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Order of Malta announces death of Fra’ Marco Luzzago

June 7, 2022 Catholic News Agency 1
Pope Francis meets with the Order of Malta’s Fra’ Marco Luzzago on June 25, 2021. / Vatican Media

Rome Newsroom, Jun 7, 2022 / 09:05 am (CNA).

The Order of Malta on Tuesday announced the death of Fra’ Marco Luzzago, who had led the 1,000-year-old institution since 2020.

In a June 7 statement, the order said that the 71-year-old died after a “sudden illness” at Villa Ciccolini in the Italian province of Macerata.

The Italian medical doctor, who was related to Pope Paul VI, was elected as Lieutenant of the Grand Master on Nov. 8, 2020.

He was expected to serve for a one-year term ahead of the election of a new Grand Master of the order, a position traditionally held for life.

But his term was extended by Pope Francis amid a push to conclude a years-long process of constitutional reform.

The pope launched the reform process in 2017 after he accepted the resignation of Grand Master Fra’ Matthew Festing.

Festing’s successor, Giacomo dalla Torre del Tempio di Sanguineto, died in April 2020 at the age of 75. Festing himself died in November 2021 aged 71.

The order said in its statement: “According to Article 17 of the Constitution of the Sovereign Order of Malta, the Grand Commander, Fra’ Ruy Gonçalo do Valle Peixoto de Villas-Boas has assumed the functions of Lieutenant ad interim and will remain head of the Sovereign Order until the election of the new head of the Order.”

It added that information about the funeral of Fra’ Marco Luzzago would be released “in the coming hours.”

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Vatican asks for suspension of ordinations in French diocese

June 3, 2022 Catholic News Agency 10
June 22,2013: The prostration of the ordinands during the Litany of the Saints at the Fraternity of St. Peter’s Roman parish, Santissima Trinità dei Pellegrini in Rome / CNA

Rome Newsroom, Jun 3, 2022 / 11:00 am (CNA).

The Vatican has asked a diocese in southern France to suspend its ordinations of priests and deacons scheduled for this month after a “fraternal visit” of the diocese.

Bishop Dominique Rey of Fréjus-Toulon announced June 2 that the suspension was requested due to “questions that certain Roman dicasteries were asking about the restructuring of the seminary and the policy of welcoming people to the diocese.”

“We welcome this request with both sorrow and confidence, aware of the trial it represents above all for those who were preparing to receive ordination,” Rey said.

The announcement comes after Archbishop Jean-Marc Aveline of Marseille conducted a visitation of the Diocese of Fréjus-Toulon, his suffragan, at the request of the Vatican. 

Aveline is among the 21 cardinals named by Pope Francis earlier this week. He will be the first French residential prelate to receive a red hat during this pontificate.

Rey, known for his support of the traditional Latin Mass, said that he has already spoken with Cardinal Marc Ouellet, prefect of the Congregation for Bishops, and other offices of the Roman curia about the questions raised by the visitation.

“Pending the outcome of these ongoing exchanges with the Roman dicasteries, it has been requested that the diaconal and priestly ordinations planned for the end of June be postponed,” he wrote in a letter published on the diocesan website.

The French diocese’s ordinations were scheduled for the feast of Saints Peter and Paul, June 29. 

According to the French publication La Vie, last year the diocese ordained ten priests and eight deacons.

La Croix reported that in 2020, 126 priests were ordained throughout France, and that more than 60% of the country’s dioceses had no ordinations.

Rey has ordained diocesan clerics using the 1962 Roman Pontifical, and has used the same book for the ordinations of religious communities, including the Institute of the Good Shepherd.

The diocese is home to the Fraternity of St. Joseph the Guardian and to the Monastere Saint-Benoit. 

The Benedictine community, which uses the traditional Latin Mass, recently had several of its members ordained outside France by an undisclosed bishop after Rey could not envisage ordaining the men amid the scrutiny of the diocese. 

After the promulgation of Traditionis custodes, the motu proprio issued by Pope Francis in 2021 which restricted Masses celebrated in the extraordinary form of the Roman Rite, Rey highlighted the concerns of a number of priests and communities present in his diocese who offered Mass according to the old rite. 

“I encourage each of you to also pray for our diocese, while waiting for the situation to be clarified for the good of all,” Rey said as he announced the postponed ordinations.

“May the Spirit of Pentecost keep our hearts at peace, happy to serve and to love.”

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Pope Francis congratulates Queen Elizabeth II on her platinum jubilee

June 2, 2022 Catholic News Agency 1
Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II stands on the Balcony of Buckingham Palace as the troops march past during the Queen’s Birthday Parade, the Trooping the Colour, as part of Queen Elizabeth II’s platinum jubilee celebrations, in London on June 2, 2022. / Jonathan Brady/Getty Images

Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Jun 2, 2022 / 06:21 am (CNA).

Pope Francis sent a congratulatory message to Queen Elizabeth II on Thursday coinciding with the United Kingdom’s joyous celebration of the 70th anniversary of her reign.

“On this joyful occasion of your Majesty’s birthday, and as you celebrate this Platinum Jubilee year, I send cordial greetings and good wishes, together with the renewed assurance of my prayers that Almighty God will bestow upon you, the members of the Royal Family and all the people of the nation blessings of unity, prosperity and peace,” the pope said in a telegram to the queen.

Queen Elizabeth, who turned 96 on April 21, is England’s longest serving monarch, having ascended to the throne in 1952 at age 25 after the death of her father, King George VI. Her coronation took place the following year.

On Thursday the United Kingdom began four days of jubilee celebrations, starting with an event called Trooping the Color, a colorful military parade in London that featured 240 horses, a Royal Air Force flyover, and a gun salute. The queen watched the parade from a balcony at Buckingham Palace.

Queen Elizabeth greets Pope Francis at the Vatican in 2014. Vatican Media
Queen Elizabeth greets Pope Francis at the Vatican in 2014. Vatican Media

Elizabeth has met four popes as queen, and one (Pius XII) as princess in 1951.

Queen Elizabeth and her late husband, Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh, met with Pope Francis in the Vatican in 2014.

The meeting marked the 100th anniversary of the re-establishment of diplomatic relations between the United Kingdom and the Holy See. After their meeting, Pope Francis gave the couple a facsimile of Pope Innocent XI’s order extending the cult of St. Edward the Confessor, and the queen in turn presented the pope with a large basket of food from the estates surrounding her homes. The items included an assortment of honey, a dozen eggs, a haunch of venison, shortbread, juice, preserves, and Balmoral whiskey.

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