A very convenient and easy trick for MSM is to see cause and effect in events that happen to be associated in some way, especially if they follow each other closely in time. That's the case with the resignation of the secretary of the Pontifical Council for the Pastoral Care of Migrants and Itinerant Workers which Pope Benedict XVI accepted yesterday. The following lead paragraphs from La Repubblica - which no one can say is pro-Vatican in any way - makes the necessary qualifications that the Anglophone MSM reports completely ignored.
#2 man at Vatican council
for migrants steps down
Translated from
VATICAN CITY, Sept. 1 - Archbishop Agostino Marchetto is no longer the Secretary of the Pontifical Council for the Pastoral Care of Migrants.
The Vatican Press Office announced that the Pope has accepted Marchetto's resignation for having reached the age of 70, which is the statutory retirement age for Apostolic Nuncios, which Marchetto was for most of his Vatican career.
Since Nuncios generally have to live away from home, they are allowed to retire five years earlier than diocesan bishops. Before being appointed to the Council for Migrant Workers, Marchetto had been the permanent observer of the Holy See to the United Nations' Food and Agricultural Organization, and earlier, Apostolic Nuncio to various nations....
Mons. Marchetto:
'I presented my resignation
more than a year ago'
Translated from
VATICAN CITY, Sept. 2 - Archbishop Agostino Marchetto leaves the Roman Curia with the wish that "the goodness, the mercy and the greatness of the Church in dealing with the problems of human migration" may be kept in mind.
The Number-2 man till yesterday of the Pontifical Council for the Pastoral Care of Migrant and itinerant Workers, Marchetto said : "The Church has sought to respond to these problems by defending the human rights of migrants while stressing their duties to the law".
Seeking to clear away misinterpretations of his resignation, he said "It is not true that my resignation was 'promptly' accepted due to recent events, because I wrote the Pope last year that I wished to retire when I reached 70". [He was born on August 28, 1940, so he turned 70 a few days ago.]
He added: "It must be recalled that I have served nine years in this Council, and before that, I served 20 years as Nuncio to places like Madagascar, the Mauritius, Tanzania and Belarus; and also, that I had an ailment that has left lasting effects even if I was cured. So I am very thankful that I have been allowed to retire".
"Moreover, I look forward to resuming my studies on the Second Vatican Council, a subject that fascinates me and which is very important for the Church".
[Mons. Marchetto previously wrote
Il Concilio Ecumenico Vaticano II. Contrappunto per la sua storia published in 2005, which was the first book by a member of the Church hierarchy to dispute the interpretation of the so-called Bologna School which had published a five-volume 'History of Vatican II" that dominated the historiography of the Council in the first four post-Conciliar decades. Marchetto's book was published in an English edition earlier this year as
The Second Vatican Council: A Counterpoint for the History of the Council.]
And here is how AFP reported Marchetto's retirement:
Champion of migrants rights
resigns from Vatican post
ROME, Sept. 1 (AFP) - A Vatican official critical of Italy's migration policies and of France's recent crackdown on Roma gypsies has resigned for age reasons and the Pope has accepted his resignation, the Vatican said Wednesday.
Agostino Marchetto, the secretary of the Pontifical Council for the Pastoral Care of Migrants and Itinerant People, the Vatican ministry dealing with migration issues, recently turned 70 and had planned his resignation "a while ago," Vatican spokesman Ciro Benedettini told reporters.
On August 20, as France was pushing ahead with its controversial repatriation of hundreds of Roma, Marchetto said the expulsions were against European norms.
A few days later Pope Benedict XVI entered the debate, asking French pilgrims visiting him at his summer residence to welcome people of all origins.
In 2009, Marchetto had criticised the Italian government for its accord with the Libyan government that allows the Italian Navy to intercept illegal migrants at sea and return them to Libya, saying it "did not take into account the rights of forced migrants."
Marchetto's criticism of Italy's migration policies earned him a rebuff from the junior interior minister and praise from the United Nation's refugee agency.
But when he attacked in 2009 an Italian law making
illegal immigration a crime [Surely if something is illegal, it is a crime!], the Vatican distanced itself from his remarks, saying the Vatican had not expressed a position on the issue.
Marchetto told religious news agency i.media that he would now spend time researching the Second Vatican Council.
The implication is that Marchetto's resignation was accepted because he had criticized the new French law against gypsies. But the Holy Father himself implied criticism of that measure a few days earlier. And the Vatican could not have known that a controversy over gypsies in France would happen to erupt just when Marchetto was turning 70 and able to retire!
Of course, nothing is more annoying than the careless and by now habitual way by which MSM attribute everything they consider negative to the Vatican. For example, their repeated mockery of the specific instructions to pilgrims attending the papal events to behave appropriately - including an exhortation not to bring alcoholic drinks or noisemakers - invariably is headlined "Pope bans booze and vuvuzelas', attributing what they think to be an unpopular instruction to the Pope himself. But what's to mock about the instructions, anyway? The events they apply to are two Masses and a prayer vigil, at which booze and noisemakers would certainly be out of place, to say the least.]
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 02/09/2010 21:50]