Archbishop Adrian Józef Galbas. / Credit: episkopat.pl
CNA Newsroom, Nov 4, 2024 / 09:05 am (CNA).
Pope Francis has appointed Archbishop Adrian Józef Galbas as the new metropolitan archbishop of Warsaw, Poland, accepting the resignation of Cardinal Kazimierz Nycz, who will turn 75 in February.
Galbas, 56, has served as metropolitan archbishop of Katowice since May 2023. A member of the Pallottine Fathers, he previously served as auxiliary bishop of Ełk and obtained his doctorate in spiritual theology from Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński University in Warsaw in 2012.
Within the Polish Bishops’ Conference, Galbas serves as chairman of the Council for the Lay Apostolate and is a member of the conference’s permanent council.
Born in Bytom, Poland, in 1968, he made his perpetual vows with the Pallottines in 1993 and was ordained a priest in 1994. Before becoming a bishop, he served as provincial superior of the Pallottines’ Annunciation Province from 2011 to 2019.
Pope Francis named him auxiliary bishop of Ełk in December 2019 and appointed him coadjutor archbishop of Katowice in December 2021. He became metropolitan archbishop of Katowice in May 2023.
The Archdiocese of Warsaw, established in 1798, serves as the primary see of Poland and encompasses the capital city of Warsaw.
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Armagh, Northern Ireland, Jul 10, 2019 / 12:18 am (CNA).- An archbishop in Northern Ireland has called for the reigniting of a “temperance movement” to address the problem of alcohol and drugs, in the wake of increasing gang violence in the country.
“We see how addictions like this can devastate family life and social life…There is no future in a life of crime associated with drugs,” Archbishop Eamon Martin of Armagh, primate of all Ireland, told the Irish Independent on Sunday.
His comments were prompted in part by a spate of violence in Drogheda, a town 30 miles north of Dublin, which has included shootings and arson attacks, the most recent being a gasoline bomb attack on a house Tuesday morning. The attacks are thought to be the result of a feud between rival gangs.
Drogheda has seen around 80 violent incidents in recent months, including gasoline bombings, shootings and assaults in the town linked to the gang violence, the Irish Independent reports.
The archbishop spoke after Mass at St. Peter’s Church in Drogheda to honor the martyred Irish saint Oliver Plunkett, who was hung, drawn and quartered on July 1, 1681 in England. St. Oliver gave up alcohol over concerns that it was damaging the priestly life of the clergy, Martin noted.
Martin said he has been discussing the problems of drugs and violence with priests and community leaders in Drogheda, and said many of them are “quietly working on the ground” to encourage peace.
In addition to gang violence, several arson attacks on Catholic churches have taken place in Northern Ireland in recent months. Sacred Heart Church in Ballyclare, about 13 miles north of Belfast, was desecrated with paint in the early hours of Easter Sunday morning April 21. Police arrested a 26 year-old man related to the “criminal damage.”
A group of young people started a fire in a shed on the parish property of Holy Family parish in Derry the night of May 24. No one was harmed, but both the church and parochial house were damaged.
London, England, Apr 6, 2018 / 04:07 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- As the parents of a sick toddler fight for continued treatment, saying that he is showing signs of improvement, the hospital where he is staying is requesting court permission to end his life su… […]
St. Hedwig’s Cathedral in Berlin, Germany. / Cedric BLN via Wikimedia (Public domain).
CNA Newsroom, Jun 19, 2023 / 16:40 pm (CNA).
Ahead of a crucial meeting on the German Synodal Way, one diocese has signaled its opposition to plans for turning the controversial event into a permanent Synodal Council — a new controlling body of the Church in Germany.
The official for the Synodal Way in the Diocese of Regensburg, cathedral chapter Josef Kreiml, warned that the preparatory work for a German Synodal Council contradicts a clear instruction from the Vatican, reported CNA Deutsch, CNA’s German-language news partner.
The prelate also said that the concept of synodality underlying the Synodal Way isn’t in line with either canon law or the ideas of Pope Francis.
The bishops of Germany’s 27 dioceses are expected to make landmark decisions at their meeting in Berlin on June 19-20 regarding the establishment and funding of the so-called Synodal Committee, which is to then establish a permanent German Synodal Council by 2026.
Some bishops had reportedly considered blocking the move by not providing funds for the body, which could prevent a permanent superstructure overseeing the Church in Germany modeled on the German Synodal Way.
The German Synodal Way was a multi-year process initiated by Cardinal Reinhard Marx and co-organized by the German Bishops’ Conference and the Central Committee of German Catholics (ZdK), a lay body financed by the German bishops. Its official purpose was to discuss four main issues: the way power is exercised in the church, sexual morality, the priesthood, and the role of women.
The process was criticized by many cardinals and bishops from around the world, as well as by Pope Francis, who warned of disunity and schism in his 2019 letter to German Catholics.
The Vatican has issued a statement saying that the Synodal Way does not have the authority to oblige bishops and the faithful to accept new forms of governance and new orientations in doctrine and morals.
Citing these statements, Kreiml said that the Synodal Way had greatly interfered with the forms of ecclesial governance and had disregarded the general law of the Church, its sacramental constitution, and the proper duties of the bishops.
He urged the German bishops to respect the unity of the Church and to follow papal guidance on synodality.
Pope Francis and other Church leaders have expressed serious concerns about plans to create a permanent synodal council for the German Church.
Such a body would function “as a consultative and decision-making body on essential developments in the Church and society,” according to a Synodal Way proposal.
More importantly, it would “make fundamental decisions of supra-diocesan significance on pastoral planning, questions of the future, and budgetary matters of the Church that are not decided at the diocesan level.”
Warning of a threat of a new schism from Germany, the Vatican already intervened in July 2022 against a German synodal council.
In January 2023, the Vatican asserted “that neither the Synodal Way, nor any body established by it, nor any bishops’ conference has the competence to establish the ‘synodal council’ at the national, diocesan, or parish level.”
A Soviet-style council in Berlin?
In June 2022, Cardinal Walter Kasper, a theologian considered close to Pope Francis, said there could be no Synodal Council, given Church history and theology.
“Synods cannot be institutionally made permanent. The tradition of the Church does not know a synodal Church government,” he said. “A synodal supreme council, as is now envisaged, has no basis in the entire history of the constitution. It would not be a renewal but an unheard-of innovation.”
Cardinal Walter Kasper. . CNA/Bohumil Petrik.
The president emeritus of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, who was bishop of the Diocese of Rottenburg-Stuttgart from 1989 to 1999, said the German process had invited comparisons to communist structures in the Soviet Union. “It was a political scientist, not a theologian, who recently expressed this notion somewhat strongly, referring to such a Synodal Council as a Supreme Soviet,” Kasper said.
The cardinal continued: “‘Soviet’ is an old Russian word that means exactly what we call a ‘Rat,’ a council in German. Such a Supreme Soviet in the Church would obviously not be a good idea. Such a council system is not a Christian idea, but an idea coming from quite a different spirit or un-spirit.”
The German theologian and prelate also warned this “would choke off the freedom of the Spirit, which blows where and when it wants, and destroy the structure that Christ wanted for his Church.”
Further concerns were raised by a professor of theology from the University of Vienna in June.
The dogmatist Jan-Heiner Tück warned that a German Synodal Council would transfer leadership authority “from sacramentally ordained persons to bodies, a conversion of power that shows a clear closeness to synodal practices in the Protestant Church in Germany.”
Wishing Archbishop Galbas strength and stamina in his service to his flock. God bless.