Vatican

No Picture
News Briefs

Will Pope Francis meet the Chinese president this week?

March 20, 2019 CNA Daily News 0

Vatican City, Mar 20, 2019 / 05:13 pm (CNA).- As Chinese President Xi Jinping travels to Rome this week, there has been much speculation as to whether his trip will also include an unofficial visit with Pope Francis.

Ahead of the Chinese president’s arrival in Italy March 21, the AP reported that Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin said, “Our door is always open.”

“The proclamation of the Gospel in China cannot be separated from a stance of respect, esteem, and trust toward the Chinese People and their legitimate state authorities,” Parolin wrote in his introduction to the book, The Church in China: A Future Yet to be Written, published this week to coincide with Xi’s visit to Italy.

Parolin wrote that the provisional agreement signed by the Holy See and China in September was “not so much a point of arrival as a starting point.”

Italian media have been speculating about a possible meeting, noting that Pope Francis’ schedule does not have many appointments planned for the dates when Xi will be in Italy March 21-23.

However Chinese sources have expressed that a potential meeting between the pope and the Chinese leader is unlikely.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said he was “not aware” of a potential meeting between the pope and the president, but said that China is ready to meet the Vatican halfway through “constructive dialogue” to “accumulate mutual trust.”

Since China severed diplomatic ties with the Holy See in 1951, a potential meeting between the pope and the Chinese leader would have to be an unofficial meeting.

Xi Jinping’s visit to Italy beginning March 21 will focus on the two countries’ economic ties with the Chinese hoping to secure Italian support for their Belt and Road Initiative, which aims to expand commerce through infrastructure investments.

The Chinese president will then travel to Monaco and meet with President Emmanuel Macron in Nice, France before returning March 26.

A Vatican source told the National Catholic Register that it is unlikely that a meeting will occur, but said that “last-minute decision is possible.”

The source added that the Vatican has been planning a papal trip to China for at least two years and hopes that it will take place by 2020.

The Vatican-China provisional agreement, signed Sept. 22, 2018, is still confidential in nature. The deal reportedly allows the Communist government-backed Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association to choose a slate of nominees for bishop. One effect of the agreement, the Holy See recognized seven illicitly consecrated Chinese bishops and entrusted them with the leadership of Chinese dioceses.

At the moment all of China’s bishops have recognition of both the government and the Holy See. Since the deal, no new bishops have yet been appointed to China.

“History often forces religious matters and political issues, ecclesial themes and cultural discussions, moral questions and social drama, into inextricable knots,” Cardinal Parolin wrote.

“The path of unity is not yet entirely complete and the full reconciliation between Chinese Catholics and the respective communities to which they belong remains a primary objective. It is more than ever necessary, therefore, that in China a serious path of purification of memory begin progressively,” he said.

[…]

No Picture
News Briefs

Cardinal Barbarin remains archbishop, takes leave-of-absence

March 19, 2019 CNA Daily News 0

Vatican City, Mar 19, 2019 / 09:25 am (CNA).- French Cardinal Philippe Barbarin will remain the Archbishop of Lyon, the Vatican announced Tuesday. According to a statement released by the Holy See Press Office, Pope Francis has not accepted the cardinal’s resignation, though Barbarin has stepped back from the day-to-day leadership of the diocese.

Barbarin was convicted by a French tribunal on March 7 on charges of failing to report allegations of sexual abuse committed by a priest of his diocese. He was given a six-month suspended prison sentence and plans to appeal the verdict.

Barbarin met with Pope Francis March 18 to submit his resignation as archbishop. Papal spokesman Alessandro Gisotti said March 19 that Francis chose to not accept the resignation of Barbarin as Archbishop of Lyon but, aware of the “difficulties” of the archdiocese at the present moment, “left Cardinal Barbarin free to make the best decision for the diocese.”

According to Gisotti, Barbarin has decided to “retire for a time,” leaving the vicar general of the Archdiocese of Lyon in charge during his absence.

In a statement on the Lyon archdiocesan website March 19, the cardinal said the pope did not want to accept his resignation, “invoking the presumption of innocence.”

“At his suggestion and because the Church of Lyon has been suffering for three years, I decided to retreat for a while and leave the leadership of the diocese to the vicar general moderator, Father Yves Baumgarten,” he said.

“The Holy See is keen to reiterate its closeness to the victims of abuse, to the faithful of the Archdiocese of Lyon and of the whole Church of France who are experiencing a particularly painful moment,” Gisotti’s statement concluded.

French tribunal president Brigitte Vernay declared Barbarin guilty March 7 “of non-denunciation of ill-treatment” of a minor, according to AFP.

The trial of Barbarin began in January on charges he did not report instances of abuse to judicial authorities between July 2014 and June 2015, in a case involving Fr. Bernard Preynat, who has been accused of abusing dozens of minors in the 1980s and early ‘90s.

In 2017, the cardinal told Le Monde that he did not conceal allegations against Preynat, but that his response to the allegations had been “inadequate.” He said he opened an investigation against Preynat after becoming aware of the allegations against him.

Allegations against Preynat became public in 2015. Prosecutors dropped the case the following year after an initial investigation, but a victims’ group with more than 80 members who say they were abused by Preynat led to a reopening of the case, the Guardian reports.

Preynat was banned from leading boy scout groups in the early 1990s, but remained in ministry until being removed by Cardinal Barbarin in 2015.

The priest will face his own trial later this year.

Barbarin’s trial and conviction comes as revelations of clerical sex abuse and cover up continue to send shock waves through the Catholic Church. The United States, Ireland, Australia, Chile, Argentina, Poland, and Germany are among the countries that have seen recent abuse scandals uncovered.

[…]

No Picture
News Briefs

Pope Francis calls for ‘gestures of peace’ in wake of mosque attacks

March 17, 2019 CNA Daily News 2

Vatican City, Mar 17, 2019 / 06:15 am (CNA).- Pope Francis called for gestures of peace to oppose hatred and violence Sunday in the wake of attacks on two mosques in New Zealand.

“To the grief for the wars and the conflicts that continue to afflict humanity, we have added that for the victims of the horrible attack on two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand,” Pope Francis said March 17.

The pope asked all gathered in St. Peter’s Square for the Sunday Angelus prayer to join him in a moment of silent prayer for “our Muslim brothers” who were killed in New Zealand, and said that he will continue to pray the dead, the wounded, and their families. A total of 50 people were killed in Friday’s shooting, and 34 of the injured remain in Christchurch Hospital.

Reflecting on the necessity and meaning of suffering, the pope said, “Each of us has his own cross. The Lord shows us at the end of our journey — which is the Resurrection — the beauty of carrying our own cross.”

“The Transfiguration of Christ shows us the Christian perspective of suffering,” Pope Francis said. “It is a necessary, but transitory passage.”

“By showing his glory, Jesus assures us that the cross, the trials, the difficulties in which we struggle have their solution and will be overcome in Easter,” he said.

The pope explained that in Christ’s Transfiguration, Jesus granted his disciples Peter, James, and John a foretaste of the Resurrection shortly before his crucifixion.

“Jesus knew that they would not accept this reality – the reality of the cross, the reality of Jesus’ death,” Francis said. “And so he wants to prepare them to bear the scandal of the passion and death of the cross, so that they will know that this is the way through which the Heavenly Father will bring his Son to glory, raising him from the dead.”

“And this will also be the path of the disciples: no one comes to eternal life except by following Jesus, bringing his own cross into earthly life,” he added.

Pope Francis recommended taking more time for prayer and moments of recollection during the Lenten season to allow Christ’s “light to pervade and radiate in our lives.”

Through “prayer in Christ and in the Holy Spirit” a person can be transformed from within and “can illumine others and the surrounding world,” he said.

“The Virgin Mary teaches us to stay with Jesus even when we do not understand Him and do not understand His ways. Because only by remaining with Him will we see His glory,” Pope Francis said.

[…]