Vatican City, Mar 1, 2019 / 11:49 pm (CNA).- Speaking at a conference on Vatican diplomacy, the Holy See’s Secretary of State stressed that it is now important “to make the China deal for the appointment of bishops work in practice.”
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Vatican City, Mar 1, 2019 / 08:42 am (CNA).- Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin Thursday called the conviction of Cardinal George Pell in Australia “shocking and painful.”
Cardinal Pell, who formerly served as the prefect of the Vatican Secretariat for the Economy, is currently in police custody awaiting sentencing on his conviction of five charges of sexual abuse of minors.
Pell’s case “is an incentive to continue in the pope’s line: to fight against this phenomenon and pay attention to the victims,” Parolin told L’Osservatore Romano Feb. 28.
An earlier statement from the Vatican press office, released on Feb. 26 underscored the Holy See’s commitment to the full judicial process playing out.
“Out of this respect, we await the outcome of the appeals process, recalling that Cardinal Pell maintains his innocence and has the right to defend himself until the last stage of appeal.”
Cardinal Pell is appealing his conviction before Victoria County Court on five counts of child sexual abuse. He faces of maximum sentence of 50 years in prison. He expected to be sentenced in a hearing on March 13.
Last week, Victoria prosecutors dropped plans for a second trial for Pell concerning different allegations. A media gag imposed by the court ahead of that trial was subsequently lifted, allowing Australian media to report on the trial and conviction.
The gag was lifted on Feb. 26, the day after the conclusion of the Vatican’s summit on sexual abuse and the protection of minors.
Cardinal Parolin said the three-day conference emphasised “a call for transparency and an ever clearer Gospel witness,” as well as a greater awareness within the entire Church on the issue of clerical sexual abuse.
“It was moving to hear the victims,” Parolin told journalists at a conference at the Pontifical Gregorian University. He added that the victim’s stories, in particular, “left no one feeling indifferent.”
Prior to his appointment to the Secretariat for the Economy in 2014, Pell served as the Archbishop of Sydney and of Melbourne.
In October, Pope Francis removed Pell, along with Cardinal Javier Errazuriz and Cardinal Laurent Monsengwo, from the C9 Council of Cardinals charged with helping the pope draft a new constitution for the Holy See’s governing structure, citing age as the reason for the removal.
Vatican City, Feb 27, 2019 / 05:07 pm (CNA).- In a video message sent Wednesday to an international anti-death penalty group Pope Francis encouraged them in their work and deliberations.
“Human life is a gift that we have received, the most important and primary, the source of all other gifts and rights. As such it needs to be protected,” Pope Francis said Feb. 27 to the seventh World Congress Against the Death Penalty, being held in Brussels.
“The death penalty is a serious violation of the right to life of every person. While it is certain that societies and human communities often face very grave delicts which threaten the common good and the security of persons, it is no less certain that today there are other means to expiate the harm caused, and detention systems are increasingly more effective in protecting society from the evil which some persons can occasion,” the pope stated.
“On the other hand, there can never be abandoned the conviction of offering even to those culpable of crimes the possibility of repentance.”
He added that “it is a positive sign that more and more countries are betting on life and no longer utilize the penalty of death, or have completely eliminated it from their penal legislation.”
“For believers, human beings are created in the image and likeness of God. For believers and non-believers alike, every life is a good and its dignity must be guarded without exception,” the pope said.
“The dignity of the person is not lost even when they have committed the worst of the crimes. No one can be killed and deprived of the opportunity to embrace the community they wounded and made to suffer.”
The Church has “always defended life,” Pope Francis said, “and her vision of the death penalty has matured.”
He said that it was “for this reason” that the text of the Catechism of the Catholic Church was changed last year.
In August 2018, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith issued a new draft of the catechism’s paragraph regarding capital punishment.
Quoting Pope Francis’ words in a speech of Oct. 11, 2017, the new paragraph states, in part, that “the Church teaches, in the light of the Gospel, that ‘the death penalty is inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person,’ and she works with determination for its abolition worldwide.”
Reasons for changing the teaching, the paragraph says, include: the increasing effectiveness of detention systems, growing understanding of the unchanging dignity of the person, and leaving open the possibility of conversion.
The Church has consistently taught that the state has the authority to use the death penalty, in cases of “absolute necessity,” though with the qualification that the Church considered such situations to be extremely rare.
Fr. Thomas Petri, O.P., a moral theologian at the Dominican House of Studies in Washington, D.C., told CNA at the time that he thinks this change “further absolutizes the pastoral conclusion made by John Paul II.”
“Nothing in the new wording of paragraph 2267 suggests the death penalty is intrinsically evil. Indeed, nothing could suggest that because it would contradict the firm teaching of the Church,” Fr. Petri continued.
Both of Pope Francis’s immediate predecessors condemned the practice of capital punishment in the West.
St. John Paul II called on Christians to be “unconditionally pro-life” and said that “the dignity of human life must never be taken away, even in the case of someone who has done great evil.” He also spoke of his desire for a consensus to end the death penalty, which he called “cruel and unnecessary.”
And Benedict XVI exhorted world leaders to make “every effort to eliminate the death penalty” and told Catholics that ending capital punishment was an essential part of “conforming penal law both to the human dignity of prisoners and the effective maintenance of public order.”
Pope Francis concluded his video message encouraging the meeting in Belgium.
“I accompany you with my prayer, and I encourage the governors and all those with responsibilities in their countries to take the necessary steps towards the total abolition of the death penalty,” he said.
“It is our responsibility to recognize the dignity of each person, so that no other lives are taken away, but are earned for the good of all society.”
Vatican City, Feb 27, 2019 / 03:11 am (CNA).- Pope Francis said Wednesday that evil is limited compared to the expanding force of God’s holiness in the world.
“Evil’s days are numbered. Evil is not eternal,” Pope Francis said in a departure from his prepared remarks in St. Peter’s Square Feb. 27.
“God’s holiness is an expanding force, and we beg that it quickly shatters barriers of our world,” he said, adding that this holiness “spreads in concentric circles, like when throwing a stone into a pond.”
Pope Francis explained that “prayer drives away all fear. The Father loves us, the Son raises his arms side by side with ours, the Spirit works in secret for the redemption of the world.”
“One thing is certain: it is evil that is afraid,” the pope said.
In a continuation of his weekly catechesis on the “Our Father” prayer, Pope Francis reflected on the line, “Hallowed be Thy name” at the general audience.
In the words, “Hallowed be Thy name,” he said, “you can feel all the admiration of Jesus for the beauty and the greatness of the Father, and the desire that all recognize him and love him for what he really is.”
“At the same time there is the supplication that his name is sanctified in us, in our family, in our community, in the whole world. It is God who sanctifies us, who transforms us with his love, but at the same time we too are the ones who, through our witness, manifest the holiness of God in the world, making his name present,” Francis said.
God is a mystery to us, but we are not one to him, the pope reminded Catholics. “When we talk to God, we do not do it to reveal to Him what we have in our hearts: He knows it much better than ourselves,” he said.
Pope Francis said that the “Our Father” prayer is easily divided into seven subgroups; the first three have God the Father at the center and the other four focus on our human needs.
“In the first part Jesus makes us enter into his desires, all addressed to the Father: ‘hallowed be Thy name, Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done;’ in the second it is He who enters into us and becomes the interpreter of our needs for daily bread, the forgiveness of sins, help in temptation, and liberation from evil,” he said.
He continued, “Here is the matrix of every Christian prayer – I would say of every human prayer – which is always made, on the one hand of contemplation of God, of his mystery, of his beauty and goodness, and, on the other of a sincere and courageous request of what we need to live, and live well.”
“The first step in Christian prayer is therefore the surrender of ourselves to God, to his providence,” Pope Francis said. “It is like saying: ‘Lord, You know everything, there is no need for me to tell you of my pain, I only ask you to stay here beside me: you are my hope.’”
Vatican City, Feb 26, 2019 / 02:33 pm (CNA).- Alessandro Gisotti, interim Holy See press office director, confirmed Tuesday via Twitter that Cardinal George Pell is no longer prefect of the Secretariat for the Economy.
Pell’s term as prefect was to have expired Feb. 24. His resignation has not been noted in the Vatican’s bollettino, so it is believed his term lapsed and was not renewed, and he was not removed from office.
Gisotti’s tweet suggests that Pell’s loss of office by the expiration of his term has been communicated to him in writing, as required by canon law.
I can confirm that Cardinal George Pell is no longer the Prefect of the Secretariat for the Economy
— Alessandro Gisotti (@AGisotti) February 26, 2019
The cardinal was convicted in an Australian civil court in December on five charges of the sexual abuse of minors. A gag order preventing media from reporting on the trial and conviction was lifted Feb. 26.
Gisotti had issued a statement regarding Pell earlier in the day Feb. 26, which did not mention his status as prefect.
The statement acknowledged the “painful” news which has “shocked many people.”
“As already expressed on other occasions, we have the utmost respect for the Australian judicial authorities,” the statement said.
“Out of this respect, we await the outcome of the appeals process, recalling that Cardinal Pell maintains his innocence and has the right to defend himself until the last stage of appeal.”
The statement confirms that Pell has been barred from public ministry and from contact with minors during the course of the legal process, and will remain so during his appeal.
“In order to ensure the course of justice, the Holy Father has confirmed the precautionary measures which had been imposed by the local Ordinary on Cardinal George Pell when he returned to Australia. That is, while awaiting the definitive assessment of the facts, as is the norm, Cardinal George Pell is prohibited from exercising public ministry and from having any voluntary contact whatsoever with minors.”
Pell was the first prefect of the Secretariat for the Economy, which was established in 2014.
Vatican City, Feb 26, 2019 / 09:58 am (CNA).- The redemption of creation takes center stage in Pope Francis’ Lenten message this year, which connects man’s sinfulness to environmental issues.
“Sin leads man to consider himself the god of creation, to see himself as its absolute master and to use it, not for the purpose willed by the Creator but for his own interests, to the detriment of other creatures,” Pope Francis wrote in his Lenten message published Feb. 26.
“Once God’s law, the law of love, is forsaken … it leads to the exploitation of creation, both persons and the environment, due to that insatiable covetousness which sees every desire as a right and sooner or later destroys all those in its grip,” he said.
The pope’s message — originally written on the Feast of St. Francis of Assisi in October — is a reflection on a line from St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans, “For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God.”
“All creation is called, with us, to go forth from its bondage to decay and obtain the glorious liberty of the children of God,” Pope Francis said. “Lent is a sacramental sign of this conversion.”
Ultimately, Francis points to the traditional Lenten practices of fasting, prayer, and almsgiving as the remedy to the rupture between God, man, and creation caused by sin.
In fasting, we learn “to change our attitude towards others and all of creation, turning away from the temptation to ‘devour’ everything to satisfy our voracity and being ready to suffer for love, which can fill the emptiness of our hearts,” he explained.
Prayer leads us to “abandon idolatry and the self-sufficiency of our ego,” he added.
Through almsgiving, “we escape from the insanity of hoarding everything for ourselves in the illusory belief that we can secure a future that does not belong to us,” Francis said.
The pope warned against living “a life that exceeds those limits imposed by our human condition and nature itself.”
“The sin that lurks in the human heart takes the shape of greed and unbridled pursuit of comfort, lack of concern for the good of others and even of oneself,” Pope Francis said.
“Unless we tend constantly towards Easter, towards the horizon of the Resurrection, the mentality expressed in the slogans ‘I want it all and I want it now!’ and ‘Too much is never enough,’ gains the upper hand,” he said.
Cardinal Peter Turkson, prefect of the Vatican’s Department for the Integral Human Development, explained the logic behind this year’s Lenten message as rooted in the Church’s social doctrine of humanity as an “interconnected and interdependent part of the world” that God created, adding that the Genesis narrative places the human being as “high priest of creation.”
“The redemption of humanity and its liberation from evil and sin express the redemption of all creation from the curse and from all the evils that it suffers because of the sin of humanity,” Turkson said Feb. 26.
He continued, “In this Lenten time, awaiting the celebration of the memory of Christ’s redeeming work for us, so that Christ’s victory over sin and death may also become ours, we ourselves ‘who possess the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly waiting for adoption to children, the redemption of our body.”
“Every action of man, both for evil and for good has cosmic consequences,” Monsignor Segundo Tejado Munoz, undersecretary of the dicastery of Integral Human Development added.
“Every abuse, every theft, every murder, each of these makes a planet disappear. Every action of ours in that is evil, but also the good, has a reaction in creation, the need among all of us in conversion,” Munoz said.
The liturgical season of Lent for 2019 will begin next week on March 6. Pope Francis’ Lenten messages contains a reminder that “the ‘Lenten’ period of forty days spent by the Son of God in the desert of creation had the goal of making it once more that garden of communion with God that it was before original sin.”
“May our Lent this year be a journey along that same path, bringing the hope of Christ also to creation,” he said.
Vatican City, Feb 26, 2019 / 07:30 am (CNA).- The Vatican press office has issued a statement on the recently announced conviction of Cardinal George Pell on charges of the sexual abuse of minors.
The decision of the County Court of Victoria w… […]
Vatican City, Feb 25, 2019 / 11:06 am (CNA).- The Vatican announced Sunday that Pope Francis will publish in March a post-synodal exhortation on last October’s synod on young people, faith, and vocational discernment.
The papal document, for whi… […]
Vatican City, Feb 25, 2019 / 10:11 am (CNA).- On Monday, in the Vatican’s first follow-up to last week’s child abuse summit, officials emphasized “encounter” and the need for concrete responses as called for by Catholics.
The f… […]
Vatican City, Feb 24, 2019 / 01:44 pm (CNA).- A Vatican spokesman said Sunday that concrete follow-up to this week’s abuse summit will include a new law on child protection for Vatican City State and a document from Pope Francis.
At the conclusi… […]
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