Pope Benedict has unusually
busy Monday of audiences
Vatican City, Dec 14, 2009 (CNA).- Pope Benedict XVI had brief audiences with a number of people on Monday morning, including three newly ordained bishops and the prime minister of Montenegro.
[CNA forgets to mention the one audience that was by no means brief today - the Pope meeting with the bishops of Belarus (Byelorussia) on their ad limina visit.]
Bishops Jean Laffitte, Mario Toso and Giovanni D'Ercole were accompanied by family members as they met Benedict XVI at the Papal residence in Vatican City. The three were ordained as bishops just a day earlier at a well attended ceremony officiated by the Holy See's Secretary of State, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone.
Each of them had already received orders for a new appointment in the last 2 months.
Bishop Laffitte, who had worked with the Pontifical Council of the Family as an under-secretary since 2005, became Secretary of that Council on Oct. 22, 2009.
On that same date, Bishop Toso was appointed as of Secretary of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace from his post at the Pontifical Salesian University of Rome, where he had been serving as Dean of the Philosophy Department since 2003.
Bishop Giovanni D'Ercole, a former director of the Holy See's press office, was chosen to be Auxiliary Bishop of Aquila, the region of Italy hit hardest by an earthquake earlier this year.
The Holy Father also received the Prime Minister of Montenegro, Milo Djukanovic, in audience Monday morning. Following his encounter with the Pope, the prime minister went on to meet with Cardinal Secretary of State Tarcisio Bertone and Archbishop Dominique Mamberti, the secretary for Relations with States.
In the meeting, the Secretaries and prime minister Djukanovic discussed current international affairs, the present domestic situation and the challenges facing Montenegro. They also touched on the Montenegrin government's efforts to promote "peace and harmony" among the country's ethnically and religiously diverse population.
Montenegrin and Serbian Orthodox Churches have been in dispute since the 1920's about which is the legitimate Church in the small country. Adding to the confusion, the bishop of the Montenegrin Orthodox Church, Mihailo, was ordained by the patriarch of a schismatic synod of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church in 1998. Upon being ordained, Mihailo was excommunicated by the Orthodox Church of Istanbul.
Vatican diplomacy manifests
hopeful realism, Fr. Lombardi says
VATICAN CITY, DEC. 14, 2009 (Zenit.org).- Benedict XVI met this month with leaders from three nations where the situation of the Church is touchy. According to a Vatican spokesman, these types of meetings reflect a principle of Holy See diplomacy: the realism of hope.
Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi, director of the Vatican press office, dedicated the most recent edition of Vatican Television's "Octava Dies" to a reflection on the Pope's meetings with the new ambassador from Cuba, and the presidents of Russia and Vietnam.
He suggested that Vatican diplomacy pursues a dialogue of hope in the name of the Gospel for the good of humanity.
So for example, Father Lombardi said, when the Holy Father was visited by the new Cuban ambassador to the Holy See, Eduardo Delgado Bermúdez, "the Pope observed that, despite the difficulties in relations with the Holy See over the past decades, and above all the limitations on the Church's activities, diplomatic relations have never been interrupted and the improvements are appreciable."
"The Pope's meeting with Russian President Medvedev,” Father Lombardi continued, "was the occasion to announce the establishment of diplomatic relations with the Russian Federation, concluding the 20 year effort at rapprochement with official but not yet full relations."
This, the Jesuit underscored, "is a significant step forward," demonstrating that "the situation of past hostility of the Soviet communist regime is today a memory."
Finally, the audience with the president of Vietnam, Nguyen Minh Triet, "must be considered as a further stage in the hoped for journey toward the normalization of relations with the Asian country, where the Catholic Church counts on a large and dynamic community," Father Lombardi asserted.
He noted how Catholics in Vietnam are "celebrating this year an important jubilee year" and "despite the difficulties of past decades, looks to the future in hope."
In this way, the Vatican spokesman proposed, "the Holy See -- with patience and a farsighted approach -- continues to weave together its dialogue with the leaders of nations, thinking of the good of the Church in their countries and in the perspective of understanding and peace among all peoples.”
"[The Vatican's] diplomacy is not guided by weakness or the spirit of compromise," Father Lombardi affirmed. "It is a matter of, as has been well said in the past, the 'realism of hope.'
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 15/12/2009 00:19]