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BENEDICT XVI: NEWS, PAPAL TEXTS, PHOTOS AND COMMENTARY

Ultimo Aggiornamento: 23/08/2021 11:16
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15/10/2010 20:58
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See preceding page for earlier posts today, 10/16/10.





One year since the Pope's decision to facilitate conversion of traditional Anglicans wishing to reunite with Rome, at least one major Anglican bishop - and perhaps two more - are announcing they will join an ordinariate.... Because of the significance of these initial steps, I am posting the news here rather than in the CHURCH&VATICAN thread...


Bishop of Fulham
to take up Ordinariate

By Anna Arco

Friday, 15 October 2010


The Anglican bishop of Fulham and the chairman of Forward in Faith International has announced he will resign before the end of the year to join an Ordinariate.

Speaking at Forward in Faith’s National Assembly today, Bishop John Broadhurst, who is a senior figure in the Anglo-Catholic movement, said he intended to tender his resignation before the end of the year and join the Ordinariate in Britain when it is established.

He has said that he will remain the chairman of Forward in Faith, which he says is not an Anglican organisation.

Bishop Broadhurst is a suffragan bishop of the Diocese of London. He said the Bishop of London would likely appoint someone new to fill the post Bishop Broadhurst is vacating.

He is the first senior Anglo-Catholic to announce publicly that he will join an Ordinariate when it is founded.

Two “flying bishops”, or bishops who are appointed to provide pastoral care for Anglicans who cannot in good conscience accept women priests, are also likely to tender their resignations before the end of the year in order to join an Ordinariate.

Both Bishop Andrew Burnham of Ebbsfleet and Bishop Keith Newton of Richborough are believed to be taking up the offer Pope Benedict made last autumn with the Apostolic Constitution Anglicanorum coetibus, which allows for a new canonical structure for Anglicans wishing to be in full communion with Rome while retaining their identity.

This year, the General Synod of the Church of England voted down proposed measures which would have offered traditionalists a structural protection from being overseen by women bishops.

At a series of meetings called last month by the Anglican bishop of Plymouth to the signatories of a 2008 open letter against women bishops written to the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Archbishop of York, traditionalists discussed taking up the Ordinariate. They also created a new society called St Wilfrid and St Hilda for Anglo-Catholics who were not sure about the Ordinariate.

Groups of Anglicans wishing to take up an Ordinariate must first write to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith formally requesting the canonical structure to be erected.

The Personal Ordinariate most resembles a military diocese and is thought to range over the territory of individual Episcopal conferences.

Pope Benedict XVI published the Apostolic Constitution Anglicanorum coetibus last November.

So far formal requests have been made in the United States, Canada and Australia among other countries.

In Britain Ordinariate groups have been forming informally over the last year as flying bishops have tried to explain to their clergy and lay people what the Pope’s offer would entail.

Among the largest worry for Anglicans considering taking up Anglicanorum coetibus is the fact that they are unlikely to be able to take buildings with them when they cross the Tiber.


Kent parish makes first move
towards Ordinariate

By Anna Arco

Friday, 15 October 2010


An Anglican parish in Kent has announced its intention of taking up the Ordinariate.

The churchwardens of St Peter’s Folkestone, which is in the Archbishop of Canterbury’s diocese, will approach their archbishop in the first step towards joining an ordinariate.

St Peter’s Folkestone falls under the pastoral care of the Rt Rev Bishop Keith Newton of Richborough, one of two “flying bishops” who are likely to be at the vanguard of an Ordinariate.

While many believe the move towards an Ordinariate is predominantly clergy-driven, the decision to take up the offer made to Anglo-Catholics by Pope Benedict in the Apostolic Constitution Anglicanorum coetibus at St Peter’s Folkestone came from a lay initiative.

The Parochial Church Council of St Peter’s Folkestone voted unanimously to approach Dr Rowan Williams about the move to take up the Ordinariate at the tend of September.

In the Church of England, the PCC acts as the executive body of a parish and consists of the parish priest, the churchwardens and elected representatives of the laity.

They issued a statement which said: “At its meeting on September 28th, the PCC of Folkestone St Peter unanimously requested the Churchwardens to approach The Archbishop of Canterbury, our Diocesan Bishop, in order to consult about the wish of the PCC and many of the congregation to join the English Ordinariate of the Catholic Church when it is erected.

“We are anxious that this should be made as easy as possible, not only for us, but for the diocesan family of Canterbury that we shall regretfully be leaving behind.”

There was no one available for comment from the parish.

Forward in Faith, the umbrella group for traditionally minded Anglicans holds its National Assembly this weekend.

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October 15, 2010


Tracey Rowland is Dean and Associate Professor of Political Philosophy and Continental Theology at the John Paul II Institute (Melbourne), a member of the Centre for Theology and Philosophy at the University of Nottingham and a member of the editorial board of the English language edition of Communio, founded, among others, by Joseph Ratzinger.

She is the author of Culture and the Thomist Tradition: After Vatican II (2003), Ratzinger's Faith: The Theology of Benedict XVI (2008), and, most recently, Benedict XVI: A Guide for the Perplexed (2010). She recently took time from her busy schedule to discuss the work and thought of Joseph Ratinger/Pope Benedict XVI.




You've now written two books about the theology and thought of Joseph Ratzinger/Pope Benedict XVI. If you had to describe his theology and thought to someone who knew little or nothing about the topic, what would you say?
I would say that he is interested in the relationship between God and the human person and in particular the role of love and reason in this relationship.

He wants people to understand that while there is something called Christian morality, Christianity is not just another option on the menu of ethical codes. It is about a personal relationship with the Trinity, and without that the ethical code can seem incomprehensible and oppressive.

What misunderstandings or misrepresentations of Benedict's thinking do you find most bothersome or in need of correction?
Unfortunately many people, in particular journalists, can only think in dialectical categories like: left-wing, right-wing, progressive, conservative. They never ask questions like: conserve what? or progress toward what? It is very difficult to present Ratzinger's ideas in sound-bites without doing violence to the nuances.

There is, for example, a sense in which it may well be right to classify Ratzinger as a progressive in 1964 and a conservative today but what changed is not the actual theological beliefs held by Ratzinger, but the historical and theological contexts.

In 1964 to be progressive meant wanting to introduce some flexibility into a theological framework which had become ossified and dry. It meant being critical of Suarezian Thomism*. Today, being progressive means being in favour of contraceptives, women priests, homosexual "marriage" and Marty Haugen.

As Cardinal Francis George has often written, it is not a case of being left wing or right wing, but being for Christ. In some social contexts that will look right wing, in others, left-wing, but these terms and labels are not the standard, and nor are they stable.

Who were some of the essential intellectual and theological influences — both ancient and contemporary — on the young Ratzinger?
Among the Patristic theologians, St Augustine was clearly the most influential, among the medieval theologians it was St. Bonaventure, and thereafter, there were a number of significant nineteenth century influences associated with the Tübingen School, such as Adam Mšhler, and there was also the influence of Blessed John Henry Newman. Among twentieth scholars, the key influences were: Romano Guardini, Josef Pieper, Martin Buber, Henri de Lubac and Hans Urs von Balthasar.

Karl Rahner was also someone with whom he collaborated at the Council and probably by whom he was to some degree mentored at the Council, but as Avery Dulles observed, Ratzinger grew to understand that he and Rahner lived on different theological planets: whereas Rahner found revelation and salvation primarily in the inward movements of the human spirit, Ratzinger finds them in historical events attested by Scripture and the Fathers.

Rupert Shortt, in a recent review of Benedict XVI: A Guide for the Perplexed, wrote that "Professor Ratzinger's volte-face [in the late 1960s] was matched by what struck many observers as a shift in his character. An earlier openness was supplanted by intolerance and gloom. The psychological element, wholly overlooked by Rowland, is revealing."

Shortt obviously believes that Ratzinger's theology and perspective changed dramatically and suddenly some forty year ago. Is there evidence for that argument? And why is the debate over this topic so important?

First, let me say that my book was published in the 'Guide for the Perplexed' series which the publishers market as an 'upper level introduction to the thought of those writers readers can find especially challenging'.

Concentrating on what it is that makes the subject difficult to grasp, these books explain and explore key themes and ideas. In other words, the book was not written as a biography, nor was there ever any brief from the publisher to delve into the psychological drives of the subject.

The brief was to present an account of Ratzinger's thought for theology students trying to get a grip on its essential contours, with special reference to his contributions to the discipline of theology.

Accordingly, the dominant theme of the book was how Ratzinger has dealt with what in Principles of Catholic Theology (1982) he called the severest crisis in Catholic theology in the twentieth century, namely, 'understanding the mediation of history in the realm of ontology'. Most of the material presented relates to that problematic.

That said, I think that just as there are at least two fundamentally different approaches to the documents of Vatican II, the 'hermeneutic of rupture' and the 'hermeneutic of reform' or continuity, there is an analogous division of interpretation over Ratzinger himself.

What everyone agrees upon is that Ratzinger is an intellectual. No one tries to argue that he has been infected with peasant piety herding cows in the Bavarian Alps as some tried to dismiss Wojtyła as a Carpathian peasant.

The line becomes: This fellow was one of the most gifted clerics of his generation, open to new ideas and progressively oriented, but then in 1968 he found students demonstrating outside his lecture theatre and claiming that Christ was a sado-masochist.

He then, so this narrative goes, had something like a breakdown from which he has never recuperated, and since that time he has been a neurotic conservative. This way one can acknowledge his talent but dismiss his substantive judgments on the grounds that they are the result of emotional fragility rather than intellectual rigour.

My response to this is to say that I remember 1968 as the year that my older cousin, whom I adored, grew his hair to his waist and started smoking pot and wearing paisley t-shirts. As a small child I thought this was all a bit odd and it does not surprise me that Ratzinger also took a rather negative view of the behaviour of the soixant-huit-ers (68ers).

He once remarked in an interview that what he found more disturbing than the demonstrations was the fact that priests were handing out Communion to Marxist students on the picket lines around the Sorbonne.

There was nothing however in his early intellectual make-up to suggest that he might react any other way. His doctoral dissertation was on the ecclesiology of St. Augustine, his Habilitationsschrift was on the theology of history in St. Bonaventure. As a seminarian he was known to be passionate about Newman and heavily influenced by Romano Guardini and Josef Pieper.

Not one of these authors is in any way close to the ensemble of intellectual currents which became fashionable in the late 1960s and 70s. It's impossible to think of Augustine or Bonaventure or Newman or Guardini or Pieper as latently liberal or Marxist. What they all have in common is an interest in matters of the heart, and in the links between affectivity and objectivity, or love and truth. Not one of them thought that truth could be found blowing in the wind.

What Ratzinger opposed in the pre-Conciliar theological establishment, which earned him the 'rebellious theological teenager 'label in the early 1960s, was the Suarezian-infused Thomism upon which almost every seminarian of his generation was fed.

In his book Twentieth Century Catholic Theologians, Fergus Kerr observed that there was a wide-scale rebellion against this, particularly among the intellectual elite of the Conciliar generation.

Ratzinger's alternative to this dry, ossified and in some elements, revisionist presentation of the thought of St. Thomas which prided itself on being 'above history', was a framework built on Augustine and Bonaventure principally, and then Newman, Guardini, Pieper, de Lubac and the personalism of Buber.

After the Council one can add the influence of von Balthasar and a deepening relationship with de Lubac. All of these influences were perfectly consistent with his early orientations. De Lubac and von Balthasar were also highly critical of the pre-Conciliar theological establishment and went to war against Suarez, but they were not trying to update Christ for the Age of Aquarius.

Accordingly a number of scholars who are not fully paid up members of the Ratzinger fan club agree that Ratzinger's theology does exhibit a quality of consistency over the decades.

For example, Joseph A Komonchak has written:

From Ratzinger's Introduction to Christianity (1968) down to the homily he delivered on his installation as Pope Benedict XVI, a distinctive and consistent approach has been visible" (See: 'The Church in Crisis: Pope Benedict's Theological Vision' Commonweal, 3 June 2005, 11-14).


Similarly, Francis Schüssler Fiorenza, a former student of Ratzinger, wrote at the time of Ratzinger's election to the papacy:

The negative slogans are wrong, the personal descriptions are true, and the biographical explanations are, in general, misleading. They overlook that Ratzinger has from early days had a consistent theological vision". ('From Theologian to Pope: A Personal View Back, Past and Public Portrayals' Harvard Divinity Bulletin, 33 [2005]).


Finally, Lieven Boeve and Gerard Mannion have concluded:

Ratzinger's theological insights have not fundamentally changed, but have rather demonstrated a firm internal consistency throughout more than fifty years'. (The Ratzinger Reader (London: Continuum, 2010, p. 12).


Nonetheless, Boeve and Mannion do note that Ratzinger's tone of writing became more polemical after 1968. The weight of scholarly opinion favours the 'theological consistency' thesis.

Why does the debate matter?
I think it matters because the truth always matters, and because I believe that the 'psychological break-down' theory is designed to dissuade people from undertaking an examination of what Ratzinger actually thinks.

A similar line of attack was taken against John Paul II's theology of the body. It was said that Wojtyła had an overly romantic attitude toward sex and marriage because he lost his mother at an early age.

The moment one comes up with a psychological examination, it seems it is no longer necessary to examine the substantive arguments.

What was Ratzinger's involvement in the Second Vatican Council? What would you say in response to those who insist that Benedict XVI is trying, in his pontificate, to undo the Council, or is working against the "spirit" of the Council?
Ratzinger was a theological advisor to Josef Cardinal Frings of Cologne and one of a group of young theologians who were frustrated by the regnant neo-scholasticism of the pre-Conciliar era.

He contributed to the drafting of several documents, including Dei Verbum, which can be read as a vindication of the anti-Suarezian orientation of his Habilitationsschrift.

I would say that if by the 'spirit of the Council' you mean projects to correlate the Catholic faith to the culture of modernity, then Benedict XVI is working against such a spirit, but I would add that he never interpreted the Council this way, and nor, I would argue, did Paul VI. If one reads the encyclical Ecclesiam Suam published in 1964, one gets a sense that Paul VI also thought that there were some odd interpretations of the Conciliar spirit about.

For Ratzinger the true spirit of the Council represented a retrieval of Christocentrism in all areas of theology and ecclesial life and he believed that this was also the kind of accent placed over the Conciliar documents by Paul VI. It was certainly the accent of John Paul II.

Much has been made of Benedict's supposed public relations errors, such as his comments about Islam in his Regensburg Address. What do you make of those criticisms?
I don't regard the Regensburg Address as a public relations error. The Pope delivered an academic paper at a university and made quite an acute philosophical observation about the common voluntarist starting points in militant Islam and militant secularism.

For one, everything depends on the will of Allah, for the other, it all depends on the will of the individual. In neither case does reason seem to have much to do with goodness.

To suggest that he shouldn't have made this point, is to concede that Popes should be subjected to the same political correctness gags as the rest of us. If the Pope can't say difficult things, who can? At least he doesn't have a family to support if the press turn nasty.

Nonetheless, I do think that there have been public relations errors, above all in the case of the anti-Semitic Lefebvrist bishop. It has been said that those whom the Pope consulted about this issue were primarily canon lawyers, and a degree in canon law certainly doesn't give one any experience in public relations.

I think that more use could be made of professional laity in the public relations work of the curia. For example, a well dressed professional woman might be a 'better look' in an interview about sexual abuse than a cleric wearing a lace surplice.

Your new book has sections on Karl Rahner and Hans Küng, two theologians who wielded much influence during the 1960s and 1970s. How do you think history will judge the work of those men compared to the work of Ratzinger?
First, I believe that these thinkers continue to have a significant influence in some circles, even though younger theologians are no longer drawn to them the way that they were a couple of decades ago.

I also think that future intellectual historians will identify affinities between the trajectories of Küng and Rahner and they will see de Lubac and von Balthasar as the alternative team, as it were.
Ratzinger will be situated within the group and regarded as someone who might have developed in the direction of Rahner and Küng, but didn't, and it will probably be said that he didn't because of the early influences of Augustine and Bonaventure on his spiritual and intellectual formation.

Küng described Rahner as the last of the great neo-scholastics, and the neo-scholastics often wanted to splice Aquinas with someone else, like Kant or Heidegger, for example. Ratzinger was never inclined that way. Francis Schüssler Fiorenza put it like this:

The theologians representing la nouvelle theologie interpreted Thomas Aquinas from the perspective of Augustine.

Ratzinger sought a much more direct retrieval of the Augustinian tradition. He wrote his first dissertation on Augustine's understanding of the people of God and his "habilitation" (a second dissertation) on St. Bonaventure's theology of history.

His theological writings often underscored Augustine's emphasis on spirituality, the role of the cross, and Christian charity toward the neighbor. His sermons explicated the scriptures with reference to patristic images and themes.

In this way, Ratzinger's writings contrasted sharply with the more arid scholasticism of his day. For this reason, he was perceived as a progressive theologian. But the Augustinian emphasis made Ratzinger much less favorable toward Metz's work on secularization and political theology, for example, and led him to question Rahner's understanding of Christianity.


While one could no doubt write a dissertation on what Rahner, Ratzinger, de Lubac and von Balthasar held in common, and for three of them at least there is the Ignatian heritage, nonetheless the divisions between Rahner on the one side, and Ratzinger, de Lubac and von Balthasar on the other, would seem to be greater than the affinities.

The intellectual historians are perhaps likely to conclude that a fundamental fault line between Rahner and those in his circle, and Ratzinger and those in his circle, is the understanding of the relationship between nature, grace and culture and what in other places Ratzinger has called 'the mediation of history in the realm of ontology'.

Ratzinger believed that Rahner was onto the right issues, that he was correct in his identification of certain problematic areas in need of theological reflection, but ultimately he did not agree with many of his solutions.

If someone has only enough time to read three or four works by Razinger/Benedict, what do you recommend?
If they were philosophically inclined I would start with the Introduction to Christianity, but otherwise I would recommend Jesus of Nazareth, then The Spirit of the Liturgy and God and the World: A Conversation with Peter Seewald.

For young theologians I would recommend Principles of Catholic Theology and The Nature and Mission of Theology. I would also suggest reading de Lubac's Catholicism and The Drama of Atheistic Humanism, von Balthasar's Love Alone is Credible and Pieper's Faith, Hope, Love.


This is an extraordinary interview because Dr. Rowland is perhaps one of the three or four people who have thoroughly studied all of Joseph Ratzinger's writings and attempted to present his thought sytematically, comprehensively and organically. In this interview, she manages in a few sentences and with a few citations to deal once and for all with the stereotyped and thoughtless idee fixe of a 'progressive' Ratzinger turning tail and becoming 'conservative' because the radicals of 1968 freaked him out!

A note about 'Suarezian Thomism': a term I have come across for the first time [I don't think it figured at all in Will Durant's Story of Philosophy, which was my basic introduction to philosophy], and which is not easy to 'research' quickly, much less to say what it is. Francisco Suarez (1548-1617) was a Jesuit, said to have been considered the greatest philosopher and theologian in his lifetime, who was among those who re-proposed scholasticism, mainly Aquinas's brand, for the Counter-Reformation era and Spain's century of conquest in Latin America. See en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francisco_Su%C3%A1rez The Wikipedia entry on him is not easy reading unless one is acquainted with scholasticism and Aquinas, which I am not!] Apparently his influence lasted well into the 19th century when neo-Thomism was revived in the Church under Leo XIII. Whatever it was he taught, apparently Joseph Ratzinger and most of his generation did not like it.

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A celebration of life
Translated from the Italian service of

Oct. 15, 2010

The entire world rejoiced these days at the rescue of 33 Chilean miners who were trapped from 70 days 700 meters under the ground. An extraordinary story which has made us reflect on the sacred value of human life. Here is the reflection of our director, Fr. Federico Lombardi, in his editorial for Octava Dies, the weekly magazine on CTV:



Several days ago, a young Chileno gave the Pope a Chilean flag that had been signed by all the 33 trapped miners. [The Chileno was a journalist who took part in the Catholic press Congress at the Vatican.]

The Pope kept the flag on display in his apartment, as he remembered the miners daily in his prayers, until their liberation finally occurred.

It is said that more than a billion persons followed the final stages of their rescue, after having taken part for two months in the concerns and hopes of the miners, their families, the rescuers and all of Chile.

Their liberation from the bowels of the earth was therefore reason for a great celebration. It is beautiful that all the world was so intensely interested in the extraordinary enterprise undertaken to save their lives.

It highlighted awareness of the the value of life, and the power of media technology allowed mankind to participate in the efforts made in behalf of the miners.

As we rejoice for the new horizons in life that have opened up for the 33 miners, in the background we must remember the innumerable miners in various parts of the world who had and will have a lees happy outcome in similar accidents, and their always insecure work conditions. We remember all those who have died forgotten or unappreciated for their work.

Can we not multiply the marvelous enterprise of intelligence and passion that went into saving the 33 in order to continue saving so many others through preventive means? Should not the mass media continue to make the world participate in such a commitment to life?



Earlier, I posted the following in the ISSUES thread, but I now feel it should go along with Fr. Lombardi's editorial, so I'm re-posting it here.

Books will be written, documentaries are even now being put together, and movies will be made of one of the most amazing and compelling stories in recent years - the trapped miners of Chile and their rescue. To anyone who followed the story even superficially from the time they told the world they were still alive when they had been given up for dead 17 days after the mountain caved in over them, the religious dimension of their experience was obvious - from what they wrote and said then to the time they emerged from 69 days of being buried alive. The following is one of the best reflections I have read about the obvious faith that sustained their hope and spirits...


Why there were no atheists
in the San Jose mine

By DAVID QUINN

October 15, 2010


Religious belief allows people to hope against hope when the odds are stacked against them.

I was in Rome last week attending a conference on the Catholic media with 200 other journalists from 85 countries. Most were from Spanish-speaking countries, including a delegation from Chile.

During one of the sessions, a member of the Chilean delegation unfurled the Chilean flag and on it was written the signatures of the 33 miners who have been pulled out of their underground prison over the past couple of days.

On Thursday, the last day of the conference, the flag was presented to the Pope in person. This was only one small example of the role, the overwhelmingly positive role that religion and faith has played in this drama.

Every inch of the way, the miners and their families have been fortified by their own prayers and the prayers of millions upon millions of other people.

The rescue operation was called Operation San Lorenzo, after St Laurence, the patron saint of miners. In August, when they found the men, a statue of San Lorenzo, complete with miner's hat, was brought to the site and an impromptu shrine set up that people prayed at day and night.

The Chilean president had a statue of the saint brought to the presidential palace.

Underground, the miners set up their own shrine and were each provided with a set of rosary beads blessed by the Pope. They knew he was among the millions of other Christians praying for them.

As the men emerged from their ordeal one by one, many of them blessed themselves or fell on their knees or looked heavenward.

The second man rescued, Mario Sepulveda, the one who hugged everyone he could find, told the cameras a little later how he had met both God and the devil while he was trapped down below, but that God had won and his faith had helped to sustain him.

Another miner said he had been "praying to God all the time".

Jonathan Vega, the brother of Alex Vega, yet another of the miners, said, "God has given me a lesson about life."

When people face adversity like this it is religion they frequently turn to and this has been shown time and again.

When Flight 1549 crash-landed in the Hudson River in January 2009, many of the passengers told journalists about how they had prayed their way through the ordeal.

Similarly, many of those who lived (or died) through the events of September 11 turned to their faith for strength.

When the Asian tsunami killed a quarter of a million people in 2004 most of the families of the victims, to judge from reports, didn't turn away from God, they turned towards Him.

In 1972, a plane crash-landed in the Andes and the survivors famously sustained themselves physically by cannibalising the dead passengers. But their faith played a huge part in sustaining them psychologically, as documented in the book and the movie, 'Alive'.

(By the way, why is it that in real-life disasters people almost always pray, but almost never in disaster movies, 'Alive' being an exception, seeing as it is based on real life?)

The media reporting on the rescue of the miners spent a lot of their time talking to psychologists and other counsellors about the likely psychological effects of the ordeal upon the men.

They would have been better off speaking to chaplains about the role religion plays in helping people to cope with adversity. And it does help. We know this now from research.

For example, people who practise a religion live longer on average than those who don't. One reason for this is that they tend to be healthier because they're less likely to abuse drugs or alcohol, for instance.

Religious believers are also less likely to commit suicide, or succumb to depression. They recover faster from serious illness. They get over a bereavement faster.

One reason believers can cope better with adversity is because they have a source outside themselves to which they can turn and that helps them to accept whatever is in store for them.

It allows them to hope against hope when the odds are stacked against them, and when all is lost, it allows them to accept that fact, not to rage against it, and to seek forgiveness for any wrong they may have done and therefore go to God in peace.

Of course, this doesn't prove that there is a God. Nor is it saying that people who don't practise religion can't cope with adversity, because many can, sometimes better than people who do have faith.

But research shows that, on average, it is better in these situations to have a religious faith and it is completely natural to think of God and to pray in such circumstances because religion is a natural and ineradicable part of human nature.

The story of the Chilean miners proves this yet again. Faith is what helped many of these men to cope with their ordeal. The old adage says, 'no atheists in foxholes'.

Now we know there are no atheists in collapsed mines either.

I wonder what it would take for arch-atheists Dawkins and Hitchens and all their fellow Ditchkinses to find God? Facing a terrorist's hatchet? Being on an airplane about to crash? And might there have been so much faith if the accident had happened in secular Europe rather than Catholic Chile?

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Saturday, Oct. 16, 28th Week in Ordinary Time

ST. MARIE-MARGUERITE D'YOUVILLE (Canada, 1701-1771)
Wife, mother and widow; Founder of the Grey Nuns; first native-born Canadian saint
By coincidence, the feast day of Canada's first native-born saint comes on the eve of the canonization of the country's first male
native-born saint, Brother Andre Bessette. Like Brother Andre, Marguerite Dufrost was born in Quebec province and did all her work
in Montreal. She had to interrupt her schooling at age 12 to help her widowed mother raise her siblings. At 20, she married a man who
turned out to be a gambler, bootlegger, and adulterer. They had six children, four of whom died in infancy; both surviving sons became
priests. She was widowed at 28 and had to open a store to support herself and her children, and spent what she could to help those
poorer than herself. In 1737, when both her sons were grown and enrolled in a seminary, she and some friends founded the Sisters of
Charity of the General Hospital of Montreal, where they had been helping to care for the poor. In 1747, they took over hospital
operations, with Marguerite as director. Over the years, the sisters, who came to be known as the Grey Nuns of Montreal, resorted to
other projects like making clothes for soldiers, to keep the hospital running. Soon, the poor of Montreal knew that in time of need, "Go to
the Grey Nuns - they never refuse to help". The General Hospital set a standard for medical care and Christian compassion. When it was
destroyed by fire in 1766, the Grey Nuns rebuilt it. After Mother Marguerite's death, the order expanded and now works throughout
Canada, the USA, Africa and South America. Pope John XXIII, who beatified her in 1959, called her 'mother of universal charity'. She
was canonized in 1990.
Readings for today's Mass:
www.usccb.org/nab/readings/101610.shtml




Today's OR has no papal photos, but carries the text of his message for World Food Day yesterday. There is
a front-page essay on Blessed John Henry Newman by his leading biographer Ian Ker, and a summary of consensus
expressed so far in the special synodal assembly for the Middle East, including the interventions on Thursday
of two Islamic guest speakers from Lebanon and Iran, representing Sunni and Shia Islam, respectively - they
both said that Muslims view the exodus of Christians from the Middle East as a loss because of the part they
play in Arab societies. Page 1 international news: Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu approves new building
permits in East Jerusalem; and the US dollar hits its lowest values so far.


THE POPE'S DAY

The Holy Father met today with

- H.E. Bronisław Komorowski, President of the Republic of Poland, with his wife and delegation

- Cardinal Stanisław Dziwisz, Archbishop of Cracow, with
Mons. Józef Michalik, Archbishop of Przemyśl of the Latins,
and president of the Polish bishops' conference, and
Mons. Stanisław Budzik, Auxiliary Bishop of Tarnów, secretary-general of the conference.

- Mons. Kazimierz Nycz, Archbishop of Warsaw

- Cardinal Marc Ouellet, P.S.S., Prefect of the Congregation for Bishops (weekly meeting)

This evening at 6 p.m., the Holy Father will attend a concert in his honor at Aula Paolo VI with
the participants of the current Synodal assembly. A German orchestra and choir, with German
soloists, will perform the Verdi Requiem.




The Holy Father has named four fairly recent Curial heads as members of the Congregation for
the Doctrine of the Faith:
- Mons. Angelo Amato, Prefect of the Congregation for the Causes of Sainthood
(till 2008, he was Secretary of the CDF)
- Cardinal Peter Turkson of Ghana, President of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace
- Cardinal Marc Ouellet, Prefect of the Congregation for Bishops
- Mons. Kurt Koch, President of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity.

He has also named a new director for the Sistine Chapel Choir - Salesian priest Marco Palombello,
a professor at the Pontifical Salesian University and founder of Rome's Inter-University Choir.

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MEETING WITH
POLAND'S NEW PRESIDENT




Communique from the Press Office


This morning the Holy Father Benedict XVI received in audience Bronislaw Komorowski, president of the Republic of Poland. The President subsequently went on to meet with Cardinal Secretary of State Tarcisio Bertone S.D.B. who was accompanied by Archbishop Dominique Mamberti, secretary for Relations with States.

The cordial discussions began by recalling the felicitous coincidence of the president's visit with the thirty-second anniversary of the election to the papacy of Servant of God Pope John Paul II.

Attention then turned to the importance of dialogue between Church and State, each according to its own competencies, for the promotion of the common good.

The parties expressed their mutual desire to continue effective co-operation in areas of joint interest - for example, in education and in promoting the fundamental values of society - and emphasis was given to the importance of defending human life in all its stages.

The meeting closed with an exchange of opinions on the current situation in Europe.






Pope meets Polish President
on anniversary of JPII's election



10 OCT 2010 (RV) - Pope Benedict today received the President of Poland in private audience here at the Vatican. The meeting came on the 32nd anniversary of the election of the Polish born Cardinal Archbishop of Krakow, Karol Wotjtyla w as the successor of Peter.

A statement released by the Vatican Press office noted the “happy coincidence” of the visit on this anniversary and went on to say that both the Pope and President focused on the importance of dialogue between Church and State, in order to promote the common good." ... [The story goes on to quote from the press communique.]

After the private talks there was an exchange of gifts in a more informal atmosphere.

President Komorowski gave the Pope a facsimile manuscript of the music of Frédéric Chopin, whose bicentenary is being celebrated this year.

The Pope in return gave the President a medal of his pontificate.

Before the meeting with the Holy Father, President Komorowski participated on Saturday morning at a Mass celebrated in the Vatican Grottoes, at the tomb of John Paul II.

After the Mass, the head of state and his wife knelt in prayer before the tomb of the Polish Pope and laid a bouquet of white and red flowers, the colours of Poland.


ADDENDUM:

The story fails to note that the Polish president, his delegation, along with Cardinals Stanislaw Diszwisz and other top Polish prelates are in Rome for the canonization tomorrow of Blessed Stanislaus Sołtys, priest of the order of Canons Regular of the Lateran, born Sept. 27, 1433 in Kazimierz (Poland) where he died on May 3, 1489.

Also in Rome for tomorrow's canonization are Cardinals Pell of Sydney and the Cardinal of Melbourne, along with Cardinal Keith O'Brien of St. Andrew-Edinburgh, leading pilgrims for Mary MacKillop, founder of the Congregation of the Sisters of St. Joseph of the Sacred Heart, born of Scottish parents on Jan. 15, 1842, in Fitzroy (Australia) and died Aug. 8, 1909 in Sydney.

Cardinal Marc Ouellet, Prefect of the Congregaiton for Bishops, and until recently Archbishop of Montreal, will lead Canadian Church officials for the canonization of Blessed Andre Bessette (secular name, Alfred), religious of the Congregation of the Holy Cross, born in Saint-Grégoire d'Iberville (Canada) on Aug. 9, 1845, and died in Montréal on Jan. 6, 1937.

No word so far on an official Spanish delegation for Candida Maria de Jesus Cipitria y Barriola (nee Juana Josefa), Spanish founder of the Congregation of the Daughters of Jesus (1845-1912).

The two other Blesseds to be canonized tomorrow are Italian:

- Blessed Giulia Salzano, Founder of the Congregation of the Catechist Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, born Oct. 12, 1846 in Santa Maria Capua Vetere (Italy) and died May 17, 1929, in Casoria and

- Blessed (Camilla) Battista da Varano, nun of the Order of St. Clare and founder of the Monastery of St. Clare in Camerino (Italy), born April 19, 1458, in Camerino, where she died on May 31, 1524.

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Verdi's 'Requiem' performed
for the Pope and Synod fathers

Adapted from

Oct. 18, 2010




Giuseppe Verdi's Messa da Requiemwas performed at the Aula Paolo VI this evening for the Holy Father and the participants of the current special Synodal assembly for the Middle East by the Chorgemeinschaft Neubeuern choir, Die Klang Verwaultung orchestra and four German soloists under musical director Enoch zu Guttenberg.

One of the world's most popular Requiem Masses, it was composed by the great Italian composer in 1874 for the city of Milan on the occasion of the first death anniversary of Italy's greatest 19th-century novelist Alessandro Manzoni.

Its success was enormous and the composition’s fame went well beyond the country’s borders. In 1875 Verdi made a revision by substituting a choral movement with an aria for mezzo-soprano.

Tonight's soloists were soprano Susanne Bernhard, mezzo-soprano Gerhild Romberger, tenor Eto Rosin and bass Yorck Felix Speer.






Here is a translation of the Holy Father's remarks after the concert.


Your Eminences,
Venerated Brothers,
Distinguished ladies adn gentlemen:

At the end of such an intense listening experience, the spirit would like to pause in meditation, but at the same time, one feels the need to demonstrate appreciation.
He contiuned in German:

I express heartfelt thanks to Maestro Enoch zu Guttenberg for his friendly words and for offering this concert as a gift from him ahd the wonderful orchestra Die Klangverwaltung, with the Choral Society of Neubeuer and the family of the Barons von and zu Guttenberg.

To you, the musical director of this performance, and to the soloists and every single member of the orchestra and choir, goes my appreciation. Thank you very much!

He resumed in Italian:

I am happy to greet the cardinals and prelates, especially the Synodal fathers, the distinguished authorities, and all of you - including the wards of Rome's diocesan Caritas - who were able to enjoy this excellent execution of Giuseppe Verdi's Messa da Requiem.

He composed it in 1873 on the death of Alessandro Manzoni whom he admired and almost venerated. In a letter he wrote: "What can I tell you of Manzoni? How to explain the most tender, indefinable, and new sensations evoked in me by the presence of that saint, as you call him?"

In the mind of the great composer, this work would have been the culmination and final work of his musical production. Not only was it his tribute to the great writer, but it was also a response to an artistic exigency - interior and spiritual - produced in him by the confrontation with the human and Christian stature of Manzoni.

Giouseppe Verdi spent his life scrutinizing the heart of man, In his operas, he brought to light the drama of the human condition, through music, the stories depcited, and their various characters. His theater is populated by the unhappy, the persecuted, victims.

Many pages of the Requiem re-echo this tragic vision of human destiny: In it, we touch the ineluctable reality of death and the fundamental questions about the transcendent world.

Verdi, not constrained by theatrical requirements, and using only the words of the Catholic liturgy and his music, presents the spectrum of human sentiments when facing the end of life: man's anguish confronting his own fragile nature, the sense of rebellion against death, the dismay one feels on the threshold of eternity.

This music invites us to reflect on the final realities, with all the possible states of the human heart, in a series of contrasts of forms, tones, colors, in alternating dramatic and melodic passages, marked by hope.

Giuseppe Verdi, who, in a famous letter to his publishers at Ricordi, called himself 'a bit atheist', wrote this Mas swhich seems to be a great appeal to the Eternal Father, in its attempt to overcome the cry of desperation in the face of death, in order to recover the yearning for life that becomes a silent and heartfelt prayer: "Libera me, Domine".

The Verdi Requiem, in fact, opens with a phrase in A minor, which almost seems to descend into silence - just a few chords from the cellos, pianissimo, muted - and conlcudes with the submissive invocation to the Lord, "Libera me".

This musioal cathedral discloses itself as a description of man's spiritual drama in the face of Almighty God, of man who cannot escape the eternal questions about his own existence.

After the Requiem, Verdi underwent a sort of 'second season' of musical composition which would close once again with religious music, the Pezzi Sacri [Four Sacred Pieces]. It is a sign of his spiritual disquiet, a sign that the yearning for God is written in man's heart because our hope rests in the Lord.

"Qui Mariam absolvisti, et latronem exaudisti, mihi quoque spem dedisti", we heard. "You who pardoned Mary (Magdalene) and granted the good thief's dying wish, you have given hope even to me".

The great musical fresco we heard this evening renews in us the certainty of St. Augustine's words: "Inquietum est cor nostrum, donec requiescat in te" - Our heart is uneasy until it rests in you.
(Confessions, I,1).

He resumed speaking German:

Dear friends, we must thank the Lord yet again that he has given us this moment of true Beauty to uplift our spirits. At the same time, we must thank all those who have been the instruments of God's Providence.
Most heartfelt thanks to you, Herr Professor zu Guttenberg. Many thanks to you, teh soloists, and to all the members of the orchestra and choir, and everyone who in various ways have contributed to the success of this beautiful evening. A heartfelt Vergelt's Gott to all of you.

Thank you and good evening.


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Hmm... the conductor is the father of our current secretary of defense -> de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl-Theodor_Freiherr_von_und_zu_Gu...


who is somewhat the hope for the future for christian deomcrats in Germany.

Interesting.
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PATHEOS is an online journal that encourages dialog about religion and spirituality, and intends to be a site for people looking "for credible and balanced information or resources about religion". The writer of the article is based in Manchester for BBC Online and former Deputy Editor of the UK Catholic weekly, The Universe.


First fruits:
The UK one month after Benedict

By Paul Burnell

October 12, 2010


Recently a coalition of UK evangelical Christians launched a project called Not Ashamed to be Christian, wherein adherents would promise to wear an outward sign of their faith on December 1 of this year.

It might seem strange to open a reflection on Pope Benedict XVI's recent missionary journey to Britain by flagging an initiative by people not normally admitted to the ecumenical tent, but in reality the pope's visit seems to have pre-empted this venture . . . or is it a move of the Holy Spirit?

Since the pope's mid-September visit here, there is a definite sense of English Catholics suddenly rediscovering their confidence (the Scots have never lacked this). This emboldened spirit even seems to be emerging from the normally reticent hierarchy. Archbishop Vincent Nichols of Westminster (London) in a pastoral letter following the pope's visit urged his flock to make their faith more visible in daily life, by offering to pray for people, by openly blessing themselves with the Sign of the Cross, or by making such remarks to people as "God bless you."

Now to some, especially in a country as in-your-face religious as the USA, this may seem pretty basic. But in one of Europe's most secular nations, where even an employee of British Airways was disciplined for wearing a cross, this is quite up-front and noteworthy.

Roman Catholics could be forgiven for feeling cowed by the aftermath of the abuse scandals, yet since the pope's humble acknowledgement of the hurt and anguish suffered through decades of inaction and mishandling, there is a tangible feeling that a boil has been lanced.

The Holy Father's visit began with media hostility and ended in tens of thousands of people -- not just Catholics -- lining the streets for him.

Visiting several churches across different cities since his visit, one notes a sense of the foot soldiers in the pews feeling less inhibited about their faith.

Hearing a newly-consecrated bishop preach last week on the 10th anniversary of the establishment of the Schoenstatt movement's first shrine in the UK, I was struck by the sheer joy on this shepherd's face as he peppered his homily with references to the words the Holy Father uttered in the UK.

And people seemed so grateful for this.

Some bishops have referred to a "Benedict bounce" with more people coming to church and an increase in inquirers.

Personally I think this is far too robust a term to be associated with the holy, gentle, humbly intellectual genius that is Pope Benedict XVI.

It is no coincidence that he chose Newman's motto Cor Ad Loquitur (heart speaks to heart) as the motto for the UK visit. The awesome, genuinely warm four-day exchange between shepherd and flock will grow a lasting fruit because Pope Benedict spoke to our hearts -- and indeed our souls -- but the season of growth may be extensive. His kind of witness sometimes takes longer to bear fruit as we try to overcome our concupiscence.

A friend told me an enlightening story last week. She was attending 40 hours devotion at an inner city church, where she heard the priest confess of his lukewarm initial response to the pope's scheduled evening vigil for youth at London's Hyde Park.

But Fr. X explained that as he encountered the incredible silence of a Pontiff and his outdoor flock of 80,000, praying in adoration before the Blessed Sacrament, something moved him, profoundly. In fact, he based the last hour of the 40-hour devotion on the Pope's programme for that night.

Everyone who attended that vigil has spoken of the silence at that event, which seemed to many to recall the half-hour silence mentioned in Revelation 8:1. One man, I know, a fully paid up member of "the church liberal," has repeatedly spoken with awe about how that silence, that vigil, affected him.

Of course the Lord's parable of the sower and the seed is a reality check; some who embraced the Pope's visit may be like the seed that did not bear fruit. However, you can't help thinking that Peter came among us obeying the Lord's admonition to strengthen the brethren (Luke 22:32), and that his obedience was efficacious.

We feel truly strengthened by those truly amazing four days in September.

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Oct. 17, 29th Sunday in Ordinary Time

ST. IGNATIUS OF ANTIOCH (d 107), Bishop, Martyr, Father of the Church
Benedict XVI devoted his catechesis on March 14, 2007, to St. Ignatius
www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/audiences/2007/documents/hf_ben-xvi_aud_20070314...
Legend says he was the infant that Jesus took into his arms in Mark 9. A convert from paganism to Christianity, he succeeded Saint Peter the Apostle as bishop of Antioch, Syria. He served during the persecution of Domitian, and in the subsequent persecution of Trajan, in his 37th year as bishop, he was ordered taken to Rome to be killed by wild animals. On the way, a journey which took months, he wrote a series of encouraging letters to the churches under his care. He was the first writer to use the term "Catholic Church'. His name is mentioned in the Canon of the Mass.
Readings for today's Mass:
www.usccb.org/nab/readings/101710.shtml




OR today.

Page 1 Church news: First draft of Synodal message on Middle East presented at the assembly, and the Holy Father's audience with the President of Poland. International news on Page 1: New chill between Israel and the United States over new building permits in East Jerusalem.


THE POPE'S DAY

Mass at St. Peter's Square to canonize six new saints. Homily.

Sunday Angelus - Before the Angelus prayer, the Holy Father had a special greeting for the various
pilgrim groups who came to Rome for the canonization rite.

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THE NEW SAINTS





[Will add their biodata later]

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Because she is Australia's first saint, Mary of the Cross MacKillop has taken most of the headlines about today's canonization and the lion's share of the reportage in the the Anglophone media. Even if another new saint, Andre Bessette, is also from an Anglophone country, Canada, he was French Canadian.


Pope Benedict canonizes first
Australian saint and 5 others

By Nicole Winfield





VATICAN CITY, Oct. 17 (AP) - Pope Benedict XVI proclaimed Australia's first saint on Sunday, canonizing a 19th-century nun and also declaring five other saints in an open-air Mass attended by tens of thousands.

Chants of "Aussie Aussie Aussie! Oi Oi Oi!" echoed throughout St. Peter's Square as a raucous crowd of flag-and-balloon-carrying Australians used a traditional sports cheer to celebrate the honor bestowed on their late native, Mary MacKillop. In Sydney, huge images of the nun were projected onto the sandstone pylons of the iconic Sydney Harbor Bridge.



Speaking in Latin on the steps of St. Peter's Basilica, Benedict solemnly read out the names of each of the six new saints, declaring each one worthy of veneration in all the Catholic Church. Among them was Brother Andre Bessette, a Canadian brother known as a "miracle worker" and revered by millions of Canadians and Americans for healing thousands of sick who came to him.

"Let us be drawn by these shining examples, let us be guided by their teachings," Benedict said in his homily, delivered in English, French, Italian, Polish and Spanish to reflect the languages spoken by the church's newest saints.

A cheer had broken out in the crowd when MacKillop's name was announced earlier in the Mass, evidence of the significant turnout of Australians celebrating the humble nun who was excommunicated for a few months in part because her religious order exposed a pedophile priest. [Unfortunately, we now have to live with this egregious example of media revisionism to serve their anti-Church agenda. First started a few weeks ago and since protested by St. mary's postulator and biogrpaher, MSM has nonetheless embraced it as a 'fact' and has ceaselessly perpetrated it since then!]

Even more MacKillop admirers -- an estimated 10,000 -- converged Sunday at the Sydney chapel where she is buried and at Sydney's Catholic cathedral, where a wooden cross made from floorboards taken from the first school that MacKillop established was placed on the steps.

Thousands of other Australians spent Sunday evening watching live broadcasts of the Vatican ceremony on television at home or on large outdoor screens in Sydney, in Melbourne where she was born, as well as in Penola, where MacKillop established her first school.

Born in 1842, MacKillop grew up in poverty as the first of eight children of Scottish immigrants. She moved to the sleepy farming town of Penola in southern Australia to become a teacher, inviting the poor and local Aborigines to attend free classes in a six-room stable.

She co-founded her order, the Congregation of the Sisters of St. Joseph of the Sacred Heart, with the goal of serving the poor, the sick and the disadvantaged, particularly through education.

"She supported Aboriginal people because she believed in supporting people who were disadvantaged," said Melissa Brickell, a pilgrim from Melbourne who was in St. Peter's Square for the ceremony. "She is a friend of Aboriginal people from the early days."

As a young nun in 1871, MacKillop and 47 other nuns from her order were briefly dismissed from the Roman Catholic Church in a clash with high clergy. In addition to bitter rivalries among priests, one of the catalysts for the move was that her order had exposed a pedophile priest.

Five months later, the bishop revoked his ruling from his deathbed, restoring MacKillop to her order and paving the way for her decades of work educating the poor across Australia and New Zealand.

In his homily, Benedict praised MacKillop for her "courageous and saintly example of zeal, perseverance and prayer."

"She dedicated herself as a young woman to the education of the poor in the difficult and demanding terrain of rural Australia, inspiring other women to join her in the first women's community of religious sisters of that country," Benedict said in English.

MacKillop became eligible for sainthood after the Vatican approved a second miracle attributed to her intercession, that of Kathleen Evans, who was cured of lung and brain cancer in 1993.

In a statement Sunday, Evans said she was humbled by MacKillop's example, grateful for her healing and overjoyed that MacKillop will now be more widely known.

"I think she would be delighted to see so many people looking at their own lives and considering how they can live better and care more," said Evans, who brought relics of MacKillop up to the altar during the canonization Mass.

Veronica Hopson, 72, was MacKillop's first miracle, cured of leukemia in 1961. She broke half a century of silence about her case, telling Australia's Channel Seven's Sunday Night program: "How does a miracle feel? I feel very fortunate that I was given the opportunity to live my life, have a family, have grandchildren, so that's a miracle."

Hopson was 22 when she was diagnosed with leukemia and given only weeks to live. She said her mother contacted nuns at Saint Joseph's convent in northern Sydney where Hopson was taught as a schoolgirl and where MacKillop once lived. The nuns brought cloth that MacKillop had worn and prayed for Hopson.

Hopson, who went on to have six children and four grandchildren, is recovering from recent bowel cancer. She said her miracle also carried a message for people who did not believe in God.

"I guess they must have some sort of hope, not just give in and just let the illness or sad things that happen in their life take over their life. Just keep hoping that it will get better," she said.



Canada's maple-leaf flag and Quebec's blue-and-white, fleur-de-lis flag was also out in force in St. Peter's Square in support of Brother Andre, a Canadian who legend says healed thousands of sick who prayed with him at his Montreal oratory.

Born in 1845, Brother Andre was orphaned at the age of 12. After taking his religious vows, he devoted his life to helping others and gained a reputation as a healer. When he died in 1937 at the age of 91, an estimated 1 million people came to pay homage.

"I think all the people from Quebec are happy now," said Alain Pilote, a 49-year-old pilgrim from Rougemont, near Montreal, who came to Rome for the Mass.

Benedict noted that Brother Andre was poorly educated but nevertheless understood what was essential to his faith.

"Doorman at the Notre Dame College in Montreal, he showed boundless charity and did everything possible to soothe the despair of those who confided in him," Benedict said in French.

Francoise Bessette, whose grandfather was Brother Andre's first cousin, was among the Canadians in attendance Sunday at St. Peter's.

"I didn't think this would happen while I was alive," said Bessette, whose brother Andre was named after the saint. "So to be here today is very special for me."

Australia's foreign minister, Kevin Rudd, was in Rome for the canonization, as was Canada's foreign minister, Lawrence Cannon. The Polish president, Bronislaw Komorowski, joined thousands of Polish pilgrims to honor that country's latest saint, Stanislaw Kazimiercyzk.

Also being canonized Sunday were Italian nuns Giulia Salzano and Battista Camilla da Varano, and Spanish nun Candida Maria de Jesus Cipitria.




Pope Benedict XVI
canonizes six new saints





VATICAN CITY, Oct. 17 (AFP) – Pope Benedict XVI formally recognised Australia's first saint, Mary MacKillop, at a mass in Saint Peter's Square in the Vatican on Sunday in front of some 50,000 cheering pilgrims.

Speaking in Latin, the Pope also canonised Canada's Brother Andre Bessette and four other saints from Italy, Poland and Spain, declaring that "throughout the Church they be honoured devoutly among all the saints."

Some 6,000 Australians came for the ceremony, Vatican authorities said, many wearing Australian bush hats and waving Australian flags.

"It's just wonderful. We've always believed Mary was a saint," said Moya Campbell, one of 800 nuns in the crowd from the Sisters of Saint Joseph of the Sacred Heart, the order that MacKillop helped found.

"This is awesome," said Emilia Mourani, 36, who flew in from Sydney.

"I've prayed to her and she's helped me with my problems. That's why I'm here, I wanted to thank her," she said, visibly moved by the moment.

Rudd earlier paid tribute to MacKillop as "an extraordinary Australian."

Anna Diliddo, 45, an art teacher from Toronto, came with a school group of 18 pupils and six teachers to witness the canonisation of Brother Andre.

"I feel very excited. He was wonderful. He healed many," Diliddo said.

There were nationwide celebrations in Australia for MacKillop (1842-1909) and her canonisation was preceded by a series of events in Rome including an open-air Aboriginal show at the Vatican museum with didgeridoo music.

MacKillop was an inspirational nun and teacher who fell out with Australian church authorities and was briefly excommunicated in 1871 in a fight over control of her order and after her denunciation of a paedophile priest. [There is that myth now reiterated as 'fact'!]

"St Mary's canoniation highlights the central role Christian faith has played in Australian history," Cardinal George Pell, the archbishop of Sydney, who helped celebrate the Mass, wrote in Australia's Sunday Telegraph.

"Mary -- Saint Mary of the Cross -- was a fine Australian and an outstanding Catholic," Pell said, referring also to the "unprincipled opposition opposition from bishops, clergy and even her own sisters" that she encountered.

Also among the spectators was Father Thomas Casanova, 43, a Catholic priest from Wagga Wagga in New South Wales.

"It's a momentous occasion. I've been looking forward to this since I was a child," said Casanova -- a distant relative of the new saint.

"She will help us have a greater perspective on life," he said.

A part-religious, part-nationalist, part-media frenzy has seized Australia for the canonisation, with "MacKillop" the musical playing to sold-out shows and a nightly projection of her image on the Sydney Harbour Bridge.

MacKillop already has stamps and pop songs in her honour, along with merchandise including bumper stickers and keyrings that is selling briskly. Her fans have also set up a Facebook page and a Twitter account in her honour.

Canonisation is only the end point of a long process of documentation and research into the life of would-be saints by Vatican authorities that often lasts several years and must include at least two proven miracles.

Brother Andre (1845-1937), a monk [He was not a monk!] from the Canadian province of Quebec was credited with healing powers that were initially dismissed by senior clergy.

The six saints announced on Sunday bring to 34 the number of people canonised by Benedict XVI since his election to the papacy in 2005. His predecessor John Paul II, recognised almost 500 saints.









The familiar coat of arms was not only hanging from the central loggia of St. Peter's today - it was also woven into the top of the tapestries depicting the six new saints to indicate they were canonized by this Pope.


And here's a report from Canadian TV to 'make up' in part for the Anglophone focus on St. Mary of the Cross:

Brother Andre is declared a saint
by the News Staff

Oct. 17, 2010

The humble Quebec monk who founded Montreal's St. Joseph's Oratory was named a saint by Pope Benedict in a ceremony at the Vatican Sunday.

The former Brother Andre, who was credited with miracle healings before his death in 1937, is now St. Andre.

The Pope told the thousands of faithful gathered for the ceremony, including hundreds of Canadians, that although St. Andre was poorly educated and working at a menial job, he was an inspiration to many faithful.

"(As) doorman at the Notre Dame College in Montreal, he showed boundless charity and did everything possible to soothe the despair of those who confided in him," Benedict said.

Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon led the official Canadian delegation to the ceremony.

"Here is a person who throughout his life had a dream, and he was able to pursue that dream, he was able to build the St. Joseph Oratory in Montreal," Cannon told CTV News Channel on Sunday in a telephone interview from Rome.

"So I think that when one looks at him, and what he was able to do throughout his life, he will be an inspiration for generations of Canadians to come."

Francoise Bessette, whose grandfather was Brother Andre's first cousin, was among the thousands of Canadians in attendance.

"I didn't think this would happen while I was alive," said Bessette, whose brother was named after the saint. "So to be here today is very special for me."



In Montreal, the faithful crowded around a big-screen television in the Oratory's church to watch the ceremony broadcast live from St. Peter's Square.

His elevation to sainthood will carry some worldly benefits for St. Andre's hometown, according to Kevin Wright, the president of the U.S.-based world religious travel association.

"When an individual is declared a saint, their shrines attract significant numbers of visitors," Wright told CTV News Channel. "And we're going to see that in Montreal."

He said that while the oratory that St. Andre founded is not as big a draw as sites like the French shrine at Lourdes, it already attracts an estimated one million pilgrims a year.

And Wright said that St. Andre's sanctification will only boost those numbers.

"Over the next couple of years we could see that double and get up to three, four or even five million people. And that's incredible."

Prime Minister Stephen Harper said in a statement that the newly canonized St. Andre was "a great Canadian."

"Brother Andre's canonization is an important inspiration to us all, and the Oratory will continue to serve as a central landmark of spiritual strength and faith for Quebecers and all Canadians."

Premier Jean Charest said in a statement from Quebec City that Saint Andre is a major figure in Quebec and that his "canonization gives full measure to his work as well as to his place in Quebec history."

All the attention and ceremony would likely have embarrassed St. Andre, who was known for his humility and his faith, which has been described by Jean-Claude Cardinal Turcotte as strong enough "to move mountains."

St. Andre was born Alfred Bessette in St-Gregoire-d'Iberville on Aug. 9, 1845, and was orphaned at the age of 12.

In 1904, the Holy Cross brother founded Montreal's St. Joseph's Oratory, a landmark church on the northern slope of Mount Royal that receives about 2 million visitors every year.

He became known for comforting the sick, and is credited with more than 100,000 miraculous healings before his death in 1937 at age 91. Two of those healings met the Vatican standard for a miracle, reported the Globe and Mail's Eric Reguly from Rome.

The drive for the canonization goes back to 1940, when it was started by the Archdiocese of Montreal and the Congregation of Holy Cross and St. Joseph's Oratory.

He was declared "venerable" by Pope Paul VI in 1978, and beatified -- declared "blessed" -- by Pope John Paul II in 1982.

Benedict announced his canonization in February after officially recognizing a second miracle attributed to him.

Brother Andre died at age 91 on Jan. 6, 1937. During the six days and nights before his funeral, more than one million people filed past his coffin.

His heart still rests in a small shrine in the Oratory, where he was ultimately laid to rest.

The heart, which is on public view as an object of contemplation for pilgrims, is protected by security systems after it was stolen in 1973. Police recovered it almost two years later from the basement of a home near Montreal.

Brother Andre follows in the footsteps of Marguerite d'Youville, who was born in 1701 and was the first saint born on what is now Canadian territory.

Canada's other saints are Marguerite Bourgeoys, who was born in France in 1620 and is considered the co-founder of Montreal, and eight French-born Jesuit martyrs who were killed during the 1640s.

Benedict gave Australia its first saint, canonizing 19th-century nun Mary MacKillop.

Also canonized Sunday were Stanislaus Soltys of Poland, Italians Giulia Salzano and Battista Camilla da Varano, and Candida Maria de Jesus Cipitria y Barriola of Spain.

St. Andre is especially dear to me, since I first 'discovered' the St. Joseph Oratory in Montreal in the early 1980s, and learned all about him shortly after he was beatified. How providential that both St. Andre and St. Mary of the Cross were both devoted to St. Joseph! The Oratory never fails to be an awesome experience - for me comparable to visiting St. Anthony's shrine in Padua, or the Marian shrines in Lourdes, Fatima, Montserrat and Guadalupe, where faith is palpable in the atmosphere, a distillation of the sentiments of all the millions of pilgrims who have come to these blessed places in prayer, and visible in the ex votos left behind by beneficiaries of God's grace through the intercession of the saints.

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THE CANONIZATION MASS - 2



Concelebrating the Mass today with the Holy Father were 5 Cardinals, 10 Archbishops, 13 Bishops and 20 Priests concelebrated. Among the 48 concelebrants, were 6 members of the Congregation for the Causes of Sainthood: Cardinal Jean-Claude TURCOTTE, Archbishop of Montreal; Cardinal Crescenzio SEPE, Archbishop of Naples; Cardinal George PELL, Archbishop of Sydney; Cardinal Stanisław DZIWISZ, Archbishop of Kraków; Mons. Francesco Giovanni BRUGNARO, Archbishop of Camerino-San Severino Marche, and Mons. Carlos López HERNÁNDEZ, Bishop of Salamanca.

Six new saints
for the Church



17 OCT 2010 (RV) - Tens of thousands of people joined Pope Benedict in St Peter’s Square today as he canonized six new Saints of the Church.

Australia’s first native-born saint, Mary of the Cross MacKillop, was one of those canonized in the solemn Eucharistic liturgy.

Some 5,000 pilgrims, along with Cardinal Archbishop George Pell of Sydney, came to Rome to see St Mary, a nineteenth century nun, raised to the “honor of the altar” at Sunday’s Canonization.

A daughter of Scottish Catholic Immigrants, she overcame many obstacles in founding a religious institute of women dedicated to St Joseph of the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

Once excommunicated by the bishops of Australia because of malicious accusations which fuelled their suspicion of the new form of religious life she founded – which was independent of the auspices of a single diocesan ordinary – St Mary remained steadfast in her trust in Divine Providence and in her selfless concern for the marginalized.

The event also saw the canonization of Canada’s first native male saint, André Bessette, a lay brother of the Congregation of Holy Cross.

A delegation of over 5,000 pilgrims came from Canada and the United States to participate in his official declaration as a saint of the Universal Church.

St André spent over 40 years as the porter of Notre Dame College in Montréal after he entered religious life. He was known as an affable, simple and devout religious who inspired countless persons to integrate their faith into their daily lives and seek the face of Christ in the poor.

During his lifetime, many miracles were attributed to the intercessory prayer of this humble and loving religious brother.

Motivated by his devotion to St Joseph, the husband of the Virgin Mary, he received permission to found a simple oratory in the Canadian city.

Today, the Oratory of St Joseph in Montréal, is an enormous sanctuary and the destination of many North American pilgrims who are in search of healing and reconciliation and venerate St André’s mortal remains.

Along with St Mary and St André four other blessed became officially recognized as saints on Sunday.

A 15th century Polish priest, St Stanislaw Soltys, who was a Canon Regular of the Lateran; St Cándida María de Jesús Cipitria y Barriola, foundress of the 19th century Congregation of the Daughters of Jesus in Spain); St Giulia Salzano, foundress of the 19th century Congregation of the Catechetical Sisters of the Sacred Heart in Italy; and St Battista Camilla Varano, a 15th century reformer of the Order of St Clare in Italy.

The Pope reminded the tens of thousands gathered in St Peter’s Square on a beautiful autumn morning that Jesus also invites each of us to follow Him in order to inherit eternal life.

"Let us be drawn by these shining examples, let us be guided by their teachings, so that our existence might be a canticle of praise to God", he said. "Let the Virgin Mary and the intercession of the six new Saints whom we venerate with joy today obtain for us this grace."



Reliquaries for each of the new saints were on a pedestal next to the altar.


THE RITE OF CANONIZATION

After the antiphon and opening prayers, the Prefect of the Congregation for the Causes of Sainthood introduces the new saints:


The faithful are then invited to listen to words and thoughts expressed by each of the six new saints. Each reflection is followed by a prayer and hymn in honor of the new saint. Then comes the formal rite of canonization. The Prefect formally requests that the Blesseds be recognized as saints in the Universal Church.


The Holy Father formally proclaims the new saints.


The choir chants a hymn of praise. The Prefect for Sainthood Causes formally asks the Holy Father to publish the Apostolic Letter regarding the new saints, and the Holy Father replies: 'We so order it".


The canonization rite is followed by the Gloria.

NB: Illustrations in the libretto
by Jean Bourdichon, Tours, France, 1503-1508
fron the Grandes Heures d'Anne de Bretagne
Bibliotheque Nationale de France, Paris




Here is a translation of the Holy Father's homily:



Dear brothers and sisters:

We renew today in St. Peter's Square the feast of holiness. With joy, I address my heartfelt welcome to you who have come, some from far away, to take part in the celebration.

A special greeting to the cardinals, bishops and superiors-general of the institutes founded by the new saints, as well as to the official delegations and all civilian authorities.

Together, let us seek to receive what the Lord tells us in the Sacred Scripture just proclaimed. The liturgy this Sunday offers us a fundamental teaching: the need to pray always, without tiring.

Sometimes, we get tired of praying, we may get the impression that prayer is not so useful in life, that is hardly effective. And so we are tempted to dedicate ourselves to activity, to use all human means to reach our purposes, and we do not turn to God. But Jesus affirms that we must always pray, and he does this through a specific parable (cfr Lk 18,1-8).

It is about a judge who does not fear God and has no respect for anyone, a judge who does not have a positive attitude, but only seeks his own interests. He does not fear the judgment of God and he does not respect his neighbor.

The other personage is a widow, a person in a situation of weakness. In the Bible, the widow and the orphan are considered the neediest categories because they are defenseless and without means.

The widow goes to the judge to ask for justice. Her chances to be heard by him are virtually nothing, because the judge despises her and she is incapable of putting any pressure on him. She cannot even appeal for help from religious leaders, because this judge does not fear God. And so, this widow seems devoid of any chances.

But she insists. She calls on the judge tirelessly. She is importunate, and in the end, she succeeds in getting the judge to act. At this point, Jesus reflects, using an a fortiori argument: If a dishonest judge can ultimately allow himself to be moved by a widow's pleas, how much more does God, who is good, listen to those who pray!

Indeed God is generosity himself, he is merciful, and therefore, is always ready to listen to prayers. Therefore, we should not despair but always be insistent in prayer.

The conclusion of the Gospel passage speaks of faith: "When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?" (18,8). It is a question that is intended to inspire an increase of faith on our part.

In fact, it is clear that prayer should be an expression of faith, otherwise it is not prayer. If one believes in the goodness of God, we cannot pray in a truly adequate way. Faith is essential as the basis for a prayerful attitude.

That was the case with the six new saints that are proposed today for the veneration of the Universal Church: Stanisław Sołtys, André Bessette, Cándida María de Jesús Cipitria y Barriola, Mary of the Cross MacKillop, Giulia Salzano and Battista Camilla Varano.
[

C]He says the following in Polish:

St. Stanisław Kazimierczyk, a 15th-century religious, can be an example and intercessor even for us. His entire life was linked to the Eucharist. Above all, in the church of Corpus Domini in Kazimierz, today part of Cracow, where alongside his mother and father, he learned faith and piety; where he made his religious vows with the Canons Regular; where he worked as priest and educator, always attentive to the care of the needy.

But he was especially linked to the Eucharist through an ardent love for Christ present in the bread and wine, reliving the mystery of his death and resurrection in the bloodless sacrifice of the Holy Mass, through the practice of love for neighbor, of which Communion is both source and sign.


In French, he said:

Brother André Bessette, of Quebec, Canada, and a religious of the Congregation of the Holy Cross, knew poverty and suffering very early. But they led him to have recourse to God in prayer and an intense interior life.

As a doorman at the Notre Dame College in Montreal, he showed a charity that was without bounds and sought to comfort the distress of those who came to confide in him. Though unlettered, he understood where the essential of his faith lay. For him, to believe meant to submit freely and with love to divine will.

Completely inhabited by the mystery of Jesus, he lived the beatitude of pure hearts and personal rectitude. It was this simplicity which enabled him most to see God.

He caused the construction of the Oratory of St. Joseph on Mont Royal, of which he would be the faithful custodian until his death in 1937. The shrine has been witness to innumerable healings and conversions.

"Do not seek to be relieved of your trials," he used to say, "but ask for the grace to bear them well".

For him, everything spoke of God and his presence. May we, in his example, seek God with simplicity in order to find him always at the heart of our life! May the example of Brother Andre inspire Christian life in Canada!


He spoke next in Spanish:

"When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?" (cf Lk 18,8). Today we can say Yes, with firmness and relief, when we contemplate figures like Mother Cándida María de Jesús Cipitria y Barriola.

That young woman of simple origins had a heart on which God had put his seal, which would lead her early on, with the guidance of her Jesuit spiritual directors, to take the firm resolution that she would live 'only for God'.

A decision she kept faithfully, as she herself recalled when she was about to die. She lived for God and for what he wants most: to reach everyone, to bring to all the hope that does not waver, especially those who need it most.

"If there is no room for the poor, then there is none for me, too", she used to say, and with meager resources, she was able to induce her sisters to follow Jesus and dedicate themselves especially to the education and promotion of women. Thus was born the Daughters of Jesus, who have in their founder a model of elevated life to emulate, and a passionate mission to pursue in the numerous countries where they work according to the spirit and ardent desires of Mother Candida's apostolate.


In English, he said:

"Remember who your teachers were – from these you can learn the wisdom that leads to salvation through faith in Christ Jesus."

For many years, countless young people throughout Australia have been blessed with teachers who were inspired by the courageous and saintly example of zeal, perseverance and prayer of Mother Mary McKillop.

She dedicated herself as a young woman to the education of the poor in the difficult and demanding terrain of rural Australia, inspiring other women to join her in the first women’s community of religious sisters of that country.

She attended to the needs of each young person entrusted to her, without regard for station or wealth, providing both intellectual and spiritual formation.

Despite many challenges, her prayers to Saint Joseph and her unflagging devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, to whom she dedicated her new congregation, gave this holy woman the graces needed to remain faithful to God and to the Church.

Through her intercession, may her followers today continue to serve God and the Church with faith and humility!


He gave the rest of the homily in Italian:

In the second half of the 19th century, in the region of Campania, southern Italy, the Lord called on a young elementary schoolteacher, Giulia Salzano, and made her an apostle of Christian education, founder of the Congregation of the Catechist Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

Mother Giulia understood well the importance of catechesis in the Church, and uniting her pedagogical preparation to spiritual fervor, she dedicated herself to that activity with generosity and intelligence, contributing to the formation of persons of every age and social rank.

She would tell her sisters that she wished to give catechism until the last hour of her life, demonstrating herself that "if God created us to know him, to love him and to serve him in this life", nothing should come before this task.

May the example and intercession of St. Giulia Salzano sustain the Church in her perennial task of announcing Christ and forming authentic Christian consciences.

St. Battista Camilla Varano, a Poor Clare nun of the 15th century, bore witness to the very end to the evangelical sense of life, persevering especially in prayer. Having entered the convent in Urbino at age 23, she became a leading player in that vast reform movement of Franciscan female spirituality which was meant to fully recover the charism of St. Clare of Assisi. She promoted new convents in Camerino, Fermo and San Severino and was elected abbess several times.

The life of St. Battista, totally immersed in the profundity of the divine, was a constant ascent along the way to perfection, with heroic love for God and her neighbor. Her life was marked by great suffering and mystical consolations. She had decided, in fact, as she herself wrote, "to enter into the Most Sacred heart of Jesus and drown in the ocean of his most bitter sufferings".

At a time when the Church was suffering a laxity in practices, she resolutely followed the way of penitence and prayer, inspired by the ardent desire to renew the mystical Body of Christ.

Dear brothers and sisters, let us thank the Lord for the gift of holiness, that it may shine forth in the Church, and which today we see in the faces of these brothers and sisters of ours.

Jesus invites each of us to follow him in order to have the legacy of eternal life. Let us be drawn by these luminous examples and be guided by their teachings, so that our existence may be a canticle of praise to God.

May we obtain this grace through the Virgin Mary and the intercession of the six new saints whom we venerate today with great joy. Amen
.





Benedict XVI: Six new saints show
that faith and holiness abide




Vatican City, Oct 17, 2010 (CNA/EWTN News).- Pope Benedict celebrated Sunday’s canonization Mass of the six newest saints in the Church as a “feast of holiness.”

Alluding to the day’s Gospel readings, he declared that their prayerful lives are “shining examples” and proof that faith still can be found on earth.

The Vatican estimated attendance in St. Peter's Square at 50,000 as Pope Benedict XVI recognized the holiness and heroic virtue of six Catholics.

In the Rite of Canonization, the Holy Father declared as saints Fr. Stanislaw Soltys, Br. Andre Bessette, Sr. Candida Maria de Jesus Cipitria Y Barriola, Sr. Mary Of The Cross (Mary MacKillop), Sr. Giulia Salzano and Sr. Battista Camilla da Varano.

During his homily at the Mass, the Pope spoke of the celebration as a renewal of "the feast of holiness." Referring to Sunday's Gospel message in that context, he said that its "fundamental teaching" is "the need to always pray ceaselessly."

Pope Benedict noted that although the faithful might at times consider prayer tiresome and ineffective, being tempted to use human means to reach their goals, the Lord underscores the importance of prayer as in the parable in the Gospel reading.

In the passage from St. Luke, Jesus tells the story of the widow who must appeal to a dishonest judge to obtain justice. With persistence, she succeeds despite his contempt for her. The Lord asks how much more God will answer those who pray if this judge was convinced by the prayer of the widow.

"God in fact is generosity personified," said the Pope, "he is merciful, and therefore he is always willing to listen to prayers. Therefore we must never despair, but always persist in prayer."

He added that the Gospel reading’s concluding question of whether Jesus will find faith when he returns is an inspiration to an increase in faith, which is "essential as the basis for prayerful behavior.”

The Pontiff said the six new saints offered for veneration sought to be such an inspiration.

Remembering each of the new saints, he paused particularly on Spain's St. Candida Maria de Jesus to answer that final question of the Gospel passage. Today, he explained, one can see "with relief and conviction" that there is faith on earth in the contemplation of figures such as her.

Known for her commitment to prayer, in 1871 St. Candida founded the Congregation of the Daughters of Jesus in Salamanca, Spain, to teach children and assist women. The order continues to function in Latin America, Asia, Africa and Europe.

Pope Benedict gave thanks to God for the gift of holiness "which shines in the Church and is visible today on the faces of these our brothers and sisters."

Noting Jesus's invitation for all to follow Him to obtain eternal life, he exhorted the faithful to be "drawn by these shining examples ... guided by their teachings, so that our existence might be a canticle of praise to God.

"Let the Virgin Mary and the intercession of the six new saints whom we venerate with joy today obtain for us this grace," he asked

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A major MSM newspaper has picked up on Anna Arco's 'scoop' in the Catholic Herald this weekend on significant movements in the Anglican Church with respect to Anglicanorum coetibus. To say it is exciting to be in at the start of an unprecedented chapter in the modern history of the Church in the West is an understatement... And all thanks to the Pope of Christian unity!:


Church of England parish
plans move to Rome

High-Anglican Folkestone congregation could be the first to defect
to Roman Catholic church in bitter row over women priests

by Stephen Bates

Sunday 17 October 2010


Left, Fr. Bould in St Peter's church in Folkestone; right, Bishop Broadhurst, who announced yesterday he was joining an Ordinariate at the end of the year.

In the church of St Peter on the East Cliff in Folkestone, Kent, this morning, the sermon was of battles. It was the Trafalgar Day service – marking the 205th anniversary of Nelson's victory this Thursday – so, with many old sailors in the congregation, Camperdown was mentioned and Lepanto, the Glorious First of June and other long-gone actions at sea.

But it was another battle, in a different sort of see, that was clearly uppermost in the mind of the priest, Father Stephen Bould: his parish may be the first to defect wholesale from the Church of England to Rome following Pope Benedict XVI's offer of a safe harbour for Anglicans disaffected by their church's decision to allow women priests to become bishops.

Bould told his ageing flock: "It is a battle we are fighting now. Let's fight it with flair, imagination and spirit."

The high-Anglican Victorian church on the cliffs above the port has become the scene of the latest twist in the Church of England's agonizingly drawn-out wrestle over women's ministry, 16 years after its first female ordinations.



In July, the church's general synod voted not to make special statutory provisions for the remaining high church conservatives who do not wish to be "tainted" by association with women's ministry and who have so far hung on without converting to Roman Catholicism, and since then the language of the opponents has become increasingly embattled and fraught.

At a conference of opponents this weekend, the Right Reverend John Broadhurst, suffragan bishop of Fulham, at last announced he will resign in the new year, denouncing the church as "fascist".

He told the Sunday Telegraph: "I don't feel I have any choice but to take up the Pope's offer. The general synod [of the Anglican Church] has become vindictive and vicious. It has been fascist in its behaviour, marginalising those who have been opposed to women's ordination. We have not been given any space." There were calls yesterday for Broadhurst to be disciplined for conduct unbecoming to the clergy.

Hard on his heels came word that St Peter's parochial church council (PCC) had decided to seek a meeting with Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, who is also their diocesan bishop, with a view to joining the ordinariate proposed by the Pope a year ago.

This would allow individual Anglicans a corralled space within Catholicism where they could continue to follow some Anglican traditions.

The parish issued a statement, saying the PCC was anxious the move should be made as easy as possible, not only for those wishing to join the ordinariate but for the diocesan family of Canterbury "whom they will regretfully be leaving behind".

Bould added a statement of his own:

"Until yesterday, St Peter's people were on a quiet and gentle journey of prayer and discernment. Today we find ourselves thrust into the spotlight. At the heart of all this is Jesus Christ and the unity and identity he gives to his people.

"If the attention of the media makes others consider how important a matter that is, then we're pleased. Personally, I am proud of the courage and faith of the lay people of this church."

But he indicated that as far as he was concerned there was nothing left for him in the Church of England.

There were about 50 in the all-white congregation this morning, no youngsters except in the choir, and more walking sticks and zimmer frames than young couples with babes in arms. There were none of those, although there is a Church of England primary school attached to the church.

The air was thick with incense and the ritual was high church. Statues of the Virgin Mary and Jesus bearing the sacred heart, stations of the cross and rosary beads, all anathema to low church evangelical Anglicans, were much in evidence.

Hail Marys were said, and prayers offered for the Rt Rev Keith Newton, Bishop of Richborough, their provincial visitor, and Pope Benedict.

Not all the church's parishioners apparently feel happy with the idea of conversion, but Bould warned his flock at the end of the mass: "Please, if you are approached by people from the press or media outside, read our statement out and smile. You are not obliged to speak to them and I warn you to be on your guard."

His congregation heeded his advice, but Bould himself came out, clad in a cassock, to explain that the PCC's decision had not been put to the congregation and he did not know how many would go over to Rome. Nor did he know what would happen to the 150-year-old parish church, or the school.

"It would be wonderful if it were possible for people to continue to worship in this building," he said.

He must know, however, that the Church of England is unlikely to let either building go and that he and other married Anglican clergy who wish to be re-ordained as Catholics will face an impoverished future: Catholic stipends and pensions being much lower than Anglican ones.

The Church of England has four bishops, known as provincial episcopal visitors, who have been appointed to minister to the small number of parishes which want nothing to do with ordained women, or with the male bishops who have ordained them.

The Rt Rev John Broadhurst, suffragan bishop of Fulham, a long-standing and vociferous opponent of women priests, was born a Roman Catholic, subsequently became an Anglican and has been ordained in the Church of England for 44 years.

Rt Rev Andrew Burnham, bishop of Ebbsfleet, and Abingdon-based former music teacher, has said he wants to lead parishioners into unity with the Roman Catholic church.

Rt Rev Keith Newton, bishop of Richborough, based in Essex, has held talks at the Vatican about joining Rome.

Rt Rev Martyn Jarrett, bishop of Beverley, based in Yorkshire, seems more positive about remaining in CofE.


Here's Damian Thompson's reaction to yesterday's announcements:

Earthquake in Anglo-Catholicism:
Bishop of Fulham to convert to Rome;
says Forward in Faith
'not part of the Anglican Church'


October 15th, 2010

Bishop John Broadhurst, Bishop of Fulham in the Anglican diocese of London, is to resign his post later this year to join the Pope’s Ordinariate. The Catholic Herald’s Anna Arco broke the story, also revealing that Bishop Broadhurst will stay as chairman of Forward in Faith, which he says is “not a Church of England organisation”.

It sounds as if traditional Anglo-Catholicism is undergoing a major shift (or crisis) of allegiance, because FiF, though not representative of everyone in that constituency, was the main body for Anglo-Catholics in the Church of England opposed to women bishops and priests. Now it seems to be heading towards Roman Catholicism. [The FIF branches outside England, including the Traditional Anglican Communion, were pretty clear about this since last year!]

Bishop Broadhurst made his announcement at Forward in Faith’s national assembly in London today. I’m told that the mood was very sympathetic towards the Ordinariate scheme.

Update: Since writing this post, I’ve listened to a clear and elegant speech on the FiF website by Fr James Patrick (in secular life, His Honour Judge James Patrick) explaining that the Ordinariate is “at the heart of the Pope’s mission” and encouraging those who are committed to joining the structure to form part of the “first wave”.

Fr Patrick refers to a “Lenten journey”. Do I detect a hint that there could be mass receptions into the Catholic Church at Easter?

If the chairman of Forward in Faith, together with the flying bishops of Ebbsfleet and Richborough, are joining the Roman Ordinariate, then you can see why members who want to stay in the C of E suddenly needed a new body – the Society of St Wilfrid and St Hilda, aka “Hinge & Bracket”, founded this month by “catholic” bishops in the General Synod.

For true opponents of women priests this is a desperate last option, because H&B can’t offer any meaningful safeguards from women’s ministry. For those many Anglo-Catholics who are prepared to soften their stance, however, it’s a quiet route back into the mainstream of the established Church.

So many things are happening at once that it’s difficult to write authoritatively; the picture will be clearer in a few days. But here are some observations:

1. The Ordinariate is picking up momentum. Not only is the chairman of Forward in Faith joining, but so is the president of the Church Union, the Rt Rev Edwin Barnes, retired Bishop of Richborough. So that makes four C of E bishops we know are crossing the Tiber: +John Broadhurst, +Andrew Burnham, +Keith Newton and +Edwin Barnes, and there will be others.

Critics of the Ordinariate may scoff at its small size – and I really do think it will be small when it launches early next year – but the fact remains that three out of the four bishops appointed by Synod to minister to traditionalists are joining this new semi-autonomous Catholic body set up by Pope Benedict XVI.

2. Bishop Andrew Burnham of Ebbsfleet and Bishop Keith Newton of Richborough are “on study leave”. I wonder if that means they’re in the process of receiving instruction now. That’s the rumour doing the rounds, but it is only a rumour.

3. I’m surprised (but pleased) that the Bishop of Fulham is taking the plunge this year, rather than waiting. I know I always refer to him disrespectfully as “wily old John Broadhurst”, but when I knew him as a Synod activist he was wily and a bit of an operator. I presume he’s sorted out the problem of having been born a Roman Catholic, which complicated things.

Being married, he couldn’t have been an RC bishop anyway. He’s good fun, as I recall, always ready with a joke (often at the expense of the more camp Anglo-Catholics). And he’s a “big beast” of Anglo-Catholicism, not a marginal figure. I suspect he may convince waverers to follow his example.

Update: Having now listened to his speech on the website, I’m glad he’s unequivocal about joining the Ordinariate, but I wish he would be less bitter about losing various battles in the C of E. In the long-term, defeat was inevitable.

4. The success of Pope Benedict’s visit to Britain has help moved things along, no doubt about it. I’m sure the Ordinariate was at the back of the Holy Father’s mind throughout his trip, and he explicitly asked the Bishops of England and Wales to support it just before he left.

Here’s a thought: one reason the Pope and Mgr Marini were so anxious that the liturgy at Westminster Cathedral should be done properly (rather than mucked around by Eccleston Square) may have been a desire to show Anglo-Catholics that the mother church of England and Wales was in full command of the Roman liturgy. These things matter to those Anglicans who go to great lengths to master the Roman Rite themselves. (As I’ve written before, I hope Anglo-Catholic parishes that reject the Pope’s offer will tone down the Roman stuff.)

5. I’ve been sceptical that any Anglo-Catholic parishes will join the Ordinariate en masse. There are so many practical difficulties – but that hasn’t stopped St Peter’s Folkestone from deciding to give it a go. Good for them.

Here’s a statement from their PCC, courtesy again of Anna Arco [reproduced in the photo above, taken from the Folkestone website]: “At its meeting on September 28th, the PCC of Folkestone St Peter unanimously requested the Churchwardens to approach The Archbishop of Canterbury, our Diocesan Bishop, in order to consult about the wish of the PCC and many of the congregation to join the English Ordinariate of the Catholic Church when it is erected. We are anxious that this should be made as easy as possible, not only for us, but for the diocesan family of Canterbury that we shall regretfully be leaving behind.”

I won’t speculate about the size and shape of the English Ordinariate (one of several around the world, including Scotland) because I don’t have enough information. I gather that members of Forward in Faith who are interested in joining are being told to contact the ex-Anglican Bishop Alan Hopes, now of Westminster.

But I think we can say that, although it will be modest in size, the Personal Ordinariate for England is a big deal:
- It is being set up by a major decree of the Pope;
- It will offer ex-Anglicans an unprecedented degree of independence from unsympathetic local RC bishops;
- It will form part of a worldwide network that will include the former leaders of the independent Traditional Anglican Communion (now entering into full communion with the Holy See); and
- It has already attracted the support of well-known English Anglo-Catholic bishops as well as enthusiastic younger clergy.

The nature of its “patrimony” will vary from place to place, but Bishop Burnham has already made it clear that its priority is evangelism.

This is a historic change to the English ecclesiastical landscape, arguably the true culmination of the Oxford Movement, and an answer to many prayers – including, perhaps, those of Blessed John Henry Newman.

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Benedict XVI:
Truth wins over image
even mediatically


Oct. 14, 2010


Almost 250,000 persons in Palermo, more than 600,000 young people now registered for World Youth Day in 2011, 30,000 at the last general audience in September when only 9000 had asked for tickets, teh celebratory crowds in the United Kingdom, millions of copies sold of his books (3 million of his book on Jesus, with a second volume coming out)... And the list could go on....

Of course, to measure the popularity of a Pope is always a futile activity, but still it must be admitted: Going by the numbers, as the experts would say, Benedict XVI 'sells'. This is not to defend him in any way, but a journalistically honest consideration of the fact that it is high time to let go of the cliche of the Pope who is 'not mediatic compared to his predecessor'.

Benedict XVI is reaching the people, in a media scenario which is more complicated than that in John Paul II's time. This shows that 'mediaticity', an idea which is very much in vogue, has nothing to do with popularity.

Papa Wojtyla himself, it must be acknowledged, 'sold' not only because of his brilliant presence but because he was a genuine Christian, and the people felt it.

Benedict XVI, with a different style, with a different character and in a different historical moment, is succeeding in the same way. Substance imposes itself over appearances in the thirst for truth in this world.

"Truth, announcement and authenticity in the digital era' is the theme chosen by the Pope for the next World Day of Social Communications. Every Christian should meditate on it. As well as many mass media, considering their constant loss of customers these days.

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Monday, Oct. 18, 29th Week in Ordinary Time

ST. LUKE (Greek, born in Antioch, Syria; died in Thebes, Greece at age 84)
Apostle and Evangelist, Patron Saint of Physicians
Companion of St. Paul, author of the Gospel considered to be the most historical of the four Gospels, and the Acts of the Apostles, recounting the history of the early Church following the Resurrection. He met Saint Paul in Troas, and evangelized Greece and Rome with him, being there for the shipwreck and other perils of the voyage to Rome; He also stayed in Rome for Paul’s two years of in prison. Much of his Gospel was based on the teachings and writings of Paul, interviews with early Christians, and his own experiences. He is believed to have painted an icon of Mary now kept in the Patriarchate of Constantinople and model for icons like the Salus Populus Romanum in Santa Maria Maggiore and the Virgin of Czestochowa. His remains have had quite an itinerary and have been kept in the Church of St. Giustina in Padua since the 12th century where it was taken from Constantinople for safekeeping. In 2001, scientific testing established that the remains in Padua corresponded to what is known about Luke, and a head that had been kept in Pargue was shown to fit the Padua remains perfectly. See
www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/italy/1360095/DNA-test-pinpoints-St-Luke-the-apostles-remains-to-Pa...
Readings for today's Mass:
www.usccb.org/nab/readings/101810.shtml

[Because they were not apostles, the evangelists Luke and Mark have somehow been left out of Benedict XVI's catechesis. They should have come after St. Paul in the series, before Timothy and Titus, perhaps? I wonder if anyone has pointed that out. He will surely talk about St. Mark when he goes to Venice next May, but St. Luke, strangely, is not the patron saint of any major city!]


No OR today.


THE POPE'S DAY

The Holy Father took part in the morning session of the Syndal assembly, after which he met with

- H.E. César Mauricio Velásquez Ossa, Ambassador from Colombia, who presented his credentials. Message in Spanish.

- Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco, Archbishop of Genoa, and president of the Italianbishops' conference

- H.E. Manuel Roberto López Barrera, Ambassador from El Salvador, who presented his credentials. Message in Spanish.


The Vatican earlier released a letter from the Holy Father to the seminarians of the world, in all the official
languages of the Vatican. It seems this is yet another unprecedented action by Benedict XVI.


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What a beautiful letter this is! Yet another text to add to that volume of 'Benedict XVI on the priesthood' that ought to come out by now... The words he addresses to his fellow priests are always among the most personal and inspiring of his works, in which he talks about his most intimate life, the priesthood as a way to perfection... He covers all the bases here, including celibacy and the problem of sex offenses by priests.


POPE'S LETTER TO
THE SEMINARIANS OF THE WORLD







Dear Seminarians,

When in December 1944 I was drafted for military service, the company commander asked each of us what we planned to do in the future.

I answered that I wanted to become a Catholic priest. The lieutenant replied: "Then you ought to look for something else. In the new Germany priests are no longer needed".

I knew that this "new Germany" was already coming to an end, and that, after the enormous devastation which that madness had brought upon the country, priests would be needed more than ever.

Today the situation is completely changed. In different ways, though, many people nowadays also think that the Catholic priesthood is not a "job" for the future, but one that belongs more to the past.

You, dear friends, have decided to enter the seminary and to prepare for priestly ministry in the Catholic Church in spite of such opinions and objections. You have done a good thing.

Because people will always have need of God, even in an age marked by technical mastery of the world and globalization: they will always need the God who has revealed himself in Jesus Christ, the God who gathers us together in the universal Church in order to learn with him and through him life’s true meaning and in order to uphold and apply the standards of true humanity.

Where people no longer perceive God, life grows empty; nothing is ever enough. People then seek escape in euphoria and violence; these are the very things that increasingly threaten young people.

God is alive. He has created every one of us and he knows us all. He is so great that he has time for the little things in our lives: "Every hair of your head is numbered".

God is alive, and he needs people to serve him and bring him to others. It does make sense to become a priest: the world needs priests, pastors, today, tomorrow and always, until the end of time.

The seminary is a community journeying towards priestly ministry. I have said something very important here: one does not become a priest on one’s own. The "community of disciples" is essential, the fellowship of those who desire to serve the greater Church.

In this letter I would like to point out – thinking back to my own time in the seminary – several elements which I consider important for these years of your journeying.

1. Anyone who wishes to become a priest must be first and foremost a "man of God", to use the expression of Saint Paul (1 Tim 6:11). For us God is not some abstract hypothesis; he is not some stranger who left the scene after the "big bang".

God has revealed himself in Jesus Christ. In the face of Jesus Christ we see the face of God. In his words we hear God himself speaking to us. It follows that the most important thing in our path towards priesthood and during the whole of our priestly lives is our personal relationship with God in Jesus Christ.

The priest is not the leader of a sort of association whose membership he tries to maintain and expand. He is God’s messenger to his people. He wants to lead them to God and in this way to foster authentic communion between all men and women.

That is why it is so important, dear friends, that you learn to live in constant intimacy with God. When the Lord tells us to "pray constantly", he is obviously not asking us to recite endless prayers, but urging us never to lose our inner closeness to God. Praying means growing in this intimacy.

So it is important that our day should begin and end with prayer; that we listen to God as the Scriptures are read; that we share with him our desires and our hopes, our joys and our troubles, our failures and our thanks for all his blessings, and thus keep him ever before us as the point of reference for our lives.

In this way we grow aware of our failings and learn to improve, but we also come to appreciate all the beauty and goodness which we daily take for granted and so we grow in gratitude. With gratitude comes joy for the fact that God is close to us and that we can serve him.

2. For us God is not simply Word. In the sacraments he gives himself to us in person, through physical realities. At the heart of our relationship with God and our way of life is the Eucharist. Celebrating it devoutly, and thus encountering Christ personally, should be the centre of all our days.

In Saint Cyprian’s interpretation of the Gospel prayer, "Give us this day our daily bread", he says among other things that "our" bread – the bread which we receive as Christians in the Church – is the Eucharistic Lord himself.

In this petition of the Our Father, then, we pray that he may daily give us "our" bread; and that it may always nourish our lives; that the Risen Christ, who gives himself to us in the Eucharist, may truly shape the whole of our lives by the radiance of his divine love. The proper celebration of the Eucharist involves knowing, understanding and loving the Church’s liturgy in its concrete form.

In the liturgy we pray with the faithful of every age – the past, the present and the future are joined in one great chorus of prayer. As I can state from personal experience, it is inspiring to learn how it all developed, what a great experience of faith is reflected in the structure of the Mass, and how it has been shaped by the prayer of many generations.

3. The sacrament of Penance is also important. It teaches me to see myself as God sees me, and it forces me to be honest with myself. It leads me to humility. The Curé of Ars once said: "You think it makes no sense to be absolved today, because you know that tomorrow you will commit the same sins over again".

"Yet," he continues, "God instantly forgets tomorrow’s sins in order to give you his grace today."

Even when we have to struggle continually with the same failings, it is important to resist the coarsening of our souls and the indifference which would simply accept that this is the way we are.

It is important to keep pressing forward, without scrupulosity, in the grateful awareness that God forgives us ever anew – yet also without the indifference that might lead us to abandon altogether the struggle for holiness and self-improvement.

Moreover, by letting myself be forgiven, I learn to forgive others. In recognizing my own weakness, I grow more tolerant and understanding of the failings of my neighbour.

4. I urge you to retain an appreciation for popular piety, which is different in every culture yet always remains very similar, for the human heart is ultimately one and the same.

Certainly, popular piety tends towards the irrational, and can at times be somewhat superficial. Yet it would be quite wrong to dismiss it. Through that piety, the faith has entered human hearts and become part of the common patrimony of sentiments and customs, shaping the life and emotions of the community.

Popular piety is thus one of the Church’s great treasures. The faith has taken on flesh and blood. Certainly popular piety always needs to be purified and refocused, yet it is worthy of our love and it truly makes us into the "People of God".

5. Above all, your time in the seminary is also a time of study. The Christian faith has an essentially rational and intellectual dimension. Were it to lack that dimension, it would not be itself.

Paul speaks of a "standard of teaching" to which we were entrusted in Baptism (Rom 6:17). All of you know the words of Saint Peter which the medieval theologians saw as the justification for a rational and scientific theology: "Always be ready to make your defence to anyone who demands from you an ‘accounting’ (logos) for the hope that is in you" (1 Pet 3:15).

Learning how to make such a defence is one of the primary responsibilities of your years in the seminary. I can only plead with you: Be committed to your studies! Take advantage of your years of study! You will not regret it.

Certainly, the subjects which you are studying can often seem far removed from the practice of the Christian life and the pastoral ministry. Yet it is completely mistaken to start questioning their practical value by asking: Will this be helpful to me in the future? Will it be practically or pastorally useful?

The point is not simply to learn evidently useful things, but to understand and appreciate the internal structure of the faith as a whole, so that it can become a response to people’s questions, which on the surface change from one generation to another yet ultimately remain the same.

For this reason it is important to move beyond the changing questions of the moment in order to grasp the real questions, and so to understand how the answers are real answers.

It is important to have a thorough knowledge of sacred Scripture as a whole, in its unity as the Old and the New Testaments: the shaping of texts, their literary characteristics, the process by which they came to form the canon of sacred books, their dynamic inner unity, a unity which may not be immediately apparent but which in fact gives the individual texts their full meaning.

It is important to be familiar with the Fathers and the great Councils in which the Church appropriated, through faith-filled reflection, the essential statements of Scripture. I could easily go on.

What we call dogmatic theology is the understanding of the individual contents of the faith in their unity, indeed, in their ultimate simplicity: each single element is, in the end, only an unfolding of our faith in the one God who has revealed himself to us and continues to do so.

I do not need to point out the importance of knowing the essential issues of moral theology and Catholic social teaching. The importance nowadays of ecumenical theology, and of a knowledge of the different Christian communities, is obvious; as is the need for a basic introduction to the great religions, to say nothing of philosophy: the understanding of that human process of questioning and searching to which faith seeks to respond.

But you should also learn to understand and – dare I say it – to love canon law, appreciating how necessary it is and valuing its practical applications: a society without law would be a society without rights. Law is the condition of love.

I will not go on with this list, but I simply say once more: love the study of theology and carry it out in the clear realization that theology is anchored in the living community of the Church, which, with her authority, is not the antithesis of theological science but its presupposition.

Cut off from the believing Church, theology would cease to be itself and instead it would become a medley of different disciplines lacking inner unity.

6. Your years in the seminary should also be a time of growth towards human maturity. It is important for the priest, who is called to accompany others through the journey of life up to the threshold of death, to have the right balance of heart and mind, reason and feeling, body and soul, and to be humanly integrated.

To the theological virtues the Christian tradition has always joined the cardinal virtues derived from human experience and philosophy, and, more generally, from the sound ethical tradition of humanity.

Paul makes this point this very clearly to the Philippians: "Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honourable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things" (4:8).

This also involves the integration of sexuality into the whole personality. Sexuality is a gift of the Creator yet it is also a task which relates to a person’s growth towards human maturity. When it is not integrated within the person, sexuality becomes banal and destructive. Today we can see many examples of this in our society.

Recently we have seen with great dismay that some priests disfigured their ministry by sexually abusing children and young people. Instead of guiding people to greater human maturity and setting them an example, their abusive behaviour caused great damage for which we feel profound shame and regret.

As a result of all this, many people, perhaps even some of you, might ask whether it is good to become a priest; whether the choice of celibacy makes any sense as a truly human way of life.

Yet even the most reprehensible abuse cannot discredit the priestly mission, which remains great and pure. Thank God, all of us know exemplary priests, men shaped by their faith, who bear witness that one can attain to an authentic, pure and mature humanity in this state and specifically in the life of celibacy.

Admittedly, what has happened should make us all the more watchful and attentive, precisely in order to examine ourselves earnestly, before God, as we make our way towards priesthood, so as to understand whether this is his will for me.

It is the responsibility of your confessor and your superiors to accompany you and help you along this path of discernment.

It is an essential part of your journey to practise the fundamental human virtues, with your gaze fixed on the God who has revealed himself in Christ, and to let yourselves be purified by him ever anew.

7. The origins of a priestly vocation are nowadays more varied and disparate than in the past. Today the decision to become a priest often takes shape after one has already entered upon a secular profession.

Often it grows within the Communities, particularly within the Movements, which favour a communal encounter with Christ and his Church, spiritual experiences and joy in the service of the faith.

It also matures in very personal encounters with the nobility and the wretchedness of human existence. As a result, candidates for the priesthood often live on very different spiritual continents. It can be difficult to recognize the common elements of one’s future mandate and its spiritual path.

For this very reason, the seminary is important as a community which advances above and beyond differences of spirituality.

The Movements are a magnificent thing. You know how much I esteem them and love them as a gift of the Holy Spirit to the Church. Yet they must be evaluated by their openness to what is truly Catholic, to the life of the whole Church of Christ, which for all her variety still remains one.

The seminary is a time when you learn with one another and from one another. In community life, which can at times be difficult, you should learn generosity and tolerance, not only bearing with, but also enriching one another, so that each of you will be able to contribute his own gifts to the whole, even as all serve the same Church, the same Lord.

This school of tolerance, indeed, of mutual acceptance and mutual understanding in the unity of Christ’s Body, is an important part of your years in the seminary.

Dear seminarians, with these few lines I have wanted to let you know how often I think of you, especially in these difficult times, and how close I am to you in prayer.

Please pray for me, that I may exercise my ministry well, as long as the Lord may wish.

I entrust your journey of preparation for priesthood to the maternal protection of Mary Most Holy, whose home was a school of goodness and of grace. May Almighty God bless you all, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.


From the Vatican
18 October 2010
Feast of Saint Luke the Evangelist

Yours devotedly in the Lord,




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Pope receives ambassadors
from Colombia and El Salvador





Left, with Amb. Lopez Barrera of El Salvador; right, with Amb. Velazquez Ossa of Colombia.


18 OCT 2010 (RV) - Pope Benedict XVI received two new ambassadors to the Holy See on Monday, from the Republic of El Salvador and Colombia.

In his message to Ambassador Manuel Roberto López Barrera from the Central American nation of El Salvador, Pope Benedict speaks of the country’s deep Christian roots and historic bonds with the Apostolic See.

The Church in El Salvador, he says, “has a specific mission to promote the common good”. The Pope writes that “evangelizing and bearing witness to God's love and all men without exception, is an effective element for the eradication of poverty and vigorously spur men and women to combat violence, impunity and drug trafficking, which cause so much destruction, especially among young people”.

Pope Benedict also speaks of the Church's contribution to caring for the sick and elderly and to the reconstruction of areas devastated by natural disasters.

He says the Church will continue to promote fair distribution of resources, honesty in the discharge of public functions, and the independence of the courts.

The Pope praised El Salvador's efforts towards peace and stability following decades of civil strife, and reaffirmed that “violence achieves nothing”.

In his message to César Mauricio Velásquez Ossa, the Ambassador from Colombia, Pope Benedict begins by remarking on this year's bicentennial commemoration of the nation's independence and the founding of the Republic.

“I am confident,” he wrote,“that this significant anniversary will be a unique opportunity to embrace the lessons that history provides, and measures to step up efforts to consolidate security, peace, harmony and development of all its citizens and to look with serenity and enthusiasm to the future ahead.”

The Pope said the Church in Colombia serves the faithful "through the education of new generations; care for the sick and elderly; respect for indigenous peoples and their legitimate traditions; the eradication of poverty, drug trafficking and corruption; the care of prisoners, displaced persons, migrants and workers; and assistance to needy families”.

Pope Benedict concluded by ensuring his spiritual closeness and prayers for those in Colombia “who have been unjustly and cruelly deprived of their liberty, for their families and victims of violence in all its forms”.

And he prayed that all Colombians can live in reconciliation and peace in their blessed land, “so full of natural resources, beautiful valleys and towering mountains, rivers and picturesque landscapes, which should be preserved as a magnificent gift of the Creator”.


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After being away from the Internet for several hours today, I am pleasantly surprised to find that almost all the major Italian Vaticanistas have immediately taken note and written about the Pope's truly exceptional and unprecedented letter to the seminarians of the world released earlier today. In the Anglophone media, it seems only Edward Pentin, who writes for ZENIT, the National Catholic Register and the Catholic Herald, has taken note so far. But here first, for the record (since it is not necessarily the best nor the most interesting) is the editorial coming out in tomorrow's issue of L'Osservatore Romano.

The presence of God
Editorial
by Giovanni Maria Vian
Translated from the 10/18-10/19/10 issue of



Do we still need saints and priests? Benedict XVI posed this question at the canonization of six new saints on Sunday at St. Peter's Square and in his letter to the seminarians of the world.

The question is radical because it has to do with the presence of God in the world.

The six new saints proclaimed by the Pope - four of them women, including the first Australian native-born saint, Mary of the Cross (MacKillop), a truly exceptional and courageous leader - understood this question, and allowed God's presence to shine forth through what they did.

In the darkness of the Nazi folly, their leaders were convinced that the new Germany would no longer need priests, Benedict XVI reminded the seminarians, from his own personal experience.

In a text, direct and very important, which was addressed not exclusively to those who are preparing for priesthood because the letter speaks of faith, as in the verse from Luke (18,8) which the Pope reflected on in his homily at the canonization Mass: "When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?"


Seminarians then and now: Left photo, Joseph Ratzinger (extreme left) with fellow seminarians in Freising in the schoolyear 1946-1947.

The tone of Benedict XVI's letter is once again almost confidential, reflecting his profound personal experience. To the thinking that priests belong to the past, the Pope replies that on the contrary, there is need for them today, that is, for "men who live for God and bring him to others".

And that indeed, if God is no longer perceived by man, then "life becomes empty". And that is why it is worthwhile to become a priest. It is a way of life that one does not do by oneself - and here is the wisdom of the seminary: priesthood is lived in community.

Benedict XVI describes the priest as essentially a 'man of God', of God who is not an unknown who withdrew from the world after the Big Bang, but who showed himself in Jesus, God near us. And the priest, who is not just any administrator, is his messenger.

That is why the priest "must never lose his interior contact with God", because then he will understand, the Pope explains, the Lord's exhortation to pray 'all the time'.

How to do this concretely?
- By starting and ending the day with a prayer, reading and listening to Scripture;
- Becoming aware to one's own errors but also of the beautiful and the good:
- Celebrating the Eucharist and understanding how the liturgy of the Church has grown over time, the product of countless generations in uninterrupted continuity; and
- Humbly approaching the sacrament of penance in order 'to oppose the brutalization of the spirit'.

What Benedict describes in the letter is really an agenda for priests
- which is useful for every believer - with recommendations that are striking for their simplicity and wisdom.

Urging sensitivity to popular piety while emphasizing the importance of study - which is nothing other that "to know and understand the internal structure of the faith". Through knowledge of Scripture in its unity, of the Fathers and the great Councils, studying in depth the various articulations of theology, an orientation on the major religions, the study of philosophy and canon law - all in a 'condition of love' and with the courage to go against the current.

One can expect that media attention will once more focus on what the Pope writes about the sexual abuse of minors by some priests. But Benedict XVI aims higher, underscoring that the dimension of sexuality should be matured and integrated into the priest's personality, because otherwise "it becomes banal and destructive".

As demonstrated by the countless examples of authentic priests and saints who are convincing precisely because of their example, allowing above all the light of God to shine forth, the light wjhch illumines every man.


On his blog today, Sandro Magister quotes three excerpts from the Pope's letter and introduces them with the following comments:

Translated from


Benedict XVI's letter to seminarians, after the conclusion of teh year for Priests, begins with an autobiographical anecdote.

This was an unexpected letter. but clearly written Benedict's own hand - his rhythm, his style, with his recurrent themes, with his usual profundity.

Benedict XVI calls on all young priest aspirants to pray, to say Mass, to confess, to appreciate popular piety, to study all they can, to achieve full human maturity even in their sexuality.

[He then quotes the pertinent portions of the Letter.]

The other commentaries resort similarly to quoting chunks from the Pope's letter, As you know, my preference for any text by Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI is to post it in full to get its full effect - besides, his thought flow is always as interesting as the substance of the text.


The first MSM Anglophone report predictably focuses almost exclusively on the celibacy and priest abuse issues... and comes to a conclusion that I find incorrect...

Pope takes on celibacy debate
in letter to seminarians

By STACY MEICHTRY

Oct. 18, 2010


ROME — Pope Benedict XVI said on Monday that the Vatican's recent sexual-abuse crisis might prompt aspiring priests to question the Catholic Church's requirement that clergy be celibate, as he publicly waded for the first time into a debate over whether priestly celibacy is partly to blame for the abuse.

In a letter to seminarians world-wide, the Pontiff defended the church's celibacy prerequisite as a way for priests to attain "an authentic, pure and mature humanity."

Yet as he addressed the sexual-abuse scandal that has shaken the Church over the past year, the Pontiff said abusive priests had "disfigured their ministry by sexually abusing children."

"As a result of all this," he continued, "many people, perhaps even some of you, might ask whether it is good to become a priest — whether the choice of celibacy makes any sense as a truly human way of life."

The comments marked the first time Pope Benedict has directly spoken about the Church's celibacy policy in the context of the sexual-abuse scandals. [That is not true! He did it in a lengthy and original answer to a priest from Slovenia at the prayer vigil last June on the eve of the conclusion of the Year for Priests!... Reproduced below this article, for convenience.]]

As thousands of cases [Not thousands - hundreds!] of children sexually abused by priests have been documented in Ireland over the past year — and other cases reported in Belgium and Germany — Catholic officials in Europe have questioned whether priestly celibacy is partly to blame for the abuse. Some say the two are linked because the celibacy requirement limits the pool of candidates for the priesthood by excluding married men.

Sandro Magister, a longtime Vatican watcher who writes for Italy's L'Espresso magazine, said he couldn't remember Pope Benedict ever mentioning sexual abuse and celibacy in the same breath. [What's with Magister??? He wrote a piece about the Pope's answer on celibacy at that prayer vigil!
benedettoxviforum.freeforumzone.leonardo.it/discussione.aspx?idd=85272... ]


With the move, the Pope appeared willing to engage in a discussion that previous Popes have considered off-limits, he said.

"It's the first time I've seen [the issues] placed together" by the Pope, Mr. Magister said, adding that he believes Pope Benedict ultimately aims to "reinforce" the Church's celibacy rule by engaging in debate, not to question it. [And yet, Magister did not say any of this in his own blog commentary today on the Pope's letter!]

Since the sexual-abuse crisis exploded in the U.S. a decade ago and resurfaced in Europe this year, the Pope has toughened Vatican rules on disciplining abusive priests, met with victims, and accepted the resignation of bishops who covered up abuse.

The Vatican, however, has steered clear of any suggestion that the celibacy rule was up for discussion, treating abuse as a separate issue. [Various Vatican officials, including the present CDF head and the CDF's top prosecutor have cited studies by psychologists saying that there is no statistical association between celibacy and the commission of sex offenses by priests.]

In March, Cardinal Christoph Schönborn of Vienna called on the church to seriously examine potential causes of sexual abuse, including how the Church trains new priests.

"That includes the issue of celibacy," he wrote in a newsletter. Cardinal Schönborn, a former student of the Pope, later clarified that he wasn't placing a question mark over the celibacy requirement.

The debate was rekindled in September when two bishops in Belgium, which has recently been rocked by hundreds of allegations of clerical sexual abuse, questioned whether married men should be excluded from the priesthood.

Pope Benedict has repeatedly described the celibacy requirement as a "gift" from God.


Here is the Q&A on celibacy from the prayer vigil:

Holy Father, I am Fr. Karol Miklosko, from Europe, Slovakia in particular, and I am a missionary in Russia.... The sacrifice of the Cross shows me the Good Shepherd who gives everything for his flock, for every sheep, and when I say, "This is my Body... This is my Blood" given and spilled in sacrifice for you, then I understand the beauty of celibacy and obedience which I freely promised at the moment of ordination.

Even with its natural difficulties, celibacy seems obvious to me, looking at Christ, but I am bewildered by reading so much worldly criticism for this gift. I ask you humbly, Holy Father, to enlighten us on the profundity and authentic meaning of ecclesiastical celibacy.


Thank you for both parts of your question - the first which shows the permanent and vital foundation of our celibacy; the second, about all the difficulties in which we find ourselves in our time.

The first part is important, namely, that the center of our life should really be the daily celebration of the Holy Eucharist, in which the words of the Consecration are central: "This is my Body... This is my Blood" - when we speak 'in persona Christi'.

Christ allows us to use his "I", we speak of the "I" of Christ, Christ draws us into himself and allows us to unite with him, he unites with us in his 'I". Thus this action, the fact that he 'draws' us into himself so that our "I" is united to his, realizes the permanence and uniqueness of our priesthood - he is truly the only Priest, and yet he is very much present in the world becaus he draws us into himself and thus makes his priestly mission ever present.

This means we are drawn to God in Christ: this union with his "I" is realized in the words of the Consecration. It is also in the words "I absolve you" - because none of us can absolve sins. Only Christ's "I", the "I" of God, can absolve.

This unification of his "I" with us implies that we are also drawn into the reality of the Resurrected One, that we are going forward in the full life of Resurrection about which Jesus speaks to the Sadducees in Matthew, Chapter 22: It is a new life, in which already, we are beyond matrimony (cfr Mt 22,23-32).

It is important that we allow ourselves to be penetrated ever anew by this identification of Christ's "I" with ourselves, of being drawn forth towards the world of the resurrection. In this sense, celibacy is an ancticipation: We transcend our time and go forward, we draw ourselves and our time towards the world of the resurrection, towards the newness of Christ, towards the new and true life.

Celibacy is thus an anticipation made possible by the grace of the Lord who draws us to himself towards the world of the resurrection - he invites us ever anew to transcend ourselves, to transcend the present, towards the 'true present' of the future which becomes present today.

Here we come to a very important point. A great problem of Christianity today is that people no longer think of the future with God - when only the present of this world seems to suffice, when we mean to have only this world, to live only in this world. And so, we close the doors to the true grandeur of existence.

The sense of celibacy as an anticipation of the future serves to open these doors which make the world much greater, which shows the reality of the future which we can live as if it were already present.

To live this way in witness to our faith: truly believing that there is a God, that God has everything to do with my life, that I can base my life on Christ, and therefore on the life of the future.

We know the worldly criticisms you referred to. It is true that for the agnostica, who say God has nothing to do with their world, celibacy is a great scandal - precisely because (it shows that) God is considered and lived as a reality.

In the eschatological [oriented towards the end of time] life of the celibate, the future world of God enters the reality of our time. But this, the critics say, must not be! It must disappear!

In a sense, this continuing criticism of celibacy is surprising in a world where it is becoming more fashionable not to marry! But not marrying is totally and fundamentally different from celibacy, because it is based on the desire to live only for oneself, not to accept any definitive bond, to have a life that is fully autonomous at all times, that can decide freely at every moment what to to do and what to take from life. It is a No to any ties, No to any definitiveness, simply having life for oneself alone.

While celibacy is the exact opposite: It is a definitive Yes, allowing oneself to be taken in hand by God, giving ourselves over to God, to his "I" - therefore, it is an act of faithfulness and trust, an act which is like the faithfulness of matrimony. It is the precise opposite of the No that characterizes the autonomy that refuses to be obliged, which refuses to be bound by any ties.

Celibacy is the definitive Yes that presupposes and confirms the definitive Yes of matrimony - the matrimony that is the Biblical kind, the natural form of matirmony between a man and a woman, the foundation of Christianity's great culture, of the great cultures of the world. If it disappears, then the root of our culture would be destroyed.

Celibacy thus confirms the Yes of matrimony with its Yes to the world of the future. That is why we wish to go forward and keep present this scandal of a faith in which everything rests on the existence of God.


We know that besides this great scandal which the world does not want to see, there are also the secondary scandals of our own insufficiencies, of our sins, which obscure the true and great scandal, and make others think, "But their life is not really based on God!"

But there is much faithfulness to God otherwise! Priestly celibacy, as its critics demonstrate, is a great sign of the faith, of the presence of God in the world.

Let us pray to the Lord that he may keep us free of the secondary scandals in order to make visible the great scandal of our faith - fidelity, the strength of our life, which is based on God and Jesus Christ.
]


Obviously, the Holy Father was careful about the language he used: He was not about to 'politicize' the concluding rites of the Year for Priests by an open discussion of the 'sex scandals' - to an audience that, one imagines, came to Rome for the event, representing the majority of priests who heroically do their tasks daily against great odds, without criminal or even venial offenses against their vow of celibacy!

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Tuesday, Oct. 19, 29th Week in Ordinary Time

SAINTS ISAAC JOGUES AND COMPANIONS (d mid-17th century), Jesuits and Martyrs
Isaac JogueS and seven fellow Jesuits were the first martyrs of North America in Church history. In 1636, Jogues was with a Jesuit mission led by Jean de Brebeuf who arrived in Quebec in 1838 to evangelize the native American tribes. Working among the Hurons, Joques was captured in 1642 by their rival Iroquois, tortured and imprisoned for 13 months. He was able to escape back to France with hands so mutilated - his fingers had been cut, chewed or burnt off - that Pope Urban VII had to give him a special dispensation to celebrate Mass. In 1646, he returned to Canada with Jean de Lalande, this time to evangelize the Iroquois themselves because of a recent peace treaty. Almost immediately upon arrival he was captured by a Mohawk war party and beheaded by tomahawk. The next day, De Lalande met the same fate near Albany, New York. Three years later, Jean de Brebeuf, who had stayed with the Hurons since Jogues's first mission, was martyred by the Iroquois. The other Jesuits martyred in the period were Rene Goupil who had been tortured with Jogues in 1642 but was tomahawked then and became the first of the Jesuit martyrs of Canada. Four others - Antony Daniel, Gabriel Lalemant, Charles Garnier and Noel Chabanel were martyred in 1648-1649. All eight martyrs were canonized in 1930.
Readings for today's Mass:
www.usccb.org/nab/readings/101910.shtml



OR for 10/18-10/19/10:

Photo: Joseph Ratzinger, extreme left, with fellow seminarians in Freising, schoolyear 1946-1947.
In a letter to seminarians around the world, Benedict XVI recalls his vocation and the relevance of answering the call:
'The world still has need of priests'
At the canonization of six new saints on Sunday, he underscores the gift of holiness

The double issue also contains coverage of the Verdi Requiem performed for the Pope and the Synodal fathers on Friday evening and his audience with the new ambassadors from El Salvador and Colombia yesterday. Also in the inside pages: The report of the Synodal Assembly summarizing the interventions of the first week.


THE POPE'S DAY

The Holy Father met today with

- Mons. Gregor Maria Franz Hanke, O.S.B., Bishop of Eichstätt



Sunday, Oct, 24
XXX Sunday in Ordinary Time
Papal Mass to conclude
the Special Synodal Assembly for the Middle East

09:30 St. Peter's Basilica




FIVE YEARS & SIX MONTHS TODAY, AND COUNTING....

AD MULTOS ANNOS, SANCTE PATER!

We can never love you enough.




One month ago today, Benedict XVI beatified Cardinal John Henry Newman
on the last day of his apostolic visit to the UK.




The Italian media are reporting the reappointment of Dino Boffo, 58, former editor of Avvenire, the newspaper of the Italian bishops' conference (CEI), to head SAT 2000, the CEI's satellite TV channel. Boffo resigned in September 2009 as editor of Avvenire and director of both Radio Blu and Sat 2000, the CEI's radio and TV networks, after he was accused in a front-page article in Il Giornale of being a 'notorious homosexual' by Italian editor Vittorio Feltri. Three months later, Feltri issued a retraction and apology claiming he had been falsely informed.

Giacomo Galeazzi says in his blog today that Benedict XVI himself had intervened "in order to remedy an obvious injustice towards an esteemed journalist and faithful servant of the Church", with the happy cooperation of both current CEI president Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco, and his predecessor, Cardinal Camillo Ruini (who had first appointed Boffo to his multimedia responsibilities in 1994).

In his article on Boffo's reappointment today, Andrea ?ornielli says it is confirmed that the Holy Father will announce tomorrow at the end of the General Audience that he will call a consistory next month to name new cardinals.

Tornielli also notes that in the space of a week, the Holy Father has approved two appointments advanced by Cardinal Ruini. The first and more important one was the appointment of Archbishop Nosiglia to be the new Archbishop of Turin, over Cardinal Bertone's nominee. [However, the Pope did name Bertone's fellow Salesian Fr. Massimo Palombella to head the Sistine Chapel Choir, a choice considered questionable by most Roman experts in sacred music. Perhaps the Pope believes in the potential of the fairly young Palombella, who comes to the prestigious position with thin credentials.]

Lots of media around the world have picked up the OR's recent front-page story on the TV cartoon comedy series The Simpsons, in which it is claimed that the Simpsons are 'true Catholics'. What the MSM has not yet picked up is the denial by the shows's creator, Al Jean, who said: "My first reaction is shock and awe and I guess it makes up for me not going to church for 20 years. We've pretty clearly shown that Homer is not Catholic. I really don't think he could go without eating meat on Fridays - for even an hour."

[Even if meatless Fridays are no longer enforced among US Catholics, it serves the OR right for its unwarranted and unnecessary ventures into showbiz territory, made all the worse because the very random choice of topics and the often-questionable judgments expressed in these articles are obviously just those of the individual writer - and yet it is always reported worldwide as 'the Vatican view'! If only for that,editor Vian should cease and desist from this 'constant shooting itself in the foot' that the Pope's newspaper has been prone to do since he took over!]

Meanwhile, other than a few Catholic blogs and the tunnel-vision Wall Street Journal story I posted yesterday, the Anglophone MSM - all focused on the 'Simpsons are Catholic' story - have not taken any notice of the Pope's landmark letter to seminarians!. This time, they can't say there was no English translation immediately available. Despite the mention of celibacy and the sex abuse scandal in the letter, apparently the MSM either does not consider the letter newsworthy in any way, or it just does not fit into their prefabricated agenda about the Pope.

The story is widely reported in the Italian newspapers but in snippets from the letter, and no significant commentary so far. After all, what commentary does such a self-explanatory and self-evident letter need? The best way to report it is to reproduce it in full!


It ranks with the March 2009 letter to the bishops of the world, and the March 2010 Letter to the Catholics of Ireland, as Benedict XVI's 'Pauline epistles' for the third millennium. I do not include the letter to the Chinese Catholics because that was a formal document, nonetheless historical and unprecedented, but with far less of the obvious personal voice of Benedict XVI evident in the other three.

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UK's Chief Rabbi: 'My meeting
with the Pope was an epiphany’

By Rupert de Lisle

18 October 2010


Pope Benedict XVI and Lord Sacks at a meeting of religious leaders at St Mary's University, Twickenham, last month.

Lord Sacks, Britain’s Chief Rabbi, has described his meeting with Pope Benedict XVI during his visit last month as “an epiphany”.

The Chief Rabbi met the Pope at a meeting with religious leaders and people of faith at Twickenham. The meeting involved the leaders of all the major faiths in Britain.

His account of the meeting is included in the official record of the state visit, published last week by the Catholic Truth Society.

In it, Lord Sacks said: “Soul touched soul across the boundaries of faith, and there was a blessed moment of healing”.

The Chief Rabbi added that the Pope “valued” the Catholic-Jewish relationship and that “he wanted the work to continue and deepen [it]”.

Lord Sacks, whose full title is Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth, said that welcoming the Pope on behalf of non-Christians in Britain was “a moment I shall never forget”.

He added that the meeting illustrated the Vatican’s emphasis on the “importance of respect and friendship between faiths”.

The meeting was of particular significance, he said, because of the “tear-stained history of the Catholic-Jewish relationship”.

He said: “Over the centuries, the relationship between the Church and the Jews has been one of the saddest stories in the history of religion” – and one, he said, that “might have continued were it not for the darkest night of all, the Holocaust”.

He also praised mid-20th century Pope John XXIII, a “very great Pope indeed”, for having laid the foundation for the Second Vatican Council, “one of the greatest acts of reconciliation in religious history”.





OFFICIAL RECORD
OF THE UK VISIT


As earlier posted several days ago, the official record of the state visit, Benedict XVI and Blessed John Henry Newman, costs £14.95 (about $24) and is available from
www.cts-online.org.uk/acatalog/info_DO837.html

CTS provides the following sample pages online:








National Secular Society grossly exaggerated
cost of Pope’s visit to taxpayers -
their own site now says it cost half what they said


October 19th, 2010


In February 2010 Terry Sanderson, President of the National Secular Society, falsely stated that Pope Benedict’s visit would cost tax payers £20 million.

However, on Friday 15 Oct the National Secular Society posted on their website that the cost of the papal visit to the taxpayer, excluding the cost of policing, was 50% less, at £10 million.

In September 2010 the police estimated that policing the papal visit would cost between £1-1.5 million.

So the cost to the taxpayer comes out at £11.5 million, and not Terry Sanderson’s scaremongering figure of £20 million.

The Catholic Church is expected to contribute at least £7 million to cover the cost of the Pope’s visit, on top of the taxes contributed by the UK’s 5 million Catholics.

Why did Terry Sanderson grossly exaggerate the figure? Was he poorly advised? Maybe he’s not good with figures? Terry does have a tendency to inflate figures, like he inflated the numbers attending the protest march from 5,000-8,000 (police estimate) to 20,000.

Or could it be that he’s an anti-Catholic who would do anything to attack Pope Benedict and the Catholic Church?







Pope's visit was a boon
for National Express buses


Oct. 19, 2010

Transport group National Express has said revenues at its coach division were boosted by the Pope’s visit to Britain.

The company, which also operates bus and rail services, ran 1,000 coaches to Birmingham from across the UK for pilgrims to see Pope Benedict XVI last month.

The group said coach revenues in the three months to September 30 increased 4% year-on-year, compared to a 2% rise in the first half.

The transport group said a restructuring in its bus network, which operates mainly in the West Midlands, had added £5 million to year-on-year operating profits.

Quieter routes have been cut back, while busier runs have had services added.

Passengers paid more for a multi-trip travelcard in the third quarter, but the company held its single journey fare, which improved its passenger per mile revenue by 5%.

Jez Maiden, group finance director at National Express, said the company would continue to focus on operational improvements to achieve growth.

But Mr Maiden said the company will be in a position to eye up potential areas of expansion in Europe and North American in about 12 months’ time.

The firm said profitability at its British rail business continued to grow on the back of a 7% rise in third-quarter underlying revenue.

National Express said its Spanish coach business Alsa was performing well, despite the subdued economic climate, while its North American arm returned to revenue growth following the introduction of 1,600 new routes.


[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 19/10/2010 23:18]
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