Blessed John Henry Newman to be canonized October 13

July 1, 2019 CNA Daily News News Briefs 5 Print

Vatican City, Jul 1, 2019 / 04:00 am (CNA).- The Vatican announced Monday that Blessed Cardinal John Henry Newman will be canonized on October 13 in Rome.

During a consistory of cardinals July 1, Pope Francis decreed that Newman and four other blesseds will be canonized together in St. Peter’s Square.

Indian Sister Marian Thresia, founder of the Congregation of the Sisters of the Holy Family; Italian Sister Giuseppina Vannini; Brazilian Sister Dulce Lopes Pontes, and Marguerite Bays, a Swiss consecrated sister of the Third Order of St. Francis will be canonized alongside Newman.

Their canonizations will take place during the 2019 Special Synod of Bishops from the Pan-Amazonian region to be held at the Vatican Oct. 6-27.

Newman was a 19th century theologian, poet, Catholic priest and cardinal. Originally an Anglican priest, he converted to Catholicism in 1845 and his writings are considered among some of the most important Church-writings in recent centuries.

Ordained a Catholic priest in 1847, he was made a cardinal by Pope Leo XIII in 1879, although he was not a bishop. Newman’s conversion to the Catholic faith was very controversial in England, and resulted in him losing many friends, including his own sister who never spoke to him again.

The British cardinal founded the Oratory of St. Philip Neri in England, and was particularly dedicated to education, founding two schools for boys. He died in Birmingham in 1890 at the age of 89.

In October, Cardinal Newman will be Britain’s first new saint since the canonization of St. John Ogilvie in 1976.

At Newman’s beatification Mass in Birmingham, England in Sept. 2010, Pope Benedict XVI said that Newman’s “insights into the relationship between faith and reason, into the vital place of revealed religion in civilized society, and into the need for a broadly-based and wide-ranging approach to education were not only of profound importance for Victorian England, but continue today to inspire and enlighten many all over the world.”

“What better goal could teachers of religion set themselves than Blessed John Henry’s famous appeal for an intelligent, well-instructed laity: ‘I want a laity, not arrogant, not rash in speech, not disputatious, but men who know their religion, who enter into it, who know just where they stand, who know what they hold and what they do not, who know their creed so well that they can give an account of it, who know so much of history that they can defend it,” Pope Benedict said.

The first miracle attributed to Newman’s intercession involved the complete and inexplicable healing of a deacon from a disabling spinal condition.

His second miracle concerned the healing of a pregnant American woman. The woman prayed for the intercession of Cardinal Newman at the time of a life-threatening diagnosis, and her doctors have been unable to explain how or why she was able to suddenly recover.

“God has created me to do Him some definite service. He has committed some work to me which He has not committed to another. I have my mission. I may never know it in this life, but I shall be told it in the next. I am a link in a chain, a bond of connection between persons,” Blessed John Henry Newman wrote.

“He has not created me for naught. I shall do good; I shall do His work. I shall be an angel of peace, a preacher of truth in my own place, while not intending it if I do but keep His commandments,” he said.

“Therefore, I will trust Him… If I am in sickness, my sickness may serve Him, in perplexity, my perplexity may serve Him… He does nothing in vain… He may take away my friends. He may throw me among strangers. He may make me feel desolate, make my spirits sink, hide the future from me. Still, He knows what He is about.”

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The Dispatch

Cardinal Becciu and the twists and turns of the Vatican finance trial

November 30, 2022 Catholic News Agency 5
Cardinal Giovanni Angelo Becciu attends the Consistory for the creation of new Cardinals at the St. Peter’s Basilica on Aug. 27, 2022, at the Vatican. / Photo by Franco Origlia/Getty Images

Rome Newsroom, Nov 30, 2022 / 11:00 am (CNA).

As the Vatican trial against Cardinal Angelo Becciu and nine others rounds the corner in its 16th month, recent court hearings have introduced a few revelations about the case as well as possible new accusations against the Secretariat of State’s former No. 2.

Here are some of the latest twists and turns in the trial to prosecute people in and around the Vatican for financial crimes.

A secret papal recording

During a Nov. 24 hearing, a Vatican prosecutor played a recording of a phone call between Pope Francis and Cardinal Becciu — secretly recorded on the cellphone of Becciu’s niece.

Though media and observers had to leave the courtroom while the recording, which had not yet been admitted into evidence, was played, Italian news agency Adnkronos later published a full transcript.

The recording revealed, Vatican prosecutor Alessandro Diddi said in court, that Becciu had called Pope Francis on July 24, 2021 — 10 days after the pope had surgery on his colon and three days before the start of the trial — to ask him to confirm that he had authorized payments to free a kidnapped nun in Mali.

During the phone call, Becciu lamented that a letter from the pope repeated the same accusations of prosecutors. “I almost should not go to trial anymore because, I’m sorry, but the letter you sent me is a condemnation,” he said, according to the transcript published by Adnkronos.

The cardinal also reportedly said he would not be able to call Pope Francis as a witness in the trial, which is why he was calling him to have his statement that he had authorized the financial operations. 

Francis said he wanted to stay above the fray of the trial and asked Becciu to put his questions to him in writing.

Possible criminal conspiracy

In the same hearing, Diddi said he also was investigating a new possible charge against Becciu and others: criminal conspiracy.

The accusation concerns the charge that Becciu misused Vatican funds to support the cooperative SPES — which works with the local Caritas in Becciu’s home Diocese of Ozieri in Sardinia. SPES is mostly managed by the cardinal’s family members.

Diddi said financial police in Sardinia have found falsified documents apparently used to justify a transfer of money from Caritas to SPES in 2018.

Police found that 927 transport documents for bread had actually been created in the summer of 2021, a few weeks before the start of the Vatican trial, and back-dated to 2018.

Becciu sues — and loses

An Italian court last week rejected a defamation lawsuit filed by Cardinal Becciu against three journalists at the Italian newspaper L’Espresso.

Becciu was ordered to pay 40,000 euros in court costs to the GEDI Publishing Group, which owned L’Espresso when the complaint was filed.

The cardinal’s lawyer had argued that L’Espresso’s reporting in 2020 had cost Becciu the chance to be pope. His lawsuit asked judges to award him 10 million euros in compensation.

This was Becciu’s second lost lawsuit this month. Earlier in November, a judge in northern Italy ordered the cardinal to pay over 20,000 euros each in court costs to his former collaborator Monsignor Alberto Perlasca and Perlasca’s friend after suing them for “persecutory acts.”

In his sentence, the judge called Becciu’s lawsuit an “abuse of the procedural instrument” and also directed the cardinal to pay 9,000 euros in damages to Perlasca.

Becciu could choose to appeal the decisions. 

Perlasca’s day in court

Monsignor Perlasca, the former head of administration at the Secretariat of State, testified two days last week, his first time taking the stand during the Vatican’s finance trial. His questioning continued on Nov. 30.

Perlasca was once considered a suspect in the finance investigations, but he was never charged after volunteering information to investigators during extensive questioning in 2020 and 2021. He is now the prosecution’s star witness.

Perlasca had sought to have most of his pretrial interrogations excluded from evidence at trial. He argued that due process was not followed since he did not have a lawyer with him while questioned.

But the president of the Vatican court, Giuseppe Pignatone, denied the plea on the eve of Perlasca’s testimony, only excluding a part of one interrogation from Aug. 31, 2020.

Perlasca, who contradicted his prior statements throughout questioning Nov. 24 and 25, was warned by Pignatone to be careful of his answers — or risk being charged with perjury.

When asked about the Secretariat of State’s decisions around the purchase of the London building, the investment at the heart of the trial, Perlasca claimed to have so little power that he could not even sign his name to anything.

But the prosecutor pointed out that Perlasca’s name was signed to the “framework agreement” that transferred the management of the London property from Raffaele Mincione to Gianluigi Torzi, both defendants in the trial.

Perlasca said the “current sostituto,” or No. 2, at the Secretariat of State, Archbishop Edgar Peña Parra, told him to sign it.

The former right-hand man of Becciu said he did not know much about financial affairs, unlike his predecessor in the position, and distanced himself from all responsibility, despite having been the head of administration.

He said Becciu is guilty of all the charges against him and insinuated the cardinal put pressure on him, while he himself is “neither accomplice, nor conniver, nor abettor.”

Perlasca also downplayed threats of suicide he made to Becciu over messages, calling them “provocations” now being exaggerated for dramatic effect.

According to Perlasca, Becciu suggested multiple times he should visit his brother, Mario Becciu, a psychologist and licensed therapist in Rome.

A statement from Becciu’s lawyers welcomed the opportunity to examine Perlasca’s claims in court and said the priest’s testimony did not correspond to the accusations against their client.

Earlier this year, Perlasca entered the Vatican trial as a civil plaintiff, joining the Secretariat of State; the Vatican’s two financial bodies, APSA and the IOR; and internal financial watchdog authority ASIF in requesting damages.

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2 Comments

  1. You referred to Blessed Cardinal John Henry Newman in the first line of your article. This has created significant confusion as the other reports name him as Blessed John Henry Newman, who was a Cardinal. Would you please consider correcting this.

    Reply

3 Trackbacks / Pingbacks

  1. John Henry Newman’s long war on liberalism – Catholic World Report
  2. Newman and the problems of Catholic intellectual history – Catholic World Report
  3. Cardinal Newman 101: An introduction to his life, work, and thought – Catholic World Report

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