The Pope's pastoral visit
to Frascati tomorrow
by Giacomo Galeazzi
Adapted and translated from the Italian service of
July 14, 2012
Benedict XVI will be making a pastoral visit to Frascati tomorrow, to one of the best-known cities making up the Castelli Romani (castles of Rome) in the Alban Hills southeast of Rome
[places where Roman nobles built their summer homes since imperial times and now must-see tourist destinations for visitors to Rome].
Famous frequent visitors and part-time residents in the past included Pauline Bonaparte, Goethe and Stendhal.
[Frascati was long best-known for its white wine, but in recent years, it has also become Italy's science center - site of the country's first accelerator, headquarters of the Italian agency for nuclear development and new technologies, and headquarters of the European space agency.]
Frascati is also the suburbicarian diocese of which Cardinal Secretary of State Tarcisio Bertone is the current titular bishop.
[However, the invitation to Frascati did not come from Bertone but from its bishop, Mons. Raffaello Martinelli, who announced the visit last May 3, on the feast of the Apostles Phillip and James the Less, patrons of Frascati.]
Moreover, one of Frascati's twin cities is Bad Godesberg
[significantly, the suburb of Bonn where Fr. Joseph Ratzinger lived when he was a professor at the University of Bonn].
Benedict XVI will be the third Pope to visit Frascati in the past half century - after Paul VI on Sept. 1, 1963, and Blessed John Paul on Sept. 9, 1990.
"Frascati is significant to Benedict XVI for two reasons," said Giovanni Maria Vian, editor of
L'Osservatore Romano. "Mons. Martinelli was one of his co-workers at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, and Frascati is now the titular see of Cardinal Bertone, his #2 man".
[Frascati is one of the seven suburbicarian dioceses of Rome, whose titular bishops are the highest-ranking order of Cardinals, the Cardinal Bishops. These dioceses are Albano, Ostia (since 1150, titular See of the Dean of Cardinals), Frascati, Palestrina, Porto-Santa Rufina, Sabina-Poggio Mirato, and Velletri-Segni, whose titular bishops are, respectively, Cardinal Sodano (both Ostia and Albano), Bertone, Jose Saraiva-Martins, Roger Etchegaray, Giovanni Battista Re, and Francis Arinze. In his time, Joseph Ratzinger was titular Bishop of Velletri-Segni, to which Ostia was added when he became Dean of Cardinals.]
Vian points out that in previous years, during his official summer vacation in July, Benedict XVI has not had any public events other than the Sunday Angelus. But last week, he made a semi-public visit to the Ad Gentes center of the SVD missionaries in Nemi, where had been part of a Vatican II working group that drafted the Council's decree on mission in the modern world.
Vian said that the Nemi visit was part of Benedict's "discreet build-up to the 50th anniversary of the opening of Vatican II
", noting that after the "the great Montini-Luciani-Wojtyla triad, Benedict XVI will be the last Pope to have taken part in the most important religious event of the 20th century".
[Is it not shocking that Vian, a scholar and professor of Christian history, omits the name of the Council's originator, John XXIII, who also presided over the first of its four annual ssessions, from his listing?}
The Pope is expected to arrive in Frascati by car around 9:10 at Frascati's Piazza Roma, the city square that overlooks Rome like a great belvedere. He will switch to the Popemobile to cross over to Piazza San Pietro in front of Frascati cathedral where he will pass among the faithful gathered for Mass.
He will be formally welcomed in remarks by Mayor Stefano Di Tomasso and by Bishop Martinelli. He will the enter the Cathedral for a brief Adoration before the Blessed Sacrament, and then don his vestments for the Mass which will start at 9:30.
After a brief chat with organizers of the visit, he will return to Castel Gandolfo in time to lead the Sunday Angelus.
Frascati does need the Pope's visit. It's a shocking fact - and difficult to believe - but the bishop says so:
Frascati diocese has not had
a single priestly vocation in 20 years!
July 14, 2012
“We are a people of faith but we still need to grow a lot in this regard” says Mons. Raffaello Martinelli, Bishop of Frascati.
“Our diocese has not had a single priestly vocation in over 20 years”, he reveals, “so you can imagine the desire and the need of our families for saints, above all saints, and priests... Our hope is that this coming of the Pope among us will lead to a strengthening of faith in each of us”. Emer McCarthy reports:
Sunday July 15th, Pope Benedict XVI will arrive among the people of one of the oldest and best-loved towns of the Castelli Romani, which populate the Alban Hills.
Synonymous with wine, song and grand summer villas, Frascati is perched on Tuscolo hill, with a view that sweeps from the Apennines, across Rome, and to the Tyrrhenian sea. Down through the centuries it has enchanted Popes, princes and great artists. Goethe once declared it a “paradise on earth”.
At the very heart of the old town, stands the Cathedral dedicated to St Peter the Apostle, completed on the orders of Pope Innocent XII in 1700, just in time to celebrate the Holy Year. Sunday morning Pope Benedict will celebrate an open air mass in the square beneath its imposing bell towers.
In fact, the baroque façade was the only part of the church that escaped the Allied bombing of September 1943 which devastated the town. That summer, General Albert Kesselring, commander of the German troops in Italy, had established his headquarters at the nearby Villa Falconieri.
The interior of the Cathedral is relatively bare, but its simplicity belies the historical treasures found within. Such as the plaque of the original tomb of Charles Edward Stuart, more familiarly known as Bonnie Prince Charlie. He was entombed in the Frascati Cathedral at the express request of his brother Henry Benedict Stuart. Henry was created a cardinal by Pope Benedict XIV in 1747 and went on to become the Dean of College of Cardinals, Bishop of Frascati [where he subsequently spent most of his life] and one of the longest serving cardinals in the history of the Church. Today, the tomb contains only the heart of the historic Stuart prince.
He and his brother were later re-interred in St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome, in a tomb designed by Antonio Canova.
Frascati’s history is deeply intertwined with the Papacy and Roman Curia, as one of the seven suburbicarian Sees of Rome, the primary See.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 15/07/2012 00:11]