Vatican

Vatican City, Oct 2, 2019 / 04:40 am (CNA).- The Vatican announced Wednesday that Pope Francis has nominated Maltese Bishop Mario Grech pro-secretary general of the Synod of Bishops to work alongside secretary general Cardinal Lorenzo Baldisseri.

In a declaration to journalists Oct. 2, Balidisseri, secretary general of the Synod of Bishops since 2013, said the pro-secretary general will “walk alongside” him in his role and participate in this month’s Amazon synod as a member.

Baldisseri said Grech will then assume the full position of secretary general at the time his own mandate “expires,” though there was no indication of when that will be.

Baldisseri, who turned 79 last month, has been secretary general of the Synod of Bishops since September 2013. In that role, he has led the two synods on the family in 2014 and 2015, and the youth synod held in October 2018.

Grech, 62, was bishop of the Maltese diocese of Gozo since January 2005. He will remain apostolic administrator of the diocese until Pope Francis appoints a new bishop.

Born in Qala, Malta, Grech was ordained a priest in 1984 at the age of 27, for the Diocese of Gozo.

Grech was one of two authors of the Maltese bishops’ controversial pastoral guidelines on Amoris Laetitia, which stated divorced-and-remarried Catholics, in certain cases and after “honest discernment” could receive communion.

Grech was also one of two Maltese bishops to speak out against divorce and in defense of the Christian view of marriage in 2010.

Baldisseri was born in 1940 in the Italian town of Barga, and in 1963 was ordained a priest, while still only 22 years of age, for the Archdiocese of Pisa.

He holds a license in dogmatic theology, a doctorate in canon law, and is a pianist who studied at the Pontifical Institute of Sacred Music under the late Cardinal Domenico Bartolucci. From 1971 to 1973 he studied at the Pontifical Ecclesiastical Academy to become a Vatican diplomat.

Baldisseri served in numerous nunciatures, including those to Guatemala, El Salvador, Japan, Brazil, Paraguay, France, Zimbabwe, and Haiti.

In 1992 he was consecrated a bishop and appointed apostolic nuncio to Haiti, which had just experienced a coup. He subsequently served as apostolic nuncio to Paraguay, India, Nepal, and Brazil.

In Brazil, Baldisseri achieved an agreement regulating the juridical status of the Church in the country, and which is now a model for every religion wishing to forge an agreement with the Brazilian state. In reaching the agreement, Baldisseri had to coordinate with 11 different ministries of the Brazilian administration.

After the achievement of the agreement, Benedict XVI appointed him in 2012 secretary of the Congregation for Bishops, as well as secretary of the College of Cardinals.

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Vatican City, Oct 1, 2019 / 02:35 pm (CNA).- Pope Francis opened the Extraordinary Missionary Month Tuesday invoking St. Therese of Liseux, the patron saint of missionaries.

“Saint Therese of the Child Jesus shows us the way: she made prayer the fuel for missionary activity in the world,” Pope Francis said Oct. 1 during his homily at Vespers in St. Peter’s Basilica.

“This is also the Month of the Rosary: how much are we praying for the spread of the Gospel and our conversion from omission to mission?” the pope asked.

October is dedicated to reflection and prayer for the missionary work of the Church. Pope Francis chose October 2019 to be an Extraordinary Missionary Month for the Church to mark the centenary of Benedict XV’s apostolic letter Maximum illud, on the propagation of the faith throught the world.

Fr. Fabrizio Meroni of the Pontifical Institute for Foreign Missions told CNA that “when Pope Francis entrusted to us the preparation and implementation of the Extraordinary Missionary Month … he stated: ‘do not forget that prayer is the real soul, the beating heart, of all missionary work of the Church.’”

“If the missio ad gentes, if the missionary life of the Church, the evangelization, is really facing a serious crisis, it is because faith and Church and structures are less and less interested in the salvation of the world,” Meroni said.

“The Church is meant to be the sacramental beginning of the salvation of the world,” he said.

Fr. Meroni said that his advice to local churches who seek to renew their missionary approach to the pastoral work of their communities, parishes, and diocese is to take into serious consideration the central key role of cloistered contemplative life, which can “rekindle their missionary passion and zeal for the salvation for the world.”

Pius XI declared St. Therese of Liseux, a 19th century cloistered Carmelite sister, the patroness of missions in 1927. The saint, who died at the age of 23, offered prayer and sacrifice for the sake of missionaries and wrote of her burning desire to save many souls in her spiritual autobiography The Story of a Soul.

Pope Francis led Vespers in St. Peter’s Basilica to begin the Extraordinary Missionary Month on the feast of St. Therese of Liseux.

Frédéric Fornos Fornos, the director of the Pope’s World Prayer Network, said at a Vatican press conference: “On this day when we celebrate St. Therese of Lisieux, patron of missions, who learned to pray for the mission of the church with the apostolate of prayer, it is beautiful to remember that prayer is a way to love.”

Cardinal Fernando Filoni, Prefect of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples, said, “October is traditionally considered the month of missionaries; we proposed that [this year] it would be an Extraordinary Missionary Month, extraordinary in its intensity and extraordinary in its vision.”

Filoni explained that this month is not about doing philanthropy because philanthropy is “not the first dimension of missionary life.” The first dimension of missionary life is “a passion for Jesus” and “a passion for people,” he said.

The theme of the Extraordinary Missionary Month is “Baptized and sent: the Church of Christ on mission in the world.” Pope Francis stressed that this means that “no one is excluded from the Church’s mission.”

“In this month the Lord is also calling you, because you, fathers and mothers of families; you, young people who dream great things; you, who work in a factory, a store, a bank or a restaurant; you who are unemployed; you are in a hospital bed… The Lord is asking you to be a gift wherever you are, and just as you are, with everyone around you,” the pope said.

Pope Francis pointed to the example of two other missionaries as exemplars of zeal for the Gospel. The first was St. Francis Xavier, whom the pope said is “perhaps, after St. Paul, the greatest missionary of all time.”

The other was Venerable Pauline Jaricot, a 19th century French lay woman who helped to found the Society for the Propagation of the Faith, and supported the Church’s missionary work with the offerings she made from her wages.

“This extraordinary Missionary Month should jolt us and motivate us to be active in doing good,” Pope Francis said.

“Can we, who have discovered that we are children of the heavenly Father, keep silent about the joy of being loved, the certainty of being ever precious in God’s eyes? That is a message that so many people are waiting to hear. And it is our responsibility,” he said.

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Vatican City, Oct 1, 2019 / 08:40 am (CNA).- Vatican prosecutors seized documents and electronic devices in a raid executed Tuesday at the offices of the most senior curial department.

According to a statement from the Holy See press office Oct. 1, the raid was conducted at the offices of the general affairs section of the Secretariat of State. The action was authorized by the Vatican City court’s Promoter of Justice, Gian Piero Milano, and Adjunct Promoter of Justice Alessandro Diddi.

The documents and devices were taken in connection to an investigation following complaints brought last summer by the Institute for Religious Works (IOR) – commonly called the Vatican Bank – and the Office of the Auditor General concerning a series of financial transactions “carried out over time,” the statement said.

The Secretariat of State is the central governing office of the Catholic Church and the department of the Roman Curia which works most closely with the pope. It is also responsible for the governance of the Vatican City state.

Since the promulgation of Pastor Bonus, Pope John Paul II’s 1988 apostolic constitution governing the organization and responsibilities of the Roman Curia, the Secretariat of State has been divided into two sections: the Section for General Affairs and the Section for Relations with States.

The deputy, or sustituto, who must be a bishop, acts as head of the Section for General Affairs, with responsibility for the day-to-day administration of governance for Vatican City, and handles all business not assigned to other curial departments. It also provides direct daily staffing service of the pope, including overseeing the facilitation of appointments within the Roman Curia, and manages relations with all foriegn ambassadors accredited to the Holy See.

As of November 2017, Pope Francis established a third section of the Secretariat, specifically to oversee the Vatican’s diplomatic corps, stationed around the world.

Cardinal Pietro Parolin has been the Secretary of State since October 2013. Archbishop Edgar Peña Parra is the current substitute. He was named to the position in 2018.

[…]

Vatican City, Sep 30, 2019 / 12:00 pm (CNA).- In his morning homily at the Vatican’s Santa Marta guesthouse, Pope Francis said Monday that the vibrant presence of elderly and young people in communities demonstrates the presence of God.

“T… […]

Vatican City, Sep 30, 2019 / 04:02 am (CNA).- Pope Francis Monday declared the Third Sunday in Ordinary Time to be the Sunday of the Word of God in order to promote a closer relationship with holy scripture and its dissemination in the world.

“A… […]

Vatican City, Sep 29, 2019 / 06:00 am (CNA).- Pope Francis celebrated Mass for the World Day of Migrants and Refugees Sunday with a message that the world is becoming more elitist to the detriment of the poor and the most vulnerable.

“Today’s world is increasingly becoming more elitist and cruel. Developing countries continue to be drained of their best natural and human resources for the benefit of a few privileged markets. Wars only affect some regions of the world, yet weapons of war are produced and sold in other regions which are then unwilling to take in the refugees generated by these conflicts,” Pope Francis said in his homily in St. Peter’s Square Sept. 29.

The pope said that those who pay the price are always “the little ones, the poor, the most vulnerable, who are prevented from sitting at the table and are left with the ‘crumbs’ of the banquet.”

“As Christians, we cannot be indifferent to the tragedy of old and new forms of poverty, to the bleak isolation, contempt and discrimination experienced by those who do not belong to ‘our’ group,” Pope Francis said.

The Lord calls us to practice charity toward all those in existential peripheries, who together with migrants and refugees, are the victims of “the throwaway culture,” he said.

“Loving our neighbor means feeling compassion for the sufferings of our brothers and sisters, drawing close to them, touching their sores and sharing their stories, and thus manifesting concretely God’s tender love for them. This means being a neighbor to all those who are mistreated and abandoned on the streets of our world, soothing their wounds and bringing them to the nearest shelter, where their needs can be met,” Pope Francis explained.

“Along with the exercise of charity, the Lord also invites us to think about the injustices that cause exclusion – and in particular the privileges of the few, who, in order to preserve their status, act to the detriment of the many,” he said.

In his Angelus address immediately following the Mass, Pope Francis unveiled a new bronze sculpture in St. Peter’s Square called “Angels Unawares.” The sculpture by Canadian artist Timothy Schmaltz depicts migrants and refugees throughout history huddled together on a raft.

“I wanted this artistic work here in St. Peter’s Square to remind everyone of the evangelical challenge of hospitality,” Pope Francis said.

“The Lord has a particular concern for foreigners, widows and orphans, for they are without rights, excluded and marginalized,” he said in his homily. “We must pay special attention to the strangers in our midst as well as to widows, orphans and all the outcasts of our time.”

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Vatican City, Sep 28, 2019 / 02:02 pm (CNA).- Just days before the Amazon synod of bishops is to convene in Rome, a symposium of students of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI published a statement of concern regarding the possibility of married priests, a controversial topic of discussion at the upcoming synod.

“The vocation as well as the existence of the priest are solely dependent upon the will of Jesus Christ alone and are not derived from either human considerations or Church regulations. In Him and with Him the Priest becomes the ‘proclaimer of the Word and the servant of joy,’” the students said in a public statement September 28.

“As the priest only exists from his relationship with Christ, a participation in the lifestyle of Christ would seem to be appropriate for those who are to act his person,” the statements added.

“According to the constant tradition of the Latin Church, celibacy is seen as a clear witness to a belief-filled hope and generous love for Christ and his Church.”

The statement was given by the Circle of Students, as well as the New Circle of Students of Joseph Ratzinger/Pope Benedict XVI, at a symposium in Rome with the theme “Recent Challenges of the Ordained Ministry in the Church.”

The “Ratzinger Schuelerkreis,” or “students’ circle,” has met to discuss topics in theology and the life of the Church since 1978, when their professor was pulled from academia to become a bishop. Their annual meetings continued with their former professor even after he was named Pope Benedict XVI in 2005. The “New Circle” is comprised of graduate or doctoral students studying the theology and life of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI.

The theme of the group’s meeting came from a topic that will be discussed at the upcoming Amazon synod, namely, whether to allow already-married and “proven men” (or “viri probati”) to be ordained as priests in the region of Amazonia in order to help alleviate the shortage of priests in the area.

“Affirming that celibacy is a gift for the Church, it is requested that, for the most remote areas of the region, the possibility of priestly ordination be studied for older people… even if they have an existing and stable family, in order to ensure availability of the Sacraments that accompany and sustain the Christian life,” a section of the working document for the Amazon synod states.

The Amazon synod will be held at the Vatican Oct. 6-27. Pope Francis said in August that the topic of ordaining married priests will “certainly not” be the main topic of discussion at the Synod.

Some Church leaders, including Cardinal Walter Brandmüller and Cardinal Raymond Burke, have expressed concerns that allowing married priests in the Amazon region will devalue the practice of celibacy in the priesthood in the rest of the Church and that the practice of married priests will soon become widespread.

The statement on priestly celibacy given by the students of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI is the first time they have spoken publicly as a group in “many years,” they said, but they felt convicted to bring “the theological thought of the Pope Emeritus…to the wider public.”

The students noted that priests do not have a simply functional role in the Church, but that they are called to be a “re-presentation” of the person of Jesus Christ both in the celebration of the sacraments and in their personal lives of holiness and devotion.

Remaining single and celibate as a witness to the kingdom of God is “a human as well as spiritual expression of the sacramental unity of the priest with Christ,” the students noted.

They added that the current sex abuse scandal of the worldwide Church “reduces the believability” of the priest as a person in union with Christ, but that the answer to this “is not first and foremost structural reforms that will bring healing and relief, but an authentically lived life of faith.”

“Only when we all return united to our common understanding of Jesus Christ as true God and true man will the Church be able to be renewed,” they stated.

Prof. Dr. Christoph Ohly told the symposium that it was a “gift” for priests to be able to conform their lives to Christ in such a way.

“The gift of the priest’s conformation to Christ consequently becomes his mission, in his style of life, his personal attitudes, his life of prayer as well as in the duties assigned to him.”

In her comments to the symposium, Dr. Marianne Schlosser also noted that the priesthood is not a functional role but a vocation of “personal identification with Christ, the Good Shepherd.”

A celibate life seems to follow as part of this vocation, she added, because it was “Christ’s own way of life, who gave his life for humanity, even unto death.”

“Celibacy is a telling witness of the faithful person’s hope for eternal life. By renouncing marriage and the founding of a family, celibacy wants to foster a generous love for the entire (family of Christ) as well as a personal bond with the Lord,” she added.

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Vatican City, Sep 27, 2019 / 01:03 am (CNA).- The leader of the largest independent Muslim organization in the world met Pope Francis this week to present his vision for a more peaceful future and greater human fraternity.

Sheikh Yahya Cholil Staquf leads the 50 million member Nahdlatul Ulama movement, which calls for a reformed “humanitarian Islam” and has developed a theological framework for Islam that rejects the concepts of caliphate, Sharia law, and “kafir” (infidels).

The Indonesian Sunni leader told CNA that he was “thrilled and excited” when Pope Francis and the Grand Imam of al-Azhar Ahmed el-Tayeb signed in February the Abu Dhabi declaration on “Human Fraternity for World Peace and Living Together,” because it expresses the vision of  “compassionate Islam” his organization has advocated for for decades.

The sheikh has specific recommendations for concrete steps to achieve the pope’s aspirations of peace and human fraternity. He came to Rome to share them with the pope.

Staquf said that Abu Dhabi declaration requires “decisive follow-up” with actions, not just words.

Just weeks after the Abu Dhabi declaration, Nahdlatul Ulama hosted a conference in Indonesia with over 20,000 Muslim scholars in attendance. At this conference, Muslim clerics and scholars issued an “ijtihad” stating their theological reasoning for prohibting the term “kafir” meaning “infidel” to describe one’s fellow citizens.

“We cannot just pretend that there are no problems in Islamic views. There are problems there. You need to acknowledge that so that we can work for the solution. If you do not acknowledge the problem, you cannot resolve it,” Staquf told CNA.

“In Muslim-majority societies, you can see more attitudes of discrimination and persecution toward minorities … so the Islamic world needs to develop the whole religious system that will integrate the Islamic world harmoniously with the rest of the world,” he said.

Central to these proposed changes to Islamic theology is how Muslims are called to interact with non-Muslims, Staquf explained.

“We need for Muslims to view others as a fellow human being, fellow brothers in humanity. We should not attack on the basis of different identities,” he said.

Staquf met Pope Francis after the general audience on Sept. 25. He presented the pope with a letter and several documents from Nahdlatul Ulama, containing recommendations as to how Muslims scholars have sought to address “problematic elements within Islamic orthodoxy” to create a more harmonious world order with “respect for equal rights and dignity of every human being.”

“When you think about global harmony, global security, global stability, we see four centers of concern related to Islamic orthodoxy,” Staquf said.

Within the documents presented to the pope, NU lays out “a practical road map” to achieve the aspirations expressed in pope’s Document on Human Fraternity: “prohibiting use of the term kafir (infidel) to describe one’s fellow citizens; affirming the legitimacy of the nation state and laws created through modern political processes; committing Muslims to strive for peace as a religious obligation; and providing a detailed framework for bringing Islamic orthodoxy into alignment with 21st century norms.”

“My hope is that these documents will be examined seriously by the Vatican so that the Vatican can make decisions to engage with us and work together with this,” Staquf said.

The Muslim leader also brought a delegation of Indonesian Catholics and young Muslims practicing “humanitarian Islam” with him to Rome to attend the general audience with the pope. Together they asked Pope Francis to visit Indonesia to continue his interreligious dialogue.

Indonesia is a Muslim-majority country historically known for its ethnic diversity and peaceful religious pluralism, which has seen an increase in religious-based violence and radical groups in recent years.

“They explained to the pope that we stand for the harmony of Indonesia, so that when we [Nahdlatul Ulama Muslims] see threats toward our fellow Indonesian Christians, we protect them,” Staquf said.

“I mentioned to His Holiness that we believe Humanitarian Islam is in alignment with noble values of Christian humanism … It was received very well,” he said.

Archbishop Agustinus Agus of Pontianak, who accompanied Staquf on the trip, facilitated the Sunni sheikh’s meetings with the pope and members of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue.

Archbishop Agus told CNA that when Sheikh Staquf expressed that he wanted to come to the Vatican to give the pope Nahdlatul Ulama’s response to the Abu Dhabi declaration, he knew it was “the right time … for one of the great leaders of the Muslims to meet the pope.”

“I feel that I have a responsibility for the future of Indonesia,” Agus said.

Staquf stressed that the persecution of Christians in Muslim-majority countries around the world must end. He said that when looking at the rise of the Islamic State and other radical groups, one cannot ignore the theological underpinnings that allow their radicalism and violence to spread.

“Let’s look at why these problematic views can spread effectively everywhere in the Islamic world in these Muslims communities because it is supported by … what is considered to be authoritative elements of the orthodoxy. So we need to change that so that people cannot use that elements to make troubles, to make problems,” he said.

“We have a network of hundreds of thousands of clerics and Muslim scholars in Indonesia. So we all know what is in the teachings of Islam,” he said. “We know that there are some elements that do not encourage harmony and even can be potential obstacles to harmony.”

One of the areas Nahdlatul Ulama is working to reform is religious education for Muslim youth. They are constructing a curriculum for teaching Islamic history that places less of an emphasis on the violence of the past, and more on spirituality.

“We want to create materials for education which contains more about the character of the prophet, the compassionate character of the prophet, rather than these records of conflicts and wars,” Staquf said.

“We use a creed for this movement, the global movement of humanitarian Islam. Our creed is: ‘We choose rahma’ … ‘We choose compassion,” he said.

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Vatican City, Sep 26, 2019 / 10:25 am (CNA).- In a meeting with Jesuits in Mozambique earlier this month, Pope Francis said that clericalism is a direct result of rigidity and linked to a fixation on sexual morality.

“One dimension of clericalis… […]

Vatican City, Sep 26, 2019 / 08:21 am (CNA).- Cardinal William Levada, the former prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, died Wednesday, Sept. 25 at the age of 83. He was the first American to lead the Congregation for the Doctrine … […]