BENEDICT XVI: NEWS, PAPAL TEXTS, PHOTOS AND COMMENTARY

Holy Father has just concluded the Mass and Angelus in Palermo. Early photos here thanks to the French service of Vatican Radio online, which has retained the mini-slideshow discarded by the English and Italian services. According to the RV commentator of the Mass, police estimated the crowd at 200,000 - twice what had been expected.

ARRIVAL IN PALERMO

Having left Rome at 8:15 a.m. on an Airbus provided by Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, the Holy Father arrived in Palermo's Falcone e Borsellino airport in Cinisi one hour later, where he was welcomed by the Archbishop of Palermo, Mons. Paolo Romeo; the Archbishop of Monreale, Mons. Salvatore de Cristina; and by the Hon. Angelino Alfanoo, Minister of Justice representing the Italian government.

The Pope proceeded by Popemobile to the Foro Italico Umberto I on the shore of the Tyrrhenian Sea, where he received a formal welcome before the Mass from the Mayor of Palermo, Diego Cammarata, and from Archbishop Romeo, who is also president of the Sicilian bishops' conference.













MASS IN PALERMO
Pope to Sicilians fighting
the Mafia: do not fear
By FRANCES D'EMILIO



PALERMO, Sicily, Oct. 3 (AP) – Pope Benedict XVI paid tribute Sunday to a priest slain by the Mafia and encouraged people in Sicily not to resign themselves to deep-rooted evil on an island where organized crime has held sway for centuries.

Sicilians had been hoping Benedict would use his words and presence during his first visit as pontiff to give a boost to efforts to try to rid the island of Cosa Nostra.

"The temptation toward discouragement, to resignation, comes to those who are weak in faith, to those who confuse evil with good, to those who think that, faced with often profound evil, there is nothing to do," Benedict told tens of thousands of faithful at Mass at a sunshine-drenched park alongside Palermo's waterfront.

The Pope cited the Rev. Pino Puglisi, who stirred consciences with his anti-Mafia preaching in one of Palermo's poorest and most heavily mobster-infested neighborhoods.

Since Puglisi was gunned down by the Mafia in 1993, his supporters have been clamoring for the Vatican to officially proclaim him a martyr, paving the way toward sainthood.

Among those recently backing an appeal for the Pope to beatify Puglisi were Oscar-winning director Giuseppe Tornatore and Italian novelist Dacia Maraini. But the Pope on Sunday made no mention of martyrdom for Puglisi.

[Puglisi's cause is already in process at the Congregation for the Cause of Sainthood. It is for them now to declare whether Fr. Puglisi's death was a martyrdom when they decide on his heroic virtues.]

Benedict in his homily acknowledged that many Sicilians endured "physical and moral suffering because of organized crime."

"Today I am in your midst to give witness with my closeness and my remembering (you) in prayer," the Pope said, sitting under a canopy to shield him from the late morning Mediterranean sun. "I am here to give you strong encouragement not to be afraid to clearly give witness to human and Christian values."

Benedict said the just must persevere even amid a "tremendous situation of violence, iniquity and oppression."

Evil-doers should be ashamed of offending God as well as society with their deeds, the Pope said in a likely reference to mobsters.

But nowhere in his homily did Benedict directly take to task the mobsters themselves, as his predecessor, John Paul II, did in one of his most emotional and vehement denunciations of that long papacy. [Dear Lord, a comparison yet again? As if to imply that Benedict XVI does not care enough or is not brave enough to make a similar denunciation!]

Then, amid a backdrop of ancient temples near Agrigento, John Paul in a trembling voice, lashed out in improvised remarks at the Mafiosi, demanding that they convert from their evil ways or suffer the wrath of God.

That was in 1993, a year after separate bombings engineered by the Mafia killed the island's two top prosecutors. John Paul hailed such slain servants of the state as "martyrs of justice, indirectly of faith." [In the Church's canonization process, martyrdom is declared when the candidate is slain in odium fidei - 'out of hatred for the faith'. The two slain prosecutors were not then (and are not now) the objects of any beatification process, yet John Paul II was careful to make the distinction.]

The murders also spurred a crackdown on the mob, leading to the capture of fugitive top Cosa Nostra bosses who had eluded the law for decades and a steady stream of Mafia turncoats breaking with their code of silence to cooperate with prosecutors.

Benedict's final event of the day is a pep rally for young people in the Sicilian capital's center.

Young people have recently been the main engine behind an anti-extortion campaign that gave shopkeepers and other local business owners across the island the courage to refuse to pay the mob so-called "protection money" and go to the police to denounce the extortionists.





Sadly, it appears now that the line first indicated by the AP in its story above is the one now taken by other news agency reports on the Palermo Mass. And it gets worse, as the headline of the following Reuters story shows - even if the story itself does not get to what the headline says until the 6th paragraph.

Pope disappoints
anti-Mafia activists



PALERMO, Oct. 3 (Reuters) - Pope Benedict encouraged Sicilians on Sunday to speak out about their problems, including organized crime, but disappointed activists who said he was not forceful enough and did not say the word Mafia.

Benedict, making his first visit to Sicily as Pope, said an open-air mass for tens of thousands of people near Palermo's port at the start of his day-long trip.

In his homily, the Pope spoke of many of Sicily's pressing problems, including high unemployment, and of those who were "suffering physically and morally … because of organized crime."

"I am here to give you strong encouragement not to be afraid to speak out clearly about human and Christian values …," he said.

Sicily is no longer the scene of the Mafia wars of the 1990s, but magistrates say the mob still does brisk business in drug trafficking, extortion and getting a slice of lucrative public works contracts for companies it controls.

Benedict's homily was sprinkled with phrases such as a biblical reference to "a tremendous situation of violence" and the need to be "ashamed by evil," but leading anti-Mafia activists said he did not go far enough.

"It is a great disappointment. I think the people of Palermo will be disappointed," said Rita Borsellino, whose brother Paolo, a leading anti-Mafia magistrate, was killed by a Mafia car bomb in Palermo in 1992.

"I was disappointed in the lack of force in what he said," she told Reuters. "I think it is indulging the Mafia too much to just call it organized crime and not call it by name. I hope he is stronger when he speaks to young people later today."

Dino Paternostro, a leading anti-Mafia activist in the town of Corleone made famous in the "The Godfather" films, also expressed disappointment.

"There were great expectations for what he would say. I really do hope he is stronger and more specific in the afternoon because the way things stand it seems like he is saying 'the Mafia is your problem'," Paternostro told Reuters.[Of course it is. It's a social, economic, cultural and political problem that has goine on for over a century that is not for the Church to resolve, but for the people and their local governments working together.]

Whatever Benedict says will inevitably be compared to a visit to Sicily by Pope John Paul II in 1993.

Before leaving the city of Agrigento, John Paul improvised a scathing and specific attack on the Mafia which has gone down in anti-Mafia history.

Speaking in a raised voice and with a clenched fist, John Paul thundered against Mafiosi, warning them directly that unless they "converted" to good, they would one day be subjected to God's judgment for their blood-letting and misdeeds.

Several months later on a sleepy summer night in Rome, bombs placed by the Mafia exploded in two churches in Rome, including the Basilica of St John in Lateran, the Pope's cathedral in his capacity as bishop of Rome.


Not to be boorish, nor to mean any disrespect for John Paul II, who is rightly remembered for his Agrigento statement, but he did not mention the Mafia by name in that imprecation, either... And obviously, more than a Pope's angry prophetic words are needed to resolve a problem that has been festering for over a century... There will almost certainly be more Christians who will pay with their lives for defying the Mafia before Sicilians are able to break out of the modus vivendi that their local officials appear to have settled into...


Forgive me! AFP has now filed its report on the Mass and it's not taking the hard line against Benedict XVI that AP, Reuters and other news outlets did:


Pope hits out at Mafia
on visit to Sicily


PALERMO, Italy, Oct. 3 (AFP) – Pope Benedict XVI denounced the "evil" of Italy's organised crime network on Sunday as he celebrated an open-air mass before tens of thousands of pilgrims in the heartland of the Sicily's Mafia.

Benedict's first visit to the island since becoming Pope in 2005 raised hopes among campaigners that he will help their struggle against the ever-pervasive Cosa Nostra.

The Pope said faith made humanity possible, even when the people of Palermo and across Sicily faced "a shortage of jobs, uncertainty about the future, moral and physical suffering, and organised crime."

"I am here to give you a strong incentive to not be afraid to testify clearly to human and Christian values, so deeply rooted in faith and in the history of this land and its people," he said.

He called on Sicilians, dogged by Mafia extortion and intimidation, to be "ashamed of evil, which offends God and man" and for the effects of organised crime which "injures the civil and religious community" to be brought into the open.

Organisers said around 250,000 people attended the Mass in bright sunshine in Palermo's giant Foro Italico square, overlooking the Mediterranean Sea.

"People of Sicily, look to the future with hope," he said. "Live with courage the values of the Gospel to shine a light on good. With the power of God, everything is possible."

The Pope arrived at Palermo's Falcone-Borsellino airport, named after two judges killed by the Cosa Nostra, the Sicilian Mafia, in 1992, before travelling through the city in his popemobile.

Residents hung banners from their houses welcoming the pontiff, but the atmosphere was subdued, in part due to restrictions on movement and a heavy security presence.

In 1995, Benedict XVI's predecessor Jean Paul II -- on the last of his five visits to Sicily -- attacked Mafia killings, saying "no man, no human association, no Mafia can change nor trample under foot the right to life."

Benedict XVI has already issued strong words against the Camorra, the dominant organised crime group in Naples, during an open-air Mass in the southern city in 2007, calling for "a struggle against all forms of violence."

Before the visit to Sicily, campaigners had called on the Pope to strongly condemn organised crime.

Benedict was to meet priests and nuns and members of religious communities in the city's cathedral, and then was due to address a gathering of 20,000 young people in a Palermo square.

The Italian Episcopal Conference, the organisation of Italian bishops, issued a report on the Mafia earlier this year, calling it a "real cancer" and "one of the deepest wounds" in Italy's more impoverished southern regions.