BENEDICT XVI: NEWS, PAPAL TEXTS, PHOTOS AND COMMENTARY

Monday, August 2, 18th Week in Ordinary Time

ST. EUSEBIUS OF VERCELLI (Italy, 283-371), Bishop and Confessor
Benedict XVI dedicated his catechesis on October 17, 2007 to this early Father of the Church
www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/audiences/2007/documents/hf_ben-xvi_aud_20071017...
Born in Sardinia, he grew up in Rome where he became a priest at the height of the Arian heresy and was named the first bishop
of northern Italy, with his seat in Vercelli, in 345. He firmly allied himself to the fourth-century Fathers, including St. Athanasius
and St. Hilary of Poitiers, in defending the divinity of Christ against the Arian heresy. Inspired by Athanasius's Life of St. Anthony
Abbot, the father of eastern monasticism, Eusebius organized his priests into a community within the city where they lived like
monks, setting a standard for apostolic holiness that inspired other bishops who were subsequently named in northern Italy, many
of whom also became saints. For defending Arianism, Eusebius, like Athanasius and many other bishops, was exiled by the philo-
Arian emperor Constantius II. Eusebius lived in Palestine from 355-360, where he wrote about his life, then went on to Asia
Minor and Egypt until 362, when a new emperor, though he wished to restore paganism, allowed all exiled bishops to return.
In Alexandria, he took part in Anastasius's Council which confirmed the divinity of the Holy Spirit and the orthodox doctrine on
the Incarnation. He was bishop for ten more years until his death.
Readings for today's Mass:
www.usccb.org/nab/readings/080210.shtml


No OR today.


New secretary at Congregation
for Institutes of Consecrated Life
Translated from

August 2, 2010

The Holy Father has named a new Secretary for the Congregation for the Institutes of Consecrated Life
and Societies of Apostolic Life - Fr. Joseph William Tobin, C.SS.R., who is also elevated to the rank of
Archbishop. He was the Superior General of the Redemptorists from 1997-2009. In 2001-2009, he was a member
of the coordinating council between the Congregation and the worldwide Union of Superiors-General. He was
born in Detroit, Michigan, in 1952. NB: AFP, which ought to know better, has reported erroneously that Mons. Tobin now
heads the Congregation to which he has been named secretary. That is obviously wrong. He was named secretary, not Prefect,
who is still Cardinal Franc Rode. But Rode turned 75 last September and may well be retiring soon.




- In La Repubblica today, Orazio La Rocca says the three ostensibly homosexual priests who were the subject of the recent Panorama expose continue to carry out their functions at the Curial dicasteries to which they belong and saying daily Mass in the Diocese of Rome. La Rocca claims he has been able to identify them easily by name as an Italian, a Frenchman, and a South American, employed respectively in dicasteries having to do with justice, mass media and ecumenical relations... This, despite the fact that Cardinal Vallini's statement issued the day the the article came out was supposedly cleared by Cardinal Bertone - and yet, his deputy for internal affairs has not done anything about the three Curial employes? The Secretariat of State cannot use the summer vacation as an excuse for inaction!
- Cardinal Bertone spent his recent summer holiday at the papal chalet in Les Combes. The facility is part of a summer colony owned by the Salesians, the order to which the cardinal belongs.
- One of the sillier reactions to the C&L children's book Gli Amici di Gesu adopting texts from Benedict XVI's catecheses on the Apostles and St. Paul was something headlined "Benedict 'unfriends' Mary Magdalane". Feminists - and probably 'Da Vinci Code' enthusiasts - claim the Pope has further slighted all women by not including Mary Magdalene in the book!
- The Anglophone media's current B16-Vatican newslist includes the Pope's remarks on cluster bombs and 'Vatican slams US green light on stem-cell work', from yesterday; and from much earlier, the Swiss Guard rule against immodest wear when in the Vatican, not just in St. Peter's; and the OR's boo-boo on 'the Caravaggio that isn't'.
- "Scandals have scared off new recruits", says the president of the German bishops' conference in this interview with dpa
www.earthtimes.org/articles/news/337481,germanys-top-catholic-s...
claiming applications to seminaries this year have only come to 150 throughout Germany - a record low, according to Mons. Zollitsch. It's a weak faith that young German Catholic males have if the 'scandals' have 'scared them' from responding to vocation! It should be a call to German pastors to find ways to reinforce the faith at the individual level of their parishioners.
- And yet (see report in preceding page), 44,000 of the 53,000 young ministrants from Europe who will be coming to Rome for a pilgrimage this week are said to be from Germany. They didn't get scared! Let us hope many of them will go on to become priests and religious.