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BENEDICT XVI: NEWS, PAPAL TEXTS, PHOTOS AND COMMENTARY

Ultimo Aggiornamento: 23/08/2021 11:16
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ALWAYS AND EVER OUR MOST BELOVED BENEDICTUS XVI






I am happy to see Fr. De Souza seems to have regained his sense of equilibrium with regard to Benedict XVI. He was one of those whom I had always considered a primary 'reliable' on Benedict XVI, but who completely threw the former Pope overboard like yesterday's trash - as did everyone else on the EWTN staff and their guests from March 13 to the coverage of the inaugural Mass and the initial events of Pope Francis's Pontificate - in their hyperbolic enthusiasm for the new Pope. This time, Fr. De Souza does give credit most generously where credit is due, and does so unabashedly, not bothering to cover his gesture with all sorts of bending-backwards as others have done to underscore that this is Francis's first encyclical, as if anyone disputes that, and that Benedict just gave him some material to work on.

The worst culprit in this respect is Mons. Fisichella, whom Benedict XVI had named president of the new Pontifical Council for Promoting the New Evangelization. He was one of three presentors of Lumen Fidei at the Vatican Press Hall on Friday, July 8, and his presentation was so blatantly skewed against Benedict's role in the encyclical that, I surmised later, it must have been the reason that the Vatican Bulletin that day (and Vatican Radio) did not carry the text of his intervention, though they promptly posted those of Cardinal Ouellet and Mons Mueller, complete with translations to other languages. I thought my inference was confirmed when, the following day, L'Oservatore Romano only published the texts of Ouellet and Mueller. Vatican Radio's English service did have a later report about
Fisichella's intervention but it pointedly excerpted only some generalized comments which did not touch at all on Pope Francis's contributions to the encyclical.

But that Friday, when I finally found a report on Fisichella's intervention in a CNA story,
http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/vatican-archbishop-encyclical-offers-insight-into-francis-style/
I felt I had been felled by a ton of bricks while reading the stark untruthfulness of his statements regarding the authorship of the encyclical. Consider just these statements, whose sycophantic falsehoods thoroughly revolt me
:

Lumen Fidei, while recovering some insights and some content of the teaching of Benedict XVI, is totally a text of Pope Francis,” the archbishop said at the Holy See’s press office during the encyclical’s release on July 5.

“Here we find his style, and the peculiarity of the content to which we have become accustomed in the first months of his pontificate, especially with his daily homilies,” he added.

Archbishop Fisichella stressed that “the usage of expressions, the wealth of images to which he makes reference, and the peculiarity of some quotations from ancient and modern authors make this text a true introduction to his teaching and allow a better understanding of the pastoral style that makes him unique.”

Really puke-provoking, excuse my language! I would have loved to see how those present - Vatican officials and media reps alike - reacted while the monsignor was mouthing his claptrap! Unless they are all sycophants to the degree that he is, 'embarrassed for him' would be a gross under-statement...

I thought to myself - What is Fisichella trying to do? Getting back at Benedict XVI because he did not make him a cardinal in the last consistory? [Neither did he make Mons. Mueller one, and the CDF Prefect would surely be primus inter pares in the Curia for a red hat if he did not already have one!] At the same time, is he currying favor openly so that Francis will be sure to give him a red hat in his first consistory? Will the Pope reward such overt careerism after all he has inveighed against it in his caustic 'Shame on you' homilies? Either way, or both, what does it say of the nominal leader of the New Evangelization that he is so ready to bend the truth - unnecessarily - for whatever reason?

Anyway, Fr. Di Souza more than makes up for Fisichella's 'treachery' (and his own unbridled Francis-euphoria-cum-Benedict-amnesia last March) in this commentary on Lumen fidei:


A faith-full light:
Benedict’s brilliance illuminates
Pope Francis's first encyclical

With 'Lumen fidei', the Pope facilitates the completion
of his predecessor’s trilogy about the theological virtues.

by FATHER RAYMOND J. DE SOUZA

July 10, 2013

On the eve of his election to the papacy in 2005, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger spoke of the “dictatorship of relativism.”

He spent the following eight years returning to the theme, explaining how, if nothing is acknowledged as objectively real, then competing views cannot be evaluated against the standard of truth, to judge which is valid. Instead, the only way to resolve disputes becomes an assertion of power — whether tyrannical or clothed in democratic processes — and, hence, the door to dictatorship is opened.

What, then, can liberate us from this dictatorship? The truth can set us free, and to know the fullness of truth about man and his place in the world requires faith or knowledge of those truths which need to be revealed to us.

At the end of his pontificate, Benedict XVI was working on an encyclical on faith, to complete the “trilogy” on the theological virtues, having written previous ones on love (Deus Caritas Est, 2005) and hope (Spe Salvi, 2007).

After his renunciation of the papacy, he left the text to his successor, and Pope Francis, having made some minor emendations, published it as his first encyclical under the title Lumen Fidei (The Light of Faith).

'Lumen Fidei' is clearly Benedict’s work, written in the sublime style perfected by Joseph Ratzinger over a lifetime of limpid theological work and biblical preaching. It is “Benedict’s” finest encyclical, even though it carries Francis’ name.

Much has been made of Pope Francis’ humility in irrelevant things, like what shoes he wears or whether he does tasks his staff could handle for him. A more impressive mark of humility is publishing as his first encyclical the work of another man, a man whose writing and insight is singular in his generation. {A most obvious point which none of the garden-variety sycophants have completely chosen to ignore, for all their exhaustive paeans to Francis's humility cued up at the drop of a hat. Why? Because they cannot bear to chip away at all from the 'peerfect Pope' image they have constructed, and certainly not by conceding any 'plus' marks at all to his 'unspeakable' predecessor, he-who-must-not-be-named, or only if it is to anathematize him.]]

Lumen Fidei first sketches the bleak landscape left by the dictatorship of relativism, which regards faith with suspicion, as it sees as a threat any claim to know the truth with certainty.

“It would become evident that the light of autonomous reason is not enough to illumine the future; ultimately, the future remains shadowy and fraught with fear of the unknown,” the Holy Father writes. “As a result, humanity renounced the search for a great light, Truth itself, in order to be content with smaller lights which illumine the fleeting moment yet prove incapable of showing the way. Yet, in the absence of light, everything becomes confused; it is impossible to tell good from evil or the road to our destination from other roads which take us in endless circles, going nowhere.”

If, in the absence of truth, there can only be conflict between those wandering in confusing and contradictory directions, what can liberate us from the limits of our own reason and depredations of our will?

“There is an urgent need, then, to see once again that faith is a light, for once the flame of faith dies out, all other lights begin to dim,” Lumen Fidei continues.

The light of faith is unique, since it is capable of illuminating every aspect of human existence. A light this powerful cannot come from ourselves, but from a more primordial source: In a word, it must come from God. Faith is born of an encounter with the living God who calls us and reveals his love, a love which precedes us and upon which we can lean for security and for building our lives. Transformed by this love, we gain fresh vision, new eyes to see; we realize that it contains a great promise of fulfilment and that a vision of the future opens up before us. Faith, received from God as a supernatural gift, becomes a light for our way, guiding our journey through time.

Here, the Holy Father weaves together the three theological virtues as part of one vision. Faith is born from an encounter with God, which in turn provides confidence for our journey through history. Faith is not a mere shortcut to knowledge, a quicker way to assemble dry facts. It embraces the whole person, as it arises from meeting the God who is love and, therefore, provides a future full of hope.

Taking up a theme articulated by Blessed John Paul in his 1991 encyclical Centesimus Annus, that “at the heart of every culture is the attitude that man takes toward the greatest mystery: the mystery of God,” Lumen Fidei makes the observation that every person and every culture has to live by faith in something. Faith is knowledge that we accept because we trust the one passing it on to us, without the capacity to verify it entirely on our own. We cannot choose to live without faith, but we can choose in what or whom we put our faith.

“In many areas in our lives, we trust others who know more than we do,” observes Lumen Fidei. “We trust the architect who builds our home, the pharmacist who gives us medicine for healing, the lawyer who defends us in court. We also need someone trustworthy and knowledgeable where God is concerned. Jesus, the Son of God, is the one who makes God known to us.”

The specific difference of Christian faith is that we trust not because of credentials or expertise or authority, but because of the revelation of God’s love. God is love, and because he loves us — fully revealed on the cross — then we can trust him to teach us the truth. Everyone needs faith in something, but only Christian faith proceeds from a perfectly reliable love.

Faith that proposes truth without love is not reliable, which is why the world is suspicious of it, and for good reason, given the experience of recent centuries.

“Truth nowadays is often reduced to the subjective authenticity of the individual, valid only for the life of the individual,” notes Lumen Fidei, explaining why relativism might be attractive. “A common truth intimidates us, for we identify it with the intransigent demands of totalitarian systems.”

Christian faith is not this threatening truth, though, as Lumen Fidei explains in perhaps the passage that is most directly addressed to a world afraid to believe and afraid of religious believers:

Lumen Fidei makes an attractive and compelling contribution to that dialogue. Whether a world that is suspicious of faith is interested remains to be seen. Suspicion and fear are the allies of dictatorships, including the dictatorship of relativism, from which Benedict, and now Francis, wishes to free us.

Father Raymond J. de Souza is editor in chief of Convivium magazine. He was the Register’s Rome correspondent from 1998-2003.


Initial thoughts on
reading 'Lumen fidei'

July 11, 2013

Last night, I finally read through Lumen fidei, not once but twice. And I was struck at how it read Benedict XVI all the way, except obviously in the parts where Pope Francis referred to him.

And consequently, how strained all the commentaries are that claim to see 'exactly' where Pope Francis is speaking in his own voice. Because all the parts they cite are familiar Benedettian themes, stated in familiar Benedettian language, as we heard him affirm and reiterate these truths during his eight years as Pope - the image of faith as a journey (which recurs in the encyclical from start to finish; it could not have been inserted wholesale into a text that did not use the image, an image fir faith that Benedict XVI, like the Church Fathers, has always used), or the part about applying the faith to obtaining justice in the world (surely, Benedict who wrote Deus caritas est and Caritas in veritate would not have left that out in his encyclical on faith!), or the concluding references to Mary (using language and concepts that Benedict XVI has used in the books he wrote about Mary before anyone ever thought he eould ever became Pope, and a loving recurrence in his Magisterium as Pope).

Pope Francis refers to the material he got from Benedict as a 'first draft'. That's a pretty impressive first draft! But as every Benaddict knows, 'Goldmund' [I prefer the Greek form, Chrysostomos] Ratzinger was famous since his early days as a theology professor for speaking in print-ready paragraphs, so even a 'first draft' from Joseph Ratzinger is a print-ready document.

It certainly took much less time for the Vatican translators to get the document into its official versions than the time they took to do that for each of Benedict XVI's preceding three encyclicals. Just a little over four weeks, if we count from March 23, the day on which, presumably, B16 turned over the documents he wanted his successor to have.That says volumes about the print-readiness of his 'first draft'. So, forgive me, Pope Francis, for referring to Lumen fidei throughout this little ‘essay’ as Benedict’s encyclical, even if it is your encyclical and yours alone, for all intents and purposes.

The second overwhelming impression I had was that this was the simplest of Benedict's encyclicals: He was not breaking new ground for an encyclical, as he did with his fascinating disquisition on the various forms of love in Deus caritas est, nor exploring the multiple theological facets of hope in unexpected ways as he did in Spe salvi, nor navigating the jungle of social philosophy and the practical implications (and potential application) of Catholic doctrine to a new ethical model of world development, as he did with Caritas in veritate.

Here the encyclical keeps a laserlike focus on the idea of faith as light, a focus that paradoxically bathes us, as readers and as Catholic faithful, in a flood of light. Every point he makes is like a fountain of light spurting up to dispel the darkness of our forgetfulness or neglect of the faith. Its brilliance is in its utter simplicity compared to the earlier encyclicals.

I have seen it referred to as dense, which was not meant negatively. Because it is not dense as to be opaque or require special tools to approach it, other than the ability to read simple words presented simply. But Benedict XVI, in his usual methodical way, presents it as a progressive induction into all the aspects of faith, so that each re-statement of material is not mere repetition but carries the accrued significance of all that went before.

And so it is dense only in the sense that each line is like a quantum packet of dynamic content that has the dynamic force of conviction, of that very faith that is the topic of the encyclical - and the dynamo for the New Evangelization. I use the quantum as an appropriate image because in physics, it conveys the ultimate equivalence of matter and energy, in this case, manifested as light.

Paragraph 4 sums up what the encyclical develops over the remaining 53 paragraphs: Faith is a light that can illumine every aspect of human existence, and it can do so only because it is a gift from God himself, whose love transforms us, so that faith becomes the light that guides us in our journey through time.

But God himself is light, who sent his Son as a light to the world, and whose Spirit enkindles in us the fire of divine love. The imagery is compelling - ever ancient and ever new, as the mystery, the adventure, the human experience, of God is.

It is the simplest of the Benedettian encyclicals because it is primarily catechetical - it drives the message home in a very effective 'pedagogical' way, a teaching way. Almost every paragraph is structured as a statement, followed by a development that explains the statement, and then a re-statement that encompasses the explanation. The principle of teaching effectively is much like the principle of musical structure. Statement-development-restatement. In which systematic repetition leads to familiarity and eventually knowledge, the way we learn a piece of music.

It is a structure in which Pope Francis would feel very much at home, because it is the structure he follows in his own homilies. The difference between his homiletic style and that of Benedict's is that Benedict takes more time and opens up new insights in his expository development of his theme. And Benedict's tone is gently persuasive, where Francis is openly prodding and provoking, even downright caustic.

The encyclical first presents faith as mankind has experienced it through salvation history and the rest of human history. Other than citations that we may not have been familiar with, we are presented with nothing that even non-Christians are not aware of about Christianity.

Non-Christians seeking for ultimate Truth know about Abraham, know about Israel. know about the trials that God 'imposed' on his chosen people throughout history, know about Jesus and the Christian belief that he is the Son of God sent to the world to redeem mankind from its sins and lead them back to the Father, even if they reject the Christian truth - for now.

And those of us Christians who are not well-versed in salvation history know enough about it to accept without question that it reached its peak and fulfillment in the Incarnation of Christ and his glorious Resurrection, the unique event that is the core of our faith.

And that is why it says from the start that lumen fidei is a light to be rediscovered - by us, to begin with, whose lives have been dimmed immeasurably by ever-weakening faith or outright loss of faith. But it is also waiting to be discovered by those who have not yet accepted the Gospel.

Our faith in Jesus is a light which makes us "see with the eyes of Jesus and share in his mind, his filial disposition, because (we) share his love which is the Spirit".

And so, faith is presented as necessarily 'lived in the Church' - that 'vital union of Christ with believers, and of believers among themselves', a 'concrete communion... that opens the individual Christian to all others'. Faith is, therefore, not a phenomenon that is meant to be private and individual, but open and communal. Therefore, catholic and universal.

Through Baptism, we become God’s children, ‘sons in the Son’, he ‘who makes God known to us’, and Jesus’s own relationship with his ‘Abba, Father’ becomes the core of the Christian experience. St Paul tells us: “By grace you have been saved through faith – not of your own doing: it is the gift of God” (which one might read as ‘a gift from God’, but even better, that God himself is the gift).

And that’s where we are at the end of Chapter One...With more treasures to come in the remaining three chapters, as I am sure those of you who have read the entire encyclical have savored by now. But which I will not attempt to synthesize because it goes into the multiple aspects of faith and its implications and applications in the life of individuals, the Church and society.

In short, a Benedict encyclical, whoever signs it, is much better read in full than reduced to a synthesis.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 12/07/2013 15:25]
12/07/2013 06:28
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HAPPY NAME DAY ONCE AGAIN

TO OUR BELOVED BENEDICT XVI


Thurssday, July 11, 14th Week in Ordinary Time
MEMORIAL OF ST. BENEDICT, Abbot



ST. BENEDICT (BENEDETTO DA NURSIA) (Italy, 480-547), Father of Western Monasticism, Co-Patron of Europe
Benedict XVI dedicated his catechesis on April 9, 2008, to St. Benedict.
www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/audiences/2008/documents/hf_ben-xvi_aud_20080409...
For more of Benedict XVI and St. Benedict, read the accounts and commentaries on the Pope's visit to Cassino and the abbey of Monte Cassino on Ascension Sunday, May 24, 2009, on one of the earliest pages of this thread:
benedettoxviforum.freeforumzone.leonardo.it/discussione.aspx?idd=852...

Readings for today's Mass:
www.usccb.org/bible/readings/071113.cfm



AT THE VATICAN, JULY 11, 2013

No events announced for Pope Francis today.
However, there were two important administrative statements from the Vatican:

COMMUNIQUÉ OF THE HOLY SEE PRESS OFFICE:
MOTU PROPRIO OF POPE FRANCIS ON CRIMINAL LAW MATTERS,
AMENDED CRIMINAL LAW PROVISIONS AND ADMINISTRATIVE SANCTIONS
IN VATICAN CITY STATE AND THE HOLY SEE


1. Today His Holiness Pope Francis has issued a Motu proprio on criminal law matters.

On this same date, the Pontifical Commission for Vatican City State has adopted the following laws:

- Law No. VIII containing Supplementary Norms on Criminal Law Matters;

- Law No. IX containing Amendments to the Criminal Code and the Criminal Procedure Code;

- Law No. X containing General Provisions on Administrative Sanctions.

2. The Motu proprio makes the criminal laws adopted by the Pontifical Commission for Vatican City State applicable also within the Holy See.

3. The criminal laws adopted today are a continuation of the efforts to update Vatican City State’s legal system, building upon the measures adopted since 2010 during the pontificate of Benedict XVI.

4. These laws, however, have a broader scope, since they incorporate into the Vatican legal system the provisions of numerous international conventions including: the four Geneva Conventions of 1949, on the conduct of war and war crimes; the 1965 Convention on the elimination of all forms of racial discrimination; the 1984 Convention against torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, the 1989 Convention on the rights of the child and its optional protocols of 2000.

5. Of particular note in this context is the introduction of the crime of torture and a broader definition of the category of crimes against minors (including: the sale of children, child prostitution, the recruitment of children, sexual violence and sexual acts with children, and the production and possession of child pornography).

6. A section of the legislation introduces a list of crimes against humanity, in particular, the crimes of genocide and apartheid, following broadly the definitions adopted in the 1998 Statute of the International Criminal Court. The section of the Criminal Code regarding offences committed in the exercise of public administration has also been revised in light of the 2003 United Nations Convention against corruption. With regard to penalties, that of life imprisonment has been abolished and it has been replaced with a maximum penalty of 30 to 35 years of imprisonment.

7. In line with the most recent developments at the international level, the new legislation also introduces a system of penalties for juridical persons who profit from the criminal activities of their constituent bodies or personnel, establishing their direct liability and providing as penalties a set of interdictions and pecuniary sanctions.

8. In the area of criminal procedure, the general principles of presumption of innocence and due process within a reasonable time have been recognized explicitly, while the power of the judicial authorities to adopt precautionary measures has been increased by bringing up to date the provisions for confiscation and the freezing of assets.

9. Also of importance is the modernization of the rather dated norms governing international judicial cooperation, with the adoption of measures in line with the standards of the most recent international conventions.

10. The law on administrative sanctions is of a general nature so as to serve as a common framework that provides for the possibility of sanctions in different areas intended to promote respect for the norms, to render them effective and to protect the public interests.

11. As a whole, these normative efforts form part of broader process aimed at modernizing further the Vatican legal system with a view to enhancing its consistency and effectiveness.

Not that it matters, but obviously, these changes did not just spring full-blwon in the past four months but have been under study in the previous Pontificate, not initiated in the current one.


One year ago...

Benedict XVI was honored with a concert in Castel Gandolfo tonight by the West Divan Youth Orchestra led by the Argentine-Israeli maestro Daniel Barenboim, in a performance of Beethoven's symphonies #5 and #6
in the inner courtyard of the Apostolic Palace in Castel Gandolfo. The added news is that Italian President iorgio Napolitano was a special guest and dined with the Pope afterwards.

The Vatican released a communique today on the extraordinary meeting held in Rome yesterday, July 10, of the Islamic-Catholic Liaison Committee, which agreed this time next year for their regular meeting on the topic of a common front by believers in the face of materialism and secularism.



CONCERT IN CASTEL GANDOLFO -
Italian President Napolitano
is the Pope's special guest

July 11, 2012










'Symphony of peace
among peoples'


July 11, 2012



“We must strive to achieve peace, leaving aside violence and weapons, engaging ourselves in personal and communal conversions, through dialogue, in a patient search for an understanding that is possible”, Pope Benedict XVI said, after the concert given by the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, in Castel Gandolfo Wednesday evening, playing Beethoven's Fifth ('Eroica') and Sixth ('Pastorale') symphonies for the Holy Father and his special guests, Italian President Giorgio Napolitano and his wife Clio. Emer McCarthy reports:

The concert by this unique orchestra of musicians from Israel, Palestine and other Arab nations, began as the sun set over the courtyard of the Apostolic Palace in Castel Gandolfo. It was a special treat for Pope Benedict, on the feast of St. Benedict, organized by Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi of the Pontifical Council for Culture with the patronage of Italian President Giorgio Napolitano who was present Wednesday evening, seated alongside the Pope.

As the last notes of the symphony died on the evening air, and Maestro Daniel Barenboim bowed before a standing ovation, Pope Benedict addressed those gathered, praising the foresight of the Argentine-born Israeli Maestro, who, together with the late Edward Said – a Palestinian intellectual and accomplished pianist – founded the orchestra to give the children of Israeli and Arab communities a vehicle to look beyond their differences.

Pope Benedict spoke of “the great symphony of peace between peoples, which is never completely accomplished”, remembering how his generation and that of Maestro Barenboim's parents, “experienced the tragedies of World War II and the Holocaust”. The Pope concluded by thanking the young men and women of the Orchestra and Maestro Barenboim, for being living witnesses to the fact that peace and understanding – beyond differences and divisions – are possible and must by everyone’s common goal.



Here is a translation of the Pope's remakrs after the concert:

Mr.President,
Venerated Brothers,
Ladies and Gentlemen:

We have just lived through an experience of listening that was intense and enriching for our spirit, and for this, let us give thanks to the Lord.

I wish to express my sincere appreciation to Maestro Daniel Barenboim and all the musicians of the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra which, during their summer tour, generously offered me this concert on the feastday of St. Benedict.

Thus they have not only allowed me to enjoy their optimal performance 'live', but also to participate more directly in their story, which began around 13 years ago, with you, Maestro, and with the late Edward Said.

I greet most cordially the President of the Italian Republic, the Honorable Giorgio Napolitano, whom I thank for his presence and for having encouraged this initiative.

And my thanks also to Cardinal Ravasi, who introduced this concert with three beautiful and significant citations.

To the other authorities, and to all of you, dear friends, I extend my greeting.

You can imagine how glad I was to welcome an orchestra like this, which was born from the conviction - or the experience - that music unites persons beyond any division, because music is the harmony of differences, which happens whenever a concert beings, with the ritual of 'tuning together'.

From the multiple timbres of different instruments, a symphony can emerge. But this does not occur magically nor automatically! It happens only thanks to the engagement of the conductor and of every single musician. An engagement that is patient, effortful, that requires time and sacrifice, in the work of listening to each other reciprocally, avoiding excessive protagonism in favor of the greater success of the ensemble.

While I express these thoughts, the mind turns to the great symphony of peace among peoples, which is never ever complete. My generation, and that of Maestro Berenboim's parents, lived through the tragedies of the Second World War and the Shoah.

It is very significant that you, Maestro, after having reached the highest goals for a musician, wished to give life to a project like the West-Eastern Divan Orhestra - a group in which Israelis, Palestinians and other Arabs perform together - persons of Jewish, Muslim and Christian religions.

The numerous acknowledgments with which you and this orchestra have been honored demonstrate, at the same time, professional excellence as well as ethical and spiritual commitment. And we heard that tonight, listening to the Fifth and Sixth Symphonies of Ludwig van Beethoven.

Even in this program choice, this pairing of the two symphonies, we can see a most interesting significance. This two highly celebrated symphonies express two aspects of life: tragedy and peace, man's struggle against adverse destiny and the reassuring immersion in a bucolic atmosphere.

Beethoven worked on these two compositions, particularly on their completion, almost contemporaneously. Such that they were performed for the first time together - as they were tonight - in a memorable concert on December 22, 1808 in Vienna.

The message that I wish to draw today is this: To achieve peace, it is necessary to be committed, putting aside violence and weapons, to be committed to personal and communitarian conversion, with dialog and a patient search for posswible agreements.

Let us therefore thank from the heart Maestro Barenboim and the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra for having given us a testimony of this way. To each of them, our wish and prayert that they may continue to dissiminate in the world the hope for peace through the universal language of music.

Thank you and a good evening to all.







[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 13/07/2013 13:20]
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Vatican state modifies its laws
to update its criminal and penal system
according to international standards

Laws apply to all who belong to any Vatican institution or office
including apostolic nuncios and their diplomatic staff to cover
even those offenses committed outside Vatican City State.


July 11, 2013

The following is the presentation made by Mons. Dominique Mamberti, deputy Secretary of State for Relations with Other States, of the new laws that update the penal and criminal laws of Vatican City States, and the corresponding Motu Proprio by which Pope Francis decrees that all such laws apply to all those who belong to any office or juridical personality under the Holy See, including those serving abroad.

The laws approved by the Pontifical Commission for Vatican City State bring about a broad-ranging normative change, necessary for the function that this State, entirely sui generis, is called upon to carry out for the benefit of the Apostolic See.

The original and foundational aim of the Vatican, which consists of guaranteeing the freedom of the exercise of the Petrine ministry, indeed requires an institutional structure that, the limited dimensions of the territory notwithstanding, assumes a complexity in some respects similar to that of contemporary States.

Established by the Lateran Pacts of 1929, the State adopted the judicial, civil and penal structures of the Kingdom of Italy in their entirety, in the conviction that this would be sufficient to regulate the legal relationships within a State whose reason for existence lies in the support of the spiritual mission of Peter’s Successor.

The original penal system – constituted by the Italian Penal Code on 30 June 1889 and the Italian Penal Code of 27 February 1913, in force from 7 June 1929 – has seen only marginal modifications and even the new law on sources of law (No. 71 of 1 October 2008) confirms the criminal legislation of 1929, while awaiting an overall redefinition of the discipline.

The most recently approved laws, while not constituting a radical reform of the penal system, revise some aspects and complete it in other areas, satisfying a number of requirements.

the one hand, these laws take up and develop the theme of the evolution of the Vatican judicial structure, continuing the action undertaken by Pope Benedict XVI in 2010 to prevent and combat money-laundering and the financing of terrorism.


In this regard, the provisions contained in the 2000 United Nations Convention Against Transnational Organised Crime, the 1988 United Nations Convention Against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances, and the 1999 International Convention for the Suppression of Financing of Terrorism, are to be implemented, along with other conventions defining and specifying terrorist activity.

The new laws also introduce other forms of crime indicated in various international conventions already ratified by the Holy See in international contexts and which will now be implemented in domestic law.

Among these conventions, the following are worthy of mention:
- the 1984 Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment,
- the 1965 International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination,
- the 1989 International Convention on the Rights of the Child and the 2000 Optional Protocols,
- the 1949 Geneva Conventions on War Crimes, etc.

A separate section is dedicated to crimes against humanity, including genocide and other crimes defined by international common law, along the lines of the 1998 Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.

From a substantial point of view, finally, further items of note are the revision of crimes against the public administration, in line with the provisions included in the 2003 United Nations Convention Against Corruption, as well as the abolition of the life sentence, to be substituted by a maximum custodial sentence of 30 to 35 years.

While many of the specific criminal offences included in these laws are undeniably new, it would however be incorrect to assume that the forms of conduct thereby sanctioned were previously licit. These were indeed punished, but as broader, more generic forms of criminal activity.

The introduction of the new regulations is useful to define the specific cases with greater certainty and precision and to thus satisfy the international parameters, calibrating the sanctions to the specific gravity of the case.

Some of the new categories of criminal activity introduced (for instance, crimes against the security of air or maritime navigation or against the security of airports or fixed platforms) may appear excessive considering the geographic characteristics of Vatican City State.

However, such regulations have on the one hand the function of ensuring respect for international anti-terrorism parameters, and on the other, they are necessary to ensure compatibility with the condition of so-called "dual criminality", to enable the extradition of persons charged or convicted of crimes committed abroad should they seek refuge in Vatican City State.

Special emphasis is given to the discipline of "civil responsibility of juridical persons derived from a criminal violation" (arts. 46-51 of the law containing complementary regulations on criminal matters), introducing sanctions for juridical persons involved in criminal activities as defined by the current international legal framework.

To this end an attempt has been made to reconcile the traditionally cautious approach observable also in the canonical order, according to which "societas puniri non potest" with the need, ever more evident in the international context, to establish adequate and deterrent penalties also against juridical persons who profit from crime.

The solution adopted was therefore that of establishing administrative responsibility of juridical persons, obviously when it is possible to demonstrate that a crime was committed in the interests of or to the advantage of that same juridical person.

Significant modifications are introduced also in terms of procedure. These include: updates in the discipline of requisition, strengthened by measures regarding the preventative freezing of assets; an explicit statement of the principles of fair trial within a reasonable time limit and with the presumption of innocence; the reformulation of regulations regarding international judicial cooperation with the adoption of the measures established by the most recent international conventions.

From a technical and regulatory point of view, the plurality of sources available to experts was organised by means of their combination in a harmonious and coherent body of legislation which, in the frameworks of the Church’s magisterium and the juridical-canonical tradition, the principal source of Vatican law (Art. 1, Para. 1, Law No. 71 on the sources of law, 1 October 2008) takes into account simultaneously the norms established by international conventions and the Italian juridical tradition, reference to which has always been made by the Vatican legal order.

In order to better order a legislative work with such broad-ranging content, it has been drafted as two distinct laws. One brings together all the legislation consisting of modifications to the penal code and the code of criminal procedure; the other will instead consist of legislation of a nature which does not permit a homogeneous section within the code structure and is therefore gathered in form of a latere or complementary penal code.

Finally, the penal reform hitherto presented is completed with the adoption by the Holy Father Francis of a specific Motu proprio, also bearing yesterday’s date, which extends the reach of the legislation contained in these criminal laws to the members, officials and employees of the various bodies of the Roman Curia, connected Institutions, bodies subordinate to the Holy See and canonical juridical persons, as well as pontifical legates and diplomatic staff of the Holy See.

This extension has the aim of making the crimes included in these laws indictable by the judicial organs of Vatican City State even when committed outside the borders of the state.

Among the laws adopted yesterday by the Pontifical Commission for Vatican City State there is also the law consisting of general legislation on the subject of administrative sanctions.

This law had already been proposed in Art. 7, Paragraph 4 of Law 71 on the sources of law of 1 October 2008, and establishes the general principles and regulation of the application of administrative sanctions.

For some time there has long been an awareness of the expedience of an intermediate tertium genus [third order] between penal and civil offences, also in relation to the growing relevance of administrative offences.

As a discipline of principle, the provisions of such a law would be used whenever another law establishes the imposition of administrative penalties for a breach of law, no doubt to specify the procedure for their application to the competent authority and the order of other minor effects.

One of the cornerstones of the system introduced by this law is constituted by the so-called rule of law, as a result of which administrative sanctions may be imposed only in cases defined by law.

The procedure for implementation is divided into a phase of investigation and challenge of the infringement by the competent offices, and a second phase of imposition of the sanction, which will fall within the competences of the President of the Governorate. Finally, there will be the right to appeal heard by a single judge except in more cases of more severe penalties, for which the jurisdiction of the Court is established.

To conclude this brief presentation, it may be observed that the laws indicated above are notable not only for their undeniable substantial and systematic relevance, but also because they represent a further significant step on the part of the Vatican legislator towards the refinement of its legal code, necessary to assume and promote the constructive and useful proposals of the international Community with a view to more intense international cooperation and a more effective pursuit of the common good.

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A very useful perspective on what St. Benedict meant by simplicity and poverty, from an Australian Benedictine monk who blogs from his present abbey in England...

The Benedictine view of
simplicity and poverty


July 11, 2013

In the universal Church, today is the Feast of St Benedict, Patron of Europe, Father of Western Monasticism, founder of the oldest order (as it were) in the Church. At Douai we have a holiday of sorts, with talking meals, a festal lunch, and a reduced regime.

However, at Mass we did not have incense nor did we sing (or say for that matter) the Creed nor the Sequence. An odd way, you might observe, to commemorate our monastic patron. Have we gone low-church all of a sudden?

Many of you will already know the reason why. Today is for most Benedictines, and certainly for us English ones, what we might term Little St Benedict’s Day. For us, the major feast for St Benedict is the Solemnity of the Transitus of St Benedict on 21 March. Thus we keep his day of death as the main feast day.

11 July was the feast of the Translation of St Benedict’s relics (though whether his relics went to Fleury in France or Monte Cassino in Italy is a vexed question: both abbeys still lay claim to possessing the true St Benedict).

After the [Second Vatican] Council the reformers opted to omit the Transitus and keep the Translation in the Calendar for the universal Church, possibly because the Transitus always falls in Lent. This is no bar to English Benedictines keeping the Transitus in full fig, a God-sent break from the rigours of Lenten penance (well, not so rigorous any more to be honest, but that is another story).

The Prior preached this morning on St Benedict’s teaching on poverty, which set me to reflecting in the light of the new pontificate. Pope Francis is laying great stress on simplicity (rather than a neutered humility as the secular-minded wish to make out). Thus Pope Francis recently exhorted priests and religious to eschew fancy cars and go for a more unprepossessing jalopy, or even a bike.

That strikes the disinterested hearer as perfectly sensible, though he (or she) might wonder why priests and vowed religious should need to be reminded of this. We religious especially should stop and take stock, and ask if in fact our lives reflect the evangelical poverty we profess.

However, the word poverty could use some fruitful elaboration, or even translation, in the context of the religious vows, and even more basically, to Christian life in general. Poverty is not the same as destitution or squalor. To be dressed in rags, living in a hovel and eating gruel is sadly the plight of many in the world today, but it is not the poverty to which religious are called (though some do indeed live so, to the glory of God).

Benedictines do not make a vow of poverty at all. We do make a vow of conversion of life, in which evangelical poverty and chastity are integral elements. St Benedict saw no need to single these out for separate vows: evidently they are essential to the life of the evangelical Christian, and even more so to the monk who has committed his life to ongoing and authentic conversion.

St Benedict has little to say on poverty. The point he does labour is private ownership. In chapter 33 of the Rule, Monks and Private Ownership, St Benedict writes,

Above all, this evil practice must be uprooted and removed from the monastery. We mean that without an order from the abbot, no one may presume to give, receive or retain anything as his own, nothing at all … not a single item, especially since monks may not have the free disposal even of their own bodies and wills… All things should be the common possession of all, as it is written (Acts 4:32), so that no one presumes to call anything his own.

The crucial phrase is as his own. The quotation from Acts refers to the life of the primitive Church, a common life that reflected the Lord’s radical self-emptying. The Christian life is one of sacrifice, just as Christ’s was, who sacrificed his own body for our salvation.

Thus the Christian is called to conform to the lifestyle of Christ a freedom born of indifference to material possessions and to one’s own preferences. It is not things that matter, but our attitude to things. Even our Lord and his apostles had a common purse (held by Judas).

In today’s gospel from St Matthew (19:16-21) the rich young man can do everything but divest himself of his possessions. His property and wealth were not the obstacle as much as his possessiveness of them. It reveals a deep-seated selfishness which is at odds with the essence of Christian life, self-forgetfulness and self-sacrifice.

Since religious life is the Christian life reduced to its concentrated essence, religious (like all Christians) are not called so much to get rid of everything but to renounce any right to possess something as their own, for themselves and their exclusive use.

For the monk, nothing can be “mine” but only “our”. Only when we have removed our attachment to a thing can we be free to use it properly. That is the freedom of Christian poverty: a simplicity that allows us to retain or discard anything with peace of heart. The monk, as too the Christian, says with Job, “The Lord has given, and the Lord has taken away: blessed be the name of the Lord” (Job 1:21).

So Pope Francis is quite right to remind seminarians and novices of the need to aim low when it comes to things we buy and use in our lives of service of the gospel. And if we do so, we become a reminder to the Church and the world that all things are passing, and that our true and lasting possession is God and his grace which mammon will displace if our priorities are not right.

Pope Francis is not advocating some sort of neo-Marxism; he is calling us to practice what we preach. “Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you” (Matthew 6:33).
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Why the world needs 'Lumen Fidei'
Peter strengthens his flock
with the light of faith

by FATHER ROGER J. LANDRY

07/12/2013

Here is one of the most sensible commentaries in English that I have read so far about Lumen fidei. Starting with the fact that Fr. Landry, who is pastor of St. Bernadette Parish in Fall River, Massachusetts, considers this encyclical as the performance of a distinctly Petrine function that is common to all Popes, regardless of who the individual is. And that is obviously why Benedict XVI, no longer Pope, did not hesitate to pass on a work he had begun to his successor, and why Pope Francis likewise did not hesitate to adopt it as his first encyclical and sign his name to it.

One of the Pope’s most important duties is to implement Jesus’s command to Peter to strengthen his brothers and sisters in the faith (Luke 22:32).

That’s one of the reasons why it is particularly striking that, in the Year of Faith, we have an encyclical on faith written, as Pope Francis said, by “four hands” — his and Benedict XVI’s — and fittingly signed on the feast of Saints Peter and Paul.

The didactic duet and distinguished date suggest that Lumen Fidei (The Light of Faith) is less the act of a particular Pope and more the faithful exercise of the Petrine office in apostolic succession.

Pope Francis dramatically reinforced this impression by publishing it on the same day he approved the recommendations for the canonization of Popes John XXIII and John Paul II. These two were responsible for the two greatest papal attempts to strengthen the faith of the Church in recent memory, the Second Vatican Council and the Catechism of the Catholic Church, both of whose jubilees are the occasion for this special Year of Faith.

The faith is transmitted by “living persons in a way consonant with the living faith,” Lumen Fidei underlines, referring to apostolic succession. The encyclical is evidence that faith is strengthened in the same way.

If there were an official motto for the Year of Faith, it would surely be the apostles’ plea, “Lord, increase our faith” (Luke 17:5). Lumen Fidei identifies four ways the faith of believers can be augmented and reinforced.

The first is in our capacity to see by the light of faith. “There is an urgent need,” the encyclical says, “to see once again that faith is a light” intended to illumine “every aspect of human existence.” Faith ultimately means to see things “as Jesus sees them, with his own eyes,” an eye transplant every believer needs.

The second intensification is in our hearing. Faith comes through hearing, St. Paul writes (Romans 10:17), and each of us needs to tune anew into the Good Shepherd’s voice speaking to us, calling us to follow him and summoning us to become those who “hear the word of God and do it,” with loving, trusting obedience (Luke 8:21).

The third growth is through the sense of touch. The encyclical challenges us to open ourselves to the interior caress of Christ’s love and to respond like the hemorrhaged woman in the Gospel (Luke 8:45): by reaching out in faith to touch him in return. This heart-to-heart contact happens, above all, through the sacraments.

The last maturation is in our memory. Faith, Lumen Fidei declares, is a living memory of the history of salvation preserved in the heart of the Church. Like Mary’s heart, our heart is called to ponder the meaning of these wondrous deeds, treasure them and unite God’s past miracles and future promises in a present full of confident hope.

Lumen Fidei seeks to strengthen our faith in each of the four ways so that we can more fully share in St. John’s authentically sacramental outlook — “What we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes and touched with our hands, concerning the word of life” (1 John 1:1) — and can transmit that glorious living memory to others.

The encyclical also tries to fortify our faith by responding to various contemporary doubts, attitudes and idolatries that undermine believing. It does so very subtly, so subtly that it’s easy to miss. In order to grasp the encyclical’s structure and greatness, however, it’s important to see these considerations hiding in the background.

For the most part, Lumen Fidei doesn’t criticize or even mention these challenges by name, but, rather, shows what faith is, positively and attractively, enticing people away from these common snares.

We can mention a dozen of the most noteworthy examples, in honor of the 12 articles of the Creed.

In response to the idea that faith is an outdated relic of the Dark Ages, retarding mankind’s growth, the encyclical shows how Christian faith provides the foundation for fidelity in interpersonal relationships, without which society would be debilitated by fear.

Against those who posit that faith seduces people to abandon the world and live for an ethereal Jerusalem, the encyclical emphasizes that raising hands in prayer strengthens them to build an earthly city founded not just on justice, but also charity and mercy.

In contrast to the secularism that organizes society as if God is distant or dead and makes utilitarianism the principle of justice in human relationships, faith makes God tangible and Christlike love possible.

For relativists who respond to the horror of totalitarianism by rejecting not false anthropology, but truth as a whole, the encyclical shows how the truth of God’s love embraced and reciprocated in faith frees us from solipsism (the belief that knowledge of anything outside one’s own mind is not sure), rehabilitates our memory and leads us to treat others not with force, but humility and reverence.

To the rationalists who believe truth is only what can be verified through the scientific method, Lumen Fidei proclaims that faith draws reason beyond formulae and opens knowledge to the wonders and richness of creation.

To those who look at faith as a burden, the encyclical testifies that faith is a treasure that makes us exceedingly rich, a good news of great joy meant to be shared contagiously — and a light capable of setting an often-dark world ablaze.

Anticipating the objections of those who claim faith is dry, cold and boring, Lumen Fidei shows that the life of faith is a drama involving not just the head, but the heart; an assent not principally to a list of truths, but to Person; and a passionate life that transforms crosses into signs and means of love.

For individualists tempted to privatize faith, the encyclical discloses how faith is personal and communal, bringing us into communion with the eternal Trialogue and into the family of believers.

To those inveigled to view the content of the faith as an à la carte buffet, Lumen Fidei how the truths of faith are interconnected and are meant to connect us with God and others. To subtract from the truths of faith is, therefore, to wound communion.

For those who try to reduce faith to doctrine and separate faith from life, the encyclical illustrates how faith is meant to be lived, as we see beautifully and compellingly in the lives of Abraham and Mary.

For Protestants tempted toward affirming salvation by faith alone, the encyclical shows how faith leads us to live in the Lord’s love to such a degree that it overflows in deeds of love.

Finally, for those who prefer to believe in Christ without believing in the Church, Lumen Fidei stresses the ecclesial dimension of the faith: that to believe in Christ means to believe in, care for and build up his body, which he loves as his beloved Bride.

In inoculating us against each of these common viruses that lead to spiritual blindness, deafness, insensitivity and amnesia, the encyclical not only strengthens and augments the faith of believers, but reinforces how important faith is for humanity’s present and future.

Lumen Fidei summons all those in the Church to take the bushel basket off the light of faith and set it on a lampstand for the whole world to see.
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Friday, July 12, 2013, 14th Week in Ordinary Time

I have been unable to find individual images online. hence these generic pictures.
SAINTS JOHN JONES (1530-1598) and JOHN WALL (1620-1679), Franciscans and Martyrs
Jones, who was Welsh, and Wall, who was English, both became Franciscans after years as being diocesan priests. They lived a century apart, but their biographies
were similar. Both went abroad for some time and returned to England to serve in secret during times of great anti-Catholic persecution. Both were eventually arrested,
imprisoned and executed - hanged, drawn and quartered according to the practice of those days. They are among the 40 men and women of England and Wales who
were martyred between 1535 and 1679, and were canonized together in October 1970. The Feast of the 40 Martyrs is celebrated on Oct. 25.
Readings for today's Mass:http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/071212.cfm



AT THE VATICAN TODAY

No bulletins from the Vatican today.

One must assume the Pope is hard at work preparing for WYD in Rio de Janeiro - he leaves July 22 - where he is scheduled to give ___ addresses and __ homilies. Though he may well choose to extemporize most, if not all, of his discourses at WYD and the side trip he is making to Aparecida before he joins the WYD festivities.


One year ago...
There were no events announced for Benedict XVI either, but the Vatican issued its bulletins on the concert for the Pope the preceding day and the visit of Italian President Giorgio Napolitano whom the Pope invited to the concert in Castel Gandolfo. The OR that day featured this interview with President Napolitano.



'My friend Benedict XVI'
Interview with President Napolitano
by Mario Ponzi
Translated from the 7/13/12 issue of


Benedict XVI welcomes and greets him with the warmth that one has for a longtime dear friend. Maestro Daniel Barenboim called him "the architect of the event Wednesday evening, a historic night, at Castel Gandolfo.

He, the President of the Italian Republic, expresses his great satisfaction at bringing closer together two men who are spreading the same message of non-violence and peace.

One, the Pope, with his words that resound in every corner of the earth. The other, Maestro Barenboim, who has been doing the same to the rhythm of a symphony of peace interpreted by young musicians who are Israeli, Palestinian, Syrian, Lebanese, Egyptian, American, German, Spanish and Argentine.

With his innate sincerity, his exceptional openness to dialog about the great as well as small things of life, President Napolitano gladly accepted to speak to us.

Cardinal Ravasi first and then Maestro Barenboim revealed a small secret last night: that you were the inspiration and architect of the evening that goes far beyond their exceptional artistic and cultural value. Could you explain why you so wanted this occasion?
For many years, I have known and have had a relationship of admiration and friendship with Maestro Barenboim. I also got to know his youth orchestra quite well. That is why I was very happy to give to them the Dan David Prize which was given to me on May 15, 2011 [a one-million-dollar prize] to this orchestra to help them consolidate and develop their activity in the world.

I have watched marvelous images of their concerts around the world. I was very struck by a concert they held in Ramallah [provisional Palestinian 'capital' on the West Bank]: it is incredible how these young people have succeeded to bring together so many diverse young people, how music is able to give what governments and politics have not succeeded to give, namely a sense of peace, of participation, of sharing common values that foster solidarity and spirituality. Values that can truly facilitate the solution to a long-standing and tragic problem such as the relations between Israelis and Palestinians. So I wanted the Pope to be aware of them.

When did you have the idea to bring them together?
Some time ago, I had the chance to speak to him personally about this youth orchestra, of the message they were bringing to the world. The Pontiff immediately grasped this significance and wanted to know more. Then, the great gift - the gift he has given this young people to welcome them to his own home. Even for Maestro Barenboim, this is a great gift. I am profoundly touched by the Pope's highly sensitive gesture.

Where does your obvious harmony with Papa Ratzinger come from?
It has been six years since my mandate [as Italian President]. The seventh and last year began in May. I do not hesitate to say that one of the most beautiful components that chas haracterized my experience as President has been, precisely, the relationship with Benedict XVI.

Together we discovered our great affinity, we have lived together a feeling of great and reciprocal respect. But there is more, something that has touched our hearts. And I am very grateful to him for this.

Today, for instance, our get-together was characterized by simple humanity. We walked together, spoke to each other face to face with a relationship of frank friendship, with all the deference that I have for him and for his most elevated mission.

Of course, the Pope, besides being a head of State, is also and above all, the leader of the universal Church. We feel close to each other if only because we are both called on to govern complex realities. ( find myself leading the institutions of the Italian Republic at a moment that is very, very difficult, It is necessary in this context, to see to it that strong motivations for serenity, peace and moderation must prevail. And I feel very deeply this mission as a moderator. Imagine, therefore, the analogous mission that the Pope has!

And of course, you are united in the ideal of peace...
I believe that the continuous appeals of the Pope for peace are welcomed and shared by so many men around the world. Of course, exhortations to peace, especially in areas like the Middle East, are opposed by a certain 'incanceration' of conflicts and differences. And this always happens when decades and decades pass without finding a solution - something becomes transformed into an incrustation that is very hard to break. Each of us does what we can, and the Pope can do a lot through his inspiration, the constancy of his actions. This, at least, is my hope.

How do you see Benedict XVI's relationship with Italy?
I will never forget the message that he sent us on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of Italian unity. I carry it and will always carry it with me as a legacy of my presidency. It was to be expected that we would get a cordial and formal message, but not as committed and engaged as his words in the letter which we did get, which including a historical analysis. This truly demonstrates that in Italy, the State and the Church, the people of the Republic and the people of the Church, are so profoundly and intimately united.

Another interesting story from a year ago concerns B16's relationship with the Jews, in the eyes of the then outgoing ambassador from Israel, Mordechai Lewy,


MSM - and the world at large - have under-estimated the ways in which Joseph Ratzinger - as cardinal and now as Pope - has advanced relations with the Jews, for the simple reason that reporting has tended to focus on controversies such as the Good Friday prayer or the cause for Pius XII's beatification. So it is refreshing when a prominent Jew cites the significance of a personal gesture by Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI that was universally appreciated, and not just by Jews... With his knowledge of Hebrew and as a lifelong student of Scriptures, he has probably been the most 'informed' Pope in modern times about Judalsm.

Outgoing Israeli envoy says
Israel is very grateful to
Benedict XVI for clarifying
'deicide' issue in JON-2




Ambassador Lewy with Benedict XVI.

ROME, July 10 (Translated from TMNews) - The outgoing Israeli ambassador to the Holy See, Mordechai Lewy, underscored the great importance attached by his country to Pope Benedict XVI's concern to dispel the myth that Jews were guilty of deicide by killing Jesus of Nazareth - a belief that has been part of Catholic tradition among many communities through the centuries.

[The second volume of Joseph Ratzinger-Benedict XVI's JESUS OF NAZARETH generated much worldwide news because of the pages in which the Pope rejects the very idea of deicide by the Jews, as did the Council of Trent in the catechism that was published at the height of the Counter-Reformation, and as the 1992 Catechism of the Catholic Church also does. It's a commentary on the dynamics of communication that not even Catholic media cited the official catechetical precedents to the Pope's assertions - obviously out of sheer ignorance of what the Church has said before on this very sensitive issue.]*

Ambassador Lewy, whose successor as envoy to the Holy See is expected to arrive next week, spoke at a news conference about the four years he spent in Rome.

"From a professional standpoint," he said, "my work turned out to be far more interesting than I had expected". Among the events in which he played a key role were Benedict XVI's visit to the Holy Land in May 2009, his visit to the Great Synagogue of Rome in January 2010, and what he called 'the great progress' made in the legal-economic bilateral negotiations that Israel and the Holy See have been carrying on for almost two decades since they first established diplomatic relations. [These negotiations involve, among other things, taxes that Israel would impose retroactively on Church properties in the Holy Land, the lack of juridical status for the Church in Israel, as well as control of holy sites such as the Cenacle on the spot where tradition says the Last Supper and the Pentecost both occurred, or shrines in Caesarea associated with the Risen Christ.]

Then he called attention to "a point that has not been recalled enough - Pope Benedict's words absolving the Jews from responsibility for the crucifixion of Jesus, in the second volume of his biography of Jesus of Nazareth".

It was an idea, he said, that was prevalent during the Second Vatican Council, but which has been "reiterated effectively by Papa Ratzinger".

In the book, the Pope says that the term 'Jews' used in the Gospel for those who accused Jesus had no 'racist overtones' if only because Jesus and all his followers were Jews themselves", and that the term certainly did not refer to all Jews.

Lewy recalled that after the book was published, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sent a formal message thanking the Pope for his words, and soon thereafter, sent a giant olive tree that has been planted in the Vatican Gardens.

Lewy also cited two 'questions of an ecclesial nature' affecting Israeli-Vatican relations. The first is that, with the increase in Christian emigration to Israel (mostly from Russia and the Philippines) in recent years - which implies that in the near future, the majority of Christians in Israel will be non-Arab - the person named by the Church to be in charge of the 'Jewish Christians' is the Jesuit priest David Neuhaus, who is the Vicar of the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem, and could very well be the next Patriarch.

The second fact he pointed out was that in 1293, when the Mameluke Turks conquered the Holy Land, the Christian see of Nazareth was not a diocese but merely the titular See of the Bishop of Trani-Barletta in Puglia (southeastern Italy). [I don't follow his point here, because the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem is a true and proper diocese within the territory of Israel, and the Church has multiple active interests in Israel. That is why she is seeking a juridical personality there, as she enjoys in other countries.]

Questioned about various other current events, Lewy said he was not involved at all in the decision of Yad Vashem officials to modify a negatively one-sided caption denouncing Pius XII for 'silence and inaction' about Nazi persecution of the Jews during World War II.

He also disputed the rumor widely reported in the Western media last month that the Vatican was ready to 'indirectly recognize' Israel's jurisdiction over East Jerusalem, claimed by the Palestinians as their capital, though Israel has held the entire City of Jerusalem since it defeated attacking Arab armies in the 1967 War.

When he was asked how he thought the Vatileaks episode has affected the Pope, Lewy said: "He is a strong man. I don't think he gets rattled easily". He paid his farewell visit to the Pope last June 29.

*The worldwide reaction - of surprise and pleasure - at the Pope's words 'exculpating' the Jews of deicide in JON-2, would seem to underscore that what the Pope says or writes makes news in a way that formal catechisms and other texts of the Church do not. Which, in turn, underscores the capital importance of a Pope's Magisterium, in which the content that a Pope chooses to emphasize and the communicative power with which this is transmitted to the faithful are very much a function of the individual Pope.

While the Magisterium of the Popes may all be identical in adhering to the deposit of the faith as it has accrued over the centuries, the effects of their teaching vary according to the Pope. Benedict XVI's papacy happens to be distinguished - a fact that is univerally acknowledged, even by his critics - by his emphasis on the essentials of the faith (and the outstanding Christians, known and unknown, who exemplified this faith best), presenting them as the Fathers of the Church did in the early centuries of Christianity. As truths rooted in Scriptures and the Jewish culture in the time of Jesus, and illumined by the reflections of the Church's greatest thinkers and mystics, erudite as well as unlettered men and women, to whom and through whom God spoke. It is to the Pope's advantage that even the MSM are much more likely to pay attention to what he says than they have been with other Popes. including Blessed John Paul II, whose mediatic presence became the focus of reporting to the virtual neglect of what he said.]


Apropos Ambassador Lewy's record as ambassador to the Vatican, he has not been shy to express views that get off the beaten path of Israeli and Jewish political correctness. As Christopher Blosser highlighted from an interview Lewy gave to the Boston Glo be in 2009: On the administrative powers of the Pope ("From the books you can see that it is an absolute monarchy, but it is not. Far, far from that"); on Israel's interest in preserving its Christian population ("It's not a question. We are obliged to"); on the matter of visas and the Pope's remarks on the Holocaust ("What he contributed at Yad Vashem was a completely different approach which was an enrichment to the culture of memory, ... a wake-up from an unexpected corner for people to think a little bit differently"); and the controversy involving Pope Pius XI ("It is wrong to look for any affinity between him and the Nazis. It is also wrong to say that he didn’t save Jews").



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Thanks to Lella who on her blog ran a story by AGI's Salvatore Izzo which led me to this article by an Argentine writer and journalist who is apparently a close friend of the Pope who was once his professor. I was wide-eyed with wonder and profound gratitude for the words attributed to Pope Francis here about Benedict XVI, until the writer quotes the Pope on what he finds wrong about his own 'life' at the Vatican, and sends me crashing down with an excruciating thud from that opening high...

'The Pope called me on the phone -
or rather, he called me again'

It may not sound humble to say that
but that's just how it was

by Jorge Milia
Translated from a posting on

an Italian website about Latin America run by Alver Metalli
July 11, 2013

...It is a privilege that fate has allowed me, and perhaps because of this, I must share it with those who can appreciate it, because goodness, when it is shared in common, multiplies.

"Twelve pages - to write me a letter 12 pages long!", he [Pope Francis] began, referring to a letter I had written him.

"But you cannot deny that I made you laugh", I replied. [Milia uses the second person familiar 'you' (tu), not the respectful third-person Usted, or Vos, as the Argentines say, with the Pope. I remember the anecdotes by Cardinal Meisner and Kasper, I belive, about when they first approached Benedict XVI after he was elected Pope, and they asked him how they should address him now. He said, "Just like before" (using the familiar 'Du']]

He laughed. For reasons that no one can explain, least of all me, he still 'tolerates' my prose as he did years and years ago when we were professor and student, respectively.

I told him I had started to read the encyclical Lumen fidei, and he declined any personal merit for it. He said that Benedict XVI had done the major work, that he was a sublime thinker who was not known or understood by many people.

"Today I was with 'el viejo' [the old man]" - so he called him, as we do in Argentina, with an affectionate connotation ew give to words - "and we talked a lot. It is a pleasure for me to exchange ideas with him".

And really, when he speaks of Ratzinger, he does so with acknowledgment and tenderness, It seems to me like the phenomenon is that of someone who has met an old friend, perhaps an old schoolmate, someone he has only seen now and then afterwards, someone who was not in the same class but whom we always admired, with whom one now renews old ties, despite the differences that time has made...

"You cannot imagine the humility and wisdom of this man." he told me.

"Then keep him close to you," I replied.

But he went on, "One cannot even think of doing without the advice of a person like him - it would be foolish of me to do so!"


The story goes abruptly downhill from here. What Francis gives with one hand, he takes away with the other. How can a person he says he admires as wise have been so unwise as to have followed traditional practices in the Papacy that Francis obviously thinks are not just unwise but downright wrong?]

I told him that the difference between them was that the people see him [Francis] as more human, someone they can touch, someone they can speak to. [Milia obviously never watched the TV coverage and videos of Benedict's interactions with people on all sorts of occasion duering his eight years as Pope, or he would not say that! He is simply buying the media line about Francis 'in contrast' to Benedict.]

"And why not? Of course, they must be able to do that. It is my duty to listen to them, to comfort them, to pray with them, to hold their hand so that they will feel alone..." [Here, unfortunately, Pope Francis seems to revert to what I have come to call his 'self referential' mode, to use one of his favorite terms. In this case, he appears to be accepting Livia’s statement on the difference between him and Benedict in the popular perception, but his answer is totally about himself – what he feels to be his duty to the people, as though no other Pope before him had felt dutybound in the same way, even if their way of showing it was not to make a 90-minute Popemobile tour preceding a ten-minute catechesis at the Wednesday general audiences. Even worse, he implies that Benedict and other Popes were perhaps negligent of this aspect of the papal duties. An inference that is reinforced by his next statements.]

But he assured me that it has not been easy to have this accepted by so many of those who are around him. [Who, exactly, and what does it matter what other people tell him he must or must not do? He’s the Pope – no one else calls the tune but him. Security has done all it can to accommodate his ‘people-friendly’ approach. The driver of the Popemobile cannot possibly disobey him when he says, “Stop here, I want to get off”, or “Let me get this child onto the vehicle”. Andrea Tornielli claims that at Casa Santa Marta, Francis prefers to be unattended by his secretaries or his valet as he goes about doing what he wants to do. Who then is there to stop him – the sovereign monarch of the Vatican – from doing as he pleases? For that matter, who was there to stop Benedict XVI or John Paul II or the Popes before them?

What is this myth perpetrated by the media – and now seemingly taken up and reinforced by Pope Francis – that there are ‘people’ who can stop the Pope from doing what he thinks is right! The myth includes the contradictory claims that living in the papal apartment of the Apostolic Palace ‘isolates’ the Pope from the world - there is no such thing as isolation anymore in this age of ubiquitous communication – and that it subjects him to unworthy pressures from ‘them’ – people never specified but occasionally identified as ‘Vatican officials who do not agree with the Pope and want their own way done’. That is all bullshit.

People lobbying for anything will lobby just as well in Casa Santa Marta as they do in the Apostolic Palace. The faulty myth suggests that anyone who cares can just drop in on the Pope in the Apostolic Palace, and yet in Tornielli’s latest Francis encomium two days ago, he said that the biggest complaint by Vatican officials against Benedict XVI was how hard it was to get to see him! And that on the contrary, at Casa Santa Marta, practically anyone is free to walk up to the Pope if he sees him [assuming they have a legitimate reason to be in the hotel] So which is it? Pressure groups somehow have more access to the Pope at the Apostolic Palace just because their offices are in the same building, but they complain because they cannot get to see the Pope? On the other hand, at Santa Marta, anyone in the building can literally walk up to the Pope, so presumably those who have causes to lobby for can do so directly with him? Either way, special interests will always find a way to get through to the Pope, but all he has to do is swat them down!


He started laughing again when I told him that if my grandparents were alive and knew that I was using the familiar ‘tu’ with the Pope, they would stop praying for me and would consider me definiteively ‘lost’. Their idea of a Pope was one who was inaccessible and distant, the same as their parents and grandparents before them had.

[That was before the age of mass media and the global village. Before Leo XIII, Catholics around the world knew of the Popes only what they saw in the rare ‘holy pictures’ disseminated about them, based on portraits not actual photographs. Leo XIII was probably the first Pope who had actual photographs of him more or less widely seen by those who read newspapers.]

But he reiterated to me: “It has not been easy, Jorge – here there are too many ’masters’ of the Pope, people who have served a long time in the Vatican” [molto anzianita di servizio]. [Frankly, I do not understand the sense of this statement, nor who is being referred to. Those who count with long years of service in the Vatican would consist of two categories: the bureaucrats of the Curia who have held on to their middle-level positions through a succession of Popes, or the volunteers who work as ushers for papal visitors or during papal liturgies in jobs often handed down from generation to generation. Other than some bureaucrats snaggling some papal initiative in red tape to slow it down, how could any of the persons in these categories be capable of imposing their will in any way on what the Pope does or does not do? And how can they in any way be considered ‘masters’ of the Pope? Can anyone imagine Benedict XVI, or any of the Popes in our lifetime, deciding for or against something just because a papal usher belonging to one of Rome’s noblest families has a personal preference one way or the other?

I have been disturbed by the Pope’s penchant – as in his homilies - for categorizing people by negative stereotypes, even with the best of intentions. Not that anyone has minded so far what would have been a never-ending source of calumnies against B16 for what they would, in his case, consider ‘over-the-top and habitual moralizing’].


Then he commented that every change he has introduced cost him great efforts (and, I suppose, many enemies…) [Enemies? Of Francis? Mr Milia, you must be hallucinating! Who would dare to declare ‘enmity’ for the most popular Pope ever, easily eclipsing even Papa Wojtyla, a ‘celebrity’ without rival or parallel who makes the Obamamania of five years ago look paltry – even if, in both cases, they have been greeted by their most ardent admirers as the ‘second coming’ of Jesus!]

Among these efforts, the most difficult has been for him not to allow ‘others’ to manage his agenda for him. And that is why he has not wanted to live in the Apostolic Palace because many Popes have become ‘prisoners’ of their secretaries. [OUCH! Does he mean John Paul II and Benedict XVI were ‘prisoners’ of Mons. Dsiwisz and Mons. Gaenswein, respectively? Papal secretaries have the duty and function of filtering requests for access and other favors addressed to their boss, who cannot possibly see everyone who wants to see him nor do everything everyone wants him to do. In the case of the last two papal secretaries, did anyone doubt that they knew their respective bosses well enough – and were reciprocally trusted totally by them – to do what they thought their boss would decide if he had to do the filtering himself? But the secretaries are still just secretaries, and nothing stops – nor would have ever stopped - John Paul II and Benedict XVI from deciding differently if they had to.

These Popes, and those that went before them in the modern era, were hardly cretins or average Joes whom their subordinates could play as they wanted to, or lead where they did not want to go (in the case of JPII, at least not before his illness made him totally dependent on those around him). Imagine, for instance, what John XXIII's secretary, the redoubtable nonagenarian Mons Capovilla, would feel about such a remark from the current Pope, which is not really so much against the secretaries as against the Popes who had secretaries!]

“It is I who decide whom I want to see, not my secretaries… Sometimes I cannot see whom I want to see because I must first find out what someone else wants of me”. [If he were to personally screen every request to see him, he would not have time to do more important things. And why can't he tell whoever makes the schedule - Mons. Gaenswein, in this case, who one must presume, consults the Pope before finalizing any schedule - "I want to see So-and-So, Fit him in somewhere!" As for finding out what someone wants from the Pope, secretaries do that as part of their filtering function - to determine what might be the requesting person’s ulterior motive for meeting the Pope. Can we have some sense of priorities here?]

This statement struck me very much. I, who am not Pope and do not have his power, feel my heart rate speed up when I am awaiting a dear friend and do not know whether to give someone else precedence before him. Whereas he must deprive himself of the meeting he wants to be with someone who has asked for one. [None of this makes sense at all. Pope Francis is supposed to be the 'take charge' guy. Why is he then complaining that he is being imposed on by his subordinates? And yet, he goes on to call his predecessors 'prisoners' of their secretaries!]

He told me that Popes have been isolated for centuries, which is not a good thing at all, because the shepherd must be with his flock…. [But there are countless ways for the shepherd of Rome to be with his flock and they are not necessarily literal, because a literal interpretation would be impossible! The Pope can be with his flock in as many meaningful ways as he wants to, including all the symbolic kissing of babies, and compassionate gestures for the handicapped, the sick and the aged, the poor and the needy, the unwanted and the neglected – previous Popes have done so as well, whenever the occasion -arose, or created occasions to be able to show their pastoral and paternal solicitude - even if the media report on what Francis does as if no one had ever done it before him.

But even a super-Pope like Francis has only so many hours in a day to do everything he must do – much of which has to do with tending his worldwide flock of 1.2 billion. Why even talk about the impossible?... And that judgment, "Popes have been isolated for centuries" - does it have any objective basis at all, any more than Marco Politi's judgment that of all the Popes in the modern era, Benedict XVI was the most isolated - and by his own choice?]


Then we talked of two or three personal matters. Always concerned about the situation in Argentina, he could not believe tthat there is not enough wheat to make bread. I recalled to him paradoxically those lines that say “One cannot die of hunger in a land blessed with bread”. He agreed with some bitterness, by the did not make a comment about anyone.

In the end, he asked me, as always, to pray for him. I did not want to be the one to have to end the conversation but suddenly he said, “Well, we shall see each other,or better yet, I will read what you wrote. Ciao – be well, all of you, and pray for me”.

I was left with the telephone in hand. And I thought, Francis spoke to me, the pope spoke to me. I was a bit confused. Fortunately, I remembered he had told me, “Don’t get too many airs, Jorge. It is just a friend who has spoken to you”.



Of course, you would have read by now that the Italian edition of Vanity Fair has chosen Pope Francis as its Man of the Year 2013, though the year is just halfway through. [And what could be more paradoxical than the paragon of humility being chosen Man of the Year by a magazine called Vanity Fair? The magazine is simply beating everyone else to the tape because one can almost bet that every magazine or periodical or popular poll at the end of the year will choose the Pope as Man of the Year.

Meanwhile, there's this story from The UK Daily Mail,
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2359424/Pope-demands-brand-new-life-size-statue-Buenos-Aires-cathedral-taken-does-wish-celebrity.html
to which Aqua provided the link:
/DIM]



The statue is of fiberglas and is said to be 5'6" tall. But he's not 5'6", probably 5'8" or 5'9" to judge from how much he is taller than our 5'7" Benedict.


The one-dimensional cutout seems to be a better likeness than the statue.


The real Francis, in Lampedusa.


I don't know that he can have very much say about the full=blown personality cult that has already been erected about him. Very much facilitated by all the unprecedented 'firsts' he has been registering in the history of the Papacy. And his great talent for playing to the crowd, never missing a cue and hitting all the right notes. As long as the faithful keep in mind that he is just the finger pointing to the moon, and not the moon itself. And God forbid Francis-fever should go the way of Obamamania!
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Lella on her blog

also cites this pIece from an Italian site which is motivated by a line from George Orwell who said that "In a time of universal deceit, to speak the truth is a revolutionary act". The byline is probably the pseudonym of a contemporary writer, adopting the pseudonym of a famous Italian writer, playwright and screenwriter in the 20th century, as well as the name of a character typifying the carefree contemporary man and his shallow 'easy life' (played by Vittorio Gassman) in an Italian classic of the 1960s. In any case, I found the piece striking - both for its title, which in this case, has nothing to do with the encyclical, but everything to do with the subject of this unexpected and unusual tribute - Benedict XVI, himself a light of the faith...


Light of faith
by Bruno Cortona
Translated from

July 12, 2013

There is a need for silence.

When all points of reference seem to yield and the solution of unsurmountable problems is left to God, the only remedy is a voluntary abstention from speech.

When a civilization is in ruin, when millenary walls start giving in to self-destruction, one must retire. The walls of the city nd its invisible confines must be abandoned. One flees the world to help save the world. [It is what monastics of all religions have done through the centuries.]

One must seek help.

The old bulwarks must be left, new walls must be built to create oases of peace that can protect us from our own rages and from sin.

The power of our civilization was founded in silence, through the conservation of the pillars of wisdom, including those that come from paganism.

The seeds of truth must be protected and safeguarded so they can continue to sprout where needed,

One prays to the only Way, the only Truth, the only Life. One prays to bring down all that is undesirable around us and in us.

The ruins of a world we do not want will be compost for future fruits - compost because it is dung, matter that is not noble. Manure is manure until it is put to good use.

So we must conserve the seeds of our faith - we must implore the Almighty to give the faith new life.

We must conserve and nourish what is good. And to DO so, we must put on the armor of freedom and reason

One must have faith in order to have hope.

One must pray - in silence. If possible, far from the madding crowd.

A mute warrior fights his own battles, encouraged by his incessant dialog with God - he conserves the seeds and nourishes them in the fertile humus of prayer.

He lives in the true frontier. It is he who lives in the invisible reaches of the world, like the great Christians before him, like the holy Patron of Europe whose name he took.

You have unsheathed the white-hot spade of the Lord's glory, you have cleared away the battleground, and you do not seek applause nor consensus, because you are His alone.

You reflect the Light of the World, because you are holy, because you are able to shore up my tottering faith.

You are a most powerful weapon of God.

You are the invisible giant of our time because you are beyond any single age in history, and time will render due merit to you because you have not sought merit.

You will triumph, because you are the standard bearer for He who has already won.

You will not leave us, and you will fulfill your self-imposed mission triumphantly.

Because you are Benedict - the Blessed.
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Double almanac posting again to make up for yesterday, Saturday...

Saturday, July 13, 14th Week in Ordinary Time

Two of the prayer cards show the saint and his wife St. Kunegunde; second from right, the lid on their tomb in Bamberg, Germany; and the center icon shows Henry as Holy Roman Emperor.
ST. HEINRICH (Henry II) (Germany, 972-1024), Duke of Bavaria, King of Germany and Italy, Holy Roman Emperor (1014-1024)
Educated by the bishops of Freising first then Regensburg, Heinrich had thought of becoming a priest, but he became duke in 995 upon his father's death, then King of Germany in 1002. Two years later, he was also crowned King of Italy, and in 1014, was crowned Holy Roman Emperor by Pope Benedict VIII. In 998, he had married Kunegunde of Luxembourg, a descendant of Charlemagne. As they never had children, many stories claim that they made a mutual vow of perpetual chastity. Heinrich fought many battles to consolidate his power and secure his borders, but he and his wife always had a reputation for helping the poor, giving away much of their own wealth. As a ruler, he founded schools and monasteries, quelled rebellions, worked to establish a stable peace in Europe and to reform the Church while respecting its independence. He supported bishops against the monastic clergy, and enforced priestly celibacy to prevent the clergy from passing on any of the public lands and goods he bestowed on the Church to personal heirs. In 1007, he established the Diocese of Bamberg which immediately became a center for scholarship and art. In 1020, Benedict VIII visited him in Bamberg to consecrate the new cathedral. He started construction of the cathedral of Basel, Switzerland, which later took him for its patron saint. When Heinrich died, Kunegunde entered a Benedictine nunnery and died in 1040. Heinrich was canonized in 1146, Kunegunde in 1200.
Readings for today's Mass:
www.usccb.org/bible/readings/071313.cfm


AT THE VATICAN, July 13, 2013

No events announced for Pope Francis.

But an update on what's going on in IOR, surprisingly, without any mention of Pope Francis for a change:

IOR freezes the accounts
of accused Mons. Scarano


July 13, 2013

The Director of the Press Office of the Holy See, Fr. Federico Lombardi, issued an update this morning about the ongoing investigations by competent Vatican authorities into the case of Mons. Nunzio Scarano.

By court order on the 9th of July, the Vatican Promoter of Justice has frozen funds at the IOR attributed to suspended Vatican employee Nunzio Scarano as part of an ongoing investigation by the Vatican judicial authorities. The investigation was triggered by several suspicious transaction reports filed with AIF and could be extended to additional individuals.

IOR commissioned an objective review by Promontory Financial Group of the facts and circumstances of the accounts in question and is fully cooperating with the Vatican Financial Intelligence Unit AIF and judicial authorities to bring full transparency in this matter.

The IOR is currently undergoing an outside review by Promontory Financial Group of all client relationships and the anti-money-laundering procedures it has in place. In parallel, the Institute is implementing appropriate improvements to its structures and procedures.

This process was initiated in May 2013 and is expected to be largely concluded by the end of 2013. Over the past weeks, the IOR nominated a Chief Risk Officer at Directorate level with a specific brief to focus on compliance, and introduced measures to substantially strengthen the reporting system.

As President Ernst von Freyberg recently pointed out, the IOR is systematically identifying and will have zero tolerance for any activity, whether conducted by laity or clergy, that is illegal or outside the Statutes of the Institute.




One year ago...
No events announced for Benedict XVI, who had been in Castel Gandolfo since July 3 for his annual summer sojourn there.


But on this day in 2011, the Irish government released the full text of what came to be known as 'the Cloyne report', triggering a summer furor of renewed but far more vicious and relentless attacks in the media against the Pope and the Church, which had seemingly peaked (it could not be worse, but it turns out it could) in the summer of 2010...Then it was a determined effort by the world's major media outlets to link Joseph Ratzinger personally, directly and indirectly, to sex abuse cases and the cover-up thereof. 'Smoking gun' after 'smoking gun' headlines came out, none of which amounted to zilch.

In 2011, the furor was over results that had long been known (publication of the full text was delayed until a court case involving one of the accused priests was out of the way), but the way Ireland - and most of MSM - reacted, one would have thought it was the first time the world had ever heard of sexual abuses committed by priests against minors. One week later, the Irish Prime Minister would deliver a thoroughly scurrilous attack against the Pope and the Church, including a few flat-out false statements about the Pope. It gave MSM something to run with during the summer news doldrums, and indeed, they ran with it full steam ahead for about three weeks though it seemed like an eternity then. It wasn't that MSM had found something new to occupy itself with - they just ran out of things to say, or negative twists to invent, that had not already been said again and again. And three weeks later, there was WYD Madrid, and suddenly, Benedict XVI was once again 'Benedict, superstar' in the eyes of the media, for a few days, at least.




July 14, 15th Sunday in Ordinary Time
Memorial of Saint Kateri Tekakwitha


Extreme left: Earliest portrait of Kateri, by a French Jesuit to whom she appeared in a vision shortly after her death.
SAINT KATERI TEKAKWITHA (b upstate New York 1656, d near Montreal, 1680), Virgin, 'Lily of the Mohawk', first Native American saint
Kateri was born nine years after the Jesuit saints Isaac Jogues and John de Brebeuf were killed by the Iroquois near their place of martyrdom. Her mother was a Christian Algonquin who was captured and given as wife to the chief of the Mohawks, the strongest of the Iroquois. At age 4, Kateri's parents and brother died in a smallpox epidemic which also left her near-blind and disfigured with scars. Adopted by her uncle who succeeded her father as chief, Kateri had contact with Jesuit fathers who, under a French peace treaty with the native Americans, were allowed to be present in villages with Christian natives. At 19 she was baptized. But it meant she was thereafter treated by her tribe like a slave. As she grew in holiness, so did their persecution. On the advice of a priest, she escaped one night and walked 200 miles to a Christian village near Montreal. There, she lived the few remaining years of her life dedicated to prayer, penance, and care for the sick and aged. She also took a vow of virginity. She died in 1680 at age 24. Her first biographer, a Jesuit priest, wrote in 1696 that Kateri's scars vanished at the time of her death revealing a woman of immense beauty; that many sick persons who attended her funeral were healed on that day; and that she appeared to two different individuals in the weeks following her death. A move towards her canonization began in 1884. She was declared Venerable in 1943 and beatified in 1980. In 2011, a miracle was reported which was 'certified' earlier thiiturgical feast os commemorated s year, which led to her canonization in October by Benedict XVI as the first native American saint.
Readings for today's Mass:
www.usccb.org/bible/readings/071413.cfm



WITH THE POPE TODAY

Pope Francis made a surprise visit today to Castel Gandolfo, traveling by car in the morning, to greet the personnel
and staff of the Pontifical Villas. Afterwards, he led the Sunday Angelus from the Apostolic Residence, walking out
to the square in front to greet the townspeople. It was the first time he has done so, although he visited here on March 23
for his first post-Conclave meeting with Benedict XVI. In his reflection on today's Gospel about the Good Samaritan,
he recalled the 17th-century Italian priest Camillo de Leliis on his liturgical feast today. He founded the order called the Camillians
dedicated to helping the sick and the poor.
NB: In the United States, St, Camillo's feast continues to be observed according to the pre-Vatican II calendar on July 18.


Center photo: The saint's statue in the Founders Gallery of St. Peter's Basilica; poster at right looks towards the 400th centenary of his death in 2014.
ST. CAMILLO DE LELLIS (Italy, 1550-1614), Priest, Founder of the Camellian order, Patron of Nurses
The saint was born in Bocchianico, Italy. He fought for the Venetians against the Turks, was addicted to gambling, and by 1574 was penniless in Naples. He became a Capuchin novice, but was unable to be professed because of a diseased leg he contracted while fighting the Turks. He devoted himself to caring for the sick, and became director of the San Giacomo Hospital in Rome. He received permission from his confessor (St. Philip Neri) to be ordained and decided, with two companions, to found his own congregation, the Ministers of the Sick (the Camellians), dedicated to the care of the sick. They ministered to the sick of Holy Ghost Hospital in Rome, enlarged their facilities in 1585, founded a new house in Naples in 1588, and attended the plague-stricken aboard ships in Rome's harbor and in Rome. In 1591, the Congregation was made into an order to serve the sick by Pope Gregory XIV, and in 1591 and 1605, Camillus sent members of his order to minister to wounded troops in Hungary and Croatia, the first field medical unit. Gravely ill for many years, he resigned as superior of the Order in 1607 and died in Rome on July 14, the year after he attended a General Chapter there. He was canonized in 1746, was declared patron of the sick, with St. John of God, by Pope Leo XIII, and patron of nurses and nursing groups by Pope Pius XI. A church in Rome is dedicated to him.

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Fr. Imbelli, a priest from the Archdiocese of New York, teaches theology at Boston College and often contributes to L'Osservatore Romano. He was one of five writers asked by AMERICA magazine to comment on the faith encyclical, to which they will add other contributors... Surprisingly - or perhaps not - 2 of the 5 do not even mention Benedict XVI, as if he had absolutely npthing to do at all with the encyclical they are praising!

In his essay for AMERICA, however, Fr. Imbelli is clear and unequivocal about where he stands - I am re-posting the essay after this one which appeared in the OR, in which Fr. Imbelli is scrupulously correct in attributing Lumen fidei completely and exclusively to Pope Francis, even if the particular emphasis in this commentary is on what the encyclical says about the proper task of theologians. A subject, of course, about which Benedict XVI was always most explicit, being a theologian himself. Which is reprised not surprisingly in Lumen fidei, in words he has said before, and more expansively.

One must also consider that Fr. Imbelli has to respect the fact that this essay is published in the Pope's newspaper - which is not just any Pope's newspaper, but that of the reigning Pope alone. The question is whether he voluntarily inhibited himself from even referring to Benedict XVI at all, or if he was specifically asked by editor Vian not to do so.


Re-reading 'Lumen fidei' - and
what it pointedly reminds theologians

by Fr. Robert P. Imbelli
Translated from the 7/13/13 issue of


Pope Francis's encyclical, Lumen fidei, is an extraordinary document which deserves to be meditated in prayer. Its clarity and profundity will reward multiple readings by everyone who is in the Church, or those who are seeking the meaning and truth about human existence.

But one chapter is particulary interesting to theologians. Paragraph 36 of the encyclical gives a brief but extraordinarily rich explanation of teh task of theology.

While it naturally reflects a traditional view (with citations from St. Bonaventure and St. Thomas of Aquinas),the encyclical places the traditional interpretation into an inter-subjective context in which the importance and implications of theology emerge in a new and more profound way.

The Pope writes that God is "a Subject who makes himsedlf known and manifests himself in the relationships between persons". Thus, the theologian cannot approach his work in a detached and neutral manner, as a scientist or a simple obserever would.

Theology prospers trough participatory knowledge, which involves reason, will and emotion. And ihe encyclical recalls the Biblical notion of 'heart' and insists on the fact that, as Blessed John Henery Newman wrote, 'cor ad cor loquitur' - heart speaks to heart ,

Theology reflects on the Word of God, which was fully revealed in the death and resurrection of Jesus, as enduring love. The heart of God speaks to our hearts through his Word of love, even in our interpersonal relations.

This Word of love is inexhaustible. And thus, the work of the theologian is infinite. up to the very end, when God will be "everything in all and everyone".

But since the Word of love is addressed in the first place to the Spouse of Christ, which is the Church, the task of the theologian is never individual but ecclesial.

The theologian operates in the Church. He or she is a member of the Body of Christ, one who seeks, in his modest way, to throw more light on the Mystery in which the Church lives, moves and exists.

Taht is why it is fundamental to acknoweldge that theology is not a discipline remote from the liturgical and catechetical life of the Christian community.

Certainly, theology raises new questions, evoked by the differing historical and social contexts of theologians, but such questions must always be raised in the light of the Gospel and apostolic tradition.

Because of this, the encyclical teaches that theology "does not consider the Magisterium of the Pope and the Bishops in communion with each other as something extrinsic", but rather "as one of its internal constitutive instances".

Everyone in the Church is under the Word of God and seeks something of the light of Christ, who alone is Lumen gentium, 'Light of the People'.

In the words of the encyclical, the role of the Magisterium is to assure 'contact with the original sources' of the faith, thus offering "the certainty of drawing from the Word of Christ in its integrity".

We can discern an even greater profundity in this manner of understanding theology if we read Paragraph 36 and link it to what is said in paragraph 39. In which, referring to the ecclesial nature of faith, the Pope writes: "It is possible to respond in the first person, Credo - 'I believe', only because one belongs to a great communion, only because one also says :We believe'."

This opening to the ecclesial 'we' happens because of the openness of God's love, which is not just the relationship between Fatehr and Son, between "I" and "you', but in the Spirit, it is a 'we', a communion of persons.

If theological knowledge participates at all in the eternal dialog and communion of God, then the theologian - whether he is an 'adult' Christian or someone who carries out an ecclesial mission - must be a person who takes part in this communion.

He or she must be moved by an authentic passion to edify the Body of Christ and must be sensitive to whatever might harm this Body.

'Worldliness', against which Pope Francis has often warned, can assume many forms. It can be the open one of desiring political inflouence or economic gain. But it can be more subtle as a desire for fame and popular acclaim.

Thus the theologian must learn to cultivate the spirituality of communion as an integral part of his task as theologian. Such spirituality of communion is as dcmanding in its asceticism as the spirituality of the desert or a cloister.

At the center of this spirituality is discernment in prayer. We have much to learn about this from the great Jesuit theologian Henri de Lubac. In his exstraordinary book Meditation sur l'Eglise, de Lubac has a chapter remarkably entitled "Pur temptations with regard to the Church".

Such temptations place ecclesial communion at risk, and it is therefore necessary to discern them attentively through a spirituality that is not worldly, but always seeks to nourish communion.

Since the temptations cited by de Lubac concern every member of the Church, theologians must particularly guard against them. One temptation merits particular attention in this age of instant mediatic communications and the so-called 'blogosphere'. De Lubac calls it the 'critical temptation'.

He does not question the fact that in the Church, truth must be said in charity. But he points out that criticism too often can 'advance astutely disguised as doing good'. There is the inveterate tendency to consider our own 'cause' - however worthy it may be - as necessarily equivalent to that of the Church. De Lubac writes that some, "in their desire to serve the Church, use the Church instead to serve their own interests".

All of us, theologians or not, could step back from ourselves and exclaim, "Who then can be saved"? De Lubac offers wise counsel. He writes about the need to be engaged, according to Ignatian practice, in a constant 'discernment of spirits'.

With his well-known pungent humor, he suggests that one criticism ehich is always healthy is self-criticism. This discernment of 'the spirits' does not lead to immobility but rejects the need for a contant reform of the Church. [Not constant 'formal' reform, perhaps, but nonetheless, as Benedict XVI often said, the Church must be 'semper riformanda', ever reforming herself, in the sense of making sure she and the faithful are constantly conformed to Christ - an endless task for us humans.]

Of course, daring words can always emerge (paresia) but always in view of the common good of the Body of Christ. Sometimes it will require patience to wait wisely for when it is the right time for harvest.

Thus, theologians, in communion with all the members of the Body of Christ, are called on to recite the concluding words of Lumen fidei, a prayer to Mary.

Mother, help our faith!
Open our ears to hear God’s word and
to recognize his voice and call.
Awaken in us a desire to follow in his footsteps,
to go forth from our own land and to receive his promise.
Help us to be touched by his love,
that we may touch him in faith.
Help us to entrust ourselves fully to him
and to believe in his love, especially at times of trial,
beneath the shadow of the cross,
when our faith is called to mature.
Sow in our faith the joy of the Risen One.
Remind us that those who believe are never alone.
Teach us to see all things with the eyes of Jesus,
that he may be light for our path.
And may this light of faith always increase in us,
until the dawn of that undying day
which is Christ himself, your Son, our Lord!

Now, the re-post from a few days back:

An extraordinary collaboration
By Fr. Robert P. Imbelli

July 8, 2013

At the end of the new encyclical, Lumen Fidei, the simple signature appears: “Franciscus.” Officially, it is thus the first encyclical of the new Pope.

Yet things are not as simple as they appear. Francis, some days prior to releasing the document, stated it was the work “of four hands,” his and those of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI.

And in the encyclical itself he writes: “[Benedict] himself had almost completed a first draft of an encyclical on faith. For this I am most deeply grateful to him, and as his brother in Christ I have taken up his fine work and added a few contributions of my own” (#7).

Thus we are witnesses to an extraordinary collaboration that might equally be called the Testament of Benedict and the Inaugural Address of Francis.

Those familiar with the three encyclicals and other writings of Benedict will quickly recognize favorite themes and sensibilities. In many ways, this lovely exposition of Catholic faith can serve almost as a “Summa” of Benedict’s magisterium, written in a lucid, inviting style. Indeed, the sixty succinct paragraphs beg to be pondered and prayed.

At the heart of the encyclical’s meditation on faith is this conviction: “In the love of God revealed in Jesus, faith perceives the foundation on which all reality and its final destiny rest” (#15). Christian faith arises from the loving encounter with Jesus Christ, crucified and risen. Thus it engages the whole person, understanding, will, and affections.

As a result, before being formulated in propositions (necessary though these be), faith is a deeply experiential reality which sets the person on a new way, enabling him or her to see reality in a new light, the light of Christ, and opening up a new horizon and mission. “Those who believe are transformed by the love to which they have opened their hearts in faith” (#21) They are being transformed by the indwelling of Christ in the Spirit.

The “I” of the believer becomes incorporated into Christ’s ecclesial body: the “I believe” of the individual situated in the “we believe” of the community. In a rich passage the encyclical teaches: “This openness to the ecclesial ‘We’ reflects the openness of God’s own love, which is not only a relationship between the Father and the Son, between an ‘I’ and a ‘Thou,’ but it is also, in the Spirit, a ‘We,’ a communion of persons” (#39).

Moreover, the ecclesial communion experienced and enjoyed is not self-enclosed, but impels us to our responsibilities for the common good. “[Faith’s] light does not simply brighten the interior of the Church, nor does it serve solely to build an eternal city in the hereafter; it helps us build our societies in such a way that they can journey towards a future of hope” (#51).

Rooted in the soil of Christ’s paschal mystery, faith does not deny or ignore the sufferings of the world. It seeks to bring the service of hope and love, especially to the most needy and abandoned. “Faith is not a light which scatters all darkness, but a lamp which guides our steps in the night and suffices for the journey” (#57).

Lumen Fidei offers challenging and enriching spiritual exercises for the contemporary church and the wider world. Tolle, lege – take it up and read!
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It's hard to understand why, with the virtually unanimous universal acclaim for Pope Francis, his perfectness and flawlesness, and his virtues = which were seemingly absent or at least quite deficient in the Popes before him - his mythmakers continue to gild the lily (should it not remain pure and white as the driven snow?), in a spirit quite contrary to the very virtues of simplicity and humility that they mean to celebrate!

And now, Andrea Tornielli, cheerlesder-in-chief of Pope Francis and, along with Paolo Rodari, the Vaticanista most afflicted with Francis papolatry and Benedict amnesia, has written a story that the Pope had reportedly asked Alitalia, in a letter from his Secretary of State, not to provide the plane he will take to Rio for WYD with any special features, much less a bed for him, God forbid, unlike other Popes before him. And more of that sycophantic syrup that surely Pope Francis does not need, but that his media adulators/idolators willingly dispense all the time in treacly gobs and dollops.


Fr. Lombardi was asked about the story, to which he replied:

There was never any letter from the Secretary of State to Alitalia regarding the outfitting of the papal plane. The question of a bed was never even raised because today, airplane seats have become much more comfortable and allow maximum rest, for which there is no reason to request any special features, Even Pope Benedict did not have a bed on board in his longer flights, As for the departure, it will be from Fiumicino (site of Rome's Leonardo da Vinci international airport) as it always is when the Pope is in residence at the Vatican (he departs from Ciampino, the old international airport, only when he is in Castel Gandolfo, since it is nearer.

Followers of Lella's blog promptly noted that Tornielli's treacly story was withdrawn from the Vatican Insider site tout de suite after Fr. Lombardi's blanket denial of the story, but one of them recovered it from the Google cache. It is worth the trouble translating it, if only to appreciate the lengths to which media mythmakers will go to push their agenda, or, in this case, the phenomenon of Francis which is so obvious it does not need to be pushed at all. In the process, one is almost embarrassed at Tornielli's bid to be the Pope's most devoted lap dog,,,Here is his breathlessly adulatory report - on what is essentially trivia - which Fr. Lombardi belied:

No special flight for the Pope
He has asked for a plane without any special features.
With a letter from the Secretariat of State,
Francis refuses a bed on the flight to Rio

by ANDREA TORNIELLI

"Where do passengers embark normally embark from Rome? At Fiumicino? Then I don't want to create any inconvenience by leaving from Ciampino..." [Actually, both airports are still used for international flights, except there are far fewer originating from Ciampino. And a VIP flight leaving from Ciampino is much less likely to affect teh routine than if it left from Fiumicino! But of course, Tornielli will not volunteer such information as it will not fit his narrative.]]

Pope Francis will leave for Rio de Janeiro, in his first international trip as Pope, from Fiumicino rather than Ciampino as earlier planned. It is a decision he took to simplify the procedure. [How will it be any simpler, whether the Pope leaves from Ciampino or Fiumicino? Vatican officials will see off the Pope, and there will be a representative of the Italian government, if not the Prime Minister himself, to wish him a good trip. Unless, of course, the Pope has asked everyone who is not travelling with him to just stay home - in a further display of simplicity and humility.]

Moreover, the Pope has asked that a letter be sent to Alitalia saying he does not desire any special fittings for the plane he will take to Rio. He will seat in first class, but there will not be a bed which in the past was prepared for Popes during long intercontinental flights.

For Bergoglio, the first-class seat already represents a luxury compared to what he was used to. As a cardinal, he always travelled in economy class, and continued to do so even after he developed a problem with his hip, merely asking for a seat next to an emergency exit where he would be able to stretch his legs more. Just as he did on his last trip from Buenos Aires to come to the Conclave which elected him Pope, therefore he only used one part of his roundtrip ticket.

The letter from the Secretariat of State was sent before the company could announce which airplane it was assigning to the papal flight to Rio. The request from the Pope was welcomed by the company, since any special configuration requested for an airplane might not have been possible in a short time The work to install a bed would require time.

Alitalia is assigning an Airbus 330 for the papal flight, the same plane model that is flown on the regular Rome to Rio, and not the more upscale Boeing 777, top of the line in the Alitalia fleet.


And where might Tornielli have obtained the details he reports so adoringly? The fact that his story was withdrawn after Fr. Lombardi's statement does not exactly vouch for its authenticity, does it?

But why is it even necessary to make every news report on Pope Francis to be an apotheosis? Where will this contradictory 'glorification of humility and simplicity' lead to? Of Torneilli et al beating their breasts pharisaically in behalf of the Pope1

Tornielli's next report may well be that the Pope went to Fiumicino riding in one of the police cars and will never ever use a car with the license plate SCV-1, nor will he ever ride a Mercedes-Benz, only Fiats and Toyotas. He will refuse his first-class seat on the flight to Brazil and will choose to sit in economy with the working press and Vatican personnel. He will not eat the first-class meal but the economy fare. In fact, he may not eat at all, He will actually take over a serving cart from one of the flight attendants and serve meals to his travelling companions. He will not sleep a wink on the flight to Brazil, and when he gets to Rio, he will decline to stay at the residence prepared for him but will check in at a working-class hotel where he stayed on a previous visit to Rio. Or, he may agree to stay at the residence but he will ask to occupy a bedroom identical to that assigned to his secretaries.... And so on.

The day is not far when Tornielli will inform us that Pope Francis actually only has three changes of clothing because that's all he could ever need - one to wear, one in the laundry, and one for any emergency. And that he only has one pair of shoes which he will wear until it starts bursting at the seams, then he will buy a new pair. And that, at Casa Santa Marta, he actually does not sleep on that big formal bed but on an air mattress on the floor, and if it were not for his bad back, he would not even use the mattress. Anc that once a week, he relieves one dishwasher in the scullery at Santa Marta to give him a day off while he, the Pope, washes the dishes for the hotel's clientele. Eventually, he may report that the Pope has also decided that once a week, he will spend the night incognito and al fresco, with all of Rome's homeless vagrants. And how about serving at a hospice for terminally ill AIDS patients at least once a month? But I am a singularly unimaginative person, and I am sure the reality that awaits us will be far more amazing and jaw-dropping than the fairly dull examples I could think of. And all this while also leading the cleanest, purest and most efficient governance of the Church or any other institution in all of human history.
[The following was inadvertently dropped in an eariler posting:]
There is so much hagiography already about Pope Francis that his postulator when his cause comes up for sainthood will merely have to compile all of it and submit it as his positio to justify Jorge Mario Bergoglio's far-more-than-heroic virtues. Or maybe he may not even need that because, for a Pope who has already broken every rule and practice adhered to by Popes before him, he will probably also end up becoming the first saint in more than ten centuries ever to be canonized by popular acclamation and not have to go through the formalities of the Congregation for Saints.

I am sure Tornielli and his fellow 'Papolators' have that consideration in mind as they so relentlessly build up their image of this formidable, unprecedented and likely-to-be-never repeated dream Pontificate. Hence their compulsion to focus on trivia which, of course, reinforces the Pope's popularity the way celebrity trivia drives the fan base to new heights of idolatry. Not to mention that it supports all that the Pope's admirers have been implying, if not explicitly saying, since March 13, 2013, "The Lord sure knew what he was doing when he sanctioned Benedict's retirement!"

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Monday, July 15, 15th Week in Ordinary Time
MEMORIAL OF ST. BONAVENTURE



Two great 17th century Spanish artists, Francisco Herrera the Older, and Francisco Zurbaran, painted scenes from the life of St. Bonaventure. From left, his parents bring the child Bonaventure to be healed by
St. Francis of Assisi; Bonaventure joins the Franciscan order; an angel communicates to the saint; the saint in prayer; Bonaventure at the Council
of Lyons; death of the saint. The first 3 canvases by Herrera were painted in 1628; the next 3 panels by Zurbaran were painted in 1629.

ST. BONAVENTURA DA BAGNOREGIO
This great saint was, of course, the subject of Joseph Ratzinger's dissertation to obtain his Habilitation as a German university professor in 1954. He spoke about Bonaventure during
his pilgrimage in September 6, 2009, to his hometown of Bagnoregio
www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/speeches/2009/september/documents/hf_ben-xvi_spe_20090906_bagnoregio...
and in three catecheses on March 3, 10 and 17, 2011
www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/audiences/2010/inde...
Readings for today's Mass:
www.usccb.org/bible/readings/071513.cfm


AT THE VATICAN TODAY

No events announced for Pope Francis. For all intents and purposes, he has been 'on vacation' since the start of the month.
In one week he leaves for WYD 2013 in Rio de Janeiro.


One year ago...
...On the other hand, it was a big day for the officially vacationing Benedict XVI in Castel Gandolfo. He made a pastoral visit to Frascati, one of the Castelli Romani towns near Castel Gandolfo and one of the suburbicarian dioceses of Rome whose churches are held titularly by the Church's most senior active cardinals. In his homily at the Mass, the Pope reminded the faithful that the Church's mission of evangelization is never-ending, and stressed the need to 'form the formators' well. Later, at the Sunday Angelus in Castel Gandolfo, he recalled the saint of the day, Bonaventure, whose life and theology, as well as his view of history, were thoroughly Christ-centered.




THE POPE IN FRASCATI

Arriving at Cathedral Square for an official welcome ceremony.




A brief moment of Adoration in the Cathedral before vesting for Mass.


The Mass



]

'God calls, we need to listen'

July 15, 2012

On the eve of the Year of Faith and the Synod on New Evangelization, Pope Benedict XVI launched a call to mission Sunday as he told the faithful of Frascati that they share responsibility for the formation of new generations of Christians - that God is calling, and Christians must listen.

Rediscovering the beauty of faith, of 'being Church', means carrying on Christ’s work of “forming the formators”, clergy, religious and above all laymen. He said that being missionaries - like the Apostles - can mean rejection and persecution,\; it means preaching "truth and justice" even if goes against applause and human power. Emer McCarthy reports:

Eight thousand people were packed into the tiny square in front of the Cathedral of St Peter the Apostle for Sunday morning Mass presided by Pope Benedict. Loud speakers relayed the liturgy throughout the winding cobbled streets of the hill top town, festooned with white and yellow flags and banners bearing Pope Benedict’s coat of arms.

The Pope was greeted on behalf of the suburbicarian diocese by Bishop Raffaele Martinelli, who spoke of Frascati’s deep bonds with the Successor of St Peter, and his personal witness, during a period of service at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, of then Cardinal Ratzinger’s tireless work on behalf of the Church.

Bishop Martinelli presented Pope Benedict with a donation for his personal charities on behalf of his community, and asked the Pope to confirm his people in their faith.

Later, at Mass, the Pope dedicated his homily to the history of mission and evangelization in the Church, which he noted is never-ending : “It is a beautiful and exciting thing to see that after two thousand years, we are still carrying on Christ’s commitment to formation!”




Here is a full translation of the Pope's homily:

Dear brothers and sisters,

I am very glad to be among you today to celebrate this Eucharist and to share the joys and hopes, efforts and commitments, ideals and aspirations, of this diocesan community.

I greet Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, my Secretary of State and the titular bishop of this diocese. I greet your Pastor, Mons. Raffaele Martinelli, and the Mayor of Frascati, for the kind words with which they welcomed me in the name of you all.

I gladly greet the Minister representing the Italian government, the presidents of the region and the province, the mayor of Rome, the other mayors present and all the various authorities.

I am indeed very happy to celebrate the Mass today with your Bishop. As he said, he was for more than 20 years a most faithful and competent co-worker at the Congregation For the Doctrine of the Faith, where he worked mostly in the section on the Catechism and catechetical instruction, silently and discreetly. He contributed to the Catechism of the Catholic Church published in 1992 and to the subsequent Compendium of the Catechism. His voice is very much present in this great symphony of faith.

In the Gospel for this Sunday, Jesus takes the initiative to send the twelve Apostles on mission
(cfr Mk 6,7-13). In fact, the word 'apostle' means 'messenger, envoy'. Their vocation was fully realized after the resurrection of Christ, with the gift of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost.

Nonetheless, it is very important that from the very beginning, Jesus wanted to involve the Twelve in his activities: It was a kind of apprenticeship for the great responsibility that awaited them. The fact that Jesus called some disciples to collaborate directly in his mission manifests an aspect of his love: namely, that he did not disdain the help that other men could bring to his work. He knew their limitations, their weaknesses. yet he did not appreciate them any less, but conferred on them the honor of being his messengers.

Jesus sent them out in pairs and gave them instructions, which the evangelist Mark summarizes in a few sentences. The first has to do with the spirit of detachment: the apostles must not be attached to money and to comforts. Jesus then warned his disciples that they would not always receive a favorable welcome - that sometimes, they would be rejected - in fact, they could be persecuted. But that this should not deter them, that they must speak in the name of Jesus and preach the Kingdom of God, without being concerned about 'succeeding". They should leave that to God.

The first Reading today presents us with the same perspective, chowing us that God's messengers are not always welcome. This was the case with the prophet Amos, who was sent by God to prophecy at the shrine of Bethel, in the Kingdom of Israel
(cfr Am 7,17-18).

Amos preached with great energy against injustices, denouncing above all the abuses of the king and his notables - abuses that offended the Lord such that their acts of worship were in vain. And so, Amasiah, priest of Barthel, ordered Amos to leave. He answered that he had not chosen this mission, but that the Lord had made him his prophet and had specifically sent him there, to the Kingdom of Israel. And therefore, whether he was accepted or rejected, he would continue to prophesy, preaching what God says and not what men want to hear.

This remains the mandate of the Church, which does not preach what the powerful want to hear. The criterion is truth and justice even if this does not earn applause and opposes human power.

Likewise, in the Gospel, Jesus warns the Twelve that it could happen they would be rejected in some places. In which case they ought to go elsewhere after having made the gesture to the people of shaking the dust from under their feet, as a sign of detachment in two senses - a moral detachment to say, "The announcement has been made - it is you who reject it"; and a material distance, "We did not want nor do we want anything from you"
(cfr Mk 6,11).

The other very important indication from the Gospel passage today is that the Twelve could not just be content with preaching conversion: Following the example of Jesus, preaching should be accompanied by healing the sick - a physical and spiritual healing.

He speaks of concretely healing ailments, but he also speaks of chasing out demons, that is, to purify the human mind, to cleanse it, to clear the eyes of the soul that have been darkened by ideologies and therefore, can no longer see God, and cannot see truth and justice.

This double healing, corporal and spiritual, is always the mandate for Christ's disciples. Therefore, the apostolic mission should always encompass the two aspects of preaching the Word of God and manifest his goodness in acts of charity, service and dedication.

Dear brothers and sisters, I give thanks to God who has sent me today to re-announce to you the Word of salvation. A word which is the basis of the Church's life and action. as it is of the Church in Frascati.

Your bishop has informed me of the pastoral commitment that is closest to your heart, which is substantially a formative commitment principally addressed to the formators, that is, to 'form the formators'.

It is precisely what Jesus did with his disciples: He instructed them, prepared them, formed them through missionary apprenticeship, so that they would be able to assume apostolic responsibility in the Church.

In the Christian community, this is always the first service offered by the responsible authorities: Starting with parents, who fulfill the educational mission for their children in the family; the parish priests, who are responsible for formation in the community; to all the priests in their various fields of work - in which they all must carry out an educational responsibility as priority; and the lay faithful, who, besides their role as parents, are also involved in formative services with young people and adults, as officials in Catholic Action or other ecclesial movements, or employed in civic and social activities, always with great attention to the formation of persons.

The Lord calls us all, distributing different gifts for different tasks in the Church. He calls to priesthood and the consecrated life, he calls to matrimony and to engagement as laymen in the Church herself and in society.

It is important that the riches in these gifts find full acceptance, especially on the part of young people; that they may feel the joy of responding to God with all of themselves, through priesthood or the consecrated life, or through matrimony - two ways that are complementary and that enlighten each other. They enrich each other, and together they enrich the community.

Virginity for the Kingdom of God, and matrimony, are both vocations, a calling from God which must be answered with and for all one's life. God calls - we must listen, accept and respond. Like Mary - "Here I am - be it done to me according to your will"
(cfr Lk 1,38).

Even here, in the diocesan community of Frascati, the Lord sows his gifts with largesse, calling you to follow him and to prolong his mission into our day.

Even here, there is need for the new evangelization, and for this, I ask you to live intensely the Year of Faith which begins in October, 50 years since the opening of the Second Vatican Council.

The documents of the Council contain an enormous wealth for the formation of the new Christian generations, for the formation of our conscience. Therefore, read them. Read the Catechism of the Catholic Church, and thus you will rediscover the beauty of being Christian, of being Church, of living the great 'we' that Jesus has assembled around him, in order to evangelize the world: the 'we' of the Church is never closed, it is always open and oriented towards announcing the Gospel.

Dear brothers and sisters of Frascati: Be united among yourselves, and at the same time, be open and missionary. Remain firm in your faith, rooted in Christ through the Word and the Eucharist. Be persons who pray, in order to remain always bound to Christ, like tendrils on a vine.

But at the same time, go forth, bring his message to everyone, especially to the little ones, the poor and the suffering. In every community, love each other, do not be divided but live as brothers, so that the world may believe that Jesus lives in his Church and that the Kingdom of God is at hand.

The patrons of Frascati diocese are the Apostles Phillip and Jmaes, two of the Twelve. To their intereesison, I entrust the journey of your community, so that it may be renewed in faith and give clear witness of it through works of charity. Amen.




'Vatican-II has so much to say
even to the new generations'

by GIACOMO GALEAZZI
Translated from the Italian service of

July 15, 2012

"The documents of Vatican-II contain an enormous wealth for the formation of new Christian generations," Benedict XVI said today in his homily at the Mass he celebrated on a brief pastoral visit to Frascati.

"Even among them, there is need for new evangelization, and that is why I ask yo to live intensely the Year of Faith which begins in October, 50 years since the opening the Second Vatican Council".

When his Pontificate started, a certain 'vulgate' in the mass media reiterated the claim [often made in the more than two decades when he was Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith] that Benedict XVI was a 'cold' Pope, one who was incapable of warming the hearts of the masses.

And yet to demolish this stereotype once and for all, one only had to be on Frascati's Tusoolo hill at dawn this morning to climb up to the summit amid a constant stream of cars and buses, to get to the top. Many more than expected had come to see the Pope, choosing to come to his Mass instead of going to the seaside on a summer Sunday.

In the city that has given more Popes to the Church than any other city but Rome, Papa Ratzinger was welcomed like a friend, but above all, as a leader from whom one was sure to receive words of truth and comfort, which are even more necessary at a time of grave economic crisis for a place which once flourished with entrepreneurial activity. But recession has made erosive effects even here, and one can almost see it visibly.

The Pope called on the faithful to announce Christ "without being concerned about succeeding" but rather with the awareness that "the messengers of God are often not welcome".

Christians, he said, "should reacquaint themselves with Vatican II" in order to rediscover "the beauty of being Church".

"It is beautiful and very encouraging," he said, "that6 after 2000 years, we can still go ahead with the commitment to be 'formed .in Christ. We are all responsible. We are all co-responsible. The Lord calls us all, distributing different gifts for the different tasks in the Church".

He calls to the priesthood and the consecrated life, as he calls to marriage and to lay commitment in the Church and in society. What is important is that "this richness of gifts finds full acceptance, especially among young people".

Thus, he appealed: "Be united among yourselves, even as you remain open to the missionary spirit. Remain firm in your faith, rooted in Christ through his Word and the Eucharist. Be persons of prayer, in order to be always bound to Christ like tendrils to the vine".

These were strong words which did not fall into the void, to judge by the general enthusiasm of his listeners.

"We organized ourselves to let Benedict XVI fell the warmth of our affection i9n return for the spiritual support that he gives us daily with his preaching", said Mara Cancellieri, who along with many friends from the various cities of the Castelli Romani region, arrived all together at the square in front of Frascati's St. Peter's Cathedral.

But many faithful also came in from other regions. "We travelled overnight to be here," said Silvia Rimoncini, 36, president of a lay association in Osimo, Ancona province. "Personally, I took the opportunity because I also have relatives in Frascati, but our members have come because during a historic and very critical phase in our history, we feel that as young Catholics, we can show our support for the Primate of Italy, who speaks for those who have no voice. We have members who have lost their jobs and have been unable to find new employment. To pray with the Pope is an injection of confidence, and our will to lift ourselves out of current difficulties. The Pope helps us not to lose heart and to proceed again from where we were halted".

The rebirth of Frascati after the Second World War is like a tangible symbol for the possibilities of rebuilding from ruin. The Supreme German Command for the Mediterranean front was located here, and so, after the armistice of September 8, 1943, 130 American tanks razed the city to the ground.* The city had to be reconstructed stone by stone. And today the Pope of purification chose it as a symbolic place for his message of regeneration and hope.

Leading his welcomers was Mons. Raffaello Martinelli, who had worked with Cardinal Ratzinger at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

The altar boys today took part yesterday in the first football championships among ministrants, whose huge white-and-yellow banner festooned the gates of Villa Aldobrandini [the 17th-century noble home built for Cardinal Aldobrandini on a hilltop that has the most beautiful panoramic view in Frascati - from the Apennines in the east, to the urban sprawl of Rome and the Tyrrhenian Sea on the west].

Gianluca Franco, 40, an engineer, came with his wife and children to the Mass. "At a very sensitive phase in my life, I benefited in a special way from the 'orientation' of Benedict XVI," he said. "I was at a stage when I no longer found sense in daily living, when almost by chance, I read his JESUS OF NAZARETH, and since then, I have been captivated by the clarity and pervasiveness of his words. He almost seems a member of my family, and to be here today is the least I can do. We also went to Milan for the World Meeting of Families last month. Every time that I can, I attend his Wednesday catecheses - it has become a way for me to 'recharge my batteries'".

"It is as if to see and hear him directly is a direct reinforcement of the faith and an incentive to overcome weaknesses and the occasions when we stumble and fall. To understand the greatness of his Magisterium, the best way is to just listen and allow oneself to be pervaded by his teaching".

The most recurrent word among the faithful for what they felt in the presence of the Pope was 'emozione'.

Mons. Martinelli told his flock that Benedict XVI has come to Frascati "top confirm and strengthen us in our faith, to pray for all the faithful, for all our families, especially our children, our young people, all those who suffer in the body and in the spirit; to invoke the gift of religious and priestly vocations coming from our families".

In the past, the suburbicarian bishops of Rome were part of the college of cardinals and enjoyed privileges such as walking directly behind the Pope in papal processions. and represented him in functions at the Cathedral of Rome, St. John Lateran. In fact, they even had a cathedral in Rome, Santa Maria in Monasterio. Today, the seven suburbicarian sees are headed titularly by the cardinal-bishops, the highest-ranking among the College of Cardinals.

The present titular bishop of Frascati is Cardinal Secretary of State Tarcisio Bertone [who, strangely, did not appear in any of the newsphotos I've seen so far!]

This pastoral visit (announced only last May) lasted barely two hours (from 9:30 to 11:30) and yet, it is very significant as the first papal visit to Frascati in 32 years. Like John Paul II before him, Benedict XVI( said Mass in the Cathedral square. Then he returned to Castel Gandolfo for the Sunday Angelus.

An erroneous news item published by the nominally Catholic Italian news agency Adista said that the diocese had solicited contributions from the faithful to 'defray' the costs of the Pope's visit. In fact, the diocese had taken up a special collection in previous Sundays to present to the Pope as a gift for his charities.




ANGELUS TODAY
July 15, 2012





In praise of Bonaventure's
Christ-centeredness


July 15, 2012

Pilgrims sang and clapped as they waited patiently in the enclosed courtyard of the Apostolic palace in Castel Gandolfo for their midday appointment with Pope Benedict XVI Sunday for the recitation of the midday Angelus.

The Pope, who had celebrated Mass in the nearby town of Frascati, arrived slightly later than usual and was greeted by resounding applause.

Here is a translation of the Holy Father's words at the Angelus today, which he preceded with a few words to explain why he was some minutes late for the noontime appointment:

Dear brothers and sisters:

I see that you have forgiven me for being late. I celebrated Holy Mass in Frascati, and perhaps we stayed in prayer a bit too long.

In the liturgical calendar, July 15 is the liturgical memorial of St. Bonaventure of Bagnoregio, Franciscan, Doctor of the Church, and successor of St. Francis in the leadership of the Order of Friars Minor.

He wrote the first official biography of the Poverello, and towards the end of his life, was also the Bishop of this Diocese, Albano. In one of his letters, Bonaventure wrote: "I confess before God that the reason that made me love more the life of the Blessed Francis is that it resembles the Church in its beginings and in its growth"
(Epistula de tribus quaestionibus, in Opere di San Bonaventura. Introduzione generale, Roma 1990, p. 29).

These words bring us directly to the Gospel today, of this Sunday, which presents the first mission of the Twelve Apostles when Jesus first sent them forth. "Jesus summoned the Twelve and began to send them out two by two", St. Mark writes. "He instructed them to take nothing for the journey but a walking stick - no food, no sack, no money in their belts... to wear sandals but not a second tunic" (Mk 6,7-9).

Francis of Assisi, after his conversion, practised this Gospel to the letter, becoming a most faithful witness of Christ. Associated singularly with the mystery of the Cross, he was transformed into 'another Christ', as St Bonaventure presents him.

St. Bonaventure's whole life as well as his theology was centrally inspired by Christ. We find such Christ-centeredness in the second reading of the Mass today
(Eph 1,3-14), the celebrated hymn in St. Paul's Letter to the Ephesians, which begins: "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavens."

The apostle then shows how this plan of blessing was realized, in four passages all beginning with the same words, "In him...", referring to Jesus Christ.

In him, the Father chose us before the creation of the world. In him, we have redemption through is blood. In him, we have become heirs, predestined to be 'in praise of his glory'. In him, everyone who believes in the Gospel will receive the seal of the Holy Spirit.

This Pauline hymn contains the view of history that St. Bonaventure contributed to disseminate within the Church: All history has Christ in the center, who guarantees novelty and renewal in every age.

In Jesus, God has given and said everything, but because he is an inexhaustible treasure, the Holy Spirit will never finish revealing and actualizing his mystery. That is why the work of Christ and his Church never regresses but always progresses.

Dear friends, let us invoke the Most Blessed Mary, whom we celebrate tomorrow as Our Lady of Mt. Carmel, so she may help us, as St. Francis and St. Bonaventure, to respond generously to the call of the Lord to annoucne his Gospel of salvation with words but above all, with our life.


After the prayers, he had a special message in Polish:
Tomorrow, we will celebrate the liturgical feast of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Mount Carmel, the Mother of God of the scapular. Blessed John Paul II carried and honored the scapular, sign of special entrustment to her. To all his co-nationals in Poland, in the world, and you who are here in Castel Gandolfo today, I pray that Mary, the best of all mothers, will wrap you in her mantle in the struggle ahainst evil, intercede in your requests for graces, and show you the way that leads to God. Praise be to Jesus Christ!





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Tuesday, July 16, 15th Week in Ordinary Time

The iconography for this particular manifestation of the Virgin is among the most diverse and prolific. Leftmost in the top panel is the 'Brown Madonna' venerated in her Basilica in Naples, said to have been brought to Italy by nuns who fled Mt. Carmel in the 13th century. Most images show the Virgin or the Baby Jesus holding out the Brown Scapular, which traditionally has the images of the Madonna and of the Sacred Heart of Jesus.
OUR LADY OF MT. CARMEL
Hermits began to inhabit Mt. Carmel (in northern Israel) near the so-called Fountain of Elijah since the 12th century, and eventually called themselves the 'brothers of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel', with a chapel dedicated to the Virgin Mary. In the late 14th century, the Carmelites, whose contemplative order (male and female) was recognized by Pope Honorius III in 1226, instituted the feast of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel on July 16, the date when according to their tradition, the Virgin appeared in 1251 to the leader of the Carmelite community on Mt. Carmel, St. Simon Stock, and handed him a scapular that would become the Carmelites' main devotional aid (it symbolizes her special protection and reminds its wearers to practice prayer and penance). July 16 became the patronal feast of the Order in 1609. The great Carmelite saints and theologians have promoted devotion to Mary. Teresa of Avila said Carmel was 'the order of the Virgin'. John of the Cross believed Mary had saved his life as a child and helped him escape prison later. Therese of Lisieux was a great Marian devotee.
A note about the 'Brown Scapular': Carmelite tradition states that Christ and the Blessed Virgin Mary granted the Brown Scapular promise to St Simon Stock in Cambridge, England on July 16, 1261. This makes the Brown Scapular 760 years old today. The Holy See defines the Brown Scapular as "an external sign of the filial relationship established between the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother and Queen of Mount Carmel, and the faithful who entrust themselves totally to her protection, who have recourse to her maternal intercession, who are mindful of the primacy of the spiritual life and the need for prayer." We learned last year, as Benedict xVI reminded Poles at the Angelus yesterday, that Blessed John Paul II carried the Brown Scapular with him all the time.
Readings for today's Mass:
www.usccb.org/bible/readings/071613.cfm


AT THE VATICAN TODAY
No events announced for Pope Francis today.




One year ago...
Benedict XVI in Castel Gandolfo held his regular weekly meeting with Cardinal Marc Ouellet, Prefect of the Congregation for Bishops. The Vatican also said that after the Angelus yesterday at Castel Gandolfo, the Pope met with Cardinal Fiorenzo Angelini, who will turn 96 next month. He had been the first president of the Pontifical Council for the Ministry to Healthcare Workers when John Paul II established this in 1986, remaining at the helm until he turned 80 in 1996. ]DIM=8pt]Before that, he was a co-worker and staunch defender of Pius XII. He lives in retirement in the Abruzzi, and two years ago,
Benedict XVI visited him in his home, on one of the Pope's summer excursions outside Castel Gandolfo.Recently, he paid a courtesy call on Pope Francis in the Vatican.

The Vatican also released the theme for the Pope's Message for the World Day of Peace in 2013.


'Blessed are the peacemakers':
Theme for 2013 World Day of Peace


July 16, 2012

For the celebration of the 46th World Day of Peace on January, 1, 2013, the Holy Father Benedict XVI has chosen the following theme: "Blessed are the peacemakers".

The annual Message of the Pope, in the complexity of the present time, will encourage everyone to take responsibility with regard to peacebuilding.

The Message will embrace, therefore, the fullness and diversity of the concept of peace, starting from the human being: inner peace and outer peace; then, highlighting the anthropological emergency, the nature and incidence of nihilism; and, at the same time, fundamental rights, in the first place freedom of conscience, freedom of expression, freedom of religion.

The Message will offer, as well, an ethical reflection on some measures the world is going to take to contain the financial and economic crisis, the educational crisis, the crisis of the institutions and politics, which is also - in many cases - a worrying crisis of democracy.

The Message will also look at the 50th Anniversary of the Second Vatican Council and of the encyclical letter by Pope John XXIII, Pacem in Terris, according to which the primacy is always for the human dignity and its freedom, for the building of an earthly city to the service of every person, without any discrimination, and directed to the common good which is based on justice and true peace.

"Blessed are the peacemakers" will be the eighth Message of Pope Benedict XVI for the Celebration of the World Day of Peace. Following are the titles of the previous ones: "In Truth, Peace" (2006), "The Human Person, Heart of Peace" (2007), "The Human Family, a Community of Peace" (2008), "Fighting Poverty to Build peace" (2009), "If you want to cultivate peace, protect creation" (2010), "Religious Freedom, the path to peace" (2011), "Educating young people in justice and peace" (2012).



Fittingly, on the Feast of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel, the Vatican released the text of Benedict XVI's message to the Bishop of Avila (Spain) on the 450th anniversary of the establishment of the Convento de San Jose in Avila by St. Teresa of Avila and the start of the Carmelite order's reformation, with the initiatives of Saint Teresa and her good friend St. Juan de la Cruz (John of the Cross).



The Pope's message for the 450th anniversary
of St. Teresa's convent for Carmelite sisters
in Avila and of the order's reform

Translated from

July 16, 2012




To my Venerated Brother
Mons. Jesús GARCÍA BURILLO
Bishop of Avila

1. Resplendens stella. "A star that gives off such great splendor" (Libro de la Vida 32,11). With these words, the Lord encouraged Santa Teresa de Jesus to establish in Avila the Convent of San Jose, as the start of the reform of the Carmelite order, 450 years ago on August 24.

On the occasion of this happy event, I wish to share the joy of the beloved diocese of Avila, the Order of Discalced Carmelites, the People of God in Spain, d all those who, in the universal Church, have found in Teresian spirituality a sure light to discover that true renewal of one's life comes to man through Christ.

Enamoured of the Lord, this eminent woman yearned only to please him in everything. Indeed, a saint is not someone who realizes great feats based on the excellence of his human qualities, but someone who humbly allows Christ to penetrate his soul, act through his person - Christ being the true protagonist of all one's actions and desires, who inspires every initiative and sustains every silence.

2. To allow oneself to be led in this way by Christ is only possible for those who have an intense life of prayer. This consists, in the words of the saint of Avila, "of a state of friendship, being alone frequently with someone whom we know loves us"
(Libro de la Vida 8,5).

The reform of the Carmelite order, whose anniversary fills us with internal joy, was born of prayer and is projected towards prayer. In promoting a return to the primitive Rule, away from what had become a mitigated Rule, Teresa de Jesus wished to create the conditions for a form of life that favored personal encounter with the Lord, for which it is necessary to "be in solitude and look within yourself, and not be surprised by receiving such a good guest!" (Camino de perfección 28,2). The Convent of San Jose was born precisely for the purpose of providing its daughters with the best conditions to find God and establish a profound and intimate relationship with him.

3. Santa Teresa proposed a new way of being a Carmelite in a world that was also new. Those were 'hard times'
' (Libro de la Vida 33,5). in which, according to this Master of the spiritual, "strong friends of God are needed to sustain the weak" (ibíd. 15,5).

She insisted with eloquence: "The world is in flames, they want to judge Christ again, they want to bring down his Church to the ground. No, my sisters, this is not the time to talk to God about matters of little importance" (Camino de perfección 1,5). Does it not sound familiar to us, in the conjuncture at which we find ourselves, this luminous and interpellative reflection more than four centuries ago by this mystical saint?

The ultimate purpose of the Teresian reform and the creation of new convents amidst a world that was deficient in spiritual values, was to wrap apostolic commitment in prayer; to propose a way of evangelical life as a model for those who seek the way of perfection, with the conviction that all personal and ecclesial reform must pass through our desire to reproduce in ourselves, even better every time, the 'form' of Christ
(cf Gal 4,19).

That and nothing else was the commitment of the saint and of her spiritual daughters. As it was of their brother Carmelites who sought only "to progress farther in all the virtues" (Libro de la Vida 31,18). In this respect, Teresa wrote: "Our Lord values more a soul who, through our industry and prayer, we gain for him through his mercy, than all the services that we could render" (Libro de las Fundaciones 1,7).

In a world where God was forgotten, the sainted Doctor encouraged praying communities [of contemplatives] who clothed with their fervent prayer those who proclaimed the Name of Christ wherever they could, who invoked the Lord for the needs of the Church, who brought the clamor of all people to the heart of the Lord.

4. Today, as in the 16th century, and amidst rapid transformations, it is necessary that dedicated prayer be the heart of apostolate, in order that the redeeming message of Christ may resound with meridian clarity and forceful dynamism. It is urgent that the Word of life vibrates in souls in a harmonious way, with sonorous and attractive notes.

In this exciting task, the example of Teresa de Avila is a great help to us. We can say that, in her time, the saint evangelized without tepidness, with an ardor that was never quenched, with methods that were a long way from inertia, with words that had a nimbus of light.

Her example conserves all its freshness even at the crossroads where we find ourselves, with the urgency that all who are baptized may renew their hearts through personal prayer, focused as the saint of Avila proposes, on the contemplation of the Most Sacred Humanity of Christ as the only way to find the glory of God
(cf. Libro de la Vida 22,1; Las Moradas 6,7).

This is the way we can form authentic families who discover in the Gospel the fire for their hearth. Christian communities that are alive and united, with Christ as their keystone, with a thirst for a life of fraternal and generous service.

It is also to be hoped that unceasing invocation of the Lord may promote the priority cultivation of vocations to priesthood, specifically underscoring the beauty of consecrated life, which must be recognized as the treasure that it is for the Church, as a torrent of graces, both in its active as well as contemplative dimensions.

May the power of Christ also lead to doubling initiatives so that the People of God may recover their vigor in the only way possible: by making room within us for the sentiments of our Lord Jesus
(cf. Phil 2,5), seeking in every circumstance to live the Gospel radically.

Which means, before everything else, to allow the Holy Spirit to make us friends with the Lord and configure us to him. It also means accepting all his mandates and adopting criteria like humility of conduct, renouncing the superfluous, not aggravating others, and behaving with simplicity and gentleness of heart.

This way, those around us will perceive the joy that comes from our adherence to the Lord, and that we put nothing ahead of his love, always being ready to give the reason for our hope
(cf. 1Pt 3,15), living, as did Teresa de Jesus, in filial obedience to Holy Mother Church.

5. To that radicality and fidelity we are invited today by this most illustrious daughter of the Diocese of Avila. Accepting her beautiful legacy, at this hour in history, the Pope calls on all the members of your local Church in a manner that may draw young people to seriously take this common calling to holiness.

Following the footsteps of Teresa de Jesus, allow me to say to those who have their whole future before them: Aspire like her to belong totally to Jesus, only to Jesus and always to Jesus. Do not fear to tell our Lord as she did: "I am yours, I was born for you - what do you want me to do?"
(Poesía 2).

I ask him that, illuminated by divine grace, you may know how to respond to his calls, with ]determined determination' in order to offer 'the little' that there is in you, confident that God never abandons those who leave everything for his glory (cf. Camino de perfección 21,2; 1,2).

6. Santa Teresa honored the Most Blessed Virgin with great devotion, invoking her under the sweet name of Carmel. To her maternal protection, I entrust the apostolic efforts of the Church in Avila, so that, made young again by the Holy Spirit, she may find the opportune ways to proclaim the Gospel with enthusiasm and courage.

May Mary, Star of Evangelization, and her chaste spouse, St, Joseph, intercede so that the 'star' that the Lord lit in the universe, the Church with its Teresian reform, may continue to radiate its great splendor of love and the truth of Christ to all men.

With this wish, Venerated Brother in the Episcopate, I send you this message which I ask you to make known to the flock entrusted to your pastoral efforts, and most especially, to the Discalced Carmelites of the Convent of San Jose in Avila who perpetuate in time the spirit of its founder, and for whose fervent prayers for the Successor of Peter I am always grateful.

To them, to you, and to all the faithful of Avila, I impart with affection the Apostolic Blessing as a token of copious celestial favors.


The Vatican
July 16, 2012










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How could I have missed this article from July 15? If even John Allen now appears to step back and take a more critical view of the relentless image-building and celebration of perceived perfection that has characterized papal reporting (including Allen's) since March 13, 2013, then it is not just Benaddicts like me who take exception to an execrable phenomenon that in four months has gone far beyond its immediate point of comparison - the Obamamania that began in 2008, in which he was literally hailed as 'the second coming' of Jesus. Allen calls the Francis-frenzy by its right name - hype, which comes from 'hyperbole', an exaggeration of fact.

A season of hype swirls in Rome
by John L. Allen Jr.

July 15, 2013

ROME - By now it's conventional wisdom that Francis is launching a sweeping reform of the Vatican. [How sweeping remains to be seen!]

So settled has that conviction become that the Italian newsmagazine L'Espresso published a cover story this week with a picture of the pope under the headline, "Will he pull it off?' [The]Apparently, there was no perceived need to explain what the "it" refers to -- everybody, it seems, knows that this pope is trying to clean house.
[The article was written by Sandro Magister and has been posted on www.chiesa, but the super-head above the title Allen cites is, "A Pope the likes of whom we have never seen before", Magister's own contribution to the hype, which far outdoes anything Andrea Tornielli has written about Francis so far.]

One difficulty with grand narratives, however, is they become the prism through which absolutely everything is seen, making it difficult to distinguish real indices of reform from casual gestures or from decisions that actually express continuity rather than change.

These days, if Francis simply opens his mail, somebody's likely to tout it as an awesome hallmark of innovation. On the Vatican beat, in other words, we're in the grip of a season of hype.

Three recent storylines illustrate the dynamic.

First, on Thursday, Pope Francis issued a motu proprio, meaning a writ under his own authority, implementing a new legal code for the Vatican City State. The code includes sanctions for a range of crimes not previously mentioned specifically, such as the sexual abuse of minors, money laundering, and the theft and publication of confidential documents.

The changes take effect Sept. 1 and apply not just to residents of the 108-acre City State but also papal personnel around the world, such as the Vatican's diplomatic staff.

In some quarters, the overhaul was styled as a dramatic bid to get control of the scandals that have plagued the Church in recent years. The difficulty with this way of seeing things, however, is that it overstates the new Pope's imprint.

In truth, the vast majority of the changes simply ratify ad hoc laws already promulgated in response to specific situations or incorporate obligations the Vatican had already undertaken by signing on to international conventions. The underlying policy decisions were taken some time back -- in every case that counts, including the provisions on sexual abuse and money laundering, the decisions actually came under Benedict XVI. [Which, of course, only a rare handful pointed out in their reporting. Even of Mons. Mamberti, in presenting the new laws to the media, was very clear that they had long been in the making. But until Allen, who, in the worldwide chorus incessantly raising hosannas to the new Pope while remembering there was ever a Benedict XVI only to use him as the execrable contrast to the gloriously reigning Pope, was going to leave the herd mentality even if momentarily, to say the truth? No matter how obvious that truth is, as in this case.]

As journalist and Vatican-watcher Gian Guido Vecchi observed in Corriere della Sera, had this code been issued by Benedict rather than Francis, it's highly probable its content would have been identical. [DIM=8pt][What 'highly probable'? It would have been 100% identical, because the content simply codifies what was already being done in practice in Benedict's Pontificate!]

The new code is evidence of reform, in other words, just not one that began life March 13.
On a more symbolic level, a visit by the Pontiff to the Vatican garage on Thursday generated a good deal of buzz, particularly since he'd told a group of seminarians and religious a few days before that it "hurts my heart when I see a priest with the latest model car."

In some quarters the visit was trumpeted as the prelude to a fire sale, with the new Pope determined to get rid of all vestiges of papal privilege. More than one Italian commentator hauled out the old saw that the license plate on Vatican limos, which reads "SCV" for 'Stato della Citta del Vaticano", actually stands for "se Cristo vedesse," meaning "if only Christ could see!"

(For the record, the Vatican car park actually has two sections. One, the "Noble Garage," contains the 10 vehicles reserved for the Pope, including two or three Mercedes S-class sedans with the "SCV-1" license plate that Francis has never used. On those occasions when he's moved by car, he's taken a simpler Ford Focus. The other section is the "Garage of State," containing roughly 50 vehicles used by other Vatican personnel.)

In truth, there was less to the visit than met the eye.

First, new Popes routinely make the rounds of Vatican facilities and personnel to introduce themselves and to formally take the reins [exactly like his much-delayed first official visit to Castel Gandolfo]. The visit by Francis to the garage had already been planned, and officials say it was not designed to herald the beginning of the end of the papal fleet. While there, Francis did not designate any vehicles for liquidation.

Second, as veteran Vatican writer Luigi Accattoli observed, even getting rid of every vehicle in the collection wouldn't really generate any savings, since these cars are donated to the Holy See by their manufacturers obviously hoping for the PR benefits of seeing the pope tool around in one of their products.

If anything, junking the papal fleet might inflict more belt-tightening on the Mercedes corporation than on the Vatican.

No doubt, Francis prefers modest means of transportation, and it's tough to imagine that cardinals and other princes of the Church will be so brazen as to take elegant limousines in contrast to the pope's example. [Not that the papal Mercedes looked like 'elegant limousines' at all - they seem rather staid and discreet, compared to say the flashier American models like Ford's Continental limousines, of Cadillacs; they are distinguished to the average eye only by a small papal seal embossed in metal on the right rear door.] A certain simplification is therefore underway, but just dropping by the garage isn't in itself the stuff of high drama.

Third, bloggers recently went to town with the "scoop" that there will be no bed for Pope Francis aboard the papal plane carrying him to Rio de Janeiro next week for World Youth Day, spinning it as another act of self-denial. One report suggested that Francis had ordered the Secretariat of State to make sure there wasn't a bed. [COLO9E=#0026FF][It was the report that set off the firestorm, and it wasn't a blog. It was a 'scoop' by Andrea Tornielli, except that Fr. Lombardi promptly denied its allegations in toto,, and Tornielli withdrew the story online.] That narrative metastasized for a day or so until Jesuit Fr. Federico Lombardi, the Vatican spokesperson, felt obliged to respond.

"There was never any letter from the Secretariat of State to Alitalia about the preparation of the plane," Lombardi said.

"The question of having a bed on board never came up, because today the seats are very comfortable and allow for a good rest, so there's no reason to think about another set-up."

"Pope Benedict also never had any bed in recent years, for example on his flights to and from Africa," Lombardi added.

For the record, there is no such thing as the "papal plane" in the sense of a jet belonging to the pope and in exclusive use by the Vatican, like Air Force One in the United States. Instead, when the pope travels, he normally takes Alitalia on the outbound leg and the national carrier of whatever country he's visiting coming back, in both cases using a normal passenger jet assigned by the company for that day.

The only real perk for the pope is that he gets to sit in the first row of business class [???? Surely it's first c;ass. not business class!], usually by himself, but other than that it's pretty much the same experience as anyone else making an intercontinental flight. Francis seems content with that arrangement, but it hardly started with him.

For sure, there are real indications of change under Francis -- the appointment of eight cardinals from around the world to make Church governance more collegial, for instance, and the creation of a commission to investigate the Vatican bank along with the resignations of its senior leadership. No doubt, there's more to come.

In the meantime, however, these three examples suggest a dose of caution: Just because there's a revolution going on [Is there objective support for that, so far, or is it merely a projection of media's wishful thinking?] doesn't mean absolutely everything that happens is revolutionary. [Which is what results because the herd thinking in media is not just devoid of objective criteria to apply to all Popes - at least to Benedict and Francis - equally, but also entirely without a sense of perspective, in which they do not distinguish between the trivial and incidental, and that which is truly significant and purposeful.]


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How could I have missed this article from July 15? If even John Allen now appears to step back and take a more critical view of the relentless image-building and celebration of perceived perfection that has characterized papal reporting (including Allen's) since March 13, 2013, then it is not just Benaddicts like me who take exception to an execrable phenomenon that in four months has gone far beyond its immediate point of comparison - the Obamamania that began in 2008, in which he was literally hailed as 'the second coming' of Jesus. Allen calls the Francis-frenzy by its right name - hype, which comes from 'hyperbole', over-the-top exaggeration and fancy gilding of fact. One must be grateful to John Allen for his candor and courage to break away from the wolf pack, at least in this respect.

A season of hype swirls in Rome
by John L. Allen Jr.

July 15, 2013

ROME - By now it's conventional wisdom ['wisdom'] that Francis is launching a sweeping reform of the Vatican. [How sweeping remains to be seen! So far, everything is speculative, other than that the Pope has now commissioned two different groups to study the problems of the Curia and the IOR, respectively, with a view to proposing reforms. And that can only be good. The actual problems have to be identified and defined, not simply cited amorphously as in "Bad, bad Curia! Their asses oughta be whupped", as everyone has done so far, especially at the pre-Conclave congregations.]

So settled has that conviction become that the Italian newsmagazine L'Espresso published a cover story this week with a picture of the pope under the headline, "Will he pull it off?' Apparently, there was no perceived need to explain what the "it" refers to -- everybody, it seems, knows that this pope is trying to clean house.
[The article was written by Sandro Magister and has been posted on www.chiesa, but the super-head above the title Allen cites is, "A Pope the likes of whom we have never seen before", Magister's own contribution to the hype, which far outdoes anything Andrea Tornielli has written about Francis so far, but it is actually limited to the title, since the article is more intent on rationalizing Francis's popularity - as if that justifies anything and everything - and moreover, he does not factor out Benedict XVI at all, even if he cites him inappropriately at times.

As for 'cleaning house', how 'dirty' is the house exactly? One would think Benedict XVI left behind him a pig sty, that Pope Francis would have to labor like Hercules cleaning out the Augean stables! In the absence of any objective evidence so far of grave malfeasances in the Roman Curia, much less of the 'evil and corruption' they have been accused of, the deliberate exaggeration - hype of the most negative kind - starts with the overwhelmingly vitriolic perceptions of the Curia actively fostered during the pre-Conclave congregations from a long-standing stereotype that paints the Roman Curia blacker than hell.

Even more maligned than the Curia is IOR, despite the fact that it passed muster with an completely autonomous external body like Moneyval in the latter's first report on the Holy See's compliance with international White List requirements. Moneyval inspectors who came to the Vatican twice and looked at all the pertinent documentation attached these documents to their full report posted online, and anyone who cares could look it up. But no one in the media really cared because the report - contrary to all the negative expectations MSM had been trumpeting for weeks before the report came out - turned out to be favorable on most of the key criteria. It contained no 'smoking gun' at all that the media could use against IOR. And the weak points were precisely those that the IOR had been trying to plug under Benedict XVI's December 2010 financial transparency law - mainly having to do with lack of sufficient controls to ensure that every bank depositors is 'straight' and not just using the IOR to launder dirty funds.

One would have thought that the five cardinals on the IOR oversight commission, led by Bertone, would have cited the Moneyval report in response to the storm raised over IOR by a phalanx of sanctimonious cardinals during the pre-Conclave congregations. That report is substantial and substantive, where everything else has been wild perception of the most damning kind. Such perceptions on the Curia and the IOR, based on unsubstantiated media stereotypes perpetrated for decades, were apparently shared by the future Pope who would later make a barbed remark to IOR employees about their institution's bad rep. Even though, as Pope, he could have looked up the record himself - a task he has now assigned to an ad hoc committee of five to study and make recommendations.]


One difficulty with grand narratives, however, is they become the prism through which absolutely everything is seen, making it difficult to distinguish real indices of reform from casual gestures or from decisions that actually express continuity rather than change.

These days, if Francis simply opens his mail, somebody's likely to tout it as an awesome hallmark of innovation. On the Vatican beat, in other words, we're in the grip of a season of hype.

Three recent storylines illustrate the dynamic.

First, on Thursday, Pope Francis issued a motu proprio, meaning a writ under his own authority, implementing a new legal code for the Vatican City State. The code includes sanctions for a range of crimes not previously mentioned specifically, such as the sexual abuse of minors, money laundering, and the theft and publication of confidential documents.

The changes take effect Sept. 1 and apply not just to residents of the 108-acre City State but also papal personnel around the world, such as the Vatican's diplomatic staff.

In some quarters, the overhaul was styled as a dramatic bid to get control of the scandals that have plagued the Church in recent years. The difficulty with this way of seeing things, however, is that it overstates the new Pope's imprint.

In truth, the vast majority of the changes simply ratify ad hoc laws already promulgated in response to specific situations or incorporate obligations the Vatican had already undertaken by signing on to international conventions. The underlying policy decisions were taken some time back -- in every case that counts, including the provisions on sexual abuse and money laundering, the decisions actually came under Benedict XVI. [Which, of course, only a rare handful pointed out in their reporting. Even of Mons. Mamberti, in presenting the new laws to the media, was very clear that they had long been in the making. But until Allen, who - in the worldwide chorus incessantly raising hosannas to the new Pope while remembering there was ever a Benedict XVI only to use him as the execrable contrast to the gloriously reigning Pope - was going to leave the herd mentality even if momentarily, to say the truth? No matter how obvious that truth is, as in this case.]

As journalist and Vatican-watcher Gian Guido Vecchi observed in Corriere della Sera, had this code been issued by Benedict rather than Francis, it's highly probable its content would have been identical. [What 'highly probable'? It would have been 100% identical, because the content simply codifies what was already being done in practice in Benedict's Pontificate!]

The new code is evidence of reform, in other words, just not one that began life March 13.

On a more symbolic level, a visit by the Pontiff to the Vatican garage on Thursday generated a good deal of buzz, particularly since he'd told a group of seminarians and religious a few days before that it "hurts my heart when I see a priest with the latest model car."

In some quarters the visit was trumpeted as the prelude to a fire sale, with the new Pope determined to get rid of all vestiges of papal privilege. More than one Italian commentator hauled out the old saw that the license plate on Vatican limos, which reads "SCV" for 'Stato della Citta del Vaticano", actually stands for "se Cristo vedesse," meaning "if only Christ could see!"

(For the record, the Vatican car park actually has two sections. One, the "Noble Garage," contains the 10 vehicles reserved for the Pope, including two or three Mercedes S-class sedans with the "SCV-1" license plate that Francis has never used. On those occasions when he's moved by car, he's taken a simpler Ford Focus. The other section is the "Garage of State," containing roughly 50 vehicles used by other Vatican personnel.)

In truth, there was less to the visit than met the eye.

First, new Popes routinely make the rounds of Vatican facilities and personnel to introduce themselves and to formally take the reins [exactly like his much-delayed first official visit to Castel Gandolfo]. The visit by Francis to the garage had already been planned, and officials say it was not designed to herald the beginning of the end of the papal fleet. While there, Francis did not designate any vehicles for liquidation.

Second, as veteran Vatican writer Luigi Accattoli observed, even getting rid of every vehicle in the collection wouldn't really generate any savings, since these cars are donated to the Holy See by their manufacturers obviously hoping for the PR benefits of seeing the pope tool around in one of their products.

If anything, junking the papal fleet might inflict more belt-tightening on the Mercedes corporation than on the Vatican.

No doubt, Francis prefers modest means of transportation, and it's tough to imagine that cardinals and other princes of the Church will be so brazen as to take elegant limousines in contrast to the pope's example. [Not that the papal Mercedes looks like the popular idea of an 'elegant limousine' at all - they seem rather staid and discreet, compared to say the flashier, larger and longer American top-of-the-line models like Ford's Continental limousines, or the Cadillacs; the papal cars are distinguished to the average eye only by a small papal seal embossed in metal on the right rear door.] A certain simplification is therefore underway, but just dropping by the garage isn't in itself the stuff of high drama.

Third, bloggers recently went to town with the "scoop" that there will be no bed for Pope Francis aboard the papal plane carrying him to Rio de Janeiro next week for World Youth Day, spinning it as another act of self-denial. One report suggested that Francis had ordered the Secretariat of State to make sure there wasn't a bed. [COLO9E=#0026FF][It was the report that set off the firestorm, and it wasn't a blog. It was a 'scoop' by Andrea Tornielli, except that Fr. Lombardi promptly denied its allegations in toto,, and Tornielli quickly took the story offline.] That narrative metastasized for a day or so until Jesuit Fr. Federico Lombardi, the Vatican spokesperson, felt obliged to respond.

"There was never any letter from the Secretariat of State to Alitalia about the preparation of the plane," Lombardi said.

"The question of having a bed on board never came up, because today the seats are very comfortable and allow for a good rest, so there's no reason to think about another set-up."

"Pope Benedict also never had any bed in recent years, for example on his flights to and from Africa," Lombardi added.

For the record, there is no such thing as the "papal plane" in the sense of a jet belonging to the pope and in exclusive use by the Vatican, like Air Force One in the United States. Instead, when the pope travels, he normally takes Alitalia on the outbound leg and the national carrier of whatever country he's visiting coming back, in both cases using a normal passenger jet assigned by the company for that day.

The only real perk for the pope is that he gets to sit in the first row of business class [???? Surely it's first class, not business class!], usually by himself, but other than that it's pretty much the same experience as anyone else making an intercontinental flight. Francis seems content with that arrangement, but it hardly started with him.

For sure, there are real indications of change under Francis -- the appointment of eight cardinals from around the world to make Church governance more collegial, for instance, and the creation of a commission to investigate the Vatican bank along with the resignations of its senior leadership. No doubt, there's more to come.

In the meantime, however, these three examples suggest a dose of caution: Just because there's a revolution going on [Is there objective support for that, so far, or is it merely a projection of media's wishful thinking?] doesn't mean absolutely everything that happens is revolutionary. [Which is what resultbecause the herd thinking in media is not just devoid of objective criteria to apply to all Popes - at least to Benedict and Francis - equally, but also entirely without a sense of perspective, in which they do not distinguish between the trivial and incidental, and that which is truly significant and purposeful.]
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Wednesday, July 17, 15th Week in Ordinary Time

CARMELITE NUNS OF COMPIEGNE(France, d 1974), Virgins and Martyrs
When the French Revolution started in 1789, a group of twenty-one discalced Carmelites lived in a monastery in Compiegne, founded in 1641. The monastery was ordered closed in 1790 by the Revolutionary gov­ernment, and the nuns were disbanded. Sixteen of the nuns were accused of continuing to live in a religious community in 1794. They were arrested on June 22 and imprisoned in a Visitation convent in Compiegne, where they openly resumed their religious life. On July 12, 1794, the Carmelites were taken to Paris and five days later were sentenced to death by guillotine. At the foot of the scaffold, the community jointly renewed their vows and began to chant the ;Veni Creator Spiritus', the hymn sung at the ceremony f1) or the profession of vows. They continued their singing as, one by one, they mounted the scaffold to meet their death. The novice of the community, Sister Constance, was the first to die, then the lay Sisters and externs, and so on, ending with the prioress, Mother Teresa of St. Augustine, O.C.D. The martyrdom of the nuns was immortalized by the composer Francois Poulenc in his famous opera Dialogues des Carmelites.
Readings for today's Mass:

www.usccb.org/bible/readings/071712.cfm



AT THE VATICAN TODAY

No events announced for Pope Francis.

But Fr. Federico Lombardi held a briefing for the media on the Pope's trip to Rio de Janeiro next week for WYD 2013,
and said there would be two 'innovations' this time:
1) The Pope will not be holding an in-flight news conference enroute to the destination as his two immediate predecessors did.
Instead, he will greet each newsman on the plane individually and chat with them.
2) He will not be using the Popemobile protected by bulletproof glass while in Brazil but will stick to the open Popemobile
he uses in St. Peter's Square.



One year ago...
There were no official events for Benedict XVI in Castel Gandolfo, but there was similar focus on the Holy Father's scheduled apostolic visit in the late summer - the one to Lebanon, which, no one suspected at the time, would be his last trip abroad as Pope.

Fittingly, the official website for the visit was launched on this day. Because of the historicity of that visit on many levels - one of the busiest and most compelling of Benedict's apostolic trips - it is worth looking back at the events and places that were programmed for the visit. Lebanon also happens to be one of the most scenic countries in the Middle East, and was a most fitting theater for Benedict XVI's final apostolic voyage....



A website for the visit -
and an overview of the places
the Pope will be visiting

July 17, 2012
The official website for the visit of Pope Benedict XVI to Lebanon has been launched. The website is available in four languages – Arabic, English, French, and Italian.
http://www.lbpapalvisit.com/test2/public/index.php
The Holy Father’s trip will be from September 14 to 16, and he will visit Beirut, Harissa, Baabda, Bzommar, Bkerké, and Charfet. (All are located within 10-30 miles from Beirut).

[Unfortunately, the website so far does not contain any information on the places the Pope will be visiting. It wasn't easy to put together the little information I have assembled here.]


Other than Beirut and Harissa, the other place names are not indicated on the map because they are not population centers. Baabda is east of Beirut and south of Harissa, while Bzommar, Bkerke and Charfet are all slightly northwest of Harissa (nearer the sea. Right photo shows the location of St Paul's Cathedral and the Shrine to our Lady of Lebanon in Harissa.

Harissa is a mountain location a few miles inland from the capital, looking down on the Mediterranean. It is the site of the Apostolic Nunciature, where the Pope will be staying, as well as two major churches.



The first is the Melkite Greek Catholic Basilica of St. Paul, where, on the afternoon of his arrival, the Holy Father will sign his Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation that formally summarizes the Special Synodal Assembly on the Middle East held in October 2010.



The other is the Maronite Catholics' modern shrine to Our Lady of Lebanon, wits its giant statue of the Virgin. (For some reason, a visit to the shrine is not on the program at all, although the Holy Father is staying in Harissa.)

The following day, Saturday, Benedict XVI will hold a number of meetings at the Presidential Palace in Baabda, also an exurb of Beirut. [Like the location of the Nunciature in Harissa, this probably makes sense since Beirut itself was the center of fighting during Lebanon's long civil war.] The government of Lebanon is treating this as a state visit.

The Pope will be holding a series of meetings with the President of Lebanon, the President of Parliament, the Prime Minister, other government authorities, the diplomatic corps and representatives of Beirut's world of culture, and leaders of the Muslim communities.

The rest of the Pope's appointments inv olves visits to the seats of the three major Catholic communities of the Eastern rite in Lebanon.



On Saturday, he will lunch with Lebanese bishops in Bzommar, seat of the Syro-Catholic Patriarchate, and then proceed in the afternoon to Bkerke, seat of the Maronite Patriarchate, where he will be meeting with young people.



On Sunday, his final day in Lebanon, the Pope will have his only event in central Beirut - Mass at the area called the Waterfront, centerpiece of the reconstruction of Beirut after the civil war from 1975-1990 destroyed much of the city that had been known as the Paris of the Mediterranean.



Beirut's location on the edge of the Mediterranean, with mountains a few miles inland, and its French colonial heritage, had made it one of the most beautiful cities in the region. Day excursions can be made from Beirut to two sites of antiquity which contain impressive ruins - Byblos and Baalbek.



In the afternoon, after leaving the Nunciature for the last time, he will be visiting Charfet, seat of the Syro-Catholic Patriarchate of Antioch, for an ecumenical meeting. From there, he will proceed to the international airport for the departure ceremony and the trip back to Rome.

The other big news of the day one year agP was a calendar item anticipating the release of the first Moneyval report on Vqtican compliance with international banking standards....

Briefing tomorrow
on Moneyval report


July 17, 2012

The Moneyval report on the status of the Vatican's application to get on the 'white list' of European states meeting international standards in combatting money laundering and funding of terrorism will be released officially at 9:30 a.m. tomorrow, Wednesday.

The report is based on the second on-site inspection held by Moneyval in April 2012.

This will be followed at 11:30 by a briefing in the Vatican Press Room by Mons. Ettore Balestrero, Vatican Under-Secretary for Relations with States.

[2013 P.S. It must be mentioned that the release of the report was preceded by days of undisguised Schadenfreude in the media, most of whom anticipated that the Vatican would get a dramatic rebuff by Moneyval for its overall lack of financial transparency, especially IOR. In this, they grossly underestimated the work that had been done since Benedict XVI's December 2010 revolutionary law on financial transparency. and simply took it for granted that IOR,in particular, would get a beating and a well-deserved comeuppance from Moneyval. Well, we now know the Cassandras had egg on their face when the report came out, but that did not make anyone relent on their insistent denigration of IOR, their favorite whipping-boy at the Vatican alongside Cardinal Bertone.]





Sorry about the very delayed 'first post' of the day - I thought I had posted it around 2 pm today, but I got caught up in work and was notg even able to check that it had posted - it did not, and I had to reconstruct the whole thing just now.

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Father Lombardi's briefing on WYD Rio:
A sense ef anticipation
for the Latin American Pope's
first 'homecoming'


July 17, 2013 –

In a press conference held Wednesday morning, the director of the Holy See Press Office, Federico Lombardi S.J., presented information on Pope Francis's imminent apostolic visit to Rio de Janeiro for the 28th World Youth Day.

Fr. Lombardi reviewed the Holy Father's program for the week he will spend in Brazil, explaining that this journey is “particularly significant in his continent, and this naturally lends it a particular sense of anticipation and participation”.

“As we know”, Fr. Lombardi continued, “it was not his decision to make his first trip to Latin America, [What a strange way to put it! But then, much of what Lombardi says in the statements quoted from him seems very strange!] but rather it was his predecessor Benedict XVI who had confirmed that World Youth Day would be held in Brazil, and had confirmed that 'the Pope' would be present, as at all the World Youth Days, even though the Pope in this case would not have been him.

"Therefore, Pope Francis is assuming the legacy of Pope Benedict XVI's pontificate in making this trip. [The way Fr. Lombardi is quoted, one wpuld think Pope Francis was simply 'forced' to honor a commitment made by Benedict XVI!] You will recall that practically the same thing happened at the last change of pontificate: Benedict XVI's first trip was to Germany, his homeland, to Cologne for the World Youth Day decided by his predecessor John Paul II”.

“The trip [to Brazil] had already been decided but the programme has also been adapted, we might indeed sa,y intensified and enriched with further events with the change of pontificate. The plan that had been drawn up for Pope Benedict XVI was less demanding, whereas with Pope Francis, some elements have been added, such as the pilgrimage to Aparecida, or the visit to the favelas, to the hospital, the meeting with the Comite de Celam.

"There are elements which were not scheduled in the first programme for the trip, intended for Pope Benedict XVI. Pope Francis has maintained the same nhmber of days – that is, the trip was expected to take place from 22 to 29 July even before the change of pontificate – but more events have been planned for this period, especially the pilgrimage to Aparecida which will occupy a day that had in the previous draft program been intended as a day of rest.

“Of course, the Holy Father was invited by the bishops who organised and promoted the World Youth Day”, added Fr. Lombardi," Orani Tempesti, archbishop of Rio de Janeiro, and Cardinal Damasceno Assis, president of the National Conference of Bishops of Brazil, and naturally also by the president Dilma Rousseff, who came to the Vatican for the inauguration of the pontificate and who met Francis the following day, explicitly inviting him to Brazil. The Pope confirmed immediately, just a few days after his election, that he intended to travel to Brazil for World Youth Day, and this helped to speed up preparations”.

The Vatican Radio report is obviously and inexplicably quite incomplete. A CBS story is far more complete:

Pope on the road:
Vatican does detailed planning
but expects surprises

by Cindy Wooden


VATICAN CITY, July 17, 2013 (CNS) - While Pope Francis's July 22-28 visit to Brazil has been planned almost down to the minute, the papal spokesman is certain it will be "a bit of an adventure."

The main events of World Youth Day are the same as they have been for years, but Pope Francis "is full of surprises," said Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi.

Briefing journalists July 17 about what to expect in Brazil, Father Lombardi had a thick red-bound tome of Mass texts and other prayers, the Pope's official schedule as released May 7 and a more detailed schedule complete with little icons of airplanes, cars, helicopters, popemobiles and a liturgically vested walking pope.

The icons provide a quick visual clue as to how the pope will move. For example, the little car illustrates his arrival July 25 at the Varginha sector of the Manguinhos complex of slums. He'll begin in the neighborhood church (there's an icon for that), then walk along the neighborhood streets. He is likely to encounter a family and visit their home. Then he will continue walking to the soccer field, where he)0 ){ will address the entire community.

Plans for a papal trip to Rio de Janeiro were begun under Pope Benedict XVI. The dates of Pope Francis's trip are the same, Father Lombardi said, but he has scrapped one day of rest and added several events: a visit to the Shrine of Our Lady of Aparecida; a visit to a hospital that serves the poor and those recovering from addiction; the visit to the slums; and a meeting with the coordinating committee of the Latin American bishops' council, CELAM.

[Necessary rejoinders to the above:
1) The visit to Aparecida is a personal thing for Pope Francis, who is a Marian devotee. Pope Benedict would not have added Aparecida if he were still Pope, because he already visited Aparecida during his apostolic trip to Brazil in 2007, having chosen it himself personally in 2005 as the site for the V Conference of Latin American and Caribbean Bishops, originally supposed to be held in Rome when it was planned in the latter years of John Paul II's life. Benedict's choice of Aparecida was a great surprise to the Latin American bishops themselves.

2) The hospital-cum-rehab-center to be visited by Pope Francis happens to be run by his order, the Jesuits, which appears to be the main reason the visit was added to the program. When Benedict XVI was in Madrid for WYD in 2011, he visited a diocesan facility for handicapped children, an activity that was not tied to the WYD program. And when he visited Brazil in 2007, he travelled to Brazil's major rehab center for drug addicts in Guaratinga, in what was one of the most moving events of that visit.

3) A visit to the 'slums' was always mentioned in the early reporting on Benedict XVI's possible itinerary in Rio for WYD, recalling John Paul II's visit to a Rio favela in 1980. Of course, in the case of Francis, his visit would sort of recapitulate his dedication while Archbishop of Buenos Aires to minister to the slum population, not just sending more priests to them, but spending time in the poor neighborhoods to say Mass and celebrate the sacraments, as well as visiting homes.

4) About 'scrapping a day of rest', I noted when the program for Pope Francis was first announced - already including the visit to Apreecida the day before he formally joins the WYD celebration, that there was more time scheduled for his jet lag readjustment than there was for Benedict XVI when he travelled to Mexico last year.
[

The news release [on the Pope's program in Brazil] does not say so, but no events are scheduled for Tuesday, July 23, Pope Francis;s first full day in Brazil. [On the day of his arrival, the only event obviously is the airport welcome ceremony.] The 36-hour rest for Pope Francis is similar to the 24-hour period between Benedict XVI's arrival in Mexico last March and his first official event after the airport welcome. The interval provides not just a rest period after a transcontinental flight but also allows the Pope's biorhythm to adjust itself to a different time zone. When Benedict XVI travelled to Sydney in 2008, he required a three-day adjustment period.


Father Lombardi said Pope Francis probably will add a speech to an already planned lunch meeting July 27 with the cardinals of Brazil and bishops from Rio and the surrounding region.

One thing the Pope will not be doing, he said, is giving a news conference during his 12-hour flight to Rio July 22, although he does plan to personally greet each of the 71 media representatives on board.

No matter who is traveling, choosing what to take on a trip is a detail that must be dealt with. The pope's biggest pieces of luggage have four wheels and an engine: the popemobile. Usually Vatican officials or Vatican security take care of choosing the papal transport, but Father Lombardi said Pope Francis insisted that he will not ride through the crowds in Rio, isolated in a bullet-proof, bubble-top set of wheels.

The Brazilian air force helped Pope Francis by hauling two vehicles from the Vatican: a white popemobile with an overarching windshield, but open on the sides, and a very military looking green jeep, which Father Lombardi says is only a reserve vehicle so it "wasn't painted for the occasion."

The amount of money spent on papal trips is always a question but has garnered even more attention this time since it is the first foreign trip of Pope Francis, who embraces simplicity and encourages others to do likewise.

"For 30 years, people have been raising the question of the costs" of papal trips, Father Lombardi said. He encouraged people to keep two things in mind: first, that most citizens of Brazil are pleased about the trip and second, "the costs associated with these visits are payments made to people who are working or provide a service," which benefits the local economy. "It's not like the money is being thrown out the window."

The Brazilian newspaper Folha estimated July 16 that the cost of World Youth Day in Rio would be between $142 million and $155 million.

Sao Paulo Cardinal Odilo Scherer told reporters that those figures represent the costs of the entire event, not just the pope's visit, and that much of the cost is being covered by sponsors and by the youths who have registered and paid to attend. In addition, he said, the event must be seen as an "investment in young people."

[What is not pointed out here is the fallout to the local economy of the WYD events. In 2011, the Spanish shamber of Commeerce estimated that local business earned some $250 million during the weeklong WYD in Madrid - far more than total costs for the event which were largely defrayed by corporate contributions and the registration fees of those who attended. .]

On another simplicity-related question, Father Lombardi denied media reports that Pope Francis had asked Alitalia -- the airline flying him to Rio -- not to reconfigure the plane for him and, specifically, not to install a bed for him.

The Vatican spokesman said: "The plane is what it is. The seats are what they are. The pope will be in the front, except when he is with you," he told reporters. "Nothing special has been done." It has been years since an airline installed a bed for a pope, he said, because most first-class seats on long-haul flights fold down almost flat.

Pope Francis isn't the only one making changes here and there. Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff has invited all of the presidents of Latin American countries to join their pilgrims in Rio. Father Lombardi said he did not know how many have accepted the invitation, but if some show up, it would likely be for the July 28 closing Mass.
Newspapers already are talking about as many as 3 million people attending the liturgy.

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I'm posting this item here belatedly for the record, and also to register my apology for having been too 'kind' about it in an earlier remark. I've gone back and revised that judgment. I do not think Magister is completely sold on everything the Pope says and does, but his argument seems to be "He's highly popular, and here's why", as if somehow the reasons he cites would justify anything and everything.

A Pope Like None Before. Can He Do It?
The symbolic voyage to Lampedusa. His great popularity. The reform of the curia.
The calculated silence on ethical issues. But also his first error over an IOR appointment.
The challenge of Francis in changing the Church is meeting with obstacles and enemies. Including at the Vatican.
[Has this not been said of every Pope in recent history? So, even the pluperfect Pope is not exempt from this? ]

by Sandro Magister
English translation by Matthew Sherry


ROME, July 11, 2013 – At the marking of his fourth month as pope, Jorge Mario Bergoglio has produced his first encyclical and completed his first voyage. Two symbolically powerful acts, but almost opposite in character.

"Lumen Fidei" indeed bears the signature of Pope Francis, but was conceived and almost entirely written by Benedict XVI. By making it his own, Bergoglio has wanted to give witness to his full agreement with his predecessor in carrying out the distinctive mission of the successor of Peter: “to strengthen the faith.”

The voyage to Lampedusa, however, marks a clear departure. In order to speak a Christian word on the encounter and clash between civilizations, the theologian Joseph Ratzinger would willingly give an erudite "lectio magistralis" at the Islamic university of Al Azhar. [First, it is most unfair to imply that Benedict XVI only had an academic and not pastoral attitude about pressing ssocial issues. I must find time to compile all the pastoral concern he expressed over the years about the plight of migrants compelled to seek asylum in Italy.

Just as importantly, Francis's visit to Lampedusa was not about 'the encounter and clash between civilizations' but about forced migrations and ultimately, illegal immigration! If anything, it shows how Muslims, must flee their own homelands for Christian lands to seek a better life!

The visit to Lampedusa, when announced, was meant to underscore Pope Francis's grief at the deaths of migrants coming from North Africa to enter Europe without legal standing. Which then, on Lampedusa, the Pope morphed into a reproach to all men for our 'global indifference' to the plight of immigrants. Although he dramatically cited God's reproach to Cain for the murder of his brother Abel, it was far-fetched to blame 'everyone' for the deaths of the migrants, and even more so, for the conditions that force them to leave their homelands, nor for the fact that potential host countries like Italy need to impose some semblance of order and practical limitations to what they can do to admit migrants entering their countries bypassing regular immigration procedures.

None of these considerations, however, made it to the reporting and commentary of a Francis-besotted media. Even Magister completely overlooks these most relevant and significant points. Moreover, I am still bothered that when the Pope announced his decision to go to Lampedusa, he said it was prompted by a recent accident at sea to a boat carrying African migrants bound for Europe, whose deaths, he said, felt 'like a thorn in my heart'. Surely, even in Argentina, he must have read of accidents to these boat people since the supposed Arab spring first occasioned their exodus in early 2011! So many of them that his heart would be mincemeat by now from all those thorns!]


The pastor Bergoglio, instead, has taken his inspiration from Francis. Just as the saint of Assisi began his mission by going to kiss the lepers, who were banned from the city at the time, so also the pope who has taken his name has wished to go first of all to a far-flung little island, the landing or wrecking place of thousands of migrants and refugees. At the Mass he wanted to have read the biblical pages of Cain who kills Abel, and of the massacre of the innocents. A voyage of penance. [This 'synthesis' of the Lampedusa trip is much too problematic to even begin to fisk! I find it an unwarranted spin on simple facts. The migrants find life in their homelands or specific circumstances thereof such as political persecution, unsupportable, so they risk their all - many with their families - to get to Europe in small boats that are not seaworthy. In the process there have been tragic accidents that have cost many lives. But not all the world is indifferent to their plight. Without needing the Pope to urge us, those of us who pause to note such tragedies pray for the victims, as we do for victims of any accident or natural catastrophe, of disease and violence; those who can also contribute to assistance funds for such victims, or even end up working directly to assist in their resettlement, rehabilitation or repatriation, as the case may be. As I remarked after reading the Pope's homily on Lampedusa, he seemed to have forgotten that often, the Catholic church and Catholic associations are in the forefront of efforts to soften the harshness of refugee life for these migrants. While the phrase 'globalization of indifference' may have been picked up by the headline-writers as they did Cardinal Ratzinger's 'dictatorship of relativism' in 2005, the spiritual leader of Christianity cannot 'globslize' his prophetic wrath to jgnore those who do work silently and lovingly in the vineyard if the Lord.]

It comes as no surprise that after the voyage to Lampedusa, the universal popularity of Francis should have reached its highest peaks. [Because people think they are not in any way alluded to when the Pope says 'everyone' is responsible for the migrants' deaths and overall plight? But in general, people love to hear high sanctimony expressed which they can share by their enthusastic support, feeling good by condemning everyone else, not themselves personally, for their faults and sins. Who then is 'everyone' that the Pope refers to?]

“God does the statistics,” he has said. But there is an evident concurrence between the words and actions of this pope and those which could have been suggested to him by a scientific planner of his success. Almost everything that he does and says is difficult to contest for Catholic and secular public opinion, starting with that “how much I would like a Church that is poor and for the poor” which has become the identity card of the current pontificate.

One key element of Francis's popularity is his personal credibility. [What? The Popes before him - at least those we know from contemporary information-saturation - had no personal credibility????]

As archbishop of Buenos Aires, he lived in a modest two-room apartment. He cooked for himself. He got around by bus and metro. He fled from worldly engagements as from the plague. He never wanted to make a career for himself, but on the contrary patiently stepped aside when his own Society of Jesus, of which he had been provincial superior in Argentina for several years, brusquely deposed and isolated him.

For this reason as well, every time he invokes poverty for the Church and rails against the ambitions of power and greed for wealth present in the ecclesiastical camp, no voice is raised to criticize him. [What a mindless statement! Who in his right mind would openly criticize denouncing what is wrong, anyway? Yet when Benedict XVI denounced the same thing over and over again, did anyone take note in the media???? A whole book can be compiled about Joseph Ratzinger's constant admonitions to men of the Church!]


Who could ever justify the oppression of the destitute, and come to the defense of unmerited careers? Who could ever charge Francis with failing to practice what he preaches? On the lips of the current pope, the paradigm of a poor Church is an infallible one. [Hardly 'infallible' - in fact, a facile slogan that is misleading about St. Francis's idea of poverty - but it goes down well with everyone who wants to be perceived as being on the side of good!] It garners a practically universal consensus, both among the friends and among the most ardent enemies of the Church, those who would like to see it so impoverished as to disappear altogether. [It bears out exactly what I said about the natural tendency for 'everyone' to feel like the breast-beating Pharisee, "Oh Lord, I thank you that I am not like others who sin" and thank God that someone out there is denouncing sinners - which does not include themselves, of course.]

But then there is another key factor of Francis's popularity. His invectives, for example, against the “invisible tyranny” of the international financial centers does not strike a specific and recognizable objective. And therefore none of the true or presumed “strong powers” feel effectively touched and provoked to react. [And how does that become a factor in the Pope's popularity? That again, no one feels personally alluded to by his denunciations? Then everyone is inhabiting a parallel world in which 'everyone' is blameless, as opposed to that other world denounced by Francis where everyone is to blame! This is news analysis????]

Even when his reprimands take aim at misdeeds within the Church, these almost always stick to generalities. [Of course, Popes cannot descend to specific names or individuals when they are denouncing sins and faults, which they must denounce, but not the sinners who must be led to 'convert'. But almost each of the Pope's homilettes has been aimed directly at specific 'groups' of offenders. singling them out caustically.]

Once when pope Bergoglio, in one of his conversational morning homilies, raised an explicit doubt over the future of the IOR, the Institute for Works of Religion, the controversial Vatican “bank,” the spokesmen bent over backward to defuse the situation.

And when he denounced the fact that a “gay lobby” at the Vatican “is there, it's true,” the damage control emerged all down the line. Even secular public opinion, more lavish today than ever in hurling accusations of homophobia, forgave him for this statement, with an indulgence that certainly would not have been granted to his predecessor.

Benedict XVI, in effect, was different. In spite of his meek appearance, he was often very explicit and direct in expressing his judgments and in getting his listeners on the ropes. [Yes, but by the force of his arguments against misdeed or sin, not by making direct personal accusations, colloquially colorful as they may be!] The earthquake unleashed by his lecture in Regensburg remains the most spectacular effect of this. [Wrong example! The 'earthquake' was not due to the lecture itself, and its very serious theme of guarding against the pathology of unreason in all religions, but because Muslims took offense at an unflattering description of Mohammed by a Byzantine emperor whose empire was conquered by the sword of Islam!]

But there was another important discourse of his that illustrates the case even better.

It was during his third and last voyage in Germany, in September of 2011. In Freiburg, pope Joseph Ratzinger wanted to meet with a representative group of German Catholics “active in the Church and in society.”

And to them, as also to the bishops of Germany who were present almost in their entirety, he serenely addressed words of deadly severity, extremely demanding. Entirely focused on the duty of a poor Church, “stripped of worldly wealth," “detached from the world,” “freed from material and political burdens and privileges,” in order to be able “to dedicate itself better and in a truly Christian way to the whole world.”

So then, that discourse of his met with a chilly reception and was rapidly hushed, in the first place by those to whom the Pope had addressed himself. Because precisely he had taken aim with precision, asking for a change: at that German Church which he knew very well: wealthy, satisfied, bureaucratized, politicized, but poor in the Gospel.

Pope Francis's way of speaking is certainly one of his most original traits. It is simple, understandable, communicative. [And does that mean that the way Benedict XVI and John Paul II spoke was difficult, incomprehensible and uncommunicative? How can experienced writers like Magister fail to note the implications and connotations of statements they make? You could tell right away it sounds wrong when you reread a statement like that after you have written it! Statements must be appropriately qualified, not just made baldly, as if in a vacuum. Everything has context!]

It has the appearance of improvisation, but in reality is carefully studied, as much in the invention of formulas - the "soap bubble" that he used in Lampedusa to represent the egoism of the modern Herods - as in the fundamentals of the Christian faith that he loves most to repeat and are crystallized in a consoling “all is grace,” the grace of God who incessantly forgives although all continue to be sinners.

But in addition to the things that he says are those about which he is deliberately silent. It cannot be an accident that after 120 days of pontificate Pope Francis has not yet spoken the words abortion, euthanasia, homosexual marriage.

Pope Bergoglio succeeded in dodging them even on the day that he dedicated to “Evangelium Vitae," the tremendous encyclical published by John Paul II in 1995 at the culmination of his epic battle in defense of life “from conception to natural death.”

Karol Wojtyla and Benedict XVI after him exerted themselves incessantly and in person to combat the epochal challenge represented by the modern ideology of birth and death, as also by the dissolution of the creatural duality between male and female.

Not Bergoglio. It seems well-established by now that he has decided to remain silent on these issues that touch upon the political sphere of the entire West, including Latin America, convinced that such statements are not the responsibility of the Pope but of the bishops of each nation. He told the Italians in unmistakable words: “The dialogue with political institutions is your affair.” [That's a baffling copout, as I've remarked before. He's the Bishop of Rome, who presides in charity over all the other bishops. What is wrong with him taking the lead in asserting the 'non-negotiable values' of Catholicism? Are these any less significant than insisting that priests must not behave like materialist laymen? Benedict XVI preached all categories of Christian teaching alike, without fear or favor. And does everyone forget that it was precisely because canon law used to allow the local bishop to have sole jurisdiction and disposition over sex crimes committed by their priests that the great cover-up and silence over these crimes developed so tragically that the Vatican had to step in to take the lead?]

The risk of this division of labor is high for Francis himself, given the hardly flattering judgment that he has repeatedly demonstrated he has on the average quality of the bishops of the world. But it is a risk that he wants to take. [An unnecessary risk, because he has nothing to lose - other than popularity among libera) seculars (and why would that be important to him?] by taking the lead in speaking out himself about these issues?] This silence of his is another of the factors that explain the benevolence of secular public opinion in his regard. [Does Magister - or Pope Francis, for that matter - really think that any anti-Church secular or religious would consider the Pope acquiescent with current liberal thinking on social issues just because he has chosen not to speak about them himself?]

Also in his favor is the visible intention of reforming the Roman curia, and in particular of acting upon that festering boil which is the IOR. Oh the stereotypes Vaticanistas have constructed about IOR, determined to see nothing good in it! And yet, Magister himself was supportive of Ettore Gotti Tedeschi and his work at IOR, and rightly furious for the way he was sacked! i will offer a Mass in tribute when one of them finally writes something objective and fact-based about IOR - and the Roman Curia.]

He has entrusted the study of a reform of the curia to an international council of cardinals, all of them appointed by him. Who in turn have called upon trusted experts to advise them. Some have seen this as a first step towards a democratization of the Church, with the passage from a monocratic to an oligarchic authority.

But as a perfect Jesuit, Bergoglio wants instead to apply to his exercise of the papacy the model proper to the Society of Jesus, in which the decisions are not made collegially, but only by the superior general, in absolute autonomy, after having listened separately to his assistants and to anyone else he may wish.
[So how exactly is that different from Benedict XVI's decision-making - for which media excoriated him because he made his decisions autonomously, and in their view, this meant he listened to no one or consulted no one! That decision-making process is obviously not exclusive to Jesuits, but a commonsense approach by anyone who thinks and who is in a decision-making role!]

It is therefore foreseeable that in early October, when the eight cardinal advisors meet in Rome to place the collected plans in the basket, the views will be very disparate.

A forewarning of disagreement has come from Germany, where a plan to reform the curia was also asked of the former director of the Munich branch of McKinsey, Thomas von Mitschke-Collande. The request was made to him by the powerful secretary of the German episcopal conference, the Jesuit Hans Langerdörfer, but without the knowledge of the archbishop of Munich, Reinhard Marx, one of the eight advisors appointed by the pope, and on the contrary., to his great disappointment, since he had come to a rather negative judgment on von Mitschke-Collande, especially after reading his latest book, with the polemical title: “Does the Church want to destroy itself? Facts and analyses presented by a business consultant.”

Meanwhile another figure of the German Church has sent the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith some of the McKinsey man's other writings, with the doctrinal errors it is alleged to contain highlighted.

If on the reform of the curia and on a more rigorous selection of candidates for bishop/COLORE] [More rigorous? Were they lax at all under Benedict XVI, whose selection of bishops has not been impugned at all>] the initiatives of Pope Francis have remained for now only at the level of announcement - these too being hailed with a general consensus - a number of concrete actions have instead been taken already on the front of the IOR.

Not so much by the pope but by different agents, some of them even in disagreement with each other, inside and outside of the Church. Moreover with a disastrous mishap that has fallen upon Francis himself.

The external agent that has had a decisive role in determining events has been the Italian magistracy, which in June ordered the arrest of Monsignor Nunzio Scarano, until one month before the head of accounting for the Administration of the Patrimony of the Apostolic See.

The charge is of illicit trafficking of money, including through accounts of the IOR and with the consent of the highest directors of the institute, carried out in 2012 precisely while the Vatican was engaged in front of the world in adopting the strictest international anti-laundering norms.

At the same time, the Italian magistracy has also concluded its investigations concerning the director and vice-director of the IOR, Paolo Cipriani and Massimo Tulli, also accused of suspicious movements of money in fourteen operations carried out between 2010 and 2011, therefore once again precisely while Benedict XVI was pushing forward a general reorganization and housecleaning of the Vatican financial offices.

The inexorable result of these actions of the Italian magistracy was the resignation of Cipriani and Tulli. that is, precisely the two who in the spring of 2012, the president of the IOR at the time, Ettore Gotti Tedeschi, had demanded should be removed, maintaining that they were the ones truly responsible for the misdeeds of the institute. Obtaining instead his own brutal expulsion on May 24 by the board of the IOR, at the mandate of cardinal secretary of state Tarcisio Bertone.

Against this background of devastation, Pope Francis took two provisions strictly of his own initiative.

On June 15, he appointed as “prelate” of the IOR, with full powers, Monsignor Battista Ricca, whom he had gotten to know and appreciate as director of the Domus Sanctae Marthae, where he chose to live instead of in the pontifical apartments.

And the following 24th he instituted a commission of investigation on the IOR, reporting to him, made up of five authoritative outside figures, including the former ambassador of the United States to the Holy See and professor of law at Harvard, Mary Ann Glendon.

Unfortunately, however, when Pope Francis instituted this commission, he had already discovered that he had erred spectacularly in the first appointment, that of the “prelate."

In the days immediately before June 24, in fact, meeting the Vatican nuncios who had come from all over the world to Rome, he had received from some of them incontestable information on the “scandalous conduct” of which Monsignor Ricca had given proof in 2000 and 2001 in Uruguay, when he was serving at that nunciature, from which he was brusquely removed before finally being called back to Rome.


The empty chair at the concert offered in his honor on June 22 was perhaps due in part to the sorrow felt by Francis at the discovery of this error of his, while meeting with the nuncios during those same hours and days. [Oh please, cut out the melodrama, Mr. Magister! The Pope's 'sorrow' could not have been so great as to disable him from attending a one-hour concert, during which Beethoven's music would have soothed his heart and spirit!]

No pope is infallible. Not even the most beloved by all. [So, already he is that!]
_
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 19/07/2013 06:36]
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Thursday, July 18, 15th Week in Ordinary Time
Today's saint is familiar from the July 14 observance of his liturgical feast in the United States, as it was before the post Vatican-II liturgical reforms.

Center photo: The saint's statue in the Founders Gallery of St. Peter's Basilica; poster at right looks towards the 400th centenary of his death in 2014.
ST. CAMILLO DE LELLIS (Italy, 1550-1614), Priest, Founder of the Camillian order, Patron of Nurses
The saint was born in Bocchianico, Italy. He fought for the Venetians against the Turks, was addicted to gambling, and by 1574 was penniless in Naples. He became a Capuchin novice, but was unable to be professed because of a diseased leg he contracted while fighting the Turks. He devoted himself to caring for the sick, and became director of the San Giacomo Hospital in Rome. He received permission from his confessor (St. Philip Neri) to be ordained and decided, with two companions, to found his own congregation, the Ministers of the Sick (the Camellians), dedicated to the care of the sick. They ministered to the sick of Holy Ghost Hospital in Rome, enlarged their facilities in 1585, founded a new house in Naples in 1588, and attended the plague-stricken aboard ships in Rome's harbor and in Rome. In 1591, the Congregation was made into an order to serve the sick by Pope Gregory XIV, and in 1591 and 1605, Camillus sent members of his order to minister to wounded troops in Hungary and Croatia, the first field medical unit. Gravely ill for many years, he resigned as superior of the Order in 1607 and died in Rome on July 14, the year after he attended a General Chapter there. He was canonized in 1746, was declared patron of the sick, with St. John of God, by Pope Leo XIII, and patron of nurses and nursing groups by Pope Pius XI. A church in Rome is dedicated to him.
Readings for today's Mass:http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/071813.cfm



AT THE VATICAN TODAY

No events announced for Pope Francis.

The Press Office released the text of a telegram sent in the Pope's name by Cardinal Secretary of state Tarcisio Bertone to the Bishop of Cayenne in French Guyana, expressing his condolences for a bus accident in which one passenger was killed - a young Parisian girl who was bound for WYD in RIO with other companions - and many others were injured.



One year ago...

No events were announced for Benedict XVI in Castel Gandolfo. But at the Vatican, a news briefing was held as scheduled on Moneyval's first status report on the financial transparency measures undertaken by the Holy See.



Vatican passes Moneyval evaluation
on 9 out of 16 key criteria


July 18, 2012

The following statement was delivered by Mons. Ettore Balestrero, Vatican Under-Secretary for Relations with States, regarding the Moneyval latest evaluation of measures undertaken by the Holy See to meet international standards of transparency in its financial operations. The original text is in English.

As the Head of Delegation of the Holy See to the Plenary Session of Moneyval that discussed and adopted the Holy See’s First Mutual Evaluation Report on July 4, 2012, I welcome you to this briefing, which aims to present the key findings of the Report and to share with you also some insights as to where the Holy See has been and where it is going.

The goal: Making moral commitments concrete

For the Holy See, this process is first and foremost a moral rather than a technical commitment. As Pope Benedict XVI stated in his 30 December, 2010 Motu Proprio, just as the rest of the international community equips itself with the tools necessary to fight these evils, it is right and good that the Holy See share in these efforts, adopting such tools "as its own" and thereby also "carrying out the mission of the Holy See."

As the Secretariat of State clarified in requesting this evaluation, the Holy See recognizes that moral commitments must be accompanied by the technical compliance and effective implementation of the international standards necessary to fight money laundering and the financing of terrorism. Compliance and effective implementation are indeed what render moral commitments concrete.

Our jurisdiction

Vatican City State has a very small territory, with a small population, a very low level of domestic crime, and no market economy. It is not a financial centre and its financial activities are meant to support its works of charity and of religion.

However the Holy See enjoys a recognized moral voice and in this sense is deeply connected not only with its immediate neighbors, but with all countries of the world.

Moreover, the Holy See, as primarily responsible for the universal mission of the Church, has a special ability – even duty – to guide and orient Catholic religious organizations throughout the world. While those organizations exist within their own civil jurisdictions and are bound to follow the laws of those jurisdictions for AML/CFT issues, it is important that the Holy See use its moral authority to raise maximum awareness about the far too frequent transnational crime of money laundering and the financing of terrorism.

Beginning along the path
and first accomplishments


Now, let’s see where we are coming from. The last nineteen months have been months of work and learning.

Before starting this process, we already had a good number of requirements in place. Above all, there has always been a clear determination to fight money laundering and terrorist financing, as well as a legal system that already had several of the elements necessary to tackle ML/FT problems.

At the end of 2010, we passed an AML/CFT law and requested evaluation in February 2011 by MONEYVAL. Our law came into force on April 1, 2011. Our Financial Intelligence Authority was operational by June. In November 2011, we received our first MONEYVAL onsite visit. The team of our evaluators was widely considered to be perhaps the strongest team MONEYVAL had ever assembled.

It included the President, the Secretary and an Administrator of MONEYVAL, the President of the Egmont Group of Financial Intelligence Units, two senior financial experts, and a Professor of International Law. We take both the praise and criticism contained in the report with seriousness.

Revision of the first AML/CFT legislation

Based on the preliminary remarks of the evaluators in November, it became apparent that the first version of the law, while representing an important effort at proper legislation, contained gaps and other difficulties that needed to be addressed in order to move forward.

All jurisdictions that receive an on-site visit are given two months time to introduce changes in their legislation, that will be included in the evaluation report. Within this timeframe, on January 25, 2012 a new law was introduced that provided for more effective cooperation among the Vatican Authorities involved in the prevention and countering of money laundering and the financing of terrorism. The new law stressed the importance of their mutual connections and the need to better allocate their respective competences in order to establish a stronger and more sustainable system AML/CFT system.

The present AML/CFT system

Now I would like to draw your attention to some of the more important elements of the current AML/CFT Regime:

- The establishment of a risk-based approach to AML/CFT work, particularly in regard to the identification of suspicious transactions;

- Enhanced emphasis on international cooperation, including full exchange of information with foreign counterparts. And I stress that this includes exchange of information including information prior to April 1, 2011;

- Laws relating to financial institution secrecy are consistent with the international standards;

- The criminal law is significantly improved, by providing a comprehensive definition of money laundering, and an array of predicate crimes in line with the international standards, as well as the criminalization of the financing of terrorism;

- The power of the courts to prosecute money laundering, financing of terrorism, and its predicate crimes, as well as to freeze and confiscate the proceeds of ML/FT activity has been strengthened;

- The sanctions for failure to fulfill AML/CFT requirements are enhanced and made applicable to legal persons;

- Entering into a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) is a requirement for the exchange of financial information with financial intelligence units from other states. We pledge this to be an effective and reliable tool for exchanging information on the basis of reciprocity with those jurisdictions that are also committed to fight money laundering and the financing of terrorism;

- The power of the AML/FT supervisor to perform an inspection of any financial institution is made explicit and the law provides for the creation of a specific and detailed regulation upon the basis of which that inspection could be conducted.

In addition, the Holy See, acting also on behalf of Vatican City State, has ratified the following Conventions:

- the Vienna Convention against Illicit Traffic on Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (1988).

- the New York Convention for the Suppression of the Financing of Terrorism (1999).

- the Palermo Convention against Transnational Organized Crime (2000).

These Conventions are immediately applicable in our legal system, without any further need to implement legislation regarding extradition and cooperation.

In addition, the area of international cooperation was carefully assessed. The findings of the evaluators were that the current system of the Holy See and of Vatican City State is largely compliant with the international standards.

Areas re where evaluators noted a need for improvement

We are aware that, like other jurisdictions, some areas of the Vatican’s systems to fight money laundering and the financing of terrorism still need to improve. After the new law was adopted in January, we addressed many of these issues in the course of our continuing exchanges with the evaluators. Other issues will be addressed expeditiously and giving proof of effectiveness.

For example:

- There are some concerns expressed in the report regarding the use of an MOU to establish the basis for international cooperation between financial intelligence units;

We feel that the adoption of this requirement, which is in line with international standards, represents the right approach for the Vatican, which, as a smaller jurisdiction, wishes to interact on fair and fully reciprocal terms with other countries. Indeed, this is a common choice made by many jurisdictions, including New Zealand, Canada, Australia and others; nor is this choice disfavored by such noted FATF members as the United States;

- The Pontifical Commission is mandated by the law to provide for a regulation permitting the AML/CFT Supervisor to perform on-sight inspections. The evaluators note that until such a regulation becomes law, the supervisors inspection powers are not yet defined. We agree. That regulation, which is already being drafted, will reflect our seriousness of purpose;

- The report notes that the original structure of a Financial Intelligence Authority, which combines the financial intelligence unit function and the regulatory functions of a Supervisor, appears to create difficulties. This structure of the FIA, which concentrated all AML intelligence and supervision was inherited from the first version of the law. It was retained in the second version of the law. The evaluators have expressed certain skepticism as to its "workability" . We are grateful for this observation which we take seriously;

- The report notes that conflicts of interest may arise due to the same person working at the same time in a Supervisor and in one of the supervised entities.

Steps taken after passing the new law

After adoption of the present law, the Holy See has continued to improve its anti-money- laundering system. Above all, the Holy See and the Vatican Authorities have moved from shorter-term solutions to the creation of long term, sustainable and effective solutions; and will continue to do.

For example, after January 25, that is after the above mentioned period of two months following the first on-site visit:

- The Holy Sere established and implemented a terrorist list in line with the measures required by the United Nations Security Council;

- We have officially applied to join the Egmont Group, which is the internationally accredited group of Financial Intelligence Units formed to favor rapid and reciprocal exchanges of information;

- Through the execution of memoranda of understanding, we have expeditiously moved to insert our own financial intelligence authority into the international network of financial intelligence units;

- As mentioned, the Cardinal’ Commission for the Vatican City State is in the process of adopting an inspection regulation;

- We have initiated further revision of our criminal law, with a view to further modernize its provisions in light of the international standards;

- Shortly we will complete our risk assessment;

- We are considering ratification of other crime fighting conventions and new legislation regarding non-profit organizations.

CONCLUSION

Therefore the report released today is not an end, but a milestone in our continuing efforts.

In regards to the actual findings, simply stated we obviously wish to strengthen the overall system; in particular out of the 16 key and core recommendations of the international standards to fight ML/FT there are 7 areas where the Holy See must and will focus on.

In this light, the report released today is not the end, but is rather an important passage of our continuing efforts to marry moral commitments to technical excellence.

We have taken a definitive step to lay the foundations to a structure – a house if you will – that is to a robust and sustainable system to combat money laundering and the financing of terrorism. Now it is our wish to fully construct a building that effectively shows the Holy See’s and Vatican City State’s desire to be a reliable partner in the international community.

With pride in what we have accomplished, tempered by recognition of what we must still do, I now welcome your questions.


The AP report stressed that the Vatican "received poor grades for the effectiveness of its new financial watchdog agency and the ability of its bank to track suspicious transactions", but also added the following information:

The so-called Moneyval committee praised the Holy See for making so much progress in a short amount of time to come into compliance with the norms, and the Vatican scored compliant or largely compliant grades overall in 49 percent of the criteria.

Moneyval's executive secretary, John Ringguth, said the uniqueness of the Holy See as a state stood out to evaluators. It is the seat of the Roman Catholic Church and a state with financial institutions but without a private sector.

"One of the first things that we had to get our head around was the law of 1929, which basically creates a public monopoly system in the Vatican City State and Holy See," he said in a phone interview.

Overall he said the Vatican fared well in its first round evaluation, noting that it comes out "somewhere in the middle" of Moneyval member states in terms of rankings; some of those states, however, have had years to come into compliance whereas the Vatican only began the evaluation process last year.

Two days later, inn his weekly column, John Allen Jr. would be the first among the Vaticanistas of any nationality to come out and present the resent Moneyval report on the Holy See's financial transparency in the right context - as a solid nuts-and-bolts governing achievement of Benedict the Legislator, as Sandro Magister has called him, from whom all sectors might learn a lesson.

Contrary to Allen's own favorite label of Benedict XVI as 'a teaching Pope', as if that were his only qualification, he is far from a 'one-trick' Pope. In a role that is more complex and universally demanding than any leadership function that could have been imagined by man, he does what he has to do, and can do, according to a sensible scheme of priorities that are not confined to spiritual transcendence, as he never loses sight of the everyday context in which man tries to achieve such transcendence.

]G]Along with the Church's now all-out war against sex predators in the clergy and the bishops who cover up for them, this transparency effort would never have been possible without the political will of one man, a most enlightened - and most likely, divinely illuminated - sovereign monarch
, in a world where the exercise of 'democracy' has often meant inherent stalemate, and therefore inaction, among battling partisan interests on any significant policy... Papa Bene also shows that at 85, he has the leadership, dynamism and initiative of men half his age.


A Vatican watershed on transparency,
and a new tool for reformers


July 20, 2012

For sure, I’m no Nostradamus. To cite just one example of my failures as a prognosticator, in 1999 I published a biography of then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger containing four reasons why his election as pope was improbable. We’re now, of course, into the eighth year of his reign.

A month ago, however, I finally got one right.

On June 22, previewing an evaluation of the Vatican’s financial transparency by Moneyval, the Council of Europe’s anti-money laundering body, I wrote: “The report is probably destined to trigger confusing and conflicting headlines about how well the Vatican did.”

On cue, these headlines ran shortly after the report’s release on Wednesday, July 18:
o Associated Press: “Vatican passes key financial transparency test”
o AGI: “Moneyval flunks the Vatican”
o L’Espresso: “Moneyval passes the Vatican”
o RTE: “Serious failings identified in Vatican Bank”
p Sunday Times: “Report cites progress in Vatican anti-money laundering efforts”

Sometimes the juxtaposition actually came in the same piece. The Italian daily Il Messaggero ran a headline (“Moneyval: Still little transparency at Vatican Bank”) which was at odds with its own opening paragraph (“The Vatican Bank is not quite transparent, but almost, the report says.”)

Why the confusion? In reality, the Vatican probably did about as well as was reasonable to expect, but the report contains plenty of criticism too. As a result, it’s a Rorschach test for broader attitudes, open to being spun in whichever direction someone feels like taking. [The fact is there is no need to spin anything - though the media could not resist doing so, as foolish as that is. The report is down-to-earth and specific, and it was never expected to be undiluted praise. It is in the nature of an interim report that while certain aspects will be praised, others will be criticized, the point being to achieve as close to full compliance with the evaluating agency's criteria. The Vatican itself struck the right note and balance in its statements. ]

We’ll get to the results in a moment, but first a word about the historical significance of the process. Without a doubt, the word is: “Watershed.”

Never before has the Vatican opened its financial and legal systems to this sort of external, independent review, with the results made public. In centuries past, had secular authorities shown up to conduct such a review, they would have been fought off tooth and nail. For Moneyval, the red carpet was rolled out instead.

American lawyer Jeffrey Lena, an advisor to the Vatican on the Moneyval process, told me that evaluators were able to examine records of judicial and diplomatic cooperation, anti-money laundering certifications, accountancy management letters, foundation registry records, and other confidential legal documents.

To say that the Vatican traditionally has been reluctant to grant such access is a bit like saying the Tea Party is lukewarm about Obama — in other words, it really doesn’t do justice to the depth of emotion involved.

In quick-and-dirty fashion, here’s a summary of the key Moneyval findings.

Evaluators found that the Vatican “has come a long way in a very short period of time”, and said that “the Holy See and Vatican City State authorities have cooperated closely with the evaluators, and reacted quickly to remedy a number of the deficiencies highlighted during the first on-site visit.”

The evaluation reflects the situation between November 2011 and January 2012, and the report lauds the Vatican for continuing “to move forward to improve and modernize its laws and practices” since that time.

Yet evaluators also found that “important issues still need addressing in order to demonstrate that a fully effective regime has been instituted in practice.”

In light of the Vatican’s checkered history of financial scandals, this finding seems especially key: “Although there have been recent unsubstantiated allegations of corruption in the media,” the report states, “there is no empirical evidence of corruption taking place within the Vatican City State.”

(For the record, the media didn’t just invent those allegations. The Vatican’s current ambassador in Washington wrote a letter two years ago, while he was a top official in the Vatican City State, complaining to thePpope about “so many instances of corruption and dishonesty.” The correspondence came to light amid the Vatican leaks scandal, though it’s been described as exaggerated or inaccurate by other officials.) [And for the record, Mr. Allen and all you reporters and commentators out there, as I have been hammering home ad mauseam, you are simply taking the word of Vigano about alleged "so many instances of corruption and dishonesty", when he only cited one example - the now oft-repeated tale of the cost overprice in the 2009 Nativity scene in St. Peter's Square [which, moreover, has been explained by the Governatorate Technical Services Department as having represented a one-time investment in a permanent base and frame for the annual construction]. Considering the detail into which Vigano went into describing the alleged personal misconduct of his 'enemies' at the Vatican, does anyone really think that if there had been more than the creche overprice, he would not have presented them in detail? Why has no one in MSM pointed this out at all? Because it is convenient for their purposes - to paint the Vatican and therefore the Church in the most negative light - to simply quote Vigano and not investigate what he said? What happened to independent reporting and corroboration? Well, now we have the presumably unbiased conclusion of the Moneyval inspectors themselves to tell us otherwise. But has anyone else besides Allen picked this out from the 240-page report?]

Overall, Moneyval found that “the threat of money laundering and terrorist financing is very low.” The report said that three factors, however, increase the risk:

- A high volume of cash transactions and wire transfers. (The report acknowledges that cash transactions “are an important contributor to the funding of the global mission of the church”.)
- The global footprint of the church’s activities, which include transactions with countries that insufficiently apply transparency standards.
- Limited information on non-profit organizations operating within the Vatican.

The Vatican has said that it’s already initiated a risk assessment in these areas, which presumably will be examined during the next round of Moneyval review.

In evaluating European states, Moneyval uses the 49 benchmarks established by the Financial Action Task Force, founded by the G8. Four were judged non-applicable to the Vatican, while it got passing grades on 22 and failing marks on 23. Most importantly, the Vatican was judged “compliant” or “largely compliant”, the highest marks available, on nine of the sixteen “key and core” standards.

Those results put the Vatican squarely in the middle of the global pack, with scores similar to recent evaluations of Germany, Italy, and the Czech Republic. The Vatican actually earned better scores on the “key and core” recommendations than 19 of the 29 countries Moneyval has evaluated, and most of those states have been through two previous evaluation cycles.

In other words, the Vatican almost finished in the top third of European nations the first time it took the test.


As a result, the Vatican will not be placed into Moneyval’s “Compliance Enhancing Procedures,” designed for problem states -- as close as they come to saying that a country has “failed”. Instead, the Vatican will be subject to the normal follow-up process for states seen as moving in the right direction.

* * *

In terms of deficiencies, Moneyval found that the “role, responsibility, authority, powers and independence” of a new financial watchdog unit created by Pope Benedict XVI in 2010 need to be clarified and strengthened. At the time, the creation of that watchdog, called the Financial Information Authority, was touted as a cornerstone in Benedict’s campaign for a financial glasnost.

According to the report, the Financial Information Authority lacks adequate powers to carry out its duties. It also lacks the ability to issue sanctions with regard to APSA, the Apostolic Patrimony of the Holy See, one of the Vatican’s two main financial entities, along with the Institute for the Works of Religion, popularly known as the “Vatican Bank.” [I wonder if this was part of the 'weakening' of the original FIA concept by the 2011 amendments made by Bertone and company to the original law signed by the Pope in December 2010?]

Evaluators found that the Financial Information Authority has not yet conducted any on-site inspections, nor has it done any sample testing of files. The report also said that the watchdog unit hasn’t yet performed an inspection of either APSA or the Vatican Bank, despite the fact that bank officials requested one. [What good would inspections be if, as the previous paragraph says, the FIA has no ability to impose sanctions???]

Further, evaluators said the number of reports the Financial Information Authority has received regarding suspect transactions is low, even allowing for the small size of the Vatican’s financial sector.

As a result of the Vatican leaks scandal, we know that similar concerns have percolated internally.

Earlier this year, Italian Cardinal Attilio Nicora, the president of the watchdog unit, wrote a confidential memorandum voicing concern that limits on its authority from the Secretariat of State could be seen as a “step back” on reform, and could “create serious alarm in the international community.”

The Vatican has said that new regulations providing inspection powers with teeth for the Financial Information Authority are on the way. Officials say it’s more important to get those regulations right than to get them fast, but when they’re issued, they vow, they’ll satisfy international standards.

Moneyval also proposed that the watchdog unit should inspect not just the Vatican’s own institutional entities, but also the 46 non-profit organizations housed within the Vatican. These are mostly small foundations created by a cardinal or other senior figure to promote some pet project, such as inter-faith dialogue, and are largely unregulated. [But one understood the December 31, 2010 law signed by the Pope to cover all financial transactions by any agency operating in the Vatican!]

On the Vatican Bank, the Moneyval report suggested that it be subject to independent supervision. The lack of such oversight, it warned, “poses large risks to the stability of the small financial sector of the Holy See and Vatican City State.”

Though there is a Commission of Cardinals that governs the bank, evaluators apparently felt that because the commission is technically a part of the institution, it’s not an objective overseer. In part, this reflects eternal confusion over whether the Institute for the Works of Religion is or isn’t a “bank”. Commercial banks are normally subject to an external regulatory agency, such as the FDIC in the States, while the IOR is a non-profit public entity.

The question of oversight is especially current in the wake of the late May firing of Italian economist Ettore Gotti Tedeschi as the bank’s president. Gotti Tedeschi had been seen in some quarters as a symbol of the Vatican’s new commitment to transparency, though officials insisted that his removal was a personnel issue related to what they described as “erratic” behavior and basically not doing his job. [No, Mr. Allen, Carl Anderson's now infamous internal memo detailing the reasons for the no-confidence vote in Gotti Tedeschi specifically said that he had himself become an obstacle to transparency!]

Moneyval also recommended that a formal statute should set out the kinds of legal and natural persons eligible to hold accounts at the bank, while applauding its internal efforts to review its database of just over 33,000 accounts -- an inspection which actually predates the Moneyval process...

[Allen then provides the links to the Moneyval site containing the 24-page Executive Summary of the report and the 240-page report itself. I must admit I skimmed through these 240 pages after the briefing on Wednesday but decided that I do not have the time - nor the technical wherewithal - to get into the details.]

Standing back from the specifics, here are three final observations about the significance of the Moneyval report.

First, journalists probably need to update their draft obituaries of Pope Benedict XVI. Up to this point, the consensus [OF WHOM? Allen and his fellow Vaticanistas who largely shape the way the public perceives the Vatican, the Church and the Pope?] has been that Benedict is a teaching Pope, not a governor, and that his inattention to management has allowed a string of train-wrecks to happen. There’s still truth to that assessment, but we now have independent secular evaluators saying that considerable progress on financial rigor has been made on Benedict’s watch.

Benedict also has launched various reforms on the clerical sexual abuse scandals, and while their effectiveness is still debated, few observers doubt that the Vatican is in a better place today than seven years ago. His record may thus have to be reconsidered: Still primarily a teaching pope, perhaps, but one who’s made management strides in at least a couple of key areas. [Unfortunately, rather than being a 'concession' that Benedict XVI has other achievements other than teaching, this sounds more like condescension! "Oh look, he may have more than one trick to show!"]

As a footnote, one might make a similar point about Benedict’s top deputy, Italian Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the Secretary of State. Fairly or not, Bertone has taken a beating in the press over the last seven years for his alleged incompetence, related to such spectacular flame-outs as the Holocaust-denying bishop affair. This time around, however, Bertone’s team managed to avoid snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. [One wonders, if the Pope had not overruled Bertone and the latter had succeeded to involve the Vatican in San Raffaele and the Toniolo Isntitute, what might Moneyval have thought of such financial excursions?]....

[Allen then devotes a couple of paragraphs singing the praises of Mons. Balestrero, whose mother is American, as a potential future Secretary of State. As it happens, Balestrero was unexpectedly named Apostolic Nuncio to Colombia in one of Benedict XVI's last nominations before he stepped down as Pope.]

Third, it’s the nature of the Catholic system that everything a Pope does, for good or ill, sets a tone. [I wish! It seems too many are out of tune with his initiatives in the sex-abuse issue and on liturgy!] By subjecting the Vatican to a Moneyval review, Benedict XVI in effect has handed financial reformers across the Catholic world a new club with which to beat recalcitrant officials over the head and shoulders.

From now on, any bishop or religious superior who resists an independent audit; any pastor who drags his feet about proper controls on receipts from the collection plate; any head of a Catholic school, hospital or charity who plays fast and loose with the books; anybody in authority, in fact, who shrugs off concerns about money management; will inevitably face the question, “If the Pope’s open to criticism, why aren’t you?” [Not that this has worked in the case of liturgy and the sex-abuse issue!]

Whether a sea change in accountability ensues remains to be seen, but even the prospect suggests that the Moneyval process could be of consequence not just for the Vatican, but for the Church everywhere.

So, once again, as we Benaddicts think all the time -

DEO GRATIAS!

BRAVO BENEDETTO XVI IL GRANDISSIMO.

BENEDICTUS QUI VENIT IN NOMINE DOMINI!




Unfortunately, few commentators even conceded the historicity of the entire Moneyval process with regard to Vatican finances, much as they had virtually ignored the genuine revolution represented by Benedict XVI's December 2010 promulgation of a Vatican financial transparency law for the Vatican. For the first time in the Church's history, her central government opened itself up to external scrutiny in an area that has always been closely guarded - ''highly secretive' is the media word - its finances.

None of the cardinals who, at the pre-Conclave congregations in Marc
h 2013, sanctimoniously painted the governance of the Vatican by Benedict XVI as an unmitigated disaster ever once cited this development. And I reiterate my perplexity as to why Cardinal Bertone and his four colleagues on the cardinals' oversight commission for IOR did not make this point (unless they chose not to do so in order to avoid having to get into the can of worms represented by Gotti Tedeschi's dismissal.

In any case, how can one forgive and forget - in the days and weeks that immediately followed BenedictXVI's retirement - the virtual and, one must think, deliberate snub made by Benedict XVI's critics, especially the sanctimonious cardinals, of the unprecedented acts of transparent governance that he showed? When all he got from them was an almost insulting form telegram such as a corporation might give to an aged employee who had just retired? The callous gesture and the utterly generic character of the telegram's tone and content said it all - to them, Benedict XVI was yesterday's trash who must now be consigned to the garbage dump of history.




This post was for yesterday, obviously... So sorry for yet another blot on my increasingly spotty record as a 'chronicler'...
20/07/2013 01:01
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Friday, July 19, 2013, 15th Week in Ordinary Time

ST. SYMACCHUS(b Sardinia), 51st Pope (498-514)
Born in Sardinia, he was baptized in Rome where he became Arch-Deacon under Pope Anastasius II. An anti-pope, Laurentius, was elected the same day by a minority with Byzantine sympathies and with the support of Roman Emperor Anastasius. But the Visigoth King Theodoric the Great supported Symmachus who ascended to the throne. The schism with Laurentius continued for years, with continuous intrigue and forgeries to support one side or the other. In 501, Senator Festus, a supporter of Laurentius, accused Symmachus of assorted crimes, including being unchaste and misusing his office. The Pope refused to answer the charges and claimed that secular rulers had no jurisdiction over a Pope. At one point Theodoric installed the anti-pope in the Lateran Palace and proclaimed him the legal pontiff. But the emperor later decided that Laurentius was too Byzantine, and had him removed. A Synodus Palmaris of all bishops in October 502 decided to dismiss all the charges against Symmachus on the ground that only God could judge him. During all the turmoil, Symacchus was not idle. He took severe measures against the Manichæans, ordered the burning of their books, and expelled them from the city. He erected or restored and adorned various churches in Rome. He also built asylums for the poor near the three churches of St. Peter, St. Paul, and St. Laurence. He contributed large sums to support the Catholic bishops of Africa who were persecuted by the rulers of the Arian Vandals. He also aided the inhabitants of the provinces of upper Italy who suffered severely from the invasion of the barbarians. After his death he was buried at St. Peter's.
Readings for today's Mass:
www.usccb.org/bible/readings/071913.cfm



AT THE VATICAN TODAY

No events announced for Pope Francis. But the Vatican released the text of a new chirograph - a letter concerning the personnel at the Vatican and the Holy See only - regarding another commissioh to study future reforms in the central government of the Church.


CHIROGRAPH OF THE HOLY FATHER FRANCIS
INSTITUTING A PONTIFICAL COMMISSION FOR REFERENCE
ON THE ECONOMIC-ADMINISTRATIVE STRUCTURE OF THE HOLY SEE


The Holy Father, by a chirograph dated 18 July, has established a Pontifical Commission for Reference on the Organisation of the economic-administrative structure of the Holy See.

The Commission will gather information, report to the Holy Father and co-operate with the Council of Cardinals for the study of the organisational and economic problems of the Holy See, in order to draft reforms of the institutions of the Holy See, with the aim of a "simplification and rationalisation of the existing bodies and more careful planning of the economic activities of all the Vatican Administrations".

As explained in the Chirograph, the Committee will "offer the technical support of specialist advice and develop strategic solutions for improvement, so as to avoid the misuse of economic resources, to improve transparency in the processes of purchasing goods and services; to refine the administration of goods and real estate; to work with ever greater prudence in the financial sphere; to ensure correct application of accounting principles; and to guarantee healthcare and social security benefits to all those eligible".

The Commission will be able to collaborate, on request, with the working Group of eight Cardinals in drafting a plan for the reform of the Apostolic Constitution "Pastor Bonus" on the Roman Curia.

The aims and the appointments of the Commission are described in detail in the Chirograph itself.

The members of the Commission are laypeople, experts in "legal, economic, financial and organisational matters", currently eminent consultants or reviewers for Vatican or ecclesiastical economic institutions. The only member of the clergy is the Secretary.

The eight members are:
Dr. Joseph FX Zahra (Malta), President; Msgr. Lucio Angel Vallejo Balda (Secretary of the Prefecture for Economic Affairs), Secretary; Mr. Jean-Baptiste de Franssu (France); Dr. Enrique Llano (Spain);[Dr. Jochen Messemer (Germany); Ms. Francesca Immacolata Chaouqui (Italy); .r. Jean Videlain-Sevestre (France); Mr. George Yeo (Singapore). Dr. Zahra and Dr. Messemer are International reviewers of the Prefecture of Economic Affairs of the Holy See.

The Commission will begin its work as soon as possible. A first meeting is scheduled for shortly after the Holy Father’s return from Brazil.

The Holy Father hopes for a happy and productive collaboration between the Commission and the Vatican Administrations associated with its work.








EIGHT YEARS AND THREE MONTHS AGO,

Joseph Ratzinger was elected Pope.

OUR LOVE AND PRAYERS, YOUR HOLINESS!

AD MULTOS ANNOS!






[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 21/07/2013 02:41]
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