Cardinal Zen expresses ‘pain and indignation’ at St. Peter’s Basilica private Mass restrictions

March 30, 2021 CNA Daily News News Briefs 1 Print

Cardinal Joseph Zen Ze-kiun departs the Pontifical Urbaniana University in Rome, Nov. 18, 2014. / Bohumil Petrik/CNA

CNA Staff, Mar 30, 2021 / 01:35 am (CNA).- Cardinal Joseph Zen on Tuesday expressed “pain and indignation” at restrictions on private Masses in St. Peter’s Basilica.

The former bishop of Hong Kong said March 30 that if he could, he would fly to Rome and kneel outside the pope’s residence until the decree was withdrawn.

He wrote: “Pain and indignation invade my heart to hear certain incredible news: They have forbidden private masses in St. Peter’s!?”

“If it were not for the restrictions imposed by the coronavirus, I would take the first flight to come to Rome and get on my knees in front of the door of Santa Marta (now the papal residence) until the Holy Father has this edict withdrawn.”

Zen made his remarks on his website in an open letter to Cardinal Robert Sarah after the former prefect of the Vatican’s Congregation for Divine Worship asked Pope Francis on Monday to reinstate the celebration of private Masses at the side altars in St. Peter’s Basilica.

Zen is the fifth cardinal to voice opposition to the change, which went into effect March 22, after Sarah, Raymond Burke, Gerhard Müller, and Walter Brandmüller.

In his open letter, Zen wrote: “It was the thing that strengthened my faith most every time I came to Rome: at exactly seven o’clock I would enter the sacristy (where I almost always would meet that holy man, the Archbishop, then Cardinal Paolo Sardi); a young priest would come forward and would help me to dress in the vestments, and then they take me to an altar (in the Basilica proper or in the grottoes, that would make no difference to me, we were in St. Peter’s Basilica!).”

The new protocols, issued by the First Section of the Vatican Secretariat of State, say that priests will be invited to take part in several concelebrated Masses at St. Peter’s every day but will not be permitted to offer private Masses at the basilica’s many side altars.

It was a long-standing custom that priests would offer individual Masses in the early morning hours at some of the side altars in the basilica. Sometimes priests said the Mass alone or with only a deacon, and other times they would be accompanied by small groups of Catholics.

Priests traveling with pilgrim groups were also permitted to reserve an altar for a private Mass.

There are a total of 45 altars and 11 chapels in St. Peter’s Basilica.

The 89-year-old cardinal, an outspoken defender of persecuted Chinese Catholics, said that he used to pray “with tears” for the Church in China at the Masses in St. Peter’s Basilica.

“I think these were the Masses that, in my life, I celebrated with more fervor and emotion, sometimes with tears praying for our living martyrs in China (now abandoned and pushed into the bosom of the schismatic church by the “Holy See” [as that document of June 2020 was presented without signatures and without the revisions of the Congregation for Doctrine]),” he wrote.

Zen has frequently criticized the Vatican Secretariat of State’s role in securing a “provisional agreement” between the Holy See and China over the appointment of bishops.

Concluding his open letter, he wrote: “It is time to reduce the excessive power of the Secretariat of State. Remove these sacrilegious hands from the communal home for all the Faithful in the world! Let them content themselves with playing worldly diplomacy with the father of lies. Let them make the Secretariat of State ‘a den of thieves’, But leave the devoted people of God alone!”

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Ukranian archeparchy in Philadelphia gets a new auxiliary bishop

August 8, 2017 CNA Daily News 1

Vatican City, Aug 8, 2017 / 05:45 am (CNA/EWTN News).- On Tuesday it was announced that Pope Francis has named Fr. Andriy Rabiy, who has a background in child protection, as an auxiliary bishop for the Ukrainian Catholic Archeparchy of Philadelphia.

Announced in an Aug. 8 communique from the Vatican, Rabiy’s appointment means he will join fellow auxiliary Bishop John Bura in serving the Archepharchy’s Metropolitan Archbishop, Stefan Soroka.

Until now he has served as “protosyncellus,” defined on the archeparchy’s website as someone – typically an auxiliary bishop or “a priest of distinguished standing” — who is given special authority to help the archbishop govern the eparchy.

Born in Lviv, Ukraine, in 1975, Rabiy eventually moved to the United States, where he adapted well to his new culture.

After completing his basic education, the bishop-elect entered the Ukrainian Seminary of St. Jehoshaphat in Washington. In 1999 he received a Bachelor’s degree in Philosophy from the Catholic University of America.

He was ordained a deacon in 1998, and was ordained a priest three years later Dec. 19, 2001.

Rabiy’s duties in the archeparchy have included his role as protosyncellus, being a member of the Archeparchial Council of Consultors, the Administrative Council of Pennsylvania’s Conference of Catholic Bishops and the Presbyterous Archepichal District Council, as well as Director of their Center for Prevention and Infant and Youth Protection.

The date of his episcopal ordination has not yet been set, but is expected to be announced soon.

Currently the Archeparchy of Philadephia is made up of roughly 67,250 faithful and 74 parishes under it’s canonical jurisdiction.

According to the archeparchy’s website, the community was initially established as the result of an influx of Catholic immigrants in the 1870s from the Austro-Hungarian empire who practiced the Byzantine tradition, and were known as Ruthenians.

In 1884 a priest from the tradition came and blessed what would become their first church building in Shenandoah, Pennsylvania the same year.

The community was placed under the jurisdiction of the Latin ordinaries in their places of residence by Pope Leo XIII in 1895, and in 1907 Bishop  Soter Stephen Ortynsky was named their first ecclesial superior. However, he was required to obtain actual jurisdiction from each Latin ordinary in every community where his faithful had settled.

Six years later, in 1913, Bishop Ortynsky was given full jurisdiction and “sui iuri” status, meaning independent status, from Latin ordinaries by Pope St. Pius X.

In 1924 the ordinary was elevated to an exarchate, referred to as the Apostolic Exharchate of the United States of America, Faithful of the Oriental rite.

Pope Pius XII in 1956 established the Apostolic Exarchy of Stamford, Conn., assigning to it parishes located in the State of New York and the whole of New England. Then two years later, in 1958, he created the the Ecclesiastical Province of Philadelphia which included the  Archeparchy of Philadelphia of the Ukrainians, and the Eparchy of Stamford.

The sitting archbishop in the Philadelphia Archeparchy oversees all Ukrainian eparchies in the United States, located in Stamford, Chicago and Parma.

Each bishop of the Philadelphia province holds jurisdiction over all faithful living in the territory of their Eparchies, meaning bishops in the Latin rite hold no authority over them. Although located in the U.S., the archeharchy answers to the See of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church in Kyiv, Ukraine, which is headed by Major Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk.

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1 Comment

  1. We are drawn to two cardinals that reveal the truth of the state of the faith within our Church. Two weather vanes who correctly reveal its direction. Zen and Sarah emerging from Catholicism persecuted in China, sold out by the Vatican, Catholicism at the mercy of barbaric African Islamists. No political ties, aspirations, just pure unmitigated faith in Christ and love of his Church. No one speaks like that of high ranking ecclesial authority, actually the highest ranking beneath Pope Francis. If Fr Antonio Spadaro is Pope Francis’ consigliere, Cardinal Piero Parolin is his enforcer. Neither directly accuse the Pope, faithful soldiers of Christ who decline to attack the Commander occupant of the Chair, Vicar of Christ. But they sure come darn close. Certainly they’re aware who calls the shots. Nothing gets by His Holiness that he doesn’t sanction. Cardinal Sarah, “The new norms are as lacking in justice as in love”. Cardinal Zen, “Remove these sacrilegious hands from the communal home”. Response from the Chair, the usual pious exclamations. Priests beware of worldliness. Laity confession and the cross. Bishops resist judgments, disturbing conflict. Presbyters be nice. Be lovingly lovable. Continue your innocuousness.

    Reply

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