Pope Francis: Confirmation is the ‘sacrament of witness,’ not the ‘sacrament of goodbye’

Denver Newsroom, Jun 19, 2020 / 06:30 pm (CNA).-  

On June 20, 2018, American Catholics woke up to discover that retired Cardinal Theodore McCarrick stood accused of sexually abusing a teenager.

The cardinal said he was innocent. The New York ar… […]

Vatican City, May 16, 2019 / 11:23 am (CNA).- A Vatican court has decided not to initiate canonical charges against a former Vatican official, after an investigation into allegations he made sexual advances toward a woman in the confessional several years ago.

Fr. Hermann Geissler, 53, is a member of Familia spiritualis Opus (FSO), informally known as “Das Werk.”

Geissler’s community announced May 17 that five judges of the Vatican’s supreme tribunal decided this week that Geissler would not be tried for “a delict of solicitation to a sin against the sixth commandment in the context of confession.”

A preliminary investigation into the matter, as specified by canon 1717 of the Code of Canon Law, was carried out by the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura.

Most likely to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest, Pope Francis requested the Signatura undertake the process instead of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which is the Vatican office usually charged with reviewing allegations of this kind.

Geissler, who maintained his innocence throughout the process, stepped down from his position within the CDF Jan. 29, where he had been an official since 1993. From 2009 he had been the head of the congregation’s teaching office.

A statement released Jan. 29 said that Geissler “affirms that the accusation made against him is untrue, and asks that the canonical process already initiated continue. He also reserves the right for possible civil legal action.”

Geissler, an Austrian, is also a prominent scholar of Bl. Cardinal Henry Newman.

The accusations against him became public at the end of September, when a (now-former) member of “Das Werk,” Doris Wagner, claimed in a lengthy piece in the German newspaper DIE ZIET that she had been sexually harassed in the confessional by a member of the religious community she then belonged to, identified in the article as “Hermann G.”

Wagner again spoke of the accusations last November, saying at a conference in Rome that she had received unwanted sexual advances and been “groomed” for sex by “a priest working to this day as capo ufficio at the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith,” according to La Croix International.

The solicitation of a sin against the sixth commandment within the context of confession is considered in the Church law to be a “grave delict,” or offense, for which a priest can be dismissed from the clerical state.

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Pope Francis left Rome’s Gemelli Hospital shortly before 9:00 a.m. on June 16, 2023. Before returning to the Vatican, he stopped to pray in front of the historic Marian icon of Salus Populi Romani at St. Mary Major Basilica, and made a quick visit to a group of religious sisters close to St. Peter’s Square. / Vatican Media.

Rome Newsroom, Jun 16, 2023 / 03:10 am (CNA).

Pope Francis was discharged from Rome’s Gemelli Hospital to a round of applause on Friday, after an eight-day stay following abdominal surgery.

He greeted hospital staff and other patients as he left the hospital in a wheelchair June 16. Outside the building, the pope was asked how he was doing by media, to whom he said, “I’m still alive!”

After Francis left in his white Fiat 500, surgeon Dr. Sergio Alfieri told reporters, “The pope is well. He’s better than before,” according to the Associated Press.

According to the Vatican, Pope Francis will lead the Angelus on Sunday as usual and other audiences for the upcoming days will take place.

The pope’s Wednesday morning audience with the public in St. Peter’s Square on June 21 has been canceled, instead, “to safeguard the Holy Father’s postoperative recovery.”

Before returning to the Vatican on Friday, Francis stopped to pray in front of the Salus Populi Romani Marian icon.

The historic icon is kept in a chapel in the Basilica of St. Mary Major. Pope Francis has also stopped there after previous hospitalizations and visits the icon before and after every international trip.

On his approach to the Vatican, he made a quick private visit to a group of religious sisters who run a guesthouse next to St. Peter’s Square.

The Italian Istituto Santissima Maria Bambina (“Institute of the Most Holy Child Mary”) is currently holding its general chapter meeting in Rome.

The pope also thanked the law enforcement who guard the entrance to the Vatican.

According to daily updates from the Vatican, the 86-year-old Pope Francis has been recovering normally after undergoing a three-hour surgery to repair an incisional hernia on June 7.

A team of surgeons removed scar tissue and operated on a hernia in the pope’s abdominal wall at the site of a previous surgical incision.

The June 7-16 stay was Pope Francis’ third hospitalization in the past two years.

He was hospitalized for four days in March for a lung infection and had part of his large intestine removed in July 2021 due to diverticulitis.

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