Vatican City, Nov 3, 2020 / 02:00 pm (CNA).- Catholics in Rome marked the 70th anniversary of the proclamation of the dogma of the Assumption Sunday with a solemn Mass offered by Cardinal Mauro Piacenza.
Pope Pius XII defined the Assumption of the Vir… […]
CNA Staff, Nov 3, 2020 / 10:19 am (CNA).- Cardinal-designate Cornelius Sim certainly was surprised to learn Pope Francis had chosen him to be one of 13 new cardinals.
“For me, it was a bit of a shock and unexpected,” Cardinal-designate Sim told Vatican News.
Sim, 69, is Vicar Apostolic of Brunei. His 1989 ordination marked the first time a native Bruneian was ordained a Catholic priest for the country, which shares the island of Borneo with Malaysia and Indonesia.
He was appointed Prefect of Brunei in 1999, then Vicar Apostolic in 2004, and he was consecrated a bishop in January 2005.
Besides Sim, the vicariate has three Catholic priests.
Sim said he wanted to thank the Pope for “choosing someone from the peripheries.” He described the Church in Brunei as a “periphery within a periphery.”
In Sim’s view, the Pope understands that the Church exists “in those little places where there is not much publicity” but where the faith is alive.
His priorities for Brunei include biblical formation, faith formation, youth and family pastoral care, the promotion of vocations to the priesthood and religious life, evangelization, and social welfare.
The Church needs to build relationships, first within the community, starting within the family and moving to elsewhere in society, like the workplace and education.
For Sim, his role as cardinal would continue his commitments as bishop: to contribute to fostering peace, harmony and goodwill in cooperation with people of different backgrounds.
Brunei is a country of 2,200 square miles located on the north coast of Borneo. It borders Malaysia and it is a developed country, with much wealth coming from its oil and gas industries. Malay is the official language, but English and Chinese are both widely spoken.
The country is an absolute monarchy led by Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah. About 70% of the the population is Muslim, and a version of Islam is the official religion.
Around 13% of the population of some 460,000 people are Buddhist, 10% have no religion, and a small number have indigenous beliefs. Christians, half of whom are Catholic, make up about 10% of Brunei’s population.
The Catholic Church has had a presence in Brunei for over 90 years. Its three Catholic schools are especially an area of contribution, and 60% to 70% of their students are Muslim, Sim said.
Cardinal-designate Sim and his three priests serve the roughly 20,000 Catholics who live in Brunei. Catholics can freely practice their faith within the church compounds and at home, but public displays of the faith are restricted.
A majority of this small Catholic population, about 70%, are migrant workers from the Philippines. Another 20% are migrants from other countries such as Indonesia, India, and Malaysia. The remaining 10% are indigenous Bruneians.
The Catholic Church in Brunei must work to “provide a home away from home” for its large immigrant community, Sim told Vatican News. It supports these migrants in times of illness or death and provides financial aid and food programs.
For Catholic natives, the Church must build their faith to help them be “more conscious and more willing to be engaged” in supporting the Church.
Young Catholics, Sim said, draw their views from their counterparts in their “own world” of social media and their relationship with authority is different from that of previous generations.
For Sim, the Church cannot simply be a subculture: “as a Church we are not one little group of people, all isolated on our own in our little bubble.”
Rather, the Church cuts across boundaries of race, color, social status, or migrant status because “all of us are children, sons and daughters of Jesus Christ,” he said, adding “you cannot have God as your Father unless you have the Church as your Mother.”
Pope Francis named Sim a cardinal Oct. 25. He and 12 others, including Archbishop Wilton Gregory of Washington, will officially become cardinals at a Nov. 28 consistory in Rome. Nine of the 13, Sim among them, are younger than 80 and will thus be eligible to vote in a conclave.
CNA Staff, Nov 3, 2020 / 08:00 am (CNA).- A Czech cardinal has criticized online censorship after his Twitter account was restored days after it was suspended.
Cardinal Dominik Duka of Prague announced the reactivation of his account Oct. 31, bu… […]
CNA Staff, Nov 3, 2020 / 07:00 am (CNA).- Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin has encouraged bishops in Europe to evaluate legislative proposals in light of the transcendent dignity of every human person.
“The recognition of the s… […]
Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Nov 3, 2020 / 06:00 am (CNA).- As the polls open for in-person voting for Tuesday’s general election, campaigners on both sides of the party divide are looking to turn out the critical Catholic vote, with the candidates… […]
New Haven, Conn., Nov 3, 2020 / 04:00 am (CNA).- The beatification of Blessed Michael McGivney was a much smaller affair than many had hoped. But despite the pandemic, people still came from across the country and across the world to honor the founder of the Knights of Columbus.
The beatification of McGivney on Saturday was celebrated with a weekend of events. In addition to the Mass of beatification at the Cathedral of St. Joseph in Hartford, Connecticut, on Oct. 31, there was a “McGivney Festival” at the priest’s former parish in New Haven on Friday, featuring Mass, adoration, a panel discussion, a Eucharistic procession around Yale University’s campus, and testimony about McGivney’s life.
Emily Lomnitzer attended the McGivney Festival. She told CNA that while a student at the Catholic University of America, she learned about McGivney, and that the event was a big moment for her and her friends, telling CNA they were “really into venerable, now-Blessed McGivney.”
“I’ve known about him for a long time. We never thought he would get beatified, so this is a really big deal,” she said. “I didn’t know about him growing up, I learned about him at [The Catholic University of America], and it’s really nice to see that he’s being recognized.”
She said that she thinks McGivney will serve as a great inspiration to young priests and seminarians, as he was “an example of someone who did a lot of great work at the beginning of their ministry.”
“Even not living a terribly long life, he was able to do such good things, even from a very young age,” she said.
McGivney, a Connecticut native, spent his entire priestly ministry in what is now the Archdiocese of Hartford. Future priests of the archdiocese played an important role in the weekend, including Colin Lane, a seminarian in first theology year, who was one of the altar servers at the beatification Mass.
Lane told CNA that knowing his archdiocese produced a blessed was an “incredible joy,” and that while in high school, he had attended St. Mary’s–McGivney’s former parish.
“Being around Fr. McGivney, being around his tomb–to be there last night at the vespers, and to be here [at the beatification Mass], it’s really quite surreal,” he said.
“Somebody who ministered in our parishes, in New Haven and in Thomaston, who walked many of the same paths that our priests do today, is being raised to the altar of ‘blessed,’ it really is a great inspiration and a great encouragement,” said Lane.
He added that McGivney’s beatification was a reminder to him and the other seminarians that “holiness is possible, even amongst priests of the archdiocese, even in the state of Connecticut, there’s someone who lived a holy life.”
McGivney’s beatification shows that “The little, daily acts of a parish priest can lead one down the path to sanctity,” Lane said.
Julie Buonasera, a member of Frassati New Haven, a young adult group at St. Mary’s Church, was a volunteer at the McGivney Festival. She said that she did not know much about McGivney before his beatification, although her grandfather was a fourth-degree Knight.
She said the day was “beautiful,” and that she “felt a lot of grace.”
“Just the beauty of being here together with peers and young adults from around the state and beyond is awesome,” she said.
Unlike other pilgrims, Nathan Schaechle, 20, did not have too much of a choice in attending the beatification. His brother, Mikey, 5, was the reason why the beatification was happening in the first place – being the recipient of a miracle attributed to McGivney’s intercession.
Schachle told CNA that when his mother was told her pregnancy with his brother Mikey had “no hope” he had “kind of just resigned [himself] to what felt like the inevitable.”
“It was like, ‘hey, he’s gonna die,’ and then all of a sudden he’s ready to be born,” said Schacle. His brother Mikey was delivered prematurely via emergency c-section after doctors realized that there was an issue with the placenta.
The gravity of the situation was not apparent to the then-teenage Nathan.
Nathan told CNA that at the time his brother was born, he was mostly upset that his mother’s emergency delivery meant that he was unable to attend the Diocese of Nashville’s diaconate ordination Mass like he had planned.
“I really didn’t realize the magnitude of what had happened until it was approved [by the Vatican],” he said.
He was aware that the Vatican was investigating the circumstances leading up to his brother’s birth, and that his parents had been involved in a diocesan tribunal that had progressed to the promoter of McGiney’s cause in New Haven. But he did not know that his brother’s recovery had been a confirmed miracle until it was announced by Pope Francis.
“We found out with the rest of the world that [the miracle] had been approved,” he said. Nathan told CNA that he woke up early the morning the pope approved the miracle to “probably about 20 texts” on his phone.
“The human moment for me was that, ‘wow, our name’s been on the pope’s desk,’” he said. “And really, I don’t think it’s completely sunk in yet, even now. It’s just kind of been a blur since then.”
The Tennessee resident described the experience in New Haven as “very cold” (temperatures for the weekend hovered in the mid-40s), “very surreal,” and “a little bit frightening.”
Nathan said his family is “not really attention-seeking people, but this is what God wants for us.”
“He wants to glorify Himself in the world through it, and He wants others to come to Him through us,” he said. “So we’re doing the best we can in that respect.”
CNA Staff, Nov 3, 2020 / 12:52 am (CNA).- Bishop Michael Burbidge of Arlington, Virginia, has called on Catholics to support adoptive families, while recognizing the important work of faith-based adoption agencies during National Adoption Month.
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Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Nov 2, 2020 / 08:00 pm (CNA).-
The Vatican Secretariat of State’s holding company, through which it controls a London property at 60 Sloane Avenue, has only one registered director, an Italian-British architect.
As the London property remains in the headlines, it is not clear how he was appointed to that role, but the architect has business connections to Gianluigi Torzi, who acted as a broker in the Holy See’s purchase of the property.
The purchase of the London building is at the center of unfolding financial scandals surrounding the Vatican’s Secretariat of State. It was purchased over a period of years from the Vatican’s investment manager Raffaele Mincione for a reported 350 million pounds; Torzi brokered the final stage of the sale.
The building is now controlled by the secretariat through a U.K. registered company, London 60 SA Ltd.
Since November 2019, the company has had only one listed director: Luciano Capaldo, an architect and property developer with connections to businesses linked to Torzi.
Four directors have been appointed to the London 60 Sa Ltd since it was registered in early 2019; three were removed between August and November 2019. Two of those removed are former staff members at the Vatican secretariat, who were removed from their posts after raids at the secretariat in October, 2019.
In June, Vatican prosecutors arrested Torzi, who has been charged with extortion, self-laundering, aggravated fraud, and embezzlement.
Although Torzi was meant to be acting on behalf of the Vatican’s interests in its dealing with Mincione, CNA has reported on the potential conflicts of interest in the deal:
That Mincione owed millions of euros to one of Torzi’s companies at the time of the transaction. And that Mincione had invested 10 million euros of Vatican funds in Sierra One, a bond of securitized debt, including some debt from mafia-linked companies, which was packaged and sold by Sunset Enterprise Ltd., a company controlled at that time by Torzi.
Sierra One’s administrator was Giacomo Capizzi, a business associate of Torzi. Capizzi is the CEO of Meti Capital, a company of which Capaldo owns personally almost 3%, and in which Torzi’s company, Sunset Enterprises, is also a shareholder.
Capizzi is also CEO of Imvest, a property development company listed in Rome. Imvest’s largest shareholder is Meti Capital.
Luciano Capaldo was chairman of Imvest from 2017 to 2018. He stepped down for “personal and family reasons,” on Nov. 26, 2018, during the same week the Vatican finalized its purchase of the London property.
Another stakeholder in Imvest is FEG International Assets SA, an anonymously incorporated company in Luxembourg that, in 2016, was run by Torzi.
In 2019, FEG and Torzi were named in a commercial fraud suit in London’s High Court. Also named as respondent was Torzi’s former company Odikon Services PLC, a company of which Capaldo was secretary from May to November 2018, and an investor in Meti as of December 2017.
Capaldo stepped down as the secretary of Odikon in November 2018, the same month he ceased being chairman of Imvest and the Vatican’s London property deal was finalized by Torzi.
Capaldo’s attorneys have said that the businessman has no knowledge of the lawsuit against Odikon.
Torzi, and his companies Odikon Services and Sunset Enterprise, are currently being investigated by Italian authorities for an alleged multi-million euro fraud involving securitization of debt owed to Fatebenefratelli, a Catholic hospital in Rome. The alleged fraud dates back to 2018, when Capaldo was secretary of Odikon.
The Fatebenefratelli debt was at one point part of the Sierra One bond, in which Mincione invested Vatican money in June 2018.
Capaldo has also served as a director of two other companies at which Gianluigi Torzi was a director, or in which Torzi and his companies had a financial interest: Sunset Credit Yield Ltd. and Virtualbricks Ltd.
The Vatican has not explained how the businessman was chosen by the Secretariat of State to serve as a director of London 60 SA, or why he is now the sole remaining director of the company. Nor has Capaldo responded to questions CNA sent to his attorney regarding his relationship with Torzi.
CNA Staff, Nov 2, 2020 / 06:01 pm (CNA).- Citing the need for more chances to go to Mass to celebrate the birth of Christ, Christmas Vigil Masses in the Diocese of Pittsburgh this year may begin as early as 2 p.m. Christmas Eve.
The Masses are traditi… […]
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