CNA Staff, Nov 18, 2020 / 07:00 am (CNA).- A cyber security expert has urged the Vatican to take immediate action to strengthen its defenses against hackers.
Andrew Jenkinson, group CEO of Cybersec Innovation Partners (CIP) in London, told CNA that he had contacted the Vatican in July to express concern about its vulnerability to cyber attacks.
He said that to date he had received no response, despite making several further attempts to raise the issue with the appropriate Vatican office.
The British cyber security consultancy approached the Vatican following reports in July that suspected Chinese state-sponsored hackers had targeted Vatican computer networks. CIP offered its services to address the vulnerabilities.
In a July 31 email to the Gendarmerie Corps of Vatican City State, seen by CNA, Jenkinson suggested that the breach might have occurred through one of the Vatican’s many subdomains.
Vatican City has a sprawling system of websites administered by the Internet Office of the Holy See and organized under the country code top-level domain “.va”. The Vatican’s web presence has expanded steadily since its launched its main website, www.vatican.va, in 1995.
Jenkinson sent follow-up emails in August and October, emphasizing the urgency of tackling weaknesses in the Vatican’s cyber defenses. He noted that www.vatican.va remained “not secure” months after the breach was reported. He also sought to contact the Vatican through intermediaries.
The Gendarmerie Corps confirmed Nov. 14 that it had received the information sent by Jenkinson. Its command office told CNA that his concerns “have been duly taken into consideration and transmitted, as far as their competence is concerned, to the offices that manage the website in question.”
A report, released July 28, said that hackers had breached Vatican websites in an attempt to give China an advantage in negotiations to renew a provisional deal with the Holy See.
Researchers said they had uncovered “a cyberespionage campaign attributed to a suspected Chinese state-sponsored threat activity group,” which they referred to as RedDelta.
The study was compiled by the Insikt Group, the research arm of the U.S.-based cybersecurity company Recorded Future.
In a follow-up analysis, published Sept. 15, the Insikt Group said that hackers had continued to focus on the Vatican and other Catholic organizations even after their activities were publicized in July.
It noted that RedDelta ceased its activities immediately after the publication of its initial report.
“However, this was short-lived, and within 10 days, the group returned to its targeting of the Hong Kong Catholic Diocese mail server, and within 14 days, a Vatican mail server,” it said.
“This is indicative of RedDelta’s persistence in maintaining access to these environments for gathering intelligence, in addition to the group’s aforementioned high risk tolerance.”
Hackers have frequently targeted the Vatican since it first went online. In 2012, the hacking group Anonymous briefly blocked access to www.vatican.va and disabled other sites, including those of the Vatican secretariat of state and the Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano.
Jenkinson told CNA that the Vatican had no time to waste in shoring up its defenses because the coronavirus crisis had created “a perfect storm for cyber criminals,” with organizations more dependent than ever before on donations via the internet.
“Within a week of the Vatican’s latest breach we undertook research on a number of their internet-facing sites. Websites are like a digital doorway to the masses and can be accessed globally. Never was there a better time for cyber criminals to launch attacks and a worse time for organizations to be insecure,” he said.
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Vatican City, May 18, 2019 / 07:08 am (CNA).- Pope Francis told journalists Saturday that their profession has a great responsibility, the foundation of which should be humility.
“Humility is an essential virtue for spiritual life; but I would s… […]
Altar of the Chair in St. Peter’s Basilica, where Bernini’s gorgeous bronze monument to the Chair of Peter acts as a massive
bronze reliquary for the historic wooden chair. / Credit: Vatican Media
Vatican City, Nov 9, 2024 / 06:00 am (CNA).
For the first time in over a century, the historic Chair of St. Peter, a wooden throne symbolizing the pope’s magisterial authority, has been removed from its gilded bronze reliquary in St. Peter’s Basilica to be displayed for public veneration.
Pilgrims and visitors can now behold this storied relic directly in front of the basilica’s main altar, just above the tomb of St. Peter, where it will remain on display until Dec. 8, the solemnity of the Immaculate Conception.
The last major public viewing of the chair occurred in 1867, when Pope Pius IX exposed the Chair of Peter for the veneration of the faithful for 12 days on the 1,800th anniversary of the martyrdoms of St. Peter and St. Paul, according to Pietro Zander, head of the Necropolis and Artistic Heritage Section of the Vatican.
It was the first time that the centuries-old wooden throne had been exhibited to the public since 1666 when it was first encased within Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s monumental bronze sculpture under the stained-glass Dove of the Holy Spirit window at the basilica’s apse.
The historic wooden Chair of St. Peter as it is currently on display in St. Peter’s Basilica. Credit: Courtney Mares/CNA
Formally known as the Cathedra Sancti Petri Apostoli, or more simply as Cathedra Petri, the chair has held a revered place in Catholic tradition over the centuries, representing papal authority from St. Peter to the present.
“The chair is meant to be understood as the teacher’s ‘cathedra,’” art historian Elizabeth Lev told CNA. “It symbolizes the pope’s duty to hand down the teaching of Christ from generation to generation.”
“It’s antiquity [ninth century] speaks to a papacy that has endured through the ages — from St. Peter who governed a church on the run trying to evangelize with the might of the Roman Empire trying to shut him down, to the establishment of the Catholic Church and its setting down of roots in the Eternal City, to our 266th successor of St. Peter, Pope Francis,” she explained.
Pope Francis venerates the Chair of St. Peter at the end of the closing Mass of the Synod on Synodality on Oct. 27, 2024, the first day the chair was displayed for public veneration. Credit: Vatican Media
A storied history
The wooden chair itself is steeped in history. According to the Vatican, the wooden seat was likely given by the Holy Roman Emperor Charles the Bald to Pope John VIII in A.D. 875 for the emperor’s Christmas coronation in the old St. Peter’s Basilica. A depiction of the emperor appears on the crossbeam of the chair, and its ivory panels illustrate the labors of Hercules along with other scenes from Greek mythology.
The informational sign near the chair in St. Peter’s Basilica informs visitors that “shortly after the year 1000, the Cathedra Petri began to be venerated as a relic of the seat used by the apostle Peter when he preached the Gospel first in Antioch and then in Rome.”
The Fabric of St. Peter, the organization responsible for the basilica’s upkeep, maintains that “it cannot be ruled out that this ninth-century imperial seat may have later incorporated the panel depicting the labors of Hercules, which perhaps originally belonged to an earlier and more ancient papal seat.”
Before returning the chair to its place within Bernini’s monumental reliquary, Vatican experts will conduct a series of diagnostic tests with the Vatican Museums’ Cabinet of Scientific Research. The ancient seat was last removed and studied from 1969 to 1974 under Pope Paul VI but was not shown to the public.
Closer details can be seen of the historic relic of the Chair of St. Peter. For the first time in over a century, the wooden throne symbolizing the pope’s magisterial authority has been removed from its gilded bronze reliquary in St. Peter’s Basilica to be displayed for public veneration. Credit: Daniel Ibanez
The recent restoration of Bernini’s works in the basilica, funded by the Knights of Columbus in preparation for the Catholic Church’s 2025 Jubilee Year, made it possible for the chair to be moved from the bronze sculpture in August.
Pope Francis got a sneak peak of the relic in early October and a photo of the moment — showing him sitting in a wheelchair before the Chair of St. Peter — quickly went viral. Afterward, the pope requested that the relic be displayed for public veneration.
Francis ultimately decided that the Chair of St. Peter — a symbol of the Church’s unity under the instruction of Christ — would be unveiled for the public at the closing Mass for the Synod on Synodality.
“Pope Francis has been exceptionally generous to the faithful about displaying relics,” Lev said. “He brought out the bones of St. Peter shortly after his election, he had the Shroud of Turin on view in 2015, and now he has taken the Chair of Peter out for veneration in the basilica.”
“In our virtual age, where much confusion reigns between what is real and what is not, Pope Francis has encouraged us to come face to face with these ancient witnesses of our faith and our traditions.”
Pope Francis venerates the Chair of St. Peter at the end of the closing Mass of the Synod on Synodality on Oct. 27, 2024, in Rome. Credit: Vatican Media
Feast of the Chair of St. Peter
The Feast of the Chair of St. Peter, celebrated each year on Feb. 22, dates back to the fourth century. St. Jerome (A.D. 347–420) spoke of his respect for the “Chair of Peter,” writing in a letter: “I follow no leader save Christ, so I enter into communion with … the Chair of Peter, for this I know is the rock upon which the Church is built.”
As Pope Benedict XVI explained in a 2006 catechesis: “‘Cathedra’ literally means the established seat of the bishop, placed in the mother church of a diocese, which for this reason is known as a ‘cathedral.”
“It is the symbol of the bishop’s authority and in particular, of his ‘magisterium,’ that is, the evangelical teaching which, as a successor of the apostles, he is called to safeguard and to transmit to the Christian community,” he said.
When a bishop takes possession of the particular Church that has been entrusted to him, he sits on the cathedra, Benedict explained: “From this seat, as teacher and pastor, he will guide the journey of the faithful in faith, hope, and charity.”
“The Church’s first ‘seat’ was the upper room, and it is likely that a special place was reserved for Simon Peter in that room where Mary, mother of Jesus, also prayed with the disciples,” he added.
Benedict XVI described Peter’s ministry as a journey from Jerusalem to Antioch, where he served as bishop, and ultimately to Rome. He noted that the See of Rome, where Peter ultimately “ended his race at the service of the Gospel with martyrdom,” became recognized as the seat of his successors, with the cathedra representing the mission entrusted to Peter by Christ.
“So it is that the See of Rome, which had received the greatest of honors, also has the honor that Christ entrusted to Peter of being at the service of all the particular Churches for the edification and unity of the entire people of God,” he said.
The Altar of the Chair in St. Peter’s Basilica, where Bernini’s bronze monument to the Chair of Peter acts as a massive bronze reliquary for the historic wooden chair. Credit: Vatican Media
Bernini’s Baroque masterpiece
Bernini’s monumental reliquary for the chair, commissioned by Pope Alexander VII and completed in 1666, is one of the most iconic artworks in St. Peter’s Basilica. Bernini encased the wooden relic within a bronze-gilded throne, dramatically raised and crowned by a stained-glass depiction of the Holy Spirit, symbolized as a dove, surrounded by sculpted angels.
The bronze throne is supported by massive statues of four doctors of the Church — two from the West, St. Augustine and St. Ambrose, and two from the East, St. John Chrysostom and St. Athanasius — symbolizing the unity of the Church through the ages, bringing together the teachings of both the Latin and Greek Church Fathers. And at the top of the throne, cherubs hold up a papal tiara and keys symbolizing papal authority.
On the chair itself, there are three gold bas-reliefs representing the Gospel episodes of the consignment of the keys (Matthew 16:19), “feed my sheep” (John 21:17), and the washing of the feet (John 13:1-17).
The ongoing restoration of Bernini’s monument at the Altar of the Chair, along with the recently finished restoration of the baldacchino, is significant not only in light of the 2025 Jubilee Year but also the upcoming 400th anniversary of the consecration of the current St. Peter’s Basilica in 2026.
“Celebrating the ‘Chair’ of Peter,” Benedict XVI said, “means attributing a strong spiritual significance to it and recognizing it as a privileged sign of the love of God, the eternal Good Shepherd, who wanted to gather his whole Church and lead her on the path of salvation.”
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2 Comments
Trump is out of cyber control. Fires Chris Krebs because he did his job!
CNN:
“Trump fires director of Homeland Security director of Cybersecurity by Tweeter. Krebs had rejected President’s election conspiracy theories.”
Kaitlan Collins byline
By Kaitlan Collins and Paul LeBlanc, CNN
Trump is out of cyber control. Fires Chris Krebs because he did his job!
CNN:
“Trump fires director of Homeland Security director of Cybersecurity by Tweeter. Krebs had rejected President’s election conspiracy theories.”
Kaitlan Collins byline
By Kaitlan Collins and Paul LeBlanc, CNN
You are commenting on the wrong article Morgan.
🙂