Open letter to Cardinal Marx urges changes to Church teaching on sexual morality

St. Mark’s Basilica in Venice, Italy. / Credit: Canva

CNA Staff, Apr 25, 2024 / 04:00 am (CNA).

This weekend, on Sunday, April 28, Pope Francis will celebrate Mass in St. Mark’s Square during a one-day trip to Venice, Italy. Afterward, he will privately venerate the relics of St. Mark the Evangelist inside the basilica. This papal visit to the iconic basilica puts a spotlight on the famous church dedicated to St. Mark and on its significance to the famous “floating city.” 

St. Mark’s Basilica, also known as the “Church of Gold,” is a Byzantine cathedral in St. Mark’s Square. Founded in 828 A.D. after the remains of St. Mark were transported from Alexandria, Egypt, the basilica has undergone several transformations.

After being built as a permanent church in 832, the basilica was burned down in a rebellion in 976. St. Mark’s was rebuilt in 978 but it was a construction project started in 1063 that formed the basis of the current form of the church.

On Oct. 8, 1094, St. Mark’s Basilica was consecrated and dedicated to the apostle and saint credited by many to be the writer of the Gospel of Mark. 

It wasn’t until 1807, on orders from Napoleon, that the city church became the residence of the patriarch of Venice and declared a city cathedral. 

The basilica’s architecture, which combines Byzantine, Gothic, and Romanesque styles, features a central dome, spandrels, and four pillars supporting the immense vaults. Inside, St. Mark’s is adorned with beautiful gold mosaics, marble flooring, and luxurious decor. The presbytery, which is reserved for clergy, houses the high altar, which holds the relics of St. Mark. 

The sacristy, which was crafted in 1486 by Giorgio Spavento, has impressive inlaid cabinets illustrating scenes from the life of St. Mark and a vault with mosaics depicting Old Testament prophets. 

There are also several side altars and chapels paying homage to various saints such as the Madonna del Mascoli and St. Isidore. The Chapel of St. Isidore also holds the saint’s relics, which were brought to Venice from the Island of Chios in 1125. 

St. Mark’s Museum was built during the 19th century. It hosts a diverse collection of artifacts and artwork, mostly acquired from Constantinople during the Fourth Crusade. One of the most notable highlights are the Horses of St. Mark — four bronze horses that once were a part of the basilica’s facade — as well as Byzantine and Gothic manuscripts, artifacts, and liturgical objects. 

St. Mark’s Basilica welcomes more than 3 million visitors a year and is truly the center of public and religious life in Venice. 

The Holy See Press Office has released the Holy Father’s schedule for this trip to Venice, which includes meetings with inmates at the women’s prison, a tour of the Vatican art exhibit on display there, a meeting with the featured artists, and a speech to young people.

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Madrid, Spain, May 16, 2019 / 09:58 am (CNA).- On May 18 in Madrid, Guadalupe Ortiz de Landazuri, a laywoman, will become the first numerary of Opus Dei to be beatified. A chemist, university teacher, and close associate of St. Josemaría Escrivá, she was known for her strong character, big heart, and cheerfulness.

According to Beatriz Gaytan, a historian who knew Ortiz: “Whenever I think of her, despite the time that has elapsed, what I hear is her laugh. Guadalupe had a permanent smile. She was welcoming, affable, straightforward.”

Opus Dei was made a personal prelature by St. John Paul II in 1982. It was founded by St. Josemaría Escrivá in 1928 and teaches that everyone is called to personal holiness in and through their ordinary lives.

There are various ways of being associated with the prelature. A numerary is someone who makes him or herself fully available to the work of the prelature.

Ortiz was born in Madrid Dec. 12, 1916, whence she was named “Guadalupe.”

She had a reputation for being a bold and courageous child. At age 10, because of her father’s military service, her family moved to Tetouan, North Africa. They returned to Spain six years later and Ortiz completed her high school studies, enrolling in university to study chemistry. She was one of five women in a class of 70.

Known to be a serious, though friendly, student, Ortiz put her studies on hold during the Spanish Civil War, which broke out in 1936. During the war, her father, a colonel in the army, was arrested for treason and condemned to death by shooting by a people’s trial.

Though he was given the opportunity of a pardon, Manuel Ortiz de Landazuri renounced it for the sake of his men, who had all been shot dead. Ortiz was just 20 years old when she, a brother, and her mother said their final goodbyes to Manuel in the hours before his death. She forgave those who condemned and killed her father.

For a period during the war, Ortiz and her mother and brothers moved to another part of Spain. When the civil war ended in 1939, they returned to Madrid, where Ortiz taught in two schools.

It was several years later that Ortiz had a powerful experience of God’s grace while at Mass. When she met a family friend shortly after, she said she wanted to meet a priest. That friend put her in contact with Fr. Josemaría Escrivá, who had founded Opus Dei about 15 years before.

Ortiz met Escrivá Jan. 25, 1944. She later said, “I had the very clear idea that God was speaking to me through that priest.” From that point she felt a calling to serve Christ through her life and work, and several months later, at the age of 27, she became a numerary of Opus Dei.

During the following years, still the beginning of Opus Dei, she managed the administration of Opus Dei student residences in Madrid, continuing to study chemistry in her spare time.

She made friends easily, especially with the university students, who appreciated her humor, patience, and affection.

In 1950, Escrivá asked her to bring Opus Dei to Mexico. While there, she enrolled in a doctoral program in chemical sciences. At the university residences in Mexico, Ortiz and her associates emphasized concern for the poor and service to the Church and society.

Among the initiatives they spearheaded was a mobile medical clinic which went home-to-home in the poorest neighborhoods providing free care and medicine. She also promoted education among poor, indigenous Mexicans.

Six years later she was asked to assist Escrivá in Rome in the central government of Opus Dei, but not long after arriving she began to suffer conditions of a heart condition which meant she had to return to Spain. Despite the symptoms of the condition, including tiredness from walking and climbing stairs, she never complained.

In Madrid she continued her academic work, eventually completing and defending her doctorate in July 1965, at the age of 48.

She was the recipient of the Juan de la Cierva prize for her research work and was a chemistry teacher at an institute and at the Women’s School for Industrial Studies, of which she became deputy head, for 10 years. She also set up the Center of Studies and Research of Domestic Sciences.

Ortiz was known to make frequent visits to the Blessed Sacrament to speak with Christ; she was also devoted to friends and students and those with whom she lived.

In 1975, doctors decided to operate on her heart. The operation, at the university clinic in Navarra, was successful, but several days afterward she suffered sudden respiratory failure.

In describing the moments before her death, Ortiz’s brother said, “this was Guadalupe’s great ‘secret:’ to always accept as good whatever happened to her. Around her, in those last hours of mortal anguish, all were lost in admiration: that same unforgettable smile.”

She died on July 16, 1975, the feast of Our Lady Mount Carmel, in Pamplona.

Ortiz will be beatified by Cardinal Angelo Becciu, prefect of the Congregation for Saints, in Madrid May 18. For those who cannot attend in person, Opus Dei has created a mobile app called “Beatification Guadalupe Ortiz de Landazuri,” which allows people to learn about her life and beatification in an interactive way.

The Vatican confirmed the miraculous healing, through Ortiz’s intercession, of an elderly Spanish man with a small cancerous tumor next to his eye. This miracle paved the way for her beatification.

A widower, Antonio Jesus Sedano Madrid, 76, contracted basal cell carcinoma in 2002. The cancer diagnosis gave Sedano a lot of anxiety. Before the surgery could take place, he found a prayer card for private devotion to Servant of God Guadalupe Ortiz de Landazuri.

He began to feel a personal and spiritual closeness to her and prayed for her intercession for his healing. His friends and three children began to do the same.

Sedano was particularly nervous before the operation to remove the tumor, and one night made a fervent request to Ortiz to intercede for his total cure, without the need for surgery. The following morning, when he awoke, the tumor was gone, without leaving a mark.

Doctors examined Sedano and could find no natural cause to explain the tumor’s total and sudden healing. He remained cancer free for the rest of his life, living 14 more years until his death in 2014, at the age of 88, from heart disease.

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Madrid, Spain, Jun 27, 2019 / 05:01 pm (CNA).- The spokesman for the Spanish bishops’ conference has expressed the desire of the Church in Spain to collaborate with the attorney general’s office, after the publication of a report accusing the bishops of opacity in the identification of sexual abuse.

“We are willing and everything that we can do to join forces is good for everyone,” said Bishop Luis Javier Argüello Garcia, Auxiliary Bishop of Valladolid.

On June 24, the nation’s attorney general’s office pointed to a “deficient” response from the Church in Spain regarding the problem of sexual abuse committed by its members.

The report of the AG’s Office was made at the request of the Department of Justice and was announced through the newspaper El País. So far it has not been sent to the Spanish bishops’ conference.

The document states that in the Church in Spain there are “environments traditionally endowed with a certain opacity where the identification of cases presents difficulties for various reasons.”

The report also encourages the creation of commissions like those in Australia, the Netherlands, or Austria, and it calls for “avoiding the case first being checked out or internal filters applied by the institution where it occurred before it being reported to the competent authorities, and that without prejudice to the measures that the institution should or could adopt to prevent reoccurrences of similar incidents within the scope of its competencies.”

In face of these accusations, Bishop Argüello explained that they learned of the report of the AG’s Office “only through the media” and expressed their desire to have it in its entirety “in order to evaluate it,” and stressed that “when they speak of opacity, I don’t know what they are referring to.”

“We are facing a matter of serious societal concern, we would like a dialogue with the AG’s Office spoken of in the report. Because we are willing and everything we can do to join forces is good for everyone,” the spokesman said.

The AG Office’s report states that in 2017 and 2018 about 1,000 cases were recorded per year, while the convictions were around 500 in 2017 and 737 in 2018.

Argüello said they would like to know how many of these complaints and convictions were against members of the Catholic Church: “We would like to be able to know … how many of these verdicts were convictions and how many were acquittals and how many cleric there were. Our perception is that the clerics convicted in those two years were quite few, but we don’t know and we would like to know. As we would like to know in what other sectors of society…We understand the reluctance of the AG’s Office, because it prosecutes persons, not social sectors.”

The report by the attorney general’s office was made at the request of the Minister of Justice, Dolores Delgado, who asked that cases of sexual abuse be investigated just in the environment of the Catholic Church in Spain. Argüello said that this request “doesn’t seem right to us, it’s unsettling to us, that only abuse within the Church be investigated. We couldn’t understand  that the minister only inquired about the Church. It is just and necessary to inquire about the abuses that affect society as a whole.”

“If we want to address the prevention and cause, it would be good for us to know what social sectors are involved and the AG’s Office doesn’t say because it can’t say, because it is subject to the ground rules of criminal proceedings. This affects all of us, and that’s why we can have a conversation about this,” he stressed.

As part of the efforts being made in the Church in Spain to put an end to sexual abuse,  Argüello said they have been waiting since April for the authorization by the Holy See of a general decree which would directly oblige all the dioceses and religious orders to act jointly and according to an established protocol.

The general decree could be approved in November during the bishops’ general assembly.

In addition, in late 2018 a commission was created to update the protocols in the fight against the abuse of minors in Spain, which until now had a juridical canonical profile. However, Argüello said this commission will admit from now on “people with different characteristics and will have the possibility of having professionals, men and women, who can help us look to the future and work for prevention.”

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