Livestream installer: it’s ‘an absolute privilege’ to bring Mass to locked-down Catholics

Barletta, Italy, May 11, 2018 / 12:16 am (ACI Prensa).- The investiture of Sister Maria Vittoria della Croce last month marked the first ceremony of its kind to be held in the Italian city of Barletta since the 1940s.

“The monastery of San Ruggero [in Barletta] had been reduced to a very few elderly nuns, but three years ago it was re-founded with the arrival of several young sisters, which revitalized it in terms of vocations,” explained Deacon Riccardo Losappio, head of communications for the Archdiocese of Trani-Barletta-Bisceglie.

Losappio told ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish language sister agency, that these new religious, including the current abbess, come from the Santa Maria delle Rose (Saint Mary of the Roses) Benedictine monastery located in the town of Sant’Angelo in Pontano in the Marche region in eastern Italy.

Now, with the admission of Sister Maria Vittoria della Croce, “the Benedictine monastic community of San Ruggero is comprised of six nuns that have made solemn vows, four nuns who have made temporary vows, two novices and one postulant,” he said.

Sister Maria Vittoria della Croce – whose baptismal name is Carmen D’Agostino – is 27 years old.

Her induction ceremony into the San Ruggero Benedictine monastery took place April 27 in the co-cathedral Basilica of Saint Mary Major and was presided by the Archbishop of Trani-Barletta-Bisceglie, Leonardo D’Ascenzo.

The photographs of the event were posted by the archdiocese on its Facebook page, where they reached more than 2 million users and drew more than 11,000 shares, 3,700 “likes” and 650 comments.

Losappio explained that “for Benedictine nuns, presenting oneself dressed as a bride is part of the rite of investiture for the religious.”

“They always enter dressed that way because they are spouses of Christ who are going out to meet him and they become brides to anticipate in time what one day will be in the fullness of God.”

During the investiture ceremony, novices who were previously dressed in a wedding gown “have their hair cut, put on the Benedictine habit and receive the crucifix to indicate their joyful renunciation of all that is vain and ephemeral.”

<iframe src=”https://www.facebook.com/plugins/post.php?href=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2Farcidiocesitrani%2Fposts%2F1882608005124535&width=500″ width=”500″ height=”683″ style=”border:none;overflow:hidden” scrolling=”no” frameborder=”0″ allowTransparency=”true” allow=”encrypted-media”></iframe>

During the ceremony, Archbishop D’Ascenzo wished the new religious “the great beauty of this presence of Jesus maturing more and more in you and to express it as a witness to the outside world through the relationship with the Church and with your community. May you have a blessed path to holiness and I hope that you can be ever more beautiful in the sense of this witness to the Church and with your sisters.”

Sister Maria Vittoria della Croce shared her testimony in the archdiocesan newspaper “In Comunione.”

The new nun was born in January 1991 in the Italian town of Melfi and finished her studies in nursing at the University of Foggia in 2014. She grew up in a strong Catholic family belonging to the Neocatechumenal Way and has three siblings.

“When I was 15, my mother went to heaven after a long illness which she endured with faith. It was not easy for me, but I can bear witness that the Lord has always provided for my family and me,” she stated.

“Thinking about my mother made me look to heaven, to paradise. More than having made a choice, I was chosen by him: at a youth encounter, and then also through others, I felt the love of Christ manifested on the cross,” she said.

“I simply accepted this love, this call to fight for the kingdom of heaven, and with the help of the Church to discern this call, I entered the monastery,” she said.

For Sister Maria Vittoria della Croce, this vocational call “opened heaven to me” and she is certain that God “loves me as I am, and I am for him a precious pearl.”
 

[…]

Mainz, Germany, Mar 3, 2020 / 10:30 am (CNA).- The German bishops’ conference has elected Bishop Georg Bätzing of Limburg as its new chairman. Bätzing replaces the outgoing chairman, Cardinal Reinhard Marx of Münich and Freising, and will lead the conference for a six year term.

The election of Bishop Bätzing was confirmed Tuesday, following a vote by the German bishops at their spring assembly, which is currently underway in Mainz. CNA Duetsch reported March 3 that, after no candidate received the necessary two-thirds majority during the first two rounds of voting, Bätzing was elected on the third ballot with a simple majority of votes cast.

The bishop used his first press appearance as chairman to reaffirm the conference’s support for the ongoing “synodal way” being conducted in partnership with the Central Committee of German Catholics (ZdK).

“At the center of our considerations is the ‘Synodal Way.’ I fully support that,” Bätzing said Tuesday.

The so-called binding synodal process formally opened during the first week of Advent, 2019, but the first meeting of the synodal assembly was convened in January. The assembly’s working groups will offer proposed changes to various aspects of Church teaching and discipline, including on women’s ordination, clerical celibacy, and human sexuality.

The 58 year-old Bätzing was consecrated bishop by Cardinal Rainer Maria Woelki on September 13, 2016.

Bätzing was asked Tuesday if some of the stated aims of the synodal process, in particular women’s ordination, had not been effectively ruled out by Pope Francis in his recent apostolic exhortation following the synod on the Amazon.

“On the contrary,” Bätzing said. The bishop explained that from his view the pope “did not take a position” on a number of questions posed in the final synodal document on the Amazon, and did not rule out any eventual conclusions of the German process.

Last year, Pope Francis wrote a letter to the whole Church in Germany, warning against allowing the Church conform to modern secular morals and thought. Pope Francis cautioned against “a new Pelagianism” which seeks “to tidy up and tune the life of the Church, adapting it to the present logic.”

The result of such errors, Francis said, would be a “well organized and even ‘modernized’ ecclesiastical body, but without soul and evangelical novelty.”

Vatican officials subsequently informed the German bishops’ conference that the synodal plans were “not ecclesiologically valid,” and called for them to be substantially revised.

As conference chairman, Bishop Bätzing will now co-chair the synodal assembly, along with the ZdK leadership.

Last month, Bätzing was elected to co-chair the synodal working group on “Life in Successful Relationships – Love Live in Sexuality and Partnership,” together with Birgit Mock, the ZdK spokeswoman on family policy. 

The ZdK has called for a total revision of Church teaching on homosexuality and for the blessing of same-sex relationships in churches.

In September, 2019, Bishop Bätzing co-chaired an ecumenical working group of Catholic and Protestant theologians which produced a document, titled “Together at the Lord’s Table,” which concluded that “mutual participation in the celebration of the Lord’s Supper / Eucharist is theologically justified.”

At the time of the document’s release, Bätzing noted that he had joined the group late in the process and initially asked himself “whether [he] can agree to this or not.”

“But I have to say, the theological justification in this basic paper is so clear to me that I did not want to and could not escape.”

In the Catholic Church, only baptized Catholics in a state of grace are permitted to receive Communion. The Code of Canon Law outlines very narrow circumstances in which non-Catholics may be admitted to Communion. While bishops in several northern European countries have repeatedly called for Eucharistic intercommunion, this has been rejected by Rome.

Acknowledging this at the time of the report’s release, Bätzing said that his own certainty on the issue did not mean he was free to alter sacramental discipline.

“However, this does not mean that I am a bishop alone, but the theological discussion must now be raised to the level of a teaching reception, i.e. an acceptance by the Magisterium of the Catholic Church. And this process is pending,” he said.

[…]

Vatican City, May 3, 2018 / 01:58 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- After several German bishops appealed to the Vatican over an alleged proposal to allow non-Catholic spouses in mixed faith marriages to receive communion, the Church’s top authority on doctrine has sent the ball back, saying Pope Francis wants Germany’s bishops to come to an agreement among themselves.

Released after a 4-hour meeting between German bishops and the heads of certain curial offices, a Vatican communique said that Archbishop Luis Ladaria SJ, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, told the bishops that the pope “appreciates the ecumenical commitment of the German bishops” and asked them “to find, in a spirit of ecumenical communion, a possibly unanimous decision.”

It is not clear whether a “possibly unanimous decision” asks the German bishops’ conference for a fully unanimous vote on the issue, or asks for a nearly unanimous decision, or whether the bishops are simply being asked to discuss the matter further to see if they can resolve the issue themselves before a central authority steps in.

The Vatican declined to comment on the meaning of the phrase.

Announced over the weekend, the May 3 meeting followed reports, later denied by the German bishops’ conference, that the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith had rejected a proposal by the conference to publish guidelines allowing the non-Catholic spouses of Catholics to receive the Eucharist in certain limited circumstances.

In February, Cardinal Reinhard Marx, president of the German bishops conference, announced that the conference would publish a pastoral handout explaining that Protestant spouses of Catholics “in individual cases” and “under certain conditions” could receive Holy Communion, provided they “affirm the Catholic faith in the Eucharist.”

Marx’s statement concerned a draft version of the guidelines, which was adopted “after intensive debate” during a Feb. 19-22 general assembly of the conference..

The Vatican’s communique noted that while more than three-quarters of the German bishops voted in favor of the guidelines, “a not indifferent number” of voters, including seven diocesan bishops, “did not feel capable, for various reasons, of giving their consent.”

The bishops, the Vatican said, then appealed to the Vatican for an answer as to whether the question of Holy Communion for Protestant spouses in interdenominational marriages can be decided at a local level by a national bishops’ conference, or if a decision from the universal Church was required in the matter.

Specifically, they wrote to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Council for Promoting Christian Unity and the Council for Legislative Texts.

Signatories, who did not consult Cardinal Marx before writing the letter, included: Archbishop Ludwig Schick of Bamberg; Bishop Gregor Hanke of Eichstätt; Bishop Konrad Zdarsa of Augsburg; Bishop Stefan Oster of Passau; Bishop Rudolf Voderholzer of Regensburg; Bishop Wolfgang Ipolt of Görlitz and Cardinal Rainer Maria Woelki, archbishop of Cologne.

None of the signatories, apart from Cardinal Woelki, were present for the May 3 meeting, which was held at the Vatican and conducted in German.

Members of the German delegation also included: Cardinal Marx; Bishop Felix Genn of Munster; Bishop Karl-Heinz Wiesemann of Speyer and president of the Doctrinal Commission for the German bishops conference; Bishop Gerhard Feige of Magdeburg and president of the German bishops’ Commission for Ecumenism and Fr. Hans Langendörfer SJ, secretary of the German bishops conference.

On the Vatican side, the meeting was attended by: Archbishop Ladaria; Cardinal Kurt Koch, president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity; Msgr. Markus Graulich, undersecretary for the Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts and Fr. Herman Geissler, who serves as a kind of office manager for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

During the meeting, several questions were discussed, centered around the relationship between faith and pastoral care.

Archbishop Ladaria will now inform Pope Francis about the discussion, which the Vatican said took place in a “cordial and fraternal atmosphere.”

[…]