Thanks to Lella's blog
we now have a full transcription of Cardinal Sodano's greeting to the Holy Father in behalf of the universal Church. Here is a translation:
CARDINAL SODANO'S TRIBUTE
TO THE HOLY FATHER
Easter Sunday, April 4, 2010
Holy Father,
On this solemn feast of Easter, the liturgy of the Church invites us to a holy joy, by telling us: "This is the day made by the Lord - let us rejoice and exult!"
Even with the rain coming down on this historic piazza, the sun shines bright in our hearts. In this spirit, we close ranks around you, the Successor of Peter, the Bishop of Rome, the solid rock of the Holy Church of Christ, to sing with you the Alleluia of faith and Christian hope.
We are profoundly grateful for the strength of spirit and apostolic courage with which you announce to us the Gospel of Christ.
We admire your great love through which, with a father's heart, you have made your own "the joys and hopes, the sorrows and anguish of men today, especially the poor and the suffering" - to use the words of the Second Vatican Council in Gaudium et spes.
Today, through me, the Church wishes to say to you in unison: Happy Easter, beloved Holy Father!
Happy Easter! The Church is with you!
With you are the cardinals who are your co-workers in the Roman Curia.
With you are our brother bishops all over the world who guide the 3,000 ecclesiastical districts on the globe.
And particularly with you these days are the 400,000 priests who generously serve the People of God in parishes, oratories, schools, hospitals, in the armed forces and countless other activities, as well as in missions in the most remote parts of the world.
Holy Father, with you are the People of God who do not allow themselves to be influenced by the chatter of the moment, nor by the trials that are meant to strike at the community of believers.
In fact, Jesus told us: "In the world you will have tribulations", adding right away, "But have courage - I have conquered the world".
Last Thursday, at the Holy Mass for the blessing of the Holy Oils, Your Holiness edified all of us, speaking of the goodness of God with words inspired by the first Bishop of Rome, the Apostle Peter, in describing the attitude of Christ during the Passion: "When insulted, he did not respond with insults; maltreated, he did not threaten vengeance, but trusted in Him who judges with justice".
Holy Father, we will treasure your words. On this Paschal solemnity, we pray for you that the Lord, our Good Shepherd, may continue to sustain you in your mission in the service of the Church and the world itself.
Happy Easter, Holy Father! Happy Easter, beloved Christ on earth! The Church is with you!
They are words that needed to be said, and the occasion was the right one. The words were also very well chosen to avoid any direct reference to the relentless media campaign against the Pope, and through him, the Church - except for that single phrase 'the chatter of the moment' (not, as most reports translated it, 'petty gossip').
But the media betrayed their consciousness of guilt in that almost everybody referred to Sodano's words in the news stories as 'a defense of the Pope'. There was no defense - because there is nothing to defend. The Pope's record on the child-abuse issue is clear and clean. The attacks on him are built on sheer and malicious innuendo.
Cardinal Sodano's words expressed affection, gratitude, solidarity, and support for the spiritual leader of Roman Catholicism. It was right that he articulated it as the most senior member of the Catholic hierarchy after the Pope.
It doesn't even matter that he may have had a role to play in sex-abuse cases that were hushed up when he was John Paul II's Secretary of State - that is not common knowledge at all to the tens of millions who saw and heard him on TV around the world last Sunday, and so there was nothing to detract from the content of his words.
Nor, I think, from the sincerity. After all, he did not make any references to the sex abuse scandals. If he had, the media may well have seized on it to castigate him for hypocrisy, at the very least.
It was good and right, necessary and propitious, that Cardinal Sodano said those words on Easter Sunday and to a world audience. And it was clear the Holy Father appreciated it. And you could see it by the way he stood up right after Sodano had pronounced his last word and looked towards him beaming (the same way he did, though in a different context, after Placido Domingo sang 'Panis angelicus' at the Wahsington DC Mass in April 2008), the way he embraced him afterwards. A father always appreciates it when his children say they love him!...Perhaps that is why when I translated Sodano's words, and everytime I read them, the tears come spontaneously at the poignancy of the occasion.
L'Osservatore Romano followed up the Sunday remarks with an interview with Cardinal Sodano in the April 6-7 issue:
'With the Church
alongside the Pope'
Interview with Cardinal Sodano
by Giampaolo Mattei
Translated from
the 4/6-4/7 issue of
"It has become a cultural contrast: the Pope embodies moral truths that are not accepted by secular society, and so the failings and errors of some priests are now being used as weapons against the Church".
Cardinal Angelo Sodano speaks further, after his remarks before Easter Sunday mass at St. Peter's Square, in which he expressed the affection and loyalty of the Catholics of the world for Benedict XVI.
"Behind these unjust attacks against the Pope," the cardinal said in an interview, "are views about the family and life that are against the Gospel. And now, the accusation of pedophilia is being used against the whole Church. In the past, there were the battles of modernism against Pius X, then the offensive against Pius XII to criticize his actions during World War II, and then against Paul VI for
Humanae Vitae [the encyclical that declares the use of artificial contraception as a violation of God's law].
Your intervention, on Easter morning - could it be read as a reaction to the defamatory campaign against the Pope, which have intensified lately with the opportunistic pretext that he failed to speak about the sex abuse cases during Holy Week?
Along with these unjust attacks, we are being told that the Church is wrong about its strategy and that we should be reacting differently. The Church has its own style and it does not include adopting the methods that are now used against the Pope. The only strategy we have comes from the Gospel.
In your opinion, how is the Catholic world, living through this?
Catholics feel rightly wounded when they are all made out to be involved en masse in the serious and tragic sins committed by some priests, in which individual guilt and responsibility are transformed into a collective offence, in a forced operation that is truly incomprehensible.
My remarks simply gave voice to the People of God: to the college of cardinals, above all, who are one with the Roman Pontiff; but also all the bishops and our 400,000 priests.
I especially wanted to speak about these ministers who dedicate their lives to the service of God and the Church. If some minister has been faithless, then the media cannot and should not generalize.
Of course, we all suffer, and Benedict XVI has asked for forgiveness in behalf of the offenders several times.
But it is not Christ's fault that Judas betrayed him. It is not the fault of a bishop if one of his priests defiles himself by serious sins. And it certainly is not the responsibility of the Pope.
All the Church is with the Pope: was that your message?
My words were spoken in the context of the Easter liturgy. It is logical that on the most significant feast of the year, a family gathers around the father. I therefore considered this an occasion appropriate for reiterating the profound bonds of unity that bring all the members of the Church together around him whom the Holy Spirit chose to lead the community of believers.
For my part, as dean of the College of Cardinals, I thought it was my duty to make that intervention. Like every cardinal, I have the mission to be always by the side of the Pope and to serve the Church usque ad effusionem sanguinis - even up to shedding one's blood.
I feel an apostolic duty to Benedict XVI for the apostolic dedication with which he serves the Church daily. And my words were also prompted by a personal impulse, by the profound affection that I have for the Vicar of Christ.
How did you conceive the remarks you gave?
Besides a testimonial of closeness to the Pope, it was also an invitation to calm. It is the appeal with which the Pope himself continually invokes the Church and the world, in the footsteps of all his great predecessors on Peter's Chair.
We should not be surprised at being persecuted because Jesus already warned the apostles that "a servant is not greater than than his master. If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you. If they observed my words closely, so too will they observe yours", as we read in the Gospel of John.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 08/04/2010 13:05]