When JMB is inexplicably inconsistent
He announced he would not be travelling in Italy during the Year of Mercy
but he went to Assisi this month and will go back there next month
while declining to attend Italy's National Eucharistic Congress in Genoa
[Since there has been no interruption in his foreign travels, why should
travel in Italy be selectively ruled out just because it is a Holy Year?]
Translated from
August 11, 2016
For this pope, Assisi is a special place, a very special place, even geographically.
[Just to establish JMB's credentials on St. Francis and Assisi, has Magister checked how many times Jorge Bergoglio visited Assisi before he became Pope, or when was the last time he visited Assisi before March 13, 2013? I tried googling it, but got no references to 'Bergoglio in Assisi' nor to 'statements about St. Francis by Cardinal Bergoglio' before March 20, 2013. Perhaps with 'world enough and time', I may find something. If anyone has any information, please let us know on this Forum. I get the impression his 'St Francis-Assisi' consciousness only started on March 13, 2013.]
On December 10, 2015,at a news conference in Milan, as reported by the Vatican press bulletin, Cardinal Angelo Scola announced that he had 'received a communication from the Vatican Secretariat of State that because of intensifying commitments related to the Year of Mercy, the Holy Father would postpone all pastoral visits in Italy".
Everyone took note and accepted this plan, starting with Cardinal Scola who thus announced the cancellation of a planned and duly announced pastoral visit by the pope on May 7, 2016.
[I would have thought he would fulfill this commitment if only because Milan has become the center of the largest and most activist Muslim community in Italy.]
But last August 4, the pope went to Assisi which, of course, is in Italy. And will be returning there on September 19. Two exceptions to his plan.
Breaking the news about this return visit to Assisi was the Imam of Perugia, Abdel Qaher Mohammed, who in an interview on TV2000 (channel of the Italian bishops' conference), said he learned this on speaking with the pope briefly in Assisi.
This return visit would coincide with the annual interfaith Prayer for Peace organized by the Sant'Egidio community (in a different city every year) o commemorate the 30th anniversary of the first such gathering in Assisi, promoted by John Paul II, in 1986.
But Sept. 19 also happens to be the day following the conclusion of the Italian Eucharistic Congress to take place in Genoa on Sept. 15-18, which the pope had earlier declined to attend because of his announced cancellation of all trips within Italy during the Year of Mercy.
And thus, he has set a precedent as the first post-conciliar pope not to attend an Italian Eucharistic Congress.
Because ever since popes in modern times - the pope is ex officio Primate of Italy - were once more able to travel outside Rome, they had always attended these quadrennial events. Before that, up to John XXIII in 1959, they sent appropriate messages.
For these Eucharistic Congresses, Paul VI went to Pisa in 1965, to Udine in 1972 and to Pescara in 1977, the year before he died. John Paul II went to Milan in 1983, to Reggio Calabria in 1988, to Siena in 1994 and to Bologna in 1997. Benedict XVI went to Bari in 2005 and to Ancona in 2011.
Eucharistic congresses are unique to Catholicism among the Christian confessions.
However, the trips this pope will be making in the next few weeks have 'vaster' horizons than the religion he nominally leads.
[Go figure!] In Assisi, on Sept. 19, he will join leaders of other faiths, Christian or not. In Georgia and Azerbaijan (two former Soviet republics), he will be with Orthodox and Muslims. And in Lund, Sweden, on Oct. 31, he will be celebrating the fifth centenary of Martin Luther's schism known also as the Reformation.
Roberto De Mattei reprises Magister's critique in a commentary that widens the question to the pope's seeming obliviousness to his own flock even as he seeks to lasso in other faiths under his Big Tent of an incipient One-World-Religion. Sorry, Catholics!...
The faithful are asking the Pope
for clarity against the attacks of evil:
Where is he and where does he stand?
by Roberto de Mattei,
Translated by Francesca Romana for Rorate caeli from
August 14, 2016
During the month of August, Casa Santa Marta in the Vatican is emptied of its guests, but Pope Francis will spend the entire month in the Vatican, just as he has done the past three years.
Francis has announced he will forego a traditional papal appointment - the National Eucharistic Congress to take place this year in Genoa from the 15th to the 18th of August, but on the 19th of August the Pope will go to Assisi to celebrate the thirtieth anniversary of the encounter among religions, organized by the Community of St. Egidio.
The Vatican Press Office did not communicate this however, but the ‘Imam’ from Perugia, Abdel Moh’d in an interview to TV 2000 (The Italian Bishops Conference TV).
Pope Bergoglio will then be in Georgia and Azerbaijan from September 30 to October 2 with the Orthodox and the Muslims, and then in Lund, Sweden, on October 31st to commemorate the five hundred years of the Protestant Reformation.
Ecumenical initiatives are the compass to his pontificate, which seems to suggest the intent to build a common platform among religions, with the risk, noted by many, of emptying Catholicism and favouring the creation of a ‘super syncretistic religion’.
The lunch on August 11th with 21 Syrian refugees, all Muslims, who arrived in Italy following the papal trip to the Isle of Lesbos, is within the purview of Francis's ‘preferential option’ for non-Catholics. A strategy that demands the denial that there are any wars of religion at all
[A willful inexplicable negation of more than abundant historical fact and, in general, of human nature]. And yet the Church is suffering persecution all over the world.
Monsignor Dominique Lebrun, Archbishop of Rouen, voiced his intention of starting the process of beatification which will lead to the recognition of Father Jacques Hamel’s martyrdom - killed ‘in hatred of the Faith’ like so many Christians of our times. Will a word of approval come from Rome?
Will a sign of support come for the three Spanish bishops taken to court for having criticised the law, just passed in Madrid, which promotes trans-sexuality? The Spanish
Osservatore against LGBT-phobia, denounced the Bishop of Getafe, Monsignor Joaquin Maria López de Andújar, his auxiliary, José Rico Pavés and the diocesan titular of Alcalà, Monsignor Juan Antonio Reig Pla ‘for incitement to hatred and discrimination towards the homosexual community’.
But the worst is yet to come. A public black mass has been organized for August 15th by an American Satanist group at the Civic Center in Oklahoma City, with the permission of the local authorities. The city’s Archbishop, Monsignor Paul Coakley, has called on the faithful to ask the intercession of St. Michael the Archangel, Our Lady and all the Angels and Saints ‘that the Lord may take care of our community and protect us from evil and its many destructive and violent manifestations’.
Today, however, it is not only an American diocese suffering the attacks of evil, but the entire Church. The disoriented faithful turn to the Vicar of Christ, asking him to show his paternity not only towards those distant, but also to those closest to him, more than ever in need of clarity and encouragement in this tempestuous, historical period.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 16/08/2016 03:10]