BENEDICT XVI: NEWS, PAPAL TEXTS, PHOTOS AND COMMENTARY

Earlier posts today (8/28) in the preceding page, including reaction - and non-reaction - in the Italian media, to Cardinal Bertone's lengthy interview in today's OR.






I thought it would be useful to re-post here some items I previously posted in the PRF on various occasions, to mark the feast of St. Augustine today:


AUGUSTINE AND BENEDICT XVI

First, from an interview by ZENIT with the Provost general of the Augustinian Order at the time of Pope Benedict's visit to the tomb of St. Augustine in Pavia on April 22, 2006:

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In October 2005, with Bishop Giovanni Giudici of Pavia, we invited the Pope to Pavia precisely to celebrate the 750th anniversary of the Grand Union, the last act of the foundation of the Order of St. Augustine.

In November of the same year we received the affirmative response of the Pope through the Vatican secretary of state. The date was left to be determined.

This event was concretized in the pastoral visit to the Dioceses of Vigevano and Pavia, that would conclude in the Basilica of San Pietro in Ciel d'Oro, the place where the relics of St. Augustine have been kept since about 725, when the king of the Lombards, Liutprand, had them brought to Pavia from Sardinia...

The Pope is very close to the figure of St. Augustine. In 1953 he wrote his doctoral thesis on the Holy Doctor: People and House of God in St. Augustine's Doctrine of the Church.

In the course of his visit to the Major Seminary of Rome on Feb. 17, 2007, the Pope said that he was fascinated by the great humanity of St. Augustine, who was not able initially simply to identify himself with the Church, because he was a catechumen, but had to struggle spiritually to find, little by little, the way to God's word, to life with God, right up to the great "yes" to his Church.

This is how he conquered his very personal theology, which is above all developed in his preaching.

The Pope has made many direct references, for example the synthesis of the figure of St. Augustine presented during the Angelus on Aug. 27, 2006, the eve of the feast of St. Augustine.

He spoke of him as "the great pastor" in the meeting with the parishioners and clergy of the Diocese of Rome on Feb. 22, 2007. He recalls him in the last post-synodal apostolic exhortation Sacramentum Caritatis on the Eucharist, food of truth, gratuitous gift of the Holy Trinity, the "Christus Totus," that is, the indivisible Christ, the whole together in the image of the head and members of the body.

In the reflections of Benedict XVI we can see the apex of the re-evaluation of the Fathers of the Church, and Augustine in particular, already begun by Vatican II and present in the principal documents of the Church...

During his visit to the basilica, he blessed the first stone of the future cultural center, named for Benedict XVI, which will relaunch some initiatives already in existence, for example, "Pavian Augustinian Week," with new initiatives, giving life to a new cultural pole that has St. Augustine as its guide.

The lamp that the Pope lit before the celebration of vespers will always remain lit next to the mortal remains of the saint. This light is meant to indicate that Augustine is still alive today, in his works and in those who live his spirituality, as we Augustinians do for example. In fact, around the ark there are 50 little flames that burn, which signify the 50 countries where we friars, together with the nuns, are present.

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During that visit to Pavia in April 2006, Benedict XVI shaped all his addresses, as well as the homily at Mass and at Vespers, around the figure of St. Augustine. Here is part of what he said at the Vespers he celebrated before St. Augustine's tomb:

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In this its concluding event, my visit to Pavia takes on the form of a pilgrimage. It was the form in which I originally conceived it, desiring to come and venerate the mortal remains of St. Augustine, to express both the homage of the entire Catholic Church to one of its greatest Fathers, as well as my personal devotion and acknowledgement of him who has played such a great part in my life as a theologian and as pastor, but I would say, above all, as a man and a priest...

As Providence would have it, my trip has acquired the character of a true pastoral visit, and therefore, in this pause for prayer, I would like to reflect, here at the tomb of the 'Doctor gratiae', the Doctor of Grace, on a message that is significant for the journey of the Church.

This message comes to us from the encounter of the Word of God and the personal experience of the great Bishop of Hippo. We heard the brief Biblical reading for the second Vespers of the Third Sunday of Easter.

The Letter to the Hebrews has placed before us Christ as the supreme and eternal Priest, exalted to the glory of the Father, after having offered Himself as the unique and perfect Sacrifice of the New Alliance, in which the work of Redemption is completed.

St. Augustine focused his attention on this mystery and in it he found the truth that he had been looking for: Jesus Christ, Word incarnate, immolated Lamb, resurrected, is the revelation of the face of God-Love to every human being journeying along the paths of time towards eternity.

The apostle John writes in a passage that one might consider parallel to that proclaimed today in the Letter to the Hebrews: "This is love: it is not us who loved God , but God who has loved us and has sent His son as the expiatory victim for our sins."

Here is the heart of the Gospel, the nucleus of Christianity. The light of this love opened the eyes of Augustine, made him encounter the 'ancient beauty that is always new" - that alone in which the heart of man can find peace.

Dear brothers and sisters, here before the tomb of St. Augustine, I would like to symbolically re-consign to the Church and to the world my first Encyclical which contains this central message of the Gospel, Deus caritas est, God is love.

This encyclical, especially its first part, owes a great part to the thought of St. Augustine, who was a passionate lover of the Love of God, which he sang, meditated and preached in all his writings, but above all, gave witness to in his pastoral ministry.

I am convinced, placing myself in the wake of my venerated predecessors John XXIII, Paul VI, John Paul I and John Paul II, that mankind today needs this essential message incarnated in Jesus Christ: God is love. Everything should proceed from this, and everything should lead to it: every pastoral action, every theological treatise.

As St. Paul said: 'If I do not have love, I gain nothing' (cfr 1 Cor 13,3): all charisms lose sense and value without love, thanks to which, instead, everything concurs to build the mystical Body of Christ.

Here then is the message that St. Augustine even today repeats to the whole Church, and, in particular, to this diocesan community which guards his relics with such veneration: Love is the soul of the life of the Church and of its pastoral action.

We heard it today in the dialog between Christ and Simon Peter: "Do you love me? Feed my lambs" (cfr Jn 21, 15-17). Only he who lives in a personal experience of the love of the Lord is able to exercise the task of guiding and accompanying others on the journey in the footsteps of Christ.

At the school of St. Augustine, I repeat this truth for you as Bishop of Rome, while with joy that is ever new, I welcome it with you as a Christian."

To serve Christ is above all a question of love. Dear brothers and sisters, may your membership in the Church and your apostolate shine always through freedom from every individual interest and through an adherence without reservation to the love of Christ.

The youth, in particular, need to receive this news of freedom and joy, whose secret is in Christ. It is Him who is the truest answer to the expectations in their uneasy hearts for all the many questions that they carry within them. Only in Him - the Word pronounced by the Father for us - is that marriage of truth and love in which is found the true sense of life.

Augustine lived first-hand and explored to the very depth the questions that man carries in his heart, and he has sounded the capacity that man has to open up to God's infinity. Following in the footsteps of Augustine, may you also be a Church that announces frankly the 'good news' of Christ, His proposition of life, His message of reconciliation and forgiveness.

The Church is a community of persons who believe in God, the God of Jesus Christ, and who are committed to live in the world the commandment of love which He left us. It is, therefore, a community in which its members are educated in love, and this education takes place not despite but through the events of life.

So it was with Peter, for Augustine, and for all the saints. So it is for us...

I encourage you to proceed in bearing personal and community witness of hard-working love. The service of charity, which you rightly conceive as always linked to the announcement of the Word and to the celebration of the Sacraments, calls you, and at the same time, stimulates you to be attentive to the material and spiritual needs of your brothers.

I encourage you to follow the high road of the Christian life, which finds in charity the link to perfection and which should translate itself in a moral lifestyle inspired by the Gospel - inevitably countercurrent with respect to worldly criteria - but to bear witness to always in a humble, respectable and cordial way.

Dear brothers and sisters, it has been a gift for me, really a gift, to share with you this pause at the tomb of St. Augustine: your presence has given my pilgrimage a more concrete ecclesial sense.

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NB: In January-February 2008, the Holy Father gave five catecheses dedicated to St. Augustine in his teaching cycle on the Fathers of the Church.

On the weekend of Benedict XVI's visit to Vigevano and Pavia, Carl Olson had this post in Ignatius Insight:


Benedict and Augustine
by Carl Olson

April 20, 2006

This Saturday and Sunday the Holy Father is visiting the Italian dioceses of Vigevano and Pavia, and will be visiting the tomb of Saint Augustine, the bishop of Hippo, which is located in the Basilica of St. Peters in the Golden Sky in Pavia. In an April 19th column for the National Post (Canada), Fr. Raymond J. de Souza writes:

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St. Augustine is more than the principal intellectual influence on Benedict; the greatest of the first millennium’s Christian scholars is the Pope’s constant intellectual companion. His preaching and teaching are unfailingly leavened with Augustinian quotations.

If John Paul II was a great philosopher Pope, teaching the wisdom of Saint Thomas Aquinas to the late 20th century, Benedict is doing the same for Augustine in the 21st.

“Augustine defines the essence of the Christian religion,” then-Cardinal Ratzinger once said. “He saw Christian faith, not in continuity with earlier religions, but rather in continuity with philosophy as a victory of reason over superstition.”

It is a favourite theme of Pope Benedict, one that provided the high point of his papacy thus far, the world-shaking address at Regensburg last year, when he argued that to act contrary to right reason was to act contrary to God — a critical message in an age of religiously motivated violence. ...

Benedict follows St. Augustine in seeing the Christian logos, the divine Word that rationally orders all things, an entirely different conception of God. Here is a God who is rational, whose creation reflects the order and goodness of right reason, and who can be known by human beings, made in His image and able to reason themselves.

And even more extraordinary than that, this God revealed Himself as one who was love — a love that creates, redeems and calls His creation to Himself. The logos of philosophy becomes the God who is love, as Benedict put it in his first encyclical.

The God of Judeo-Christian revelation is not merely the god of the philosophers, acting as a remote first cause or principle of motion. Rather this God is a rational person, the principle of rationality and truth. This God can be approached by human creatures in truth — both the natural truths of science, and the revealed truths of faith.

The ancient gods of the Nile or Mount Olympus, with their need for power and domination, had no standing in the world of philosophy. They belonged to a world of superstition. St. Augustine demonstrated how the God of Abraham belonged the world of philosophy, but pointed beyond it to the world of salvific love.

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Fr. Aidan Nichols, O.P., in his excellent book, The Theology of Joseph Ratzinger (T&T Clark, 1988; republished in 2005 as The Thought of Pope Benedict XVI: An Introduction to the Theology of Joseph Ratzinger [Burns & Oates]), dedicates an entire chapter, "Augustine and the Church," to examining the influence of the great Doctor on Ratzinger's thought and theology, especially his approach to ecclesiology:

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Believing with Romano Guardini that the twentieth century was proving, theologically, the "century of the Church", when the idea of the Church was re-awakening in all its depth and breadth, Ratzinger chose to scour the Augustinian corpus for insight into the nature of the Christian community of faith. ... For Augustine, the Church is at once the "people and the house of God". (p. 29)

And this interesting note:

Nonetheless, the culture which Augustine brought to the exploration of the Christian faith in his early writings was largely philosophical, and so it is, naturally, from a philosophical perspective that Augustine first considered the mystery of the Church.

Here Ratzinger identifies two main elements that form the Ansätze, "starting-points" of Augustinian ecclesiology. Augustine's reflections on the concept of faith will be vital for his understanding of the Church as people of God. By contrast, his concept of love is more important for his portrait of the Church as the house of God ... (p. 33).

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Ecclesiology was a primary focus in many of Joseph Ratzinger's writings, while a central theme of his pontificate, of course, has been love. As both Frs. de Souza and Nichols indicate, the effect of Augustine's thought on Benedict has been profound.

And while there are many obvious differences between two bishops who lived so many centuries apart, there are, I think, several intriguing parallels, or commonalities: the theological and philosophical erudition, the deep knowledge of both Christian and non-Christian beliefs and philosophies, the interaction with non-Christian philosophies, an ability to both be open to such systems while at the same time defending Catholic doctrine, the ability to be both theologian and pastor, a theological focus on ecclesiology, and so forth. Someday, I trust, someone will further explore much further, at book length, this fascinating relationship. [Someone's probably working on it already!]



My own comments at the time:
When you come to think of it, Benedict XVI's challenge is not so much how to 'match' (for want of a better term) his immediate predecessor John Paul II, but how to 'live up' to the wider expectation held of him by by admirers who have a longer and broader view of history, who see in Benedict XVI not just the new Benedict of Europe as was St. Benedict of Norcia, but also the new Augustine for the Catholic Church and the Western world.

Not that Joseph Ratzinger would think of himself in these terms, but the parallels are just too obvious. Surely while he was living the awesome curriculum vitae that he has so far achieved, the thought of being the next Benedict or the next Augustine - being anybody else other than himself, in short - was farthest from his mind, even if he was promoting and developing promoting some of the themes dear to both those great saints.

In 2006, Peter Seewald quoted the eminent liberal Munich theologian Eugen Biser, then 89, as saying that, even as early as now, one can already say that Benedict XVI will be considered one of the most significant Popes in history. [And that's not the opinion of just another besotted Benaddict like us, obviously! Who might well add, "...and conceivably, future Doctor of the Church, 'Doctor caritatis', perhaps"! ]

Vatican Radio has a fleeting acknowledgment of the opening today of the annual Ratzinger Schuelerkreis seminar, with a fragment of an 'interview' with one of the participants, Cardinal Schoenborn of Vienna.


'Summer school' time
in Castel Gandolfo
Translated from
the Italian service of

August 28, 2009


Today at Castel Gandolfo - the start of a three-day seminar at the Mariopoli Center of the Focolari Movement, of the Ratzinger Schuelerkreis, former doctoral students of Benedict XVI from his years as a university professor in Germany.

The seminar, always held behind closed doors, has for its theme this year "Mission in the ecumenical perspective'. The Holy Father is expected to spend all day Saturday with his former students and will preside at the concluding Mass on Monday morning. Alessandro Gisotti reports:

The annual seminar-reunion of Joseph Ratzinger's former students has taken place every year since 1977, when he was named by Paul Vi to become Archbishop of Munich and Freising, thus ending his 25-year academic career.

After he became Pope in 2005, the seminars have taken place every summer in Castel Gandolfo. In the past four years, the seminar topics have been: 'The relationship with Islam' (2005); 'Creation and evolution' (2006 and 2007); and 'The relationship between the Gospels adn the historical Jesus; and the salvific significance of the Passion of Christ' (2008).

Forty participants are expected this year, among them the Archbishop of Vienna, Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn, who spoke to Marta Vertse, in charge of Hungarian programming at Vatican Radio.

SCHOENBORN: Our topic this week is mission - the Church's missionary task - and it was chosen by the Holy Father himself.

What is the atmosphere like during these meetings? Is there still the professor-student relationship?
Of course, that remains, and one can see that for the Holy Father, it is a time of detachment from his daily routine so that he can be with his former students as he used to be when he was their professor.

On the subject of mission, do you see the possibility of undertaking a Christian mission in cooperation with other Christian confessions in Europe?
Yes, because the Lord calls us to bear common witness. It is an urgent call by Jesus himself.


Scenes from the Schuelerkreis seminars, 2006-2008, from the Foundation website:

Saturday, August 29

THE BEHEADING OF JOHN THE BAPTIST



OR today.

No Benedict XVI stories in this issue. On Page 1: An editorial commentary
on a lay theologian's misrepresentation in another newspaper of the nature
of forgiveness in the Church, applied in this case to the Prime Minister
of Italy and his alleged sexual indiscretions. Page 1 international news:
Now the Obama administration says a freeze on Israeli settlements in
the West Bank is not a condition to resuming Israeli-Palestinian peace talks;
Japan's unemployment rate hits 5.7%, highest in the postwar era [in the US,
it's 9.5%!]; and the World Council of Churches elects Lutheran minister
Fyke Tveit of Norway as its new president.




THE POPE'S DAY
No events scheduled for the Holy Father today, but it was previously announced he would spend today with his
Schuelerkreis which is holding its annual reunion seminar on the theme "Mission in the ecumenical perspective'.

In this week's issue, Britain's Catholic Herald sums up the recent 'controversy' over the reports by Andrea Tornielli on changes
to liturgical practices recommended by the cardinals and bishops who are members of the Congregation for Divine Worship.


Vatican seeks
‘reform of the reform’
By Anna Arco

28 August 2009


The Vatican has proposed sweeping reforms to the way Mass is celebrated, it has been claimed.

Communion on the tongue, Consecration celebrated ad orientem (facing east) and renewed use of Latin could all be re-introduced to ordinary Sunday Masses as part of proposals put forward by the Congregation for Divine Worship.

Andrea Tornielli, a senior Vatican watcher, reported last week that the congregation's cardinals and bishops voted "almost unanimously in favour of greater sacrality of the Rite" at a plenary meeting in March.

Members of the congregation are said to have put forward 30 propositiones ("propositions") aimed at reforming the way in which the Novus Ordo has been celebrated since the Second Vatican Council.

These set out to recover a "sense of Eucharistic worship", the use of the "Latin language in the celebration" and include the "remaking of the introductory parts of the Missal in order to put a stop to liturgical abuses".

According to Mr Tornielli, the propositions, which were voted on by the congregation on March 21, also include placing renewed emphasis on receiving Communion on the tongue "according to the norms".

Mr Tornielli said that Cardinal Antonio Cañizares Llovera, the prefect for the Congregation for Divine Worship, had also been studying ways to return to the ad orientem celebration of the Mass. This would see the priest and the congregation facing the cross and the altar during the Consecration.

He also said that the "propositiones foresee a return to the sense of sacredness and to adoration, but also a recovery of the celebrations in Latin in the dioceses, at least in the main solemnities, as well as the publication of bilingual Missals - a request made at his time by Paul VI - with the Latin text first".

Mr Tornielli said these were the first concrete steps towards the "reform of the reform", a notion outlined in Pope Benedict's 2000 book, The Spirit of the Liturgy.

The book argues that some of the liturgical reforms following the Second Vatican Council got out of hand and needed reform as they no longer reflected the changes envisaged by the Council Fathers.

Cardinal Cañizares delivered the propositiones to Pope Benedict on April 4, receiving the Pope's approval, Mr Tornielli said. But Mr Tornielli also said that the "reform of the reform" would take a long time before it would be fully implemented. He said it would require a long and patient labour "from below" with the aid of the bishops.

"The point of departure and ultimately also that of arrival is the Council's Constitution on the liturgy Sacrosanctum Concilium," he said.

"The Pope is convinced that it serves nothing to make hasty steps or to drop directives from on high, with the risk then that it could remain a dead letter. The style of Ratzinger is one of comparison and, above all, of example. This is evidenced in the fact that for a year now anyone who receives Communion from the Pope must kneel on a kneeler prepared for that purpose by the master of ceremonies."

Shawn Tribe, the editor and founder of the New Liturgical Movement, an online magazine which deals with liturgy, said: "Given what we know from the Pope's writing and discourses over the years, one can at least say that what is being suggested would be consonant with the Pope's own liturgical thought and approach.

"Evidently we can only speculate at this point and will have to wait and see what, if anything, might actually come to pass, though Tornielli has proven himself reliable in these regards in the past. If what has been reported does indeed come to pass, it would certainly be a matter of no little significance."

Fr Ciro Benedettini, the deputy spokesman for the Holy See, downplayed the report on Monday. He said: "At the moment, there are no institutional proposals in existence regarding a modification of the liturgical books currently in use."

But Mr Tornielli stood by his story, saying that he interpreted Fr Benedettini's denial of "institutional proposals" as indicative of "unofficial (for now) projects".

The American Catholic News Service (CNS) quoted anonymous Vatican sources as denying that proposals had been voted on at the plenary meeting. Rather, the congregation had forwarded its suggestions on the subject of Eucharistic Adoration - which had been the theme of the plenary session - to the Pope. The subject of ad orientem had never been discussed, according to the CNS source.

The Second Vatican Council's Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, Sacrosanctum Concilium, said that Latin should remain the language of the liturgy even as it promoted the wider use of the vernacular.

It said that "the use of the Latin language is to be preserved in the Latin rites" but also that "since the use of the mother tongue, whether in the Mass, the administration of the sacraments, or other parts of the liturgy, frequently may be of great advantage to the people, the limits of its employment may be extended".

Communion on the tongue continues to be the liturgical norm, while reception on the hand remains an indult granted on a local level. Archbishop Malcolm Ranjith, then secretary of the worship congregation, caused a stir last year when he said that Communion should be received on the tongue.

Archbishop Ranjith argued that the practice had been brought in hastily in some places and was only approved by the Vatican after it had been introduced.

The 2004 instruction Redemptionem Sacramentum also re-emphasised that the faithful had a right to receive Communion on the tongue but that receiving Communion on the hand was only granted to the faithful in areas where an indult had been given. Officials for the Congregation for Divine Worship were unavailable for comment.


In his blog today, Tornielli - a scrupulous journalist who has also been reliable about his behind-the-scenes reporting - replies to the criticisms made against his reports, saying that everything he reported was correct, and that he never said 'formal' decrees about the propositions were forthcoming.

Unfortunately, other media, including the Anglophone, interpreted his story to mean that formal instructions from the Vatican were imminent. It is ironic that Tornielli has been mentioned prominently as a possible nominee to be director of the Vatican press office to replace Fr. Federico Lombardi.

Here is a translation of his blog entry today:


The 'reform of the reform'
and the non-denial denials
by Andrea Tornielli
Translated from

August 29, 2009


Dear friends, I must go back to the subject of my report on August 22 about the questions discussed by the plenary assembly of the Congregation for Divine Worship for recovering a better sense of sacredness in the liturgy.

As you know, on Monday afternoon, the deputy director of the Vatican Press Office, Fr. Ciro Benedittini (whom I have great respect for), issued a statement through Vatican Radio about my article.

These were his words, very well calibrated and studied: "At the moment, there are no institutional proposals about a change in the liturgical books currently in use".

This presumed denial made the rounds of the blogosphere - not a few did not conceal their glee that the undersigned had received egg on his face.

In addition, in his recent interview with L'Osservatore Romano, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone made a reference to 'fanciful remaking' of documents in order to reflect retrogression with respect to the Second Vatican Council - words which the ZENIT news agency immediately considered to be a reference to my article.

I wish to point out that the denial by Fr. Benedettini was less about my article than it was by its use in many blogs (after the Williamson case, the blogs and Internet sites are now constantly monitored at the Holy See] who claimed that the propositions for change that I reported were imminent, along with changes to the ordinary form of the Mass towards a more traditional sense [or 'retrogression', to use Cardinal Bertone's term].

First of all, I never wrote in my article of imminent reforms, nor of documents that are ready, and I clearly said that the propositions were the start of a work plan. A plan that will take time, and does not envision imposing such propositions from on high but to involve the bishops in it.

I described the vote taken by the plenary assembly of the CDW, that its prefect, Cardinal Canizares, had presented those results to the Pope, that the CDW has started to study "not institutional proposals to change the liturgical books" but rather as more precise and rigorous indications about the way of celebrating Mass with the existing books, which in many cases, have only been recently published.

All this to make clear that you must not believe whose who write that, in fact, nothing is happening, that the Pope and the CDW are not thinking of any changes, that the 'reform of the reform' and the recovery of more sacredness in the liturgy are simply fantasies of this writer.

Since I began to cover the Vatican, I have made many errors and will commit more, but the article in question is not one of them.

Moreover, the fact that 'for now' there are no 'institutional proposals' for liturgical reform - as Fr. Benedettini put it - does not deny that there exist today propositions under study that have not yet become 'institutional'.

One only has to read what Cardinal Ratzinger wrote in his time and what Pope Benedict XVI wrote in his letter to the bishops that accompanied the Motu Proprio Summorum Pontificum to see how close these matters are to his heart.

Sunday, August 30

BLESSED JEANNE JUGAN (France, 1792-1879)
Founder, Little Sisters of the Poor
To be canonized in October



OR today.

The only papal news in today's issue is the Pope's
appointment of Cardinal Joachim Meisner, Archbishop
of Cologne to represent him at the 12th centenary of
the death of St. Ludgerus, first Bishop of Muenster
and 'Apostle of the Saxons and Frisians', to be
celebrated in Werden an der Ruhr, Diocese of Essen,
on Sept. 6. Page 1 has an editorial on growing use
of microcredit as a way for social inclusion of the
'have-nots'; Iran slows down its nuclear development
work to allow IAEA to inspect a nuclear plant; EU
mission seeks to promote resumption of Mid-East
peace talks; Christian and Muslim parties in Lebanon
continue talks to form a government.



THE POPE'S DAY

Sunday Angelus - The Holy Father, referring to Saints Monica and Augustine,
whose feasts the Church celebrated last week, talks about prominent saints who came
from the same family, like the brothers Basil the Great and Gregory Nazianzene.

Senator Kennedy's letter to the Pope
and the Vatican response disclosed
at graveside final rites


A surprise at Senator Edward Kennedy's funeral last night in Arlington National Cemetery was provided by Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, emeritus Archbishop of Washington, DC, who performed the final funeral prayers at graveside before the senator was laid to rest.

Cardinal McCarrick read excerpts from the letter Sen. Kennedy had sent to Pope Benedict XVI through President Obama when the latter visited the Vatican last July 10, as well as the excerps from the response sent by the Vatican, written in the name of the Pope (the signatory was not revealed), which was received by Sen. Kennedy two weeks later.

The cardinal said that when he and Mrs. Kennedy were planning the funeral, they decided that both letters would be read at the gravesite rites. It was the first disclosure that the Vatican had responded to the letter sent through Obama, the fact of which was publicized at the time, but not the contents.

First, the text of the disclosed excerpts from Sen. Kennedy's letter:

---

Most Holy Father,

I asked President Obama to personally hand deliver this letter to you. As a man of deep faith himself, he understands how important my Roman Catholic faith is to me and I am so deeply grateful to him.

I hope this letter finds you in good health. I pray that you have all of God's blessings as you lead our church and inspire our world during challenging times.

I am writing with deep humility to ask that you pray for me as my own health declines. I was diagnosed with brain cancer over a year ago and although I am undergoing treatment, the disease is taking its toll on me.

I am 77-years-old and preparing for the next passage of life.

I've been blessed to be part of a wonderful family and both my parents, specifically my mother, kept our Catholic faith at the center of our lives.

That gift of faith has sustained and nurtured and provided solace to me in the darkest hours. I know that i have been an imperfect human being, but with the help of my faith I have tried to right my past.

I want you to know, your Holiness, that in my 50 years of elected office I have done my best to champion the rights of the poor and open doors of economic opportunity. I've worked to welcome the immigrant, to fight discrimination and expand access to health care and education. I've opposed the death penalty and fought to end war. Those are the issues that have motivated me and have been the focus of my work as a U.S. Senator.

I also want you to know that even though I am ill, I am committed to do everything I can to achieve access to health care for everyone in my country. This has been the political cause of my life.

I believe in a conscience protection for Catholics in the health field and I'll continue to advocate for it as my colleagues in the Senate and I work to develop an overall national health policy that guarantees health care for everyone.

I've always tried to be a faithful Catholic, Your Holiness. And though I have fallen short through human failings I've never failed to believe and respect the fundamental teachings of my faith.

I continue to pray for God's blessings on you and on our church and would be most thankful for your prayers for me.

---

Here is the text of the disclosed excerpts from the Vatican response:

---

The Holy Father has read the letter in which you entrusted to President Obama, who kindly presented it to him during his recent meeting.

He was saddened to know of your illness and asked me to assure you of his concern and his spiritual closeness. He is particular grateful of your prayers for him and for the needs of our universal church. His Holiness prays that in the days ahead you may be sustained in faith and hope and granted the precious grace of joyful surrender to the will of God, our merciful Father.

He invokes upon you the consolation and peace of our risen savior, to all who share in his sufferings and trust in his promise of eternal life, commending you and the members of your family to the loving intervention of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

The Holy Father cordially imparts his apostolic blessing as a pledge of wisdom, comfort and strength in the Lord.

---

We will never know if Sen. Kennedy ever mentioned in his letter his opposition to Catholic teachings in his legislation and political policies, even if he acknowledges his human failings. But in fact, he also writes, "I've never failed to believe and respect the fundamental teachings of my faith".

The Holy Father's response was very paternal and generous, but calibrated in the sense that it was not written by him directly. [But perhaps this is simply according to protocol regarding personal letters to the Pope from pesons who are neither heads of state or government, nor his own personal friends.].

The fact that the Pope reached out to the senator in his last days perhaps also made it unnecessary for the Vatican to issue a public expression of condolence, that would have had some measure of hypocrisy because it would have been unseemly to mention Kennedy's 'anti-Catholic' public record.

Again, one must contrast this with the letter the Pope sent unsolicited to the family of Eunice Kennedy Shriver - conveyed through the Apostolic Nuncio in Washington - when she was hospitalized three weeks ago and eventually died. Mrs. Shriver was the only member of the Kennedy family who was staunchly pro-life to the end.

ANGELUS TODAY






Here is a full translation of the Holy Father's words today:

---

Dear brothers and sisters!

Three days ago, on August 27, we celebrated the liturgical feast of St. Monica, mother of St. Augustine, who is considered the model and patron of Christian mothers.

Much information about her came to us from her own son in his autobiography, Confessions, a masterpiece that is among the most read books of all time.

Here we learn that Augustine drank the name of Jesus with his mother's milk and was educated by his mother in the Christian religion, whose principles would remain impressed in him even during his years of spiritual and moral dissipation.

Monica never stopped praying for him and his conversion, and she had the comfort of seeing him return to the faith and receive Baptism. God fulfilled the prayers of this saintly mother, about whom the Bishop of Tagaste [Augustine's hometown] had said: "It was not possible that so many tears could be shed for a son".

Indeed, Augustine not only converted but decided to embrace the monastic life, and on his return to Africa, he founded a community of monks.

The last spiritual conversations between mother and son, in the quiet of a house in Ostia as they waited for the ship that would take them back to Africa, are moving and edifying.

By then, Monica had become, to her son, "more than a mother, the spring of my Christianity". Her only desire for years was the conversion of Augustine, whom she now saw headed towards a life consecrated to the service of God.

She could therefore die happy, as she did on August 27, 387, at age 56, after having asked her son not to worry too much about her burial, but simply to remember her, wherever he was, at the altar of the Lord. St. Augustine liked to say that his mother "had generated him twice".

The history of Christianity is constellated by numerous examples of saintly parents and authentic Christian families who accompanied the lives of generous priests and pastors of the Church.

One thinks of Saints Basil the Great and Gregory Nazianzene, who both belonged to families of saints. Much closer to our time, let us think of the spouses Luigi Beltrame Quattrocchi and Maria Corsini, who lived between the end of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th, who were beatified by my venerated predecessor John Paul II
in October 2001, on the 20th anniversary of the Apostolic Exhortation Familiaris consortio.

This document, besides illustrating the value of matrimony and the tasks of the family, calls on spouses to be particularly committed to a path of sanctity, which, drawing grace and strength from the Sacrament of Matrimony, they may follow all their lives (Cfr N. 45).

When spouses are generously dedicated to the education of their children, guiding and orienting them in the discovery of God's plan of love, they prepare that fertile spiritual terrain which gives rise to vocations to the priesthood and consecrated life, and matures them.

This shows how matrimony and virginity are intimately linked, illuminating each other, on the basis of their common root in Christ's spousal love.

Dear brothers and sisters, in this Year for Priests, let us pray so that, "through the intercession of the Holy Cure D'Ars, Christian families may become little churches in which all the vocations and charisms given by the Holy Spirit may be welcomed and valued" (From the Prayer for the Year for Priests).

May this grace be obtained for us by the Blessed Virgin, whom we shall now invoke together.


After the Angelus prayer, he said:

Next Tuesday, September 1, Italy will observe the Day for Safeguarding Creation. It is a significant occasion, which also has ecumenical importance.

This year, the theme is the importance of the air, an element indispensable for life. As I did in the General Audience last Wednesday, I exhort everyone to make a greater commitment to the protection of creation, a gift of God.

In particular, I urge the industrialized nations to cooperate responsibly for the future of the planet, and so that it will not be the poorer nations who will pay the price for climate changes.

---

Christianity becomes mission
only when knowing God brings joy:
The Pope's homily for his Schuelerkreis
Translated from
the Italian service of

August 30, 2009


Only if knowing God and his will brings joy to us does Christianity also become missionary, and only if the revelation of God to men is recognized as a gift can Christianity be stimulating.

These were underscored by Benedict XVI this morning in his homily at a Mass he celebrated for his Schuelerkreis at the Chapel of the Apostolic Palace in Castel Gandolfo.

Speaking on today's liturgy readings, the Pope pointed out that if we wish to listen completely to the message of Jesus and the way in which he leads us to God, if we wish to know how God comes to us, then it is essential to read both the Old and the New Testaments.

He said Sacred Scriptures contained the Law handed down by God to man, but the Commandments of God should not be considered as a yoke or a form of slavery.

Rather, he said, the Commandments transmit wisdom, true knowlede, because they tell us how to be and how to live. For this, the Pope said, the Christian must be grateful to God and rejoice for what he has received.

Joy, said the Pope, must be the distinguishing mark of the Christian - joy because he knows the will of God, and because even the Law is an expression of God's friendship - as words that make us free, that give us strength, and that purify us.

He added that to the degree we allow ourselves to be touched by God, and establish a dialog of love and friendship with him, then we too can love as he loves.

He said it was somewhat as St. Augustine had summarized in the statement, "Give us what you command and command us to do what you want" - a way of saying that through his friendship, God makes us capable of having the love that he has.

Monday, August 31

SAINTS JOSEPH OF ARIMATHEA & NICODEMUS
Pharisees who became Disciples of Christ
Both were said to be at the Deposition of Christ from the Cross; Joseph offered his tomb.
According to legend, Joseph ended up in England to which he brought the Holy Grail.



No OR today.



THE POPE'S DAY

The Holy Father met today with

- Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, Prefect of the Congregation for Bishops

- Mons. Vincenzo Paglia, Bishop of Terni-Narni-Amelia, with Professors Andrea Riccardi and Marco Impagliazzo,
founder and president, respectively, of the St. Egidio Community,

- Mons. Livio Melina, President of the John Paul II Pontifical Institute for Studies on Matrimony and the Family,
at the Pontifical Lateran University.


The Vatican announced that the Holy Father has accepted the resignations of Mons. Joseph Martino
and Mons. John Dougherty, Bishop and Auxiliary Bishop, respectively, of Scranton, Pennsylvania.

[A US report says Cardinal Justin Rigali of Philadelphia will be appointed apostolic administrator of
the Scranton diocese until a new bishop is named.

I would normally dismiss articles like this, coming from a source like The Trumpet, a Philadelphia weekly newsmagazine published by an entity called the Church of God [that believes Anglo-Saxons are the 'ten lost tribes of Israel') - but its obvious conspiracy theory bias apart, the author did a lot of spadework to 'support' his theory that Benedict XVI is out to re-establish the Holy Roman Empire!

In a way, it is an acknowledgment of Benedict XVI's influence, but I bet the European Union panjandrums and the European national leaders would be the first to scoff at any such Church-and-state collaboration!

The Trumpet is descended from Herbert Armstrong's Plain Truth magazine which at the height of its popularity in the 1980s had a weekly circulation of eight million in various languages. Armstrong (now dead) and his church believe that God has a timetable now underway that will soon lead to the 'end times', and that the current phase is leading to the establishment of a United States of Europe [the Beast] led by the Bishop of Rome [the anti-Christ]!

This article follows the scenario, and the author's reading of Pope Benedict's simplest actions is LOL-worthy, to say the least! But I'm not going to comment on any of it, because the whole scenario is preposterous. But on a slow news day, it's a tickler.



The Pope’s war:
Positioning the Church to fulfill its part
in a revived European empire
by Joel Hilliker
From the October 2009
Trumpet Print Edition


It’s a most unholy marriage. The union of Church and state on the European continent — the combination of spiritual influence and unifying power with military muscle and civil discipline — has been history’s most lethal.

Six resurrections of the “Holy” Roman Empire have come and gone through the ages. The Bible prophesies that a seventh is upon us.

Looking at present conditions in the historic seat of “holy” imperial power, many would scoff at the idea. Not only is modern Europe politically fractious, but it also seems incurably secular. The idea that it could give rise to another kingdom intoxicated by religion may seem, to some, highly unlikely.

But there is one powerful man who clearly will not accept that.

His name is Pope Benedict xvi. His 4½-year papacy has provided ample evidence of his zeal to reassert Roman Catholic relevance in the 21st century.

Inside the church, he continues his decades-long campaign to expel liberals and stack the deck with conservatives. In Europe, he is working to reestablish a Catholic continent. Among non-Catholic Christians, he seeks to draw worshippers under papal authority. In the world, he is leveling a strong attack against secularism and godlessness. And to Islam, he has unmistakably shown a resistance, a toughness, that promises to grow stronger.

What Pope Benedict has done, in fact, is position the Roman Catholic Church to fulfill its prophesied role in coming European and world events.

After assuming office, Pope Benedict XVI began placing his hand-picked conservative troops in the top spots within the Catholic Curia (governing body). He eliminated two senior positions and chose a notoriously shy, controllable man for his old job, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. He switched out the cardinal in charge of Vatican relations with the developing world, replaced the Vatican’s longstanding press officer with a Jesuit priest, and shuffled the Vatican City governate and foreign-policy offices. He replaced the Vatican secretary of state with his trusted former deputy in the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, a man who would help him clean house at the Curia and catholicize the masses.

“I, bishop of Rome and pastor of the universal church … send to you, age-old Europe, a cry full of love,” the Pope said July 24, 2005, quoting his predecessor, John Paul ii. “Return to yourself. Be yourself. Discover your origins. Revive your roots. Revive those authentic values that made your history glorious and your presence beneficial among the other continents.”

In March 2006, Pope Benedict xvi chose to drop “Patriarch of the West” from his list of official titles. Why? The Eastern Orthodox synod said the move implied that the Catholic Church still sought “universal jurisdiction of the bishop of Rome over the entire church.”

The Pope retains the titles “vicar of Christ” and “supreme pontiff of the universal church.” He cast off the title “patriarch of the West” not because it gave him too much jurisdiction, but not enough.

Striking Out, Causes Offenses

By May 2006, after settling into his office, Ratzinger took the opportunity to lash out against European secularism — and Islam — in his book Without Roots: The West, Relativism, Christianity, Islam. In it, Benedict wrote that the only solution to Europe’s paralysis and the “advance of Islam” is Roman Catholicism.

In September that year, Pope Benedict traveled home to Bavaria for a six-day visit. There he discussed injecting “Christianity” (read Catholicism) into the European Constitution, and talked with German President Horst Kohler about the dangers of Islamic penetration into German society.

But his most famous speech was a lecture at the University of Regensburg, where he quoted Catholic Byzantine Emperor Manuel ii Paleologus: “Show me just what Mohammad brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.” Benedict was drawing his line in the sand.

The {ope also visited the Auschwitz Nazi death camp, where 1.5 million victims, mostly Jews, died during World War ii. In his carefully selected words, the self-styled “son of Germany” failed to even mention anti-Semitism or Nazis or Jews. A German pope. Speaking at Auschwitz.

The King-Breaker

On Feb. 19, 2007, the Vatican summoned Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi and a contingent of senior Italian government officials. The topic: homosexual couples. On the 23rd, Catholic World News reported, “New Italian government would not require allies to support civil-union bill.” The article showed that Prodi had caved on the issue in order to gather enough support to return to office.

The Vatican had shown Prodi, and the world, who rules Italy. The incident echoed of the Vatican’s past as Europe’s kingmaker, the unifying political power that forged the Holy Roman Empire.

Soon after, Benedict extended his reach into Italian politics issuing his command to faithful followers: Vote Catholic. He told Italian politicians March 13 they must not vote for laws that went against the church’s “non-negotiable values.”

Around the same time, the Times of London reported, “Radical proposals to reunite Anglicans with the Roman Catholic Church under the leadership of the Pope are to be published this year. The proposals have been agreed by senior bishops of both churches. In a 42-page statement prepared by an international commission of both churches, Anglicans and Roman Catholics are urged to explore how they might reunite under the Pope” (Feb. 19, 2007).

March 24 that year was the 50th anniversary of the Treaty of Rome, the agreement that led to establishing the European Union. Benedict took the occasion to warn that Europe is sliding into “apostasy.” He demanded that EU leaders recognize that they had failed to embrace their spiritual and cultural heritage, and expressed dismay that the Rome Declaration made no mention of the influence of “Christianity,” meaning Catholicism.

Agitating the Masses

In mid-May, the Pope traveled to Brazil to open an assembly of the Latin American bishops’ conference — not by invitation, but by personal choice.

There he challenged the bishops to galvanize a continent-wide crusade against competing non-Catholic religions (“sects,” he called them), such as North-American evangelicals. Latino bishops jumped on board, and began lobbying national governments for legislation to ban and obstruct non-Catholics’ operation in Latin America. The visit illuminated Benedict’s aims to re-energize Catholicism not only in Europe, but around the whole globe.

Later that month, Pope Benedict prodded Catholics: It’s time to evangelize. He spoke of the “urgent need to relaunch missionary activity to meet the many grave challenges of our time.” He also called missionary work “the Church’s primary service to humanity today.” The message was clear: The church’s most important job is to convert the world.

To that end, the Pope resurrected the Tridentine Mass, a Latin-language ceremony codified in 1570. In the 1960s, the church restricted the use of the ultra-conservative Tridentine prayer book, which is peppered with references that make Jews and non-Catholics bristle (asking God to “lift the veil from [their] eyes,” and that Jews “be delivered from their darkness” and converted to Catholicism).

The more inclusive, modern mass the church adopted in its place was scorned by hard-core Catholics, one of whom was a younger Joseph Ratzinger. In July, Pope Benedict reversed that restriction, reconnecting the church to its medieval past. German rabbi Walter Homolka said, “This kind of signal has an extremely provocative effect on anti-Semitic groups. The Catholic Church does not have its anti-Semitic tendencies under control.”

That same month, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith restated the doctrines of Dominus Iesus, a document Cardinal Ratzinger had signed in 2000 to proclaim that non-Catholics were “gravely deficient” and that Protestant churches are “not churches in the proper sense.” The restatement added that Orthodox churches suffer from a “wound” because they do not accept the Pope’s authority, a wound “still more profound” in Protestants.

The document, approved by Pope Benedict, said that denominations outside Roman Catholicism are defective or not full churches. “Despite the fact that this teaching has created no little distress … it is nevertheless difficult to see how the title of ‘church’ could possibly be attributed to them,” it said.

Remarkably, this sequence of provocative moves seems to have helped rather than hurt the Pope’s popularity. It’s been said that crowds came to see Pope John Paul II, but they come to hear Benedict XVI. Over his pontificate, Benedict has consistently attracted larger audiences to witness his weekly homilies in St. Peter’s Square than did his predecessor.

“A New Generation of Christians”

In a homily in September 2007, the Pope made it clear that Sunday worship is a “necessity” for all. “Without the Lord’s day we cannot live!” he declared. “Give the soul its Sunday, give Sunday its soul!” It was a strong call for Christians to revive Sunday-keeping as an all-important religious practice. The underlying message: Your life depends on worshipping on Sunday.

The Vatican went back to king-breaking in January 2008, when it forced Prodi to resign, bringing down the government of Italy. Prodi lost a vote of confidence in the Senate after the Catholic leader of Italy’s Udeur Christian Democrat Party withdrew the party’s support from the coalition government, taking away Prodi’s majority in the Senate.

According to the Italian newspaper La Stampa, this was directly the work of the Vatican. “Prodi’s government dared to challenge the ecclesiastical hierarchy for the second time and this time it has had its hands burned,” it wrote.

In March, the Vatican again meddled in national politics, launching a large campaign against Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Zapatero, another supporter of homosexual “marriage,” abortion and easier divorce. The Vatican’s political campaign cut Zapatero’s lead drastically and nearly won the election single-handedly.

In April, Benedict came to America, inspiring a press frenzy reminiscent of John Paul ii’s funeral. In a society where God and the Bible are often ridiculed, the secular news media’s fawning praise for the Pope was astounding. Tens of thousands filled stadiums and lined streets to hear or glimpse the white-clad “holy father.”

While in America, the pope addressed the grotesque record of homosexual pedophilia in the priesthood of what he called “the church in America” — by blaming much of the scandalous behavior on America’s broken society. He accepted no responsibility for cleaning up the problem.

In September 2008, Pope Benedict spoke out to defend World War ii Pope Pius XII. Benedict praised him for being “courageous” in trying to save Jews: “Wherever possible he spared no effort in intervening in their favor either directly or through instructions given to other individuals or to institutions of the Catholic Church.”

The historical record shows that this is pure fiction: Pius conspicuously ignored the Holocaust and failed to come to the Jews’ aid. Yet Benedict wants to make him a saint.

Benedict XVI again pushed in early September for “the birth of a new generation of Christians involved in society and politics.” He challenged Catholics who, “as far as the formation [of] new generations involved in society and politics is concerned, seem to be falling asleep.”

That same month, the Pope traveled to France, where he convinced President Nicolas Sarkozy that the country needs to rethink and redraw its church-state relations. The two leaders laid the groundwork for what could be the biggest change in France since the French Revolution — a move from a firmly secular society to one that accepts, as the Pope said, “the irreplaceable role of religion.”

In November, it emerged that the Catholic Church wants Sunday observance enshrined in EU law. Specifically, the Vatican wanted a clause inserted in the Working Time Directive that would force every citizen in the European Union to rest on Sunday.

Some members of the European Parliament tabled an amendment saying the minimum rest period “shall in principle include Sunday.” The Brussels-based Commission of the Bishops’ Conferences of the European Community said the directive should state “the minimal weekly rest must include Sunday.”

In January of this year, the Pope again hurled a challenge at the Jews. The Vatican has been demanding the handover of six sites in Jerusalem and elsewhere in Israel. Catholic media reports indicated that these negotiations were nearly finished, and IDF Army Radio said President Shimon Peres was pressuring Interior Minister Eli Yishai to cave in to the Vatican. It said he may find a way to sign away the sites without Yishai’s approval if necessary. Biblical prophecy shows that soon, the Vatican will gain control over the territory it seeks within Israel.

Also in January, Pope Benedict lifted the excommunication of Bishop Richard Williamson, a fellow arch-conservative who rejects the modern Vatican II changes and is a Holocaust-denier. The move attracted an outcry from Jews and from German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who openly criticized the Pope for his decision. We watch to see whether her outspokenness adversely affects her political career.

As the world economy came apart at the seams like a cheaply sewn liturgical vestment, the Pope descended from on high to suggest his own solution: “a true world political authority.” On July 7, the pontiff released a 144-page encyclical, “Charity in Truth,” which took a swipe at the U.S.-style capitalism that many blame for the financial crisis.

He called for regulation with “real teeth,” administered by a global political authority. Biblical prophecy shows this is exactly what will happen: That authority will be European, and the Vatican will have control.

The record is impressive: Pope Benedict XVI has been active, determined and aggressive in asserting Roman Catholic authority and positioning the church to play a larger role in the time ahead. He even seems to view his actions in their historical context—facilitating yet another revival of that ancient church-state union.

Looking to Benedict

In April 2008, during a regular weekly address in St. Peter’s Square, Pope Benedict made a telling statement about European unity. He said that his namesake, St. Benedict, “exercised a fundamental influence on the development of European civilization and culture.”

The Pope praised St. Benedict for helping the Continent emerge from the “dark night of history” that followed the fall of the Roman Empire.

This Pope identifies strongly with his namesake, whose monastic system galvanized Europe during Justinian’s revival of the Roman Empire. Clearly, he is trying to spark a similar revival today.

By alluding to the period between the fall of the Roman Empire in a.d. 476 and its revival under Justinian in a.d. 554 as the “dark night of history,” Benedict seems to be implying that modern Europe has endured a similar “dark night” from which it is now emerging under his influence.

The Pope also said St. Benedict had sparked “a new cultural unity based on Christian faith” within Europe — which united an otherwise fractious European populace into a mighty empire. Ever since, the “cultural unity” created by Roman Catholicism has helped Europe to unify time and time again as the Holy Roman Empire.

The Pope is working to sway Europe to embrace the religion of Rome today — to once again serve as the cultural glue enabling the restoration of that empire.

The Bible informs us that he is destined to succeed. It will happen just as Herbert W. Armstrong, based on the Bible’s prophecies, repeatedly said it would. “I have been proclaiming and writing, ever since 1935, that the final one of the seven eras of the Holy Roman Empire is coming in our generation—a ‘United States of Europe,’ combining 10 nations or groups of nations in Europe—with a union of church and state!” he wrote in the January 1979 edition of the Plain Truth.

“The nations of Europe have been striving to become reunited. They desire a common currency, a single combined military force, a single united government. They have made a start in the Common Market. They are now working toward a common currency. Yet, on a purely political basis, they have been totally unable to unite.

“In only one way can this resurrected Holy Roman Empire be brought to fruition—by the ‘good offices’ of the Vatican, uniting church and state once again, with the Vatican astride and ruling (Revelation 17:1-5).”

The European Union is now the greatest united trading entity in the world. It is aggressively developing a combined military force. With its constitution nearing ratification, it could soon weld together politically as one supra-European continental government. Yet it still lacks that key element: the ability to totally unite.

As Mr. Armstrong wrote in the Aug. 28, 1978, Good News magazine, European leaders “well know there is but one possibility of union in Europe—and that is through the Vatican. … This political union will put the Catholic Church right back in the saddle as it was from 554 to 1814 — with the power of police and military to enforce its decrees!”

Today we see Pope Benedict working feverishly to enable that spiritual “vital lifeblood” of European unity. The resulting wave of evangelism will sweep the Continent into Rome’s arms in a bonding of church and state.

It is all now so close to coming to pass. We are witnessing the beginning of the seventh and final resurrection of the Holy Roman Empire".

Here is a report from the German service of Vatican Radio on Pope Benedict's homily to his Ratzinger Schuelerkreis at Mass yesterday morning in the Chapel of the Apostolic Palace at Castel Gandolfo. As the Holy Father spoke in German, it uses direct quotations unlike the item I translated earlier from RV's Italian service which reported what the Holy Father said indirectly.



Benedict XVI on mission:
Joy is an integral part of it
Translated from
the German service of

August 30, 2009

...The Holy Father spoke once more about an integral approach to tbe Bible:

---

If we wish to listen to the Message of the Lord, how he leads us to God, and how God comes to us through him, then we must listen to the Lord in full, not just in bits and pieces, in which something important emerges, but we must read his entire message, the Gospels, the New Testament and the Old Testament together.

---

He said that for Israel, God's Law was not considered bondage but a cause for great joy:

---

We are no longer groping in the dark, we are no longer searching for what 'rightness' is, we are no longer sheep without a shepherd who do not know where to go and what the right way is - God has shown us all this. He himself shows us the way, we know his will, and thereby, we know the truth, the right wisdom.

---

Today, he said, the joy that was Israel's is considered remarkable:

---

What Catholic can say he rejoices, that he is proud, that God has laid down the Law for us, that his wisdom took eternal form in the Crucified Christ against foolishness that thinks itself wisdom?

---

It is not triumphalism, the Pope said, to think this way. The Pope reiterated that joy in God's message was an integral part of the Church's missionary work:

---

I believe that this joy must be made manifest among us again, we must rejoice that - amid the chaos of the world, in the disorientation of contemporary philosophies, religious theories and opinions, we are able to see the face of God in Christ, that he made himself known to us, that we know what God's will is, and therefore, that we know how to live.

Only when this knowledge becomes joy in us, gratitude for the gift that we could never have caused ourselves but which is generously given to us, then will Christianity be tru;y missionary and truly able to 'infect' others.

---

The Gospel message, he said, has no other purpose but to lead men to friendship with God, and that Christ holds the definitive truth about man.

---

Purification is a two-way event. It starts in that he comes to us - He who is Truth and Love - he takes us by the hand, and more, he penetrates into our being. To the degree that we allow ourselves to be touched by him, that we have dialog and friendship with him in the most intimate unity, one Body and one Spirit - as the Canon says today - then we become pure from his own purity, and thus, compassionate and loving as he is.

---

SIR, the news agency of the Italian bishops' conference, has since released a report in Italian based on the excerpts published by the German service of Vatican Radio. I hope the Vatican press Office sees fit to release the full text.It's so frustrating to get bits and pieces.

The Pope’s war:
Positioning the Church to fulfill its part
in a revived European empire



Hehehehe!!! That was sooo funny!!
Thanks for making me laugh after a very hard day at work!!
What a fruitcake!!



Wasn't it fun? But imagine what a good article the nut might have written if had used the same facts he marshalled but with the Pope's viewpoint of trying to save a Christian Europe!

TERESA

www.diocesiviterbo.it/

GIFTS FOR THE POPE





The new bronze doors
of St. Lawrence Cathedral
by Mons. Salvatore Del Ciuco



To give Viterbo an indelible record of the happy event of Pope Benedict XVI's visit to the City of Popes, Mons. Lorenzo Chiarinelli, Bishop of Viterbo, wanted his longtime project of new bronze doors for the Cathedral of St. Lawrence to be finally completed.

In 2005, he inaugurated the central door, shown below, called the Door of Light, executed by artist Roberto Joppolo.



The door takes its name from the Luminous Mysteries of the Rosary, which are represented on the superior part of the door, 'radiating' from the central Cross and symbolizing the rays of light offered to the world by the Sacrifice of Christ - Christ is 'our Light and teh Light of the world".

Panels represent the Luminous Mysteries from the public life of Christ: The baptism of Jesus, the marriage at Cana, the Sermon on the Mount (announcement of the Kingdom), the Transfiguration of Jesus, and the institution of the Eucharist.

The lower part of the door features the two patron saints of Viterbo, St. Rose and St. Lawrence, depicted life-size on the left and right door panels. The central figures are the 12 cardinals who met in 1268 and had to be forced under lock and key - the first true 'Conclave' - to make up their minds and elect a Pope after three years of indecision.

New for Benedict XVI's visit are the side doors that complete Maestro Joppolo's triptych, and recount the historic reunification in 1986 of five dioceses into the Diocese of Viterbo, depicting the four co-cathedrals of the unified diocese, with the motto, 'Ex multis gentibus, unum corpus sumus' [Of many peoples, we are one body).



The left door carries on the upper left side the coat of arms of Pope Benedict; at bottom left is St. Bonaventure with his native town of Bagnoregio in the background, and on the right side, the facade of the Cathedral of the Holy Sepulchre in Acquapendente with the Madonna del Fiore. The center of the panel is a replica of a window from the co-cathedral of St. Martin in Cimino.

The right door has the coat of arms of Mons. Chiarinelli on the upper right corern; on the lower left side, the facade of the Shrine of the Madonna della Quercia and the image itself of the miraculous Virgin Mary who is the patron saint of the entire diocese; and on the right, the dome of Santa Margherita of Montefiascone and the latter city's patron saint Lucia di Filippini. In the center, the rose window from San Pietro in Tuscania.

Pope Benedict XVI will bless the new doors that symbolize the diocesan consolidation of 1986 and Mons. Chiarinelli's dream to leave Viterbo with a fitting artistic work and perennial reminder of the Pope's visit.


Viterbo's Cathedral Square, Piazza San Lorenzo. The fish eye view, top panel, shows the Cathedral in the center, and to its right, the complex of the Palace of the Popes. Bottom panel shows the Cathedral itself, and the Palace of the Popes with its famous Loggia. Pope Benedict will address the people of Viterbo from this vantage upon arriving in the city next Sunday.






'Viterbo and the Popes':
A book for Benedict XVI
Adapted and translated from




Upper right photo shows a note written by one of the cardinals locked in the first Conclave in 1286, requesting the citizens of Viterbo to help one of the cardinals who had fallen sick; lower right photo is Mons. Del Ciuco.

In fact, Mons Del Cuoco himself, the spokesman of the Diocese, has written 'Viterbo e i Papi' (Viterbo and the Popes), a book to mark Benedict's visit to Viterbo.

In presenting the book last month, Mons. Lorenzo Chiarinelli, Bishop of Viterbo said that Mons. Del Cuoco demonstrates his love for his native Viterbo whose distinctive characteristic is 'fulgens' (resplendent), his familiarity with the history of the city, particularly its centrality in Church affairs during the second half of the 13th century, when five Popes were elected and lived there, and his sincere admiration for the Viterban Popes and the living legacies they have left the city.

The book starts with Benedict XVI, however, and his visit to the city, the first by a Pope since the consolidation of 1986. At teh presentation, Mons. Chiarinelli said it will answer whether Joseph Ratzinger had ever visited Viterbo before. He called the book 'a splendid seal of a new century in our history".

The 150-page well-illustrated book is a joint project of the Diocese with the Banca di Viterbo.


Right photo is one of the illustrations from the book, a 19th-century sketch showing a view of the Palace of the Popes from Valle Faul, the plain (left photo) where Pope Benedict will say Mass on Sept. 6.





From Bagnoregio to the Pope:
A new sculpture of St. Bonaventure
Adapted and translated from




Bottom panel shows two views of the new sculpture by the Paolucci brothers, and the statue of St. Bonaventure in Bagnoregio's Piazza San Agostino (how much more Ratzingerian can it be?) - from where Pope Benedict will be addressing the twonsfolk of Bagnoregio.


In Bagnoregio, the municipality will give Benedict XVI a commissioned sculpture of St. Bonaventure which will be presented to the Holy Father bu Mayor Francesco Bigiotti on Sept. 6.

Bigiotti recalls that last year, the municipality had presented the Pope with a bas relief of St. Bonaventure, executed by the brothers Francesco and Gaetano Paolucci (whom he later commissioned to do the sculpture), at the time of a visit to the Vatican by a delegation from the Diocese of Viterbo.

It was then, Bigiotti said, that Mon. Chiarinelli first extended to the Pope an invitation to visit St. Bonaventure's birthplace.

Sant'Egidio leaders discuss
Auschwitz inter-religious meeting
with Pope Benedict XVI


VATICAN CITY, AUG. 31, 2009 (Zenit.org).- Members of the Sant’Egidio Community are holdingan inter-religious meeting in Auschwitz this year, and met with Benedict XVI today to discuss the program.



The Sept. 6-8 meeting in Krakow and Auschwitz is a continuation of the first inter-religious and intercultural meeting called in 1986 in Assisi by Pope John Paul II.

Professors Andrea Riccardi and Marco Impagliaazo, founder and president, respectively, of the Sant'Egidio Community, met the Pope in Castel Gandolfo this morning, accomapnied by Mons. Vincenco Paglia, Bishop of Terni. [It is the eve of the liturgical feast of Sant'Egidio - St. Giles, in English.]

The event, encouraged by Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz, archbishop of Krakow, is titled “The Spirit of Assisi in Krakow” in connection with the 70th anniversary of the outbreak of World War II.

Among the participants will be the chief rabbi of Israel, the president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, the president of the Council of European Churches, and a representative of the Orthodox Church of Russia.

Also invited are the heads of state of Costa Rica, Cyprus, Albania, East Timor, Poland and Uganda.

The program will close with a pilgrimage to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp, as a "sign of reconciliation and peace to manifest a radical rejection of violence and war as instruments for the solution of international conflicts,” organizers explained.

The program for the event may be found on
www.santegidio.org/index.php?pageID=905&idLng=1064

After the first Assisi meeting in 1987, the Sant'Egidio Community has sponsored a yearly inter-religious meeting in 'the spirit of Assisi', choosing a different city as venue every year.

In addition to ecumenical and inter-religious dialogue, the Pope also spoke with the meeting organizers about Africa, and particulary Sant’Egidio’s contribution to the fight against AIDS.

The Community of Sant'Egidio began in Rome in 1968, in the period following the Second Vatican Council. Today it is a movement of lay people and has more than 50,000 members, dedicated to evangelisation and charity, in Rome, Italy and in more than 70 countries throughout the world.

The Pope visited the Community at St. Bartholomew Church on Tiberina island in Rome on Apirl 8. 2008, on their 40th anniversary.

Tuesday, Sept. 1

ST. GILLES (France, 650-710)
[Giles, Gil, Egidio]
Hermit and Abbot


OR for 8/31-9/1/09:


Photos from the Angelus crowd, and the Mass said by the Holy Father for his Schuelerkreis on Sunday.
At the Sunday Angelus, the Pope underscores importance of families in fostering vocations:
'Even spouses can be saints'
Other Page 1 stories: After half a century, Japan votes a new party into power in sweeping defeat for the Liberal Democratic Party; in Germany, Chancellor Merkel's Christian Democrats lose in two state elections, two weeks before nationwide parliamentary elections; UN-sponsored climate conference opens in Geneva; and evangelical scholars endorse Caritas in veritate [only now the OR is reporting this!].



No events scheduled for the Holy Father today.



THE HOLY FATHER'S PRAYER INTENTIONS
FOR SEPTEMBER 2009

---

General intention:
That the word of God may be better known, welcomed and lived
as the source of freedom and joy.

Mission intention:
That Christians in Laos, Cambodia, and Myanmar, who often meet with great difficulties, may not be discourage from announcing the Gospel to their brothers, trusting in the strength of the Holy Spirit.

---

The Pope's response to Ted Kennedy's letter
was 'pro forma' - but ended the funeral
on a Catholic note, not with Obama's eulogy
By Jeff Israely

Tuesday, Sept. 01, 2009



Many American Catholics followed the daylong funeral and burial rites for Sen. Edward M. Kennedy looking for signs of the ongoing struggle between the traditionalist and liberal wings of their Church.

The passing of the most notable U.S. Catholic politician of his generation seemed to be a perfect catalyst for such ecclesiastical drama.

Some traditionalists hoped (in vain) that Kennedy, a longtime abortion rights and gay-marriage supporter, wouldn't even be allowed a Catholic funeral. Others hoped (also in vain) that Boston's Archbishop, Cardinal Sean O'Malley, who has declared that voting for pro-choice Catholic politicians "borders on scandal," would sit out the Saturday funeral.

Though the main celebrant was former president of Boston College Rev. Donald Monan, a Jesuit and longtime Kennedy family friend, O'Malley was there to give the final commendation at Our Lady of Perpetual Help Basilica.

But what has been one of the most discussed gestures of a tightly choreographed day came at the Arlington National Cemetery evening burial service.



At the graveside, tetired Washington Archbishop Cardinal Theodore McCarrick read excerpts from a private letter Kennedy wrote to Pope Benedict XVI — hand-delivered in July by President Obama — and portions of the Vatican response to Kennedy two weeks later.

After making no public comment nor authorizing an official communique after Kennedy's death, was the Pope publicly reaching out to this controversial Catholic politician? According to both Vatican and U.S.-based Church officials, the answer is no.

McCarrick himself noted at the brief final rite of committal and prayer that the reading was an idea he and Kennedy's widow Victoria had agreed to, apparently using a copy of Kennedy's letter that the senator had kept.

The subsequent response from a papal aide offering Benedict's prayers for his health, according to a veteran ambassador to the Holy See, was likely of a pro forma nature.

Such letters are typically handled either by the office of the sostituto, the No. 2 official in the Secretary of State's office or by the Pope's private secretary.

"It's very rare to have a letter with the Pope's own signature," says the diplomatic source. In any case, coming in July, it was clearly not a response to Kennedy's death.

The Vatican diplomat said the original copies of all correspondence to the Pope — and a photocopy of the responses — are duly sent to the Holy See archives. Such missives are divided among those of a personal nature from ordinary faithful that are kept in the Pope's personal archives and those of a public or political nature that go into the Vatican's "general" archive.

After a certain period of time following a Pope's death, scholars may eventually be given access to the correspondence. The Pope would never reveal the contents of the private correspondence he receives, the Ambassador told TIME.

In this case, thanks to Victoria Kennedy and Cardinal McCarrick, millions of Americans heard directly from such a papal correspondence less than two months after the fact, providing a powerful close to the day of prayer and remembrance.

Kennedy wrote to the Pope about his own failing health, as well as his legislative battles on behalf of the less fortunate. And though conceding that he was "imperfect," at least in the portion read aloud, there was no mention of the issues that divided him from Church teaching, like abortion.

"I have always tried to be a faithful Catholic, Your Holiness, and though I have fallen short through human failings, I have never failed to believe and respect the fundamental teachings of my faith. I continue to pray for God's blessings on you and on our church and would be most thankful for your prayers for me."

A U.S. Church official said that while McCarrick cleared the reading with the Washington-based papal nuncio (the Pope's personal and official representative in the U.S., the equivalent of the Vatican ambassador), "there wasn't any word from Rome. And I don't expect there will be."

Diplomatic protocol doesn't require the Pope to respond to the death of a U.S. senator, either privately or publicly. Still, prominent and well-regarded Catholics often get particular attention.

Earlier in August, the day before she died, the family of Kennedy's sister Eunice, who advocated on behalf of the poor, the mentally handicapped and the unborn, received a letter directly from the Nuncio saying the Pope was praying for her, her children and her husband.

Though the letter was not signed by the Nuncio and not the Pope, it conveyed Benedict's personal greetings: "I wish to convey to all of you, especially to Sargent and to Bobby, Maria, Timothy, Mark and Anthony, the warm greetings and paternal affection of the Holy Father.... His Holiness unites himself spiritually with each of you at this difficult time, holding close to his heart Eunice as she is called home to eternal life..."

"These decisions [about how to react to deaths of public figures] ultimately depend on the Holy Father," says the Vatican diplomat. "There's no fixed rule."

In any event, Cardinal McCarrick's reading of the private letters served a larger Church agenda.

"At the funeral in Boston, you had the eulogy of the sitting President, which is impressive, but not really religious," said the Church official. "This way the Cardinal wanted to be sure the day ended as it should, in prayer."

And so, the last word as Ted Kennedy was consigned to the earth would be from the Roman Catholic Church.


I am really baffled and very disappointed at what I consider to be the rather un-Christian and petty attitude of those Catholics who would have denied Sen. Kennedy a Catholic funeral and even Cardinal O'Malley's participation in the funeral Mass.

As terrible as the senator's public record was on non-negotiable Catholic issues, he did receive the last Sacraments before he passed away, and one must assume he repented for eveyrthing he needed to repent for. Ultimate forgiveness is God's prerogative, not ours.

The celebratory tone of the entire funeral Mass was obviously the choice of the family and the Redemptorist priests of the Church, who have had a long relationship with the late Senator.

I didn't mind the celebratory tone since most funerals are meant to be a celebration of the dead person's life, warts and all. And in this case, the family was obviously celebrating all of Kennedy's legislative record, including the anti-Catholic part of it, while Mary Jo Kopechne was, as one blogger put it, The-Name-That-Shouldn't-Be-Said-At-All, also understandable. Ultimately, these are matters that were entirely between Senator Kennedy and God.

What I did mind was the politicization of the intercessions, using the younger Kennedys to do it. That was unseemly and completely out of place - they could have expressed the intercessions in a general manner and not as a direct pitch for passage of the President's health reform bill!

I apologize for posting these comments on this thread, but the post on the Pope's letter provided the occasion.

The AP puts its spin on this story starting with its headline - as though the Pope's support of the Italian bishops' conference necessarily means an anti-Berlusconi position (which the CEI itself has not taken, even if its newspaper's editor has).

The Pope is also Primate of Italy. How can he possibly not support the CEI - and particularly Cardinal Bagnasco, whose loyalty to the Church and to the Pope has been sterling?

The AP's spin on the rest of the story regarding the editor of Avvenire must be considered in the light of the objective stories about the episode that I have chosen to post from the Italian press in the CHURCH&VATICAN thread. I will post a couple of Italian reports about the Pope's call to Cardinal Bagnasco as soon as translated. There's a General Audience today and that is my priority..


Pope backs the Church in Italy
in Berlusconi row
By ARIEL DAVID



ROME, Sept. 1 (AP) – Pope Benedict XVI on Tuesday gave his full support to the Italian Catholic Church after it was dragged into a media row linked to Premier Silvio Berlusconi's sex scandal.

The Italian Bishops Conference said Benedict had spoken by telephone with its president, Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco, to discuss the "current situation."

Benedict expressed to Bagnasco "his esteem, gratitude and appreciation," the Bishops Conference said in a statement. Vatican officials confirmed the phone call but would not elaborate.

[What this story omits is the first part of the CEI statement which said: "The Pope asked for information and asseessments of the actual situation [involving the editor of Avvenire, Dino Boffo] and expressed his esteem, gratitude and appreciation for the work of the CEI and its president". The Pope is rightly synmpathetic but apparently, neither is he complacent about the still unexplained aspects of Boffo's embarassing situation.]

Bagnasco and other top Church officials have been defending a Catholic editor who was attacked by a Berlusconi family newspaper after demanding that the premier answer allegations over his purported relationships with young women.

Il Giornale, which is owned by the premier's brother Paolo, on Friday alleged that the chief editor of the Avvenire daily had a homosexual scandal in his past.

The paper alleged that Dino Boffo had been fined several years ago for harassing the wife of a man in whom he was purportedly interested. Boffo has denied the allegations.

[This story is obviously misleading. Boffo does not deny he paid a court fine in 2004 for 'telephone molestations' made from his cellphone, but that the calls were made by a teenage drug addict he was trying to rehabilitate and had nothing to do with the husband of the woman who got the telephone calls.

That a leading news agency like AP can be so cavalier about dismissing a complicated story in a single misleading line is yet another indication of the careless irresponsible journalism that has become SOP these days.]]

The Bishops Conference, which owns Avvenire, staunchly defended Boffo, and Bagnasco called the allegations "disgusting."

Berlusconi quickly distanced himself from Il Giornale's claim, but the incident damaged the premier's church ties, already frayed by the scandal.

Following Il Giornale's article, a meeting between Berlusconi and the pope's top aide, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, was scrapped. The meeting had been widely seen as a chance for Berlusconi to clear the air with the Vatican.

Support from Catholic voters is considered crucial for any Italian government to come to power, and good ties with the Vatican are courted by many politicians.

Berlusconi has been on the defensive since his wife announced in spring she wanted to divorce the premier, citing his alleged relationships with young women. Allegations have included that women were paid to attend Berlusconi's parties, while a high-class prostitute said she spent a night with him at his Rome residence.

Berlusconi has denied having any improper relationships or paying women for sex, and dismisses the scandal as a plot by left-leaning media. But many, including Avvenire, have demanded more answers from the 72-year-old conservative billionaire media mogul.





As an adult, mature account by an italian who knows whereof he speaks, in contrast to the simplistic, throwaway AP report above (which also contains not a few factual errors), I have chosen to translate Andrea Tornielli's account of the Pope's telephone call. Although he writes for the newspaper that started the whole vicious attack on Boffo, he has been unable to comment or report the ongoing battle so far, but the Pope's intervention has given him the occasion to report.

Perhaps, his editors are responsible for the headline to his story, but it is factual! And as always, his report is fair and balanced, especially since he does not get into the truths and untruths about the Boffo case itself.


Now even the Pope wants
all the facts about the case
by Andrea Tornielli
Translated from

Sept. 2, 2009


ROME - The convulsed day at the Vatican and at the CEI yesterday hinged on a statement from the Vatican spokesman and a telephone call by Benedict XVI yesterday afternoon to Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco, sking for 'information and assessments' on the Boffo case while expressing his 'esteem and appreciation for the CEI and its president".

The Pope is seeking information, and the papal apartment has been in constant touch with the Secretariat of State and the leadership of the Italian bishops.

Yesterday morning, it was the task of the Vatican press director, Fr. Federico Lombardi, to send a reassuring sign by denying any tensions between the Vatican and the CEI.

"It is clear," he said, "that there is agreement between the Holy See and the Church in Italy, according to their respective competencies, and there have been frequent contacts, as well as profound mutual knowledge and esteem between the Cardinal Secretary of State amd the president of the Italian bishops' conference".

"Thus," he said, "attempts to place to portray the Secretariat of State and the CEI as opponents is inconsistent".

Tensions and differences which nonetheless have been repeatedly evident in these days (even involving Il Giornale), and which, truthfully, do not concern the Boffo case as much as they do the Italian bishops' dealing with the political world and the governance of the CEI itself.

Despite the official denials, the existence of different approaches to dealing with the Italian government is known to all. Just as it is known that since the start of Cardinal Bagnasco's presidency at the CEI, Cardinal Bertone laid down in black and white that he wished to have the Secretariat of State take charge of how the Church in Italy would deal with the Italian government - a decision that was not at all welcomed by the CEI hierarchy, even if Bertone meant it to mark the end of the Ruini era.

Likewise, the Secretariat of State has not been too happy lately with interventions coming from some of the 'stars' in the galaxy of the Italian episcopate nor from the CEI newspaper Avvenire.

In his statement. Lombardi also says that "It should not be surprising if there are differences of approach between the Vatican media and that of the Italian Catholic world with regard to the issues and debates going on in Italian society and politics, given the different audiences and priorities of these media".

Some Vaticna sources point out that the first sentence of Lombardi's statement was very important - both for what it says and fails to say: "I confirm that the Cardinal Secretary of State has spoken with Dr. Boffo to manifest his closeness and solidarity".

There was no reference to an intervention by the Pope or solidarity with the editor of Avvenire expressed to Boffo by Bertone in the name of Benedict XVI - as some news agencies hypothesized and as one newspaper even headlined yesterday.

According to an authoritative prelate in the Apostolic Palace, the very attempt to involve the Pope in a matter that still has to be cleared up completely, had prompted Lombardi's statement, which was chiseled word for word at the Secretariat of State.

But in the afternoon, a signal came from the Pope himself. The press office of the CEI issued a press release to say that:

"This afternoon, Tuesday, Sept. 1, there was a telephone conversation between the Holy Father, Benedict XVI, and the president of the Italian bishops' conference, Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco, Archbishop of
Genoa.

"The Holy Father asked for information and assessments on the present situation and expressed esteem, gratitude and appreciation for the work of the CEI and its president".

The telephone call thus reiterates the Pope's confidence in the CEI leadership named by him and appreciates its work.

The lack of any explicit expression of solidarity with Boffo is explained by some Vatican prelates this way: Right now, the Pope feels it is not just one man - the editor of Avvenire - who is under attack, but the Church itself as an institution.

But it is also pointed out that Papa Ratzinger limited himeelf to asking for 'information and assessments' regarding the Boffo case, so he, too, is waiting for the details of the dispute to be cleared up.

Sept. 2
Blessed Jean-Francois Burte and companions (died 1792-1794)
Martyrs of the French Revolution
[Brute and 184 other priests, bishops and religious
were massacred in 1792 for refusing to deny the faith;
another 14 were guillotined in 1794]



OR today.


No papal stories in this issue. Page 1 leads off with a story on Poland
marking the 70th anniversary of the start of World War II. Russia's Putin
joined the observance in the port city of Gdansk; Turkey and Armenia
prepare to resume diplomatic relations; leaders of 53 African countries
meet in Libya to consider 'new strategies' to resolve local conflicts; and
the US fears for the future of its military bases in Japan even after
the incoming Prime Minister says he is not anti-American.



THE POPE'S DAY
General Audience - The Holy Father held it at the Aula Paolo VI today to accommodate ticketholders.
His catechesis was on St. Odo of Cluny (880-942), who was the second abbot of the famed medieval
French monastery and was exemplary for preaching perseverance and patience in pursuing the Christian
way. The abbey became a new center for spreading the Benedictine influence throughout Europe.


The Vatican Press office has still not posted the text of today's catechesis.



The Holy Father has named Rev. Fr. Jean-Pierre Kwambamba Masi to the staff of the Pontifical
Office of Liturgical Celebrations. His name has been added to the list of Pontifical 'Cerimonieri'
(Assistant Masters of Pontifical Ceremonies) under Mons. Guido Marini, all with the rank of
Monsignor, as ff: Francesco Camaldo, Enrico Vigano, Konrad Krajewski, Pier Enrico Stefanetti, Diego
Giovanni Ravelli, Guillermo Javier Karcher, Marco Agostino, and Jean-Pierre Kwambamba Masi.

GENERAL AUDIENCE TODAY





Here is how the Holy Father synthesised his catechesis today:

---

Our catechesis today deals with another great monastic figure of the Middle Ages, Saint Odo of Cluny.

Attracted by the Benedictine ideal, Odo became a monk, and later the second abbot, of Cluny. At the beginning of the ninth century, Cluny was the center of an influential movement of Church reform, and Odo, by his example and teaching did much to further this spiritual renewal throughout Europe.

His writings reveal how deeply he was influenced by the monastic virtues of contemplation, detachment from this world and longing for the world to come. Odo was particularly devoted to the Eucharist, emphasizing the real and substantial presence of Christ under the species of bread and wine.

This conviction of faith led him to work for the reform of the clergy and to stress the need for a worthy reception of the Sacrament. An authentic spiritual guide for his troubled times, Odo blended the personal austerity of a great reformer with a constant and joyful contemplation of Christ’s infinite mercy.

---

Here is a translation of today's catechesis:

---

Dear brothers and sisters<

After a long pause, I wish to resume the presentation of great writers in the Church of the East and the West in medieval times, because, as in a mirror, we see in their lives and their writings what it means to be a Christian.

Today, I offer to you the luminous figure of St. Odon, Abbot of Cluny. He is part of that monastic medieval age which saw the surprising diffusion in Europe of Christian life and spirituality inspired by the rule of St. Benedict.

In those centuries there was a prodigious emergence and multiplication of cloisters, with branches throughout the continent, which widely apread the Christian spirit and sensibility.

St. Odon, in particular, brings us to the abbey of Cluny, which in the Middle Ages was among the most illustrious and celebrated, and even today discloses through its magnificent ruins the signs of a past that was glorious for its intense dedication to asceticism, to study, and particularly, to divine worship that was distinguished by decorum and beauty.

Odno was the second abbot of Cluny. He was born around 880, in the area between the Maine and Touraine rivers in France. He was consecrated by his father to Saint Martin, Bishop of Tours, in whose beneficent shadow and memory Odon passed his entire life, until his death near the saint's tomb.

The choice for religious consecration was preceded in him by an experience of a special moment of grace, which he described himself to another monk, Giovanni L'Italiano (John the Italian), who later became his biographer.

Odon was still an adolescent, about 16, when on Christmas Eve, he felt the following prayer come spontaneously to his lips: "My Lady, Mother of Mercy, who on this night gave birth to the Savior, pray for me. May your glorious and singular act of giving birth, o most Pious, be my refuge" (Vita sancti Odonis, I,9: PL 133,747).

The appelative 'Mother of mercy', with which the young Odon invoked the Virgin, would be that with which he would always address Mary, whom he also called "the only hope in the world... thanks to whom the gates of Paradise were opened" (In veneratione S. Mariae Magdalenae: PL 133,721).

At that time, he started to come across the Rule of St. Benedict and to practice some of its observances, "bearing, though still not a monk, the light yoke of monks" (ibid., I,14: PL 133,50).

In one of his homilies later, Odon would celebrate Benedict as "a lantern that shines in the dark state of this life" (De sancto Benedicto abbate: PL 133,725),and calls him 'master of spiritual discipline" (ibid.: PL 133,727).

Affectionately, he points out that Christian piety "honors him with the most sincere tenderness", in the awareness that God elevated him "among the supreme chosen Fathers of the Church" (ibid.: PL 133,722).

Fascinated by the Benedictine ideal, Odon left Tours end enrolled to be a monk in the Benedictine Abbey of Baume, later going on to Cluny, of which he would become the Abbot in 927.

From that center of spiritual life, he was able to exercise a vast influence on the monasteries of the continent. His guidance and reforms benefited the monasteries of Italy as well, among them the Benedictine Abbey in St. Paul outside the Walls.

Odon visited Rome more than once, reaching as far as Subiaco, Montecassino and Salerno. In fact, he was in Rome in the summer of 942 when he fell sick. Feeling that he was nearing his end, he wanted with all his strength to return to his patron St. Martin in Tours, where he died during the Octave of St. Martin on November 18, 942.

His biographer, underscoring Odon's 'virtue of patience', offers a long list of his other virtues, such as his detachment from the world, his zeal for souls, and his commitment for peace in the local Churches.

The Abbot Odon's great aspirations, he said, were concord with kings and princes, observance of the commandments, attention to the poor, education and correction of young people, respect for the old (cfr Vita sancti Odonis, I,17: PL 133,49).

He loved the small cell where he lived, "away from the eyes of everyone, concerned only with pleasing God" (ibid., I,14: PL 133,49). Nonetheless, he did not fail to exercise, as a 'super-abundant spring', his ministry by word and example, even while "lamenting the world as immense misery' (ibid., I,17: PL 133,51).

In just one monk, his biographer observes, all the virtues diffused in various monasteries were found together: "Jesus in his goodness, drawing from the many gardens of monks, created a paradise in one small place, in order to irrigate from its spring the hearts of the faithful" (ibid., I,14: PL 133,49).

In a passage from a sermon in honor of Mary of Magdala, the abbot of Cluny tells us what he thought of monastic life: "Mary, seated at the feet of the Lord, listening attentively to his words, is the symbol of the tenderness of contemplative life, whose flavor, the more it is tasted, more and more leads the soul to detach itself from visible things and the tumult of worldly concerns" (In ven. S. Mariae Magd., PL 133,717).

It is a concept that Odon confirms and develops in his other writings, which show his love for the interior life, his vision of the world as a fragile and precarious reality from which one must uproot onself, a constant tendency to detach himself from things he found to be sources of disquiet, an acute sensitivity to the presence of evil in the various categories of men, and an intimate eschatological aspiration.

This vision of the world may seem rather remote from ours, but Odon's concept, considering the fragility of the world, values an interior life that is open to others, to love of neighbor, thus transforming existence and opening the world to the light of God.

Odon's devotion to the Body and Blood of Christ merits particular attention, one which he always cultivated with conviction, in view of a widespread negligence towards the Sacrament that he actively deplored.

He was firmly convinced of the real presence of Christ in the Eucharistic species, thrugh the 'substantive' conversion of bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Christ.

He wrote: "God, the Creator of everything, took bread, saying it was his Body that he offered for the world, and distributed wine, calling it his Blood", but, he adds, "it is a law of nature that change occurs at the command of the Creator" and that is why "nature immediately changes its usual condition - without delay, the bread becomes flest, and wine becomes blood": at the Lord's command, "substance is transformed" (Odonis Abb. Cluniac. occupatio, ed. A. Swoboda, Lipsia 1900, p.121).

Unfortunately, our abbot notes, this "sacramental mystery of the Body of the Lord, which constitues the entire salvation of the world" (Collationes, XXVIII: PL 133,572), is often negligently celebrated.

"Priests,", he warned, " who come to the altar unworthily, soil the Bread, that is, the Body of Christ" (ibid., PL 133,572-573).

Only he who is spiritually united to Christ can participate worthily in his Eucharistic Body; "otherwise, to eat his body and drink his blood serves for nothing, but is rather a condemnation" (cfr ibid., XXX, PL 133,575).

All this invites us to believe with new force and profundity in the reality of the presence of the Lord - the presence of the Creator among us, who delivers himself into our hands and transforms us, as he transforms the bread and wine, thus transforming the world.

St. Odon was a true spiritual leader for monks as well as for the faithful of his time. In the face of the 'vast multitude of vices' widespread in society, the remedy he proposed decisively was that of a radical change of life, founded on humility, austerity, detachment from ephemeral things and adherence to eternal values" (cfr Collationes, XXX, PL 133, 613).

Notwithstanding the reality of his diagnoses of the situation of his time, Odon did not indulge in pessimism: "We do not say this," he made clear, "in order to cast into desperation those who wish to convert themselves. Divine mercy is always available; it simply awaits the hour of our conversion" (ibid.: PL 133, 563).

He exclaimed: "Oh, the ineffable depths of divine mercy! God pursues sins but he protects sinners" (ibid.: PL 133,592).

Sustained by this conviction, the Abbot of Cluny loved to contemplate the mercy of Christ, the Savior whom he described suggestively as a 'lover of men', amator hominum Christus (ibid., LIII: PL 133,637). Jesus took upon himself the scourges meant for us, he observed, in order to save his creatures who are his work and whom he loves (cfr ibid.: PL 133, 638).

Here we see a trait of the holy abbot which is almost hidden at first glance under the rigor of his reformist austerity: the profound goodness of his soul. He was austere, but above all, he was good, a man of great goodness, a goodness that came from contact with divine goodness.

Odon, according to his contemporaries, radiated around him the joy which overflowed from him. His biographer attests that he had never heard from the mouth of man 'such tenderness of expression" (ibid., I,17: PL 133,31).

His biographer recounts that he would invite the boys he met along the way to sing with him and then gave them little gifts: "His words were full of exultation... his light-heartedness infused intimate joy into our hearts" (ibid., II, 5: PL 133,63).

Thus, this vigorous but amiable medieval abbot, who was an impassioned reformer, nourished with incisive action among his monks but also among the lay faithful of his time, the offer to proceed diligently along the path of Christian perfection.

Let us hope that his goodness, the joy that comes from faith, joined to austerity and opposition to the vices of the world, may touch our own hearts, so that we may find the spring of joy that flows from the goodness of God.


The Holy Father had a special message for the people of Poland:

Yesterday, we remembered the 70th anniversaary of the start of the Second World War. The human tragedy and absurdity of war remain in the memory of peoples. Let us ask God that the spirit of forgiveness, of peace and of reconciliation, may pervade in the hearts of men.

Europe adn the world today are in need of the spirit of communion. Let us construct it on Christ and his Gospel, on the basis of love and truth.

To all of you who are present and to all who constribute to crate am atmosphere of peace, I grant my blessing from the heart.

---

I translated the following report while I was waiting for the Vatican to post the text of the Holy Father's catechesis. And I find to my distress that, despite Mr. Izzo being one of the more conscientious and sensible of Vatican correspondents, his reporting of the Pope's catechesis is in some ways misleading, because he conflates certain concepts together that appear separately in the Pope's text itself.

A comparison of his report and what the Pope actually says shows the pitfalls into which reporters fall when they try to 'summarize' a text by Benedict XVI by resorting to random citations from his text in a jumble that does not reflect the actual flow of his thoughts.

Howewver, as an Italian journalist, Izzo picks out what must appear to him the most relevant statement in today's catechesis to write his lead.

As I noted earlier, Benedict XVI has always known how to convey messages, directly or indirectly. In today's GA, what he had to say on sin and sinners applies to current events - and personalities - in the eye of controversy.

The Pope at today's GA:
'God pursues sins and protects sinners'
by Salvatore Izzo



VATICAN CITY, Sept. 2 (Translated from AGI) - "God pursues sins but protects sinners" - Pope Benedict XVI today recalled this statement by St. Odon* [Odo, Oddone, Eudes] of Cluny in his catechesis to the General Audience today at the Aula Paolo VI.

[*In my translations, as in the daily 'almanac' of saints that I post, I have taken to using the names of the saints as they are called in their native lands, hence, I use the French form 'Odon' here, rather than Odo (English), Oddone (Italian) and Eudes (Latin).]

The catechesis was dedicated to the French medieval saint, a great Benedictine, follower of St. Martin of Tours, who became the second abbot of Cluny.

Continuing with citations from St. Odon, the Pope said "Divine mercy is always available - it simply awaits our own decision. Loving all men, Jesus took on himself the flagellations which were destined for us".

Paying tribute to "the vigorous but always amiable medieval abbot", the theologian Pope recalled his profound Marian piety, turning to the Virgin as "Mother of mercy, the only hope of the world, thanks to whom the gates of Paradise have opened", as well as Odon's profound faith in the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist, a sacrament that Odon lamented was often "negligently celebrated by unworthy priests who soil the Bread, namely, Christ".

In the face of the 'multitude of vices' widespread in society, St. Odon's 'remedy' to be followed 'decisively' was 'a radical change of life, based on humility, austerity, detachment from ephemeral things, and adherence to eternal values".

The Pope came to the Vatican from Castel Gandolfo for the audience to accommodate the great number of requests for tickets, returning to the summer residence afterwards.

With today's catechesis, he resumed his catechetical cycle on the "great medieval writers of the Eastern and Western Churches".

Nonetheless, the figure of the great St. Odon, who was 'a great spiritual guide for the monks as well as the faithful of his time' appears very relevant today.

"Notwithstanding the realism of his diagnoses, he did not indulge in pessimism but with incisive actions, he nourished in his monks, as well as in the lay faithful of his time, the way of proceeding industriously along the path of Christian perfection".

Through his teaching, said the Pope, St. Odon "was able to exercise a vast influence on the monasteries in all of Europe", with "the surprising diffusion in Europe of Christian life and spirituality inspired by the Rule of St. Benedict".

In this respect, the Pope recalled St. Odon's description of Mary Magdalene "seated at the foot of the Lord, listening to his words attentively", indicating her as an ideal for monastic life which should look at the world "as a fragile and precarious reality distinguished by the presence of evil in the various categories of man". [The sentence sounds rather non-sequitur. Here is what the Pope said in his text:

"Mary, seated at the feet of the Lord, listening attentively to his words, is the symbol of the tenderness of contemplative life, whose flavor, the more it is tasted, more and more leads the soul to detach itself from visible things and the tumult of worldly concerns.

It is a concept that Odon confirms and develops in his other writings, which show his love for the interior life, his vision of the world as a fragile and precarious reality from which one must uproot onself, a constant tendency to detach himself from things he found to be sources of disquiet, an acute sensitivity to the presence of evil in the various categories of men, and an intimate eschatological aspiration."]

"Concord with kings and princes, the observance of the commandments, attention to the poor, education and correction of the young and respect for the old" along with 'the virtue of patience" were St. Odon's 'great aspirations', and thanks to the 'multiplication of cloisters', Cluny became 'among the most illustrious and celebrated of monasteries for its intense devotion to asceticism, study and divine worship, all carried out in decorum and beauty".

The Pope recalled that "St. Odon's guidance and monastic reforms" also benefited Italian monasteries, among them, the Benedictine abbey at St. Paul's outside the Walls.

Odon visited Rome more than once, going also to Subiaco, Montecassino and Salerno. In 942, he fell ill when in Rome, and decided to return to his monastery where he died during the Octave of St. Martin.
[The Pope said to 'return to his patron St. Martin of Tours', not to his monastery, so it appears Odon died in Tours, not Cluny, as Izzo reports.]

"Let us hope," concluded Benedict XVI extemporaneously, "that his goodness,the joy that comes from the strength of faith through the austerity of saying NO to the vices of the world, may also touch our hearts".

I do not know if Vatican Information Services does this regularly - and shame on me for not knowing - but it is certainly one very good essential service that can provide us with a quick reference for the Holy Father's activities every month - including episcopal/Curial resignations and appointments! If they have always been doing it and the items are archived online, then it pays to post them into a separate thread for that purpose alone!


ACTIVITIES OF POPE BENEDICT XVI
IN AUGUST2009



VATICAN CITY, 1 SEP 2009 (VIS) - Following is a list of Pope Benedict’s activities during the month of August. It includes the Angelus, general and private audiences, other pontifical acts, letters, messages, telegrams and other news. The activities are presented in chronological order under their respective headings.

ANGELUS

- 2: Speaking in Castelgandolfo, the Holy Father recalls how the Year for Priests is a precious opportunity to underline the importance of priests’ mission in the Church and in the world. He then assures Polish pilgrims of his union in prayer with participants in celebrations marking the anniversary of the insurrection of Warsaw. He highlights how the heroism of the insurgents and the strength of the nation gave rise to a free Poland and expresses the hope that such a sacrifice of life may bring fruits of peace and prosperity for the Polish nation.
- 9: Benedict XVI advises the faithful to meditate upon the figures of certain saints, whose feast days fall in this period: Clare of Assisi, Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (Edith Stein), Maximilian Kolbe, Francis of Assisi, Pope Pontianus and Lawrence. From these holy men and women, says the Holy Father, and especially from the priests, one may learn the evangelical heroism that encourages us to give our lives for the salvation of souls. Love, the Pope concludes, overcomes death.
- 15: On the Solemnity of the Assumption of the Virgin, the Holy Father recalls that the current Year for Priests is dedicated to St. John Mary Vianney. He mentions that saint’s particular devotion for the Mother of God, and entrusts all the priests of the world to the Blessed Virgin.
- 16: Speaking of the Incarnation, the Pope affirms that God asks us, as He did the Virgin Mary, to accept Him in various ways, placing our lives and our hearts at His disposal that He may dwell in the world. By this gesture, says Pope Benedict, we are transformed and, in some way, become assumed into the divinity of the One Who assumed our humanity.
- 23: Commenting on the words of St. Peter in today’s Gospel - “Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life” - Benedict XVI explains that such a response remains valid in our own time when Jesus’ teachings seem, as they did then to the disciples, difficult to follow and put into practice. Following Jesus, says the Pope, fills our hearts with joy and gives full meaning to our lives, but it also involves difficulties and sacrifices because it often means swimming against the tide.
- 30: The Pope mentions the feast day of St. Monica, mother of St. Augustine, which falls on 27 August, and recalls how the history of Christianity is marked by countless examples of saintly fathers and mothers who have accompanied the lives of generous priests and pastors of the Church. He then goes on to mention the Day for the Defence of Creation which is celebrated in Italy on 1 September and calls on industrialised countries to co-operate responsibly in the future of the planet so that the poor do not end up paying the highest price for climate change.

WEDNESDAY GENERAL AUDIENCES

- 5: The Pope again praises St. John Mary Vianney, highlighting the prophetic energy that marked his human and priestly character. Benedict XVI also recalls the pastoral fruitfulness and creativity of the “Cure of Ars”, which focused on showing that the rationalism of his time (just as the relativism of our own) is unable to satisfy the authentic needs of human beings.
- 12: On the eve of the Solemnity of the Assumption, the Holy Father explains that Mary’s ‘yes’ was the door through which God was able to enter the world, and that the Incarnation (the Son becoming man) already contained the gift of self, the sacrifice on the Cross to become bread for the life of the world. Hence sacrifice, priesthood and Incarnation are united, and at the centre of this mystery is the Virgin Mary.
- 19: Benedict XVI focuses his catechesis on the figure of St. John Eudes, apostle of devotion to the Sacred Hearts, who lived in seventeenth-century France and dedicated himself to the formation of the diocesan clergy. The Pope expresses the view that the years spent in the seminary may be likened to the period in which Jesus, having called the Apostles and before sending them out to preach, asks them to remain with Him.
- 26: The Holy Father reminds his audience that the earth is a precious gift of the Creator which humans are called to administrate. On the basis of this truth the Church considers matters associated with the environment and its protection as being closely tied to the question of integral human development. Benedict XVI affirms that environmental protection, the safeguarding of resources and climate change require world leaders to act in respect of the law, and to show solidarity, especially with the poorest regions of the earth.


LETTERS, MESSAGES AND TELEGRAMS

- 1: Publication of a Letter, dated 24 June, in which the Holy Father appoints Cardinal Francis Arinze, prefect emeritus of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, as his special envoy to the ninth plenary assembly of the Federation of Asian Bishops’ Conferences. The event is due to be held in Manila, Philippines, from 11 to 16 August.
- 1: The Holy Father sends a telegram of condolence to Cardinal Gaudencio B. Rosales, archbishop of Manila, Philippines, for the death of Corazon Aquino, former president of that country.
- 3: The Holy Father sends a telegram to Bishop Joseph Coutts of Faisalabad, Pakistan, for attacks in Gojra City which caused many victims in the local Christian community.
- 13: Publication of a Letter in which the Holy Father appoints Cardinal Christoph Schonborn O.P., archbishop of Vienna, Austria, as his special envoy to celebrations marking the millennium of the diocese of Pecs, Hungary, due to take place on 23 August.
- 23: Message of the Holy Father to Bishop Francesco Lambiasi of Rimini, Italy, for the thirtieth “Meeting for Friendship among Peoples” which is being held in that city from 23 to 29 August on the theme: “Knowledge is always an event”.
- 29: Publication of a Letter, dated 4 July, in which the Holy Father appoints Cardinal Joachim Meisner, archbishop of Cologne, Germany, as his special envoy to celebrations marking the twelfth centenary of the death of St. Ludger, first bishop of Munster and “Apostle of the Saxons and Frisians”, due to take place at Werden an der Ruhr, Germany, on 6 September.
OTHER NEWS
- 1: Participants in the World Swimming Championships, currently being held in Rome, are received in audience by the Pope, who delivers a brief address.
- 2: Benedict XVI attends a concert of the “Bayerisches Kammerorchester Bad Bruckenau” which plays pieces by Bach, Britten and Mozart.
- 15: For the Solemnity of the Assumption of the Virgin, the Pope celebrates Mass and pronounces a homily in the parish church of St. Thomas of Villanova in Castelgandolfo.

AUDIENCES
- 31: The Holy Father receives in separate audiences: Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, prefect of the Congregation for Bishops; Bishop Vincenzo Paglia of Terni-Narni-Amelia, Italy, accompanied by Andrea Riccardi, founder of the Sant’Egidio Community, and Msgr. Livio Medina, president of the John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and the Family.

OTHER PONTIFICAL ACTS

- 1: Resignation of Bishop Cornelius Schilder M.H.M. from the pastoral care of the diocese of Ngong, Kenya, in accordance with canon 401 para. 2 of the Code of Canon Law. Appointment of Bishop Bernard-Emmanuel Kasanda Mulenga, auxiliary of Mbujimayi, Democratic Republic of Congo, as bishop of the same diocese. He succeeds Bishop Tharcisse Tsibangu Tsibishiku, whose resignation was accepted by the Holy Father, upon having reached the age limit.
- 4: Appointment of Fr. Rufin Anthony as coadjutor of Islamabad-Rawalpindi, Pakistan. Appointment of Fr. Hermann Geissler F.S.O. as bureau chief at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith
- 5: Appointment of Fr. Gontram Decoste S.J. as bishop of Jeremie, Haiti. He succeeds Bishop Joseph Willy Romelus, whose resignation from the pastoral care of the same diocese the Holy Father accepted, upon having reached the age limit. Appointment of Bishop Simon Pierre Saint-Hillen C.S.C., auxiliary of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, as bishop of Hinche, Haiti.
- 8: Appointment of Archbishop Orlando Antonini, apostolic nuncio to Paraguay, as apostolic nuncio to Serbia.
- 14: Resignation of Bishop Jan Baginski, auxiliary of Opole, Poland, upon having reached the age limit. Appointment of Msgr. Andrzej Czaja as bishop of Opole. He succeeds Bishop Alfons Nossol, whose resignation from the pastoral care of the same diocese was accepted by the Holy Father, upon having reached the age limit. Appointment of Fr. John Vadakel C.M.I. as bishop of Bijnor of the Syro-Malabars, India. He succeeds Bishop Gratian Mundadan C.M.I., whose resignation from the pastoral care of the same diocese the Holy Father accepted, in accordance with canon 401 para. 2 of the Code of Canon Law.
- 17: Resignation of Archbishop John Choi Toung-soo from the pastoral care of the archdiocese of Daegu, Korea, in accordance with canon 401 para. 2 of the Code of Canon Law. Appointment of Fr. Giuseppe Filippi M.C.C.J. as bishop of Kotido, Uganda. Appointment of Msgr. Pietro Parolin, under secretary for Relations with States, as apostolic nuncio to Venezuela and his elevation to the dignity of archbishop. Appointment of Msgr. Ettore Balestrero as under secretary for Relations with States.
- 18: Appointment of Cardinal Franc Rode C.M., prefect of the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life, as the Holy Father’s special envoy to celebrations marking the twelfth centenary of the translation of the relics of St. Tryphon to Kotor in Montenegro. The event is due to take place on 17 October.
- 19: Resignation of Bishop Frederick Drandua from the pastoral care of the diocese of Arua, Uganda, in accordance with canon 401 para. 2 of the Code of Canon Law.
- 20: Appointment of Bishop Andrea Bruno Mazzocato of Treviso, Italy, as archbishop of Udine, Italy. He succeeds Archbishop Pietro Brollo, whose resignation from the pastoral care of the same archdiocese the Holy Father accepted, upon having reached the age limit. Appointment of Archbishop Renzo Fratini, apostolic nuncio to Nigeria, as apostolic nuncio to Spain and the Principality of Andorra, and Holy See permanent observer to the World Tourism Organisation.
- 31: Resignation of Bishop Joseph Francis Martino from the pastoral care of the diocese of Scranton, U.S.A., in accordance with canon 401 para. 2 of the Code of Canon Law. Resignation of Bishop John Martin Dougherty from the office of auxiliary of the same diocese, upon having reached the age limit


THANK YOU, VIS!