Vatican City, Jun 17, 2020 / 09:00 am (CNA).- In a video message Wednesday, Pope Francis told maritime workers that their many sacrifices before and during the coronavirus pandemic have not gone unnoticed or unappreciated.
“These are difficult t… […]
Vatican City, Jun 17, 2020 / 06:00 am (CNA).- Members of the Vatican’s financial watchdog authority met this week to update offices on regulations to fight money laundering and the financing of terrorist organizations.
The June 15-16 seminar was held by the new leadership of the Financial Information Authority (AIF), including president Carmelo Barbagallo and vice director Federico Antellini Russo.
“The Vatican regulations are in line with the regulations of the rest of the world,” Barbagallo told Vatican News. “They have also recently been renewed, in particular the law on procurement is at the forefront.”
Barbagallo referred to a law promulgated by Pope Francis June 1 on the awarding of public contracts. The new norms are intended to prevent corruption, including nepotism, money laundering and other crimes in Vatican City State and Holy See financial transactions.
Russo told Vatican News that the Holy See had taken “significant pioneering steps” in financial security legislation and wanted to extend “not only training but also a form of prevention, of awareness and in some ways of support also to the public authorities of the Holy See, of the Vatican City State.”
The public authorities of the Holy See and Vatican City State are the entities which carry out financial transactions with members of the general public, such as the Vatican post office, supermarket, and pharmacy.
Vatican public authorities also include the Institute for the Works of Religion (IOR) and the Administration of the Patrimony of the Apostolic See (APSA).
At least one official of the Secretariat of State also took part in the two-day meetings.
Anita Titomanlio of the legal office of the Secretariat of State told Vatican News “we wanted to propose tools to public authorities to evaluate themselves.”
“Then self-assessment questionnaires will be prepared, which will be filled in by the public authorities and sent to the financial information authorities to prepare an action plan, should there be any deficiencies in the fight against money laundering and terrorist financing.”
Barbagallo also noted the increased threat of crime which comes with the global economic crisis caused by the coronavirus emergency.
“And so this is a time when you absolutely have to have your eyes more open than usual,” he said.
The AIF is expected to release its annual report soon. The report usually catalogs the Suspicious Activity Reports received over the previous year and which led the information authority to investigate cases of money laundering and financial fraud within Vatican financial entities.
This will be the first report of the Vatican’s Financial Information Authority since an abrupt change of leadership at the end of 2019.
AIF’s then director, Tommaso Di Ruzza, was suspended at the end of September 2019 after a search of AIF offices by Vatican gendarmes. Five days later AIF president René Brüelhart resigned. His replacement, Carmelo Barbagallo, was named by Pope Francis at the end of November 2019.
Meanwhile, the Egmont Group, through which 164 financial authorities share information and coordinate their work, had suspended the AIF in mid-November. Barbagallo announced in January 2020 the suspension had been revoked and the authority could resume collaboration with foreign intelligence bodies.
Vatican City, Jun 17, 2020 / 04:40 am (CNA).- Ahead of the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, Pope Francis encouraged Catholics to discover the riches of charity hidden in the heart of Christ.
“Friday we will celebrate the solemnity of the … […]
Vatican City, Jun 15, 2020 / 09:30 am (CNA).- The Vatican said Monday that officials had granted bail to the Italian businessman Gianluigi Torzi who was arrested as part of a financial investigation.
Torzi played a central role in the controversial pu… […]
Vatican City, Jun 15, 2020 / 08:05 am (CNA).- Pope Francis Monday appointed Fabio Gasperini, an Italian financial adviser working at Ernst & Young, to the second-ranking position at the Administration of the Patrimony of the Apostolic See (APSA).
This is the first time in its history that the secretary of APSA will be a layperson. Gasperini fills the position following the end of the five-year term of Msgr. Mauro Rivella in April.
Gasperini is well known in the banking and finance world, with 25 years’ experience advising financial services institutions across a broad range of areas, from retail banking to asset management, investment banking, insurance, and capital markets.
For 16 years, he has been president of financial business advisory services at Ernst & Young, one of the largest professional services firms in the world.
CNA first reported Gasperini’s possible appointment June 12.
Very early in his career, after graduating from Rome’s La Sapienza University with a degree in business economics and commerce, Gasperini worked in the administration of Vatican City State.
APSA, which operates like the Vatican’s central bank, oversees real estate holdings and other sovereign assets.
Bishop Nunzio Galantino is president of APSA. In addition to Secretary Gasperini, there is an undersecretary, an official for management control, and 13 offices and services.
APSA has around 95 employees and 10 collaborators, as well as a commission of eight cardinals who work alongside the president. Pope Francis recently appointed Cardinal Daniel Sturla, archbishop of Montevideo, to the commission to replace Cardinal Agostino Vallini, who has turned 80 and is no longer eligible to hold a curial position.
In June 2019, APSA’s councilor Bishop Gustavo Zanchetta was charged with the sexual abuse of two seminarians in his former Diocese of Orán in Argentina. The previous January, the Vatican said Zanchetta had been suspended from his APSA position.
On June 15, a Vatican spokesman confirmed to CNA that Zanchetta has returned to his job at APSA, despite the ongoing trial against him in Argentina.
At the end of May, Pope Francis moved the office of the Vatican’s financial records database from the management of APSA to the Secretariat for the Economy.
The Secretariat for the Economy has oversight of the Vatican’s administrative and financial structures and activities, including monitoring the work of APSA.
Other recent appointments by Pope Francis have also gone to Italian laypeople.
June 12, the pope named Antonella Sciarrone Alibrandi a member of the directive counsel of the Financial Information Authority (AIF).
Alibrandi is vice-rector of Sacred Heart Catholic University in Milan, a lawyer, and a professor of banking law and financial markets law.
Another laywoman, Raffaella Vincenti, was named office head of the Vatican’s Apostolic Library, after serving as the library’s secretary.
Vatican City, Jun 15, 2020 / 07:30 am (CNA).- Bishop Gustavo Zanchetta has returned to work at the Vatican amid an ongoing trial in Argentina, where he has been charged with sexual and financial misconduct.
Holy See Press Office director Matteo Bruni told CNA June 15 that Zanchetta had resumed his work at the Vatican while “remaining available to the Argentine judicial authorities.”
Bruni said that Zanchetta’s work at the Administration of the Patrimony of the Apostolic See (APSA) — the Vatican’s central reserve bank and sovereign asset management body — “does not interfere in any way with the investigations.”
Zanchetta, the former Bishop of Orán, Argentina, has been accused of “aggravated continuous sexual abuse” of two adult-aged seminarians, as well as fraud and mismanagement of funds. He denies the charges.
The accused bishop was suspended from his role as an assessor at APSA amid a canonical investigation, announced in January 2019.
APSA oversees real estate holdings and other sovereign assets. The financial operations APSA carries out are recorded in the database of the Vatican’s Data Processing Center, which includes the records of investments and financial transactions going back 50 years.
Zanchetta was one of Pope Francis’ first episcopal appointments in Argentina, where he led the Diocese of Orán from his appointment in July 2013 to 2017.
After being allowed to resign as Bishop of Orán for “health reasons” in 2017, Zanchetta was appointed by Pope Francis to the specially created position of assessor at APSA.
Argentine media have since reported that the bishop was first accused of sexually inappropriate behavior as early as 2015.
According to a report from El Tribuno, one of Zanchetta’s secretaries alerted authorities after accidentally finding sexually explicit images sent and received on Zanchetta’s cell phone in 2015. The complaint says that some of the images depict “young people” having sex, in addition to lewd images of Zanchetta himself.
Pope Francis summoned Zanchetta to Rome for five days in October 2015. The bishop claimed his phone and computer had been hacked, and that the accusations were motivated by ill feeling towards the pope. Francis reportedly accepted the bishop’s excuse that his cell phone had been hacked, and took no further action.
The Vatican has repeatedly denied having prior knowledge of sexual abuse allegations against Zanchetta before his December 2017 appointment to a Vatican office.
In a May 2019 interview, Pope Francis said that a preliminary investigation against Zanchetta had concluded and would proceed to a trial, conducted by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
“They will make a trial, they will issue a sentence and I will promulgate it,” the pope said.
Fr. Juan José Manzano, the former vicar general of the Diocese of Orán, has claimed publicly that he first reported Zanchetta in 2015, after the pornographic images were found on his phone. Manzano said he also reported him again in 2017.
After Zanchetta was charged with assaulting two seminarians in June 2019, Orán’s Economic Crime Unit raided offices in the chancery November 2019. The raid was carried out to investigate Zanchetta’s alleged fraud against the state, according to El Oranense.
In addition to accusations of mismanaging church funds donated by the faithful in the diocese, public records show that Zanchetta received more than 1 million Argentine pesos from Salta Province to restore a rectory and for lectures at the seminary which never occurred.
Zanchetta’s canon lawyer confirmed in November 2019 that the Argentine was still living in Casa Santa Marta, where he had resided for two years, in Vatican City.
Vatican City, Jun 14, 2020 / 08:00 am (CNA).- Here is the full text of Pope Francis’ Corpus Christi homily, delivered June 14 at the Basilica of St. Peter.
“Remember all the way which the Lord your God has led you” (Deut 8:2). Today’s Scripture readings begin with this command of Moses: Remember! Shortly afterwards Moses reiterates: “Do not forget the Lord, your God” (v.14). Scripture has been given to us that we might overcome our forgetfulness of God. How important it is to remember this when we pray! As one of the Psalms teaches: “I will call to mind the deeds of the Lord; yes, I will remember your wonders of old” (77:11). But all those wonders too, that the Lord has worked in our own lives.
It is vital to remember the good we have received. If we do not remember it, we become strangers to ourselves, “passers-by” of existence. Without memory, we uproot ourselves from the soil that nourishes us and allow ourselves to be carried away like leaves in the wind. If we do remember, however, we bind ourselves afresh to the strongest of ties; we feel part of a living history, the living experience of a people. Memory is not something private; it is the path that unites us to God and to others. This is why in the Bible the memory of the Lord must be passed on from generation to generation. Fathers are commanded to tell the story to their sons, as we read in a beautiful passage. “When your son asks you in time to come, ‘What is the meaning of the decrees and the statutes and the ordinances which the Lord our God has commanded you?’, then you shall say to your son, ‘We were slaves… [think of the whole history of slavery!], and the Lord showed signs and wonders… before our eyes’” (Deut 6:20-22). You shall hand down this memory to your son.
But there is a problem: what if the chain of transmission of memories is interrupted? And how can we remember what we have only heard, unless we have also experienced it? God knows how difficult it is, he knows how weak our memory is, and he has done something remarkable: he left us a memorial. He did not just leave us words, for it is easy to forget what we hear. He did not just leave us the Scriptures, for it is easy to forget what we read. He did not just leave us signs, for we can forget even what we see. He gave us Food, for it is not easy to forget something we have actually tasted. He left us Bread in which he is truly present, alive and true, with all the flavor of his love. Receiving him we can say: “He is the Lord; he remembers me!” That is why Jesus told us: “Do this in remembrance of me” (1 Cor 11:24). Do! The Eucharist is not simply an act of remembrance; it is a fact: the Lord’s Passover is made present once again for us. In Mass the death and resurrection of Jesus are set before us. Do this in remembrance of me: come together and celebrate the Eucharist as a community, as a people, as a family, in order to remember me. We cannot do without the Eucharist, for it is God’s memorial. And it heals our wounded memory.
The Eucharist first heals our orphaned memory. We are living at a time of great orphanage. The Eucharist heals orphaned memory. So many people have memories marked by a lack of affection and bitter disappointments caused by those who should have given them love and instead orphaned their hearts. We would like to go back and change the past, but we cannot. God, however, can heal these wounds by placing within our memory a greater love: his own love. The Eucharist brings us the Father’s faithful love, which heals our sense of being orphans. It gives us Jesus’ love, which transformed a tomb from an end to a beginning, and in the same way can transform our lives. It fills our hearts with the consoling love of the Holy Spirit, who never leaves us alone and always heals our wounds.
Through the Eucharist, the Lord also heals our negative memory, that negativity which seeps so often into our hearts. The Lord heals this negative memory, which drags to the surface things that have gone wrong and leaves us with the sorry notion that we are useless, that we only make mistakes, that we are ourselves a mistake. Jesus comes to tell us that this is not so. He wants to be close to us. Every time we receive him, he reminds us that we are precious, that we are guests he has invited to his banquet, friends with whom he wants to dine. And not only because he is generous, but because he is truly in love with us. He sees and loves the beauty and goodness that we are. The Lord knows that evil and sins do not define us; they are diseases, infections. And he comes to heal them with the Eucharist, which contains the antibodies to our negative memory. With Jesus, we can become immune to sadness. We will always remember our failures, troubles, problems at home and at work, our unrealized dreams. But their weight will not crush us because Jesus is present even more deeply, encouraging us with his love. This is the strength of the Eucharist, which transforms us into bringers of God, bringers of joy, not negativity. We who go to Mass can ask: What is it that we bring to the world? Is it our sadness and bitterness, or the joy of the Lord? Do we receive Holy Communion and then carry on complaining, criticizing and feeling sorry for ourselves? This does not improve anything, whereas the joy of the Lord can change lives.
Finally, the Eucharist heals our closed memory. The wounds we keep inside create problems not only for us, but also for others. They make us fearful and suspicious. We start with being closed, and end up cynical and indifferent. Our wounds can lead us to react to others with detachment and arrogance, in the illusion that in this way we can control situations. Yet that is indeed an illusion, for only love can heal fear at its root and free us from the self-centeredness that imprisons us. And that is what Jesus does. He approaches us gently, in the disarming simplicity of the Host. He comes as Bread broken in order to break open the shells of our selfishness. He gives of himself in order to teach us that only by opening our hearts can we be set free from our interior barriers, from the paralysis of the heart.
The Lord, offering himself to us in the simplicity of bread, also invites us not to waste our lives in chasing the myriad illusions that we think we cannot do without, yet that leave us empty within. The Eucharist satisfies our hunger for material things and kindles our desire to serve. It raises us from our comfortable and lazy lifestyle and reminds us that we are not only mouths to be fed, but also his hands, to be used to help feed others. It is especially urgent now to take care of those who hunger for food and for dignity, of those without work and those who struggle to carry on. And this we must do in a real way, as real as the Bread that Jesus gives us. Genuine closeness is needed, as are true bonds of solidarity. In the Eucharist, Jesus draws close to us: let us not turn away from those around us.
Dear brothers and sisters, let us continue our celebration of Holy Mass: the Memorial that heals our memory. Let us never forget: the Mass is the Memorial that heals memory, the memory of the heart. The Mass is the treasure that should be foremost both in the Church and in our lives. And let us also rediscover Eucharistic adoration, which continues the work of the Mass within us. This will do us much good, for it heals us within. Especially now, when our need is so great.
Vatican City, Jun 14, 2020 / 07:30 am (CNA).- Pope Francis expressed “great apprehension and sorrow” Sunday after eight mass graves were discovered in Libya amid the ongoing civil war.
“I urge international bodies and those who have political and military responsibilities to recommence with conviction and resolve the search for a path towards an end to the violence, leading to peace, stability and unity in the country,” Pope Francis said in his Angelus address June 14.
The United Nations announced this week the discovery of at least eight Mass graves in Tarhuna, Libya, 62 miles southeast of the capital in Tripoli.
“I am following the dramatic situation in Libya with great apprehension and sorrow. It has been present in my prayer in recent days,” the pope said.
The pope’s prayer comes a day following the UN Secretary General António Guterres’ call for a “thorough and transparent investigation” to identify the victims and bring the perpetrators to justice. It remains unclear when the killings occurred, according to the New York Times.
Libya’s civil war started in 2014 after disputed elections when rebel commander Khalifa Hifter led the Libyan National Army on a military offensive against the Tripoli-based Government of National Accord led byPrime Minister Fayez al-Sarraj.
Libya has the largest oil reserves of any country in Africa, increasing the stakes for a number of foreign powers who have become involved in the conflict.
Hifter is backed by Russia, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates, while Al-Sarraj’s administration is supported by the U.N., Turkey, Qatar, Italy, and the United States.
The ongoing violence in Libya has led tens of thousands of people in Libya to flee their homes.
Pope Francis prayed for these internally displaced people, as well as the hundreds of thousands of migrants and asylum seekers who have traveled to Libya from neighboring African countries.
“I also pray for the thousands of migrants, refugees, asylum seekers and internally displaced persons in Libya,” he said. “The health situation has aggravated the already precarious conditions in which they find themselves, making them more vulnerable to forms of exploitation and violence. There is cruelty.”
“I call on the international community to please take their plight to heart, identifying pathways and providing means to provide them with the protection they need, a dignified condition and a hopeful future,” Pope Francis said.
“Brothers and sisters, we are all responsible for this. No one can consider him or herself dispensed from this. Let us all pray for Libya in silence,” he added.
In his Angelus address Pope Francis also offered a reflection for the Solemnity of Corpus Christi, celebrated in Italy and other countries this Sunday.
“Jesus is present in the sacrament of the Eucharist to be our nourishment, to be assimilated and to become in us that renewing force that gives once again the energy and the desire to set out again after every pause or after every fall,” he said.
Earlier on Sunday Pope Francis offered Mass and Eucharistic adoration in St. Peter’s Basilica with a limited number of people present to safeguard against the coronavirus. In his homily, he said that Christ’s presence in the Eucharist heals wounds and transforms bitter negativity into the joy of Lord.
The pope said the body and blood of Christ unites the Church to God and to each other, in his reflection before the Angelus prayer.
“We are a community, nourished by the body and blood of Christ. Communion with the body of Christ is an effective sign of unity, of communion, of sharing,” he said.
“The Lord knows well that our human strength alone is not enough for this. On the contrary, He knows that there will always be the temptation of rivalry, envy, prejudice, division … For this reason too He left us the Sacrament of His real, tangible and permanent Presence, so that, remaining united to Him, we may always receive the gift of fraternal love,” Pope Francis said.
Vatican City, Jun 14, 2020 / 04:00 am (CNA).- Christ’s presence in the Eucharist heals wounds and transforms bitter negativity into the joy of Lord, Pope Francis said in his homily for the Solemnity of Corpus Christi Sunday.
“The Eucharist… […]
Rome, Italy, Jun 13, 2020 / 09:38 am (CNA).- Venerable Carlo Acutis, an Italian teenager and computer programmer who died in 2006, will be beatified October 10 in Assisi, Italy.
“The joy we have long awaited finally has a date,” Arch… […]
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