Rome, Italy, Jan 25, 2021 / 12:19 pm (CNA).- Papal almoner Cardinal Konrad Krajewski offered a funeral Mass Monday for a 64-year-old homeless man who died in Rome.
Roberto Mantovani died in a homeless shelter near Rome’s Termini train station after contracting pneumonia.
Cardinal George Pell concelebrated the funeral Mass Jan. 25 at the parish of St. Pius X with Archbishop Arthur Roche, Secretary of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, and a dozen priests, according to Vatican News.
Cardinal Krajewski, who knew Mantovani, said that he chose the reading from the Gospel of Luke in which Christ recounts the parable of Lazarus and the rich man, for the funeral Mass because “Robert always slept in front of a closed door.”
“He was a cheerful, sunny person, at the lunches we had he made everyone laugh,” Cardinal Krajewski said.
Mantovani will be buried next to his parents in his hometown of Oppeano in northern Italy. He had formerly been a professional soccer player with Hellas Verona F.C. but an injury ended his career.
His funeral took place one day after Pope Francis prayed for another homeless man, a 46-year-old Nigerian man named Edwin, who was found dead near St. Peter’s Square last week.
“Last Jan. 20, a few meters from St. Peter’s Square, a 46-year-old Nigerian homeless man named Edwin was found dead because of the cold,” the pope said Jan. 24.
“His story was added to that of many other homeless people who recently died in Rome in the same dramatic circumstances. Let us pray for Edwin.”
According to the news website RomaToday, Edwin was the fourth homeless person to die this year in Rome, where there are an estimated 8,000 homeless people. Many sleep in tents along the edge of Bernini’s colonnade, the semi-circular columns enclosing St. Peter’s Square.
“Let us think about Edwin,” Pope Francis said. “Let us think of how this man, 46 years old, felt in the cold, ignored by all, abandoned, even by us. Let us pray for him.”
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CNA Staff, Sep 1, 2020 / 06:15 am (CNA).- A Catholic archbishop appealed for prayers Tuesday, a day after he was blocked from entering Belarus by border guards.
In a Sept. 1 message to Belarusian Catholics, Archbishop Tadeusz Kondrusiewicz said … […]
Father David Waller will become the first bishop Ordinary of the Ordinariate. / Credit: Courtesy photo / Bishop’s Conference of England and Wales
National Catholic Register, Apr 29, 2024 / 18:45 pm (CNA).
The Vatican has announced a new leader of the ordinariate in Great Britain.
Father David Waller, 62, a parish priest and vicar general of the Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham, will replace Monsignor Keith Newton, 72, who is retiring after serving over 13 years as the ordinary of the ecclesiastical structure for former Anglicans.
In a statement, Newton called the Vatican’s April 29 announcement “momentous” given that Waller, who is a celibate, will become the first bishop ordinary of the ordinariate.
As someone who was already married as an Anglican clergyman before entering the Church through the ordinariate, Newton was not allowed episcopal consecration.
Established by Pope Benedict XVI in 2011 through his 2009 apostolic constitution Anglicanorum Coetibus, the ordinariate is an ecclesiastical structure for Anglicans wishing to enter into full communion with the Catholic Church while retaining their distinctive Anglican patrimony.
With today’s announcement, the Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham becomes the first of three in the world — the others being in the U.S./Canada and Australia — to have had an influence in choosing its leader.
In keeping with the Anglican emphasis on consultation and in accordance with the Anglicanorum Coetibus, members of the ordinariate’s governing council, made up of ordinariate priests, were able to choose Waller as one of three names they recommended to the Holy See.
Monsignor Keith Newton, 72, is retiring after serving over 13 years as the ordinary of the ecclesiastical structure for former Anglicans. Credit: Edward Pentin
Newton said he believed allowing this faculty, one that is usually left to the apostolic nuncio, “showed the Holy See’s confidence in the ordinariate in the U.K.”
A former Anglican vicar who served as a pastor, part-time hospital chaplain, and a member of the governing body of the Church of England, Waller was among the first Anglican clergy to be received into the Church following the establishment of the Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham in 2011.
He was then ordained to the diaconate and the priesthood, has served in two parishes, and was elected chairman of the ordinariate’s governing council. For the past four years he has worked with Newton as vicar general.
In a statement, Waller said it was “both humbling and a great honor” to have been appointed ordinary. “The past 13 years have been a time of grace and blessing as small and vulnerable communities have grown in confidence, rejoicing to be a full yet distinct part of the Catholic Church,” he added.
Already well known to members of the ordinariate, he said he was looking forward to serving them in his new role, adding that experience over these past years has taught him “there is nothing to be feared in responding to the Lord and that Jesus does great things with us despite our inadequacies.”
Newton said in a statement that he was “delighted” with Waller’s appointment, adding that he has been “unwaveringly loyal” to the ordinariate and a “great support” to him as vicar general.
Waller has been “totally been involved in life of the ordinariate and understands it all, and is a good administrator,” Newton told the National Catholic Register, CNA’s sister news partner.
No coercion to step down
Newton stressed that he had chosen to retire while he is still active.
“I’ve not been forced out in any way, and nobody has told me to retire; it’s totally my own decision,” he said. “It’s a time to pass it on to new hands,” he continued, adding that he and his wife, Gill, “want to enjoy a bit of retirement together.”
Other prominent priests of the ordinariate also welcomed the news of Waller’s appointment. Father Ed Tomlinson, priest in charge of St. Anselm’s Ordinariate Parish Church in Pembury, Tunbridge Wells, told the Register he was “delighted the ordinariate will have a bishop” and that he wished “Father David the best.”
Father Benedict Kiely, an ordinariate priest of the same parish who also runs the charity Nasarean.org for persecuted Christians, said: “I will always remain grateful to Msgr. Keith for making the defense of persecuted Christians an important part of the ordinariate, and I’m sure Bishop David will continue that support.”
Newton said the date and place of Waller’s episcopal ordination have yet to be confirmed but that he expected it to take place “towards the end of June.”
This story was first published by the National Catholic Register, CNA’s sister news partner, and is reprinted here on CNA with permission.
Respectful farewell to Roberto Mantovani. Eternal rest grant unto him O Lord and let your perpetual light shine upon Roberto, Edwin, and other souls of the homeless gone ahead.
Respectful farewell to Roberto Mantovani. Eternal rest grant unto him O Lord and let your perpetual light shine upon Roberto, Edwin, and other souls of the homeless gone ahead.