Vatican City, Feb 16, 2019 / 10:00 am (CNA).- The Holy See announced Saturday the conviction of Theodore McCarrick on charges of the sexual abuse of minors and adults – aggravated by the abuse of power – and solicitation in the confessional. The admini… […]
Vatican City, Feb 15, 2019 / 10:05 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Pope Francis said Friday that people need to overcome their fear of migrants and refugees, and look for the face of Christ in each immigrant arriving in their countries.
“The Lord speaks to… […]
Vatican City, Feb 15, 2019 / 06:13 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Pope Francis spoke out about inequality, the environment, sustainable development and the elimination of poverty during his visit to the United Nations’ agricultural development agency in Ro… […]
Vatican City, Feb 14, 2019 / 06:00 pm (CNA).- As Pope Francis prepares for his long-awaited Vatican summit on sexual abuse, Catholic commentators and U.S. bishops are waiting to see what it can accomplish. But just as eagerly, they are waiting to see w… […]
Vatican City, Feb 14, 2019 / 11:13 am (CNA/EWTN News).- The liturgy, Pope Francis said Thursday, cannot be reduced to a matter of taste, becoming the subject of ideological polarization, because it is a primary way Catholics encounter the Lord.
There is a risk with the liturgy of falling into a “past that no longer exists or of escaping into a presumed future,” the pope told members of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments Feb. 14.
“The starting point is instead to recognize the reality of the sacred liturgy, a living treasure that cannot be reduced to styles, recipes and trends, but should be welcomed with docility and promoted with love, as irreplaceable nourishment for the organic growth of the People of God,” he continued.
Francis also emphasized that the liturgy is not a “do-it-yourself” zone and urged the Vatican officials, “as in other areas of ecclesial life,” to avoid “ideological polarizations” and an attitude of “perpetual dialectics” against those with differing ideas about the liturgy.
He also recalled his statement in Evangelii gaudium “that reality is more important than the idea.”
“When we look back to nostalgic past tendencies or wish to impose them again, there is the risk of placing the part before the whole, the ‘I’ before the People of God, the abstract before the concrete, ideology before communion and, fundamentally, the worldly before the spiritual,” Francis asserted.
Meeting the congregation during their Feb. 12-15 plenary assembly, Pope Francis addressed the importance of the Church’s liturgy, of having good collaboration between the Vatican congregation and bishops’ conferences, and of developing a proper liturgical sense in Catholics.
“The liturgy is in fact the main road through which Christian life passes through every phase of its growth,” Francis said. “You therefore have before you a great and beautiful task: to work so that the People of God rediscovers the beauty of meeting the Lord in the celebration of his mysteries.”
The pope noted that the plenary falls 50 years since St. Paul VI reorganized Congregation for the Discipline of the Sacraments “in order to give shape to the renewal desired by the Second Vatican Council. It was a matter of publishing the liturgical books according to the criteria and decisions of the Council Fathers, with a view to fostering, in the People of God, ‘active, conscious and pious’ participation in the mysteries of Christ.”
He asserted that “the praying tradition of the Church needed renewed expressions, without losing anything of its millennial wealth, even rediscovering the treasures of its origins,” and noted that it was also in 1969 that the General Roman Calendar was changed and the new Roman Missal was promulgated, calling them “the first steps of a journey, to be continued with wise constancy.”
Francis added that “it it is not enough to change the liturgical books to improve the quality of the liturgy.”
He argued that proper liturgical formation of both clergy and laity is fundamental, and quoted from Sacrosanctum Concilium, the Second Vatican Council’s 1963 constitution on the sacred liturgy.
Though necessary, just providing information about liturgical books is not an adequate liturgical education, he continued, even with a view toward preserving the dutiful fulfillment of the ritual disciplines.
“In order for the liturgy to fulfill its formative and transforming function, it is necessary that pastors and the laity be brought to grasp its meaning and symbolic language, including art, song and music at the service of the celebrated mystery, even silence,” he stated.
He pointed to mystagogy as a suitable way to enter into the mystery of the liturgy, “in the living encounter with the crucified and risen Lord”; he pointed to the Catechism of the Catholic Church as an example of a book that illustrates the liturgy in this manner.
Referencing the title of the congregation’s plenary assembly, “the liturgical formation of the People of God,” he said the task awaiting them is “essentially that of spreading the splendor of the living mystery of the Lord, manifested in the liturgy, in the People of God.”
“To speak of the liturgical formation of the People of God means first of all to become aware of the irreplaceable role that the liturgy plays in the Church and for the Church,” he stated.
“And then concretely help the People of God to better internalize the prayer of the Church, to love it as an experience of meeting with the Lord and with the brothers and, in light of this, to rediscover its contents and observe its rites.”
Vatican City, Feb 14, 2019 / 05:41 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Pope Francis Thursday nominated a new camerlengo, Irish-American Cardinal Kevin Joseph Farrell, prefect of the Dicastery for Laity, Family, and Life, and a former bishop of Dallas.
Farrell’… […]
Vatican City, Feb 13, 2019 / 11:30 am (CNA).- Pope Francis has sent a letter to Nicolas Maduro responding to a recent invitation to mediate in the Venezuelan political crisis, according to an Italian newspaper.
On Feb. 13, the Milan daily newspaper Corriere Della Sera published a report saying that the pope had written to Maduro reiterating his desire for the avoidance of violence in the country.
According to the article, the pope wrote on Feb. 7 that previous peace efforts in Venezuela were “interrupted because what had been agreed in the meetings was not followed by concrete gestures to implement the agreements.”
“The Holy See clearly indicated what were the conditions for dialogue to be possible” in December 2016 in “a series of requests,” it went on to say.
The Holy See did not comment on the letter, citing the private nature of the correspondence.
The Corriere della Sera report only quoted fragments of the alleged letter, including Francis’ reiteration of his desire to “avoiding any form of bloodshed” and his concern for “the suffering of the noble Venezuelan people, which seems to have no end.”
The newspaper noted, however, that Pope Francis addressed Maduro as “señor,” rather than “president.”
Two men currently claim to be the legitimate president of Venezuela: Nicolas Maduro and Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido.
After winning a contested election in which opposition candidates were barred from running or imprisoned, wide-spread protests followed Maduro’s Jan. 10 inauguration,
Juan Guaido declared himself as interim president on Jan. 23. Since then, numerous governments across the world, including the United States, have recognized Guaido as the legitimate interim leader of the country, though Maduro remains in effective power supported by the military.
Maduro’s leadership of Venezuela during his previous term was marred by violence and social upheaval, with severe shortages and hyperinflation leading millions of Venezuelans to emigrate.
On Monday, Vatican Secretariat of State unofficially received a delegation from Venezuela affiliated with Guaido and discussed human rights, the common good, and “avoiding bloodshed” in Venezuela.
Following international recognition of Guaido in January, Maduro wrote a letter to Pope Francis asking him to mediate in the political situation in Venezuela.
Pope Francis has sought to maintain neutrality on Venezuela, telling reporters Jan. 28 it would be “pastoral imprudence” on his part to choose a side in the current split in Venezuela.
Venezuela’s bishops have taken a less neutral stance, calling Maduro’s election “illegitimate” and backing opposition marches in January. On Feb. 1, Venezuela’s bishops met with Guaido in an effort to mobilize the entrance of humanitarian aid to the crisis-stricken country.
Cardinal Baltazar Enrique Porras Cardozo, Apostolic Administrator of Caracas, called the proposal for Vatican mediation “non-viable” in a Feb. 6 radio interview.
In a Feb. 8 interview with CNA, U.S. Senator Marco Rubio, a key advisor and strategist on Venezuela for the Trump administration, said that previous attempts by the Vatican to lead negotiations with Maduro had been a “fiasco.”
Pope Francis said Jan. 28, “I support in this moment all of the Venezuelan people – it is a people that is suffering – including those who are on one side and the other. All of the people are suffering.”
Vatican City, Feb 13, 2019 / 03:32 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Pope Francis Wednesday approved the canonization of Bl. John Henry Newman, a Roman Catholic cardinal, scholar, and founder of the Oratory of St. Philip Neri in England.
Following a Feb. 12 meetin… […]
Vatican City, Feb 13, 2019 / 03:17 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Pope Francis said Wednesday that one’s prayer should always be a dialogue with God with charitable consideration for others’ needs.
“There is no room for individualism in dialogue with God,” Pope Francis said Feb. 13, noting that there is no “I” in the words of the “Our Father” prayer.
One’s prayer should not contain an “ostentation of one’s problems as if we were the only ones in the world to suffer,” the pope advised.
“In prayer, a Christian brings all the difficulties of the people who live next to him: when the evening descends, he tells God about the pains he has encountered on that day, putting before Him many faces, friends and even enemies,” he said.
In a continuation of his weekly catechesis on the “Our Father,” Pope Francis focused on the prayer’s repeated use of the words “you” and “us,” rather than an individualistic “I” in his Wednesday general audience.
“Jesus teaches us to pray, having first of all ‘You’ on our lips because Christian prayer is dialogue: ‘hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done,’” he said. It is about “you” and then “we,” a community of brothers and sisters.
“If one does not realize that there are many people around him who are suffering, if he does not pity for the tears of the poor, if he is addicted to everything, then it means that his heart is of stone,” he said.
“In this case it is good to beg the Lord to touch us with his Spirit and to soften our heart,” he continued.
The pope warned Catholics not be hypocrites seeking attention through prayer, but to follow Christ’s instructions to pray in “the silence of your room” where one can “withdraw from the world, and turn to God calling him ‘Father!’”
Prayer “at its root, is a silent dialogue, like the crossing of glances between two people who love each other: man and God,” he explained.
Pope Francis said that “there are men who apparently do not seek God, but Jesus makes us pray for them too, because God seeks these people above all.”
“Saints and sinners, we are all brothers loved by the same Father,” Pope Francis said.
Vatican City, Feb 12, 2019 / 12:00 am (CNA).- The Vatican’s general auditor has new statutes, conferred recently by Pope Francis, that will bring financial audits of Vatican offices into greater conformity with United Nations agreements.
With a Feb. 9 motu proprio issued the new norms for the Vatican’s Office of the General Auditor; they will become become effective on Feb. 16.
The general auditor oversees an annual financial assessment of each department, or dicastery, of the Roman Curia, the group of offices that assists the pope in his governance of the Church.
Signed by Pope Francis on Jan. 21, 2019, the new statutes describe general auditor’s office as the “Vatican anti-corruption body.”
The former statutes of the office were published on Feb. 22, 2015.
While the auditor had previously been charged with working in “full autonomy and independence,” the new norms call for the auditor to collaborate with the Vatican’s Council for the Economy, which is charged with approving the auditor’s annual audit procedure.
Despite the change, the Vatican has insisted that the new norms do not diminish the authority of the auditor’s office.
In a Vatican News op-ed Feb. 9, Vatican spokesman Andrea Tornielli, said the norms give the auditor more authority to review financial records than he previously had.
What is the guiding principle of the reform, then?
In the first place, the new statutes fulfill the Holy See’s international agenda by placing the auditor in the context of international law governing financial oversight. The statutes describe the auditor as the “anti-corruption authority,” a term that complies with the United Nation’s Mérida Convention, the anti-corruption multilateral legal tool the Holy See signed in 2016.
The Mérida Convention also provides some rules to control public procurements. The Holy See complies with those norms by giving the auditor the task to “review particular situations about: anomalies in the employment or attribution of material and financial resources; irregularities in assigning public procurements or in operating transfers or alienation of goods; acts of corruption and fraud.”
The issue of public procurements is crucial in the Vatican, where there is no market, nor private sector.
The statutes and rules of reporting harmonize the work of various entities involved auditing the Vatican finances. All of these entities are now given a specific and well outlined task.
The auditor is also requested to “inform the Council of the Economy via the review committee of the council, about mishandling it might find out,” and to send “a report to the Financial Intelligence Authority when there are grounded reasons to suspect that funds, goods, activities, economic initiatives or transactions are connected to money laundering or financing of terrorism.”
The auditor must also report the “the Vatican City State’s judicial authority every crime detected during its activity”.
The statutes also commit the auditor to “report every three month to the review committee of the Council of the Economy on its work done and ongoing.”
The statutes also regulate the activities of external auditors and subject them to clear oversight,
The issue of using external auditors has been a point of discussion since 2016. At issue was the question of whether, given that Vatican City is a sovereign state, and not a company, it is appropriate that its financial books undergo external auditing.
The Holy See’s sovereignty insists on the independent, albeit small, territory of the Vatican City State, which like any other independent nation has its internal jurisdiction and legislation, and is involved in international relations.
This sovereignty implies that the Vatican dicasteries are considered on par with the ministries of any other country – which includes a level of confidentiality in handling their budgets.
The discussion was about how introduce international accountability standards within a state system, finding a balance between the needs of a manager and those of a governor.
This discussion led to the new statutes. In a first phase, the Vatican financial reform marked certain discontinuity, and raised some issues. As a response, the reforming process was not halted, but was rather included in a wider framework, which involves the Curia and the Vatican City State.
The next step will be that of appointing a general auditor. Between 2015 and 2017, Libero Milone was the auditor, but he was fired after grave allegations of espionage and embezzlement.
In 2018, Vatican prosecutors informed Milone’s lawyers that a criminal investigation against him was closed and no charges were going to be filed.
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