Cardinal Robert Sarah offers Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica for his 50th anniversary of priesthood in 2019. / Credit: Evandro Inetti/CNA.
Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Dec 29, 2021 / 12:00 pm (CNA).
The past year had no shortage of news in the Catholic realm, both in the Vatican and beyond. Read on for a recap of some of the most important – and interesting – figures who made headlines this year.
President Joe Biden
On Jan. 20, 2021, President Joe Biden (D) was sworn in as the second Catholic president of the United States. Born in Scranton, PA and raised in Delaware, Biden attended Catholic grammar and high school before matriculating at the University of Delaware.
Since becoming president, Biden has faced criticism from both the left and the right over his various positions, as well as his continued reception of the Eucharist at Mass. As president, Biden eliminated many pro-life policies from the Trump era. He met with Pope Francis in late October, where the two purportedly discussed the Eucharist.
Cardinal Robert Sarah
Cardinal Robert Sarah, a native of Guinea, resigned as prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments in February 2021. Sarah, who had reached the retirement age of 75 in June 2020, was the most senior African prelate at the Vatican. He had been appointed head of the liturgy department by Pope Francis in November 2014.
Sarah had previously served as the president of the Pontifical Council Cor Unum and as secretary of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples.
“Today, the Pope accepted the resignation of my office as Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship after my seventy-fifth birthday. I am in God’s hands. The only rock is Christ. We will meet again very soon in Rome and elsewhere,” said Sarah on Twitter following his resignation.
Jonathan Goodall and Fr. Michael Nazir-Ali
Each year, many people cross the proverbial Tiber and are received into the Catholic Church. This fall, however, the Tiber Swim Team landed two big-name recruits: two former Church of England bishops.
Jonathan Goodall, the former Anglican bishop of Ebbsfleet, announced on Sept. 3, the feast of St. Gregory the Great, that he was stepping down from his position and entering into full communion with the Catholic Church. The date was a nice touch, as St. Gregory the Great launched a mission to convert the then-pagan England to Christianity.
Goodall was formally received into the Church on Sept. 8. He said his decision came after “only after a long period of prayer, which has been among the most testing periods of my life.” He said he was “abidingly grateful to all who have so generously supported Sarah and me in these years, especially the laity and clergy of the See of Ebbsfleet — who have been the focus and joy of my ministry and devotion since becoming bishop in 2013,” and that it was “an immense privilege” to have been bishop.
Not to be outdone, a few weeks later the now-Fr. Michael Nazir-Ali announced that he, too, would be entering into full communion with the Catholic Church. Nazir-Ali, the former Anglican bishop of Rochester, entered into full communion with Rome within the Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham on Sept. 29. He was ordained a deacon on Oct. 28, and then a priest on Oct. 30.
Unlike Goodall, who came from a more conservative Anglican background, Nazir-Ali described himself as being part of the “Evangelical” wing of Anglicanism. At one point, he was considered to be a possible future Archbishop of Canterbury, the spiritual leader of the world’s 85 million Anglicans.
Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi
Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone of San Francisco is Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA)’s bishop. Cordileone and Pelosi are both Catholic. And that’s about where their similarities end.
Pelosi, a committed Democrat, lamented that the support of pro-life voters for former President Donald Trump was an issue that “gives me great grief as a Catholic.” Pelosi made the comment on a Jan. 18 podcast with former senator and presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.
“I think that Donald Trump is president because of the issue of a woman’s right to choose,” said Pelosi, implying that pro-life voters boosted Trump to victory in 2016. She added that these voters “were willing to sell the whole democracy down the river for that one issue.”
Cordileone rebuked Pelosi in a statement issued days later, saying, “No Catholic in good conscience can favor abortion” and that “Our land is soaked with the blood of the innocent, and it must stop,” he said.
The archbishop also promoted a “Rose and a Rosary for Nancy Pelosi” campaign, which saw more than 16,000 people commit to praying for Pelosi’s change of heart on life issues.
Archbishop Joseph Naumann
Archbishop Joseph Naumann of Kansas City in Kansas wrapped up a three-year stint as the head of the USCCB’s pro-life committee in 2021. The outspoken defender of life unleashed on Biden in a Feb. 13 interview with Catholic World Report.
“The president should stop defining himself as a devout Catholic, and acknowledge that his view on abortion is contrary to Catholic moral teaching. It would be a more honest approach from him to say he disagreed with his Church on this important issue and that he was acting contrary to Church teaching,” said Naumann.
“When he says he is a devout Catholic, we bishops have the responsibility to correct him. Although people have given this president power and authority, he cannot define what it is to be a Catholic and what Catholic moral teaching is,” the archbishop added. He further called for the bishops to “correct” the president, “as the president is acting contrary to the Catholic faith.”
Sr. Lucile Andre Randon
The coronavirus pandemic continued throughout the world in 2021, killing hundreds of thousands of people. One person who beat it, however, was the world’s second-oldest person: a French nun named Sr. Lucile Andre Randon.
Right before Randon’s 117th birthday, coronavirus swept through the Sainte Catherine Labouré retirement home in Toulon, southern France. Eighty-one of the 88 residents of the facility tested positive in January of this year, and 10 died.
Fortunately, Randon did not display any symptoms of the disease and recovered in time to celebrate her birthday on Feb. 11.
Asked if she was scared of COVID, she told France’s BFM television, “No, I wasn’t scared because I wasn’t scared to die… I’m happy to be with you, but I would wish to be somewhere else – join my big brother and my grandfather and my grandmother.”
Hidilyn Diaz
The covid-postponed Tokyo 2020 Olympics finally were staged in the Summer of 2021, and Catholic athletes shined on the world stage.
On the third full day of the games, Hidilyn Diaz won the first gold medal for the Philippines, inspiring an entire nation with her faith, grit, and perseverance. Diaz’s triumph came in the women’s 55-kilogram weightlifting event, and she won gold with an Olympic record lift of a combined weight of 224 kilograms.
After completing her final lift in a very close competition, Diaz held her hands to her face, burst into tears and clutched at her Miraculous Medal of the Blessed Virgin Mary hanging from her neck. Later, on the podium at the medal ceremony, Diaz pointed skyward after singing the Philippine national anthem, then made the Sign of the Cross before stepping down and shouting “Mabuhay ang Pilipinas!” (“Long live the Philippines!”)
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Howler!
The Pelosi Protest in a country which, until the Dobbs ruling, was the least restrictive fetal killing field in the world, except for Communist China and North Korea.
Actually that title goes to Canada. There’s no regulation whatsoever.
Saith the archbishop-ress of partial birth abortion…
I guess all the stern warnings she received about endangering her soul she must have gotten from Francis last October failed to change her mind.
Pray for all unrepentant sinners that their hardness of heart will be softened.
Amen, Deacon Edward.
These sad, pathetic women need our prayers.
And yet, we’re subjected to her photographed with Pope Francis, all with big smiles.
She is a false prophet.
Everything I read about this pathetic woman is – pathetic.
And then I read about the actor Shia Laboeuf who portrays St. Padre Pio in the upcoming (Sept 9) film of his life, and it gives me hope – much hope.
We’ll get through this.
On may suspect that she has willfully lost her eyes to see or her ears to hear as it appears that God may be turning his Face from her, maybe withdrawn the Holy Spirit.
Whenever I see a photo of Nancy Pelosi I am driven to draw it nearer to me , to see if I can spot the horns under har bouffant hairdo.
Nobody, including the federal government, “mandates pregnancy.” There is a foolproof method of contraception called abstinence. Don’t use sexual intercourse as recreation when it was meant for procreation. Yes, there are rare instances when pregnancy results from rape, but those cases are far from the majority of abortions. The Leftist Democrats have been working to eliminate personal responsibility since 1933 to the detriment of individuals and society. Everyone needs to take responsibility for their actions and the consequences thereof, period.
This so called catholic needs to be ousted….. such a shame to have women that are “catholic” promote taking the life of a child that our loving God has made possible. Makes me just sick that they don’t even care about the babies that are to born. Not good women or mother’s.
How is it that every Catholic bishop has not rushed to support Archbishop Cordileone’s effort to end the desecration of the Blessed Sacrament by refusing to administer our Lord to this high priestess of satan?
Her evil contagion is vomiting forth whenever she speaks now and erupting across the face of the earth, while our shepherds — with too few exceptions — do virtually nothing to protect their flocks.
The antichrist with is is now all to clear — and it is leftism.
In the meantime, half of America’s Catholics vote for its insane, vile, monstrous agenda every chance they get.
“Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter.” Isaiah 5:20
Its interesting but not shocking that Democrats like Pelosi NEVER speak about the virtual of personal responsibility. NOBODY is responsible for your getting pregnant but YOU. And that applies not matter what color you are or what income level you possess. It seems rather “sinful” to me that Pelosi implies that women lack the brains to make responsible decisions, like abstaining from sexual activity when needed. They therefore MUST need the ability to the murder the child they conceive. Its hard to say what if anything this crone knows about sinfulness, inasmuch as she is a major proponent of late term abortion. Which she appears to believe a greater good for woman-kind. Some can posit the “clump of cells” argument in arguing for abortion in the first two months of a pregnancy. But that is absolutely bogus by well before the 9th month. Yet there is no recognition of this reality from the democrats. I have a friend in her 60’s (past pregnancy age herself) who recently made it clear to me that this will be her voting issue. She has no daughters, and thus I am mystified why she takes this issue like she will need an abortion herself tomorrow. Out the window evidently in her voting decision are REAL life concerns about the open border admitting terrorists and fentanyl pushers and sex traffickers, food shortages, hyper inflation, and the dangers presented by the increasingly war-like posture of our enemies. No comment about the violence perpetrated on life centers and churches by pro-abortion “activists”. Its clear that clergy must speak up loud, often and clear with brutal frankness not only about this barbaric procedure, but about the sinfulness of those who support it, medically or politically. I would consider Pelosi merely dim-witted if she wasnt doing so much harm.
Men often put extreme pressure on a wife or girlfriend to terminate or else
Which again feels like an argument that women lack either intellect or the spine to understand the consequence of what they do. I personally would take the “or else” rather than continue a relationship with a man who urged me to kill my baby.
More “theology” from Professor Pelosi! No doubt she will be warmly
welcomed the next time she goes to the Vatican. And Cardinal Gregory
will be silent and keep giving her Communion.
I am so tired of well-heeled women pleading compassion for minority and low income women to justify their promotion of abortion. How does it show respect/compassion for minority and low income women to tell them their babies are trash?
Our Lord persevered in efforts to help free Judas from the curse incurred by him that blinded him to Lord’s warnings . The Holy Father too likely with the intention to set such persons free – ? from the blinding effects of the curses incurred .
https://biblehub.com/deuteronomy/27-25.htm
Such persons also ignoring the wisdom and warnings from exorcists as well .
The Govt. too , participating , even in the act of bribing by supporting such choices … and we see the effects – as massive social issues , debt issues , afflictions of nature ,lives and families – wars , identity confusions , addictions , suicides ..
Persons who ought to see the connections refusing to connect the dots – themselves being blinded by the curses ..
Used to be puzzled about the focus given by Rev.Fr.Jim Blount , for the Precious Blood prayers ( a rather long standing devotion ) as advocated for our times – not hard to see how much we need same –
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OOghQCAeqrE
Blessings !