Washington D.C., Dec 22, 2020 / 05:48 pm (CNA).- Catholics are not morally obliged to take the coronavirus vaccine and should appeal to the Holy Spirit for wisdom, Archbishop Joseph Naumann of Kansas City in […]
San Rafael, Argentina, Dec 22, 2020 / 02:47 pm (CNA).- A priest of the Diocese of San Rafael has been suspended after he physically attacked Bishop Eduardo María Taussig during an argument over the closing of the local seminary.
Fr. Camilo Dib, a priest from Malargue, more than 110 miles southwest of San Rafael, was called to the chancery to explain “his role in the events happened in Malargue November 21st,” according to a Dec. 22 statement from the diocese.
On that date, Bishop Taussig made a pastoral visit to the town to explain the controversial closing of the seminary in July 2020, which has sparked a string of protests from local Catholics.
A group of protesters, including priests and lay people, interrupted the Mass celebrated by Bishop Taussig, and one protester slashed the tires of the bishop’s vehicle, forcing him to wait for another vehicle while confronting the protesters.
According to the diocese’s statement, “Father Dib lost control of himself and suddenly attacked the bishop violently. As a consequence of this first attack, the chair in which the bishop was sitting was broken. Those present tried to stop the fury of the priest who, despite everything, once again tried to attack the bishop who, thanks be to God, could be covered by one of those attending the meeting, withdrawing from the office in which they were.”
“When everything seemed to have calmed down,” the statement continues, “Father Camilo Dib became furious again and, out of control, tried to attack once more the bishop who had retired to the diocesan dining room. Those present were able to prevent (Fr. Dib) from approaching the bishop and making things worse. At that time, the parish priest of Nuestra Señora del Carmen of Malargue, Fr. Alejandro Casado, intervened and accompanied the attacker out of the diocesan house, took him to his vehicle, and definitively withdrew.”
The diocese explained that the suspension of Fr. Dib from all his priestly duties is based on code 1370 of the Code of Canon Law, which states that “A person who uses physical force against the Roman Pontiff incurs a latae sententiae excommunication reserved to the Apostolic See; if he is a cleric, another penalty, not excluding dismissal from the clerical state, can be added according to the gravity of the delict. A person who does this against a bishop incurs a latae sententiae interdict and, if he is a cleric, also a latae sententiae suspension.”
The diocese’s statement concluded: “Faced with this painful situation, we invite everyone to receive the grace of the Manger and before the Child God who looks at us, seek a sincere spirit of conversion that brings the peace of the Lord to all.”
It appears that virtually all who look into the origin and Christian symbolism of Christmas trees trace the first overt example to St. Boniface (bet. 672-679 to 745 or 755). The story he is most […]
Vatican City, Dec 22, 2020 / 06:30 am (CNA).- Pope Francis has recognized the martyrdom of Rosario Livatino, a judge who was brutally killed by the mafia on his commute to work at a courthouse in Sicily thirty years ago.
The Vatican Congregation for the Causes of Saints announced Dec. 22 that the pope had approved a decree of Livatino’s martyrdom “in hatred of the faith,” paving the way for the judge’s beatification.
Before his murder at the age of 37 on Sept. 21, 1990, Livatino spoke as a young lawyer about the intersection between the law and faith.
“The duty of the magistrate is to decide; however, to decide is also to choose… And it is precisely in this choosing in order to decide, in deciding so as to put things in order, that the judge who believes may find a relationship with God. It is a direct relationship, because to administer justice is to realize oneself, to pray, to dedicate oneself to God. It is an indirect relationship, mediated by love for the person under judgment,” Livatino said at a conference in 1986.
“However, believers and non-believers must, in the moment of judging, dismiss all vanity and above all pride; they must feel the full weight of power entrusted to their hands, a weight all the greater because power is exercised in freedom and autonomy. And this task will be the lighter the more the judge humbly senses his own weaknesses,” he said.
Livatino’s convictions about his vocation within the legal profession and commitment to justice were tested at a time when the mafia demanded a weak judiciary in Sicily.
For a decade he worked as a prosecutor dealing with the criminal activity of the mafia throughout the 1980s and confronted what Italians later called the “Tangentopoli,” or the corrupt system of mafia bribes and kickbacks given for public works contracts.
Livatino went on to serve as a judge at the Court of Agrigento in 1989. He was driving unescorted toward the Agrigento courthouse when another car hit him, sending him off the road. He ran from the crashed vehicle into a field, but was shot in the back and then killed with more gunshots.
After his death, a Bible full of notations was found in his desk, where he always kept a crucifix.
On a pastoral visit to Sicily in 1993, Pope John Paul II called Livatino a “martyr of justice and indirectly of faith.”
Cardinal Francesco Montenegro, the current archbishop of Agrigento, told Italian media on the 30th anniversary of Livatino’s death that the judge was dedicated “not only to the cause of human justice, but to the Christian faith.”
“The strength of this faith was the cornerstone of his life as an operator of justice,” the cardinal told the Italian SIR news agency Sept. 21.
“Livatino was killed because he was prosecuting the mafia gangs by preventing their criminal activity, where they would have demanded weak judicial management. A service that he carried out with a strong sense of justice that came from his faith,” he said.
The courthouse where Livatino used to work in Agrigento also organized a conference over the weekend marking the anniversary of his death.
“Remembering Rosario Livatino … means urging the whole community to join forces and lay the foundations for a future no longer burdened by mafia loans,” Roberto Fico, president of the chamber, said at the event Sept. 19, according to La Repubblica.
“And it means strengthening the determination — which continues to animate so many judges and members of the police on the front line against organized crime — to want to do their duty at all costs.”
Pope Francis expressed his support this year for an initiative aimed at countering mafia organizations’ use of the figure of the Blessed Virgin Mary to promote submission to the will of the mafia boss.
A working group organized by the Pontifical International Marian Academy brought together about 40 Church and civil leaders to address the abuse of Marian devotions by mafia organizations, who use her figure to wield power and exert control.
The pope previously met with the Anti-Mafia Parliamentary Commission on the anniversary of Livatino’s death in 2017. On that occasion, he said that dismantling the mafia begins with a political commitment to social justice and economic reform.
The pope said that corrupt organizations can serve as an alternative social structure which roots itself in areas where justice and human rights are lacking. Corruption, he noted, “always finds a way to justify itself, presenting itself as the ‘normal’ condition, the solution for those who are ‘shrewd,’ the way to reach one’s goals.”
On the same day that Pope Francis recognized Livatino’s martyrdom, the pope also approved a decree by the Congregation for the Causes of Saints declaring the heroic virtue of seven other people, including an Italian priest Fr. Antonio Seghezzi, who helped the resistance against the Nazis and died in Dachau in 1945.
The heroic virtue of Fr. Bernardo Antonini, an Italian priest who served as a missionary in the Soviet Union and died in Kazakhstan in 2002 was also recognized, along with a 16th century bishop of Michoacán, Vasco de Quiroga, Italian Servant of Mary Msgr. Berardino Piccinelli (1905-1984), a Polish Salesian priest Fr. Ignazio Stuchlý (1869-1953), and Spanish priest Fr. Vincent González Suárez (1817-1851).
The congregation also declared Sr. Rosa Staltari, an Italian religious sister with the Congregation Daughters of Mary, the Most Holy, Co-Redemptrix (1951-1974) to have had heroic virtue.
Before his death, Judge Livatino wrote: “Justice is necessary, but not sufficient, and can and must be overcome by the law of charity which is the law of love, love of neighbor and God.”
“And once more it will be the law of love, the vivifying strength of faith, that will solve the problem at its roots. Let’s remember Jesus’ words to the adulterous woman: ‘Let him who is without sin cast the first stone.’ By these words, he indicated the deep reason of our difficulty: sin is shadow; in order to judge there is need of light, and no man is absolute light himself.”
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St. Francis of Assisi’s words: “I want to stage the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem to show the wonders of the Spirit through the eyes of the body,” have struck a chord with Italian priest, […]
CNA Staff, Dec 21, 2020 / 04:47 pm (CNA).- Cardinal George Pell, who was acquitted this year after becoming the highest-ranking Catholic cleric ever to be convicted of sexual abuse, spoke this week about his time in prison, his hopes for the future, and his thoughts on Vatican financial reform efforts.
Pell was initially convicted in Australia in 2018 of multiple counts of sexual abuse. On April 7, 2020, Australia’s High Court overturned his six-year prison sentence. The High Court ruled that he should not have been found guilty of the charges and that the prosecution had not proven their case beyond a reasonable doubt.
Pell spent 13 months in solitary confinement, during which time he was not permitted to celebrate Mass.
The cardinal still faces a canonical investigation at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in Rome, though after his conviction was overturned, several canonical experts said it was unlikely he would actually face a Church trial.
In a new interview with EWTN, Pell said his time in jail was difficult, but he was strengthened by many people offering prayers and sacrifices for him.
“[O]ne of the great differences between us and people without religion is that we believe in some mysterious way suffering can be turned to good. So many people wrote to me and said me they were offering their suffering for me: a young fellow who was dying, a woman wrote and said she was about to give birth and she said would offer up the pains of childbirth for me,” he said in the December 9 interview.
“I felt I could offer up my suffering for the good of the Church, for the victims [of clerical sex abuse], for my family, for my friends, and that helped,” he continued.
“And it also helps to realize that ultimately there’s one judgement that’s supremely important and that’s before the good God when you die. Now if I had thought that death was the end of everything, that the ultimately important thing was my earthly reputation, well obviously my approach would have been different.”
Pell said that although he had faced animosity in his career, the type of infamy that comes with allegations of sex abuse are extremely challenging, especially when he had to remain silent in the face of unfair reporting.
Still, the cardinal said he never despaired during his time in prison, although losing his appeal at the Victoria Supreme Court “was a very low moment.”
“I knew rationally, that my case was enormously strong, but things are not decided on rationality and that Appeal court decision in Victoria reminded me of that,” he said.
“One of the interesting things in Rome was that even my ideological enemies didn’t believe that I was guilty,” he noted. “Now one reason for that was because they knew what a Cathedral is like after a big Mass on Sunday. Many of the people in Australia, even a few of those who were helping me, think of churches as being small and empty and nobody around. But in a cathedral on Sunday, we were, you know, there were hundreds in the big Mass, 50 in the choir, 15 servers, half a dozen people in the sacristy, plus the visitors. The suggestion that I would have attacked two youngsters I didn’t know, nobody said I knew them, in such circumstances, is doubly implausible.”
In Australia, however, he said some people treated him as a scapegoat, seeing not just him but the Catholic Church more broadly on trial for sex abuse.
Pell said his time in prison was somewhat like a retreat – removed from the world and isolated from social interaction.
While there were moments where he wondered why God was allowing his suffering, he also hopes that his ordeal can bring souls to Christianity.
Pell said he is not angry looking back at his experience, but is glad to be back in Rome to thank Pope Francis for his support.
Although he is no longer prefect of the Secretariat for the Economy, as his term expired last year, he said his successor, Jesuit priest Fr. Juan Antonio Guerrero Alves is “a good man, a competent man.”
“He’s headed in the right direction and I totally support him,” Pell said. “I just hope he’s not thwarted the way I am. The Holy Father says there’s got to be an investment committee set up to manage Vatican investment. We recommended that 5 years ago. Now that’s got to be men and women by honest and really professional investors and given effective control. That’s what my successor wants and I fully support that so that we can get away from this shadowy world that the Vatican has dealt with, not all always, but so many times, for decades.”
Reflecting on his own time heading the secretariat, Pell said he “didn’t quite realize just the level of sophistication, corruption, and a good measure of incompetence that would be there.”
During his time as prefect, he discovered more than 1 billion euro in accounts that had not been declared.
Pell addressed speculations that the sex abuse allegations against him were an attempt to prevent his anti-corruption work in Vatican finances. He said that while there is evidence to support this idea, there is not proof, and more investigation is needed.
“A lot of the people who were working for serious reform here believed there was a connection. Amongst my supporters in Australia, almost nobody believed that there was a connection,” he continued. “We now know that quite a number of the criminal elements around the place hoped that I would come to grief in Australia, whether they knew more than that we don’t know.”
Some of this speculation involves media reports that Cardinal Angelo Becciu sent 700,000 euros of Vatican funds to Australia during Pell’s sexual abuse trial, possibly as a payment for Pell’s accusers.
In September, Becciu resigned as prefect of the Vatican’s Congregation for the Causes of Saints and from the rights extended to members of the College of Cardinals.
He worked previously as the number two-ranking official in the Vatican’s Secretariat of State, and has been connected to an ongoing investigation of financial malfeasance at the secretariat. He had clashed with Pell over reform efforts in the Vatican.
CNA has reported that in 2015 Becciu seemed to have made an attempt to disguise the loans on Vatican balance sheets by canceling them out against the value of the property purchased in London. Senior officials at the Prefecture for the Economy said that when Pell began to demand details of the loans, Becciu called the cardinal in to the Secretariat of State for a “reprimand.”
In 2016, Becciu also canceled a planned external audit of all Vatican departments.
Asked about Becciu’s resignation, Pell said, “I hope the cleaning of the stables in both my state of Victoria and the Vatican continues.” He added that “Becciu has a right to a trial. Like everybody else, he has a right to due process. So let’s just see where we’ll go.”
Overall, Pell said he thinks the Church is doing a good job of helping sex abuse victims. He pointed to protocols aimed at prevention, reporting and investigation claims, and offering compensation and counseling to survivors.
“I think, for a long time, the Church has basically been heading in the right direction and this hasn’t been as sufficiently recognized,” he said.
Looking forward, the cardinal said he plans to write and speak, and added that “like every good Christian, I should try to prepare for a good death.”
Vatican City, Dec 21, 2020 / 10:50 am (CNA).- The Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith stated Monday that it is “morally acceptable” to receive COVID-19 vaccines produced using cell lines from aborted fetuses when no alternative i… […]
Denver Newsroom, Dec 21, 2020 / 09:35 am (CNA).- The outcome of a Vatican appeal involving same-sex civil marriage and the Catholic identity of an Indiana school could have effect on a pending religious liberty lawsuit, and on the way other Catholic schools approach the issue of Catholic identity among their faculty.
Layton Payne-Elliot is a math teacher at Brebeuf Jesuit High School in the Archdiocese of Indianapolis. In 2017, the school became aware that Payne-Elliot had contracted a same-sex marriage with Joshua Payne-Elliot, a teacher at Cathedral High School, which is also in the archdiocese.
The archdiocese asked that both schools not renew the teachers’ contracts, because, they said, teachers in Catholic schools are supposed to be witnesses of Catholic doctrine, and contracting a same-sex marriage constitutes a public act of counterwitness to that doctrine.
Brebeuf refused the archdiocesan instruction. In turn, the archdiocese revoked the school’s recognition as Catholic. The school appealed that decision to the Congregation for Catholic Education.
Curial officials close to the case have warned for months that Indianapolis’ Archbishop Charles Thompson is unlikely to find support for his deployment of the “nuclear option” in response to the school’s decision on Layton.
Several Vatican officials have told CNA that after some gestures of consideration, Brebeuf’s Catholic identity will likely remain intact, and the practical autonomy of institutes administered by religious orders will be bolstered by the Congregation’s decision.
A decision against Thompson could impact an ongoing civil lawsuit over the same case.
Joshua Payne-Elliot, who taught at Cathedral High School, filed suit against the Archdiocese of Indianapolis in 2019, after he was fired from his position. His case is currently before the state Supreme Court; this month the court rejected a request from the archdiocese to dismiss the case.
Cathedral High School’s handbook states that the “personal conduct” of all teachers should “convey and be supportive of the teachings of the Catholic Church.”
The Department of Justice has filed an amicus brief on behalf of the archdiocese, saying that “religious employers are entitled to employ in key roles only persons whose beliefs and conduct are consistent with the employers’ religious precepts,” and the government cannot interfere “with the autonomy of religious organizations.”
But according to The Indiana Lawyer, a judge in the litigation offered an unexpected settlement proposal last year.
Judge Stephan Heiman suggested that the parties reach a settlement that would depend on the Vatican’s decision in Brebeuf Jesuit’s canonical appeal against the archbishop. The judge suggested that if the archdiocese prevailed in Rome, the civil litigation would be dismissed, but if Brebeuf won in Rome, “the liability of the Archdiocese to Payne-Elliott would be established as a legal matter.”
Payne-Elliot accepted the idea, but the archdiocese did not. It’s worth noting that the judge’s proposal seemed to consider that the Congregation for Catholic Education will rule on the issue only as a matter of principle, when, in fact, there are any number of technical canonical issues at play, all of which may be a factor in the canonical case.
Heiman has recused himself from the case, and a special judge has been appointed.
But Heiman’s proposed settlement indicated that he saw a correlation between the Congregation’s decision and the case before him. That idea may well be picked up by Judge Lance Hammer, who is now overseeing the case, or argued for by Payne-Elliot’s attorneys, especially if the Congregation decides against Thompson without clarity on the reasons.
In short, the canonical specifics of the Vatican’s decision may well prove an operative factor in the ongoing civil litigation.
Of course, a decision against the archdiocese could also have a chilling effect on other Catholic institutions which require that teachers or employees live according to Catholic doctrine. It is unlikely bishops will be willing to press institutions in their diocese on such requirements, especially institutions administered by religious institutes, if they expect Rome won’t support their decisions on the matter.
Across the U.S., Catholic bishops in recent years have strengthened their policies on the Catholic identity of employees, in light of a number of religious liberty decisions in U.S. courts. But to understand how those policies might actually be applied in the years to come, many will now be looking to Rome, and to Indianapolis.
Vatican City, Dec 21, 2020 / 07:00 am (CNA).- Pope Francis urged the Roman Curia Monday not to view the Church in terms of conflict, but to see the current “ecclesial crisis” as a call […]
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