BENEDICT XVI: NEWS, PAPAL TEXTS, PHOTOS AND COMMENTARY

Peter's task
Editorial
by Giovanni Maria Vian
Translated from
the 9/7-9/8/09 issue of







For the sixteenth time yesterday, Benedict XVI visited a diocese of Italy, the nation of which the Bishop of Rome is also the Primate.

With a simple and clear purpose, underscored by the motto chosen for the papal visit to Viterbo and Bagnoregio: "Confirm your brothers", as Jesus said to Peter at the Last Supper, in the Gospel account of St. Luke.

The Roman Pontiff did so with his presence and his words, welcomed with the affection which found emblematic expression by an aged nun who caressed the Pope's healing right wrist before kissing his ring yesterday, a gesture of devotion and feminine attention as touching as it was spontaneous and unexpected.

In his customary way, during the liturgical celebration in Viterbo which was characterized by a truly impressive spirit of focused attention by the congregation, Benedict XVI explained the Bible readings of the day.

And then, using the image of a desert in the heart of any man that is closed off to God and to his neighbor, he noted how Jesus had ventured even into pagan (non-Jewish) territory, healing the sick and preaching the way towards a new humanity - which is good and without discriminations - offering the world today an example of authentic brotherhood.

In the background of the visit was the figure of St. Bonaventure who sought a 'wisdom rooted in Christ' and to whom the young Joseph Ratzinger was fascinated to the point of devoting his Habilitation dissertation to qualify for university professorship to this great Franciscan theologian.

Speaking to the faithful of Viterbo, the Pope addressed all Italian Catholics, surrounded by his Vicar in Rome and the bishops of Lazio, and welcomed by civilian authorities in an image of evident institutional calm.

Taking up the pastoral priorities of the Bishop of Viterbo - which had been the seat of the Popes in the second half of the 13th century - Benedict XVI underscored the importance of education, a priority in both the Christian community and all of society, and the urgency of "living and bearing witness to the faith in the various sectors of society", of which he named a few: social commitment, political activity, and integral human development, which is at the core of his encyclical Caritas in veritate, a text which has aroused widespread interest even beyond the visible confines of the Catholic Church.

The Pope is, of course, well aware of how historical seasons and social contexts change, as well as the specific difficulties faced in each era.

But equally clear is his conviction of what remains unchanged: the urgency to "live the Gospel" in solidarity with everyone. That is why he calls on Italian Catholics - on every component of the Church, but especially, of the lay faithful - to be able to live up to the stature of their history in the service of the dignity of every human being and the common good of the nation.

He also asked the Catholics of a diocese singularly tied to the Peter's Chair, but also of all faithful in Italy and the world, to pray for him. That he may "always carry out with, faithfulness and love, the task of being Pastor for all the flock of Christ".

As his predecessors have done, among whom the Pope recalled the example of St. Leo the Great, a native of Tuscia [the historical region where Viterbo is located], "who rendered a great service to truth in love, through his assiduous exercise of the word".


Although he is always attentive to writing an editorial when he feels it necessary to call attention to the Pope's words, Mr. Vian does not have the literary ability and felicitous expression of, say, Giuliano Ferrara, or the best editorialists of Avvenire (not always staff members).

And so, his attempts to paraphrase what the Pope actually said always appear awkward, rambling and incomplete. In other words, it's better to go directly to what the Pope actually said.

He also uses this particular editorial to express the current line of the Secretariat of State - and Mr. Berlusconi's government, for that matter - that after the Boffo buffeting, there is an 'institutional calm' between the Vatican and civilian authorities. (See paragraph 7 above).

P.S. Vian inexplicably fails to make any mention to the Pope's specially composed, powerful and very 'topical' prayer to the Madonna della Quercia!




In this connection, the AP report on the Pope's pastoral visit yesterday was focused primarily - and unfortunately for the passtoral and spiritual aspects of the visit itself - on the presence in Viterbo of Gianni Letta, undersecretary of the Prime Minister's cabinet, representing the Italian government. (Besides which, it contains a number of factual errors on verifiable recent news data!)

AP, echoing most of the Italian media, saw it as a sign of the Vatican's friendship with the Berlusconi government - not that it was ever hostile, even despite the much-headlined sexual escapades attributed to Berlusconi lately.

However, it is not the first time Letta has represented the government at these pastoral visits. It must also be pointed out that before ever becoming a member of Berlusconi's staff, he has been one of the 'gentiluomo di Sua Santita', the Papal gentlemen - lay attendants of the Pope and his household who serve without pay in the Apostolic Palace or at St. Peter's Basilica in an honorific position handed down from father to son.

Pope meets Berlusconi aide
amid scandal fallout
by NICOLE WINFIELD


ROME, Sept. 6 (AP) – Premier Silvio Berlusconi's top aide met with Pope Benedict XVI on Sunday amid continuing fallout over scandals that have strained ties between Italy's government and the Catholic Church.

Berlusconi adviser Gianni Letta pronounced relations were "solid" after meeting briefly with the Pontiff during a visit by the Pope to Viterbo, north of Rome.

"My smile says it all. I'm happy and serene," Letta said, according to the ANSA and Apcom news agencies, although he added that there was always work to be done to "further strengthen" relations.

Ties between the government and church, which are politically important in the largely Roman Catholic Italy, have been in a tailspin recently.

Catholic publications [except Giovanni Vian's L'Osservatore Romano - and I specifically label it as such] have openly criticized Berlusconi for his dalliances with young women, and Vatican officials [a couple of Curial prelates, at most] have criticized the conservative government for its tough anti-immigration policy.

In what was largely seen as tit-for-tat retribution, a Berlusconi family newspaper last week accused the editor of the country's pre-eminent Catholic newspaper [Oh wow!, Cardinal Bertone will not be pleased that Avvenire is being called that! What about OR? But then, one of Boffo's professional successes was to make Avvenire into an attractive, readable and compelling general-readership newspaper and not just a channel for news about the Italian bishops] of being involved in a scandal.

The editor, Dino Boffo, professed his innocence. But he resigned Thursday as head of Avvenire, the newspaper of the Italian Bishop's Conference, saying he was doing so for his family and the church.

Last week, Il Giornale, which is owned by Berlusconi's brother, claimed that Boffo had been fined in a plea-bargain several years ago for making harassing calls to the wife of a man in whom he was purportedly interested. It accused him of hypocrisy for scrutinizing Berlusconi's private life.

Boffo acknowledged being fined in the case but said someone else had used his cell phone to make the calls. Prosecutors maintain Boffo made the calls, but have denied there was a gay angle to the case. But Boffo has insisted that the full court file remain sealed.

Il Giornale published the article after Boffo's Avvenire called on Berlusconi to answer questions about revelations that women had been paid to attend parties at the premier's residences and that a high-class prostitute had once spent the night with him. [NO! It was not Boffo who asked Berlusconi to 'answer questions' about his private escapades - it is La Repubblica, which is keeping a running count of the days it has posed its first '1o questions for Berlusconi', now augmented by '10 more questions for Berlsuconi'. After weeks of editorial silence on the matter, Boffo wrote a moderate editorial reflecting the consensus of Avvenire readers that the Prime Minister should desist from scandal-raising behavior in keeping with the dignity of his office.]
The revelations were sparked by the announcement in the spring by Berlusconi's wife that she was divorcing him, citing his presence at the 18th birthday party of a Naples model.

Berlusconi, 72, has denounced what he says is a media smear campaign against him and has sued two left-wing dailies and several other European publications for libel. He has denied ever paying anyone for sex and says there was nothing "spicy" in his relations with the model, Noemi Letizia.

In an interview aired Sunday on Sky TG24, Letizia said Berlusconi's wife should know better than to think she played any role in the end of their marriage.

"Everyone can see I am not the reason for the divorce," said Letizia, who was interviewed in a garden and on a motorboat. "How can an 18-year-old's birthday party ruin a marriage? If this is the case, what kind of marriage could it be?"

Speaking in Italian and an occasional phrase in English, Letizia said she had actually enjoyed the notoriety that the scandal had caused and that she hoped it would help her with her dream to go to the U.S. and become an actress.

Despite the monthslong scandal, Berlusconi's coalition appears solid, although his support among Catholics had slipped slightly, according to an Ipsos survey published Sunday in Corriere della Sera. The poll of 800 people said Berlusconi remained popular among 50 percent of practicing Catholics, compared to 55 percent in April before the scandal broke. The survey had a margin of error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.

Italian newspapers have focused on how the scandal has laid bare the divisions between the Italian bishops and the Vatican over who was responsible for cultivating relations with the Italian political establishment.

During Pope John Paul II's pontificate, the head of Italy's bishop's conference was in charge. Under Benedict, though, the Vatican No. 2, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, has asserted his authority, the newspapers said.

Vittorio Messori, longtime Vatican watcher and commentator, wrote in Corriere that Bertone was merely enforcing Benedict's long-sought ideal of "clerical federalism" — the centralized authority of the Vatican over bishops worldwide. [Which, I maintain, notwithstanding Messori's obvious eminence, is a mis-application of Ratzinger/Benedict's phrase to the CEI leadership in particular!]

Indeed, there has been an unwarranted over-interpretation of Vatican-government relations in the aftermath of the Boffo case, in which the prevailing viewpoint used is that of considering the Vatican as just another institution with secular partisan interests.

Berlusconi is being denounced by his opponents (ultra-liberal, generally anti-Catholic, such as La Repubblica) as an immoral libertine who should answer for his private personal conduct to the public. In which they manage to be breathtakingly contradictory to their usual position that the Catholic Church has no business moralizing about politicians, even if the Church has never done so ad hominem ['One denounces the sin and not the sinner'], which is what the anti-Berlusconi hypocrites are doing.

For his part, while his lawyers were announcing they would sue soem newspapers in italy and in other countries for 'defamatory' stories about Berlusconi, he himself managed to be above the fray in the past week, but spoke this weekend:


Berlusconi insists his relations
with the Catholic Church are excellent
By Flavia Krause-Jackson



ROME, Sept. 7 (Bloomberg) -- Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi said relations with the Vatican were excellent in spite of the resignation of a Catholic news editor and commentator accused by Berlusconi family-owned Il Giornale of homosexual behavior and harrassment.

“The relationship between the government and the Church will consolidate further in the coming months on important issues, such as the right-to-die bill,” Berlusconi said on Mattino Cinque, a morning show on Mediaset SpA’s Canale 5. “My government has defended principles that are at the base of Catholic doctrine and demonstrate that ties are excellent.”


As questionable as his private morals (sexual and financial) may be, and as boorish as he is said to be, Berlusconi has not taken any public positions contradicting Church doctrine since he first came to office in 1994, as far as I have been able to google. In fact, he has always maintained that the political parties he has formed (Forza Italia and its successor, Partita della Liberta), are natural allies with the Church in their espousal of conservative causes.

He even had Parliament override President Napolitano's veto last year of a bill that would have saved Eluana Englaro from arbitrary discontinuation of her food-and-water lifeline.

He is among the remarried Italian Catholic divorcess who have been petitioning the Church to allow them to receive Communion but I have not read any reports that he has ever tried to force the issue by publicly seeking to receive Communion, as some American politicians have done. (Though I wonder when was his last confession.)


As a real outsider looking on, I think that Boffo's resignation has been exploited by the secular Italian media, echoed by tendentiously cavalier news agencies who report Italian events to the rest of the world - often incompletely, erroneously, and/or without the proper context:

1) To portray a serious rift between the Vatican and the CEI over political management. There is obviously some friction. but how can there be a real rift when the Pope is also Primate of Italy, and therefore head of the Italian Church, in which capacity he named Cardinal Bagnasco to head the CEI?

2) To portray supposedly major problems between the Vatican and the government of Silvio Berlusconi. Even if a) Cardinal Bertone has said that is not the case at all (and indeed there are no major issues between them - even on the tough anti-illegal immigration policy of the government, although the Pope has always said that immigrants who do get to Italy by any means should be welcomed and respected as human beings, he always takes care to say they must also know that there are laws that need to be followed); b) the Vatican newspaper has, in fact, not said a word about Berlusconi's current scandals; and c) Berlusconi himself has not spoken out agains the Vatican, now or at any time); and therefore,

3) Outside of the Berlusconi-owned media, to cause political damage to Berlusconi, even if he does not face any real parliamentary challenges to his government so far.

On the part of the Secretariat of State, some subtle and not-so-subtle maneuvering has been reported by usually reliable journalists as an effort to wrest from the CEI the task of dealing with the Italian government.

Which does not make sense because it is the Italian bishops and the Italian Church who are directly concerned in almost all the provisions of the Concordat between the Vatican and the State of Italy.

In fact, it is the Church in Italy, represented by the CEI, not the Vatican, that is the beneficiary of the annual 0.008 percent of Italian tax revenue stipulated by the Concordats.

And it is the Italian bishops, not the Secretariat of State, who must mobilize the Church in Italy to any action necessary to support the Church position in any public debate.

Finally, the Pope, insofar as he is Primate of Italy, must act through the CEI, not through the Secretariat of State.

Cardinal Bagnasco must certainly clear it with the Pope - who appointed him - whenever he has to make a crucial decision for the Church in Italy. One imagines that when he does that, it means effectively clearing it with the Secretariat of State as well, because the Pope knows protocol and would not keep his Secretary of State uninformed of anything the CEI president tells him.

If the Pope wants the Church in Italy to speak with one voice as the Vatican on any specific issue, all he has to do is tell Cardinal Bagnasco, who will certainly not contradict him. Nor go out of his way to offend Cardinal Bertone, either!

That is why I cannot explain why someone like Vittorio Messori is in the camp of those who see the Boffo case as the proper occasion for a 'consolidation of power' [or less charitably, 'power grab'] by Cardinal Bertone.

Moreover, even if Bertone turns out to be as politically adroit as a Cardinal Richelieu, I doubt he (or anyone else) can turn any single dissident bishop, in Italy or elsewhere, to a pro-Benedict bishop! As the Holy Father pointed out to the Brazilian bishops today, decades of self-secularization by those in the Church who have mis-interpreted Vatican II cannot easily be overturned.

As for Vian's decision not to say anything at all about Berlusconi's Sexgate in OR, that's all very well, if he had taken care to make an editorial stand at the start that "The newspaper is aware of all the stories circulating involving the Prime Minister of Italy, but we will not be reporting any of it or commenting on it because they concern his private behavior, for which he must be responsible to his family and before God." - or something similar.

You cannot aspire to be a 'serious' newspaper and choose to blank out a subject matter everyone else is reporting. At least acknowledge it once, and then keep editorial silence if that is your choice.