News Briefs

Vatican City, Oct 22, 2019 / 02:10 pm (CNA).- Cardinal Christoph Schönborn explained Monday that the final document at the Vatican’s Synod of Bishops on the Amazon will be written principally by a team chaired by the synod’s Relator General, Brazilian Cardinal Claudio Hummes.

“The word ‘drafting committee’ is not very clear, in fact, the drafts are from the principal relator and his team. The role of the drafting committee is to give immediate approval of the work the relators do. So we, the drafting committee, don’t write the text,” the Austrian archbishop said at a press conference held October 21 in the Vatican press room.

Matteo Bruni, director of the Vatican’s press office, told ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish language news partner, that Hummes and the synod’s “special secretaries” are principally responsible for the text of the final report.

“The relator and the special secretaries prepare the draft of the document based on the reports from the ‘small groups’ and the contributions of the participants during the general sessions.  In doing this they are assisted by the ‘experts,’ included on the list of the Synod participants which was published before the synod began,”

The roles played by various contributors in the drafting process is not entirely clear.

Bishop Erwim Kräutler, emeritus heard of Brazil’s Xingu diocese, told ACI Prensa this week that Hummes, who chairs the drafting team, has not yet read the existing draft of the final document, suggesting it has been principally compiled by “special secretaries” participating in the synod, and by experts and other collaborators.

On Oct. 21, theologian Fr. José Oscar Beozzo told ACI Digital, CNA’s Portguse language news partner, that he was busy “helping with drafting the text” and needed to cancel a scheduled interview.

Beozzo is a well-known proponent of liberation theology in Latin America, a theological approach that has been the subject of several corrections and criticisms by the Vatican’s doctrinal offices.

On Oct. 22, Beozzo told ACI Digital that “the drafting of the document is the  responsibility of the bishops, experts, consultants that are in the synod hall. I’m on the outside.”

He added that some Brazilian bishops had asked him to pray the Office of the Martyrs in the Church of Santa Maria in Traspontina during his free time.

 The Vatican’s Synod of Bishops on the Amazon is an Oct. 6-27 meeting on the Church’s pastoral and social ministry in the Amazon region, which spans nine countries in South America.

The synod is considering the nature of evangelization in the region, as well as the proposals of married priests in the region and commission women to serve as deacons, and is expected to issue a final report this week, which will constitute a set of recommendations for the consideration of Pope Francis.

A version of this story was first published by ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.

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Vatican City, Oct 22, 2019 / 10:00 am (CNA).- The head of the Vatican’s sovereign asset management body has insisted that the Holy See is not headed for financial “collapse.”

Bishop Nunzio Galantino made the comments in response to a book published on Monday by Italian journalist Gianluigi Nuzzi, which claims that the Holy See is facing a serious cash shortage, and may soon be unable to meet its ordinary operating expenses.

“There is no threat of collapse or default here. There is only the need for a spending review. And that is what we’re doing. I can prove it to you with numbers,” Galantino said on Oct. 22.

Galantino is head of the Administration for the Patrimony of the Apostolic See (APSA), which oversees the Vatican’s real estate holdings and other sovereign assets.

“The current situation of the administration of the Holy See is no different from what happens in any family or even in the nations of the different continents. At a certain point one looks at what one spends, considers the revenue that comes in, and tries to adjust expenses accordingly.”

Nuzzi’s book, “Universal Judgment,” claims to be based on some 3,000 pages of confidential documents leaked to him. He reports that annual donations to the Holy See have fallen sharply, by as much as 40% over the last three years – from 100 million euros to 60 million. At the same time, he also says that the Holy See’s property portfolio failed to register a profit last year, the first time ever. The cumulative effect, Nuzzi claims, is an urgent liquidity crisis in the Vatican’s operating finances.

Speaking in response to the book’s publication, Galatino said that no such crisis exists.

“In fact,” he said on Tuesday while claiming that “the ordinary management of the APSA in 2018 closed with a profit of over 22 million euros.”

Galatino said that any reported loss was due to “an extraordinary intervention aimed at saving the operation of a Catholic hospital and the jobs of its employees.”

Nuzzi also claimed that cardinals and high-ranking Vatican officials were operating secret or numbered personal accounts through APSA. A review of the book in the Italian newspaper La Republica quotes Vatican financial investigators as concluding that “the false bottom in Vatican finances is practically non-eliminable.”

Galantino flatly refuted the allegations, saying Tuesday that “I confirm and repeat: APSA has no secret or encrypted accounts. Anyone is welcome to prove the contrary. At APSA, there are also no accounts of physical or juridical persons, except for the dicasteries of the Holy See, related institutions, and the Governorate.”

In an apparent response to recent reports of various Vatican financial deals, including real estate speculation through a Luxembourg-based investment company, the bishop said that management of Vatican assets for a profit is essential to the Holy See’s operations.

“A state that has no taxes or public debt has only two ways to live. Either it invests its own resources to produce an income, or it relies on the contributions of the faithful, even those made to Peter’s Pence,” he said. “Many want the Church to have nothing and then, in any case, to provide fair pay for its workers, as well as to respond to the many needs, first of all those of the poor. It’s obvious that it can’t be like that.”

Galatino conceded that there was a need for a “spending review” but said that this was already underway.

“There is no need for alarmism about the hypothetical default. Rather, we are talking about an entity that is realizing it needs to contain expenses. This happens in any good family or in any serious state”.

The reference by Galatino to an “extraordinary intervention” by APSA appears to be a reference to reports that APSA had written off 30 million of a 50 million euro loan to the Istituto Dermopatico dell’Immacolata, a scandal and corruption hit hospital formerly owned by the Congregation of the Sons of the Immaculate Conception and bought out of government bankruptcy administration by a foundation co-owned by the order and the Vatican Secretariat of State in .

The purchase of the hospital by the non-profit Fondazione Luigi Maria Monti was intended to rescue the hospital from closure and stabilize its operations after years of financial scandals leading to between 400-800 million euros of debt, forcing it into state-administered insolvency.

The hospital was at the center of a public disagreement between the Vatican and the American-based Papal Foundation, which was asked in 2016 to make a grant of $25 million to the hospital to ease liquidity problems.

After the foundation approved the grant in December 2017, an initial $8 million was sent to the Vatican. Subsequently the grant came under intense scrutiny and then opposition from lay trustees and benefactors, who claimed that the size and purpose of the grant was outside of the foundations scope of operations, and that the board had been misled about the financial state of the hospital.

The grant request was later withdrawn by the Holy See at the request of Cardinal Wuerl, who had led the presentation of the plan to the board.

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Vatican City, Oct 21, 2019 / 07:40 pm (CNA).- Shortly after the new “smart rosary” bracelet was released last week, the Vatican discovered an easy route for hackers to retrieve a user’s personal information. The issue has since been fixed.

Launched on Oct. 15, the device is called an eRosary and allows users to track their prayers, find spiritual resources, and connect with an online prayer community.

A few days after its release, Fidus Information Security, a cyber security consulting service, discovered the device’s weak safety measures, which could have allowed hackers to gain access to a user’s personal information such as their phone number, date of birth, gender, and height.

“One of our researchers decided to check out the code, and in just 10 minutes found some glaring issues,” Andrew Mabbitt, founder of Fidus, told The Register tech site.

According to Fidus, the most glaring concern was a glitch that would allow a hacker to access a user’s password – a four-digit PIN – without connecting to the user’s email. The application uses API calls to talk to its backend system. Upon request for a user’s email address, the system would send over a readable text of the user’s PIN through the API.

Father Frédéric Fornos, international director for the Pope’s Worldwide Prayer Network, told The Register that Vatican coders were placed on the problem immediately after he heard about the issue on Oct. 17. Since then, the issue has been corrected.

According to The Register, Fidus also found that, because there are unlimited password guesses, hackers would be able to retrieve the pin number by “brute forcing” – a means to retrieve hidden information through excessive trial and error. However, a Vatican spokesperson said this issue has also been resolved.

The eRosary was launched under the Pope’s Worldwide Prayer Network and developed by the Taiwan-based tech company GadgTek Inc.

The Bluetooth device in the bracelet connects to Click to Pray, a phone app on iOS or Android that reminds people to pray. It also includes reflections, campaigns, and an electronic bulletin board, where users may request or find prayer intentions.

The eRosary activates when the user makes a sign of the cross. It tracks the user’s progress and, in connection with the user’s phone, provides visual aids and audio reflections on the mysteries of the rosary.

The device is available on Amazon.it for 99 euros, roughly $109.

According to an Oct. 15 press release from Click to Pray, the eRosary is an opportunity to connect young people together in prayer.

“Aimed at the peripheral frontiers of the digital world where the young people dwell, the Click To Pray eRosary serves as a technology-based pedagogy to teach the young how to pray the Rosary, how to pray it for peace, how to contemplate the Gospel,” the press release said.

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