this region, the Bishops and the Churches of Tuscany express profound gratitude to him for his service to the Gospel and our deeply felt adhesion to the ecclesial itinerary that he proposes, in which we consider ourselves to take part completely.

In going through this territory, and especially through our cities, Beneidct XVI will come into contact with the religious and civic history of this region and will be able to appreciate the roots of faith which have innervated our civilization, of that growth in humanity that has been offered for centuries to Italy and the world.

We are proud to be the first repositories of this heritage, although we must confess our feeling of inadequacy in making that legacy shine forth today in all its richness.

The presence of the Pope among us, on the eve of the Year of Faith - which he intends to be a spur that will put back what is essential into the center of our lives, namely the presence of God whom we welcome in the event of Christ, his Son made man, who died and rose again for us - will be a special inducement to share the spiritual and pastoral objectives that Benedict XVI has placed at the center of this initiative.

And we want to do this with our own specificities, with a recovery of the transcendent reasons that are at the heart of every expression of beauty, with attention to that divine mystery which creation reveals in our landscapes, with the promotion of that human dignity that is the basis of every true humanistic project, with generosity of attention towards the weak and the poor who have inspired in us over time so many testimonials of charity.

Let us accompany the Pope's visit without prayers so that the hearts of everyone, believers or not, may open to his presence and allow his teaching to enlighten us.

Thank you, Holy Father, for the gift you make to us and for what you will be telling us that will give deeper solidity to our faith, more courageous horizons for our hope, and greater impulse to our charity.

May 13, Sixth Sunday of Easter
FEAST OF OUR LADY OF FATIMA

Mass celebrated in Fatima in May 2010 by Benedict XVI drew the largest crowd ever gathered at the shrine for a single event.
Reading for today's Mass: usccb.org/bible/readings/051312.cfm

WITH THE POPE TODAY

---

PASTORAL VISIT OF HIS HOLINESS BENEDICT XVI

TO AREZZO, LA VERNA & SANSEPOLCRO

Sunday, May 13, 2012

08.00 Departure from the Vatican by helicopter.

09.00 Arrival at the Communal Stadium 'Citta di Arezzo'

10.00 EUCHARISTIC CONCELEBRATION
Parco Il Prato, Arezzo
- Homily
REGINA CAELI
- Greetings.

12.30 Private visit to the Cathedral of San Donato in Arezzo.

13.15 Lunch with the Bishops of Tuscany
Bishop's Residence, Arezzo

16.30 Meeting wih the Organizers of the Pastoral Visit
Bishop's Residence

17.00 Departure by helicopter from the Communal Stadium for La Verna.

17.15 Arrival at La Beccia district in the Commune of Chiusi della Verna.

17.45 VISIT TO THE SHRINE OF LA VERNA
(where St. Francis received the stigmata)
in the presence of various Franciscan communities,
including the Friars Minor, the Poor Clares of Tuscany,
and other religious living in Chiusi La Verna.
- Address by the Holy Father.

18.45 Departure by helicopter from La Beccia for Sansepolcro.

19.00 Arrival at the Aviosuperficie heliport in Sansepolcro.

19.15 Private visit to the Co-Cathedral of Sansepolcro

19.30 MEETING WITH THE TOWNSPEOPLE
Piazza Torre di Berta, Sansepolcro
- Address by the Holy Father

20.15 Departure by helicopter from Sansepolcro for the Vatican.

21.15 Arrival at the Vatican heliport

---

Thirty-one years ago today, on May 13 1981...

Blessed John Paul II survived an assassination attempt by the Communist-hired Turkish gunman Ali Agca.


One year ago today...
The Vatican Press Office released the text of the Instruction Universae Ecclesiae regarding the implementation
of the 2007 Summorum Pontificum, thus 're-trenching' the traditional Mass into the daily life of the Church.

ARRIVAL & GREETING
TO THE PEOPLE OF AREZZO


The Holy Father is greeted by children dressed in medieval costumes, and right, by Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti.









Welcome at the Prato and greeting to the people.
This event preceding the Mass was not originally on the program.



Diocesan Bishop Riccardo Fontana delivers a greeting for the Pope; and is acknowledged by him.

Below,Arezzo Mayor Giuseppe Fanfani with his greeting.

AREZZO: MASS AT THE PRATO








Libretto illustrations: Left, marble main altar of Arezzo's cathedral; right, Mater misericordia, Giorgio Vasari, 1870, Diocesan Musuem of Arezzo.



Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti attended the Pope's Mass.


Pope Benedict XVI celebrated Mass this morning in Arezzo, central Italy, at the park called Il Prato (the meadow) beside the Cathedral of San Donato.

In his homily, the Holy Father recalled the great contributions of the local Church, saying, "Over the centuries, the Church in Arezzo has been enriched and animated by many expressions of the Christian faith, the highest among them being the Saints."



Here is the Vatican's English translation of the Pope's homily:

---

Dear brothers and sisters,

It is a great joy for me to be able to break with you the bread of the Word of God and the Eucharist. I greet you all and I thank you for your kind welcome.

I greet your Pastor, Archbishop Riccardo Fontana, whom I thank for his words of welcome, the Bishops, Priests, men and women religious, representatives of Church Associations and Ecclesial Movements.

I greet the Mayor, Giuseppe Fanfani and thank him for his welcome, the Prime Minister, Senator Mario Monti, and the other civil and military authorities present. My special thanks go to those who have generously contributed to this my Pastoral Visit.

An ancient Church welcomes me today, a Church that is expert in relationships and praiseworthy for its commitment over the centuries to building the city of Man in the image of the City of God.

Here in Tuscany, the community of Arezzo has often distinguished itself in the course of history for its sense of freedom and its ability to dialogue with different social groups. This is my first visit to you and my wish is that your City may always allow this precious heritage to bear fruit.

Over the centuries, the Church in Arezzo has been enriched and animated by many expressions of the Christian faith, the highest among them being the Saints. I think, in particular, of St Donato, your Patron, whose life’s witness which fascinated Medieval Christians, is still appropriate today.

He was an intrepid evangelizer, urging all to free themselves from pagan customs and to rediscover in the Word of God the strength to affirm the dignity of every person and the true meaning of freedom. Through his preaching, he brought people, whose Bishop he was, to unity with prayer and the Eucharist.

The chalice that was broken and restored by St Donato, and which is referred to by St Gregory the Great, is the symbol of the peacemaking action of the Church in society, for the common good.

Another of your witnesses is St Peter Damian [San Pier Damiani, a Doctor of the Church], and, with him, the great Camaldolese tradition which has been offering its spiritual riches to this diocesan Church and to the universal Church for a thousand years.

Blessed Pope Gregory X is entombed in your cathedral, almost as a sign of the continuity of the service of the Church of Christ to the world, in different times and cultures.

Sustained by the light that came from the burgeoning Orders of mendicant friars, including theologians and Saints, like St Thomas Aquinas and St Bonaventure of Bagnoregio, he confronted the great problems of his time: the reform of the Church, the healing of the schism with the Eastern Christian Church, which he tried to do by calling the Council of Lyon; attention to the Holy Land; peace and relations among peoples – he was the first person in the West to exchange ambassadors with Kublai Khan in China.

Dear Friends, the first Reading presented us with an important moment which manifests the universality of Christ and the Church’s message: St Peter, in the house of Cornelius, baptized the first pagans.

In the Old Testament, God didn’t want the blessing of the Jewish people to remain exclusive, but to extend it to all nations. When he called Abraham, he said: “All the tribes of the earth shall bless themselves by you”.

Thus Peter, inspired from above, understood that “God does not have favourites, but anybody of any nationality who fears God and does what is right, is acceptable to him”. Peter’s gesture becomes a symbol of the Church’s openness to all humanity. Following the great tradition of your Church and your Community, be authentic witnesses of God’s love for all!

But how can we, in our weakness, be witnesses to this love? In the second Reading, St John tells us clearly that being freed of our sins and their consequences is not our initiative but God’s. We did not love him first - he loved us, and took our sins upon himself and washed them with the blood of Christ. God loved us first and wants us to enter his communion of love, to collaborate in his work of redemption.

The Lord’s invitation rang out in the Gospel: “I commissioned you to go out and to bear fruit, fruit that will last”. He was speaking specifically to the Apostles, but in the broader sense, it regards all Jesus’s disciples. The whole Church is sent out into the world to preach the Gospel and salvation.

But it is always God’s initiative; he calls us to different ministries, so that each one plays his proper role for the common good. He calls us to the ministerial priesthood, to consecrated life, to married life, to working in the world: all are asked to respond generously to the Lord, sustained by his Word which comforts us: “You did not choose me, no, I chose you”.

Dear Friends. I know about your Church’s commitment to promoting Christian life. Be a ferment in society, be present as Christians, be active and coherent. With its centuries-old history, the City of Arezzo summarizes significant expressions of culture and values.

Among the treasures of your tradition, you are proud of your Christian identity, visible in many signs and rooted in devotions like the one to Our Lady of Comfort.

This land was the birthplace of great Renaissance personalities, from Petrarch to Vasari, and played an active role in affirming that concept of man which left its mark on the history of Europe, drawing strength from Christian values.

In recent times too, the ideal heritage of your city has been expressed by some of its most illustrious children through their university research and other institutions where they have elaborated the concept of civitas, defining it in terms of the Christian ideal among people of our time.

Within the context of the Church in Italy, committed to the theme of education, we must ask – especially in this region where the Renaissance was born – what vision of man are we proposing to the new generations.

The Word of God we have heard is a powerful invitation to live God’s love towards all, and, among its distinctive values, the culture of this land includes solidarity, attention to the weak, respect for the dignity of all. Your capacity to welcome those who have come here recently in search of freedom and work, is well known.

Showing solidarity with the poor, means recognizing the plan of God the Creator, who made us all one family.

Of course, this area has also been severely struck by the economic crisis. The complexity of the problems makes it difficult to find quick and effective solutions to come out of the present situation which affects the weakest elements especially and greatly worries young people.

Since the remotest times, attention to others has moved the Church to show concrete signs of solidarity with those in need, sharing resources, promoting simpler lifestyles, going against an ephemeral culture which has disappointed many and determined a profound spiritual crisis.

May this Diocesan Church, enriched by the shining witness of St Francis of Assisi, continue to be caring and attentive towards those in need, and may it teach how to go beyond purely materialistic ideologies that often mark our age and end up clouding our sense of solidarity and charity.

Witnessing to the love of God by caring for the weakest is tied to the defence of human life, from its beginning to its natural end. In your Region, ensuring everyone dignity, health and fundamental rights, is justly considered an indispensable good.

The defence of the family, through laws that are just and protect the weakest elements, is always an important point that keeps the fabric of society strong and offers hope for the future.

Just as in the Middle Ages, the statutes of your city became instruments that ensured inalienable rights to many, may they continue that task today, promoting a City with an ever more human face. The Church offers her contribution to this task so that the love of God may always be accompanied love for one’s neighbour.

Dear brothers and sisters. Continue serving God and man according to the teaching of Jesus, the shining example of your saints and the tradition of your people. May the maternal protection of Our Lady of Comfort, whom you love and venerate, accompany and sustain you in this task. Amen.

---

At the end of the Mass, the Holy Father also led the recitation of the Regina caeli, before which he spoke this brief message, also from the Vatican translation:

---

Dear brothers and sisters.

At the conclusion of this liturgical celebration, the Marian prayer invites us to place ourselves spiritually before the image of Our Lady of Comfort, which is kept in the Cathedral.

As Mother of the Church, Our Lady always wants to comfort her children at the time of their greatest difficulties and sufferings. This City has often experienced her maternal assistance. So, today too, we commit to her intercession, all the people and families of your community which find themselves in situations of serious need.

At the same time, through Mary, we invoke from God the gift of moral comfort, so that this community, and the whole of Italy, may resist the temptation to become discouraged and, strengthened by this great humanist tradition, it may set out again on the road to spiritual and ethical renewal which can only lead to an authentic improvement in social and civil life. In this regard, each and every one must make their contribution.

Mary, Our Lady of Comfort, pray for us.

---

P.S. The Italian news media have just reported that because of bad weather, the Holy Father's visit to the Franciscan shrine of La Verna has been cancelled. He was to have flown there by helicopter.

The only report I've seen so far in the secular Anglophone media about the Pope's visit to Arezzo is from AP - it's very brief and is focused on the 'economic' angle of his homily:

Pope addresses Italy's
economic crisis with
practical Catholic sense


AREZZO, Italy,May 13 (AP) - Pope Benedict XVI is promoting the church's prescription for coping with the economic crisis: share resources and pare lifestyles down to the essentials.

Benedict spoke about economic problems as he made a daylong pastoral visit Sunday to the Tuscan town of Arezzo.

During his homily at Mass, he acknowledged that the complexity of the problems makes it hard to pinpoint “more rapid and efficient” solutions to the Eurozone crisis, which he noted hits the weakest especially hard and is worrying the young, as they search for hard-to-find jobs.

The Pope says the Catholic church over the centuries has reacted to such problems by showing concrete solidarity to those in need, sharing resources and “promoting more essential lifestyles".

VISIT TO THE CATHEDRAL
OF SAN DONATO



After the Mass, and before lunch with the bishops of Tuscany, the Pope made a private visit to the Cathedral of San Donato.



He used the mobile platform to get around the Cathedral.




Praying before the Madonna del Conforto.



Veneration at the tomb of San Donato.


Mons. Fontana shows out new features of the Cathedral.


The Pope looks closer at the sculpture supporting the Novus Ordo altar.


Visit to La Verna cancelled
due to bad weather
In the afternoon, the weather which had been blustery since the Pope arrived in the morning, took a turn for the worse in the mountaintop shrine of La Verna, and it was decided to cancel the helicopter trip there.


Franciscan monks and nuns who had been waiting for the Pope are battered by wind and rain at La Verna.

The Pope proceeded to Sansepolcro from Arezzo, and it was hoped that the weather would clear enough for him to still make a brief visit to La Verna afterwards, but it didn't turn out that way. {As a cardinal, the Pope had made a few pilgrimages to La Verna, where St. Francis received the stigmata.)

Papal discourse prepared for
the Franciscans of Tuscany

Although the Holy Father had to cancel his pilgrimage to the Franciscan shrine of La Verna on account of bad weather at that mountaintop location Sunday afternoon, the Vatican has published the text of the discourse he had prepared to address to the Franciscan monks and nuns of Tuscany. La Verna is where St. Francis of Assisi received the stigmata of Christ in 1224.


St. Francis receives the stigmata, by three artists: Left, Giotto (1350); top right, Giovanni Bellini (1485), and bottom right, Jan van Eyck (1480).

---

Dear Friars Minor,
Dear daughters of St. Clare,
Dear brothers and sisters:

May the Lord give you peace!

To contemplate the Cross of Christ: We have come as pilgrims up to the Sacro Spicco (sacred rock outcrop) of La Verna where, "two years before he died" (Celano, Vita Prima, III, 94: FF, 484), St. Francis was imprinted with the wounds of the glorious Passion of Christ.

His journey as disciple had led him to a union so profound withh the Lord that he shared the external signs of his supreme act on the Cross. A journey that had begun at San Damiano before the Crucified One, contemplated with the mind and the heart.

The continuous meditation of the Cross, in this holy place, has been a way of sanctification for so many Christians who, during the past eight centuries, have knelt here in prayer, silence and recollection.

The glorio0us Cross of Christ takes on the sufferings of the world, but it is baove all a tangible sign of love, a measure of God's goodness towards man.

In this place, we too are called on to recover the supernatural dimension of life and turn our eyes away from what is merely contingent to entrust ourselves completely to the Lord, with a free heart and in perfect joy, contemplating the Crucified Lord so that he may wound us with his love.

"Most, High, Almighty, good Lord, to you alone all praise, honor and glory and every blessing" (Cantico di Frate Sole: FF, 263). Only by allowing oneself to be illuminated by the light of God's love can man and all nature be rescued, and beauty can finally reflect the splendor of the face of Christ as the moon reflects the sun.

Pouring forth from the glorious Cross, the Blood of the Crucified Lord comes to revive the arid bones of Adam which remain in us, so that each one may find the joy of journeying upwards, towards God.

From this blessed place, I join the prayers of all the Franciscan men and women on earth: "We adore you, o Christ, and we bless you here and in all the churches of the world because by your Holy Cross you redeemed the world".

Seduced by the love of Christ! One cannot come to Lqa Verna without allowing onseself to be guided by St. Francis's prayer of the 'absorbeat': "May the power of your love, Lord Christ, fiery and sweet as honey, so absorb our hearts as to withdraw them from all that is under heaven. Grant that we may be ready to die for love of your love, as you died for love of our love" (Preghiera "absorbeat", 1: FF, 277).

The contemplation of the Crucifix is a work of the mind, but it cannot allow us to exult without the support, indeed without the power of love. In this very place, Fra Bonaventure of Bagnoregio, illustrious son of Francis, planned his Itinerarium mentis in Deum (Journey of the mind into God), to show us the way towards the peaks where we may encounter God.

This great Doctor of the Church communicates to us his own experience, inviting us to pray. First of all, the mind was look to the passion of the Lord, because it is the sacrifice of the Cross that cancels our sins, a deficiency that can only be filled with God's love.

"I exhort the reader", he writes, "first of all to the prayer for the Crucified Christ, who blood cleanses the stains of our sins" (Itinerarium mentis in Deum, Prol. 4). But in order to be effective, our prayer needs tears, namely, our interior involvement, our love that responds to God's love.

Then we also need that admiratio that St. Bonaventure sees in the humble of the Gospel, who are capable of wonder in the face of Christ's salvific work. It is truly humility that is the door to every virtue.

Indeed it is not with the intellectual pride of seeking that is closed in on itself that that we can reach God, but with humility, according to another famous statement by St. Bonaventure: "Let not man believe that he only needs reading without unction, speculation without devotion, seeking without admiration, consideration without exultation, industry without piety, knowledge without charity, intelligence without humility, study without divine grace, nor the looking-glass without divinely inspired wisdom" (ibidem).

The contemplation of the Crucifix is extraordinarily effective, because it makes us pass from the order of things that are thought, to experience that is lived; from the salvation we hope for to the blessed homeland.

St. Bonaventure says: "He who looks at the Crucified One attentively... fulfills the Passover with him, namely, the passage" (ibid., VII, 2).

This is the heart of the experience of La Verna, of the experience of the Poverello of Assisi. On this holy mountain, St. Francis lived in himself the profound unity of discipleship, imitation and conformation to Christ.

And so he also tells us that it is not enough to declare oneself Christian in order to be Christian, nor even just seeking to do good works. We must conform ourselves to Jesus, with a slow, progressive commitment to transform our very being in the image of the Lord, so that by divine grace, every member of his Body, which is the Church, may show the necessary likeness with the Head, Christ the Lord.

Even in this journey, one starts off - as we are taught by the medieval masters led by the great Augustine - fr4om knowing ourselves, from the humility of looking with sincerity into our most intimate self.

To carry the love of Christ! How many pilgrims have climbed up to this Holy Mountain to contemplate the love of the crucified God and allow themselves to be seduced by him! How many pilgrims have come in search of God who is the reason why the Church exists - to be the bridge between man and God.

Here they also meet you, sons and daughters of St. Francis. Always remember that the consecrated life has a specific task to bear witness, with words and with the example of a live lived according to the Gospel, the fascinating story of love between God and mankind which traverses history.

The Franciscan Middle Ages have left an indelible sign in your Church of Arezzo. The repeated passages through here of the Poverello of Assisi and the times he lingered in your territory are a precious treasure.

The event at La Verna was unique and fundamental for the singularity of the stigmata that were impressed on the body of the seraphic Francis, but so is the collective history of your brothers and your people, who continue to rediscover, here at the Santo Spicco, the centrality of Christ in the life of the believer.

Montauto di Anghiari, Le Celle di Cortona and the hermitage of Montecasale and that of Cerbaiolo, but even minor places of Tuscan Franciscanism, continue to mark the identity of the community of Arezzo, Cortona and Sansepolcro.

So much light has illuminated these lands, like Santa Margherita da Cortona, a little known Franciscan penitent who was able to relive in herself with extraordinary vitality the charism of the Poverello, uniting contemplation of the Crucified Lord with charity towards the very least.

Love of God and neighbor continues to inspire the precious work of the Franciscans in your ecclesial community. The profession of the evangelical virtues is a royal road for living the charity of Christ.

In this blessed place, I ask the Lord to continue sending workers into his vineyard and, to the young people, above all, I address the urgent invitation so that whoever is called by God may respond generously and have the courage to give himself to the consecrated life and the priestly ministry.

I have come as a pilgrim to La Verna, as the Successor of Peter, and I would like each of you to listen once more to the question Jesus asked of Peter: "Simon, son of John, do you love me more than others do?... Feed my sheep" (Jn 21,15).

It is love for Christ that is the basis for the life of a Pastor, as it is that for the consecrated person - a love that has no fear of commitment and hard work.

Bring this love to the men of our time, who is often closed up in his own individualism. Be a sign of the immense mercy of God. May priestly piety teach our priests to live that which they celebrate , that we may share our life with those whom we meet - in sharing their pain, in attention to their problems, in accompanying them in the journey of faith.

I thank the Minister General, Jose Carballo, the entire Franciscan family and all who are present. Persevere, as did your sainted Father, in the imitation of Christ, so that whoever meets you may meet St. Francis, and in meeting St. Francis, meets the Lord.

---

VISIT TO SANSEPOLCRO
Address to the city


Sansepolcro's 11th-centry Cathedral of St John the Evangelist, whose 1000th-year anniversary is marked along with the founding of the city by the pilgrims Astanius and Egidius after returning from the Holy Land. They brought back a rock from the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, for which they named the city.

The Holy Father began his visit to Sansepolcro with a private prayer before the city's most venerated icon - a 9th-century wooden sculpture of the Crucified Christ wearing a tunic in the manner of Eastern iconography.



Afterwards, he came out to address the townspeople who gathered despite the bad weather. (The cardinal accompanying the Pope is the Archbishop of Florence and senior Catholic bishop in Tuscany, Cardinal Giuseppe Betori).



B/W photo is from the 3/14-3/15 issue of OR - it's the only photo I've seen so far of the crowd in Sansepolcro. The news agencies, as usual, did not think the crowds important enough to take any pictures of them.






Here is a translation of the Pope's address:

---

Dear brothers and sisters:

I am very happy to be in Sansepolcro and to join you in rendering thanks to God for the millennial anniversary of the foundation of the city, for the wonders of grace and all the good things that, in ten centuries, Providence has extended to you.

In this historic Piazza, let us repeat the words of today's Responsorial Psalm: "Sing to the LORD a new song, for he has done wondrous deeds;… Sing joyfully to the LORD, all you lands; break into song; sing praise" (Ps 97).

Dear friends of Sansepolcro, I greet you all with affection. I am very grateful for your welcome. Despite the fact that the weather is a bit nasty, our hearts are full of light, warmth and joy.

I greet everyone, starting with the Archbishop, Mons. Riccardo Fontana. With him, I greet the priests, consecrated persons and lay faithful who have actively dedicated themselves to apostolate work.

I address a deferential greeting to the civilian and military authorities, most especially your mayor, Dott. Daniela Frullani, who I thank for the kind words she addressed to me and for the beautiful gifts. Thank you.

A thousand years ago, the holy pilgrims Arcanus and Aegidius, in the face of the great changes taking place at that time, set out to seek the truth and the meaning of life, heading towards the Holy Land.

On their return, they brought back not only the stones they had gathered from Mt. Sion but the special idea that they had thought about while in the land of Jesus: to construct, in the upper valley of the Tiber, a civitas hominis (city of man) in the image of Jerusalem, which in its very name, would evoke justice and peace.

It was a project that recalls the great vision of history that St. Augustine wrote about in The city of God. When Alaric's Goths entered Rome and the pagan world accused the Christian of not having saved Rome which was the caput mundi (head of the world), the saintly Bishop of Hippo made clear what we should expect from God, that is, the correct relationship between the religious and political spheres.

He sees in history the presence of two loves: love of self, to the point of indifference to God and to others; and love of God which brings full liberty to others and to building a city of man ruled by justice and peace (cfr La Città di Dio, XIV, 28).

We are sure this vision was not unknown to the founders of Sansepolcro. They envisioned a detailed city model that was full of hope for the future, in which the disciples of Christ are called on to be the motor of society in the promotion of peace through the practice of justice.

The courageous challenge they gave themselves became reality, persevering along a path that, thanks to Benedictine charism first, and later, that of the Camaldolesi monks, has continued for generations.

A strong commitment was necessary to found a monastic community and around the abbatial church, your city. It was a plan that not only marks the urban design of Sansepolcro, because the very location of the Cathedral has a strong symbolic value: it is the reference point from which everyone can orient himself when leaving on a journey but especially in life.

The Cathedral constitutes a strong reminder to always look up, to lift oneself from daily routine, in order to turn our eyes to heaven, in a continual tension towards spiritual values and communion with God, which does not alienate us from daily life, but orients it and makes us live it more intensely.

This perspective is valid even today in order to recover our taste for seeking the truth, for perceiving life as a journey that brings us closer to the 'true' and the 'right'.

Dear friends, the ideal of your founders has survived to our day and constitutes not just the cardinal points of Sansepolcro's identity and that of the diocesan Church, but also a challenge to conserve and promote Christian thinking which was at the origin of this city.

The millennial anniversary is an occasion for reflection, which at one time, was the interior journey along the ways of faith, and a commitment to rediscover Christian roots so that Gospel values may continue to fertilize consciences and daily life for each of you.

Today most especially, it is necessary that the service of the Church to the world be expressed through enlightened lay faithful who are able to function within the city of man, with the will to serve above and beyond private interest, beyond partisan ends.

The common good counts more than the good of a single person, and it is incumbent on Christians to contribute to the birth of a new public ethic. We are reminded of this by the splendid figure of the newly beatified Giuseppe Toniolo.

In the face of distrust towards social and political commitment, Christians - especially young people - are called on to counteract with commitment and love for responsibility, inspired by evangelical love, which asks us not to close in upon ourselves, but to take responsibility for others.

To young people, I address the invitation to learn to think big: Have the courage to dare! Be ready to give a new flavor to the entire civilian society with the salt of honesty and disinterested altruism. It is necessary to find once more solid reasons to serve the good of all citizens.

The challenge which faces this ancient city is that of harmonizing its rediscovery of its own millenary identity with the acceptance and incorporation of different cultures and sensibilities.

St. Paul teaches us that the Church, but also all of society, are like the human body, in which every part is different from the other, but all parts work together for the good of the organism (cfr 1Cor 12, 12-26).

Let us thank God because your diocesan community has matured through the centuries an ardent missionary openness, as in your spiritual twinship with the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem.

I have learned with great pleasure that it has resulted in collaboration and works of charity in behalf of our neediest brothers in the Holy Land. The old ties led your ancestors to construct in stone a copy of the Holy Sepulcher of Jerusalem in order to solidify the identity of your inhabitants and to keep alive their devotion for the Holy City and and their prayers in its behalf.

These ties continue, such that everything that happens in the Holy Land is perceived by you as realities that concern you, just as in Jerusalem, your name and the presence of pilgrims from your diocese keep the brotherly relationship alive.

In this regard, I am sure that you will be opening up new perspectives of solidarity, with renewed apostolic impulse towards serving the Gospel. This will be one of the most significant results of your city's jubilee celebrations.

I will make another reference to your Cathedral where I contemplated the beauty of the 'Volto Santo'. This Basilica is the place for all the city to praise God, the seat of a recovered harmony between the times of worship and civic life, the reference point for the pacification of souls.

Just as your ancestors w4ere able to build this splendid temple of stone, so that it may be a sign and appeal to a communion of life, it is up to you to make the meaning of this sacred structure visible and credible by living peacefully within the ecclesial and civic communities.

At the peak of the Renaissance, the residents of Sansepolcro asked the painter Durante Alberti to represent Bethlehem in the Mother Church so that no one would forget that God is with us in the poverty of the manger.

Remembering the past and attentive to the present, but also projected towards the future, you, the Christians of the Diocese of Arezzo-Cortona-Sansepolcro, know that the spiritual progress of your ecclesial communities and the very promotion of the common good of the civilian communities require a commitment for an ever more vital involvement of your parishes and church associations.

May the journey you have come along so far and the faith that inspires you give you the courage and the forward thrust to continue. Keeping in mind your rich spiritual patrimony, be a living Church in the service of the Gospel. A hospitable and generous Church which with her testimony renders the love of God present for every human being, especially for those who suffer and are in need.

May the Blessed Virgin, whom we venerate specially in this month of May, watch over each of you and sustain your efforts for a better future.

O Mary, Queen of Peace, listen to our prayer: make us witnesses to your Son and tireless artisans of justice and peace. Thank you.

---

After this address, the Pope greeted some city authorities and representatives of the citizenry. At 7 pm, he left by car for the heliport of Sansepolcro for the return to Rome. The Pope flew back to Rome by helicopter after this event.


CNS filed a report today about the Pope's pastoral visit yesterday, focusing on the Sansepolcro stop, and in this (even if both CNA and CNS very unprofessionally take off from reporting on weekends), it is better than CNA which filed a report bylined by David Kerr supposedly covering the pastoral visit and datelined May 13 [but apparently written without the reporter checking out what actually happened] which reports that the Pope went to La Verna when he did not. Two points against CNA for lack of professionalism!

The Pope in Sansepolcro:
'Christians' civic commitment
must respect other beliefs'


SANSEPOLCRO, Italy, May 14 (CNS) -- Celebrating the 1,000th anniversary of a town founded to be a model of Gospel peace and justice, Pope Benedict XVI said Christians today must find ways to infuse their cities and nations with Gospel values while welcoming and respecting people with other beliefs.

In his evening visit May 13 to Sansepolcro, named after the Holy Sepulcher of Jerusalem, the Pope urged the townspeople to use the anniversary to emulate Sts. Arcanus and Aegidius, who established the town after returning from Jerusalem.

The saints saw the town as a place where Christians could fulfill their vocation to build a society marked by peace through the practice of justice, he said.

"Today there is a particular need for the Church's service to the world to be expressed through enlightened lay faithful," involved in civil society "with a desire to serve that goes beyond their private interests and beyond partisan views," he said.

"The common good counts more than the good of the individual, and it's up to Christians to contribute to the birth of new public ethics," the pope said.

The challenge facing the people of Sansepolcro is to take the city's founding ideals as a Christian town and harmonize them with acceptance of others and "the incorporation of different cultures and sensibilities" as the population becomes more diverse, the pope told the townspeople huddled under umbrellas in a town square.

The Pope had arrived in Sansepolcro in the midst of a rain storm that forced him to cancel a visit to La Verna, site of a Franciscan shrine marking the place where St. Francis of Assisi received the stigmata.

Pope Benedict had started the day in Arezzo, celebrating Mass in a park with an estimated 30,000 people, including Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti.

Tuscany was the birthplace and heart of the Italian Renaissance, a humanist movement that led to a flourishing of art, music and literature. Tuscans today, the Pope said, have to ask themselves "what vision of the human person they are able to propose to new generations."

The Gospel calls Christians "to live God's love toward everyone" with solidarity, care for the weakest members of society and respect for the dignity of each person, he said.

"To be in solidarity with the poor is to recognize the plan of God the creator who has made everyone one family," the pope said.

Pope Benedict said giving witness to God's love by caring for the weakest must include defending human life from conception to natural death and protecting the family.

Monday, May 14, Sixth Week of Easter

ST. MATTHIAS THE APOSTLE (d. 80 AD)
Little is known about the man whom the Apostles chose after the first Pentecost to replace Judas Iscariot.
"They nominated two men: Joseph Barsabbas and Matthias. They prayed and drew lots. The choice fell upon
Matthias, who was added to the Eleven". Even Benedict XVI, in his catechesis on the Apostles could not say
more than what the Acts of the Apostles reported, and mentioned Matthias only in his catechesis on Judas
Iscariot on Oct. 18, 2006. Matthias is thought to have preached beyond Judea, and some believe he was
martyred in what is now Georgia in the Caucasus. He was added to the Church's list of saints only in the
11th century.
Readings for today's Mass:
usccb.org/bible/readings/051412.cfm


No events announced for the Holy Father today.




- Roman police have now exhumed a Roman gangster who was buried in 1990 in a crypt in the Basilica of St. Apollinaire.
There was only one body in the casket and in the crypt, contrary to speculation that the teenager Emmanuela Orlandi who
disappeared from a Rome street in 1983, may have been buried in the crypt. For a detailed report of a very cold and very
muddled case that has been the subject of the most bizarre speculations, go to
http://www.foxnews.com/world/2012/05/14/vatican-braced-for-exhumation-in-old-kidnap-case/
Also collected for evaluation were samples from some 300 ossuaries kept in the Basilica. One positive consequence so far:
the gangster will not be reburied in the Basilica.

The Vatican Radio report on this papal appointment made known today does not mention it, but the case of the previous bishop of Toowomba, William Morris, made headlines around this time last year after the Pope dismissed him for having ignored Vatican admonition for years against his open advocacy of teachings that contradict the Magisterium such as abolition of priestly celibacy. The Australian bishops' conference supported the Pope's move - one rarely taken - as a legitimate exercise of his Petrine ministry. Read the background on Pages 210 and 211 of this thread.
benedettoxviforum.freeforumzone.leonardo.it/discussione.aspx?idd=85272...

Pope names Bishop for Toowomba, Australia,
whose longtime bishop he dismissed last year
after years of preaching doctrinal

May 14, 2012

Pope Benedict XVI has appointed Monsignor Robert McGuckin, Vicar General of the Diocese of Parramatta, the sixth Bishop of the Diocese of Toowoomba, Australia.

A highly respected canon lawyer, Msgr. McGuckin has been engaged in positions of leadership in the Archdiocese of Sydney and the Diocese of Parramatta. He is presently Vicar General and Moderator of the Curia in Parramatta as well as Judicial Vicar of the Regional Tribunal for News South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory.

Reacting to news of his appointment, the Bishop-elect stated : “I’m honoured and humbled to be appointed by Pope Benedict XVI as Bishop of Toowoomba. I would hope to build upon the good work of my predecessors and look forward to working with the clergy, religious and everyone in the Diocese. I ask for your prayers as together we strive to fulfil the mission entrusted us in building up the Kingdom of God”.

Mgr McGuckin said in his vocation he has been mindful of Matthew 20:28 - ‘He came to serve, not to be served’.

Born January 28, 1944 in Sydney, New South Wales, the bishop elect studied at St. Pius Elementary School, Enmore Primary and De la Salle College, Marrickville, and attended the Sutherland Shire Evening College and the Metropolitan Business College. In 1967 he joined the St. Columba's Seminary and in 1970 continued his training for the priesthood at the Seminary of Manly.

He was ordained October 20, 1973 for the Archdiocese of Sydney. In 1993 he was incardinated in the Diocese of Parramatta.

The diocese of Toowoomba covers more than 490,000 square kilometres spanning from below the Great Dividing Range in the east, south to the New South Wales Border, west as far as the Northern Territory and South Australian borders and north taking in the areas of Taroom and Cracow. Within that territory there are 35 Catholic parishes who serve the faithful through schools, churches, Catholic Charities, ecumenical works and many other Catholic agencies and institutions.


CDF asks Schoenborn to explain his action
on homosexual parish council chairman

Speaking of 'dissident' bishops, Austria's Der Standard reports in a bylined article yesterday Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn, Archbishop of Vienna, has been asked by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith - of which, ironically, he is a member - to explain why he ignored the recommendation of one of his parish priests against recognizing the election of a young man publicly registered as a partner in a homosexual union to be the chairman of the parish's pastoral council. Schoenborn overrode the parish priest's decision after meeting with the young man and his partner, but not with the parish priest. Schoenborn will have a chance to give his explanation in person when he attends this week's plenary assembly of the CDF.

I shall probably be posting stories about the pastoral visit for the next few days, as I get to see more coverage from the Italian media...


Benedict tried to get to La Verna
through an alternate chopper route
Translated from



The Holy Father bids goodbye to civilian and religious authorities in Sansepolcro before flying back to the Vatican yesterday evening.

AREZZO, May 14 - "The Pope would have done anything to get to La Verna", said Archbishop Riccardo Fontana of Arezzo.

He was even willing to try getting there from neighboring Umbria, when meteorologists said that the Casentino airlane from Arezzo to La Verna was too dangerous in the prevailing weather conditions.

He said that flying from Arezzo to Sansepolcro, the helicopter took a detour that took them over Castiglio Fiorentino, Cortona and then Lake Trasimeno. "But once we found ourselves above Madonnuccia, the pilot decided against trying farther and we headed back towards Sansepolcro."

The Pope then asked Mons. Fontana and Cardinal Giuseppe Betori, Archbishop of Florence, to travel by car later in the day to La Verna to bring his apologies to the Franciscan comunity that had been awaiting his visit.


The following story was posted by La Nazione yesterday afternoon but the photos did not come till much later....

Cancellation of La Verna trip gives
Arezzo's Renaissance guilds a chance
to show their stuff to the Pope
by Massimo Benigni
Translated from






AREZZO, May 13 - "Thank you, flag artists, you have touched my heart, Benedict XVI said to Arezzo's Renaissance guilds who put up a colorful show of flag-wavingfeats and medieval music for him in front of the bishop's palace yesterday afternoon.

The exhibition, with musicians from the city's annual Giostro del Saracino (Saracen's Joust), was a tribute to the city;s history, its anicent roots, its treasured traditions, and all the famous Aretini (citizens of Arezzo) who brought world renown to the city since it was founded.

Six master flag-tossing artists performed an impeccable routine for the Pope, and the Giostro musicians closed with the hymn 'Terra di Arezzo' (Land of Arezzo).

The Pope watched from a third-story window of the bishop's palace adjoining the cathedral of San Donato. Afterwards, he went down to the square to thank the guilds, dressed in their medieval finery. [Unfortunately, La Nazione's photos do not include this.]



Here is what he said from the window:

---

Dear friends,

I thank you from the heart for this beautiful presentation of your great Renaissance culture which has truly touche me deeply.

Whoever is capable of rendering present in such a perfect manner the culture of the past is also able to open culture to the future because he knows man and he loves man, whose greatest dignity is not just by being man but because he is the image of God.

This dignity of man places an obligation on us, but it also comforts and encourages us. If we are truly in the image of God, then we must also be capable of going forward and to overcome the problems of the present and open the way for a new future.

I thank you from the heart for all this. May the Lord Bless you... Thank you. These sounds will be unforgettable for me.

---

Later, the Pope met with guild leaders inside the Palace.


The cancellation of the trip to La Verna because of bad weather in the mountains allowed the Pope to find time for the unscheduled exhibition.

Before the Pope left the Bishop's Palace, he had photographs taken with the bishop's staff:

He very likely does this with the staff of every bishop's palace or Nunciature that he has ever visited, but it's one of the rare photos I have seen of it, and it's very endearing.

About Italy's Renaissance guilds, I was fortunate to live for seven months in Siena, which has Italy's most famous Renaissance holdover custom in the annual Palio (a horse race run around the famous Piazza del Campo twice a year, in July and August), in honor of Siena's patroness, Our Lady of the Assumption. The city's 'contrade' (neighborhoods) vie passionately, with flags, meticulously researched costumes, banners and all the medieval accoutrements you could wish, not to mention the neighborhood church where victory pennants won over the centuries are displayed proudly. The flag-waving-and-tossing exhibitions are truly masterful. The guilds take their traditions very seriously, and membership in a contrada can be as fiercely chauvinistic as you can imagine. The street parties - literally, party tables laid out the length of the neighborhood's main street for anyone to join - after a contrada's victory are the epitome of Italian bonhomie and good cheer!

P.S. LA NAZIONE had a special 22-page supplement on the Holy Father's pastoral visit to Arezzo with their Sunday issue (May 13, 2012), which is unfortunately, not available online, but I like their promo for it (and the cover picture) - one of the rare times I can truly commend anyone for an excellent cover photo of Benedict XVI:

The “all” and the “many”
At stake are correct understandings of
salvation, divine revelation, and liturgy
by James V. Schall, S.J.

---

“The many bear responsibility for the all. The community of the many must be the lamp on the lampstand, a city on the hilltop, yeast for all. There is a vocation that affects each one of us individually, quite personally. The many, that is to say, we ourselves, must be conscious of our mission to and responsibility for the whole".
— Pope Benedict XVI
Letter to Archbishop of Freiburg, April 14, 2012

---

I.

Evidently, a number of German bishops maintain that the liturgical translation of the second consecration prayer should still read that this sacrifice is to be offered “for all,” and not for “many.”

The German Pope is dealing with stubborn German bishops. He promised those bishops he would write a short letter explaining why “for many” is to be used and not “for all.” Benedict XVI notes that they did very little, if anything, to explain the proper reasoning for the “for many” translation.

His letter, sent this past month, sets forth the reasons why “for many” is the proper wording. Basically, it is because those are the words Christ used as reported in the Gospels of Matthew and Mark. The Pope again affirms that what Christ said is normative. The bishops’ office is to pass down not their opinions or interpretation but what was given to them all from the beginning.

In dealing with the reasons for this issue, Benedict recalls that, after the Second Vatican Council, some exegetes wanted to use the term “for all” because they thought it referred to Isaiah 53 concerning the Suffering Servant who was to suffer for all. It turns out this exegesis of the text has now been dropped by all scholars.

However, a pastoral problem remains. People were led to understand that the words “for all” meant Christ died for everyone, so when the phrase “for many” is used, it seems the scope of salvation was narrowed from all to a few. This dubious understanding caused confusion for many Catholics.

The task to which the Pope addressed himself was to explain clearly why the words now in all the canons, “for many,” were the proper ones. In doing so, he emphasized that Christ was indeed sent to save all men. That mission is clear. So why not say so?

Here is where something remarkable about this Pope comes in. He is so erudite and alert that he foresees problems, real problems, where most of us do not. The use of the term “for all” can easily come to undermine the way in which God, through Jesus Christ, intended to redeem us — that is, all men.

If Christ simply came “for all,” it would be easy to make cases for salvation from sources that were not really related to salvation history beginning with Jewish revelation. In fact, this avenue has been a problem as the Holy Father (then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger) demonstrated in Dominus Iesus, the August 2000 declaration of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, “On the Unicity and Salvific Universality of Jesus Christ and the Church”.

So what about the use of “for many?” The first thing the Pope emphasizes is that, at the Last Supper, Christ was talking to the Apostles about His own body and blood to be shed. If Christ had intended to use the word “all,” He would have. He must have had something else in mind. What was that?

The Pope approaches an answer by noticing that Luke and Paul, in their account of this action at the Last Supper, use the words “for you.” Thus, in the present Liturgy, the words say that Christ’s blood will be shed “for you and for many.” This makes Christ’s attention to be directly on the Apostles before Him. The universal mission of salvation is not some abstraction, nor is it apart from the plan of revelation set down for us in Scripture.

Rather, this plan is to be carried out in the manner the Father has decreed in sending Christ into the world to redeem us through the Cross. Perhaps some other way to accomplish this end was conceivable. But God directed this one way, which passed through the Apostles who were told to “Do this in memory of Me” and were later sent to teach the nations.

The universality is there, but not apart from the centrality of the Mass as the proper way to worship the Father. If this grounding in the text is not maintained, it will be difficult to explain why the word “all” is not a better word. “Not even the most sensitive translation can take away the need for explanation.”

Thus, “it is part of the structure of revelation that the word of God is read within the exegetical community of the Church—faithfulness and drawing out the contemporary relevance go together.” We do not make up or interpret the text, then look at its words.

II.

The faithful need to know reasons. Bishops (even German bishops) need to explain why such issues require clear episcopal explanations for the priests and faithful. They will understand if it is properly explained.

Again, the issue is not whether Christ came to save all men. The issue is the way that Christ proposed to carry out this purpose. He did not proceed by abstractions, but by real persons, the “you and the many.” That is, the mission of the Church includes reaching each person in his individual, particular being.

Revelation does not save abstractions or shadows. Before the Apostles left the upper room at the Last Supper, the plan of God was carried no further than them, the “you” to whom Christ addressed His words.

We might say that God’s plan was not a very good one if it depended on eleven relatively unknown fishermen in an obscure corner of the world. But that is just another way of saying we could have figured out a better way than God to accomplish what God had in mind. This view is touching, but highly dubious.

So the Church insists the words of consecration be kept to the words Jesus used. This is what obliges the Church, whether some of her members like it or not. This insistence enables us to get at what is at stake in the “for all” translation.

“The Holy See has decided that in the new translation of the Missal, the words ‘pro multis,’ should be translated as they stand, and not presented in the form of an interpretation.” Neither Matthew nor Mark said “for the many,” but “for many.”

The Pope again adds he is aware of how the words can confuse. “I am aware that it poses an enormous challenge to those with the task of explaining the word of God in the Church, since to the ordinary church-goer it will almost inevitably seem like a rupture at the heart of the sacred. They will ask, did Christ not die for all? Has the Church changed her teaching? Can she do so? May she do so?” Maybe people are trying to undermine Vatican II with this insistence on “for many”?

Benedict continues: “‘For you’ covers the past and the future; it means me, personally; we, who are assembled here, are known and loved by Jesus for ourselves. So this ‘for you’ is not a narrowing down, but a making concrete, and it applies to every Eucharistic community, concretely uniting it to the love of Jesus.” Nothing that is saved is an abstraction. Salvation is through Christ but through men. This is the meaning of the Incarnation.

Did the Lord die for all or just for the “many”? Clearly, for all. But the words are taken from the Gospel. “She (the Church) says words out of deference to Jesus’s own words, in order to remain faithful to him.”

Yet, as people who recognize that revelation is directed also to our minds, we have to ask why Jesus said these words and not the ones that we might prefer? It is here that we refer back again to the Suffering Servant text from Isaiah 53. Christ reveals Himself in the line of the prophets and the fulfillment of their words. Jesus Himself is faithful to the words of Scripture.

If we speak, on the ontological plane, of why Jesus came, Benedict explains that the relation of many and all becomes clear. The many are to be sent to everyone concretely, to each person with a name, everyone who existed in the world.

The many to whom Christ spoke are sent but not with their own ideas of how it should be done. They are to follow the example of Christ in establishing of the Eucharist in the first place. All men and women in all times are included in Christ, but not as abstractions or universals, but as individuals who must listen and accept what is handed down to them.

How does the Lord “reach” others? This is a “mystery,” but we are directly called to his table. The words that the sacrifice are “for you” are heard there, no place else. Christ suffered “for me.” Thus, the “many bear responsibility for all.”

This community is the light, the hill, the yeast; it is the Church. Each individual has a vocation to the many as concrete persons. Finally, it seems that we are not “many,” but “few.” We seem, however, to be becoming smaller, not growing. The Pope here cites the book of Revelation, of the “great multitude that no man can number.”

III.

So, why do we use “for many?” The Holy Father puts it this way: “We are many and we stand for all. So the words ‘many’ and ‘all’ go together and are intertwined with responsibility and promise.”

In insisting on the accuracy of the translation, in disallowing an interpretation, it turns out that the Pope is defending the very purpose and scope of revelation. We are all impatient with the Lord’s slowness with us. We want to save “all” by bypassing ourselves and by overlooking the way Christ provides for our sanctification through the sacrifice of the Mass.

Again, God does not save “all” apart from the concrete way Christ dealt with the Apostles and all of us. He addressed His words “for you and for many” because the all were not to be reached apart from “the you and the many.”

What is saved ultimately is not an abstraction, an “all,” but each individual person in his concreteness. The “all” that Christ died for is the one that includes us in our concreteness, in our existence. This is what is at stake in the words “for you and for many.”

Mons. Fellay and his sensible stand
The Church needs him back;
let us pray his opponents will fail
By William Oddie

Monday, 14 May 2012

What exactly is going on in the SSPX? On Wednesday last week, a “communiqué” was issued by the SSPX “General House,” which I suppose means its headquarters, condemning the circulation on the internet, two days before, of an exchange of private letters between the Superior General of the Society of St Pius X and the three other SSPX bishops.

“This behaviour is reprehensible”, thundered the statement; “The person who breached the confidentiality of this internal correspondence committed a serious sin”. This means, I assume, that the letters as circulated were authentic...

There has been a very fundamental disagreement between the four bishops of the FSSPX over the possibility of an agreement with the Holy See, involving the setting up of the FSSPX as a personal prelature, in other words as a semi-independent jurisdiction responsible only to the Pope.

On the one side of the divide are Bishops Tissier de Mallerais, de Galarreta and Williamson, and on the other the Superior General of the Society, Bishop Fellay, and his two assistants Fr Pfluger and Fr Nély.

The three dissident bishops seem to me to be not only talking utter rubbish but to be actually barking, positively up the wall (Vatican II, they say, represents “a total perversion of the mind, a new philosophy founded on subjectivism. Benedict XVI is no better than John Paul II in this regard… he puts human subjective fantasy in the place of God’s objective reality and subjects the Church to the modern world” - you see what I mean).

Bishop Fellay’s response to this, on the other hand, was (and I never thought I would find myself saying this) measured and sensible as well as being, as one would have expected, absolutely faithful to the Catholic tradition.

I really hope, if there is to be a schism within the FSSPX (as looks on the basis of these letters more likely than not) that the overwhelming majority of fSSPX adherents will follow Bishop Fellay back over the Tiber.

there is, and he clearly understands this, still a battle going on inside the Catholic Church between the Magisterium and the “spirit of Vatican II” secularisers; and we need everyone we can get by the Pope’s side in this great struggle for the renewal of the Catholic tradition and the cleaning up of the Catholic Church.

A personal prelature doesn’t need more than one bishop; and the disappearance from the scene of Bishop Williamson would be an unlooked for bonus.

Bishop Fellay’s declaration is not merely sensible, it is positively inspiring, and I therefore quote it at length; this is a bishop whose leadership is needed within the mainstream of the Church. He begins by criticising his fellow SSPX bishops’ analysis for two faults: “lack of a supernatural view and a lack of realism”. Then he goes on, very strikingly as follows:

“Do you still believe that the Church is the Church and that the Pope is Pope? Can Christ still speak through him? If he expresses a legitimate desire or decision, should we not obey, and will not God help us?

“Your all too human and fatalistic attitude implies that we should not count on God’s help, his grace or the Holy Spirit. If Providence guides men’s actions, has it not been guiding the movement back to Tradition? It makes no sense to think God will let us faIl now, especially since we only want to do his will and please him.

“Likewise you lack realism, just as the liberals make the Council a super-dogma, you are making the Council a super-heresy. Archbishop Lefebvre made distinctions about liberal Catholics, and if you do not make them, your caricature of reality could lead to a true schism.

“You blame all the current evils on the authorities even though they are trying to extricate the Church from them (e.g. the dissidents' condemnation of the hermeneutic of continuity) and are thus not all obstinate in heresy. That is clearly false. Hence when it comes to the crucial question of making an accord, we do not come to the same conclusion as you.”

He continues by saying that because of the present Pope’s words and actions, a real change is taking place. “Young priests and bishops are supporting us… Archbishop Lefebvre would have accepted what is proposed; we must not lose his sense of the Church”.

And then he comes to the central point about the situation in which we all find ourselves: “Church history shows that we only recover gradually from heresies and crises, so it is not realistic to wait until everything is sorted out. If we refuse to work in this field, we fall foul of the parable of the wheat and the cockle in which Our Lord warns us that there would always be internal conflict.”

In other words, separating yourself off within a little private world in which everything is conducted precisely to your taste simply isn’t the Catholic way.

These are, it seems to me, wise and courageous words, and the vision which inspired them deserves to succeed. Whether or not it does, we will have to wait and see; there are those working within the SSPX against its success.

It is clear from this correspondence that, as Bishop Fellay writes to them, the other bishops “have all worked to undermine [him]”. For all our sakes, I hope they fail; and I believe we should pray that they do.

Bishop Fellay is, it seems to me on this evidence, a courageous and inspirational leader; and we could do with him back “within the walls”.

This is a crucial time: we are beginning to make, under the Pope’s guidance, real progress. In this country, soon, I hope and pray, Archbishop Mennini will be recommending (when all is as it should be in the Congregation of Bishops) a clutch of new and orthodox bishops to stand by the side of Bishop Mark Davies of Shrewsbury.

Perhaps Bishop Fellay, as Superior of the new Prelature of the FSSPX, will make an official visit to the Shrine Church of Saints Peter and Paul and St Philomena in New Brighton, Wirral.

Stirring times, if all goes well. I live in hope; please God, let nothing go wrong.