Curitiba city councilman Renato Freitas / Rodrigo Fonseca / CMC
Curitiba, Brazil, Feb 21, 2022 / 18:00 pm (CNA).
Renato Freitas, a city councilman for Curitiba who led a protest interrupting Mass at Our Lady of the Rosary church in the city, has asked for a leave of absence, citing health problems.
The request was made Feb. 16, accompanied by a medical certificate that doesn’t state the cause for his request. The city council says that Freitas has received death threats.
ACI Digital, CNA’s Portuguese language sister news agency, asked for specifics on the death threats, if they were reported to the police, and what health problems the councilman has, but no response was received by press time.
“The councilman has been subject to constant and increasingly violent threats, including death threats and racial slurs, which is why he needed a respite to recuperate from so much violence,” says a statement from an advisor.
In his request submitted to the Curitiba city council, Freitas asks that his absence from the council sessions be justified by the medical certificate. He is expected to be out until next week.
The Board of Directors of the Municipality of Curitiba has accepted four requests for Freitas to be censured for breach of decorum. The council Ethics Committee is investigating the case.
The demonstration interrupting Mass at Our Lady of the Rosary church took place Feb. 5.The demonstrators shouted accusations of “racist” and “fascist.”
The protest was held “in memory of and justice for” two black men, Moïse Kabagambe and Durval Teófilo Filho. Kabagambe, a Congolese immigrant, was beaten to death by three men on Jan. 24 at a kiosk in Rio de Janeiro, while Filho was shot in front of his house in São Gonçalo after a sergeant mistook him for a thief. Freitas is also black.
In a subsequent explanation, the councilman said the site of the protest was chosen “because of the historical relationship of the place with the black population of Curitiba.” Completed in 1737, the church of Our Lady of the Rosary of Black Men of São Benedito was built “by and for the slaves, since black men and women could not enter other churches in our city.”
Four days later, Freitas made a statement about the incident during a regular session of the city council and apologized for his attitude.
“Some people were deeply offended and for those people I sincerely and deeply apologize. I’m sorry. It was not, in fact, intended to hurt or in any way offend anyone’s creed. Even because I myself, as everyone knows, am a Christian,” Freitas said Feb. 9.
Although the demonstrators carried flags of the Workers’ Party, to which Freitas belongs, inside the church, the party said it was not involved in the disturbance in any way.
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Michelangelo’s The Creation of Eve, from the Sistine Chapel ceiling, c. 1510. / null
Denver, Colo., Nov 15, 2022 / 09:00 am (CNA).
Michelangelo’s artistic masterpiece in the Sistine Chapel broke new ground in portraying the dynamic creative acts of God, but his work also depicts the combined importance of men and women through all of sacred history, art historian Elizabeth Lev has said.
“The spirit of artistic adventure led the artist to experiment with a completely new vision of creation,” Lev said Nov. 12. “He took a book that had been painted, sculpted, mosaiced, and illuminated over and over again in the history of art and created something completely new.”
She spoke at the closing keynote Saturday evening at the fall conference of the University of Notre Dame’s de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture. Lev teaches at the Rome campus of Duquesne University and the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas. Her speech, “Creation, Complementarity, & St. John Paul II in Michelangelo’s Sistine Ceiling,” focused on one of the key artistic treasures of Vatican City.
The 16th-century Florentine artist Michelangelo was commissioned by Pope Julius II to paint the Sistine Chapel’s ceiling and the upper section of its walls. This was the artist’s focus from 1508 to 1512. He later finished the Last Judgment above the chapel altar from 1535 to 1541.
The ceiling frescoes show the creation of the heavens and the earth, the creation of Adam and Eve, their expulsion from the Garden of Eden, the great flood, and the rebirth of humankind through Noah.
Lev cited St. John Paul II’s description of Michelangelo’s work in his poem “Meditations on the Book of Genesis at the Threshold of the Sistine Chapel.”
“It is the book of the origins — Genesis,” the pope said. “Here, in this chapel, Michelangelo penned it, not with words, but with the richness of piled-up colors. We enter in order to read it again, going from wonder to wonder.”
Lev reflected on the first three panels depicting the creation of the world. These show “the mighty dynamic figure of God the Father at work.”
“It’s not what God creates, it’s that God creates,” she said. Michelangelo broke ground in portraying God as “physically engaged in creation.” For Lev, this offers “a preview of the Incarnation.”
Turning to Michelangelo’s famous depiction of the Creation of Adam, Lev noted that the artist depicts “just God and the creature formed in his likeness.” Adam is shown as “somewhat listless” in contrast with God’s energy. Adam is “sentient and awake but he has no will or strength or purpose to rise,” she said. “He looks completely passive and dependent despite that incredibly beautiful form.”
“It’s God who reaches towards man,” she continued. For Lev, the outstretched finger of God makes the viewer “almost lean forward in his seat waiting for that final Act of Creation, the divine spark, the Breath of Life that will release that latent energy and allow Adam to take his place as the greatest of creations.”
“This is the joy in humanity that permeates the Renaissance,” Lev said.
Michelangelo’s The Fall and Expulsion from Paradise from the Vatican’s Sistine Chapel (1508-12).
There is academic debate over a female figure shown in the Creation of Adam. As God the Father stretches out one arm to Adam, his other arm curls around a female figure. Some have identified this figure as Wisdom, some as Mary.
Lev suggested it is best to identify this figure as Eve, both because the figure provides visual balance to Adam and because her gaze “connects her more intimately with Adam.”
The creation of Eve from Adam, depicted next on the chapel ceiling, shows Eve emerging from Adam’s side with her hands clasped in prayer, an image of the Church and the personification of Mary, the “Second Eve.”
Lev cited St. John Paul II’s 1999 homily inaugurating the newly restored Sistine Chapel, after centuries of grime and soot were removed. The pope called the chapel the “sanctuary of the theology of the human body,” alluding to his catecheses offered from 1979 to 1984. The pope suggested that Michelangelo allowed himself to be guided by the Book of Genesis’ depiction of mankind in Eden: “the man and his wife were both naked and they felt no shame.”
Before the fall, Lev commented, Michelangelo depicted Adam and Eve in the state of grace as “two of his most beautiful figures.”
“They are filled with dynamism. They’re buoyant. They’re luminous,” Lev said, adding that their bodies “suggest immortality.” After the fall, however, both of their bodies “lose their luminosity” and appear heavier, like a burden. Adam’s shoulder seems to force Eve into the background, “subjugating her.”
For Lev, the artistic depiction of the genealogy of Jesus Christ also deserves attention. The portrayal of the ancestors of Jesus Christ shows “a genealogy of men and women struggling from generation to generation.” These figures seem “more approachable” and “much more similar to candid family photographs.” Even though 22 women in Jesus’ genealogy are not named, Michelangelo pairs them with their husbands.
Lev noted that Michelangelo broke with artistic convention both by including mothers and by showing them as busy, everyday women “tending to toddlers, toilettes, and tasks.” His style of painting them with “incredible immediacy” adds observations of human nature: Eleazar’s wife holds the purse strings and the key to the house, and her husband looks “startled” as she surveys their son. Other depictions are “tender and intimate,” like the portrayal of the wife of Manasseh, who cradles a swaddled son while rocking an infant’s cradle.
Here, Lev drew on John Paul II’s 1995 “Letter to Women.” He wrote that womanhood and manhood are complementary at the physical, psychological, and even ontological level.
“It is only through the duality of the masculine and the feminine that the human finds full recognition,” the pope said. “To this unity of the two, God has entrusted not only the work of procreation and family life but the creation of history itself.”
Lev noted that the passing of generations “necessarily emphasizes the begetting of children.” This means that the complementarity of the sexes is essential for a population to form and for creation to continue.
In Michelangelo’s portrayal of the Last Judgment, the artist still looks back to creation but also breaks new ground. He placed Mary next to Christ, as “a foil to Christ’s sternness.”
“She is the picture of mercy gazing down towards the elect, placed by the wound in Christ’s side whence the Church sprang,” Lev said. “Mary is transfigured into the Bride of Christ, for whom he gave his life and to whom he cannot say no. She is the conduit to Christ, as Eve was the link between God and man in the creation of woman.”
For Lev, the Sistine Chapel shows the “incredible gift of creation” from the beginning of the world down through the generations, “through which all of us today are a part of that continuation of creation.”
Vatican City, Feb 25, 2021 / 04:44 pm (CNA).- After Robert Cardinal Sarah’s retirement as Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of Sacraments, the big question around the Vatican is who will take his place.
Informed sources say that Pope Francis would be looking at three possible options.
The first would be that Pope Francis would raise Archbishop Arthur Roche, 70, from the congregation’s secretary to its prefect.
Archbishop Roche was appointed Secretary of the Congregation for the Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments by Benedict XVI in 2012. Before, he was president of the British International Commission on Liturgy from 2002 to 2012. He also served as auxiliary bishop of Westminster from 2001 to 2002, coadjutor Bishop of Leeds from 2002 to 2004, and Bishop of Leeds from 2004 to 2012.
During Pope Francis’ pontificate, he has been a go-between Pope Francis and Cardinal Sarah in liturgical issues. He was entrusted with writing a commentary to the motu proprio Magnum Principium, which shifted the responsibility of translating liturgical texts to bishops’ regional and national conferences. The comment came out along with the publication of the motu proprio.
In 2019, Pope Francis appointed Archbishop Roche as a member of the team to examine the appeals on delicta graviora, the gravest crimes dealt by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which includes the sexual abuse of minors.
The second option is Bishop Claudio Maniago of Castellaneta. Maniago, 62, has been president of the Italian Bishops Conference’s Commission on liturgy since 2015. In that position, he oversaw the new translation into Italian of the Roman Missal, which included a new version of the Our Father.
Pope Francis appointed Bishop Maniago as a member of the Congregation for Divine Worship, and in 2016.
The third option would be Bishop Vittorio Viola of Tortona. A member of the Order of Friars Minor, Viola, 55, has been a bishop since 2014.
Pope Francis picked Viola as bishop, raising him from his position of president of the Assisi Caritas. He had also been the Custodian of the Papal Basilica of Saint Mary of the Angels in Assisi. He got to know Pope Francis during the pope’s visit to Assisi on Oct. 4, 2013, when he sat next to him during a lunch with the poor.
Viola was ordained a priest by Bishop Luca Brandolini, one of Archbishop Annibale Bugnini’s closest collaborators.
Viola is also a good friend of Bishop Domenico Sorrentino of Assisi, who was secretary of the Congregation for the Divine worship from 2003 to 2005.
Pope Francis reportedly appreciated how Bishop Viola handled the parishes’ re-organization in Tortona, and he showed strong decision-making skills. Bishop Viola was among the candidates to take over the position of Archbishop of Genoa. Pope Francis opted for a Conventual Franciscan in Genoa, Fr. Marco Tasca. But rumors insist that the pope had already decided to call Viola to the Vatican.
Pope Francis arrives with Cardinal Marc Ouellet (R) of Canada for the opening of three-day Symposium on priesthood in the Paul VI hall at the Vatican on Feb. 17, 2022. / Tiziana Fabi/AFP via Getty Images)
I cannot think of anything more disrespectful to the innocent murder victims than to disrupt their Funeral Mass. Freitas should have resigned in disgrace. He is an example of what is wrong with so called “racial justice warriors”, who are more interested in looting and causing chaos than actually fighting to end racism.
I cannot think of anything more disrespectful to the innocent murder victims than to disrupt their Funeral Mass. Freitas should have resigned in disgrace. He is an example of what is wrong with so called “racial justice warriors”, who are more interested in looting and causing chaos than actually fighting to end racism.