BENEDICT XVI: NEWS, PAPAL TEXTS, PHOTOS AND COMMENTARY

Tuesday, Oct. 19, 29th Week in Ordinary Time

SAINTS ISAAC JOGUES AND COMPANIONS (d mid-17th century), Jesuits and Martyrs
Isaac JogueS and seven fellow Jesuits were the first martyrs of North America in Church history. In 1636, Jogues was with a Jesuit mission led by Jean de Brebeuf who arrived in Quebec in 1838 to evangelize the native American tribes. Working among the Hurons, Joques was captured in 1642 by their rival Iroquois, tortured and imprisoned for 13 months. He was able to escape back to France with hands so mutilated - his fingers had been cut, chewed or burnt off - that Pope Urban VII had to give him a special dispensation to celebrate Mass. In 1646, he returned to Canada with Jean de Lalande, this time to evangelize the Iroquois themselves because of a recent peace treaty. Almost immediately upon arrival he was captured by a Mohawk war party and beheaded by tomahawk. The next day, De Lalande met the same fate near Albany, New York. Three years later, Jean de Brebeuf, who had stayed with the Hurons since Jogues's first mission, was martyred by the Iroquois. The other Jesuits martyred in the period were Rene Goupil who had been tortured with Jogues in 1642 but was tomahawked then and became the first of the Jesuit martyrs of Canada. Four others - Antony Daniel, Gabriel Lalemant, Charles Garnier and Noel Chabanel were martyred in 1648-1649. All eight martyrs were canonized in 1930.
Readings for today's Mass:
www.usccb.org/nab/readings/101910.shtml


OR for 10/18-10/19/10:

Photo: Joseph Ratzinger, extreme left, with fellow seminarians in Freising, schoolyear 1946-1947.
In a letter to seminarians around the world, Benedict XVI recalls his vocation and the relevance of answering the call:
'The world still has need of priests'
At the canonization of six new saints on Sunday, he underscores the gift of holiness

The double issue also contains coverage of the Verdi Requiem performed for the Pope and the Synodal fathers on Friday evening and his audience with the new ambassadors from El Salvador and Colombia yesterday. Also in the inside pages: The report of the Synodal Assembly summarizing the interventions of the first week.


THE POPE'S DAY

The Holy Father met today with

- Mons. Gregor Maria Franz Hanke, O.S.B., Bishop of Eichstätt



Sunday, Oct, 24
XXX Sunday in Ordinary Time
Papal Mass to conclude
the Special Synodal Assembly for the Middle East
09:30 St. Peter's Basilica

FIVE YEARS & SIX MONTHS TODAY, AND COUNTING....

AD MULTOS ANNOS, SANCTE PATER!

We can never love you enough.

One month ago today, Benedict XVI beatified Cardinal John Henry Newman
on the last day of his apostolic visit to the UK.




The Italian media are reporting the reappointment of Dino Boffo, 58, former editor of Avvenire, the newspaper of the Italian bishops' conference (CEI), to head SAT 2000, the CEI's satellite TV channel. Boffo resigned in September 2009 as editor of Avvenire and director of both Radio Blu and Sat 2000, the CEI's radio and TV networks, after he was accused in a front-page article in Il Giornale of being a 'notorious homosexual' by Italian editor Vittorio Feltri. Three months later, Feltri issued a retraction and apology claiming he had been falsely informed.

Giacomo Galeazzi says in his blog today that Benedict XVI himself had intervened "in order to remedy an obvious injustice towards an esteemed journalist and faithful servant of the Church", with the happy cooperation of both current CEI president Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco, and his predecessor, Cardinal Camillo Ruini (who had first appointed Boffo to his multimedia responsibilities in 1994).

In his article on Boffo's reappointment today, Andrea ?ornielli says it is confirmed that the Holy Father will announce tomorrow at the end of the General Audience that he will call a consistory next month to name new cardinals.

Tornielli also notes that in the space of a week, the Holy Father has approved two appointments advanced by Cardinal Ruini. The first and more important one was the appointment of Archbishop Nosiglia to be the new Archbishop of Turin, over Cardinal Bertone's nominee. [However, the Pope did name Bertone's fellow Salesian Fr. Massimo Palombella to head the Sistine Chapel Choir, a choice considered questionable by most Roman experts in sacred music. Perhaps the Pope believes in the potential of the fairly young Palombella, who comes to the prestigious position with thin credentials.]

Lots of media around the world have picked up the OR's recent front-page story on the TV cartoon comedy series The Simpsons, in which it is claimed that the Simpsons are 'true Catholics'. What the MSM has not yet picked up is the denial by the shows's creator, Al Jean, who said: "My first reaction is shock and awe and I guess it makes up for me not going to church for 20 years. We've pretty clearly shown that Homer is not Catholic. I really don't think he could go without eating meat on Fridays - for even an hour."

[Even if meatless Fridays are no longer enforced among US Catholics, it serves the OR right for its unwarranted and unnecessary ventures into showbiz territory, made all the worse because the very random choice of topics and the often-questionable judgments expressed in these articles are obviously just those of the individual writer - and yet it is always reported worldwide as 'the Vatican view'! If only for that,editor Vian should cease and desist from this 'constant shooting itself in the foot' that the Pope's newspaper has been prone to do since he took over!]

Meanwhile, other than a few Catholic blogs and the tunnel-vision Wall Street Journal story I posted yesterday, the Anglophone MSM - all focused on the 'Simpsons are Catholic' story - have not taken any notice of the Pope's landmark letter to seminarians!. This time, they can't say there was no English translation immediately available. Despite the mention of celibacy and the sex abuse scandal in the letter, apparently the MSM either does not consider the letter newsworthy in any way, or it just does not fit into their prefabricated agenda about the Pope.

The story is widely reported in the Italian newspapers but in snippets from the letter, and no significant commentary so far. After all, what commentary does such a self-explanatory and self-evident letter need? The best way to report it is to reproduce it in full!

It ranks with the March 2009 letter to the bishops of the world, and the March 2010 Letter to the Catholics of Ireland, as Benedict XVI's 'Pauline epistles' for the third millennium. I do not include the letter to the Chinese Catholics because that was a formal document, nonetheless historical and unprecedented, but with far less of the obvious personal voice of Benedict XVI evident in the other three.