U.S. Embassy to the Vatican: Nigerian Christians are being targeted

Vatican City, Oct 21, 2020 / 05:00 am (CNA).- Pope Francis said Wednesday that Christians should pray from the heart and not “like parrots.” 

In his general audience address in the Paul VI Audience Hall Oct. 21, he said: “The wo… […]

Vatican City, Feb 23, 2018 / 11:40 am (CNA/EWTN News).- On Friday Pope Francis returned from his week-long Lenten spiritual exercises in Ariccia, where he and members of the Roman Curia have been on their annual retreat since Sunday afternoon.

Before boarding the bus that would take him back to Vatican City, Francis thanked the priest who preached the exercises for his reflections and for encouraging members of the Curia to be open to the Holy Spirit and not stuck in bureaucratic structures.

“Thank you, Father, for having spoken of the Church, for having made us, this small flock, feel the Church,” the Pope said Feb. 23.

He thanked Fr. José Tolentino de Mendonça for reminding them that “the Church is not a cage for the Holy Spirit,” and also voiced thanks for receiving a warning “not to shrink it with our bureaucratic worldliness!”

Fr. Tolentino is a Portuguese priest, poet, and Biblical theologian who preached during the spiritual exercises, which this year focused on the theme: “Praise of Thirst.”

De Mendonça is vice-rector of the Portuguese Catholic University in Lisbon and has been a consultant of the Pontifical Council for Culture since 2011. He was ordained a priest in 1990 and completed his master’s degree in Biblical Studies in Rome before later obtaining a doctorate in biblical theology from the Portuguese Catholic University, where he later taught as an assistant professor.

In his brief greeting at the end of the retreat, Pope Francis also thanked De Mendonça for helping them understand how the Holy Spirit works in the hearts of non-believers and those of other religious confessions, saying the Holy Spirit is “universal, he is the Spirit of God, who is for everyone.”

Francis noted that there are many people today like the centurions and the guards at Peter’s prison who live with an “an inner search” and who know how to tell when there is “something that calls” them.

He thanked De Mendonça for the call “to opening ourselves without fear, without rigidity, for being malleable in the Spirit and not mummified within our structures that close us off.”

The Pope also noted how he had declared Friday as a day of prayer and fasting for South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Syria, saying the spiritual retreat is extended through the offerings they will make on behalf of the war-torn countries.

Held Feb. 18-23, this year’s curial Lenten spiritual exercises began Sunday evening with adoration and vespers. The rest of the week followed a basic schedule beginning with Mass at 7:30 a.m., followed by the first meditation of the day.

In the afternoon, a second meditation was preached before concluding with adoration and vespers. Friday, the final day of the exercises, consisted of only a morning meditation. Pope Francis and the curia then left the retreat house, returning to the Vatican at 11:15 a.m.

The exercises took place at the Casa Divin Maestro in Ariccia, a town just 16 miles outside of Rome. Located on Lake Albano, the retreat house is just a short way from the papal summer residence in Castel Gandolfo. It will be the fifth consecutive year the Pope and members of the Curia have held their Lenten retreat at the house in Ariccia.

While the practice of the Bishop of Rome going on retreat with the heads of Vatican dicasteries each Lent began some 80 years ago, it had been customary for them to follow the spiritual exercises on Vatican ground. Beginning in Lent 2014, Pope Francis chose to hold the retreat outside of Rome.

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Vatican City, Oct 1, 2020 / 07:00 am (CNA).- The Vatican’s Secretariat for the Economy released the 2019 balance sheet for the Roman Curia Thursday.

Fr. Juan A. Guerrero, S.J., the department’s prefect, told Vatican News Oct. 1 “the economy of the Holy See should be a house of glass.”

“We want the budget to explain how the Holy See uses its resources to carry out its mission,” he said.

The report comes a week after the resignation of Cardinal Angelo Becciu from the Roman Curia, which followed more than a year of reporting by CNA and other news outlets on various financial scandals involving Becciu and the Holy See’s Secretariat of State.

Guerrero told Vatican News he “reads the newspapers” and that “it is possible that, in some cases, the Holy See was not only badly advised but also cheated.”

“I believe we are learning from past mistakes or recklessness,” he said.

The Holy See balance sheet was also published as the Holy See undergoes an onsite financial inspection by Moneyval, the Council of Europe’s anti-money laundering watchdog.

The evaluation will likely include looking at the role of the Administration of the Patrimony of the Apostolic See (APSA), which functions as the Holy See treasury, sovereign wealth manager, and administers payroll and operating expenses for Vatican City.

In 2018, Pope Francis asked for Vatican investments to be centralized under APSA’s management.  

Guerrero said that the project of centralizing investments in APSA was advancing “little by little.”

The prefect also acknowledged that he made a request in April that all dicasteries transfer their liquid assets to APSA, saying he did it in anticipation of revenue loss due to Italy’s coronavirus lockdown. 

In May, Guerrero said that in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, the Vatican is forecasting a reduction in income of between 30% and 80% for the next fiscal year.  

The Oct. 1 Holy See financial report for 2019 showed that the expenditure of the 60 curial offices for 2019 totaled 318 million euros (around $374 million) out of an income of 307 million euros.

The deficit of 11 million euros was smaller than the 2018 deficit due to 68 million euros in investment returns, the report showed. It said that the increase was “mostly attributable to the effect of the recovery of share prices in 2019.”

The report did not include financial statements for other Vatican entities which collaborate with the Holy See, such as the governorate of Vatican City State, the IOR, or Peter’s Pence, the pope’s charitable fund which comes from an annual Church-wide collection.

These institutions and others “present their results, and report to the corresponding authorities,” Guerrero said.

Despite not being part of the report, Guerrero said that Peter’s Pence covered 32% of the expenses “for the mission of the Holy See.”

The prefect said that Peter’s Pence in 2019 “collaborated with the mission of the Holy Father” for a total of 66 million euros, with 23 million coming from reserve funds in addition to what was donated in 2019.

Guerrero noted that this shortage has happened in the last few years, lowering the capital of Peter’s Pence overall.

The balance sheet showed overall income and expenditure figures for 2019 and a breakdown of how much went to each curial department.

Expense categories were listed as apostolic mission, assets management, and services and administration.

Under apostolic mission, the largest expense went to “message diffusion” at 22% and apostolic nunciatures — the Holy See’s embassies abroad — at 21%.

Supporting local churches in difficulty and mission territories accounted for 16%. Donations made up 12%, and 9% was spent on maintaining the Curia’s historic assets.

APSA had the largest expenditure at over 66 million euros toward asset management, followed by the Secretariat of State with more than 65 million in expenses, over 22 million attributed to administration costs.

The Dicastery for Communication, the department which employs the greatest number of lay people in the Holy See, spent almost 46 million euros.

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