Vatican

Vatican City, Feb 7, 2020 / 10:51 am (CNA).- Six Catholic patriarchs from Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, and Iraq met with Pope Francis at the Vatican Friday to discuss the difficulties faced by Christians in the region and their mass emigration.

In the morni… […]

Vatican City, Feb 6, 2020 / 08:51 pm (CNA).- During its general chapter meeting in Rome, the Legionaries of Christ religious order has elected a new superior general to lead the embattled religious congregation.

Fr. John Connor, LC,  has been the North American territorial director of the Legionaries of Christ since 2014. He will serve a six-year term as superior general of the religious order of priests.

Connor’s election comes during a time of widespread public criticism of the Legionaries of Christ, which reported in December 2019 that since its founding in 1941, 33 priests of the Legionaries of Christ have been found to have committed sexual abuse of minors, victimizing 175 children, according to the 2019 report.

The order was founded by Mexican-born Fr. Marcial Maciel, who himself abused at least 60 minors, according to the order, and is accused of using the religious congregation he founded to provide him access to abuse victims, and funding to support mistresses, children he fathered, and an alleged drug habit.

In 2006 the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, with the approval of Pope Benedict XVI, removed Maciel from public ministry and ordered him to spend the rest of his life in prayer and penance. The Vatican congregation decided not to subject him to a canonical process because of his advanced age. Maciel died in 2008.

In 2009, Benedict ordered an apostolic visitation, or worldwide administrative review, of the religious institute, and then placed it under direct Vatican oversight. Benedict ordered the congregation to develop and implement new governing documents and policies, after Church officials found substantial problems in the Legion’s formation and governance structures.

Pope Francis has continued pushing for reforms to the religious order.

The general chapter now taking place in Rome, and consisting of representatives of the order from its nine territories, is tasked with electing new leadership, and discussing how to address the ongoing controversy surrounding the religious order.

While the chapter is taking place, some have called for the Vatican to suppress the group, but Pope Francis has given no indication he plans to do so.

In Mexico and elsewhere, some victims of abuse perpetrated by members of the order have said the reforming the group is impossible without a wholesale change in leadership.

Some critics have suggested that reforms are mostly a kind of window-dressing, and some have questioned whether the order has a legitimate charism – a term used to describe the spirituality at the heart of a religious order’s identity.

Connor was ordained a priest in 2001. He worked in fundraising for the order, oversaw its Regnum Christi lay apostolate in New York, and served in other leadership positions.

In 2014, Connor told reporter John Allen that within the religious order were “men who are very capable of governing who weren’t associated with the founder.”

“For me, nonassociation with the founder is a very important issue,” Connor added, while emphasizing his hope that the order would commit to greater transparency.

Connor has faced criticism for his handling of misconduct allegations against a priest in the Legion, Fr. Michael Sullivan. In 2017 Sullivan was accused of “showing affection and favoritism” toward two young women; in one case the behavior was alleged to have begun when the woman was a high-school student, according to a 2019 letter from Connor.

Sullivan, who said he had not crossed “emotional or physical boundaries with any minors,” was sent for a psychological assessment and then continued in ministry. In late 2019, “another person came forward indicating that Fr. Sullivan crossed over the emotional and physical boundaries of a pastoral relationship with her and others,” the Legion said.

Sullivan was subsequently removed from ministry and admitted to some forms of sexual misconduct with adults, which “mainly affected young women.”

Once Sullivan was removed from ministry, a spokesperson for the Legionaries of Christ said that the priest should have been subject to restrictions on his ministry.

In December 2019, the spokesperson told KBTX that while the order does not believe Sullivan broke any laws, “in hindsight, we now understand that additional restrictions should have been placed on Fr. Sullivan prior to returning to ministry” in 2017.

The spokesperson added that “Fr. Connor has been meeting with those most closely affected, including the women who have come forward with claims in 2017 and most recently.”

In a 2018 letter to Legionaries and Regnum Christi members, Connor reflected on the scandal that has plagued his religious community.

“Over these last years of our renewal, I have been moved often in prayer by the fact that the Risen Jesus kept his wounds. You would think that a glorified body would be perfect and unmarred. But Jesus kept his wounds. There is a lesson in this for all of us,” the priest wrote.

“In the Legion’s 2014 General Chapter we had conversations about whether or not to change our congregation’s name: to definitively put our past history behind us and get a fresh start with a new name. Many were shocked the Legion did not change its name and formally separate itself from her scarred and wounded history. At the time I kept thinking, I am proud to be a Legionary; we cannot forget our history. The wounds we suffered in the past – as well as those we inflicted – are part of us. They are part of our story.”
 
Connor added that “as your territorial director, I have a tremendous desire for this gift of merciful healing for our entire spiritual family, extending also to those who no longer participate in it. I desire this healing because I know that wounds exist. Most hurts were not intended, but resulted from human weakness combined with imbalances in our past ways of thinking and operating from which our Lord continues to purify us.”

“I want to express my own sorrow for hurts I may have caused. I know that in the past I have been convinced of my own opinions and the direction I wanted to go and have often not stopped to listen to others, take their opinions to heart, or communicate the reasons why I make certain decisions,” he added in that letter.

There are fewer than 1,000 priests in the Legionaries of Christ, and the religious order runs schools in South and North America, and in Europe.

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Vatican City, Feb 6, 2020 / 12:20 pm (CNA).- Pope Francis will make the final decision on when to publish a highly-anticipated report on former cardinal Theodore McCarrick, the Vatican’s Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin said Thursday.

“I think that [the report] will come out soon, I cannot tell you exactly when,” Parolin told a small group of journalists Feb. 6.

Speaking on the sidelines of a conference on holiness, the cardinal said “we are trying to speed up the time to arrive” at the publication of the report on the Vatican’s internal investigation into the disgraced former cardinal.

Parolin did confirm that he expects the document to be released “in the near future.”

“However, the publication depends on the pope. The work that is done is done, but the pope must give the final word,” he added.

The Vatican announced that it would conduct an internal review of files on McCarrick’s career in October 2018. McCarrick was a cardinal and the archbishop of two major American sees before he was found guilty of serial sexual abuse and laicized in 2019, following a canonical process.

Since the review was announced, American Catholics – including many bishops – have repeatedly called for the release of its findings.

Over the past several months, the bishops of the United States have been meeting with Pope Francis for their ad limina visits, travelling to Rome in regional groups. While there, several bishops have raised the issue of the McCarrick report. 

When the topic was came up during the USCCB meeting in Baltimore in November last year, Cardinal Sean O’Malley, recently returned from Rome, updated the U.S. bishops on the report’s progress, saying that the final draft was being translated into Italian for presentation to Pope Francis and was expected to be released at the beginning of 2020, if not sooner. 

In the 87 days since Cardinal O’Malley gave that update, other bishops have said they also raised the issue while in Rome.

In December, Bishop Earl Boyea of Lansing told EWTN News that he asked about the status of the McCarrick investigation and was “very glad to hear that a report is coming.”

Bishop Joseph Strickland of Tyler also told reporters that he’d asked about the timing of the report’s release in a meeting with Pope Francis during his own ad limina visit in January.

McCarrick was laicized in February 2019, after he was found by the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith “guilty of the following delicts while a cleric: solicitation in the Sacrament of Confession, and sins against the Sixth Commandment with minors and with adults, with the aggravating factor of the abuse of power.”

Pope Francis announced an internal Vatican investigation into the career of McCarrick in October 2018.

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Vatican City, Feb 6, 2020 / 10:37 am (CNA).- He is a Heisman Trophy winner, a two-time college football champion, a sports broadcaster, and one of the most watched players ever to play professional football, even while his career was short-lived. At 32, he is also a minor-league baseball player, taking the field with almost no chance of a big league career, and against players ten years younger than him, solely for love of the game.

Tim Tebow is recognized, beloved, and respected by millions around the world, even years after his career as a spread option quarterback sputtered.

Those things, though, are not the most important to Tim Tebow. Most important to him is faith in Jesus Christ, Tebow says. Tebow is well-known as an Evangelical Christian, the son of missionaries, and an outspoken witness to his convictions about living the Christian life.

When he met Pope Francis at the Vatican Feb. 5, Tebow talked with the pope about his faith, and especially about the project, borne of that faith, that had brought him to Rome.

“Our visit to the Vatican was a great experience for our entire team and it was a joy to meet with Pope Francis to share with him our heart for people with special needs and the joy that we experienced at Night to Shine – Rome,” Tebow told CNA after the visit.

Night to Shine, the project Tebow talked about with Pope Francis, hosts proms – dances – for people with intellectual disabilities and other special needs around the world. Tebow began the project in 2014, and sponsors it through the Tim Tebow Foundation.

Tebow hosted the first Night to Shine in Rome earlier this week. He told CNA he hopes it is the first of many such events in Italy.

“Our hope is that Night to Shine could grow across Italy and the entire world, where we all celebrate and love people with special needs,” the athlete told CNA.

Tebow told EWTN News on Tuesday that part of Night to Shine’s purpose is to let people with special needs know “they matter, that they have significance — and more than just to us, but to the God of this universe, because we believe that everybody has value, everybody has meaning.

“God loves every single person. They were created in love, by love, and for love and God loves them just the way they are,” Tebow added.

When he met with Pope Francis on Wednesday, Tebow reiterated those things. He and his wife, Demi-Leigh Nel-Peters, spoke with Pope Francis after his Wednesday audience in the Vatican’s Paul VI Hall.

After Tebow explained the project, the athlete told CNA, he got some words of encouragement from Pope Francis.

“Thank you for the important work you’re doing,” Tebow says Pope Francis told him.

“Keep it up!”

Tebow has every intention of doing just that.

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Vatican City, Feb 5, 2020 / 03:12 pm (CNA).- Pope Francis called on global financial leaders and economists to end economic inequality Wednesday, saying that modern resources make ending global poverty possible – and a responsibility.

“A rich wo… […]

Vatican City, Feb 5, 2020 / 11:31 am (CNA).- What most Italians know about proms, they learned from watching American sitcoms or dubbed-over versions of 90210. The "prom" is a uniquely American event. Still, Italians flocked to a prom in Rome… […]

Vatican City, Feb 5, 2020 / 09:20 am (CNA).- Pope Francis said Wednesday that a focus on achieving fame or having a perfect image in the eyes of the world denies God’s call to poverty of spirit and is a tiring and lonely endeavor.

The “poo… […]

Vatican City, Feb 5, 2020 / 08:10 am (CNA).- After a German Catholic weekly reported that Archbishop Georg Gänswein was asked to take a leave of absence from his position as head of the papal household, the Vatican has said it cannot confirm the report, and the archbishop is still in his job.

Die Tagespost reported Feb. 5 that the German archbishop had recently been asked by Pope Francis to “focus on his role as private secretary to pope emeritus Benedict XVI.”

A Vatican source told CNA that the Die Tagepost report was on the mark. Gänswein has been requested to “stay away from his office [as prefect of the papal household] indefinitely,” the source said.

But the Holy See press office told CNA Wednesday that it has no information regarding Ganswein being on a leave of absence from the prefecture

Regarding the bishop’s absence from papal audiences in recent weeks, the press office stated “it is due to an ordinary redistribution of the various commitments and duties of the Prefect of the Papal Household, who, as you know, is also the personal secretary of the Pope emeritus.”

In January, Gänswein was absent for several weeks from his usual official seat at public appearances of the pope – such as the general audiences on Wednesdays – due to being ill with bronchitis.

Gänswein’s continued absence in the immediate wake of controversy over a new book on priestly celibacy written by Cardinal Robert Sarah and Benedict XVI, led to speculation the personal secretary of the pope emeritus had been removed as head of the papal household for this reason.

Fr. Leonardo Sapienza, regent of the prefecture, has been filling in for Gänswein at general audiences as representative of the papal household.

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Vatican City, Feb 5, 2020 / 04:50 am (CNA).- Pope Francis in January met and shook hands with the woman at whom he lost his patience after being grabbed in St. Peter’s Square Dec. 31.

After his general audience Jan. 8, Pope Francis spoke briefly… […]

Vatican City, Feb 4, 2020 / 10:03 am (CNA).- Pope Francis Tuesday marked the first anniversary of the joint signing of the Abu Dhabi document on human fraternity with a video message urging an end to extremism and terrorism.

The pope called the signin… […]