A Catholic journalist from Italy revealed Wednesday that Cardinal George Pell, who died on Jan. 10, had been the author of a controversial memo about the next papal election.
The anonymous memo was circulated among cardinals during Lent last year and made public by Sandro Magister on March 15, 2022.
Magister, a longtime Vatican journalist, revealed the identity of the document’s author on Jan. 11, the day after Pell’s death from a cardiac arrest at the age of 81.
In an article about the Australian cardinal’s “last writings,” Magister wrote on his blog “Settimo Cielo” that “Pell was the author of that memorandum, signed ‘Demos,’ which was very critical of the pontificate of Francis.”
The funeral Mass of the Australian cardinal will be held in St. Peter’s Basilica on Jan. 14. Pope Francis will preside over the rites of final commendation and farewell, as he does for all cardinals who die in Rome.
Magister’s disclosure sparked a backlash against Pell on social media.
“Like Jesus, Francis’s love and mercy draw out bad spirits of disdain and rigidity. You saw it, sad to say, in Pell RIP,” tweeted Catholic journalist and Pope Francis biographer Austen Ivereigh.
But at least one friend of Pell’s, Jesuit Father Joseph Fessio, founder and editor of Ignatius Press, voiced skepticism that Pell was the author of the memo.
“I think it’s just pure speculation as to whether he’s the author or not,” Fessio said Jan. 12 on EWTN’s “The World Over with Raymond Arroyo.” “He’s said enough things publicly that we can understand what his views were on these things. I will take a sed contra on this. George Pell was a loyal son of the Church. He would not publicly criticize the Holy Father, and I doubt that he would put his signature to something, even anonymously, that would be public criticism.”
The memo on a future conclave described Pope Francis’ pontificate as a “disaster” and listed ways the author thought the pope had caused confusion on important issues in the Church.
The document’s author also laid out what it considered to be grave problems in the Vatican, including financial, legal, and doctrinal issues, before outlining the qualities needed in the next pope.
“The Vatican’s political prestige is now at a low ebb,” the memorandum said.
The critical tone of the memo is matched by a more recent writing by Pell, published posthumously by the British magazine The Spectator.
The article, which calls Pope Francis’ three-year-long Synod on Synodality a “toxic nightmare,” was published on Jan. 11.
An associate editor of the magazine, Damian Thompson, described the article as Pell’s “last public statement,” though he did not know he was about to die when writing it and “was prepared to face the fury of Pope Francis and the [synod] organisers when it was published.”
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Denver Newsroom, May 9, 2022 / 15:01 pm (CNA).
The New York Times has changed the answer to its daily Wordle word game, avoiding ‘fetus’, lest it be viewed as related to current events linked to Roe v. Wade.“At … […]
Catholic Archbishop Matthew Ishaya Audu of Jos marches alongside evangelical leader Rev. Dr. Gideon Para-Mallam in front of the Plateau state governor’s office building in Jos, Nigeria, Jan. 8, 2024. / Credit: Photo courtesy of Rev. Dr. Gideon Para-Mallam, photo by Plateau State Government Media Team.
Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Jan 9, 2024 / 15:30 pm (CNA).
Thousands of Christians rallied yesterday in front of the governor’s office in Nigeria’s Plateau state to demand action after more than 200 were killed in a series of Christmas massacres.
The attacks, which targeted Christian villages beginning Dec. 23 and continuing through Christmas day, left Christian communities in Nigeria’s Plateau state reeling. Photos obtained by CNA after the attack showed villagers burying their slain relatives and loved ones in mass graves.
According to Rev. Dr. Gideon Para-Mallam, an evangelical leader who helped to organize the rally, the attacks also left 15,000 people displaced without homes.
Among the demands being made by the protestors, Para-Mallam said that they asked for an “urgent humanitarian relief material response by the state and federal government” and for the arrest of the perpetrators of the Christmas massacre, which he called a “genocidal,” “terrorist” attack.
Thousands of Christians peacefully and prayerfully march to a rally in front of the Nigerian Plateau state governor’s office building in protest of the 2023 Christmas massacre that left over 200 Christian Nigerians dead, Jan. 8, 2024. Credit: Photo courtesy of Rev. Dr. Gideon Para-Mallam, photo by Plateau State Government Media Team.
The attack marks the latest instance of terrorists targeting Christian Nigerians on significant Christian feast days. In 2022, on Pentecost Sunday, 39 Catholic worshippers were killed at the St. Francis Xavier Owo Catholic Parish in Ondo Diocese.
Religious freedom advocates believe that militant Muslim Fulani herdsmen were responsible for the Christmas attacks. In Nigeria as a whole, at least 60,000 Christians have been killed in the past two decades. An estimated 3,462 Christians were killed in Nigeria in the first 200 days of 2021, or 17 per day, according to a new study.
Due to continued attacks, Nigeria is one of the most dangerous countries in the world to be a Christian, according to a 2023 report by the advocacy group International Christian Concern.
Para-Mallam told CNA that Nigeria’s middle belt region, of which Plateau state is a part, has “suffered sustained attacks for over a decade now with destruction of lives and properties.”
The thousands of protestors at the rally, he said, were “mournful, angry, but surprisingly joyful.”
Their “central objective,” he explained, was “to ask for an end to the killings not just in Plateau but Nigeria and seek justice for the people.”
Just-In: CAN Plateau State Chapter is having a Peaceful Walk to Government House pic.twitter.com/YbFRqtFI9J
“Above all, it was very peaceful and prayerful,” he added. “The old, the young all together felt that we had to do what we had to do to get our message across.”
According to Para-Mallam, the crowd numbered about 5,000 and included both Catholics and Protestants. Together, he said, they peacefully and prayerfully marched, ending in front of the governor’s office building in the city of Jos. Archbishop Matthew Ishaya Audu of Jos and several Catholic priests also took part in the march and rally, according to Para-Mallam.
The demonstration was “mournful, angry, and surprisingly joyful,” according to Rev. Dr. Gideon Para-Mallam. Credit: Photos by Nigerian multimedia journalist Jœy Shèkwônúzhïbó, used with permission.
The rally was organized with the help of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), a coalition of Nigerian Christian Churches and groups that includes the Catholic Church in Nigeria.
Para-Mallam said the purpose of the demonstration was to “mourn in solidarity” with the devastated communities as well as to show them that the Church “cares” and “identify with them in the moment of suffering and mourning.”
A secondary purpose for the rally, Para-Mallam said, was to “get the Church on the Plateau to unite and to speak with one voice around the issues of social justice” and to “create awareness nationally and globally about the Christmas season attack.”
Para-Mallam said that Plateau’s governor, Caleb Mutfwang, addressed the crowds at the rally and was “sympathetic and understanding and spoke well on the pains of his people.”
Mutfwang condemned the attacks shortly after they occurred in a Dec. 26 statement in which he said: “This has indeed been a gory Christmas for us.”
“He promised to relay our concerns to the president and committed to work with the president to end the killings in the Plateau state,” Para-Mallam said.
Despite the governor and president voicing their support for the impacted communities, several religious freedom advocates have been critical of the lack of government response to the growing terrorist attacks.
Maria Lozano, a representative for the papal relief group Aid to the Church in Need, told CNA after the attacks that tangible government support was largely absent after the Christmas massacre and that a “lack of response from the government” over the years has worsened the situation in the region. The absence of government support, Lozano said, has forced Christian churches to take on the “primary responsibility of providing assistance.”
Para-Mallam asked for Christians outside of Nigeria to help by offering prayer, advocacy, and humanitarian intervention.
“We also want fellow believers to encourage policymakers to encourage the Nigerian government to do more to end the killings in general and particularly those targeted at Christians,” he said.
For several years now, religious freedom advocates have criticized the U.S. government for failing to include Nigeria in the State Department’s “Countries of Particular Concern” list, which some consider to be America’s most effective tool to encourage foreign governments to address the persecutions in their countries.
“There is no justification as to why the State Department did not designate Nigeria or India as a Country of Particular Concern,” said U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom chair Abraham Cooper and vice chair Frederick Davie in a Jan. 4 statement.
Cooper and Davie mentioned the Christmas massacre as “just the latest example of deadly violence against religious communities in Nigeria.”
Speaking on “EWTN News Nightly” on Monday, Davie said that the decision to leave Nigeria off the list was “particularly” concerning and a “huge mistake.”
Davie told EWTN that “there are some who are saying that the government [of Nigeria] if it is not actively participating in some of this religious persecution is actually standing by and not doing what it can to prevent it.”
“We just believe,” Davie explained, “that by designating Nigeria a Country of Particular Concern, the United States puts itself in a position to work more closely with the government of Nigeria to address some of those fundamental security issues that are going unattended to.”
Despite this, the State Department has left Nigeria off the Countries of Particular Concern list since 2021.
Vatican City, Oct 9, 2018 / 05:01 pm (ACI Prensa).- Among those being canonized on Sunday are Fr. Franceso Spinelli, a diocesan priest through whose intercession a newborn was saved from death in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
The child was born April 25, 2007 at a hospital in Kinshasa served by the Adorers of the Blessed Sacrament
The newborn and his mother were discharged three days after the baby was born. But on her way home, the mom tripped and instinctively clutched the baby to herself, but so hard that that she induced a severe hemorrhage.
Returning to the hospital, the doctors tried to help him for 45 minutes. In order to save him they had to give him an emergency blood transfusion. But the baby’s condition was so bad that his veins were thinning, which made the procedure impossible.
Given the lack of technology at the hospital and the impossibility of quickly transferring him to another hospital, the doctors gave the baby up for dead.
While this was going on, Sister Adeline, the Adoration sister in charge of the hospital’s maternity unit, noted the serious condition of the baby and asked her community to pray that the child would survive.
The superior of the congregation, Sister Antonietta Musoni, asked the intercession of Fr. Spinelli and they began to prayer a novena to him.
Sister Adeline placed a holy card of Fr. Spinelli under the baby’s sheets and when the doctors made a final effort they miraculously found a vein just as big as an adult’s to give the blood transfusion.
With just three or four drops of blood the baby began to kick and cry. He completely recovered in a few hours.
The parents, realizing the miracle obtained through the intercession of the founding father of the Institute of the Adorers of the Blessed Sacrament, changed the name of their son from Ambrosio María Díaz to Francisco María Spinelli Díaz.
The child has grown up to be healthy, with no after-effects from that episode. Medical exams performed on the child during the process of investigating Fr. Spinelli’s cause demonstrated his perfect state of health.
Brief Biography
Francesco Spinelli was born in Milan April 14, 1853. He entered the seminary at Bergamo and was ordained a priest Oct. 17, 1875.
He began his apostolate educating the poor and at the same time he served as a seminary professor, spiritual director, and counselor for several women’s religious communities.
In 1882, Fr. Spinelli met Caterina Comensoli, with whom he would found the Institute of the Adorers of the Blessed Sacrament.
The sisters dedicated themselves to Eucharistic adoration day and night which inspired their service to the poor and suffering.
Due to several setbacks, Fr. Spinelli transferred from the Diocese of Bergamo to the Diocese of Cremona where he continued to lead the Adoration Institute in Rivolta d’Adda/
The priest died Feb. 6, 1913, and was buried in the church of the Adoration Sisters in Rivolta d’Adda. At that time, the institution had founded 68 communities in different countries.
Currently, the institute has around 250 communities in Italy, Congo, Senegal, Cameroon, Colombia, and Argentina. Their ministries include caring for people with HIV, orphans, drug addicts, and prisoners.
Fr. Spinelli was beatified by St. John Paul II June 21, 1992 at the Marian Shrine of Caravaggio.
He will be beatified Oct. 14 at the Vatican along with Paul VI, Bshop of Rome from 1963 to 1978; Oscar Romero, a martyr who was Archbishop of San Salvador from 1977 to 1980; Vincenzo Romano, a diocesan priest from Torre de Greco in Italy; Maria Caterina Kasper, a German nun and founder of the Institute of the Poor Handmaids of Jesus Christ; and Nazaria Ignazia of Saint Teresa of Jesus, founder of the Congregation of the Misioneras Cruzadas de la Iglesia Sisters.
This article was originally published by our sister agency, ACI Prensa. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.
“George Pell was a loyal son of the Church. He would not publicly criticize the Holy Father”, said Father Fessio. Can there be a purer example of a self-contradictory position?
“George Pell was a loyal son of the Church. He would not publicly criticize the Holy Father”, said Father Fessio. Can there be a purer example of a self-contradictory position?