Wednesday, July 17, 15th Week in Ordinary Time
CARMELITE NUNS OF COMPIEGNE(France, d 1974), Virgins and Martyrs
When the French Revolution started in 1789, a group of twenty-one discalced Carmelites lived in a monastery in Compiegne, founded in 1641. The monastery was ordered closed in 1790 by the Revolutionary government, and the nuns were disbanded. Sixteen of the nuns were accused of continuing to live in a religious community in 1794. They were arrested on June 22 and imprisoned in a Visitation convent in Compiegne, where they openly resumed their religious life. On July 12, 1794, the Carmelites were taken to Paris and five days later were sentenced to death by guillotine. At the foot of the scaffold, the community jointly renewed their vows and began to chant the ;Veni Creator Spiritus', the hymn sung at the ceremony f1) or the profession of vows. They continued their singing as, one by one, they mounted the scaffold to meet their death. The novice of the community, Sister Constance, was the first to die, then the lay Sisters and externs, and so on, ending with the prioress, Mother Teresa of St. Augustine, O.C.D. The martyrdom of the nuns was immortalized by the composer Francois Poulenc in his famous opera Dialogues des Carmelites.
Readings for today's Mass:
www.usccb.org/bible/readings/071712.cfm
AT THE VATICAN TODAY
No events announced for Pope Francis.
But Fr. Federico Lombardi held a briefing for the media on the Pope's trip to Rio de Janeiro next week for WYD 2013,
and said there would be two 'innovations' this time:
1) The Pope will not be holding an in-flight news conference enroute to the destination as his two immediate predecessors did.
Instead, he will greet each newsman on the plane individually and chat with them.
2) He will not be using the Popemobile protected by bulletproof glass while in Brazil but will stick to the open Popemobile
he uses in St. Peter's Square.
One year ago...
There were no official events for Benedict XVI in Castel Gandolfo, but there was similar focus on the Holy Father's scheduled apostolic visit in the late summer - the one to Lebanon, which, no one suspected at the time, would be his last trip abroad as Pope.
Fittingly, the official website for the visit was launched on this day. Because of the historicity of that visit on many levels - one of the busiest and most compelling of Benedict's apostolic trips - it is worth looking back at the events and places that were programmed for the visit. Lebanon also happens to be one of the most scenic countries in the Middle East, and was a most fitting theater for Benedict XVI's final apostolic voyage....
A website for the visit -
and an overview of the places
the Pope will be visiting
July 17, 2012
The official website for the visit of Pope Benedict XVI to Lebanon has been launched. The website is available in four languages – Arabic, English, French, and Italian.
http://www.lbpapalvisit.com/test2/public/index.php
The Holy Father’s trip will be from September 14 to 16, and he will visit Beirut, Harissa, Baabda, Bzommar, Bkerké, and Charfet. (All are located within 10-30 miles from Beirut).
[Unfortunately, the website so far does not contain any information on the places the Pope will be visiting. It wasn't easy to put together the little information I have assembled here.]
Other than Beirut and Harissa, the other place names are not indicated on the map because they are not population centers. Baabda is east of Beirut and south of Harissa, while Bzommar, Bkerke and Charfet are all slightly northwest of Harissa (nearer the sea. Right photo shows the location of St Paul's Cathedral and the Shrine to our Lady of Lebanon in Harissa.
Harissa is a mountain location a few miles inland from the capital, looking down on the Mediterranean. It is the site of the Apostolic Nunciature, where the Pope will be staying, as well as two major churches.
The first is the Melkite Greek Catholic Basilica of St. Paul, where, on the afternoon of his arrival, the Holy Father will sign his Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation that formally summarizes the Special Synodal Assembly on the Middle East held in October 2010.
The other is the Maronite Catholics' modern shrine to Our Lady of Lebanon, wits its giant statue of the Virgin.
(For some reason, a visit to the shrine is not on the program at all, although the Holy Father is staying in Harissa.)
The following day, Saturday, Benedict XVI will hold a number of meetings at the Presidential Palace in Baabda, also an exurb of Beirut. [Like the location of the Nunciature in Harissa, this probably makes sense since Beirut itself was the center of fighting during Lebanon's long civil war.] The government of Lebanon is treating this as a state visit.
The Pope will be holding a series of meetings with the President of Lebanon, the President of Parliament, the Prime Minister, other government authorities, the diplomatic corps and representatives of Beirut's world of culture, and leaders of the Muslim communities.
The rest of the Pope's appointments inv olves visits to the seats of the three major Catholic communities of the Eastern rite in Lebanon.
On Saturday, he will lunch with Lebanese bishops in Bzommar, seat of the Syro-Catholic Patriarchate, and then proceed in the afternoon to Bkerke, seat of the Maronite Patriarchate, where he will be meeting with young people.
On Sunday, his final day in Lebanon, the Pope will have his only event in central Beirut - Mass at the area called the Waterfront, centerpiece of the reconstruction of Beirut after the civil war from 1975-1990 destroyed much of the city that had been known as the Paris of the Mediterranean.
Beirut's location on the edge of the Mediterranean, with mountains a few miles inland, and its French colonial heritage, had made it one of the most beautiful cities in the region. Day excursions can be made from Beirut to two sites of antiquity which contain impressive ruins - Byblos and Baalbek.
In the afternoon, after leaving the Nunciature for the last time, he will be visiting Charfet, seat of the Syro-Catholic Patriarchate of Antioch, for an ecumenical meeting. From there, he will proceed to the international airport for the departure ceremony and the trip back to Rome.
The other big news of the day one year agP was a calendar item anticipating the release of the first Moneyval report on Vqtican compliance with international banking standards....
Briefing tomorrow
on Moneyval report
July 17, 2012
The Moneyval report on the status of the Vatican's application to get on the 'white list' of European states meeting international standards in combatting money laundering and funding of terrorism will be released officially at 9:30 a.m. tomorrow, Wednesday.
The report is based on the second on-site inspection held by Moneyval in April 2012.
This will be followed at 11:30 by a briefing in the Vatican Press Room by Mons. Ettore Balestrero, Vatican Under-Secretary for Relations with States.
[2013 P.S. It must be mentioned that the release of the report was preceded by days of undisguised Schadenfreude in the media, most of whom anticipated that the Vatican would get a dramatic rebuff by Moneyval for its overall lack of financial transparency, especially IOR. In this, they grossly underestimated the work that had been done since Benedict XVI's December 2010 revolutionary law on financial transparency. and simply took it for granted that IOR,in particular, would get a beating and a well-deserved comeuppance from Moneyval. Well, we now know the Cassandras had egg on their face when the report came out, but that did not make anyone relent on their insistent denigration of IOR, their favorite whipping-boy at the Vatican alongside Cardinal Bertone.]
Sorry about the very delayed 'first post' of the day - I thought I had posted it around 2 pm today, but I got caught up in work and was notg even able to check that it had posted - it did not, and I had to reconstruct the whole thing just now.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 19/07/2013 06:24]