Month: September 2019

Vatican City, Sep 19, 2019 / 10:14 am (CNA).- Pope Francis’ now six-member Council of Cardinal Advisors met this week to continue work on the forthcoming apostolic constitution, incorporating into the draft suggestions submitted by bishops’ conferences and others during the summer.

According to a brief press release from the Holy See press office Thursday, the council met Sept. 17-19, with a focus on “re-reading and modifying the draft of the new Apostolic Constitution,” which has the provisional title Praedicate evangelium.

“This first rereading, which has come to an end, was a passage of listening and reflection that responds to the indications of the Holy Father in the sense of communion and synodality,” the statement said.

The new constitution has been the advisory group’s key reform project since its establishment in 2013, one month after Pope Francis’ election.

The document is expected to place renewed emphasis on evangelization as the structural priority of the Church’s mission, with some predicting the merger of the Vatican’s Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples and the Pontifical Council for the Promotion of the New Evangelization into a single larger department.

Praedicate evangelium will replace Pastor bonus, the current apostolic constitution on the Roman Curia promulgated by Pope John Paul II on June 28, 1988, and subsequently modified by both popes Benedict and Francis.

Pope Francis attended the council’s meetings, the advisory group’s 31st, when not in other audiences and appointments. On Wednesday morning the pope held his usual general audience, and Thursday morning he had a full slate of appointments, including with Cardinal Reinhard Marx, Archbishop of Munich and Freising and the coordinator of the Council for the Economy, who is also president of the German bishops’ conference.

The Council of Cardinal Advisors is often referred to informally as the “C9,” although there have been only six members since December 2018, when three of the original members, Cardinals George Pell, Francisco Javier Errazuriz, and Laurent Monsengwo, were removed, ostensibly for reasons of age.

In addition to Marx, the other members of the pope’s advisory council are Cardinals Pietro Parolin, Óscar Andrés Rodríguez Maradiaga, Seán Patrick O’Malley, Giuseppe Bertello and Oswald Gracias.

Bishops Marcello Semeraro and Marco Mellino, the secretary and adjunct secretary of the council, were also present at the meetings this week.

The next round of gatherings will take place Dec. 2-4.

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Naples, Italy, Sep 19, 2019 / 10:06 am (CNA).- The miracle of the liquefiction of the blood of early Church martyr St. Januarius took place Thursday in Naples.

The blood was shown to have liquefied shortly after 10 a.m. during Mass in the Naples’ Cathedral of the Assumption of Mary.

The Mass was celebrated by Cardinal Crescenzio Sepe, Archbishop of Naples, who in his homily, strongly criticized the violent crime of Neapolitan streets.

Despite the city’s recurring miracle, “the evil that the hateful and violent killers commit in Naples is limitless,” he said.” In effect they try to kill at birth just the possibility of making a future…”

This, he noted, generates fear and insecurity, and goes against the common good. 

“We must ask ourselves: does Naples still have a great and sincere heart? Us citizens of today’s Naples have to answer this question with truth, therefore, with realism, with honesty and courageously, without letting ourselves be taken by a false nostalgia of the times we once had,” he stated.

St. Januarius, or San Gennaro in Italian, the patron of Naples, was a bishop of the city in the third century, whose bones and blood are preserved in the cathedral as relics. He is believed to have been martyred during Diocletian persecution.

The reputed miracle is locally known and accepted, though has not been the subject of official Church recognition. The liquefaction reportedly happens at least three times a year: Sept. 19, the saint’s feast day, the Saturday before the first Sunday of May, and Dec. 16, the anniversary of the 1631 eruption of Mount Vesuvius.

During the miracle, the dried, red-colored mass confined to one side of the reliquary becomes blood that covers the entire glass. In local lore, the failure of the blood to liquefy signals war, famine, disease or other disaster.

The blood did not liquefy in December 2016, but Monsignor Vincenzo De Gregorio, abbot of the Chapel of the Treasure of San Gennaro, said it was a sign that Catholics should pray rather than worry about what the lack of miracle could mean.

“We must not think of disasters and calamities. We are men of faith and we must pray,” he said at the time.

The vial has sometimes changed upon the visit of a pope.

On March 21, 2015, Pope Francis met with priests, religious and seminarians at the cathedral and gave a blessing with the relic.

Sepe then received the vial back from the pope and noted that the blood had partially liquefied.

The last time blood liquefied in the presence of a pope was in 1848 when Bl. Pius IX visited. The phenomenon didn’t happen when St. John Paul II visited the city in October 1979, or when Benedict XVI visited in October 2007.

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Vatican City, Sep 19, 2019 / 07:30 am (CNA).- Pope Francis said Thursday that canon law is essential for ecumenical dialogue with Orthodox and Oriental Churches.

“Many of the theological dialogues pursued by the Catholic Church, especially with … […]

Vatican City, Sep 19, 2019 / 12:00 am (CNA).- A book on papal communication aims to connect the history of the Vatican’s communications office with the theology of the Second Vatican Council.

“I welcomed this publication with great pleasure,” Alessandro Gisotti, deputy editorial director at Vatican Media, during a September launch event for “Anche i Papi comunicano,” – “The popes also communicate.”

 “I believe it is also a sign of gratitude to all the colleagues who accompanied me during the months in which I held the position of director of the Press Room. I was part of this story and now that it has been dedicated to Navarro Valls the Press Room is even more the home of journalists,” Gisotti added, according to a report from Vatican Media.

The book is authored by Veronica Giacometti, an editor at Italian news agency ACI Stampa and a former intern at Radio Vaticano. ACI Stampa is CNA’s Italian-language partner agency.

Gisotti said the book is important because it connects contemporary Catholic communicators to the Church’s tradition.

“Tradition means transmitting knowledge, it is important that Vatican experts know how popes have communicated in recent decades,” he said.

“Popes communicate first of all with their presence. A president, if he does not act, is thought not exist. But the pope exists and communicates as Peter’s successor, he is the message itself, therefore political categories cannot be applied to his communication,” Gisotti said.

Giacometti told Vatican Media that she wrote the book to be a resource to Vatican journalists.

This book can be a working tool. It contains basic information (for Vatican journalists.) For example, what is a bolletino, how is the press office structured,” among other questions, she said.

Giacometti said she aimed to put the traditions of Vatican journalists on paper.

Alan Holdren, director of EWTN’s Rome office, and long-time Vatican journalist, also spoke at the launch event.

“I think all of us feel this need to know where we have come from. I have been here for 10 years, my first days of journalism at the Vatican were right in the Vatican’s press room. I spent a year and a half there, every day of the week, to report the facts about the pope. The press room for us is a meeting point, a welcome point, a point of information that is essential to carry out our profession,” Holdren said.

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