BENEDICT XVI: NEWS, PAPAL TEXTS, PHOTOS AND COMMENTARY

Friday, October 15, 28th Week in Ordinary Time

From left: Two generic icons; painting by Francois Gerard, 1827; founder statue in St. Peter's Basilica; St. Teresa in Ecstasy[Teresa's heart pierced by an angel), by Bernini, 1652; portrait by monk Juan de la Miseria, painted when the saint was 61; portrait by Rubens, 1615.
ST. TERESA DE JESUS (Teresa of Avila) (Spain, 1515-1582)
Nun, Mystic, Founder of the Discalced Carmelites, Doctor of the Church
Born just a few years before the Protestant Reformation, she would die 20 years after the Council of Trent, the Church's great Counter-Reformation initiative. Born to Spanish nobility, with a grandfather who had been a Jew forced to become Christian, she was raised very piously by her mother. She was cured of a severe childhood illness after prayer to St. Joseph. She entered a Carmelite convent at age 17, and then became gravely ill again soon after taking her vows, remaining in poor health for the rest of her life. She began experiencing visions, for which she was thoroughly investigated by the Church, but her confessor, the future St. Francisco Borja, assured her that her experiences were divine not diabolical. In 1559, she had a series of visions lasting over two years, in one of which an angel appeared and pierced her heart with a lance. [After her death, her heart was found to be pierced, a phenomenon called transverberation. It is one of the many relics surviving her.] Unhappy at the laxity of rules in her convent, she set about to reform the Carmelites, inspired by another confessor, the future St. Pedro de Alcantara, to translate her internal experiences to practical action. With the help of her great contemporary, the future St. John of he Cross (Juan de la Cruz), she founded the Order of Discalced Carmelites in 1562, receiving papal approval for her rule the following year. She spent the first five years in seclusion, writing, at the order of her confessor, two of her major works, the Autobiography and The Way of Perfection, both published in 1567. That year, she got permission to establish more houses for the new order and travelled throughout Spain to set them up. In 1576, she and her reformed order became the object of persecution by the older Carmelite establishment - she was forbidden to found new houses and condemned to retirementin Toledo, while her friends and associates were subjected to greater trials. During this time, she wrote her masterpiece, El Castillo Interior (The Interior Castle), which is considered one of the greatest works of mystical literature. After several letters to King Phillip II of Spain in behalf of her order, Teresa obtained relief: charges against her and her associates before the Inquisition were dropped, and she resumed her work. She founded three more new houses before she took ill for the last time at Alba de Tormes near Salamanca, where she died. Teresa was supremely outstanding, especially for her time - her gender never got in the way; she was both a contemplative and mystic, as well as an active reformer and administrator; and her writing quickly established her as the only woman in the front rank of Spanish prose writers during the Golden Age of Spanish literature. Soon after her death, the University of Salamanca gave her the posthumous degree of Doctor Ecclesiae (Doctor of the Church), a title she would formally get from the Church 400 years later when Paul VI proclaimed her and Catherine of Siena as the first women Doctors of the Church. She was canonized in 1622, along with Ignacio de Loyola, Francisco Javier (Francis Xavier), Filippo Neri, and Isidro of Madrid. Her major shrine is in Alba de Tormes.
Readings for today's Mass:
www.usccb.org/nab/readings/101510.shtml


OR today:

Center photo: Benedict XVI greets Rabbi David Rosen after his address to the Synodal Assembly yesterday.Jewish rabbi speaks to Synodal assembly on the need for maintaining Jewish-Catholic dialog:
'We should get to know each other'
The issue features the Holy Father's message to the 46th Social Issues Week for Italian Catholics which opened yesterday in Reggio di Calabria, and the opening address to the convention by Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco, president of the Italian bishops' conference. Other Page 1 items: Iranian President Ahmadinejad's triumphal visit to Lebanon, a stronghold of the Iran-supported terrorist movement Hezbollah; a dire report from the World Wildlife Fund claiming that by 2030, the planet will require twice the earth's available resources to sustain its population; and the participants of the Synodal Assembly for the Middle East are received by Italian President Giorgio Napolitano. In the inside pages, the Vatican Museums host special exhibits and performances highlighting Australian culture in connection with Mary MacKillop's canonization; the Cathedral Museum of Florence doubles its exhibition space but still far less than it needs to show off all its treasures; and a symposium on ethics and finance held in Rome today sponsored by Siena's Monte dei Paschi bank and the OR.


THE POPE'S DAY
According to the morning bulletin of the Bishops' Synod today, the Holy Father attended the morning session
during which the main speaker was the Archbishop of Baghdad, Cardinal Emmanuel II Delly.


The Vatican announced that yesterday afternoon, the Holy Father met with
- Muhammad al-Sammak, political counselor to the Grand Mufti of Lebanon; and
- Ayatollah Seyed Mostafa Mohaghegh Ahmadabadi, Ph.D., Professor of Law at the Shahid Beheshti University
of Tehran, and Member of the Iranian Academy of Sciences.
Both men addressed the Synodal assembly in behalf of Sunni and Shia Islam, respectively.

Today, the Holy Father sent a message to Jacques Diouf, president of the UN's Food and Agricultural Organization
based in Rome, on the occasion of World Food Day today.



For the past two days, MSM has been peddling a story they have typically headlined "Pope says Carla Bruni-Sarkozy is not welcome
at the Vatican", as in the UK Daily Telegraph - a headline that deliberately implies the Pope is an insensitive boor. The actual story says
that wben President Sarkozy requested to have his recent audience with the Pope, he was reportedly advised by the Vatican Secretariat
of State not to bring along his Italian-born wife, to avoid giving the media another occasion to feature salacious pictures of her when
she was a supermodel-jetsetter, alongside pictures of Sarkozy with the Pope. This would have detracted and distracted from the objective
of Sarkozy's trip which was to repair his image with Catholics after his government's controversial measures to deport illegally staying
gypsies from France. The advice was certainly in Sarkozy's interest. Also, Bruni was not with him either, when he first visited the Pope
in 2007 (But I think it's because they weren't married yet.)