BENEDICT XVI: NEWS, PAPAL TEXTS, PHOTOS AND COMMENTARY

The narrative being peddled by the Anglophone MSM about the Pope's trip to Mexico and Cuba is openly negative and quite sickening. What could possibly generate this kind of animus that the reports specifically make Benedict XVI the scapegoat no matter how far-fetched the association is?

In Mexico, the main party-pooping claim is that Mexicans are so enamored of John Paul II that they couldn't care less - or even look down upon - the current Vicar of Christ; and secondarily, that he is not meeting at all with any of the victims of Fr. Marcial Maciel, Mexico's most notorious prelate of the 20th century and the only founder of a modern ecclesial movement to have been found to be an outright unholy man and a criminal! [Not that there have been any demands at all for such a meeting by Maciel's victims, who are well aware that Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI had nothing to do at all with their misfortune or with coddling Fr. Maciel.]

In Cuba, the rap is that the local Church has been conniving with the Communist government - never mind that such 'connivance' has resulted in thousands of political prisoners having been released by the government through the Church's mediation, and that media considered the rapprochement between that government and the local Church as the object of hosannahs at the time the breakthrough was marked by John Paul II's visit to Cuba. Why the rapprochement is now seen as blameworthy and nefarious - as Benedict somehow giving his unqualified blessing to the Cuban government - can only be explained by irrational bias against Benedict.

Of course, the assault on the head of the Roman Catholic Church is an assault on the Church itself - and maybe, it is a measure of what the secular media think of Benedict XVI's leadership that they feel they can best strike at the Church by running him down. With all that in mind, consider this report from a major newspaper chain in the Americas.

Benedict's visit to Mexico
brings ache for John Paul II
by Tim Johnson
McClatchy Newspapers

MEXICO CITY — The imminent visit of Pope Benedict XVI to Mexico is drawing little excitement, underscoring the stark differences between this Pontiff and his predecessor, John Paul II, a figure beloved to Mexicans.

Since the moment John Paul II descended from a jetliner in 1979 and kissed Mexican soil, on the first of five visits, Mexicans felt he held their nation close to his heart.

In contrast, Pope Benedict, who arrives Friday in Mexico, is "the antithesis of John Paul II. He is not very charismatic," said Maria de las Heras, head of the Demotecnia public opinion firm.

An opinion survey by her company earlier this month found that 77 percent of Mexican Catholics feel indifferent to the pontiff's visit or are less enthusiastic about it than they were to John Paul's.

Pope Benedict will visit the states of Guanajuato and Leon, areas of fervent Catholicism northwest of Mexico City, before traveling on to Cuba for two days. It is his first trip to Latin America [NO! How can the reporter overlook his visit to BraZil in 2007????], a region critical to the Church's long-term vitality.

The visit comes as Mexico struggles with rampant violence by criminal gangs that has rent the Church, separating those who want a greater role in ministering to the victims and denouncing human rights abuses from clerics who support a hard line against the gangs, or those who look the other way as they take donations from drug lords.

But such divisions — as well as legislative debates on relaxing anti-clerical provisions in the constitution — are less at the forefront than the notable lack of enthusiasm for Pope Benedict's arrival, which led a Catholic prelate to admonish Mexicans to stop comparing the German-born pontiff to his Polish predecessor.

"From the perspective of faith, all Popes are equal and deserve our respect and our loyalty without regard to the charisma that they may embody," Archbishop Jose Guadalupe Martin Rabago of Leon told CNNMexico. "We need to say this to everyone so that they don't expect to see in Pope Benedict a repeat, or a clone, to put it bluntly, of Pope John Paul."

The Mexico where Pope Benedict will set foot for the first time is at once deeply Catholic and officially anti-clerical when it comes to intervention by the church in state affairs.

Only in 1992 did Mexico establish diplomatic relations with the Vatican and relax strictures such as one that barred priests from wearing clerical garb in the streets.

"It is a church that is quite powerful but one that has lost many of its faithful. It is estimated that they've lost 15 to 20 percent of their followers in the last two decades," said Ilan Semo Groman, a historian at the Jesuit-run Ibero-American University in the capital.

Semo said Pope Benedict has not won the hearts of Mexicans.

"He's always the Pope. But there are beloved popes and less beloved popes. And in circles of power, he's not seen with great affection," Semo said.

Mexicans are hard-pressed not to draw comparisons to Pope John Paul II, who visited in 1979, 1990, 1993, 1999 and 2002, traveling to 12 of Mexico's 31 states and ministering to millions in open-air masses in the nation's largest cities.

"Every time he arrived, it was nuts. The country came to a standstill, even among non-Catholics," recalled de las Heras, the pollster. "John Paul II had the virtue of convincing Mexican Catholics that the country was very special to him."

The affection was so great that at times police intervened to give the Spanish-speaking pontiff, who died in 2005, some rest from those who sought to serenade him each night.

President Felipe Calderon, whose ruling National Action Party is trailing in July 1 presidential elections, will greet Pope Benedict on his arrival Friday in Leon, perhaps hoping that his party's candidate will get a boost.

Pope Benedict will speak on all aspects of national life, including the violence that has taken more than 50,000 lives since Calderon came to office in late 2006.

"The violence has increased so much that the church has to speak out from a national perspective," said Richard Jones, a deputy regional director for Catholic Relief Services, a Baltimore-based charity. "The Pope is going to focus on a message of peace and hope."

Mexico's Catholic hierarchy shifted sharply to the right under John Paul II, a crusader against communism who revived the Church while promoting conservative clergy. In Mexico, that meant that clerics who sided with the leftist Zapatista rebellion in the mid-1990s, for example, were shunted aside.

But Mexico's roiling domestic violence threatens to split the Church again, dividing activists from a somewhat aloof hierarchy that has failed to propose effective antidotes to runaway killings, extortion and drug trafficking. [I do not know if there was any time in history when the Church has been able to counteract human vice on a grand scale! You can be pretty sure that Mafiosi as well as Mexican drug lords - who may all have been cradle Catholics - automatically make the sign of the Cross before they pull the trigger to carry out a massacre! Both actions are automatic to these people the first one, out of sheer lifelong interia, the other out of inexorable current compulsion.]

"This is one of the reasons why the Pope is coming," Semo said.

Moreover, some clergy have clearly been lured by donations from drug lords. The founder of Los Zetas, Heriberto Lazcano, a man so brutal he is known as "the executioner," paid for an elegant chapel in his hometown, Pachuca. [So? What has the man's private chapel have to do with the Church? Did he endow the local church or the diocese, or build a completely new church for the public?]

Federico Estevez, a political scientist at the Autonomous Technological Institute of Mexico, said drug money has remade other churches, including one southeast of the capital in the state of Mexico.

"Go and see how it glitters today. It's all narco money," he said.

Church officials said Leon was chosen as the center of Benedict's visit over Mexico City because the capital's high elevation — nearly 12,000 feet — was a health risk for the 84-year-old pontiff.

By sidestepping Mexico City, however, the Pope will also avoid one of Latin America's most permissive cities, one where gay marriage and abortions are permitted.

In contrast, the state of Guanajuato that will welcome Pope Benedict is among its most religiously orthodox.

"He's going to a state that is so conservative that they passed a law that life begins at conception," said Richard Grabman, author of several books on Mexican history, including one on a religious war in the early 20th century. "That means indigenous women who've had miscarriages have been imprisoned for murder."
[Did the reporter bother to check out this outrageous statement at all????]

The pedophilia scandal that shook the church worldwide also took a toll in Mexico, the homeland of Marcial Maciel, the disgraced pedophile founder of the Legions of Christ, a wealthy and powerful global congregation.

Pope John Paul II was an enthusiastic supporter of Maciel, impressed at his skill in amassing wealth on behalf of the Legion of Christ and its lay branch, Regnum Christi. The Pope gave the Mexican priest a very public blessing in 2004.

Only two years later, however, with John Paul dead, Benedict ordered Maciel, who is believed to have fathered up to six children, into a "life of prayer and penitence," without spelling out his transgressions.

In 2010, two years after Maciel's death, the Vatican appointed an Italian cardinal to oversee the Legion of Christ.

A former Legionnaire who claims to have been a victim of Maciel, Jose Barba, is a co-author of a book to be released later this week in Mexico that alleges the Vatican knew for years of Maciel's sexual abuse but did nothing about it. [It is dishonest of the reporter not to specify that 'the Vatican' referred to in the book is definitely not 'the Vatican' under Benedict XVI! In the same way, has no polling been done at all about how Mexicans feel regarding the long-favor enjoyed by Maciel under successive Popes since the 1950s, and the fact that it took Benedict XVI to directly expose him and take measures to redress his long corrupt regime at the head of a large and powerful ecclesial movement?]

Here's a more equitable perspective on the trip from a Vaticanista who has been generally reliable and fair:

Benedict XVI: A mission of truth amid
the contradictions of Mexico and Cuba
by Salvatore Izzo


MEXICO CITY, March 22 (Translated from AGI) - Benedict XVI will be undertaking an apostolic trip that will be far from stereotype when he lesves Fiumicino on Friday for Leon in the state of Guanajuato, Mexico. This was one place never visited by John Paul II in five visits to Mexico.

Even if this site of his visit was dictated by medical advice to the near-85-year-old Pope - to skip the capital, Mexico City, because its 12,000-foot altitude could be harmful to someone with Benedict XVI's specific health problems (hypertension and a history of heart trouble) - the fact that the German Pope is starting his 23rd international trip out of his predecessors beaten path has a symbolic value beyond doubt.

Mexico is indeed still a huge Catholic country whose profound faith has been irrigated by the blood of the Cristeros martyrs of the early 20th century - those who defiantly proclaimed 'Cristo Rey!" (Christ is King) when they fought an implacably anti-Catholic Masonic-secular regime in 1926-1929, setting themselves up for martyrdom by the hundreds.

Mexico's relationship with the Holy See - which only dates back to 1982 (three years after Jo0hn Paul I first visited Mexico) - is the 'positive evolution', as Cardinal Secretary of State Tarcisio Bertone said this week, who underscored that on the part of the government (specifically, the ruling Partido Revolucionario Institucional,PRI, which once persecuted believers), there is finally "an acknowledgment of the universal function carried out by the Church an the Holy See".

But Mexico has been, unfortunately and by common knowledge, the homeland of the worst symbol of the 'filth' denounced and fought by the current Pontiff since he waa at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith : Fr. Marcial Maciel, founder of the once very powerful Legionaries of Christ, who was a drug addict, pedophile, rapist and illegitimate father of children from relationships, all kept hidden from exposure for decades by generous pay-offs.[to anyone and everyone who could be bought, including his own priest-lieutenants and ranking officials in the Vatican [at least up until the CDF under Cardinal Ratzinger finally overcame what seemed to be a resistance even by Blessed John Paul II].

Unlike in the United States, the tragedy of sexual abuses committed by proiests and religious has not yet led to any serious examination of conscience on the part of the bishops who had not seen or did not want to acknowledge this kind of wrongdoing. And unlike in Ireland, the Mexican government has not intervened at all in this lack of initiative by the local Church nor to help clean itself up .

Thus, the trip of Benedict XVI could be a historic occasion to trigger off a cleansing process even in Mexico, where in recent days, victims of Maciel have produced a document demanding clarification and clarity on the role of the Church hierarchy, in Mexico and at the Vatican, whom they had first asked in 1998 to denounce the behavior of the man who was responsible for odious crimes committed against them.

[If these victims are expecting the Vatican to come out in black and white with a specific statement acknowledging that Maciel's crimes were substantially 'swept under the carpet' by the Vatican at least up to 2004, when Blessed John Paul II made that very public commendation of Maciel on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of his ordination, they are being unrealistic. The Vatican can simply refer them to the 2005 CDF announcement of the canonical penalty imposed by Benedict XVI on Maciel, which gave the background for the penalty, and probably to any documents from the Congregation for the Causes of Saints that directly respond to any protests made by victims of Maciel against John Paul II's cause for sainthood.

While it seems obvious that the Polish Pope and his associates supported Maciel in his protestations of innocence up til 2004, at the very least, it also seems apparent that shortly afterwards, John Paul II gave Cardinal Ratzinger the go-ahead to resume investigations of Maciel which had been earlier suspended.

John Paul II's egregious miscalculation - let's call it a downright error - in standing by Maciel so long and so unequivocally does not mean the late Pope was willing to tolerate outright crimes by people he trusted, but that he placed his trust so wrongly in such an unworthy person as to choose not to entertain any doubts at all about Maciel's integrity. So, one obvious flaw in a life that was otherwise saintly and which certainly did not pretend to be perfect does not invalidate his cause for sainthood!

But this should also say something very significant to those who see John Paul II as the unsullied paragon of all virtues [he himself would not have thought so!] in contrast to a Benedict XVI they dislike and whom they persist in considering to be incapable of any virtue whatsoever! And I mean you, Marco Politi and ilk, above all! I have more forbearance for the poorly-catechized Mexican Catholics who are playing the game of papal favorites to an unprecedented and totally unhealthy extreme.]

It is well known that Cardinal Ratzinger was virtually the only person in the Roman Curia to believe the victims' accusations but that he was prevented from doing anything about it - according to statements made by Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn of Vienna in 2010, who laid the blame on close associates of John Paul II. In fact, a note came to light from the Secretariat of state (then under Cardinal Angelo Sodano) that denied as late as 2004 that Maciel was under investigation in any way at all.

However, Papa Wojtyla ultimately was convinced there was a basis for the persistent accusations against Maciel, and a few months before he died, finally auithorized the CDF to proceed with its investigation.

Thus, even without a canonical trial [which the CDF said it did not undertake because of Maciel's advanced and age and poor health at the time, but on the basis of depositions made by victims over the years and interviews conducted in 2005-2006 by the CDF's chief prosecutor with many of them], Benedict XVI in 2006 deprived Maciel of any authority in the Legion and its various branches, nor to officiate any liturgies in public, and ordered him to live the rest of his days in isolation.

Subsequently, Benedict XVI placed Maciel's entire organization under papal authority while the institutions are being reorganized [and 'purified' of the people and elements corrupted by Maciel].

Unfortunately, outside the Vatican - where many ranking prelates accepted money from Maciel - the latter apparently used the same methods to buy the support and silence of many Mexican bishops. {While I cannot imagine that Cardinal Sodano and now Cardinal Dsiwisz - the two names most prominently mentioned as arch-supporters of Maciel in the Wojtyla Pontificate - could have used Maciel's donations to line their own pockets (they probably gave it to worthy causes not their own). I hope they have since redressed any such use of tainted money by putting their own money into those causes!]

maciel's corrupt influence among Mexican bishops may explain why, as Varican spokesman Fr. Federico Lombardi confirmed last week, Mexican bishops did not present any request to the Pope to meet with victims of local priestly abuse, as local bishops did in the USA, Australia, Malta, the UK and Germany.

Such a meeting with the victims of Maciel would be important, if not decisive, in forcing the Mexican bishops to examine their consciences about Maciel.

Nonetheless, the Pope could carry out a significant gesture in this regard during his three-day visit by apologizing, in the name of the Church, for the offenses of Maciel and other priestly criminals to their victims and the families of the latter.

He will certainly be forceful about appealing for a general respect for life - whether it concerns the wanton daily bloodshed generated by the drug wars, or the culture of abortion that seems to be widespread in Mexico. [There's also the still 'unsolved' murder of the Bishop of Guadalajara in a Mexican airport two decades ago.] [I know I posted something about this years back in the PRF, so I have to look it up.]

Likewise, in the second half of this Latin American trip, when he is in Cuba, this aged but courageous Pope could still surprise everyone - not just with an eventual meeting with Fidel Castro - but agreeing to meet dissidents who wish to have 'one minute; with him during his visit to Cuba. [If Benedict XVI, who is very proper, told his hosts beforehand that he planned to do this, I don't think they would object. The Vatican, when announcing such a meeting after it take place, can always reiterate the same admonition the Pope made to the underground Church in China - that they ought to be good citizens as well as good Catholics - and guard against the dissidents from unduly exploiting their meeting with the Pope for propaganda. It won't keep them from doing so, obviously, but the Vatican will have guarded its flanks.]

In Cuba, too, Benedict XVI will undertake something that John Paul II was unable to do in 1998 - a visit to the Shrine of Our lady of Charity of El Cobre, a place that has symbolized the Catholic faith of Cubans over decades of persecution by the Communist regime.

At the end of his 1998 visit, John Paul II called on Cuba to open itself to the world and on the world to open itself to Cuba. But although much has improved since then, much remains to be done, especially in terms of political dissidents being imprisoned. And the United States embargo against commerce with Cuba remains in place, [despite Barack Obama's liberal administration, which obviously is courting the all-important Florida electoral votes for the 2012 elections and will therefore not alienate the considerable Cuban-American vote there by doing any favors to the Castro regime.].

But even in the case of the US embargo, Papa Ratzinger - who is not inclined to compromise and keeping off 'taboo' subjects - could ay and do something that could change history. [Somehow, I think not in this case. It's the US government he must 'influence', not the Cubans, and who can see Obama kissing the Florida electoral vote goodbye by lifting the embargo against Cuba?]

Vatican Radio interviewed the Archbishop of Santiago de Cuba, the first city to be visited by Benedict XVI, Mons, Guillermo Garcia Ibanez, who is also president of the Cuban bishops' conference who said that his primary concern was "that everyone in our nation may feel the need for reconciliation, of common undertaking, of respect for the person in his full dignity and all his rights, so that all Cubans may feel united, as citizens of a country we love, and that we can all feel like brothers, regardless of faith, thinking, or social conditions".

Mons. Carlos Aguiar Retes, president of the Mexican bishops' conference in 2006, and current president of the Conference of Bishops of Latin America and the Caribbean, expressed through Radio Vatican the expectations of his fellow Mexican bishops, observed that "During the time that Mexicans underwent serious difficulties because of religious conflicts, the figure of the Pontiff was always a most important element in the Church life of Mexico".

Now, he said, "Mexico is experiencing problems she never had before. She has to face particularly complex situations that do not lend themselves to immediate solutions. But we know that precisely in this situation, or faith as disciples of Christs is growing and maturing".

This, he said, is 'the confidence with which the Catholic Church in Mexico faces every event with hope. Therefore we trust and hope that the presence of the Holy Father will infuse us all with great enthusiasm and joy despite all our current difficulties".