BENEDICT XVI: NEWS, PAPAL TEXTS, PHOTOS AND COMMENTARY

Thursday, April 12, Octave of Easter

ST. TERESA DE LOS ANDES (Chile, 1900-1920), Virgin, Carmelite nun
Chile's first saint was born Juanita Fernandez Solar to a wealthy and very Catholic family in Santiago the capital. After her First Communion
at 6, she received Communion daily. After reading the biography of St. Therese of Lisieux, she decided she wanted to be like her and devote
herself to prayer and sacrifice. She entered the Carmelite convent at age 19, then contracted typhus. She died shortly after she took her
vows. During her brief time in the convent, she wrote letters expressing her thoughts. In one of them, she wrote "Christ, so foolish in his
love, has driven me madly in love". John Paul II beatified her when he visited Chile in 1987 and canonized her in Rome six years later.
[Cardinal Bertone, who was in Chile after the 2010 earthquake, visited her shrine in the Andes on her feast day.]
Readings for today's Mass:
usccb.org/bible/readings/041212.cfm


No events announced today for the Holy Father.
But L'Osservatore Romano reports that the Pope will be returning to the Vatican tomorrow from Castel Gandolfo,
one day earlier than planned, to be in Rome when his brother Georg arrives from Regensburg to be with him
on his 85th birthday.


AT THE VATICAN TODAY

- It was announced that the Pontifical Biblical Commission, an agency of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, will hold its annual plenary session on April 16-20 at the Vatican's Domus Cantae Marthae, to be presided by Cardinal William Levada, its president ex officio. The commission will resume its consideration of the topic, "Inspiration and Truth in the Bible".

- A news conference will be held on April 17 to present an International Study Conference on "Constantine the Great: At the Roots of Europe", organized by the Pontifical Commission on Historical Sciences, to be held at the Vatican on April 18-21, to mark the 1700th anniversary of the Battle of Ponte Milvio and the conversion of Emperor Constantine to Christianity.




- I have added a maddening article by Paolo Rodari on the dissident Irish priest story as a post-script to my earlier post on this page of Gerard O'Connell's story. It's maddening as a case study of reporter's bias by one of the leading Italian Vaticanistas, which also raises many questions about priestly dissidence these days and the tendentious way it is reported, even by reporters like O'Connell and Rodari, whom one would expect to be sympathetic to Catholic orthodoxy.

- One year ago today, CNA created an overnight kerfuffle by carelessly reporting that YOUCAT, the abridged Catholic catechism prepared primarily for WYD 2011, said the Church now approved contraception. It was all an unbelievable tale of unforgivable journalistic confusion, carelessness, and misdirection on the part of CNA, and wrong translation from the original German in the Italian edition of YOUCAT, which was promptly corrected. But not before the misleading CNA story had been picked up by the secular media and trumpeted as a change in the Church's position on contraception. Strangely, CNA got away virtually unscathed for that mix-up that it never even appropriately apologized for.. The tale is much too involved to recapitulate in a few sentences, so if you'd like to be reminded of the snafu, you may go back to Page 203 of this thread.
http://benedettoxviforum.freeforumzone.leonardo.it/discussione.aspx?idd=8527207&p=203&#idm110551746