CNA Staff, Jun 26, 2020 / 10:00 am (CNA).- Churches and other places of worship in Ireland will be permitted to open to more than 50 people, following a new exception to the country’s Phase Three coronavirus reopening. The exception was announced on Thursday evening.
Ireland’s Phase Three reopening sets a limit of 50 people for indoor gatherings, and 100 people for outdoor gatherings. In Phase Four, the indoor limit will be raised to 100. Ireland enters Phase Three on Monday.
On Thursday, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar said that houses of worship would not be subjected to the same “indoor gathering” rules, and would be permitted to police their own congregations in line with social distancing norms.
Archbishop Diarmuid Martin of Dublin had raised concerns about the feasibility of the 50-person limit, given the size of many Catholic churches in Ireland compared to the number of people who would wish to go to Mass. Retail locations in Ireland are not subjected to hard-number caps. Instead, they are instructed to ensure that people are practicing social distancing.
“It seems strange that in a church with a capacity of 1,500 people–which has been scrupulously fitted out for conformity with social distancing and with clear indications about movement and interaction of people within church–that only 50 people might be present, while we all see a situation in which large retail outlets (are) brimming with people,” said Martin earlier in June.
With the 50-person limit, Martin said, some parishes could only celebrate Mass with 1% of their congregations. He instead appealed for a “more reasonable and responsible” standard.
Had the capacity limit remained in place, it would have applied to all of Ireland’s churches, including those with capacities far beyond 50 people.
The Knock Basilica, which is one of the largest churches in Ireland, has a capacity of 10,000 people–yet would not have been permitted to host more than 50 people inside under the existing Phase Three restrictions.
Ireland has had about 25,400 confirmed cases of COVID-19 since the start of the pandemic, with 1,727 deaths attributed to the disease. The number of new cases discovered in the country each day has dwindled to the low double digits.
Approximately half of the country’s confirmed cases have been discovered in County Dublin. Only three counties, including Dublin have more than 1,000 confirmed cases.
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Cardinal Matteo Zuppi, Archbishop of Bologna, Italy, in St. Peter’s Basilica on Oct. 5, 2019. / Daniel Ibáñez/CNA
Rome, Italy, Nov 25, 2021 / 11:00 am (CNA).
No, it does not seem as if Pope Francis is going to resign. Indeed, his dynamism and desire to do things, working to bring the Church closer to the people, should be appreciated.
That is how Cardinal Matteo Zuppi responded when asked if the Pope Francis era was about to come to an end.
The questions, however, were legitimate because they were asked at the launch of a book explicitly addressing the papacy’s future.
Zuppi was on a panel for the Nov. 18 presentation of the book “Cosa Resta del Papato? Il futuro della Chiesa dopo Bergoglio” (“What Remains of the Papacy? The future of the Church after Bergoglio”), by the Italian Vaticanist Francesco Antonio Grana.
The book examines what the institution of the papacy is and what it can become after the resignation of Benedict XVI and the pontificate of Pope Francis.
It reconstructs the last part of Benedict XVI’s pontificate, revealing that among the few people aware of the forthcoming resignation was Italy’s then president, Giorgio Napolitano. The book also offers a glimpse of what the next conclave might look like.
Returning from Slovakia in September, Pope Francis had complained about the prelates who were allegedly already seeking to identify his successor. For this reason, the presence of a cardinal at the launch of a book that also looks at the papal succession risked being viewed as part of a “hidden electoral campaign.”
This is especially the case as Zuppi, the archbishop of Bologna, northern Italy, is seen by many as one of the possible papabili in a future conclave.
A leading figure in the Community of Sant’Egidio, and known internationally also for his role as a peace mediator in Mozambique, Zuppi has nevertheless always maintained a low-key and ascetic profile. This approach made him a beloved parish priest, first at the Rome church of Santa Maria in Trastevere and then in a parish on the city’s outskirts.
His hierarchical ascent began with his appointment as an auxiliary bishop of Rome in 2012. He was then called by Pope Francis to be archbishop of Bologna, a major Italian see, in 2015, receiving the cardinal’s red hat in 2019.
Cardinal Matteo Zuppi receives the red hat on Oct. 5, 2019. Daniel Ibanez/CNA.
Zuppi’s presence at the book launch was all the more striking because he is a cardinal loved by Pope Francis, who gives little indication of wanting to detach himself from the legacy of the reigning pope and always defends his pastoral activities. (The one exception might be his decision not to clamp down severely on the Traditional Latin Mass in his archdiocese following the motu proprioTraditionis custodes.)
The 66-year-old cardinal’s words at the book launch were cautious. He began by reflecting on the book’s title. He then focused on the Statio Orbis of March 27, 2020: the solitary prayer in St. Peter’s Square in which Pope Francis asked for an end to the pandemic. Zuppi said that on that occasion, “for the first time, Ecclesialese — the language spoken among us priests — became the common language.”
Speaking of the crisis in the Church, Zuppi said that “we can spend a lifetime arguing among ourselves, fueling an internal conflict. But the point is that it is a crisis, generative of something new.”
He stressed that John XXIII was considered “a simpleton, who seemed to impoverish the greatness of the Church,” and that Benedict XVI “defined himself as a humble worker in the Lord’s vineyard.”
In short, Francis is not, according to Zuppi, a pope who is diminishing the institution’s importance. Rather, he is giving it a new impetus. So much so, that there is “anything but an air of resignation,” Zuppi said. “In the many decisions he has made, and in the processes he has initiated, there is a great awareness and sense of the future.”
He added: “Pope Francis tells us that there is so much to do now, and he helps us not to have a renunciatory attitude, as a retreating minority. His significant reform is pastoral and missionary conversion.”
“He allows us to place ourselves in an evangelical, straightforward way, close to the people, and shows us some priorities for a Church that speaks to the heart. He helps us to be more Church, in a world that makes identity fade.”
There was also talk of the Zan bill, a proposed anti-homophobia law discussed in the Italian Senate. The Holy See presented a formal diplomatic note to the Italian state, highlighting that the bill violated the Concordat between the Holy See and Italy as part of the freedom of education.
It was not an opinion of the Holy See, but rather a diplomatic initiative to avoid the violation of a treaty. One of the panelists, Peter Gomez, director of IlFattoquotidiano.it, suggested erroneously that the Holy See expresses an opinion and the secular state is free to make its own decisions. But this was not the focus of the discussion.
Zuppi has repeatedly refused to address the controversy publicly. Many have interpreted this as a tactical move. The general assembly of the Italian bishops’ conference is currently discussing who should be its next president. Zuppi is one of the leading candidates to succeed Cardinal Gualtiero Bassetti of Perugia-Città della Pieve.
Then there is the question of the next conclave that continues to hang over Zuppi. It was the author of the book himself, Francesco Grana, who sought to damp down any speculation. He explained that, despite its arresting title, the book was not presenting a manifesto.
He referred to a book recently published by Andrea Riccardi, founder of the community with which Zuppi is closely associated.
“Andrea Riccardi, the founder of the Community of Sant’Egidio, wrote the book ‘The Church burns.’ And if the Church burns, how can we not ask ourselves about the papacy of the future?” he asked.
Rome, Italy, Mar 20, 2018 / 10:04 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Continuing his custom of saying Holy Thursday Mass outside a sacred place, Pope Francis this year will visit one of Rome’s most well-known prisons, the Regina Coeli, located in the historic Trastevere neighborhood.
The Pope will celebrate the Mass of the Lord’s Supper March 29. During the ceremony he will wash the feet of 12 inmates. He will also meet with prisoners and visit sick inmates in the prison’s infirmary.
Originally the site of a 17th-century convent, from which it gets its name, the Regina Coeli prison was constructed in 1881 by the Italian government after the country’s unification. A women’s prison, called the Mantellate, was later built nearby, also on the site of a former convent.
The prison has been visited by popes on three former occasions: by St. John XXIII in 1958, by Bl. Paul VI in 1964, and by St. John Paul II in 2000.
Like most prisons throughout Italy, Regina Coeli has had issues with overcrowding and inmate suicide in recent years.
For Pope Francis, this will be the fourth time during his pontificate that he has celebrated Maundy Thursday Mass at a prison. The first was in 2013, just after becoming Pope, when he visited the Casal del Marmo youth detention center.
This occasion was notable for being the first time a Pope included females and non-Christians among those whose feet he washed. At the time, liturgical law permitted only men’s feet to be washed in the Holy Thursday ceremony.
In January 2016, the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments modified the Roman Missal to allow for women’s feet to be washed at the Holy Thursday Mass, though it added that those chosen are to be “from among the People of God.”
The Roman Missal’s text was modified to say that “those chosen from among the People of God are accompanied by the ministers,” while it had previously read: “the men chosen are accompanied by the ministers.”
“People of God” is an ecclesiological term adopted by the Second Vatican Council’s dogmatic constitution on the Church, Lumen gentium, to indicate the Church of Christ, which “subsists in the Catholic Church.”
Pope Francis said Holy Thursday Mass at a center for asylum seekers in Castelnuovo di Porto, a municipality just north of Rome, in 2016. There he washed the feet of refugees, among whom were Coptic Orthodox, Muslims, and Hindus.
In 2015 the Pope went to Rome’s Rebibbia prison, and in 2017 he visited Paliano prison located south of Rome.
In 2014 he visited people with disabilities, saying Mass at the Don Gnocchi center for the disabled.
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