CNA Staff, Jun 15, 2020 / 02:50 pm (CNA).- The Catholic Church should be at the forefront of efforts to address racial inequality – not only through words, but through actions, said the bishops of Maryland on Monday.
In a June 15 letter, the Mar… […]
CNA Staff, Jun 15, 2020 / 11:40 am (CNA).- Cardinal George Pell told a group of Australian students that his Christian faith helped him persevere through his time in prison, and offered advice on how to overcome grief and stressful situations.
Pell, in one of his first public appearances since his April release from prison, spoke to an online silent retreat hosted June 5 and 6 by the Australian Catholic Students’ Association about suffering and the tools one can use to remain steadfast in faith through hard times.
The cardinal said his 13 months in prison were “difficult and unpleasant,” but not the worst possible form of suffering. He said his time in prison reinforced the truth of Christian view of redemptive suffering, according to The Catholic Weekly.
“I’m still teaching the same Christian message,” said Pell. “And I’m here simply to say that it works. Not in the sense that I was acquitted, but that this Christian teaching helped me to survive.”
Pell was convicted in 2018 of multiple counts of sexual abuse. On April 7, Australia’s High Court overturned his six-year prison sentence. The High Court ruled that he should not have been found guilty of the charges and that the prosecution had not proven their case beyond a reasonable doubt.
During the retreat, Pell gave five suggestions for anyone who is going through emotional hardship, including grief, loss, and personal suffering. The cardinal’s suggestions: exercise, avoiding large amounts of alcohol, eating healthy and regularly, sleeping a certain number of hours a night, and waking up at the same time each day.
He added that this routine, particularly ensuring regular exercise, helped him very much when he was in prison. He told the students at the retreat that it was especially important that, as young people, they take this advice sooner rather than later.
By creating these “good habits of mind and habits of practice,” a person will be led in the right direction during the inevitable intense times of suffering, he said.
“Whereas, if you’ve been sloppy and ill-disciplined and selfish all your life, it makes it so much harder to rise to the challenge,” he said.
In an Easter message published in April, Pell wrote of his incarceration that “I have just spent 13 months in jail for a crime I didn’t commit, one disappointment after another. I knew God was with me, but I didn’t know what He was up to, although I realised He has left all of us free. But with every blow it was a consolation to know I could offer it to God for some good purpose like turning the mass of suffering into spiritual energy.”
“The only Son of God did not have an easy run and suffered more than his share. Jesus redeemed us and we can redeem our suffering by joining it to His and offering it to God,” Pell added.
The cardinal’s Easter message included a proclamation of the Gospel: that Jesus of Nazareth died, and was resurrected bodily. “It was a return of his entire person from death, breaking the rules of health and physics, as Christians believe this young man was the only Son of God, divine, the Messiah…who redeems us, enables us to receive forgiveness and enter into a happy eternity.”
On April 7, the day he was released from prison, the cardinal told CNA that “prayer has been the great source of strength to me throughout these times, including the prayers of others, and I am incredibly grateful to all those people who have prayed for me and helped me during this really challenging time.”
CNA Staff, Jun 15, 2020 / 10:30 am (CNA).- Bishops entrusted the Church in Poland to the Virgin Mary on Monday as they marked the centenary of the birth of St. John Paul II.
The bishops made the act of entrustment June 15 at the Sanctuary of the Berna… […]
Rome Newsroom, Jun 15, 2020 / 10:00 am (CNA).- Cardinal Peter Turkson delivered face masks and care packages over the weekend to Romani families in need on the outskirts of Rome on behalf of Pope Francis.
“We are here today to witness the suppor… […]
Vatican City, Jun 15, 2020 / 09:30 am (CNA).- The Vatican said Monday that officials had granted bail to the Italian businessman Gianluigi Torzi who was arrested as part of a financial investigation.
Torzi played a central role in the controversial pu… […]
Washington D.C., Jun 15, 2020 / 09:00 am (CNA).- The Supreme Court ruled on Monday that employers cannot fire workers because of their sexual orientation or self-determined gender identity, while dissenting justices opined the Court was legislating fro… […]
Vatican City, Jun 15, 2020 / 08:05 am (CNA).- Pope Francis Monday appointed Fabio Gasperini, an Italian financial adviser working at Ernst & Young, to the second-ranking position at the Administration of the Patrimony of the Apostolic See (APSA).
This is the first time in its history that the secretary of APSA will be a layperson. Gasperini fills the position following the end of the five-year term of Msgr. Mauro Rivella in April.
Gasperini is well known in the banking and finance world, with 25 years’ experience advising financial services institutions across a broad range of areas, from retail banking to asset management, investment banking, insurance, and capital markets.
For 16 years, he has been president of financial business advisory services at Ernst & Young, one of the largest professional services firms in the world.
CNA first reported Gasperini’s possible appointment June 12.
Very early in his career, after graduating from Rome’s La Sapienza University with a degree in business economics and commerce, Gasperini worked in the administration of Vatican City State.
APSA, which operates like the Vatican’s central bank, oversees real estate holdings and other sovereign assets.
Bishop Nunzio Galantino is president of APSA. In addition to Secretary Gasperini, there is an undersecretary, an official for management control, and 13 offices and services.
APSA has around 95 employees and 10 collaborators, as well as a commission of eight cardinals who work alongside the president. Pope Francis recently appointed Cardinal Daniel Sturla, archbishop of Montevideo, to the commission to replace Cardinal Agostino Vallini, who has turned 80 and is no longer eligible to hold a curial position.
In June 2019, APSA’s councilor Bishop Gustavo Zanchetta was charged with the sexual abuse of two seminarians in his former Diocese of Orán in Argentina. The previous January, the Vatican said Zanchetta had been suspended from his APSA position.
On June 15, a Vatican spokesman confirmed to CNA that Zanchetta has returned to his job at APSA, despite the ongoing trial against him in Argentina.
At the end of May, Pope Francis moved the office of the Vatican’s financial records database from the management of APSA to the Secretariat for the Economy.
The Secretariat for the Economy has oversight of the Vatican’s administrative and financial structures and activities, including monitoring the work of APSA.
Other recent appointments by Pope Francis have also gone to Italian laypeople.
June 12, the pope named Antonella Sciarrone Alibrandi a member of the directive counsel of the Financial Information Authority (AIF).
Alibrandi is vice-rector of Sacred Heart Catholic University in Milan, a lawyer, and a professor of banking law and financial markets law.
Another laywoman, Raffaella Vincenti, was named office head of the Vatican’s Apostolic Library, after serving as the library’s secretary.
Vatican City, Jun 15, 2020 / 07:30 am (CNA).- Bishop Gustavo Zanchetta has returned to work at the Vatican amid an ongoing trial in Argentina, where he has been charged with sexual and financial misconduct.
Holy See Press Office director Matteo Bruni told CNA June 15 that Zanchetta had resumed his work at the Vatican while “remaining available to the Argentine judicial authorities.”
Bruni said that Zanchetta’s work at the Administration of the Patrimony of the Apostolic See (APSA) — the Vatican’s central reserve bank and sovereign asset management body — “does not interfere in any way with the investigations.”
Zanchetta, the former Bishop of Orán, Argentina, has been accused of “aggravated continuous sexual abuse” of two adult-aged seminarians, as well as fraud and mismanagement of funds. He denies the charges.
The accused bishop was suspended from his role as an assessor at APSA amid a canonical investigation, announced in January 2019.
APSA oversees real estate holdings and other sovereign assets. The financial operations APSA carries out are recorded in the database of the Vatican’s Data Processing Center, which includes the records of investments and financial transactions going back 50 years.
Zanchetta was one of Pope Francis’ first episcopal appointments in Argentina, where he led the Diocese of Orán from his appointment in July 2013 to 2017.
After being allowed to resign as Bishop of Orán for “health reasons” in 2017, Zanchetta was appointed by Pope Francis to the specially created position of assessor at APSA.
Argentine media have since reported that the bishop was first accused of sexually inappropriate behavior as early as 2015.
According to a report from El Tribuno, one of Zanchetta’s secretaries alerted authorities after accidentally finding sexually explicit images sent and received on Zanchetta’s cell phone in 2015. The complaint says that some of the images depict “young people” having sex, in addition to lewd images of Zanchetta himself.
Pope Francis summoned Zanchetta to Rome for five days in October 2015. The bishop claimed his phone and computer had been hacked, and that the accusations were motivated by ill feeling towards the pope. Francis reportedly accepted the bishop’s excuse that his cell phone had been hacked, and took no further action.
The Vatican has repeatedly denied having prior knowledge of sexual abuse allegations against Zanchetta before his December 2017 appointment to a Vatican office.
In a May 2019 interview, Pope Francis said that a preliminary investigation against Zanchetta had concluded and would proceed to a trial, conducted by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
“They will make a trial, they will issue a sentence and I will promulgate it,” the pope said.
Fr. Juan José Manzano, the former vicar general of the Diocese of Orán, has claimed publicly that he first reported Zanchetta in 2015, after the pornographic images were found on his phone. Manzano said he also reported him again in 2017.
After Zanchetta was charged with assaulting two seminarians in June 2019, Orán’s Economic Crime Unit raided offices in the chancery November 2019. The raid was carried out to investigate Zanchetta’s alleged fraud against the state, according to El Oranense.
In addition to accusations of mismanaging church funds donated by the faithful in the diocese, public records show that Zanchetta received more than 1 million Argentine pesos from Salta Province to restore a rectory and for lectures at the seminary which never occurred.
Zanchetta’s canon lawyer confirmed in November 2019 that the Argentine was still living in Casa Santa Marta, where he had resided for two years, in Vatican City.
Rome Newsroom, Jun 15, 2020 / 05:30 am (CNA).- A historic statue of Mary atop a column, torn down by an angry crowd more than 100 years ago, has been restored to its original site in Prague.
The placement of the exact replica of the 17th-century statu… […]
CNA Staff, Jun 15, 2020 / 04:00 am (CNA).- The 1920s are known as the “Roaring Twenties” because they were years of economic growth and rising prosperity. But while the U.S. was booming, other countries were grappling with stagnation and ma… […]
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