PHOTOS: Remembering Cardinal Pell

Vatican City, Jan 11, 2019 / 07:57 am (CNA/EWTN News).- The Vatican announced Friday that Paolo Ruffini, prefect of the Vatican communications department, has amended the organizational structure of the Holy See Press Office to include a senior advisor… […]

Cardinal François-Xavier Bustillo stands outside St. Peter’s Square after the conclave that elected Pope Leo XIV. / Marco Mancini / EWTN News

Rome Newsroom, May 10, 2025 / 07:00 am (CNA).

Cardinal François-Xavier Bustillo described Pope Leo XIV as a “solid, discreet, and good worker” and expressed confidence that the new pontiff will continue to be “bold” in addressing the needs of today’s world, in comments made shortly after the May 8 conclave that elected Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost as the Church’s 267th pope.

Speaking with ACI Stampa, CNA’s Italian-language partner agency, on the streets of Rome, the Bishop of Ajaccio, Corsica — who participated as a cardinal elector — said the College of Cardinals entered the conclave with openness to the Holy Spirit, not political calculation.

“It’s precisely this: we weren’t thinking at all about strategies or political tactics,” Cardinal Bustillo said.

“We were trusting and wanted not our own good, not the good of us cardinals, but wanted the good of the people of God, and I think we succeeded in giving a good pope to the Church — and this was our objective.”

The cardinal highlighted the significance of the date of Leo’s election. May 8 is marked across much of Europe as Victory in Europe Day, commemorating the end of World War II.

“Our world needs peace — there’s too much violence in our lives, in our families, everywhere, even in international geopolitics — and so there’s a need for peace,” he said. “The pope was right to recall the meaning of peace, and the mission of the Church is to foster peace.”

When asked about similarities between Leo XIV and his predecessor, Pope Francis, Cardinal Bustillo pointed to their shared pastoral outlook.

“He reminds me of Pope Francis in his contact with people, in his vision of the world, and in his understanding of the Church’s response to the world,” he said. “That’s what’s important.”

Bustillo emphasized that the conclave, which concluded in under 24 hours, was marked by spiritual clarity and fraternal unity.

“He is the pope the Holy Spirit has given us — in less than 24 hours we elected the pope, and there were neither tactics nor strategies. There was freedom and trust,” he said.

Reflecting on the Church’s challenges, Cardinal Bustillo voiced hope that Leo XIV would offer meaningful guidance for a restless world.

“Faith in a world that is very materialistic, hedonistic — we need to find a spirituality, a soul, in this world that functions but does not live,” he said.

This story was first published by ACI Stampa, CNA’s Italian-language news partner. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.

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Vatican City, Jun 29, 2019 / 03:30 am (CNA).- Pope Francis sent a 5,700 word letter to Catholics in Germany Saturday calling for a focus on evangelization in the face of the “erosion” and “decline of the faith” in the country.

“The current challenges as well as the answers we give demand a long maturation process and the cooperation of an entire people over years,” Pope Francis wrote in a letter published June 29.

“This stimulates the emergence and continuation of processes that build us as God’s people, rather than seeking immediate results with premature and medial consequences that are fleeting because of lack of deepening and maturation or because they do not correspond to the vocation we are given,” he continued.

In his letter, Pope Francis issued a warning about the “synodal path,” a process announced by Cardinal Reinhard Marx. The pope said,“What this entails in concrete terms and how it unfolds will certainly require further consideration.”

The German bishops’ conference decided in March that the issues of priestly celibacy, the Church’s teaching on sexual morality, and a reduction of clerical power would be subject to a process  “synodal progression” that could lead to a binding, but as yet undetermined, outcome.

“Synodality presupposes and requires the action of the Holy Spirit,” Francis said in the letter.

The pope warned, “despite all serious and inevitable reflection, it is easy to fall into subtle temptations … therefore caution should be exercised, since they, anything but helpful to a common path, hold us in preconceived schemes and mechanisms that end in alienation or limitation of our mission.”

“What is more, if we are not aware of these temptations, we easily end up with a complicated series of arguments, analyses and solutions with no other effect than to stay away from the real and daily encounter with the faithful people and the Lord,” he said.

The pope also reiterated concerns he raised with the German bishops during their ad limina visit in Rome in November 2015 in which he had already noted a grave lack of participation in the sacraments among Catholics in Germany. He challenged bishops to “pastoral conversion” and warned of “excessive centralization.”

“To accept and endure the present situation … is an invitation to face what has died in us and in our congregations, which requires evangelization and visitation by the Lord,” Francis said. “But this requires courage, because what we need is much more than structural, organizational or functional change.”

The church in Germany has been embroiled in a number of controversies in recent months, several of which have also led to tensions with the Vatican, in particular pertaining to the practice of giving communion to protestants who are married to Catholics — a practice now officially established in several German dioceses — along with the practice of giving communion to divorced and remarried Catholics.

According to research recently published by the University of Freiburg, the number of officially registered Catholics in Germany will halve by 2060.

“The forthcoming process of change cannot respond exclusively to external facts and needs, such as the sharp decline in the birth rate and the ageing of communities, which do not allow a normal generational change to be considered,” Pope Francis said. “A true process of change … makes demands that arise from our Christianity and from the very dynamics of the evangelization of the Church; such a process requires pastoral conversion.”

“Pastoral conversion reminds us that evangelization must be our guiding criterion par excellence, by which we can recognize all the steps we are called to take as an ecclesial community; evangelization is the real and essential mission of the Church,” he said.

Anian Christoph Wimmer contributed to this report.

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