BENEDICT XVI: NEWS, PAPAL TEXTS, PHOTOS AND COMMENTARY

See preceding page for earlier entries today, 6/26/12, including RV/VIS reports and photos of the Holy Father's visit to the earthquake victims in Rovereto. I have posted below a full translation of his simple but extraordinary message to the earthquake victims.




Yves Congar's Vatican II Diary
By Father Robert Barron

June 26, 2012

One of the most theologically fascinating and just plain entertaining books I've read in a long time is Yves Congar's My Journal of the Council.


Right, Fr. Joseph Ratzinger with senior Council peritus Congar during Vatican-II.

Catholics of a certain age will recognize the name, but I'm afraid that most Catholics under the age of 50 might be entirely unaware of the massive contribution made by Congar, a Dominican priest and certainly one of the three or four most important Catholic theologians of the twentieth century.

After a tumultuous intellectual career, during which he was, by turns, lionized, vilified, exiled and silenced, Congar found himself, at the age of 58, a peritus, or theological expert at the Second Vatican Council.

By most accounts, he proved the most influential theologian at that epic gathering, contributing mightily to the documents on the Church, on ecumenism, on revelation, and on the Church's relation to the modern world.

During the entire course of the Council, from October 1962 to December 1965, Congar kept a meticulous journal of the proceedings, which includes not only detailed accounts of the interventions by various bishops and Cardinals, but also extremely perceptive commentaries on the key personalities and the main theological currents of the Council.

Several times as I read through the journal, I laughed out loud at Congar's pointed assessments of some of the players: "a bore," "useless," "talks too much." But what most comes through is -- if I can risk employing an overused and ambiguous phrase -- "the spirit of the Council," by which I mean those seminal ideas and attitudes that found expression in the discussions, debates and texts of Vatican II.

In the pages of Congar's journal we hear of a Church that should be more evangelical and open to the Word of God, of the dangers of clerical triumphalism, of the universal call to holiness, of a liturgy that awakens the active participation of the faithful, of the need for the Church to engage the modern world, etc.

Attending meeting after meeting and engaging in endless conversations with bishops and theologians, Congar was indefatigably propagating these ideas, which we now take to be commonplace and the permanent achievement of Vatican II.

As Congar led this charge, his chief opponents were Archbishop Pericle Felice and Cardinal Alfredo Ottaviani, the keepers of the traditional, scholastic form of Catholicism. His principal allies were "progressive" council fathers Cardinal Frings of Cologne and Archbishop Wojtyla of Krakow, as well as fellow periti Karl Rahner, Edward Schillebeeckx, Henri de Lubac, Hans Kung, and a young German theologian named Joseph Ratzinger.

As I read the pages of Congar's journal, all of these figures and that very heady time came rather vividly to life. But even as I was caught up in the moment, I couldn't help but think of the divisions that would later beset that victorious group.

Archbishop Wojtyla, of course, later became Pope John Paul II, and he would appoint Joseph Ratzinger (later Pope Benedict XVI) as his chief doctrinal officer. Further, John Paul would create de Lubac and Congar himself as Cardinals, but would preside over a critical investigation of the works of both Kung and Schillebeeckx. Why did these divisions arise in the post-conciliar period?

One way to get a perspective on the split in the victorious party is to look to the beginnings of the theological journal Communio. In the wake of the council, the triumphant progressive party formed an international journal called Concilium, the stated purpose of which was to perpetuate the spirit of the great gathering that had prompted such positive change in the Church.

On the board of Concilium were Rahner, Kung, Schillebeeckx, de Lubac, Congar, Hans Urs von Balthasar, Ratzinger and many others. But after only a few years, three figures -- Balthasar, de Lubac, and Ratzinger -- decided to break with Concilium and found their own journal and the reasons they gave to justify this decision are extremely illuminating.

First, they said, the board of Concilium was claiming to act as a secondary magisterium, or official teaching authority, alongside the bishops. Theologians certainly have a key role to play in the understanding and development of doctrine, but they cannot supplant the bishops' responsibility of holding and teaching the apostolic faith.

Secondly, the Concilium board wanted to launch Vatican III when the ink on the documents of Vatican II was barely dry. That is to say, they wanted to ride the progressive momentum of Vatican II toward a whole series of reforms - women's ordination, suspension of priestly celibacy, radical reform of the church's sexual ethic, etc. -- that were by no means justified by the texts of the council.

Thirdly, and in my judgment most significantly, Balthasar, Ratzinger, and de Lubac decried the "Concilium" board's resolve to perpetuate the spirit of the council. Councils, they stated, are sometimes necessary in the life of the Church, but they are also perilous, for they represent moments when the Church throws itself into question and pauses to decide some central issue or controversy. We think readily here of Nicea and Chalcedon, which addressed crucial issues in Christology, or Trent, which wrestled with the challenge of the Reformation.

Councils are good and necessary, but the Church also, they contended, turns from them with a certain relief in order to get back to its essential work. The perpetuation of the spirit of the council, they concluded, would be tantamount to a Church in a permanent state of suspense and indecision.

Kung, Schillebeeckx, Rahner, Ratzinger, Congar, de Lubac and Wojtyla were all proud "men of the council." They strenuously fought for the ideals I mentioned earlier. But in the years that followed, they went separate ways -- and thereupon hangs a tale still worth pondering as we approach the fiftieth anniversary of the opening of Vatican II.


NB: The original book by Fr. Congar was published posthumously in French in 2002 (Vol, 1 1960-1962, Vol II 1964-1966), edited by his brother Dominique. I wonder if Cardinal Ratzinger ever got to 'review' it in print! I'm still searching online

THE POPE IN ROVERETO:
Address to earthquake victims



The Vatican bulletin does not say so, but the text reads to me like it was extemporaneous. The Holy Father knows exactly what to say and what tone to use, in this very human and down-to-earth message of encouragement to a stricken people. His citation of a Psalm he providentially came across in the daily course of the Breviary is one that only a conscientious priest or religious could do. Here is a translation:

---

Dear brothers and sisters:

Thank you for your welcome!

From the first days of the earthquakes that have struck your territory, I have always been close to you in prayer and concern. But when I learned that your trials have become even more difficult, I felt ever more strongly the need to come in person among you. I thank the Lord that he has granted me this opportunity.

And so, with great affection, I am here with you who are gathered here today, and with mind and heart, I embrace all the towns and villages, all the people who have suffered great loss from the earthquakes, especially those families and communities who mourn departed dear ones. May the Lord receive them into his peace.

I would have wanted to visit all the communities to be able to make myself present in a personal and concrete manner, but you know that it would have been difficult to do.

At this time, however, I wish that everyone, in every village, will feel how the Pope's heart is close to you to comfort you, but above all, to encourage and to sustain you.

I greet the Honorable Minister representing the Government - the head of the Department of Civil Protection, and the Honorable Vasco Errani, president of the Emilia-Romagna region, whom I thank from the heart for the words he addressed to me in the name of the civilian institutions and communities of the region.

I greet and thank my brother bishops and priests, the representatives of various religious and social organizations, the forces of law and order, and the volunteers. How important it is to to offer concrete proof of solidarity and unity! I thank you for this great testimonial, especially from the volunteers.

As I said earlier, I felt the need to come here to be with you even for a brief time. When I was in Milan, at the start of this month, for the World Meeting of Families, I would have wanted to drop in for a visit, and my thoughts were often of you.

I knew, in fact, that beyond suffering material consequences, you were also put to a trial of the spirit because of the prolonged aftershocks which were often strong; and by the loss of some buildings that are symbolic of your land, among them, many churches.

Here in Rovereto di Novi, in the collapse of a church which I just visited, don Ivan Martini lost his life. Paying tribute to his memory, I address a special greeting to you, dear priests, and all our brothers who are showing, as you have in other difficult times throughout history, your generous love for the people of God.

As you know, we priests - but also the religious, and not a few laymen - pray every day with what we call the Breviary which contains the Liturgy of the Hours, the prayers of the Church to mark the passage of the day.

We pray with the Psalms, according to an order that is identical throughout the Catholic Church throughout the world. Why do I tell you this? Because these days, I found, in praying Psalm 46, these words which touched me deeply: "God is our refuge and our strength, an ever-present help in distress. Thus we do not fear, though earth be shaken and mountains quake to the depths of the sea" (vv 2-3).

How many times have I read these words? Countless times - because I have been a priest now for 61 years. And yet, at certain moments, like now, the words strike very powerfully, because they touch a raw nerve - they give words to an experience that you have been living through, words that all who pray can share.

But the words of the Psalm do not just strike me because they use the image of an earthquake, but above all for what they say about the interior attitude we must have in the face of a great natural calamity: an attitude of great certainty, based on the stable, immovable rock who is God.

"We do not fear if the earth is shaken," says the Psalmist, because "God is our refuge and our strength" and is "an ever-present help in distress".

Dear brothers and sisters, these words seem to be contradictory to the fear that one inevitably has after an experience such as that which you underwent. That is the immediate reaction, which can imprint itself more deeply as the fear continues and is prlonged. In fact, the psalm does not refer to this kind of fear, which is natural, and the certainty that it affirms is not that of superhumans who are not touched by normal sentiments.

The certainty it speaks of is that of the faith, in which, yes, one may have fear and anguish - Jesus himself expereinced these, as we know - but above all, one has the certainty that God is with us: We are sure of this like the child who knows he can always count on his mamma and papa, because he knows he is loved by them and wanted, whatever happens.

Thus we are, with respect to God: small and frail, but secure in his hands, that is, trusting in his love which is as solid as a rock. We see this love in the Crucified Christ, who is also the sign of pain, of suffering, and of love. He is the revelation of God-Love, who is one with us even in the most extreme humiliation.

On this rock, with this firm hope, we can build, we can rebuild. On the ruins of the last world war - not just materially - Italy was rebuilt, thanks of course to aid that was received, but above all, to the faith of so many people inspired by the spirit of true solidarity, by the desire to give a future to their families, a future of fredom and peace.

You are people esteemed by all Italians for your humanity and sociability, for industriousness combined with good cheer. All this is now being put to a hard test by this situation, but it should not and cannot erode that which you are as a people, with your history and your culture.

Remain faithful to your calling to be fraternal and mutually supportive of each other, face everything with patience and determination, rejecting the temptations that are unfortunately often bound to moments of weakness and need.

The situation you are going through has brought to light an aspect that I want you to always keep present in your heart: you are not and you will never be alone. In these days, amidst so much destruction and sorrow, you have seen and felt how so many people have mobilized themselves to express their closeness, solidarity and affection for you, and they have done this through so many signs of concrete assistance.

My presence among you is one such sign of love and hope. Looking at the devastated zones, I felt profound emotion at so much damage, but I have also seen many hands which want to remedy this with you.

And I see that life has 'begun' again, and that it will start again with strength and courage, which is the most beautiful and brightest sign.

From this place, I wish to launch a strong appeal to all institutions and to every citizen to be - despite the difficulties of the present - like the Good Samaritan in the Gospel who does not pass through, indifferent to anyone in need, but with love, he bends down, he helps, he stays close, and takes responsibility to the very end for the needs of the other (cfr Lk 10,29-37).

The Church is close to you and will continue to be close in prayer and with concrete help from her organizations, especially from Caritas, which will also be involved in restoring the community fabric of your parishes.

Dear friends, I bless you all, each and everyone, and I carry you all with great affection in my heart.

---

After the address, the Holy Father greeted representatives of the various groups present. He then travelled by car back to the sports field in San Marino di Carpi, to board the helicopter for the return trip to Rome. He reached the Vatican around 1:30 pm.

At least four days have gone by, can you believe it, that no Vaticanista has come up with anything 'new' about Vatileaks (the furor over Paolo Gabriele did not even reach the one-month anniversary of his arrest) - if we count out their speculation on what went on during the Pope's private meeting on Saturday evening with five cardinals of his confidence, and what, if anything, he may be planning to do about Cardinal Bertone who was not included in the meeting.

A rather far-out idea was suggested by the lady Vaticanista of Il Messaggero, who claims that Bertone will not be replaced as Secretary of State but will rather be given one or two 'high-ranking' auxiliaries from among seasoned Vatican diplomats to assist him in the administration of the Secretariat of State. But he already has two deputy secretaries of state who are veteran diplomats - Mons. Becciu for general affairs, and Mons. Mamberti for foreign relations. Will the new 'auxiliaries' outrank them? And would such a cuckoo scheme not make Bertone more an object of derision? It's equivalent to saying, "Well, since he's not quite up to the job, we'll give him two more aides to help him along". That does not all sound like the kind of decision Benedict XVI would make, because it complicates matters instead of simplifying, much less solving, anything.

So here's today's long shot about Vatileaks from ANSA:

A 'surprise soon' on Vatileaks,
says cardinal investigator


VATICAN CITY , June 26, 2012 (Translated from ANSA) - Cardinal Julian Herranz, who heads the three-man commission of cardinals named by Pope Benedict XVI to investigate Vatileaks and related event, says that their work has been 'intense but profitable', with 'great cooperation' on the part of all those they have interviewed so far.

He also says, cryptically, "There will be a surprise soon", without hinting what it might be. The cardinal is known never to make statements lightly.

"I'm quite at ease," he told ANSA, "things are going well. We have been hearing about 5-6 persons a week". He said these are clerical as well as lay members of the Curia who, in addition to answering the cardinals' questions, he said, have also been free to express their thoughts as they please.

"When they come to see us," he said, "they speak frankly and openly - it's a conversation, or maybe an audition. We ask our questions, they answer and talk about ahything they may want to"

He underscored that "of course, at this stage, absolute privacy about the matters discussed is necessary, and any persons who may turn out to be involved have a right not to be named until after the investigation is done".

Asked about a possible time frame, he said, "It does not depend on us. We are working as fast as we can. What we seek to do is to conclude our investigation with the most information possible and with sufficient elements to draw conclusions. We will submit our findings to the Pope, and he will decide".

The cardinal joined Opus Dei when he was 20 years old and was ordained an Opus Dei priest five years later. He went on to earn a medical degree and a doctorate in canon law, before joining Opus Dei founder Josemaria Escriva when he moved to Rome, where he was one of his closest aides for 22 years until the future saint died in 1975. He participated in Vatican-II as a canon law expert.

35 YEARS AGO TODAY....
Joseph Ratzinger was
made a cardinal
Translated from the 6/27/12 issue of




Right photo, Cardinal Ratzinger greeted by the faithful upon returning to Munich on July 1, 1977, after being consecrated cardinal.

Thirty-five years ago today, on the consistory of June 27, Joseph Raztinger, who had been consecrated Archbishop of Munich-Freising one month earlier (May 28), was created cardinal by Pope Paul VI. Along with him, in what was to be the last consistory of Paul VI's Pontificate, also elevated to cardinal rank were the Archbishop of Florence Ugo Benelli (who would be the leading conservative papabile in the next conclave); Bernardin Gantin, pro-president of the Pontifical Council on Justice and Peace (and first African ever to be considered papabile); Mons. Luigi Ciappi, Theologian of the Pontifical Household; and Frantisek Tomasek, apostolic administator of Prague, who had been named cardinal in pectore (secretly) the year before. In this issue we reprint the address given by Pope Paul VI during the public consistory, and his homily at the Mass he concelebrated with the new cardinals two days later on the Solemnity of Saints Peter and Paul.


Top photo, Cardinals Ratzinger, Gantin and Benelli; in the bottom photo, Cardinals Benelli and Ratzinger.

---

The consistory that we celebrated this morning in the Apostolic palace according to tradition, continues here and reaches its culmination. We shall shortly impose the berretta on the new cardinals, who we greet wholeheartedly and welcome as new members of the Sacred College.

We also greet the delegations present - bishops, civilian and military authorities, members of the clergy and the faithful who have come to be with the new cardinals representing their country of origion, as well as the dioceses of which they are the pastors. We thank you all for coming to this important ecclesial event.

Our thanks above all to Cardinal Giovanni Benelli, Archbishop of Florence, who expressed the sentiments of himself and his brothers in the Episcopate and in the cardinalate to which they have been called at this time in their life.

The singular character of this final ceremony of the consistory suggests to us some reflections on a subject which seems to us fundamental and specific to this ceremony: faithfulness.

It is exactly what we wished to underscore in calling this consistory. Indeed, the most worthy and venerated ecclesiastics whom we have now added to the number of Cardinals are all distinguished principally by this gift: the absolute faithfulness with which they have lived (during this post-Conciliar period so rich in healthy ferment but also in disgregatory elements) in continuous readiness, in daily service, in total dedication to Christ, to the Church, to the Pope, without bending, withoout hesitation, without transaction.

In carrying out the most sensitive tasks, you, who we call our venerated Brothers,have offered to the entire Church an incomparable witness of fidelity.

Of this faithfulness, we are happy to render public attestation today:

First of all to you, Cardinal Benelli, who have been so close to use for a very long time, but above all during the ten years when, as Deputy Secretary of State (Sostituto), you diligently executed our will, without sparing time or energy, working uninterrupted and tirelessly.

And as much as it cost us to do without your daily collaboration, we thought of the good that will come to the Church of Florence to whom we are making a gift of your gifts, of your dedication, and of your spirit of sacrifice.

Likewise we acknowledge your fidelity, Cardinal Gantin, who after having served exemplarily your native archdiocese of Cotonou in Benin (as the ancient Dahomey is now known), became secretary of the dicastery to promote evangelization around the world, and now preside over the Commission on Justice and Peace, instituted by us to promote the cause of justice and peace especially in the emerging nations.



And we acknowledge your fidelity, Cardinal Ratzinger, whose elevated theological magisterium in prestigious university professorships in your native Germany and in numerous worthy publications, have shown how theological research - following the high road of fides quaerens intellectum (faith seeking understanding) - cannot and should never be detached from the profound, free and creative adherence to the Magisterium that authentically interprets and proclaims the Word of God; and who now, from the Archbishopric of Munich and Freising, shall be leading, with our trust, a chosen flock along the ways of truth and peace.

And in you, Cardinal Ciappi, we acknowledge a faithfulness that has always been second nature to you and which inspired your teaching at the Angelicum as Dean of the Faculty of Sacred Theology, and also as the much appreciated, humble and authoritative Theologian of the Pontifical Household from the time of our predecessors Pius XII and John XXIII, as well as during the 14 years of our Pontificate.

Our gesture serves also as a reward for this most valuable service, as well as further recognition for the Dominican order of which you have been an exemplary son.

And finally, how much faithfulness has been shown by Cardinal Tomasek, whom we rejoice to see among us today, after finally revealing his name which had remained in pectore since the Consistory of May 1976!

Your long and generous work as priest and Bishop in our beloved Czechoslovakia, with such evangelical directness and consistency, has made it our duty to present it to the Church and to civilian society as a token of a more serene and constructive tomorrow.

We publicly thank you, our venerated Brothers, for the example of your meritorious and beneficial faithfulness. But if we have given public witness of this, we certainly cannot forget the tousands upon thousands of lives spent in silence, in prayer, in work, for the glory of God and for the good of our brothers.

Let us think of the healthy and heroic young people who remain faithful to divine law and to the imperatives of conscience in the midst of perils of every kind.

Let us think of the mothers and fathers who keep the faith in living out their matrimonial vows and who make their homes 'a small church', a crucible for education, a school for apostolate.

Let us think of our beloved seminarians who prepare for the priesthood in faithfulness to an austere and edifying program of interior life, of study and self-discipline.

Let us think of the generous priests who, in the monotony of an obscure and unseen life, give everything to preach the Word of God, to the ministry of reconciliation, to caring for the sick, to the formation of adolescents, and in varied and multiple works of apostolate.

To everyone goes our gratitude. Yes, we know what they do, we are grateful to them, we bless them, we remember them.

This day that speaks to all of us of faithfulness is a wonderful occasion to recognize and encourage faithfulness which, for the most part, lives in the Church, while not allowing ourselves to he influenced by new ideologies, by the thirst for worldly applause, by seeking only our own advantage.

This,brothers and chlidren, is the significance of today's ceremony. Because even the oath which the new cardinals will be making soon is nothing but a new and larger commitment to faithfulness, an act of allegiance.

We will hear them say: "I promise and swear, that from this time to the end of my life, I will be faithful and obedient unto St Peter, the holy apostolic Roman Church and our most Holy Lord, the Pope of Rome and his successors, canonically and lawfully elected..."

The faithfulness that you will swear today shall henceforth distinguish even more your activities and your life - both as chosen members of the Roman Presbytery, to which the titles assigned to you will bind you visibly; or as our co-workers in the various dicasteries of the Roman Curia, and therefore specifically assigned to the service of the Holy See and the demands of the entire ecclesial family; or as the authorities of the diocese entrusted to some of you, and in which you will carry out the triple pastoral duty to teach, to minister and to govern, as teachers, as liturgists, and as pastors, in commu8nion with the Successor of Peter, who counts on you and your Churches.

As we said in last year's consistory, "a current of life flows from the center towards single local points, which returns to the center, in a unique exchange of vitality and love which manifests the intimate fruitfulness and unity of the Church of Christ".

In this respect, may we be aided by Our Lady, Virgo Fidelis (faithful virgin), who was always attentive to the Word of God, and may she teach us to live it and to know it profoundly. May the grace of the Lord, to whom we entrust ourselves with immense hope and total confidence, bless the commitment of everyone.

---

NB: For years, the only photographs I could get online of Joseph Ratzinger's elevation to cardinal rank were the above photos, with watermarks, in which the two showing the imposition of the beretta at St. Peter's Basilica have both the Pope and the cardinal in purple-colored robes, when both should be wearing red, the liturgical color used at a cardinals' Mass. The first photo is of the conferral of the title at the public conssistory, in which it looks like Paul VI is wearing a purple mozetta (it remains purple no matter what intensity one places on the cardinal's red. Because the sources of these few photos (including the unmarked photos above, and the sepia ones) are necessarily different, it has not been possible for me to match the color tones in all the pictures, but I have managed to make the chasubles look reasonably red, not purple, for the beretta imposition. I will have to spend much more time learning how to improve problem pictures than the simple 1-4 steps I am now able to take, and some playing around with the hue-and-saturation wheel.

I will post a translation of the homily later.

Wednesday, June 27, 12th Week in Ordinary Time

Center icon: In orthodox iconography, Cyril is often paired with Athanasius (left), his great predecessor as Bishop of Alexandria.
ST. CYRIL OF ALEXANDRIA (Egypt, 376-444), Bishop, Theologian, Doctor of the Church
Benedict XVI devoted his catechesis on October 3, 2007, to Cyril of Alexandria
www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/audiences/2007/documents/hf_ben-xvi_aud_20071003...
who was made a Doctor of the Church by Leo XIII and who has been called 'Pillar of Faith' and 'Seal of the Fathers' because of his staunch doctrinal orthodoxy. He grew up under an uncle, Theophilus, who was bishop of Alexandria and who took him to Constantinople where eventually, he took part in a Synod that deposed John Chrysostom as Bishop of Constantinople, in the context of an ongoing rivalry between Constantinople and Alexandria (along with Rome, Jerusalem and Antioch, they made up the premier Sees of the early Church). When Theophilus died, Cyril was elected to succeed him and served as Bishop of Alexandria for 32 years. He was responsible for closing down the churches of Novatian heretics, and for expelling anti-Christian Jews from Alexandria and confiscating their properties. His biggest conflict was with Nestorius, elected Bishop of Constantinople in 418 who affirmed that Jesus was only a vessel in whom God dwelt and therefore refused to call Mary Theotokos (or God-bearer). Cyril spearheaded a theological campaign against this heresy to affirm the traditional teaching that human and divine nature united uniquely in Jesus. Significantly, Benedict XVI chooses this quotation from a letter that Cyril wrote to Nestorius: "It is essential to explain the teaching and interpretation of the faith to the people in the most irreproachable way, and to remember that those who cause scandal even to only one of the little ones who believe in Christ will be subjected to an unbearable punishment". Benedict goes on to say that "the faith of the people is an extension of tradition and a guarantee of sound doctrine". Cyril and his supporters held the Council of Ephesus in 431 which affirmed traditional Church teaching on Christ and the Theotokos, condemned Nestorius, and exiled him. Cyril was a prolific writer who was widely read in his day. His theology was very Christ-centered and much of it carried on the ideas of his great predecessor Athanasius (285-373), not surprisingly known as the Doctor of Orthodoxy, whose great fight was against the Arian heresy.
Readings for today's Mass:
www.usccb.org/bible/readings/062712.cfm


AT THE VATICAN TODAY

General Audience - The Holy Father reflected today on the great "Christological hymn" found in the Letter
to the Philippians (2:6-11), in which St. Paul, a prisoner for the Gospel, exhorts his hearers to "that
deep joy which is the fruit of our imitation of God’s Son, who humbled himself and took on our human nature".


IOR executives meet -
Pope watches them closely
Translated from

June 27, 2012

---

This morning, the Administrative Council of IOR met, currently composed of the Vice President, Ronaldo Hermann Schmitz; Carl Albert Anderson, Antonio Maria Marocco, and Manuel Soto Serrano.

Afterwards, tghey reported to the Cardinals' oversight commission presided by Secretary of Satte Cardinal tarcisio Bertone.

Both meetings were useful to share information and proposals both on the regular management of the institution, as well as to draw up the criteria of professionalism and universally recognized experience for the next IOR president.

The Holy Father is paying close attention to the current situation of IOR and has asked to be constantly informed by the Secretary of State.

---

Note the last line of the communique. Does it not seem to indicate that Benedict XVI is riding herd over IOR management for the first time? As if to say, "Guys, you're not just dealing with Cardinal Bertone now. I'm watching you all, him included". Perhaps the era of blind unquestioning trust in this particular co-worker has ended for the Pope. Cardinal Tauran, who's on the cardinals' oversight commission, may have told him a thing or two about IOR last Saturday.

GENERAL AUDIENCE TODAY
June 27, 2012



In his last General Audience before his July summer break, Pope Benedict XVI today continued his catecheses on prayer in the letters of St. Paul. Once again, the audience was held in Aula Paolo VI because of the summer heat in Rome.

The Holy Father leaves for Castel Gandolfo on Tuesday, July 2, and will be staying there to the end of September, with a brief 'interruption' when he travels to Lebanon on Sept. 12-14.

Here is how he synthesized today's catechesis in English:

---

As part of our continuing reflection on prayer in the letters of Saint Paul, we now turn to the great "Christological hymn" found in the Letter to the Philippians (2:6-11).

Paul, a prisoner for the Gospel, exhorts his hearers to that deep joy which is the fruit of our imitation of God’s Son, who humbled himself and took on our human nature.

Christ’s complete obedience to the will of the Father, even to death on the cross, reverses the sin of Adam and restores our original dignity. Therefore God highly exalted him and gave him the name of "Lord".

At the name of Jesus, then, every knee must bend in heaven, on earth and under the earth (vv. 9-11). As Jesus’s exaltation took place through his abasement, so in our lives and in our prayer we discover that, by lowering ourselves in humility and love, we are lifted up to God.

May we more frequently bend the knee in praise and worship of Christ’s divinity and his Lordship over all creation. In our prayer, may we be ever more faithful witnesses of his sovereignty in our every thought, word and deed.

---

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

---

Dear brothers and sisters,

Our prayer consists, as we have seen in past Wednesdays, of silence and speech, of singing and gestures that involve the whole person: from the mouth to the mind, from the heart to the whole body. It is a characteristic that we find in Jewish prayer, especially in the Psalms.

Today I would like to talk about one of the oldest songs or hymns of the Christian tradition, which St. Paul presents to us in what is, in a sense, his spiritual testament: The Letter to the Philippians. It is, in fact, a letter that the Apostle dictated while in prison, perhaps in Rome. He feels close to death, because he says that his life will be poured out as a libation (cf. Philippians 2.17).

Despite this situation of grave danger to his physical safety, St. Paul, throughout the text, expresses the joy of being a disciple of Christ, of being able to reach out to Him, to the point of no longer seeing his death as a loss but as gain.

In the last chapter of the Letter there is a powerful invitation to joy, a fundamental characteristic of our being Christians and of our prayer. St. Paul writes: "Rejoice in the Lord always. I shall say it again: rejoice!" (Phil 4,4).

But how can one rejoice in the face of an imminent death sentence? From where, or rather, from whom does St. Paul draw the serenity, strength, courage to go to meet his martyrdom, and the shedding of his blood?

We find the answer at the centre of the Letter to the Philippians, in what Christian tradition calls carmen Christo, the hymn for Christ, more commonly known as the 'Christological hymn', a hymn in which all attention is centered on the 'sentiments' of Christ, that is, on his thinking, as well as his lived and concrete experience.

This prayer begins with an exhortation: "Have among yourselves the same attitude that is also yours in Christ Jesus" (Phil 2,5). These feelings are presented in the following verses: love, generosity, humility, obedience to God, the gift of oneself.

It is not simply to follow the example of Jesus, as a moral thing, but to involve all of our existence in his way of thinking and acting. Prayer should lead to an ever deeper knowledge and union of love with the Lord, to be able to think, act and love like Him, in Him and for Him. To exercise this, to learn the sentiments of Jesus, is the path of Christian life.

Now I will linger briefly on some elements of this dense hymn that sums up the whole human and divine journey of the Son of God, and encompasses all of human history: from his being God, to the incarnation, to his death on the cross and his exaltation in the glory of the Father, all of which also implies the behavior of Adam, of man at his origins.

This hymn to Christ starts off from his being «en morphe tou Theou», as the Greek text says, namely, his being 'in the form of God', or better yet, in the condition of God. Jesus, true God and true man, does not live his 'being like God' in order to triumph or to impose his supremacy - he does not consider it a possession, a privilege, a jealously guarded treasure.

Rather, he 'stripped himself', he emptied himself, assuming, as the Greek text says, the 'morphe doulos', the form of a slave, which is the human reality marked by suffering, poverty, death. He assimilated himself totally in humanity, except in sin, so that he behaved as a servant completely dedicated to the service of others.

In this regard, Eusebius of Cesarea in the fourth century said: "He took upon himself the burdens of the members who suffer. He made his own our lowly diseases. He suffered and was tortured for our sake: all this in conformity with his great love for mankind" (The evangelical demonstration, 10, 1,22).

St. Paul continues by delineating the 'historical' context in which this self-abasement of Jesus took place: "He humbled himself, becoming obedient to death" (Phil 2,8). The Son of God had truly become man and completed a journey in complete obedience and faithfulness to the will of the Father up to the supreme sacrifice of his own life.

Again, more than ever, the Apostle specifies that Jesus was 'obedient to death, even death on a cross". On the cross, Jesus reached the maximum degree of humiliation, because crucifixion was the penalty reserved for slaves, not for free men: «mors turpissima crucis» (the shameful death on the Cross) wrote Cicero (cfr In Verrem, V, 64, 165).

On the Cross of Christ, man is redeemed, and the experience of Adam is overturned: Adam, created in the image and likeness of God, presumed to be like God with his own forces, to put himself in God's place, and thus he lost the original dignity that he had been given.

Jesus, on the other hand, was 'in the condition of God', but he abased himself, immersed himself in the human condition, in total fidelity to the Father, in order to redeem the Adam in us and give back man the dignity that he had lost.

The Fathers underscored that he was obedient, restoring to human nature, through his own humanity and obedience, that which was lost through the disobedience of Adam.

In prayer, in our relationship with God, we open the mind and the heart, our very will, to the action of the Holy Spirit in order to enter into that same dynamic of life, as affirmed by St. Cyril of Alexandria, whose feast we celebrate today: "The work of the Spirit seeks to transform us through the grace of perfectly copying his humiliation" (Lettera Festale 10,4).

But instead, human logic often seeks realization of the self in power, in dominion, with powerful means. Man continues to want to build with his own powers the tower of Babel so that by himself he may reach the height of God, to be like God.

The Incarnation and the Cross remind us that full self-realization is conforming our human will to that of the Father, emptying ourselves of self in order to be filled with love, the charity of God, and thus become truly capable of loving others.

Man does not find himself by remaining closed in on himself, affirming himself. Man finds himself only by leaving himself, Only if we leave ourselves do we find ourselves. If Adam wanted to imitate God, that in itself is not bad, but he was wrong in his idea of God. God is not one who only wants greatness. God is love who gives himself in the Trinity and then in Creation. To imitate God means leaving oneself, to give oneself in love.

In the second part of this Christological hymn in the Letter to the Philippians, the subject changes: it is no longer Christ, but God the Father. St. Paul underscores that it is precisely because of his obedience to the will of God that "God greatly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name" (Phil 2,9).

He who had profoundly abased himself taking on the condition of a slave was exalted, elevated over every other by the Father, who gives him the name Kyrios, Lord - the supreme dignity of lordship. In the face of this new man, in fact,given the name of God himself in the Old Testament, "every knee should bend, of those in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father" (vv 10-11).

The Jesus that is exalted is the Jesus of the Last Supper, who took off his outer garments, girded himself with a towel, and bent to wash the feet of the Apostles, asking them: "Do you realize what I have done for you? You call me ‘teacher’ and ‘master,’ and rightly so, for indeed I am. If I, therefore, the master and teacher, have washed your feet, you ought to wash one another’s feet" (Jn 13,12-14).

It is important to remember this always in our prayer and in our life: "The ascent to God comes precisely in the descent to humble service, the descent of love, which is the essence of God, and therefore the truly purifying power which makes man able to perceive and to see God" (JESUS OF NAZARETH, Milan, 2007).

The hymn in the Letter to the Philippians offers us two important indications for our own prayer. The first is the invocation Lord addressed to Jesus Christ, seated at the right hand of the Father. He is the only Lord of our life, among so many 'dominators' who wish to direct and guide it. Therefore, it is necessary to have a scale of values in which God has the primacy so we can affirm with St. Paul: "I even consider everything as a loss because of the supreme good of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord." (Phil 3,8). His encounter with the Risen One made him understand that he is the only treasure for whom it is worth giving one's own existence.

The second indication is prostration, that 'every knee may bend' on earth and in the heavens, which recalls an expression of the prophet Isaiah, when he indicates the adoration that all creatures owe to God (cfr 45,23).

Genuflection before the Most Blessed Sacrament or kneeling when we pray, express the attitude of adoration before God, even with the body. Thus the importance of this gesture, not out of habit and in haste, but with profound awareness. When we kneel before the Lord, we confess our faith in him, we acknowledge that he is the only Lord of our life.

Dear brothers and sisters, in our prayer, let us keep our gaze on the Crucified One, let us pause in adoration more often before the Eucharist, in order to make our life enter into God's love, who debased himself with humility to raise us to him.

At the start of the catechesis, we asked how is it that St. Paul could rejoice with the imminent risk of martyrdom and the shedding of his blood. This is possible only because the Apostle had never turned away his look from Christ, to the point of conforming with him in death in the hope that "somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead" (Phil 3,11).

Like St, Francis before the Crucifix, let us also say: "Most High, glorious God, enlighten the darkness of my heart and give me true faith, certain hope and perfect charity, sense and knowledge, Lord, that I may carry out Your holy and true command. Amen" (cfr Prayer before the Crucifix FF [276])..

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Pope gets new book on
adult stemcell research
from Vatican-sponsored
conference last year

June 27, 2012



As part of an ongoing mission to advance scientific research on adult stem cell therapies and explore their cultural and ethical implications, Monsignor Tomasz Trafny of the Vatican's Pontifical Council for Culture, joined Dr. Robin Smith, CEO of NeoStem and Chairman and President of the Stem for Life Foundation, and Dr. Max Gomez, trustee of the Stem for Life Foundation to present the first copy of their forthcoming book, Our Stem Cells: The Mystery of Life and Secrets of Healing, to Pope Benedict XVI following the Wednesday general audience.



The book is the result of a unique collaboration between the Vatican’s Pontifical Council (via its charitable foundation STOQ International) and the Stem for Life Foundation, and will be available later this year.

It includes Pope Benedict's address that urges increased support and awareness for advancements in adult stem cell research in order to alleviate human suffering.

The book focuses on concepts discussed at the First International Vatican Adult Stem Cell Conference in 2011 and presents the reader with an engaging, comprehensive overview of adult stem cells and their vital role in a future of regenerative medicine.

In powerful, accessible language the book showcases a wide array of emerging adult stem cell breakthroughs, including their ability to repair damaged hearts and organs, restore sight, kill cancer, cure diabetes, heal burns and stop the march of degenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer’s, multiple sclerosis and Lou Gehrig’s disease.

“In addition to making the science easy to understand, we filled the book with here-and-now case studies on how adult stem cell therapies are already helping real people suffering needlessly from deadly and debilitating diseases and medical conditions,“ said Dr. Smith. “Not only does the book speak to the success of our historic partnership with the Vatican, but it sets the stage for our next events.”

“This book promotes a powerful dialogue between scientific and religious communities,” says Monsignor Tomasz Trafny. “This dialogue needs to find its expression within the important framework of searching for truth and being guided by the highest ethical values. We hope this book will help educate people throughout the world regarding the importance of ethical scientific research and help them understand they do not need to choose between their faith and science; but in fact, the two can work together to profoundly improve humanity.”

Benedict XVI on
the 'what' and 'why' of Baptism
By James V. Schall, S.J.

June 25, 2012

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“Why isn’t it sufficient for discipleship to know the teachings of Jesus, to know the Christian values? Why is it necessary to be baptized?”
— Pope Benedict XVI, “Lectio Divina,” St. John Lateran, June 11, 2012.

“I was born not because I made myself man, but I was born because being human was given to me.”
— Pope Benedict XVI, June 11, 2012

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I.

Benedict XVI speaks often and at length on baptism. At first sight, it seems a rather messy and inconvenient ceremony, all that water, candles, oil, and — not infrequently — crying babies.

The first thing we must know about baptism is that it is not a human invention, though it is a human thing. It is unlikely anyone would sit down and figure out that pouring water over the head of someone would mean anything but normal cleansing.

John the Baptist, however, was said to baptize with water, but Christ, to whom he witnessed, baptized with water and the Holy Spirit.

In a reflective “reading” at the Basilica of St. John Lateran, Benedict again took up the importance of baptism. Over the course of his Pontificate, the Holy Father has given fourteen other homilies on baptism when he himself has administered the sacrament — seven on the Sunday after the Epiphany and seven at the Easter Vigil.

In Spe Salvi, he also recalled the rite of Baptism, the part where the priest asks the parents or the one to be baptized what he wants from the sacrament. The answer is: “Eternal life.”

Ultimately, this eternal life is why we exist, that we may obtain it. It is a gift to us. It is not the result of our own enterprise or of our own nature.

Benedict begins by pointing out that baptism repeats the last recorded words of Christ in the Gospels. The Apostles were charged with going forth to make all nations His disciples and to baptize each one in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. We are baptized in the name of the Trinity; we mention each Person. We are to be “immersed” in God — we, who are human beings.

The Pope recalls a conversation Christ had with the Sadducees. These latter only admitted as legitimate scripture the first five books of Moses. In them, resurrection is not mentioned, which was the Sadducees’ reason for not believing in this teaching. But Jesus responded to them in words that reflected the books they did accept.

“Did you not know that God calls himself the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob?” (Mt 22:31). That is, He is the God of the living, which includes the three figures found in these early books. In other words, Christ gave the Sadducees enough challenge to see their own contradictions.

The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit have “become” the “name” of the one God. “The living are living because they stand in the memory, in the life of God.”

Already in the Old Testament ,we have intimations of the teachings that Christ will complete. So the baptismal rite is obedient to Christ’s last charge to the Apostles. They are to teach and baptize. Baptism “inserts” us in the name of God. Like Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, we too witness to the living God; to be baptized means “to be united with God.” The symbolism of immersion means that we are taken up into the life of the Godhead.

Baptism means God is not “far” from us. He “exists” and is near to us. This closeness is what we now affirm. Yet, “we do not make ourselves Christians.” Our acceptance is essential but the faith is not of our direct making. “I am taken up by God, taken in hand by God and in this way, saying “yes” to this action of God, I become Christian.”

Benedict emphasizes that our becoming Christian is, on our part, largely “passive.” His analogy to birth is telling. “I was born not because I made myself man but I was born because being human was given to me. So also, being Christian is given to me; it is a ‘passive’ for me that becomes 'active’ in our, in my life.” The Pope already sees here the foretaste of our dying, of the Cross as included in the being born into the reality of this world.

But if we are immersed in God, we are also united to others who are baptized in the name of the Trinity. “Being baptized is never a solitary act of ‘me,’ but is always necessarily a being united with the others.” The very unity of God Himself includes the diversity of the three Persons so that everything created in its “image” will reflect both its uniqueness and its relation to others.

We again recall that God is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God of the living. “Baptism is the first step of the resurrection, the entry into the indestructible life of God.” The concluding words of Matthew thus form the grounding of what baptism is.

II.

The rite of baptism, like most sacraments, has matter, that is, water, and form provided by the words used in the baptism. Benedict stresses the fact that “Christianity is not something purely spiritual, something solely subjective, of sentiment, will, and ideas, but it is a cosmic reality.” This is the rejection of all idealism or Gnosticism that finds material creation — especially man’s body — to be somehow an impediment, something to be rejected.

Matter is “part” of our faith. “The faith is not purely spiritual, but in this way God inserts us into the whole reality of the cosmos and transforms the cosmos, draws it to himself.”

We are not Gnostics who rebel at the limitations of the fact we have bodies that are the instruments of our spirit. If we have to eat, drink, sleep, work, and take care of ourselves, this is what we are. The water of baptism reminds us and teaches us that matter is not alien to us. It is really there to be reckoned with. It too is a gift.

The Pope notes the search for God exists in all religions for a proper way to God. Those religions can be mistaken but still reveal a search for God. So if water is one element in baptism; the other element is the word, our understanding of what it is we are taught to do. The words we speak are not just “words.” They indicate what we really believe and hold. “Baptism extends to our whole life.”

Benedict explains that the “renunciations” in the baptismal rite — to renounce Satan and all his works—is an abiding need for each of us. “The sacrament of baptism is not the work of an hour, but a reality of our whole life.”

There are always ways of life to which we must say “no,” and others to which we must say “yes.” This distinction is what we go over in the baptism’s renunciations and affirmations. This is why we ask: “Do you renounce?” and “Do you believe?” These are not abstractions.

The Pope recalls that earlier formulae of baptism asked us to renounce the “pomp” of Satan. What they had in mind at the time was the renouncing of “the grand bloody spectacles in which cruelty becomes entertainment.”

But even more it meant the rejection of a “special way of culture” and of “a way of life in which what counts is not the truth but the appearance, what is sought is not the truth but the effect, the sensation, and under the pretext of truth, in reality, men are destroyed, the intention is to destroy and create only oneself as victor.”

Needless to say, Benedict has described here much of our present culture of death to which we must say “no.” “We also know well from many Psalms the contrast of a culture in which one seems incapable of being touched by all the evils of the world, one places oneself above all, above God, while in reality it is a culture of evil, a dominion of evil.” The Pope expects us to be aware of these things about which our baptism warns us.

“Today freedom and Christian life, the observance of the commandments of God, move in the opposite direction. Being Christian is thought to be a sort of slavery; freedom is emancipation from the Christian faith, emancipation—in the final analysis—from God,” Benedict observes.

“The word ‘sin’ appears to many almost ridiculous, because they say: ‘How? We cannot offend God! God is so great, what does it matter to God if I make a little mistake? We cannot offend God; his interest is too great to be offended by us.”

This is but another version of the ancient notion that God has no care of His creation, especially of His human creation. It is a denial of the very essence of Christianity that providence includes each of us, so great we are.

Our main concern is not doing anything against God’s love for in this power of rejection consists our freedom. God made Himself vulnerable by becoming man. If we emancipate ourselves from God the result is always to become a “slave to many dictatorships of time.”

III.

The baptismal rite continues with the affirmation of the Creed in dialogue form. That is, it asks each person, “Do you believe this about each statement of God’s being?” The faith is not just something of the “intellect,” though it is that too. “The truth of Christ can be understood only if one has understood his way.”

The water in baptism recalls the history of water in Scripture. It symbolizes both death and life “This is part of the symbolism of water: it symbolizes — above all in the immersions of antiquity, the Red Sea, death, the cross. Only through the cross does one come to new life, and this is realized every day.” But as the font, from whence water flows, water becomes witness to new life

Benedict also has a comment on the baptism of infants. The objection is made that we “impose” a belief on the hapless child. Such a view does not see faith as itself a “new life” or as a “true” life, but just one possible choice.

Yet, “life is given to us without our being able to choose whether we want to live or not.” Life is simply given to us. It is ours by way of gift, not right. We can give life and baptism if we affirm that life itself is “good.” “Only the anticipation of meaning justifies the anticipation of life.” It is not, after all, a chaos. It anticipates our “yes” to God’s gift.

“The Baptism of children is not contrary to freedom. It is really necessary to give this rite in order to justify as well the gift — highly debatable — of life. Only the life that is in the hands of God, in the hands of Christ, immersed in the name of the triune God, is certainly a gift that can be given without scruples.”

Baptism is the opportunity to affirm and live this gift of life and eternal life. When we begin to see the “what” and “why” of baptism, of its relation to eternal life, our eternal life, we see why Benedict takes such care to explain this sacrament of initiation to us.

Jewish advocate for Pius XII says
'We are winning the war
to clear the Pope's name'
By Edward Pentin


ROME, JUNE 21, 2012 (Zenit.org).- After six years of untiring research that has uncovered 76,000 pages of original material, plus multiple eyewitness accounts and testimonies from prominent international scholars, Gary Krupp is confident the besmirching of Pope Pius XII's reputation is coming to an end.

"We're definitely winning, absolutely no question," Krupp tells me on a visit to Rome this week. "Every time we do more research, we find a diamond. It's incredible, but there's nothing on the other side because there's no documented foundation for any of their accusations."


Krupp's book and various meetings with Pope Benedict XVI., including an audience for Pave the Way Foundation in Castel Gandolfo.

Krupp, the founder of the Pave The Way Foundation, a not-for-profit organization dedicated to bridging the gap between world religions, is well known for being one of the most passionate defenders of Pius XII's reputation for heroism in his relations with the Jewish people.

As a Jew from New York who grew up, like many others of his generation, with an indoctrinated hatred of the wartime Pope for his alleged anti-Semitism and unwillingness to help Jews during the Holocaust, his anger at realizing this was all a lie, and his willingness to reveal the truth, is both heartfelt and compelling.

Now he and his team of researchers have uncovered more documented evidence that Pave the Way believes should act as incontrovertible proof to any serious historian that Pius XII did all he could to protect and defend Jews before, during and after the Second World War. All the documentation can be viewed on the organization's Web site: www.ptwf.org

Some of these documents show that Pius XII favored the creation of a Jewish state as far back as 1917. In further recent discoveries, Pave the Way has come across a letter written by Cardinal Pacelli in 1939 in which he attempted to obtain visas for 200,000 Jews who remained in Germany after Kristallnacht.

"He wasn't able to obtain the visas, but he tried," says Krupp. "The point is, he didn't do it from the safety of Washington DC or London. He did it while surrounded by hostile forces, and infiltrated by spies, and yet he still managed to save more Jews than all the other world leaders combined."

Further letters reveal how, through his nephew Carlo Pacelli, Pius XII helped prevent the arrest of Roman Jews in 1943, giving an estimated 12,000 of them the chance to seek refuge in Church monasteries, convents, and the homes of Italian Catholics.

"All these archival records show how he personally helped save Jewish people," says Krupp, adding emphatically in his broad New York accent: "Anti-Semites don't do that!"

Other ground-breaking discoveries show how the Pope was not just a target for assassination by Hitler (Pave the Way has a copy of a letter Pius wrote to cardinals expecting to be killed and giving them instructions to form a government in exile), but that he and his secretary were also named in a German report as co-conspirators in the Valkyre assassination attempt on the Fuhrer in July 1944.

Pave the Way has combed through copies of the New York Times and Palestine Postfrom 1939 to 1958 to find any evidence of animosity toward the Jews.

"There's not one negative article. Not one," Krupp says, adding that a French friend of theirs also went through French Communist and Socialist papers from that time, and similarly came up with nothing negative.

Krupp points out a "fantastic letter" from the American ambassador to Germany, reporting on 3rd March 1939 on the new Pope's election on 2nd March. The ambassador recalls in the letter meeting Cardinal Pacelli in 1937, and wanting to visit the Sistine Chapel, but he wasn't able to as the Cardinal had kept him in his office for three solid hours, talking about National Socialism and Hitler. "In the letter it says: "While his views against Hitler were well known to me, I had no idea of the extremity of his views,'" Krupp recounts.

Like many, Krupp is convinced the smearing of Pius's reputation was due to an elaborate misinformation campaign by the Soviets and, in particular, the play "The Deputy," which was widely performed after the Pontiff's death. The play, which spread what's become known as the "Black Legend" of Pius XII, is still being performed today, currently in Munich and even in an American university – something that greatly irritates Krupp given the dean of the university is allowing it on grounds of "academic freedom."

What makes him so unstinting in his desire to uncover the truth is his firm belief that history must be accurate. "People die with history," Krupp says, "so it's absolutely essential people realize that history is a sacred thing – you must get it right because people kill one another on perceived history." He says anti-Pius historians are "historical revisionists," and makes no apology for calling them "liars" instead of scholars.

He is particularly indignant with Rome's Jewish community and those who persistently propagate the Black Legend in the face of the contrary evidence.

"All of Rome's Jewish community despises Pius XII, when a few short few years ago they erected a monument in his honor because he saved all of their lives," says Krupp (the monument, erected in 1946, is no longer there).

"You have air in your lungs today because he saved your lives," he says in pointed words directed at them, "and yet you despise him? This is a sin. This is a Jewish sin." Krupp frequently stresses that one of the worst character flaws a Jew can have is ingratitude, and notes that the Hebrew word for Jew is actually based on the word gratitude.

He believes if any of the community were willing to look at the documents, they would change their minds. "Anyone who refuses to look at documents and the proof is a fool," he says. "This is especially obnoxious to me, as this community is alive because of his actions, very provably alive – everyone from the era said so," Krupps argues.

He also says he has come to discover the enemies of Pope Pius XII tend to be "ultra-left wing Jews and Catholics" with an agenda to destroy the Pope's reputation because he "typified the conservative, traditional Church."

But what about the regular accusations one hears made against Pius? Krupp bats away each of them away with ease.

On why Pius didn't lay down his life as a martyr: "Why didn't General Patton do the same thing? Why didn't Roosevelt do the same thing? Don't forget the Vatican is two entities, head of the Catholic Church and also a government. It would be the worst thing one can do, especially when he could do the good that he did alive. Being dead would be no good at all."

On the claim no Nazis were excommunicated: "They were -- I love this one. The German bishops said anyone who joined the 'Hitler Party,' who wore the uniform or flew the flag were excommunicated, and a priest couldn't attend their funeral if any of them died."

On the accusation that Pius XII helped Nazi war criminals flee to South America after the war: "No, it was exactly the opposite according to Bishop Hudal himself [Hudal was a Nazi collaborator in Rome]; just read his [Hudal's] autobiography."

On the claim that Pius authorized forced baptisms of Jewish infants: "Nonsense. In fact he forbade it. There were some … You had some overzealous nuns and others who did this, but he forbade it. He forbade it because he had a great love and respect for Judaism, starting from his childhood. His closest friend was a Jewish orthodox boy, Guido Mendes."

Krupp recognizes "Nostra Aetate," the Second Vatican Council declaration considered by many to have transformed Jewish-Catholic relations, as "one of the most important events in Jewish-Christian relations."

It's arguable whether his invaluable efforts to clear Pius XII's name would have taken place had it not been for that document, but Krupp began working on the Pius issue after receiving a papal knighthood, seeing it would "open things up to do wonderful things between Jews and Catholics."

"I'm interested to know if he himself ever considered becoming a Catholic? "No, never," he says. "This is the way I am supposed to be. I'm doing what I'm supposed to do as a Jew not as a Catholic."

"I feel my brothers and sisters are in the Church, but I would never consider converting," he says. "I'm very proud to be Jewish, and I think this is the path God meant for me to take."

I missed this item completely this weekend because for some reason, it is not included in CNS's own round-up of its current and recent stories, and it was rather strange to see it referenced in an Italian traditionalist site...

Mons. Di Noia on FSSPX:
'Reconciliation is close
but it needs a push -
the Pope wants it'
By Carol Glatz




VATICAN CITY, June 26 (CNS) -- In an effort to aid reconciliation attempts with traditionalist Catholics, Pope Benedict XVI has named U.S. Archbishop J. Augustine Di Noia to fill the newly created post of vice president of the Pontifical Commission "Ecclesia Dei."

"The appointment of a high-ranking prelate to this position is a sign of the Holy Father's pastoral solicitude for traditionalist Catholics in communion with the Holy See and his strong desire for the reconciliation of those traditionalist communities not in union with the See of Peter," the Vatican said in a written statement June 26.

The statement, released by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which oversees "Ecclesia Dei," said the New York-born Dominican is a respected theologian who has devoted much time and attention to the doctrinal issues under review in current talks with the breakaway traditionalist Society of St. Pius X, led by Bishop Bernard Fellay. The society rejects some of the teachings of Vatican II as well as the modernizing reforms, especially to the liturgy, that followed in its wake.

At a high-level meeting at the Vatican June 13, Vatican officials presented Bishop Fellay with a draft document proposing a personal prelature as the most appropriate instrument for any future canonical recognition of the society, in the event doctrinal differences are resolved. Vatican officials also gave Bishop Fellay their evaluation of the society's latest statement on those doctrinal differences.

Following the meeting, the society said that unresolved "doctrinal difficulties" with Vatican II and the church's subsequent liturgical reform could lead to a "new phase of discussions" over possible reconciliation with Rome.

The talks have focused on the wording of a "doctrinal preamble" outlining what the Vatican has said are "some doctrinal principles and criteria for the interpretation of Catholic doctrine necessary to guarantee fidelity" to the formal teaching of the church.

In a June 25 letter to SSPX bishops and priests published on the Internet, the society's secretary general, Father Christian Thouvenot, wrote that Bishop Fellay considered the Vatican's latest version of the preamble to be "clearly unacceptable."

Archbishop Di Noia said his task will be to help resolve the impasse over the terms of an agreement.

"The theological dialogue has gone on for three years but now (the Pope) is hoping to find the language or the modality for a reconciliation," Archbishop Di Noia told CNS. "We're at the stage of finessing, to help them find a formula which respects their own theological integrity."

"It seems to everyone that (a reconciliation) is close, but now it needs a kind of push," he said.

Archbishop Di Noia told Catholic News Service June 26 the Vatican needed to help people who have strong objections to the council see "that these disagreements don't have to be dividing or keep us from the same Communion table."

"It is possible to have theological disagreements while remaining in communion with the see of Peter," he said.

"Part of what we're saying is that when you read the documents (of Vatican II), you can't read them from the point of view of some liberal bishops who may have been participants (at the council), you have to read them at face value," Archbishop Di Noia told CNS. "Given that the Holy Spirit is guiding the Church, the documents cannot be in discontinuity with tradition."

The doctrinal office said the archbishop's experience as secretary of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Sacraments since 2009 "will facilitate the development of certain desired liturgical provisions" in the celebration of the 1962 Roman Missal, commonly known as the Tridentine rite.

Archbishop Di Noia, who said his reassignment from the worship congregation after only three years had left him "flabbergasted," will be replaced in that job by Bishop Arthur Roche of Leeds, England, the Vatican announced.

The doctrinal congregation also emphasized that Archbishop Di Noia enjoys "broad respect" in the Jewish community, which "will help in addressing some issues that have arisen in the area of Catholic-Jewish relations as the journey toward reconciliation of the traditionalist communities has progressed."

In addition to the highly publicized position of Bishop Richard Williamson, a traditionalist bishop who denies the Holocaust, public statements by Bishop Fellay, the society's superior general, leave in doubt whether the society as a whole accepts the entirety of "Nostra Aetate," the Vatican II document stating that the Jewish people cannot be blamed for the death of Jesus Christ.

"Ecclesia Dei" oversees the pastoral care of Catholics who have a special devotion to the older Latin liturgy. Pope Benedict placed the commission under the doctrinal congregation in 2009 to better address the doctrinal issues emerging from talks between the Vatican and the Society of St. Pius X.

U.S. Cardinal William J. Levada remains president of the commission and Msgr. Guido Pozzo continues as the commission's secretary.

The archbishop's appointment is significant as it dedicates additional expertise and manpower to the questions still under consideration by the Society of St. Pius X.

Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi, Vatican spokesman, told journalists that the new position is a sign of "the importance and delicate nature of the kind of difficulties" with which the commission is dealing and should not be seen as an indication of how things are proceeding with the society.

Questions under examination when talks began in 2009 included the concept of tradition; the post-Vatican II Roman Missal; the interpretation of Vatican II in continuity with Catholic doctrinal tradition; the themes of the unity of the church and the Catholic principles of ecumenism; the relationship between Christianity and non-Christian religions; and religious freedom.

When Archbishop Di Noia was undersecretary of the doctrinal congregation, he was involved with the pope's establishment in 2009 of the personal ordinariates, special structures for former Anglicans who want to be in full communion with the Catholic Church while preserving aspects of their Anglican spiritual and liturgical heritage.

"It's possible that (Pope Benedict) had that experience in view" when selecting him for his latest job, the archbishop said.

Blessed John Paul II named then-Father Di Noia to the No. 3 spot at the doctrinal congregation in 2002, when it was headed by then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger. The archbishop has worked extensively with Pope Benedict, especially as a member of the International Theological Commission when the current Pope was its president. [The Prefect of the CDF is ex-officio president of the International Theological Commission. so Joseph Ratzinger was its president from 1982-2005. Before that, he had been a member of the ITC since its inception in 1969, and was renamed every five years to it.]

Thursday, June 28, 12th Week in Ordinary Time
MEMORIAL OF ST. IRENAEUS OF LYONS

ST. IRENAEUS OF LYONS (b Asia Minor, ca 140, d Lyons 202), Bishop, Theologian and Martyr
Benedict XVI dedicated his catechesis on March 28, 2007
www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/audiences/2007/documents/hf_ben-xvi_aud_20070328...
to this early Father of the Church. He was born in Izmir (in present-day Turkey) and had been a student of Bishop Polycarp, who was a disciple of St. John the Evangelist. He eventually moved to Gaul and was listed among the presbyters of Lyons in 177. That year, he was on a mission to the Pope in Rome when at least 48 Christians, including the aging bishop of Lyons, were martyred by order of Marcus Aurelius. Returning to Lyons, he was elected Bishop and served so until his death, possibly martyred, himself. He distinguished himself both as a pastor and as a defender of the faith, explaining its truths clearly to the faithful, especially in specific response to the Gnostics, an ascendant heresy in the second century. One of his two extant works could be called the oldest catechism of the Catholic Church. Benedict's lecture on Irenaeus is fascinating for how he describes the Church Tradition that Irenaeus taught - one, holy, apostolic, public and 'pneumatic', or inspired by the Holy Spirit - as handed down from the Apostles themselves. "His tradition, uninterrupted Tradition, is not traditionalism, because this Tradition is always enlivened from within by the Holy Spirit, who makes it live anew, causes it to be interpreted and understood in the vitality of the Church".
Readings for today's Mass:
www.usccb.org/bible/readings/062812.cfm


AT THE VATICAN TODAY

The Holy Father met with

- The delegation of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople to the observance of the Solemnity of
Saints Peter and Paul. This reciprocates annually a similar visit by a Vatican delegation to the observance
in Istanbul of the Feast of St. Andrew, patron saint of the Ecumenical Patriarchate. Address in French.

Two ambassadors on a farewell visit:
- H.E. Mordechay Lewy, Ambassador of Israel; and
- H.E. Madame Lamia A. H. Mekhemar, Ambassador from the Arab Republic of Egypt.
[She had been President Mubarak's envoy to Egypt when relations with the Vatican were briefly disrupted after the eruption of violence in Egypt in late 2010. She was recalled to Egypt, but sent back by the Egyptian army council that took over after Mubarak was forced out of office in early 2011. Her departure this time apparently reflects the imminent change to an elected civilian government under President-elect Mohammed Morsi, who is a leader of the Muslim Brotherhood.]

- Cardinal Angelo Amato, Prefect of the Congregation for the Causes of Sainthood. The Holy Father authorized
a number of decrees that will lead to the beatification of an Italian priest and a Brazilian laywoman, both of
whom lived in the 19th century, for whom miracles attributed to their intercession have been confirmed.
Also decreed: Martyrdom for a total of 156 Spanish priests, religious and lay faithful killed in hatred of the faith during the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939); an Indian layman martyred in 1792, and an Italian priest killed by the Mafia in Palermo in 1993. Martyrs will proceed to canonization without requiring a beatification miracle, but will require one before canonization. Most notable among nine persons whose heroic virtues were proclaimed today (they will proceed to beatification after the Vatican certifies a miracle attributed to their intercession) are Mons. Fulton Sheen (1895-1979), the charismatic American bishop who was the evangelizing face and voice of the US Church for decades, and Fr. Alvaro Portillo (1914-1994), who succeeded St. Josemaria Escriva after his death in 1975 as head of the Opus Dei.

Pope approves new decrees
for sainthood causes at various stages -
includes Sicilian priest killed by Mafia in 1993,
Mons, Fulton Sheen, and Opus Dei prelate


Vatican City, June 27 (VIS) - Today, during a private audience with Cardinal Angelo Amato S.D.B., prefect of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, Pope Benedict XVI authorised the Congregation to promulgate the following decrees, advancing sainthood causes for many candidates one step closer, at various stages, to canonization:

MIRACLES
- Servant of God Luca Passi, Italian diocesan priest and founder of the Congregation of the Teaching Sisters of St. Dorothy (1789-1866).
- Servant of God Francesca de Paula de Jesus, known as Nha Chica, Brazilian laywoman (1808-1895).

MARTYRDOM
- Servants of God Manuel Borras Ferre, auxiliary bishop of Tarragona, Spain, Agapito Modesto (ne Modesto Pamplona Falguera) of the Institute of Brothers of Christian Schools, and 145 companions, killed in hatred of the faith in Spain between 1936 and 1939.
- Servant of God Giuseppe Puglisi, Italian diocesan priest (1937-1993), killed in hatred of the faith in Palermo, Italy in 1993.
- Servants of God Ermenegildo of the Assumption (ne Ermenegildo Iza y Aregita) and five companions of the Order of the Blessed Trinity, killed in hatred of the faith in Spain in 1936.
- Servant of God Victoria de Jesus (nee Francesca Valverde Gonzalez), Spanish religious of the Instituto Calasancio de Hijas de la Divina Pastora (Daughters of the Divine Pastor) (1888-1937), killed in hatred of the faith in Spain in 1937.
- Servant of God Devasahayam (Lazarus) Pillai, Indian layman (1712-1752), killed in hatred of the faith in India in 1752.

HEROIC VIRTUES
- Servant of God Sisto Riario Sforza, Italian archbishop of Naples and cardinal of Holy Roman Church (1810-1877).
- Servant of God Fulton Sheen, American archbishop, and former bishop of Rochester (1895-1979).
- Servant of God Alvaro del Portillo y Diez de Sollano, Spanish prelate of the Personal Prelature of the Holy Cross and Opus Dei (1914-1994).
- Servant of God Ludwig Tijssen, Dutch diocesan priest (1865-1929).
- Servant of God Cristobal of St. Catherine (ne: Cristobal Fernando Valladolid), Spanish priest and founder of the Congregation and the Hospital of Jesus of Nazareth in Cordoba (1638-1690).
- Servant of God Marie of the Sacred Heart (nee Marie Josephte Fitzbach), Canadian widow and founder of the Handmaidens of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, known as the Good Shepherd Sisters of Quebec (1806-1885).
- Servant of God Mary Angeline Teresa (nee Bridget Teresa McCrory), founder of the Carmelite Sisters for the Aged and Infirm (1893-1984).
- Servant of God Maria Margit (nee Adelaide Bogner), Hungarian professed nun of the Order of the Visitation (1905-1933).
- Servant of God Ferdinanda Riva, Italian professed sister of the Institute of Daughters of Charity (1920-1956).

On 10 May the Holy Father authorised the Congregation to promulgate the decree concerning the martyrdom of Servant of God Juan Huguet y Cardona, Spanish diocesan priest (1913-1936), killed in hatred of the faith in Spain in 1936.

Pope meets Orthodox delegation
to Rome's observance tomorrow of
the Solemnity of Sts. Peter and Paul

June 28, 2012



Pope Benedict XVI on Thursday greeted a delegation sent by the Patriarch of Constantinople, Bartholomew I, to mark Friday’s Feast of Saints Peter and Paul.

The delegation sent by the Ecumenical Patriarch was led by Metropolitan Emmanuel Adamakis, who heads the Greek Orthodox Church in France.

During his remarks, Pope Benedict praised the accomplishments of the apostles Peter and Paul, and said that in their preaching, sealed by the witness of martyrdom, we can find the roots of the bonds which exist between the two Churches. He asked that through their intercession, God may “bring closer the blessed day when we can share the Eucharistic table.”

He also mentioned the 50th anniversary of the Second Vatican Council, which the Holy Father said began “an important new phase” in Catholic-Orthodox relationship.

“Recalling the anniversary of Vatican II, it seems right to remember the figure and the work of the unforgettable Ecumenical Patriarch Athenagoras, of whose death we will in a few days mark the fortieth anniversary,” Pope Benedict said.

“Patriarch Athenagoras, with Blessed Pope John XXIII and the Servant of God Pope Paul VI, animated by passion for the unity of the Church which comes from faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, became proponents of bold initiatives which paved the way for a renewed relationship between the Ecumenical Patriarchate and the Catholic Church.”

The Pope concluded by speaking of his “great joy” in the manner which the current Ecumenical Patriarch, Bartholomew I, has continued this work, “with renewed faithfulness and abundant creativity…noted around the world for his openness to dialogue between Christians, and his commitment to the proclamation of the Gospel in the modern world.”

The following item is attributed to the Holy See Press Office, supposedly released yesterday, but it does not appear on the regular Vatican news bulletin in any way, shape or form, though it is reported as a press statement by both Vatican Radio and the soon to be extinct VIS (It will no longer exist by July 1, its services being merged into the news.va pages). If the Press Office can't even keep 'official' track of their own statements, you know there must be some incompetent employees - inattention is not a component of competence - who do not get the supervision they need. Remember when last February the Press Office handed out Wikipedia reprints to the press as the 'official' biographies for the new cardinals? That would never have happened if there was adequate supervision to begin with. In the news and information business, personnel cannot be allowed to work without supervision.

The change in the placement of the pallium rite itself is quite practical, and obviously reflects Benedict XVI's respect for the Eucharistic Sacrifice itself and his concern to limit 'interruptions' in the rite by other rites that are solemn but not Sacramental, and can therefore be done outside the Mass itself.

It recalls a similar modification introduced by Benedict XVI to the rite of creating new cardinals last February, in which he converted the 'public consistory' at which the new cardinals are named and given their berettas, from the non-liturgical rite of a consistory as it has been historically, into a liturgical rite that also includes the bestowal of the cardinal's ring and of each new cardinal's titular church in Rome, which previously took place during the Mass concelebrated with the Pope by the new cardinals.


Vatican modifies pallium rite
so as not to interrupt the Mass

June 27, 2012

The Holy See Press Office today issued a note explaining the new form of the rite for imposing the pallium on metropolitan archbishops, which takes place annually on 29 June, Solemnity of Sts. Peter and Paul Apostles.

---

Things will remain substantially the same, but this year, following a logic of development in continuity, it has been decided simply to move the rite itself, so that it takes place before the Eucharistic celebration (Mass).

The modification has been approved by the Holy Father and is motivated by the following reasons:

1. To make the rite shorter.
The list of new metropolitan archbishops will be read out immediately before the entry of the opening procession and the singing of 'Tu es Petrus', and it will not be part of the celebration.

The rite of the palliums will take place as soon as the Holy Father reaches the altar.

2. To ensure that the Eucharistic celebration is not 'interrupted' by a relatively long rite (the number of metropolitan archbishops now stands at around forty-five each year), which could make attentive and focused participation in the Mass more difficult.

3. To make the rite of imposing the pallium more in keeping with the 'Cerimoniale Episcoporum', and to avoid the possibility that, by coming after the homily (as happened in the past), it may be thought of as a Sacramental rite.

Indeed, the rites which take place during a Eucharistic celebration following the homily are normally Sacramental rites: Baptism, Confirmation, Ordination, Matrimony, Anointing of the Sick.

The imposition of the pallium, on the other hand, is not Sacramental in nature.

---

The following metropolitan archbishops will receive the pallium tomorrow:
- Cardinal Rainer Maria Woelki, archbishop of Berlin, Germany.
- Cardinal Francisco Robles Ortega, archbishop of Guadalajara, Mexico.
- Archbishop Francesco Moraglia, Patriarch of Venice, Italy.
- Archbishop Alfredo Horacio Zecca of Tucuman, Argentina.
- Archbishop Mario Alberto Molina Palma O.A.R. of Los Altos, Quetzaltenango-Totonicapan, Guatemala.
- Archbishop Charles Joseph Chaput O.F.M. Cap. of Philadelphia, U.S.A.
- Archbishop Luc Cyr of Sherbrooke, Canada.
- Archbishop Salvador Pineiro Garcia-Calderon of Ayacucho or Huamanga, Peru.
- Archbishop Francesco Panfilo S.D.B. of Rabaul, Papua New Guinea.
- Archbishop Ulises Antonio Gutierrez Reyes O. de M. of Ciudad Bolivar, Venezuela.
- Archbishop Stanislaw Budzik of Lublin, Poland.
- Archbishop Wilson Tadeu Jonck S.C.I. of Florianopolis, Brazil.
- Archbishop Paul-Andre Durocher of Gatineau, Canada.
- Archbishop Luis Antonio G. Tagle of Manila, Philippines.
- Archbishop Patrick D’Rozario C.S.C. of Dhaka, Bangladesh.
- Archbishop Wiktor Pawel Skworc of Katowice, Poland.
- Archbishop Jose F. Advincula of Capiz, Philippines.
- Archbishop Filippo Santoro of Taranto, Italy.
- Archbishop Jose Francisco Rezende Dias of Niteroi, Brazil.
- Archbishop Esmeraldo Barreto de Farias of Porto Velho, Brazil.
- Archbishop Jaime Vieira Rocha of Natal, Brazil.
- Archbishop Joseph Harris C.S.Sp. of Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago.
- Archbishop Waclaw Depo of Czestochowa, Poland.
- Archbishop Ignatius Chama of Kasama, Zambia.
- Archbishop Pascal Wintzer of Poitiers, France.
- Archbishop John Moolachira of Guwahati, India.
- Archbishop William Charles Skurla of Pittsburgh of the Byzantines, U.S.A.
- Archbishop Joseph Coutts of Karachi, Pakistan.
- Archbishop Romulo Geolina Valles of Davao, Philippines.
- Archbishop Airton Jose dos Santos of Campinas, Brazil.
- Archbishop Timothy Costelloe S.D.B. of Perth, Australia.
- Archbishop Jacinto Furtado de Brito Sobrinho of Teresina, Brazil.
- Archbishop Thomas D’Souza of Calcutta, India.
- Archbishop Arrigo Miglio of Cagliari, Italy.
- Archbishop John F. Du of Palo, Philippines.
- Archbishop Paulo Mendes Peixoto of Uberaba, Brazil.
- Archbishop Christian Lepine of Montreal, Canada.
- Archbishop William Edward Lori of Baltimore, U.S.A.
- Archbishop Mark Benedict Coleridge of Brisbane, Australia.
- Archbishop Jesus Carlos Cabrero Romero of San Luis Potosi, Mexico.
- Archbishop Andrew Yeom Soo jung of Seoul, Korea.
- Archbishop Benedito Roberto C.S.Sp. of Malanje, Angola.
- Archbishop Alfred Adewale Martins of Lagos, Nigeria.
- Archbishop Samuel Joseph Aquila of Denver, U.S.A.
The following two archbishops will receive the pallium in their metropolitan sees:
- Archbishop Gabriel Justice Yaw Anokye of Kumasi, Ghana.
- Archbishop Valery Vienneau of Moncton, Canada.

This would never have happened without the decision of Benedict XVI in 2010 to make all Vatican financial operations transparent. And if it had been left to those who pull the string at IOR - and who resisted any measures that would allow Moneyval to examine Vatican's financial transactions for purposes of guarding against money laundering through the banks - they would never have interpreted 'financial transparency' to mean letting the world know these basic facts that the faithful have a right to know about the IOR. IOR first opened its doors to 'outsiders' when it invited ambassadors to the Holy See to a briefing on IOR last May 15, two weeks before IOR president Ettore Gotti Tedeschi was dismissed by the IOR administrative council.

See, that wasn't so hard:
IOR opens up to newsmen
by ANDREA TORNIELLI

June 28, 2012

The Vatican financial institution IOR manages approximately 6 billion Euro and has some 33,000 accounts belonging to 25,000 client depositors, but has no secret or anonymous accounts. [For example, a corporate depositor, such as a religious congregation, can have multiple accounts, one for each of its national branches and different institutions.]

It operates strict checks on money transfers, guarantees traceability of payments and is doing everything in its power to bring itself in line with international anti-money laundering regulations.

This was the crux of the message conveyed today by IOR director-general Paolo Cipriani ina briefing for 53 journalists from all around the world. It was the first time ever that IOR has ever opened its doors and given a briefing to journalists. [Also the first time that anyone finally has an idea of how big - or small - the IOR is as a financial institution. For perspective, consider that the top 50 banks in the world today control assets ranging from 500 billion to 2.7 trillion dollars.]

The open house included a visit to the hall with counters open only to selected clients, preceded by a two-hour presentation on the activities of the institution established by Leo XIII in 1887 and transformed to its present strucgture by Pius XII in 1942.

The director of the Vatican Press Office, Fr. Federico Lombardi, said he was happy with the initiative: “We want to further this line of legality, transparency and correctness; this is why we want to communicate important information to the media.”

During his presentation, Cipriani, accompanied by deputy director Massimo Tulli and four other directors, reiterated on a number of occasions that the Vatican bank wants to “remove the veil of secrecy” concealing its activities and eliminate suspicions about the Vatican bank being used for dirty operations.

Cipriani also stressed that the services offered by the Vatican bank “are conceived according to the Catholic Church’s basic ethical principles.” He explained that the institute’s primary objective was not to create profit on its balance sheet but to satisfy the client. [That's a strange statement. Wasn't IOR created so that it could generate legitimate profits through its investments, out of which the Church can finance various 'religious works' around the world? Of course, every bank wants to satisfy its clients, and clients want their money to grow and to remain safe, hopefully in legitimate ways, and their privacy to be respected - those are general intentions, not specific objectives, much less the primary objective for IOR! It is so frustrating when reporters don't challenge statements like that made by Cipriani.

This is why the IOR organizes conferences with the financial authorities of various religious orders, to illustrate market trends to them and rationalize how the bank programs its investments in order to get the best and safest deal for its clients and itself.

Entities who can open an account with IOR include nunciatures, bishops, dioceses, religious congregations, parishes, canonical foundations, seminaries, Catholic educational institutions and embassies to the Holy See.

Cipriani said that 77.% of IOR clients are Europeans, 7.3% Vatican, 6.3% African, 4.1% South American, 2.3% North and Central American, 2.5% Asian and 0.2% from Oceania.

Cipriani retierated IOR's version of the Italian investigation into a 2010 IOR transaction, in which some 23 million euro of IOR funds was sequestered by the Italian government which suspected an irregular money transfer from the IOR account in Italy's Credito Artigianle bank to its own bank account in Frankfurt for the purpose of buying German bonds.

“These funds", he said,"are intended for normal treasury operations by IOR, and not for money transfers".

He also explained how and why JPMorgan closed out its Milan account with IOR recently. The bank had asked for detailed information that was not specified in the collaboration contract: “We wanted to know how the information was going to be used and we expressed our willingness to provide said information if the Italian bank surveillance authority requested it.”

Cipriani also pointed out that “The IT system which has been in place since 1996 makes it impossible for any shady operations to take place; while in the past there may have been irregularities in some accounts, this is no longer possible because every single Euro that comes in and out can be traced.”

Under scrutiny, Vatican opens
IOR doors to newsmen


VATICAN CITY, June 28 (AP) – The Vatican bank, one of the most secretive institutions in the secrecy-obsessed Vatican [The Vatican is no more secrecy-obsessed than, say, any sovereign state's defense and intelligence establishments!], opened itself up to a little external scrutiny Thursday in a bid to show it's serious about fighting money-laundering and being more financially transparent. [AP and other newsmen, including the most veteran Vaticanistas insist on calling IOR the Vatican bank, and it isn't until the 12th paragraph that AP bothers to ackonwledge the difference.]

During a nearly three-hour power-point presentation to a few dozen journalists, the bank's director, Paolo Cipriani, highlighted the peculiar nature of the Institute for Religious Works, the institute's official name, and stressed its internal and external financial controls.

But more importantly, he sought to refute media allegations that the institution has been less than cooperative with requests for financial information from banks such as JPMorgan and Italian authorities.

At one point, Cipriani displayed a letter from Italy's financial police thanking him for his "timely and exhaustive response" in signaling a suspect transaction to them even before the Vatican's new anti-money laundering law went into effect last year. And he described in detail the exhaustive checks carried out by the institute to ensure that the money that comes into and out of its accounts is clean.

The institute, known by its Italian acronym IOR, has long been the subject of rumor and scandal — earned in part because of its role two decades ago in one of the most spectacular banking collapses in Italy, and ongoing suspicions by Italian investigators that it hasn't abided by anti-money laundering norms.

Cipriani, in fact, remains under investigation by Rome prosecutors for a 2010 suspect transaction. He hasn't been charged and said the transaction merely involved moving money from one IOR treasury account to another — not a client transfer which requires more information be provided.

In his first ever news conference, Cipriani said that his aim in coming before reporters was to "remove the veil and shadow of the past and do the utmost to respect the needs of the Holy See."

However, TV cameras and recording devices were barred, and Cipriani didn't take spontaneous questions from reporters. Instead the Vatican spokesman selected some that had been previously submitted and posed them to Cipriani, an affable, fast-talking Italian who nevertheless seemed a bit overwhelmed by the whole encounter.

The visit comes on the eve of a crucial decision by a Council of Europe committee on whether the Vatican has complied with a host of anti-money laundering and anti-terrorist financing norms.

A good compliance grade will enhance the Vatican's chances of eventually getting on the so-called "white list" of countries that share financial information — a keen aim of both the Pope and Cipriani, since the bank has to deal with financial institutions that insist that its books are clean.

The Institute was founded in 1942 by Pope Pius XII to manage assets destined for religious or charitable works. Located in a squat stone tower just inside the Vatican City gates, it is not open to the public and isn't even a bank per se but rather an institution that provides financial services, such as bank transfers and financial advice, for church entities in 150 countries.

It has about 35,000 accounts belonging to religious congregations, dioceses, Holy See offices, diplomats and Vatican officials. Cipriani said it has about €6 billion ($7.5 billion) in assets and makes conservative, ethically-minded investments, about five percent of which are in the stock market and the bulk in bonds.

It doesn't do any business with offshore banks, applies regular customer due diligence and internationally-approved bank transfer measures and has a fully functioning anti-money laundering system of checks, he said.

The IOR has been in the news lately because of the unprecedented ouster of its president, Ettore Gotti Tedeschi, who was brought in specifically to help usher in a new era of transparency. The IOR's lay board of financiers removed Gotti Tedeschi last month, saying he was actually becoming an obstacle to transparency. [They have never explained how - considering that he managed the drafting of the first financial transparency law signed by Benedict XVI in December 31, 2010, which was subsequently amended to give three other Vatican offices (the Secretariat of State, the Vatican Governatorate and the Vatican Gendarmerie) financial oversight powers alongside the Financial Information Authority created by the 2010 law - amendments made over the objections of Gotti Tedeschi and the Pope's personal pick for the Vatican's financial supervisory czar, Cardinal Nicora.]

On Wednesday, the board met for the first time since the ouster and began deliberations on the selection of a new president.

Cipriani didn't mention Gotti Tedeschi's name or refer to the ouster. He did, however, respond to some other issues that have arisen in recent months, including the abrupt decision by JPMorgan to close its IOR account earlier this year.

Because the IOR isn't a traditional bank per se, it relies on commercial banks in Italy and elsewhere to carry out its transactions. Its 35-year relationship with JPMorgan came to an end when the U.S. bank asked for information about transactions beyond the scope of what the IOR was contractually required to provide.

Cipriani said the type of information JPMorgan was seeking involved "types of questions made by vigilance authorities" — a reference to the Vatican's belief that Italian banking regulators were forcing JPMorgan to seek such information, even though it went beyond what is required.

The questions didn't concern an individual suspect transaction, but rather general questions about the IOR's policies about joint accounts, accounts with delegates and other matters, Cipriani said.

Cipriani displayed a letter in which he told JP Morgan to go through the Vatican's financial intelligence unit to get the information it wanted. Instead, JP Morgan "unilaterally" closed the account, he added.

JP Morgan has said it cannot comment. The Bank of Italy has refused repeated requests for comment about its decision to designate the IOR an offshore entity, a move that required banks in Italy to apply more scrupulous controls over their IOR transactions.

The IOR was implicated in a scandal over the collapse of the Banco Ambrosiano in the 1980s in one of Italy's largest fraud cases. Roberto Calvi, the head of Banco Ambrosiano, was found hanging from Blackfriars Bridge in London in 1982 in circumstances that remain mysterious.

Banco Ambrosiano collapsed following the disappearance of $1.3 billion in loans the bank had made to several dummy companies in Latin America. The Vatican had provided letters of credit for the loans.[It certainly is pertinent to mention here that the IOR was the majority stockholder in Banco Ambrosiano]

While denying any wrongdoing, the Vatican bank agreed to pay $250 million to Ambrosiano's creditors.

What a wonderfully informative and reflective article this is about LUX IN ARCANA - so much written about when it opened, by pesons who seemed to have relied mostly on the publicity materials given out rather than visiting the exhibit himself. How different is Weigel's account of having personally visited the exhibit and mentioning items not even referred to in the initial burst of blurbs about it... Of course he brings up something that has bothered me a bit - why does the official Vatican translation for the office continues to be 'Vatican Secret Archives', when in fact, the Latin word 'secretum' in Archivum Secretum Vaticanum simply means 'private', not 'secret' - because these are, in fact, the private archives of the Popes?

The Vatican 'Secret' Archives
and its world-historical treasures
Prompting some thoughts about Europe's
historical amnesia and cultural suicide

June 27, 2012

Rome — The very name “Vatican Secret Archives” tends to trigger the Dan Brown reflex in minds given to conspiracy theories and black legends about the Catholic Church. In fact, there is nothing sinister about the title of this treasure trove of historical materials; “secret,” in this case, is Vaticanspeak for the private archives of the papacy, which were opened to qualified scholars in 1881 by Leo XIII, the founder of the modern papacy and a man unafraid of the truths that history could teach. [Neglect of whom, along with that of his later successor Benedict XV, in terms of official recognition for their personal holiness, disturbs me greatly. Of the Popes since Pius IX in the mid-19th century, only these two have not been proposed at all for sainthood, althugh there have been absolutely no black legends about them at all.]

To mark the 400th anniversary of the founding of this remarkable institution, the Vatican and the City of Rome have assembled an extraordinary exhibit of materials from the Secret Archives, Lux in Arcana (“Light in Mysterious Places”), which can be enjoyed at the Capitoline Museum in the Piazza del Campidoglio until September 9, and sampled online at www.luxinarcana.org.

If good fortune brings you to La Città before September 9, reserve at least three hours to savor an assemblage of primary historical materials of a magnitude never before exhibited in one place, and unlikely to be shown again in the foreseeable future.

Some of the documents — written on such various materials as parchment, vellum, paper, and birchbark (the medium for an 1887 letter from the Ojibwe Indians to the Pope, “the Great Master of Prayer, he who acts in Jesus’s stead”) — bring to mind epic moments and historical turning points across ten centuries: the handwritten records of Galileo’s trial before the Inquisition; Pope Alexander VI’s bull Inter Cetera (which might be translated, “Among Other Things”), dividing the New World between Spain and Portugal; the 1530 petition from dozens of members of England’s House of Lords, asking Pope Clement VII to annul Henry VIII’s marriage to Catherine of Aragon so that the Tudor king might marry Anne Boleyn; Gregory XIII’s calendar of 1582 with the “missing ten days” in October, an excision that rectified the inaccuracies of the earlier Julian calendar; a letter from Mary Queen of Scots to Sixtus V just before her execution; Polish king John III Sobieski’s 1683 letter to Innocent XI, reporting his victory over the Turks at the Battle of Vienna; letters from Jefferson Davis and Abraham Lincoln to Pius IX during the U.S. Civil War.

More recent documents and artifacts recall the darkness of the mid-20th century: a report on the execution of Italian partisans and patriots by the German SS at the Ardeatine Caves outside Rome in 1944; a miniature Polish “Black Madonna” crafted from scraps at the Oberlangen concentration camp as a gift for Pius XII; a handwritten index of the hundreds of priests imprisoned at Dachau in what some historians refer to as “the world’s largest rectory”; and a heart-rending 1945 letter to Giovanni Battista Montini, later Pope Paul VI and then Vatican deputy secretary of state, from the papal representative in The Hague, forwarding a request for information on the fate of Edith and Rosa Stein from a brother-in-law in New York who had lost track of them three years earlier — just prior to their execution at Auschwitz (Edith Stein was canonized by John Paul II in 1998).

There is also one major surprise, to this visitor at least: a letter from Voltaire to Benedict XIV, written in 1745, in which the man remembered for the hypersecularist slogan Ecrasez l’infâme! (“Crush the infamous thing!” — namely, biblical religion), addressed the humanist pope as “the Father of the World,” and closed with “a kiss in all humility . . . of the most sacred feet.”

Benedict XIV and Voltaire had their differences, but however much the latter may have been engaging in flattery tinged with irony in this letter, he seems to have recognized the intellectual and literary accomplishments of the former — a sentiment unlikely to be replicated by, say, Richard Dawkins in respect of Benedict XVI.

Then there are the documents of particular interest to Catholics and historians of Christian thought. One great historical might-have-been is embodied in the parchment manuscript of Laetentur coeli(“Let the heavens rejoice”), the 1439 papal bull announcing the end of the schism between Rome and Constantinople, the Christian West and the Christian East — a temporary repair of the breach that did not last, to the detriment of both parties.

Leo X’s 1521 decree excommunicating Martin Luther provides one documentary bookend to the exhibit’s recollection of the subsequent fracture of western Christendom; the other is a 1524 letter from Erasmus to his friend Matteo Gilberti, bishop of Verona, in which the Dutchman urges moderation in Catholicism’s response to the challenge of the early Reformers, so that “to remedy one evil, another is not committed.”

Then there is the 1542 bull convoking the Roman Church’s ultimate response to the Reformation, the Council of Trent, which, over 21 years, created the form of Catholicism that is now leaving the stage — to be succeeded by the Evangelical Catholicism whose birth was accelerated by Vatican II (whose bull of convocation by John XXIII is also in Lux in Arcana).

One of the more striking aspects of modern Catholicism, the rise of popular Marian piety and Marian pilgrimage shrines, is remembered through two impressive documents of entirely different character and style. The first is the 1854 parchment proclamation of the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, with its beautiful calligraphy and a papal pendant seal attached with a yellow and red silk cord. The second is an utterly simple handwritten letter from Bernadette Soubirous, the visionary of Lourdes, who in 1858 saw the “beautiful lady” who styled herself “the Immaculate Conception”; Bernadette wrote Pius IX in 1876, describing herself as “a little Zouave of Your Holiness’s, armed with prayer and sacrifice.”

And for Americans caught up in today’s battles for religious freedom, there is what some might well regard as one of the foundational documents of western democracy: the Dictatus papae of the papal reformer Gregory VII, who in 27 propositions defended the independence of the papacy and the Church in ecclesiastical matters.

Gregory’s challenge to the Holy Roman Emperor, Henry IV, who sought to make the Church a cabinet department of the state by controlling the appointment and investiture of bishops, was absolutely crucial in setting the conditions for the possibility of the social pluralism of the Middle Ages, from which, in turn, grew Magna Carta and, eventually, the western theory of the limited, constitutional state.

Lux in Arcana is splendidly laid out, with a vast amount of historical information compressed into brief, reader-friendly electronic commentaries in Italian and English beside each of the documents and artifacts (which are of course displayed in special cases for purposes of preservation).

I would quibble with a couple of the commentaries on the documents. The Thirty Years’ War (represented by Pope Innocent X’s brief criticizing the terms of the Peace of Westphalia) is treated as an entirely religious affair, whereas the best of contemporary scholarship shows it to have been much more complicated than that and far more political than theological in its causes and passions.

And the dots are just not connected between the aforementioned reforms of Gregory VII and the modern democratic project in the West. But perhaps the latter is not all that accidental, given the reluctance in 21st-century Europe to concede any role to Christianity in the formation of Europe’s commitments to civility, tolerance, social pluralism, human rights, and democracy.

Yet that, in turn, underscores the importance of Lux in Arcana. If this magnificent exhibit is a powerful reminder of the corruptions that were a result of the Church’s various alliances with state power and the mistakes the Church made in its initial reactions to the rise of secular modernity and modern science, it also makes clear that there would be no “West” in the political, cultural, and social senses of the term without the Catholic Church.

Try as contemporary European secularists might to eradicate Christianity from the continent’s cultural memory, that erasure cannot be done without causing severe damage — as Europe’s present demographic crisis and its parallel crisis of political culture testify.

Thus I might suggest that those who refused, in the preamble to the constitutional treaty that governs today’s European Union, to concede Christianity any role in forming contemporary Europe’s democratic commitments pay a visit to Rome and have a close look at Lux in Arcana.

There they will find, openly displayed, the work of the Catholic Church in preserving documents decisive for the cultural and historical memory of the West — documents that have, over time, compelled the Church to examine its own conscience and develop its own social doctrine to the point where the Catholic Church now has a richer concept of democracy than most European political theorists.

And perhaps, reflecting on that, secular Europe can be brought to its own examination of conscience — and its own development of thought.

At the Angelus tomorrow:
Romans called to show
their love for the Pope

First, an appeal from the Vicar-General for Rome, Cardinal Agostino Vallini:


And an appeal to young people
to surround him in a sea of love


An interview with the spokesman
of 'Noi per Benedetto XVI'
by the blogger Scenron
Translated from

June 28, 2012

We will be there! Tomorrow, on the occasion of the Angelus led by Benedict XVI on the Solemnity of Saints Peter and Paul, St. Peter's Square will welcome the participants of NOI PER BENEDETTO (We're here for Benedict), an initiative that arose spontaneously on the Internet and promoted by a group of young Italian Catholics to rally the faithful closely around the Holy Father after months and years of attacks against his person.

Also at St. Peter's Square tomorrow will be the clergy and faithful of the Diocese of Rome who have been invited by Cardinal Vicar Agostino Vallini to express to Benedict XVI affection and gratitude for his ministry.

This blog immediately joined and has been spreading this extraordinary initiative of affectionate solidarity with the Pope. On the eve of the event, we spoke to Domenico, one of the initiators and now the spokesman for the group.

Who is behind NOI PER BENEDETTO and what exactly is it? What made you launch such an initiative?
We began as a group of young Catholics who live in Rome and belong to various associations that are school- or work-related, and we decided it is time to raise our voices and make known clearly to the world, as we do on our website that 'WE ARE TIRED...' - tired of seeing the Holy Father being continually vilified in waves of demagogic attacks. Tired of hearing the usual stupidities about the Church's legitiamte tax exemptions [also enjoyed by other religious groups in Italy], about the absurd claim that selling the Pope's ring alone will solve hunger in the world, and about claims that all priests are pedophiles by the very fact alone that they are priests.

And tired of the fact that all the good work done by the Church - mostly and rightly in silence and away from cameras - is ignored or promptly forgotten.

Today we read and hear news about the Church that seem like fantasies from popular novels, as if everything in the Church were evil and troubled - the Church has its problems as any human institution does - but the negative reporting simply obscures all that is good and beautiful in the Church, which is also the work of humans.

But what urged us most of all are the continuous attacks against Catholics on the Internet and on social networks - as if the worst crime of all is to be a believer, while blaspheming and offending the religious belief of others has been turned into an inviolable right!

In short, NOI PER BENEDETTO is intended to counteract that anti-Catholic prejudice which an American sociologist once called 'the last socially acceptable prejudice'. {After World-War II and the Holocaust, anti-Jewish became unthinkable except to culturally-conditioned Muslims; and anti-Muslim is, of course, not just politically incorrect but it also comes with a blazing label, 'Warning: This could put your life in danger!' And no one except the leaders in Beijing could possibly be against Buddhists who literally would not kill a fly, even if some burn themselves to death, go figure!]

We have received countless messages of support on the social networks and throug!h e-mail, and almost each one begins or ends with "It's about time", as if this initiative was responding to a social need that has been unexpressed.

Now we must pass from a celebratory phase to an active phase of Catholic commitment. We must keep our heads high and defend our values, we must emerge from the 'new catacombs' to which we seem to have been run literally into the ground.

So we must begin by, on the one hand, standing up for the Supreme Pontiff, Vicar of Christ, and the Catholic Church, and on the other, by becoming elements of the New Evangelization and effective sensitivization in defense of Christian and Catholic values especially among young people.

What does Pope Benedict XVI mean to you?
For us, he is above all, a Father of the faith - he guides us with his his words and teachings to grow in authentic faith and to a full awareness of what it means to be Christian today.

He is also the symbol of the unity and communion among all the Christians of the world, and we feel sustained by his prayers and affection which he has always demonstrated everytime he is with young people.

The Holy Father is for us a true Master of truth, for the clarity of his Magisterium in the full light of both faith and reason; a Master of charity, for his extraordinary example of humility and goodness which he has invariably shown through all the difficulties of his Pontificate; a Master of authentic freedom because he has taught us that true freedom is realized in adhering to goodness and the search for the Truth that never changes or fades, which has a unique name and face in Jesus Christ, who died and rose again for us.

For all this, we are grateful to the Lord for having given us Pope Benedict XVI, and also we want to express to him our closeness and profound affection, like children feel for their own father.

Will there be other initiatives in support of the Pope?
We have a great idea, a dream that we wish to present to the Holy Father. We will continue through the Year of Faith when this project will go beyond Italy to bring together young people from every part of the world under the motto "young people of faith in a new prophecy". But for now, we shall concentrate our efforts so that tomorrow will be a true 'sea of love' surrounding the Holy Father.

Here is a tribute to the Holy Father's strength amid all the trials of his Pontificate, posted rather late, as I only saw it on a Modena website while I was googling for information about Cardinal Cafarra's welcome remarks to the Pope during the latter's visit to Rovereto...

Vatileaks shows ethical collapse in media -
and the strength of Benedict XVI under siege
Guest Editorial
by Mon. Bruno Forte
Archbishop of Chieti-Vasto (Abruzzo)
Translated from
re
June 17, 2012

The publication of some private papers belonging to Benedict XVI (many of them confidential and meant for his eyes only) in a book intended to be an easy best-seller, represents a serious collapse of ethics in the communications media.

In this journalistic enterprise, the respect that is due to every person was not even minimally considered, especially that respect which ought to be more than merely dutiful for the person of the Pope and for those who wrote the letters to him in confidence, and perhaps, out of a sense of responsibility.

If the purpose is to make it appear that the ecclesial community at its universal center, the Roman Curia, is a nest of vipers - thus discrediting at the same time the moral authority of the Catholic Churc -, the attempt appears to have failed. Especially in the eyes of the People of God, in whom the efforts to portray the Successor of Peter as weak and isolated has only inspired a wave of affection and closeness in prayer of truly impressive proportions.

The ovations that greeted the Pope by the million or so persons present at the concluding Mass of the World Meeting for Families in Bresso-Milan are proof of this, as are the countless signs of devotion and affection in all the local churches of the world.

Even some leaders of secular culture and public life have shown their rightful indignation at this mediatic exploitation and violation of privacy rights, especially of Benedict XVI who is the world's most important moral and spiritual leader.

What is most striking about this unfortunate story is the man identified (the only one so far) as the faithless 'crow' who copied those papers and took them out of the Vatican. It was a serious betrayal of the Pope's trust, and a morally reprehensible act of the highest order.

Of course, the community of Christ's disciples has been no stranger to traitors from its earliest days, starting with the tragedy of Judas and the '30 coins' he received for it. Bloodstained, they served no other purpose than to buy a burial ground for strangers to Jerusalem.

And yet, out of all this, the extraordinary positive aspect is Benedict XVI's own witness - more than ever luminous and credible - to a faith that is as solid as rock.

As we heard in the words of the Pope at his General Audience last Wednesday (June 13), which deserves our reflection more than ever. He was reflecting on prayer as "an oasis of peace from which we can draw the living water to nourish our spiritual life and transform our existence".

And the model for such prayer is the Apostle Paul, who during a time of grave suffering, "three times prayed the Lord insistently to deliver him from such testing". But contemplating God profoundly, he received an answer to his plea: "“My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness” (2Cor 12,9).

The logic of the Apostle is linear: "He does not boast of his activities, but of the action of Christ who acts precisely on his weakness".

Benedict XVI commented: "This attitude of profound humility and trust in God manifesting himself is also fundamental for our prayer and for our life, for our relationship to God and to our weaknesses... St. Paul understands with clarity how to face and live every event, especially suffering, difficulty, persecution. At the moment when he experiences his own weakness, God manifests his power, he does not abandon him, he does not leave him alone, but becomes his support and strength".

This is followed by a touching declaration from the Pope, in which he seems to indicate with discretion and modesty something of the suffering he himself is experiencing: "Of course, Paul would have preferred being freed of this 'thorn', of this suffering, but God says: 'No, this is necessary for you. You will have enough grace to endure and to do what needs to be done'. This goes for us, too. The Lord does not liberate us from evil but he helps us to mature in our sufferings, in difficulties, in persecutions... It is not through the power of our means, of our virtues, of our abilities, that the Kingdom of God is realized, but it is God who works wonders through our weakness itself, our inadequacy for the responsibility. We must, therefore, have the humility not to trust simply in ourselves, but to work with the help of the Lord in the vineyard of the Lord, entrusting ourselves to him as fragile 'earthen vessels'."

This is the testimony of a man of faith, who knows very well how important are "the constancy, the fidelity of our relationship with God, especially in situations of aridity, of difficulty, of suffering, of the apparent absence of God".

This is the fruit of great love: "Only if we are gripped by Christ's love will we be able to face every adversity as Paul did, convinced that we can do everything in him who gives us strength".

And thus, the greatness of this Pope's spiritual stature rises above the squalor of Vatileaks - and becomes a message of life and hope for all of us - in the face of the trials of life and of history, especially those that arrive unexpectedly as well as sadly, moral as well as physical trials (such as, for example, the tragic events from the recent earthquakes in Emilia-Romagna).

In the face of the ethical crisis that is at the root of the present difficulties for the 'global village', we need above all to maintain our trust in the power of good, in the capacity of truth to end up triumphant, and the serene certainty - very vivid in those who believe - that we are not alone, but that we can count on the fidelity of a love that will never fail us, and that, amid the waves, will sustain the Barque of the Church and whoever trusts in the living God, along a secure route, towards a port of justice and peace for all.

Friday, June 29, Twelfth Week in Ordinary Time
SOLEMNITY OF SAINTS PETER AND PAUL

This feast day commemorates the martyrdom of the two great Apostles, assigned by tradition to the same day of June in the year 67. They had been imprisoned in the famous Mamertine Prison of Rome and both had foreseen their approaching death. Saint Peter was crucified; Saint Paul, a Roman citizen, was slain by the sword.

The Chief of the Apostles was a native of Galilee like Our Lord. Peter was poor and unlearned, but candid, eager, and loving. In his heart, first of all, his conviction grew, and then from his lips came the spontaneous confession: “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God!” Our Lord chose him and prepared him to be the Rock on which He would build His Church, His Vicar on earth, the Head and Prince of His Apostles, the center and indispensable bond of the Church’s unity, the unique channel of all spiritual powers, the guardian and unerring teacher of His truth. Ten years after the Ascension Saint Peter transferred his apostolic capital to Rome, going in person to the center of the majestic Roman Empire, where were gathered the glories and riches of the earth, along with all the powers of evil. From there he sent Saint Mark, his valued secretary, to establish the Church of Alexandria in Egypt. In Rome Saint Peter’s Chair was placed; there for twenty-five years he labored at building up the great Roman Church. He was crucified by order of Nero and buried on the Vatican Hill, where now the Basilica stands which bears his name.

Saint Paul was originally Saul of Tarsus, born in that city of Cilicia of Jewish parents, two or three years after the Saviour was born in Bethlehem of Judea. He studied in Jerusalem at the feet of the famous teacher Gamaliel, who later would be converted and listed among the Saints.While still a young man, Saul was present to oversee, as commanding officer, the stoning of the proto-martyr Stephen. In his restless zeal he pressed on to Damascus, “breathing threats and slaughter against the disciples of Christ,” intending to drag them from their houses and imprison them. But on the road a light from heaven struck him to the earth. He heard a voice which said, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute Me? It is hard for you to kick against the goad.” He asked who was speaking, and astonished on hearing His Name, inquired what Jesus wanted of him. And then, struck blind, for three days he saw nothing more. But he had been told what to do. He was led by the hand to Damascus, where he remained in the house of a Christian until, three days later, he rose for his baptism by a Christian leader of that city. Then he saw the light of day again, and the brilliance of the full truth for the first time, as another man, a new creature in Jesus Christ. He left Damascus for a long retreat in Arabia, before he set out at the call of God, and carried the Gospel to the uttermost limits of the known western world, for years living and laboring with no thought but that of Christ crucified, no desire but to dispense himself for Him. He became the Apostle to the Gentiles, whom he had been taught to hate. With Saint Peter in his final year he consecrated Rome, the new holy city, by his martyrdom.
Readings for today's Mass:
www.usccb.org/bible/readings/062912-mass-during-the-day.cfm



AT THE VATICAN TODAY

Mass of Saints Peter and Paul and imposition of the pallium on archbishops named within the past 12 months.

Angelus - Speaking about Saints Peter and Paul as pillars of the universal Church and patrons of Rome,
the Holy Father quoted St. Augustine who said aof the two postles, "Though they were martyred on different
days, they are but one".


ONE YEAR AGO...

]

ON THE 61ST ANNIVERSARY OF THEIR PRIESTHOOD TODAY

Prayers, love and all good wishes

to the Holy Father and Mons. Georg

on this blessed day -

Ad multos annos!

SOLEMNITY OF SAINTS PETER & PAUL
Mass and Imposition of Palliums


Cover illustration: Saints Peter and Paul with Pope Nicholas III. Late 13th-century fresco. Cappella del Sancta Sanctorum, Scala Santa, Rome.

Frieze: Details from 'Crucifixion of Peter' and 'Conversion of Paul', Michelangelo, 1550, Cappella Paolina.

At 9 a.m. today, the Holy Father Benedict XVI imposed the sacred pallium on 43 new metropolitan archbishops at the Altar of the Confession in St. Peter's Basilica. Three other archbishops who could not come to Rome will be given the pallium at their respective metropolitan Sees by the Apostolic Nuncio.

After the pallium rite, the Pope presided at the Eucharistic Celebration concelebrated by the archbishops.

As has now become a tradition following the Second Vatican Council, a delegation from the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople was present, led this year by His Eminence Emmanuel Adamakis, Orthodox Metropolitan for France and director of the Orthodox Church Office at the European Union; His Grace Iias Katre, Bishop of Philomelion (USA); Rev. Deacon Paisios Kokkinakis, Codifier of the Holy Synod of the Ecumenical Patriarchate.





Here is the Vatican translation of the Pope's homily:

---

Your Eminences,
Brother Bishops and Priests,
Dear Brothers and Sisters,

We are gathered around the altar for our solemn celebration of Saints Peter and Paul, the principal Patrons of the Church of Rome. Present with us today are the Metropolitan Archbishops appointed during the past year, who have just received the Pallium, and to them I extend a particular and affectionate greeting.

Also present is an eminent Delegation from the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, sent by His Holiness Bartholomaios I, and I welcome them with fraternal and heartfelt gratitude.

In an ecumenical spirit, I am also pleased to greet and to thank the Choir of Westminster Abbey, who are providing the music for this liturgy alongside the Cappella Sistina.

I also greet the Ambassadors and civil Authorities present. I am grateful to all of you for your presence and your prayers.

In front of Saint Peter’s Basilica, as is well known, there are two imposing statues of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, easily recognizable by their respective attributes: the keys in the hand of Peter and the sword held by Paul.

Likewise, at the main entrance to the Basilica of Saint Paul Outside the Walls, there are depictions of scenes from the life and the martyrdom of these two pillars of the Church. Christian tradition has always considered Saint Peter and Saint Paul to be inseparable: indeed, together, they represent the whole Gospel of Christ.

In Rome, their bond as brothers in the faith came to acquire a particular significance. Indeed, the Christian community of this City considered them a kind of counterbalance to the mythical Romulus and Remus, the two brothers held to be the founders of Rome.

A further parallel comes to mind, still on the theme of brothers: whereas the first biblical pair of brothers demonstrate the effects of sin, as Cain kills Abel, yet Peter and Paul, much as they differ from one another in human terms and notwithstanding the conflicts that arose in their relationship, illustrate a new way of being brothers, lived according to the Gospel, an authentic way made possible by the grace of Christ’s Gospel working within them.

Only by following Jesus does one arrive at this new brotherhood: this is the first and fundamental message that today’s solemnity presents to each one of us, the importance of which is mirrored in the pursuit of full communion, so earnestly desired by the ecumenical Patriarch and the Bishop of Rome, as indeed by all Christians.

In the passage from Saint Matthew’s Gospel that we have just heard, Peter makes his own confession of faith in Jesus, acknowledging him as Messiah and Son of God. He does so in the name of the other Apostles too.

In reply, the Lord reveals to him the mission that he intends to assign to him, that of being the "rock", the visible foundation on which the entire spiritual edifice of the Church is built (cf. Mt 16:16-19).

But in what sense is Peter the rock? How is he to exercise this prerogative, which naturally he did not receive for his own sake? The account given by the evangelist Matthew tells us first of all that the acknowledgment of Jesus’S identity made by Simon in the name of the Twelve did not come "through flesh and blood", that is, through his human capacities, but through a particular revelation from God the Father.

By contrast, immediately afterwards, as Jesus foretells his passion, death and resurrection, Simon Peter reacts on the basis of "flesh and blood": he "began to rebuke him, saying, this shall never happen to you" (16:22). And Jesus in turn replied: "Get behind me, Satan! You are a hindrance to me ..." (16:23).

The disciple who, through God’s gift, was able to become a solid rock, here shows himself for what he is in his human weakness: a stone along the path, a stone on which men can stumble – in Greek, skandalon.

Here we see the tension that exists between the gift that comes from the Lord and human capacities; and in this scene between Jesus and Simon Peter we see anticipated in some sense the drama of the history of the papacy itself, characterized by the joint presence of these two elements: on the one hand, because of the light and the strength that come from on high, the papacy constitutes the foundation of the Church during its pilgrimage through history; on the other hand, across the centuries, human weakness is also evident, which can only be transformed through openness to God’s action.

And in today’s Gospel there emerges powerfully the clear promise made by Jesus: "the gates of the underworld", that is, the forces of evil, will not prevail, "non praevalebunt".

One is reminded of the account of the call of the prophet Jeremiah, to whom the Lord said, when entrusting him with his mission: "Behold, I make you this day a fortified city, an iron pillar, and bronze walls, against the whole land, against the kings of Judah, its princes, its priests, and the people of the land. They will fight against you; but they shall not prevail against you - non praevalebunt -, for I am with you, says the Lord, to deliver you!" (Jer 1:18-19).

In truth, the promise that Jesus makes to Peter is even greater than those made to the prophets of old: they, indeed, were threatened only by human enemies, whereas Peter will have to be defended from the "gates of the underworld", from the destructive power of evil. Jeremiah receives a promise that affects him as a person and his prophetic ministry; Peter receives assurances concerning the future of the Church, the new community founded by Jesus Christ, which extends to all of history, far beyond the personal existence of Peter himself.

Let us move on now to the symbol of the keys, which we heard about in the Gospel. It echoes the oracle of the prophet Isaiah concerning the steward Eliakim, of whom it was said: "And I will place on his shoulder the key of the house of David; he shall open, and none shall shut; and he shall shut, and none shall open" (Is 22:22).

The key represents authority over the house of David. And in the Gospel there is another saying of Jesus addressed to the scribes and the Pharisees, whom the Lord reproaches for shutting off the kingdom of heaven from people (cf. Mt 23:13).

This saying also helps us to understand the promise made to Peter: to him, inasmuch as he is the faithful steward of Christ’s message, it belongs to open the gate of the Kingdom of Heaven, and to judge whether to admit or to refuse (cf. Rev 3:7).

Hence the two images – that of the keys and that of binding and loosing – express similar meanings which reinforce one another. The expression "binding and loosing" forms part of rabbinical language and refers on the one hand to doctrinal decisions, and on the other hand to disciplinary power, that is, the faculty to impose and to lift excommunication. The parallelism "on earth ... in the heavens" guarantees that Peter’s decisions in the exercise of this ecclesial function are valid in the eyes of God.

In Chapter 18 of Matthew’s Gospel, dedicated to the life of the ecclesial community, we find another saying of Jesus addressed to the disciples: "Truly I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven" (Mt 18:18).

Saint John, in his account of the appearance of the risen Christ in the midst of the Apostles on Easter evening, recounts these words of the Lord: "Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven: if you retain the sins of any, they are retained" (Jn 20:22-23).

In the light of these parallels, it appears clearly that the authority of loosing and binding consists in the power to remit sins. And this grace, which defuses the powers of chaos and evil, is at the heart of the Church’s mystery and ministry.

The Church is not a community of the perfect, but a community of sinners, obliged to recognize their need for God’s love, their need to be purified through the Cross of Jesus Christ. Jesus's sayings concerning the authority of Peter and the Apostles make it clear that God’s power is love, the love that shines forth from Calvary.

Hence we can also understand why, in the Gospel account, Peter’s confession of faith is immediately followed by the first prediction of the Passion: through his death, Jesus conquered the powers of the underworld, with his blood he poured out over the world an immense flood of mercy, which cleanses the whole of humanity in its healing waters.

Dear brothers and sisters, as I mentioned at the beginning, the iconographic tradition represents Saint Paul with a sword, and we know that this was the instrument with which he was killed. Yet as we read the writings of the Apostle of the Gentiles, we discover that the image of the sword refers to his entire mission of evangelization.

For example, when he felt death approaching, he wrote to Timothy: "I have fought the good fight" (2 Tim 4:7). This was certainly not the battle of a military commander but that of a herald of the Word of God, faithful to Christ and to his Church, to which he gave himself completely. And that is why the Lord gave him the crown of glory and placed him, together with Peter, as a pillar in the spiritual edifice of the Church.

Dear Metropolitan Archbishops, the Pallium that I have conferred on you will always remind you that you have been constituted in and for the great mystery of communion that is the Church, the spiritual edifice built upon Christ as the cornerstone, while in its earthly and historical dimension, it is built on the rock of Peter.

Inspired by this conviction, we know that together we are all cooperators of the truth, which as we know is one and "symphonic", and requires from each of us and from our communities a constant commitment to conversion to the one Lord in the grace of the one Spirit. May the Holy Mother of God guide and accompany us always along the path of faith and charity. Queen of Apostles, pray for us!
Amen.

---

I found the following text from a Greek Orthodox site commemorating the Feast of Saints Peter and Paul. The line that Benedict XVI cited from Augustine in his Angelus message of June 29, 2012, comes from this sermon.

FEAST OF SAINTS PETER AND PAUL
Sermon of Saint Augustine
Bishop of Hippo

---

Today the Holy Church piously remembers the sufferings of the Holy, Glorious and All-Praised Apostles Peter and Paul.

St. Peter, the fervent follower of Jesus Christ, for the profound confession of His Divinity: "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the Living God," was deemed worthy by the Savior to hear in answer, "Blessed art thou, Simon ... I tell thee, that thou art Peter [Petrus], and on this stone [petra] I build My Church" (Mt 16,16-18).

On "this stone" [petra], is on that which thou sayest: "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the Living God" it is on this thy confession I build My Church. Wherefore "thou art Peter": it is from the "stone" [petra] that Peter [Petrus] is, and not from Peter [Petrus] that the "stone" [petra] is, just as the Christian is from Christ, and not Christ from the Christian.

Do you want to know from what sort of "rock" [petra] the Apostle Peter [Petrus] was named? Hear the Apostle Paul: "Brethren, I do not want ye to be ignorant," says the Apostle of Christ, "how all our fathers were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea; and all were baptized unto Moses in the cloud and in the sea; and did all drink the same spiritual drink: for they drank of that spiritual Rock that followed them: and that Rock was Christ" (1Cor 10,1-4).Here is from whence the "Rock" of Peter.

Our Lord Jesus Christ, in the final days of His earthly life, in the days of His mission to the race of man, chose from among the disciples His twelve Apostles to preach the Word of God. Among them, the Apostle Peter for his fiery ardor was vouchsafed to occupy the first place (Mt 10,2) and to be as it were the representative person for all the Church.

Therefore it is said to him, preferentially, after the confession: "I will give unto thee the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth, shall be bound in the heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth: shall be loosed in heaven" (Mt 16,19).

Therefore it was not one man, but rather the One Universal Church, that received these "keys" and the right "to bind and loosen." And that it was actually the Church that received this right, and not exclusively a single person, turn your attention to another place of the Scriptures, where the same Lord says to all His Apostles, "Receive ye the Holy Spirit" and further after this, "Whose soever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them: and whose soever sins ye retain, are retained" (Jn 20, 22-23); or: "whatsoever ye bind upon the earth, shall be bound in Heaven: and whatsoever ye shall loose on earth, shall be loosened in heaven" (Mt 18,18).

Thus, it is the Church that binds, the Church that loosens; the Church, built upon the foundational cornerstone, Jesus Christ Himself (Eph 2,20), doth bind and loosen. Let both the binding and the loosening be feared: the loosening, in order not to fall under sin again; the binding, in order not to remain forever in this condition. Therefore "Iniquities ensnare a man, and everyone is bound in the chains of his own sins," says Wisdom (Prov 5,22) and except for Holy Church, nowhere is it possible to receive the loosening.

After His Resurrection the Lord entrusted the Apostle Peter to shepherd His spiritual flock, not because among the disciples only Peter alone was pre-deserved to shepherd the flock of Christ, but Christ addresses Himself chiefly to Peter because Peter was first among the Apostles and as such, the representative of the Church; besides which, having turned in this instance to Peter alone, as to the top Apostle, Christ by this confirms the unity of the Church.

"Simon son of John" -- says the Lord to Peter -- "lovest thou Me?" -- and the Apostle answered: "Yea, Lord, Thou knowest that I love Thee"; and a second time it was thus asked, and a second time he thus answered; being asked a third time, seeing that as it were not believed, he was saddened. But how is it possible for him not to believe That One, Who knew his heart? And wherefore then Peter answered: "Lord, Thou knowest all; Thou knowest that I love Thee." "And sayeth Jesus to him" all three times "Feed My sheep" (Jn 20,15-17).

Besides this, the triple appeal of the Savior to Peter and the triple confession of Peter before the Lord had a particular beneficial purpose for the Apostle. That one, to whom was given "the keys of the kingdom" and the right "to bind and to loose," bound himself thrice by fear and cowardice (Mt 26, 69-75), and the Lord thrice loosens him by His appeal and in turn by his confession of strong love.

And to literally shepherd the flock of Christ was [a task] acquired by all the Apostles and their successors. "Take heed, therefore unto yourselves, and to all the flock," the Apostle Paul urges church presbyters, "over which the Holy Spirit hath made you overseers, to feed the Church of the God, which He hath purchased with His own blood" (Acts 20,28); and the Apostle Peter to the elders: "Feed the flock of God which is among you, taking the oversight thereof not by constraint, but willingly: not for filthy lucre, but of a ready mind: neither as being lords over God's heritage, but being examples to the flock. And when is appeared the Prince of pastors, ye will receive unfading crowns of glory" (1Pt 5,2-4).

It is remarkable that Christ, having said to Peter: "Feed my sheep," did not say: "Feed your sheep," but rather - Feed, good servant, the sheep of the Lord.

Wherefore "wolfish robbers, wolfish oppressors, deceitful teachers and mercenaries, not being concerned about the flock" (Mt 7,15; Acts 20,29; 2Pt 2,1; Jn 10,12), having plundered a strange flock and making of the spoils as though it be of their own particular gain, they think that they feed their flock. Such are not good pastors, as pastors of the Lord.

"The good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep" (Jn 10,11), entrusted to Him by the chief Shepherd Himself (1Pt 5,4). And the Apostle Peter, true to his calling, gave his soul for the very flock of Christ, having sealed his apostleship by a martyr's death, is now glorified throughout all the world.

The Apostle Paul, formerly Saul, was changed from a robbing wolf into a meek lamb. Formerly he was an enemy of the Church, then is manifest as an Apostle. Formerly he stalked it, then preached it. Having received from the high priests the authority at large to throw all Christians in chains for execution, he was already on the way, he breathed out "threatenings and slaughter against the disciples of the Lord" (Acts 9,1), he thirsted for blood, but "He that dwells in the Heavens shall laugh him to scorn" (Ps 2:4).

When he, "having persecuted and vexed" in such manner "the Church of God" (1Cor 15,9; Acts 8,5), he came near Damascus, and the Lord from Heaven called to him: "Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou Me?" - I am here, and I am there, I am everywhere: here is My head; there is My body. There comes nothing of a surprise in this; we ourelves are members of the Body of Christ.

"Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou Me; it is hard for thee to kick against the goad" (Acts 9,4-5). Saul, however, "trembling and frightened", cried out: "Who art Thou, Lord?" The Lord answered him, "I am Jesus Whom thou persecutest."

And Saul suddenly undergoes a change: "What wantest Thou me to do?" -- he cries out. And suddenly for him there is the Voice: "Arise, and go to the city, and it shall be told thee what thou must do" (Acts 9,6) Here the Lord sends Ananias: "Arise and go into the street" to a man, "by the name of Saul," and baptize him, "for this one is a chosen vessel unto Me, to bear My name before the Gentiles, and kings, and the children of Israel (Acts 9, 11.15.18). His vessel must be filled with My Grace."

"Ananias, however, answered: Lord, I have heard from many about this man, how much evil he hath done to Thy saints in Jerusalem: and here he hath authority from the chief priests to bind all who call on Thy Name" (Acts 9,13-14). But the Lord urgently commands Ananias: "Search for and fetch him, for this vessel is chosen by Me: for I shall show him what great things he must suffer for My name's sake" (Acts 9,11.15-16).

And actually the Lord did show the Apostle Paul what things he had to suffer for His Name. He instructed him the deeds; He did not stop at the chains, the fetters, the prisons and shipwrecks; He Himself felt for him in his sufferings, He Himself guided him towards this day.

On a single day the memory of the sufferings of both these Apostles is celebrated, though they suffered on separate days, but by the spirit and the closeness of their suffering they constitute one. Peter went first, and Paul followed soon after him, formerly called Saul, and then Paul, having transformed his pride into humility. His very name (Paulus), meaning "small, little, less," demonstrates this.

What is the Apostle Paul after this? Ask him, and he himself gives answer to this: "I am," says he, "the least of the Apostles... but I have labored more abundantly than all of them: yet not I, but the grace of God, which was with me" (1Cor 15,9-10).

And so, brethren, celebrating now the memory of the holy Apostles Peter and Paul, remembering their venerable sufferings, we esteem their true faith and holy life, we esteem the innocence of their sufferings and pure confession. Loving in them the sublime quality and imitating them by great exploits, "in which to be likened to them" (2Ts 3,5-9), and we shall attain to that eternal bliss which is prepared for all the saints.

The path of our life before was more grievous, thornier, harder, but "we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses" (Heb 12,1), having passed by along it, made now for us easier, and lighter, and more readily passable.

First there passed along it "the author and finisher of our faith," our Lord Jesus Christ Himself (Heb 12,2); His daring Apostles followed after Him; then the martyrs, children, women, virgins and a great multitude of witnesses.

Who acted in them and helped them on this path? He Who said, "Without Me ye can do nothing" (Jn 15,5).

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