I must admit that I have not paid enough attention on this Forum to the sermons of the Preacher of the Pontifical Household, Fr. Raniero Cantalamessa, who delivers five important sermons in Lent for the Holy Father and the Roman Curia - the four Lenten sermons on for four consecutive Fridays in the second-to the fifth weeks of Lent at the Redemptoris Mater chapel of the Apostolic Palace, and the homily at the Good Friday liturgy in St. Peter's Basilica.
This year, Vatican Radio even provided an immediate English translation of his Good Friday homily:
www.radiovaticana.org/en1/Articolo.asp?c=578071
In 2010, Fr. Cantalamesa created headlines full of outrage when he recounted in his Good Friday homily that a Jewish friend wrote him to say that the media assaults on the Church and the Pope over the sex abuses committed by some priests reminded him of the anti-Jewish propaganda in Nazi Germany before World War II.
This year, an Italian news agency finds a topical reference worked into the Franciscan theologian's Good Friday homily this year.
The Orlandi case laps at
Vatican's Holy Week observance
Papal preacher refers to 'anonymous crimes'
and 'unresolved cases' in Good Friday homily
VATICAN CITY, April 6 (Translated from TMNews) - The Emanuela Orlandi case turned up at the Vatican today in the midst of the commemoration of the Lord's Passion.
Even if he couched it in general terms, the Preacher of the Pontifical Household, Fr. Raniero Cantalamessa, spoke to the Pope and the Good Friday congregation at St. Peter's about 'anonymous crimes (and) unresolved cases that take place even in our own country".
He said this after speaking of the 'sorrow of innocent children', and went on to call on 'responsible persons' to 'come out in the open', not to 'carry their secrets to the grave' and to 'confess their sins' because 'the Italian people are not unforgiving to those who ered but who acknowledge the bad they have caused'.
Avducted in 1983, Emanuela Orlandi, then 15, daughter of an employee in the Prefecture of the Pontifical Household and a Vatican citizen, has been for three decades at the center of one of the most intractable unsolved cases in Italian history.
Her brother Pietro recently published an interview book with newsman Fabrizio Peronaci entitled
Mia sorella Emanuela (My sister Emanuela) in which he seeks to have light shed on the cold case.
Orlandi himself revived public interest in the case by launching an online petition to Benedict XVI - signed by some 70,000 Italians - asking him to "do everything humanly possible to ascertain the truth about what happened to his Vatican compatriot Emanuela Orlandi".
Pietro says he is hopeful because Benedict XVI has been engaged in bringing about transparency in Vatican affairs, in matters such as financial operations and the sex abuse cases, and therefore, could also contribute to uncover facts about his sister's disappearance.
Lately, the former mayor of Rome Walter Veltroni, now head of the center-left Partito Democrata, demanded in Parliament that the Vatican explain why a notorious Mafia chief Renatino de Pedis believed linked to the Orlandi disappearance was buried in the Roman church of Sant'Apollinare, near where, by coincidence, Orlandi was last seen apparently waiting for a bus before she was abducted. Veltroni engaged the current Interior Minister about the issue at question time in the Italian House of Deputies.
[This seems like political opportunism because Veltroni was mayor of Rome at the time the Mafia lord was buried in Sant'Apollinare. Why did he not question it at the time? And what would the current Interior Minister say about a case that is 29 years old when suddenly questioned about it in Parliament?]
[NB: The Mafia connection is that De Pedis was thought to have masterminded the abduction to use the girl as a pawn, because her father was suspected to have come upon documents regarding links between the Mafia and the authorities at the Vatican financial institution IOR relative to the collapse of the Banco Ambrosiano bank in 1982.]
Also in recent days, a Roman prosecutor had openly said that 'someone in the Vatican knows the truth" about Orlandi's disappearance but is not talking. Since then, however, a new chief prosecutor, Giuseppe Pignatone, issued a statement saying that
"every new initiative and proceeding on the case of Emanuela Orlandi will be directed and coordinated by Italian federal prosecutors, who have taken the responsibility for the district's anti-Mafia operations".
[I always thought that the investigation should really be in the hands of the Italians, specifically Rome police, because the crime happened in Rome, not at the Vatican, and because the Vatican police really are not equipped for criminal investigation and prosecution.]
There has been no official comment so far from the Vatican. But Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, who was Deputy Secretary of State for General Affairs at the time of the abduction, told
Corriere della Sera that "If anyone in the Vatican knew anything about the case, they would have said so already".
But today, the Preacher of the Pontifical Household seemed to address the issue in this passage of his homily, which comes after he speaks of the good thief who was crucified alongside Jesus:
How many atrocious crimes in recent times remain anonymous, how many unresolved cases exist! The good thief launches an appeal to those responsible: do like me, come out into the open, confess your fault; you also will experience the joy I had when I heard Jesus’ word: “”today you will be with me in Paradise!” (Luke 23:43).
How many confessed offenders can confirm that it was also like this for them: that they passed from hell to heaven the day that they had the courage to repent and confess their fault. I have known some myself. The paradise promised is peace of conscience, the possibility of looking at oneself in the mirror or of looking at one’s children without having to have contempt for oneself.
Do not take your secret to your grave; it would procure for you a far more fearful condemnation than the human. Our people are not merciless with one who has made a mistake but recognizes the evil done, sincerely, not just for some calculation. On the contrary! They are ready to be merciful and to accompany the repentant one on his journey of redemption...
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 07/04/2012 16:24]