Inside the Vatican magazine March-April 2024

Photo - Grzegorz Galazka

MARCH-APRIL 2024 $10 / EUR 10 / £6.60

30 YEARS

A Child is a Gift Not an Object POPE FRAnCIS CALLS January 3, 2024, Vatican City.

Pope Francis blesses the womb of a pregnant mother during the General Audience at Paul VI Hall

FOR THE UnIVERSAL PROHIBITIOn OF SURROGATE MOTHERHOOD

EDITORIAL by Robert Moynihan

Tyconius

The 4th century theologian Tyconius may provide a key to the thinking of Pope Benedict XVI, and explain his decision to resign the papacy in 2013...

“For Tyconius, the city of the devil exists both outside the Church and inside the Church – not only among the pagans but also among impostor Christians.” —The central idea of the early Church theologian Tyconius (he was, like St. Augustine, from North Africa; he lived from about 379 to 423 A.D.) Tuesday, February 20, 2024 — For some time now, as I prepare these magazines and write my “Moynihan Letters,” I have been attempting to understand more deeply the events I have been seeing with my own eyes, including Pope Benedict XVI’s announcement, on February 11, 2013, that he was resigning from the office of the papacy, and the now more than 11 years of the pontificate of Pope Francis, who in December turned 87.

A year ago, in my Letter #18 of 2023, sent out on Monday, January 16, 2023, I drew on material published on September 8, 2022 on the website of my Italian colleague Marco Tosatti under the title “Ratzinger, Tyconius and Fatima: An Interpretive Key for the End Times.”

This essay contains information and arguments which may help to clarify Pope Benedict XVI’s reasons for resigning his papacy, and also may help to give us a better understanding of our own present predicament.

When he was a young man in his 30s, the late Joseph Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI, who died a little more than a year ago, on the last day of 2022, December 31), studied the early Church theologian Tyconius closely.

Tyconius’s best known work was his commentary on the Book of Revelation, which he interpreted, somewhat like Origen, almost entirely in a spiritual sense.

He asserted that Revelation depicts the spiritual controversy over the kingdom of God. This means that all of the plagues and famines and pale horses did not need to be interpreted as actual physical historical events, but as spiritual realities which occurred in the life of individual souls, and in the Church as a whole.

Ratzinger even wrote a 12-page article about Tyconius’s theology when he was not yet 30, in 1956, mentioning that scholars thought of Tyconius as an “Augustine before Augustine” and saying that study of Tyconius is always closely connected to study of Augustine.

Of course, Ratzinger had written his doctoral dissertation on “the People of God” and the “House of God” in St. Augustine’s thought, so it seems clear that by immersing himself in Augustine, he had also come to know Tyconius well. Suffice it to say that Ratzinger knew Tyconius’ thought well.

Fifty-three years later, as Pope Benedict XVI, Benedict cited Tyconius in a catechesis at his Wednesday, April 22, 2009, General Audience. Strikingly, this was just seven days before he went to Aquila, Italy, on April 29, 2009 and left his pallium on the tomb of Pope Celestine V, who had resigned the papacy in 1294.

Here is that April 22, 2009, citation by Pope Benedict: “Ticonius, an African who lived a generation before St Augustine... was not a Catholic; he belonged to the schismatic Donatist Church, yet he was a great theologian. In his commen-

tary he sees the Apocalypse above all as a reflection of the mystery of the Church. Ticonius had reached the conviction that the Church was a bipartite body: on the one hand, he says, she belongs to Christ, but there is another part of the Church that belongs to the devil. Augustine read this commentary and profited from it but strongly emphasized that the Church is in Christ's hands, that she remains His Body, forming one with Him, sharing in the mediation of grace. He therefore stresses that the Church can never be separated from Jesus Christ.”

About one year later, Pope Benedict XVI, in May 2010, on his trip to Fatima, in response to a journalist's question, said: “Attacks on the Pope and the Church come not only from without, but the sufferings of the Church come precisely from within the Church, from the sin existing within the Church. This too is something that we have always known, but today we are seeing it in a really terrifying way: that the greatest persecution of the Church comes not from her enemies without, but arises from sin within the Church.”

So Tyconius believed that the world was not divided into just two — “the followers of Christ” (His “one, holy, catholic and apostolic” Church) and “the followers of the devil” (the world, unbelievers) — but that the Church herself was divided into true and false believers, faithful disciples and impostors.

Was Benedict’s thought intently fixed on discerning between good and evil, between truth and lies, between sincere and false believers?

In fact, Joseph Ratzinger had spent his entire youth under the shadow of National Socialism, and of the 1939-1945 war. He had seen World War II close-up (though he never saw actual combat) — even today regarded as the greatest war our world has ever seen.

He then decided to study for the priesthood (he was ordained in 1951 at age 24), then to become a theologian, arguably to understand and make sense of our fallen world, of the conflict between good and evil in our world.

Did he understand the world as “tripartite” with the Church divided into a false part and a true one?

If this were so, is it conceivable that his resignation was a type of theological statement: that he remained inside the Church — as all who wish to be saved must remain — but nevertheless “withdrew” from the worldly or apostate Church, not denouncing it, but merely praying for it — having denounced it ferociously just before being named Pope — seemingly realizing that his strength was insufficient to effectively fight against it?

Meaning that, in the September 8, 2022 essay on Tyconius, we may have a key to understanding Benedict’s decision to resign — unless this essay is a mis-reading, or a forced reading, of these events, and of the late Pope’s mind.

Of course, it is not given to any man to know “the day or the hour” of “the Lord’s return.”

We must live in the same expectation that all who have lived before us have lived in, attempting with the grace we are given to redeem the time we now have. m MARCH-APRIL 2024 INSIDE THE VATICAN

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CONTENTS MARCH-APRIL 2024

Year 32, #2

LEAD STORY Pope Francis declares human surrogacy “deplorable”

by Courtney Mares (CNA)/ITV staff . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .12 Surrogacy is a betrayal of Woman

by Anthony Esolen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .15

MARCH-APRIL 2024 Year 32, #2

v EDITOR-IN-CHIEF: Robert Moynihan ASSOCIATE EDITOR: George “Pat” Morse (+ 2013) ASSISTANT EDITOR: Christina Deardurff CULTURE EDITOR: Lucy Gordan CONTRIBUTING EDITOR: William D. Doino, Jr. WRITERS: Anna Artymiak, Alberto Carosa, Giuseppe Rusconi, David Quinn, Andrew Rabel, Vladimiro Redzioch, Serena Sartini PHOTOS: Grzegorz Galazka LAYOUT: Giuseppe Sabatelli ILLUSTRATIONS: Stefano Navarrini CHIEF OPERATING OFFICER: Deborah B. Tomlinson ADVERTISING: Katie Carr Tel. +1.202.864.4263 kcarr@insidethevatican.com

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Inside the Vatican is published by Urbi et Orbi Communications, PO Box 1320, Front Royal, VA 22630, USA, pursuant to a License Agreement with Robert Moynihan, the owner of the Copyright. Inside the Vatican, Inc., maintains editorial offices in Rome, Italy.

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4 INSIDE THE VATICAN MARCH-APRIL 2024

NEWS AFRICA/Cardinal explains steps in African rejection of Fiducia Supplicans

by ACI Prensa/CNA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .16 HOLY LAND/Christians in Gaza: “Everyone is in danger”

by Christopher Hart-Moynihan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .18 VATICAN/Will Francis finally visit his own country?

by Zenit/ITV staff . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .20 VATICAN/Pope to Journalists: Build bridges instead of divisions

by Devin Watkins (Vatican News) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .21 CULTURE Interview/Biographer Peter Seewald on Benedict XVI: “He was stabbed in the heart”

by Nico Spuntoni . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .22 Report/Benedict continues to speak to the world

by ITV staff/NCR . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .26 Exhibit/The Martyrdom and Beatification of the Ulma Family

by Anna Artymiak . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .30 Interview/Ivan Soltanovsky, Russia’s new Ambassador to the Holy See

by Victor Gaetan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .34 Homily/Palm Sunday message: “His royal throne is the wood of the Cross”

by Pope Francis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .37 Interview/Sr. Salvatrice Musial: the Divine Mercy devotion, and the convent where it all began

by Barbara Middleton . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .38 Footsteps on the Way/Preparing for the Jubillee Year 2025

by Anna Artymiak . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .40 Scripture/What is your “Mammon?”

by Anthony Esolen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .42 Spirituality Behind Bars/The Weapons of Our Warfare

by Marcellus Roberts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .44 URBI ET ORBI: CATHOLICISM AND ORTHODOXY Icon/The Creed: The Ascension

by Robert Wiesner . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .46 East-West Watch/Defrocking: A Weapon Against Dissent

by Peter Anderson . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .47 News from the East/Syrians on brink of starvation; defiance in Syro-Malabar churches; Belarus Catholics face new wave of arrests; Ukrainian officials deny violence against faithful

by Matthew Trojacek . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .48 FEATURES Tradition and Beauty/When Mary Spoke to Me

by Aurelio Porfiri . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .50 Art/St. Peter’s Baldacchino, Under Restoration for Holy Year 2025

by Lucy Gordan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .52 Lord of the World/“They’re going — to wipe out Rome”

by Monsignor Robert Hugh Benson . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .56 Vatican Watch/A day-by-day chronicle of Vatican events: December 2023 and January 2024

by Matthew Trojacek . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .58 People/ Cardinal Becciu’s ‘balance sheet’; new French Consul in Jerusalem; Cardinal Zen on Fiducia Supplicans; French bishops back farmers; Myanmar conlfict targeting Christians

by Matthew Trojacek . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .60 Food/ Top chef Heinz Beck speaks at the UN

by ITV staff . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .62

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LETTERS TO THE EDITOR INSIDE THE VATICAN welcomes letters but cannot reply to all. Each is read and considered carefully. Printed letters may be edited for clarity. You may email us at editor@insidethevatican.com

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VATICAN TURNING ON ITSELF

We get requests like these everyday.

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INSIDE THE VATICAN MARCH-APRIL 2024

Please don’t let ITV become a forum for Mark Mallet’s “Countdown to the Kingdom,” where he promotes the heretical writings of Luisa Piccaretta.

Your coverage of the unfortunate Vatican trial was great — but why is the Vatican turning on itself?

Side note: the Book of End Times by Yves Dupont says the date of the birth of the Antichrist is 1962 (the year Cardinal Fernández — and I! — were born). Yikes!

Andrea Cruz Azusa, California, USA

REOPENING THE ORLANDI CASE Could you pose the question to Fr. Charles Murr during your interesting live interviews (Ed note: available free on the Urbi et Orbi Communications channel on YouTube) on the case of Vatican State citizen, teenager Emanuela Orlandi, who went missing in 1983?

I read that the Vatican reopened this case for further investigation in 2023.

Biserka Brito abaxima@roadrunner.com

LORD OF THE WORLD (Re: Moynihan Letters #128, September 27, 2023: Book) Most people don’t realize that Msgr. Robert Hugh Benson wrote Lord of the World as satire, not prophecy.

It drove him bonkers when people misinterpreted the novel, even after he put in his “disclaimer” about possibly screaming too loud at the beginning.

As he noted in a letter to his mother in 1905 before he began writing the book, “I have an idea for a book so vast and tremendous that I daren’t think about it.

Have you ever heard of Saint Simon?

Well, mix up Saint Simon, Russia breaking loose, Napoleon, Evan Roberts, the Pope, and Antichrist; and see if any idea suggests itself. But I’m afraid it is too big. I should like to form a syndicate on it,

but that it is an idea, I have no doubt at all.” (Robert Hugh Benson, December 16, 1905, quoted in C.C. Martindale, S.J., Life of Monsignor Robert Hugh Benson. Longmans, Green and Co., 1916, II.65-66.)

I explain all this in the essay on Lord of the World in my book, So Much Generosity (currently available on Amazon), along with his extreme irritation at people who took his “counterblast” satire, The Dawn of All (also in my book) as the blueprint for an ideal society. Evidently, the rei novae — New Things — of socialism, modernism, and the New Age have become so entrenched in daily life even of Catholics that people don’t even recognize when the problems are being mocked. This is one of the difficulties about the world today I noted in my recent book, The Greater Reset, co-authored with Dawn K. Brohawn, and currently available from TAN Books, the publisher.

Michael D. Greaney mgreaney@cesj.org I just got a new book today with a forward by Fr. Murr and a second order is coming soon. You want me to read a novel Pope Francis recommends? I’ll stick with non fiction in this category, thank you very much.

Catherine Polumbus c.polumbus@gmail.com I was interested to read in Lord of the World, which I discovered several years ago, a Catholic variation of which the Evangelical world was already wellacquainted in its prophecy conferences and the Left Behind series, and Catholics were coming to know in larger numbers in Michael O’Brien’s Father Elijah books, precursors of which can be traced back at least to the tenth century Benedictine monk and theologian Adso of Montier-enDer’s De Ortu et Tempore Antichristi,and speculations about which fill Christian history, especially its popular lore.

(One will hear nothing, for example, but disdain for Left Behind by Evangelical

schoolmen: average people, though, are very interested in it and it was not, like The Late, Great Planet Earth, produced by a member of the priestly caste, which has a long history of giving very short shrift to biblical apocalyptic in its general dogmatic treatises, but which has always been of consuming interest to the unwashed laity from the days when they used to watch the Ludi Antichristi morality plays — the medieval equivalent of Father Elijah and Left Behind — in the square on market day.)

Pope Francis’ recommendation that Catholics read this story is, given his dogged campaign in favor of yet further development of doctrine in the Catholic Church, very hard for me to read as anything but a supremely clever inoculation against accusations that he and his gang are among the principal antichristic players of the old and well-known story: that the real enemies of the Catholic Church are the traditionalists.

Traditionalists, it goes, wish to mire it, resisting the ever-progressive “Spirit,” in the old ways, and among whom we may expect the Antichrist to arise.

This sort of thing is to be anticipated as a function of liberalism wherever it operates. It accuses its enemies of doing exactly what it is doing: lying, cheating, stealing, and murdering, thus removing among the people a receptive ear for these accusations posed against themselves and encouraging the false and damning narratives that “they’re really all the same,” and “we honor the God of peace by making the necessary compromises to get along” (that is, allow them to continue what they are doing).

S.M. Hutchens smhutchens@proton.m I read Lord of the World a few years ago, I think right after Pope Benedict mentioned it; and I heard it mentioned in a homily by a very good local priest.

I’m baffled that Pope Francis would suggest reading it. Can he not see whom he has been pandering to all this time?

Perhaps it is a situation like in the US: Biden is the head, but clearly not running things.

Maybe Francis is the Head of the Church, but someone else is running it?

Chris C. Marengo, Ohio, USA

I read Lord of the World a number of years ago. I have a list of about 40 20thcentury novels that I recommend to people. For Lord of the World I have a parenthetical aside that says “with reservations.” Father Benson tells us that Papa Angelicus, after he had negotiated for himself the temporal lordship of Rome, “had since set himself to make it a city of saints.” Here is one of the measures he took: “Then he had restored Capital Punishment, with as much serene gravity as that with which he had made himself the derision of the civilized world in other matters, saying that though human life was holy, human virtue was more holy still; and he had added to the crime of murder, the crimes of adultery, idolatry and apostasy, for which this punishment was theoretically sanctioned.” As you know, John Paul II, Benedict, and Francis have all spoken firmly against the death penalty. Francis even pushed for a revision to the CCC that states: “The Church teaches, in the light of the Gospel, that ‘the death penalty is inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and dignity of the person’, and she works with determination for its abolition worldwide.” By the way, I am also against capital punishment.

Out of love for Christ, it is my policy never to speak ill of Pope Francis. But I can’t reconcile his praise of Lord of the World with his appointments, his choice of collaborators, and with his views on the death penalty. I have a strong sense that Francis’ collaborators and advisors are not fans of Lord of the World. I don’t think they would want Papa Angelicus presiding over the Synod.

Frank Gibbons Seekonk, Massachusetts, USA

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HUMAN OR DIVINE? As regards South Sudan’s current preparations for commemorating the first anniversary of the Pope’s visit to the country in 2023: For me, it is not worth commemorating, especially given the Pope’ s current misleading theology on conferring blessings to same-sex couples/unions, which ultimately goes contrary to the dictates of the Holy Bible/Scripture. Can we infer that the Pope aspires to invent a “human theology” which is very antagonistic to “divine theology?” Indeed, no matter what, it is quite impossible to change the divine framework as stated in the Holy Bible: “heaven and earth will both pass, but my words will last forever.”

In fact, we should not completely rely on the dictates of the papal office. As baptized Christians, we should also be firm in correcting the Vatican. After all, when we all die, we are going to be judged by Christ, not the Pope and his colleagues.

Joseph Kenyi Samuel mumuns@gmail.com

AN EMPTY HELL? A short response to your video (Ed. note: see Urbi et Orbi Communications’ YouTube channel for our video series) and Francis’ statement that he envisions hell as empty: First, an empty hell would mean no sin is truly “mortal” per se. Such statements in Sacred Scripture and tradition from which the existence of mortal sin can be inferred become “literary expressions.” The laws and precepts thus become only suggestions.

If such important subjects are simply “literary expressions,” then what of the resurrection of Christ? Was this just a literary expression? (Many liberal theologians think so.)

Second, how can we hope that hell is empty? Do we wish God to deny human freedom and human decisions? Do we wish so, contrary to the statements of Christ and the will of an all-holy and alljust God as stated so clearly in the Gospels? Do we wish no justice for the Holocaust, for child sexual abuse, murder, rape, torture?? God’s dignity and holiness cry out for justice, as well as does innocent humanity wronged by fellow men down through eons since Cain and Abel.

MARCH-APRIL 2024 INSIDE THE VATICAN

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LETTERS TO THE EDITOR Third, do we diminish the cross by saying Jesus took our place when our place was never to be in hell? Yes, we, like God, should desire that all men choose salvation in this life that is freely offered us in Christ. This is what we should hope for, but we should never hope for something that Scripture states is clearly in the plan and will of God as stated by our God and Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ.

Jack Carter, MD Birmingham, Alabama, USA

FAMILY FIGHTS Great video about how the Catholic Church has gone through these bad times before. Five times in the past there have been “Knock-down-drag-out” fights that lasted for a long, long time. Seems to be part of the Church’s DNA to have these family fights that always have a way of purifying and clarifying things. These arguments are good for the Church in a way, but do come with a cost.

Gus gsp.gus@mailfence.com

MORE CONFUSION (Re: Moynihan Letters #1, January 4, 2024: More Confusion) Why don’t you stop splitting hairs and just wish two people, human beings with whom we will share heaven, every blessing and help on the journey to being perfect as our Heavenly Father is perfect? His perfection is the perfection of love and mercy for all.

But I suppose your gang will be standing at the judgment gate when we approach and will try to tell the Lord, “No, no, not him/her. He didn’t conform to our rules.” I wonder if Jesus came back to wander the earth, would he head straight into the Vatican or would he be looking for the tax collectors and prostitutes? I doubt he’d head into the Vatican unless to kick the hypocrites out who are so hung up on visible conformity.

Sean Creaney seancreaney@gmail.com So pathetic. The real point is kindergarten-level: no one can bless a sin!!!! cpenelopeanne@aol.com It is well known among realists that the blessing for gay couples is part of the move to reform morality in a new world 10

INSIDE THE VATICAN MARCH-APRIL 2024

Church. The “Argentinian Dynamo” is now fooling very few. We have to ask some very controversial questions, including about Paul VI (Montini) and the inner core of those orchestrating Vatican II reform, and homosexuality in the Church. Fernandez is a big joke. His book Love Me with Your Mouth: The Art of Kissing is scandalous.

Read the “handwriting on the wall” instead of the graffiti put out by a cluster of perverts who have taken over the Vatican. God actually does have “rules & regulations.”

JBQ Firestone jacquebquique@yahoo.com

SELF-CONTRADICTION NOW ACCEPTABLE Thank you so much for your good work on behalf of the Faith.

As is evident from Fiducia Supplicans, self-contradiction seems to have become, for many in the post-Conciliar Church, an acceptable mode for teaching the Faith.

This modernist mode of expression, now so commonplace within the Church, can be traced to Cardinal Henri de Lubac, who, through Communio: International Catholic Review and its many Communio scholars around the world; succeeded in having it widely accepted as a valid mode for teaching the Faith. For de Lubac and his disciples in Communio, this new criterion of truth goes by the name of “paradox.” De Lubac’s self-contradictory teaching on Nature and Grace and Original Sin may prove of some assistance in exposing the contradictory nature of Fiducia Supplicans.

Julie Connolly Finglas, Dublin, Ireland

A CALMING EFFECT Robert, following this morning’s YouTube podcast (January 5, 2024), I wanted to write and extend my sincere “thank you” for your constant and very unbiased reporting. I often find myself agitated and disturbed with so much that comes out of the Vatican these days. You have a calming effect on my occasional over-reactions and I find that I benefit greatly from your balanced perspective.

Thank you! A little background: I was educated by Benedictines, K-8, and Jesuits and Sisters of Charity, grades 9-12 in

Pueblo, Colorado. I spent two years with the Benedictines again following high school before attending a state college.

I am two years older than Fr. Murr and was in high school during Vatican II, graduating in 1966 from Pueblo Catholic High School. I spent decades waiting for Summorum Pontificum and I now attend an FSSP TLM in Tacoma, Washington.

I was in Slovenia for the Christmas Holidays in 2005 and we drove to Rome from Ljubljana for Benedict’s first Christmas as Pope. I can’t tell you how wonderful it’s been getting to know Fr. Murr through your podcasts. It’s out of the question now, but I hope I can make a future pilgrimage with you and Fr. Murr.

Please tell Father that I’ve purchased many of his books for gifts.

The Godmother was just wonderful and Murder in the 33rd Degree filled in many missing pieces of the puzzle.

Your reporting on Archbishop Viganò has been greatly appreciated and Finding Viganò was a wonderful read. (The last time I lent it out, it didn’t find its way home so I purchased another!)

I always look forward to The Moynihan Letters and offer prayers for you and all the staff at Inside the Vatican.

Bill Župančič milehi.bz@gmail.com

VATICAN TRIAL Thanks, Bob, for diligent reporting on this trial at the Vatican.

Did you see the piece, “Something is Rotten in Buenos Aires,” by Liz Yore in the March 14, 2023 Remnant online? She recalls her interactions with Pope Francis, and how she connects the dots from this decade of the pontificate and his previous decade in Argentina! God is permitting us to suffer through this period. I appreciate your keeping us updated.

Barbara Engelland bendgelland@reagan.com

THE THIRD ERA (Re: Moynihan Letters #127, September 25, 2023: John Lamont) Thank you for posting this excellent ar-ticle summarizing the reasons for the current crisis in the Catholic Church.

It is damning, particularly concerning Pope Francis and the clergy whom we, the laity, expect to be exemplars of the Faith.

The conclusion of the article seems to

suggest a tragic ending to the Faith unless some unforeseen event were to unfold.

Fortunately, we have Christ Himself who said the Gates of Hell would not prevail against His Church.

Several like St. Padre Pio addressed that concern with their spiritual insight and understood that there would be a Third Era (following the Eras of Creation and of Redemption), one in which The Divine Will of God would prevail.

Indeed, this Era, (unrecognized by the Church itself) began around 1900 and has been slowly expanding ever since.

So perhaps the present Pope is not actually overseeing the demise of Our Catholic Church as many believe, but unwittingly, calling for the arrival of a whole new Epoch!

Suzanne Formanek suzanne.formanek@gmail.com

FROM A PRISONER I am writing to tell you that I was released from prison last week.

Last year you printed the letter my Mexican friend wrote asking for your special issue about Mary. Thank you for sending it! He was thrilled to see his letter printed. He was released last summer and gave the Mary issue to another devout Mexican inmate before he left. I teased him, saying, “Your first day back in Mexico you will be lying on the beach in Acapulco.” He replied, “No, first I go to church.” Since I am no longer a prisoner, I don’t know if you can resume my subscription but I have no income yet and would greatly appreciate extending it for a little while longer. You have been sending me ITV magazine for more than ten years and I am grateful.

Donald Sprinkle (Greek Orthodox) Orlando, Florida, USA (Ed. note: Readers, please consider contributing to our Prisoner Subscription Fund!)

NEW SOLID DOCUMENT On the Feast of the Presentation, the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith issued a new document, “ordered” (not just “authorized”) to be published by Pope Francis — after about two years of preparation. It presents solidly orthodox teaching about the matter and form of the sacraments, and reinforces Church teaching about the danger of innovations that

lead to invalid baptisms and other sacraments. However, yet another orthodox DDF document that came out seven weeks earlier, on December 13, 2023, has passed completely under the radar, presumably because Fiducia Supplicans exploded into the secular and church media headlines just five days later, and has pretty much dominated them ever since.

This almost unknown document is about the access of single mothers (and their babies) to the sacraments, and rebukes the excessive rigorism in that regard that is apparently found in some parts of Latin America. (I never found it in Puerto Rico, where I myself several times baptized infants of unwed mothers — always in compliance with the conditions of Canon Law for the licit baptism of infants.)

It can be found on the internet here: vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cf aith/documents/rc_ddf_doc_20231213_ri sposta-madri-single_en.html Some critics were insisting, after the 2022 Apostolic Letter Desiderio Desideravi, that Pope Francis is okay with Catholics receiving Communion while in the state of mortal sin. So it’s good to see that in paragraph 4 of this new letter, which was approved by Francis in an audience on the same day it was published, DDF Prefect Fernandez reaffirms orthodoxy on this point: “Pastoral work should be done in the local Church to make people understand that being a single mother does not prevent that person from accessing the Eucharist. As for all other Christians, sacramental confession of sins allows the person to approach Communion” (emphasis added).

Brian Harrison materdei82@hotmail.com

CHRIST AND ANTICHRIST (Re: Letter #17, January 13, 2023: Antichrist) A hearty thank you for a very “comprehensive” article. Don't be so compelled to apologize for length, as those who don’t like it can skip over what “they” feel is TMI. I specifically subscribe to your emails because they are so very informative, thorough, and extremely open-minded/diplomatic. You provide the facts and let the reader come to their own conclusion, whether they agree with you or not. Please don’t change your style and know that is is appreciated by many.

I also wish to add, the attached links you include are a tremendous resource.

Regarding your email, yes, the internet has definitely made use of Antichrist “headlines” after Vladimir Palko's letter was released. Despite what appears to be taking advantage of the topic at hand to gain “clicks & thumbs up,” I think wellinformed Catholics have been aware of this situation for a many years. Thank you for all you do. May God continue to bless your continued work in His vineyard.

Jacqueline Florida, USA Your continuous hard work is daunting to a converted boomer like me. Thank you for being where you need to be in order to ask incisive questions of important people in God’s economy. You, I believe, are doing His work. A question of my own: Why your and Fr. Murr’s soft ball take on John Paul II’s dismissal of Gagnon, precipitating the good bishop’s disconsolate return to South America (driven to the airport by a young Fr. Murr.)?

John Paul II’s many and tremendously important failures, I believe, have not been incisively vetted by those who truly loved him: 1. Failure to fearlessly identify the causes of our Church’s collapse after VII; 2. Appointing the worst possible bishops over a span of decades; 3. Pettiness in dealing with the large soul of Archbishop Lefebvre; 4. A blind and profoundly inappropriate response to sexual sins and perversions in high places; 5.

Worst of all, questioning Our Lord’s Second Word from the Cross, “Today you will be with me in paradise,” which led to the theological disaster presently found in the CCC’s section on capital punishment.

Unthinkable!

Considering the magnitude of importance of these matters, JPII’s hand in them all and the ongoing significance these wrong turns still hold over our beloved Church, I ask again: Why are we playing softball here. Could you and Fr. Murr consider revisiting JPII’s part in our present distress, this time with a fearlessness and incisiveness rarely found in Catholic reporting outside of the society of a…well, …a Robert Moynihan and a Fr. Charles Murr. May our God continue to use and strengthen you.

Gary Matthews, Sr garymatthews302@icloud.com MARCH-APRIL 2024 INSIDE THE VATICAN

11

LEAD STORY

pope calls surrogacy ‘deplorable’ …and calls for its global prohibition. he made the call January 8 to the world’s diplomats n BY COURTnEY MARES (CnA)

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ope Francis called surrogacy “deplorable” and called for a global ban on the exploitative practice of “so-called surrogate motherhood” in an annual speech to all of the world’s ambassadors to the Vatican on January 8.

“The path to peace calls for respect for life, for every human life, starting with the life of the unborn child in the mother’s womb, which cannot be suppressed or turned into an object of trafficking,” Pope Francis said January 8.

“In this regard, I deem deplorable the practice of socalled surrogate motherhood, which represents a grave

violation of the dignity of the woman and the child, based on the exploitation of situations of the mother’s material needs. A child is always a gift and never the basis of a commercial contract.”

The Pope then called on the international community to prohibit the practice of surrogacy universally.

“At every moment of its existence, human life must be preserved and defended; yet I note with regret, especially in the West, the continued spread of a culture of death, which in the name of a false compassion discards children, the elderly and the sick,” he added.

a child is not an obJect

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ope John Paul II approved the “Instruction on Respect for Human life in its Origin and on the Dignity of Procreation: Replies to Certain Questions of the Day,” promulgated by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in 1987. Its author was Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, later Pope Benedict XVI. Here are a few relevant excerpts:

THE SUFFERInG CAUSED BY InFERTILITY In MARRIAGE

The suffering of spouses who cannot have children or who are afraid of bringing a handicapped child into the world is a suffering that everyone must understand and properly evaluate. [...] Nevertheless, marriage does not confer upon the spouses the right

12 INSIDE THE VATICAN MARCH-APRIL 2024

to have a child, but only the right to perform those natural acts which are per se ordered to procreation.(57) A true and proper right to a child would be contrary to the child’s dignity and nature. The child is not an object to which one has a right, nor can he be considered as an object of ownership: rather, a child is a gift, “the supreme gift” (58) and the most gra-

tuitous gift of marriage, and is a living testimony of the mutual giving of his parents.[...]

WHY MUST HUMAn PROCREATIOn TAKE PLACE In MARRIAGE? Every human being is always to be accepted as a gift and blessing of God. However, from the moral point of view a truly responsible procreation vis-a-vis the unborn child must be the fruit of marriage.

For human procreation has specific characteristics by virtue of the personal dignity of the parents and of the children: the procreation of a new person, whereby the man and the woman collaborate with the power of the Creator, must be the fruit and the sign of the mutual selfgiving of the spouses, of their love and of their fidelity.(34) The fidelity of the spouses in the unity of marriage involves reciprocal respect of their right to become a father and a mother only through each other. The child has the right to be conceived, carried in the womb, brought into the world and brought up within marriage: it is through the secure and recognized relationship to his own parents that the child can discover his own identity and achieve his own proper human development. [...]

WHAT JUDGMEnT SHOULD BE MADE On OTHER PROCEDURES OF MAnIPULATInG EMBRYOS COnnECTED WITH THE “TECHnIQUES OF HUMAn REPRODUCTIOn”?

Techniques of fertilization in vitro

can open the way to other forms of biological and genetic manipulation of human embryos, such as attempts or plans for fertilization between human and animal gametes and the gestation of human embryos in the uterus of animals, or the hypothesis or project of constructing artificial uteruses for the human embryo. These procedures are contrary to the human dignity proper to the embryo, and at the same time they are contrary to the right of every person to be conceived and to be born

the life of an embryo - cryopreservation - constitutes an offense against the respect due to human beings by exposing them to grave risks of death or harm to their physical integrity and depriving them, at least temporarily, of maternal shelter and gestation, thus placing them in a situation in which further offenses and manipulation are possible.

Certain attempts to influence chromosomic or genetic inheritance are not therapeutic but are aimed at producing human beings selected according to sex or other predetermined qualities. These manipulations are contrary to the personal dignity of the human being and his or her integrity and identity. Therefore in no way can they be justified on the grounds of possible beneficial consequences for future humanity. (33) Every person must be respected for himself: in this consists the dignity and right of every human being from his or her beginning. [...]

IS “SURROGATE” MOTHERHOOD MORALLY LICIT?

within marriage and from marriage.(32) Also, attempts or hypotheses for obtaining a human being without any connection with sexuality through “twin fission”, cloning or parthenogenesis are to be considered contrary to the moral law, since they are in opposition to the dignity both of human procreation and of the conjugal union.

The freezing of embryos, even when carried out in order to preserve

Surrogate motherhood represents an objective failure to meet the obligations of maternal love, of conjugal fidelity and of responsible motherhood; it offends the dignity and the right of the child to be conceived, carried in the womb, brought into the world and brought up by his own parents; it sets up, to the detriment of families, a division between the physical, psychological and moral elements which constitute those families.m

Surrogacy’S Tragic EffEcTS

S

adly, the international surrogacy market appears to have significant and growing overlap with human trafficking. Given the amount of money involved, traffickers stand to profit substantially from selling women and girls into surrogacy arrangements.

As Dr. Sheela Saravanan, author of A Transnational Feminist View of

Surrogacy Biomarkets in India, wrote in a submission to the UN Special Rapporteur on the sale and sexual exploitation of children, “The surrogacy trafficking trade used the same network that was used for domestic work and sex trade from the poor regions of India into urban areas. These unmarried girls [were] impregnated with embryos without their consent.

Others were confined in homes and when some girls tried to run away, they [were] caught, brought back and beaten.”

HOW ARE GOVERnMEnTS RESPOnDInG? In response to various injustices and exploitation, several countries have closed their borders to internaMARCH-APRIL 2024 INSIDE THE VATICAN 13

LEAD STORY PoPe Calls surrogaCy ‘DePlorable’ tional surrogacy arrangements in recent years, including India and Thailand. Hundreds of organizations from 18 countries signed an International Statement for a Global Ban on Womb Rental in 2018.

And at its meeting on October 5, 2023, the EU parliament’s Joint Committee on Women’s Rights and Civil Liberties added surrogacy to the list of crimes targeted by the bloc’s directive on preventing human trafficking.

Regrettably, the current official position of the United States with respect to international surrogacy is that surrogacy does not involve the exploitation or commodification of children. The U.S. signed and ratified the optional protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child that prohibits the sale of children, but holds that “surrogacy arrangements fall outside the scope” of the protocol. (The Heritage Foundation) EMBRYO DEATH TOLL AnD “ADVERSE PERInATAL OUTCOMES” FOR SURVIVORS As reported by the website ThemBeforeUs: “Both surrogacy and third-party reproduction rely on in-vitro fertilization (IVF), a practice of creating lives outside the womb that can only be sustained inside the womb. It is a violation of human dignity to place a group of people in charge of whether or not a fellow human lives, dies, or continues to develop. These human lives are left in limbo, at the mercy of an unregulated industry.”

The majority of IVF clinics engage in genetic screening to weed out “less desirable” embryos, despite the questionable accuracy of these screenings, and in 2015 it was estimated that almost half of the clinics offering genetic screening allowed couples to discard embryos on the basis of sex. Furthermore, the multiple-pregnancy rate jumps 30% for 14 INSIDE THE VATICAN MARCH-APRIL 2024

Surrogacy rate for same-sex “commissioning couples” is rising Yet, such couples promise less stability and security for children According to Psychology Today, “research has shown that cohabiting same-sex romantic couples dissolve their relationships at higher rates than different-sex cohabiting or married couples… Overall, same-sex couples reported shorter relationship lengths than different-sex couples (Joyner et al., 2017).”

Yet, the proportion of “commissioning parents” who are homosexual has been rising over the past decade — exposing an ever-increasing number of children to family dissolution and its attendant negative results (see chart below) from being raised in a household which always excludes at least one biological parent, and sometimes both.

(Source: ThemBeforeUs.com)

IVF pregnancies (twins), and more than 400% for triplets and greater, over the rate observed in naturallyconceived pregnancies. Therefore, “selective reduction” of embryos is

often used at the 9-12 week mark — which is, in fact, an early abortion of one or more of the growing embryos.

The death toll from IVF exceeds that of abortion, and, while the exact number is unknown, it is estimated that the number of embryos who

have been abandoned to a frozen fate by commissioning parents in the U.S. is in the millions. This number continues to grow every year.

As for those IVF babies who make it to birth, a study published in the journal Fertility and Sterility in 2017 concluded that pregnancy and birth outcomes are harmed for them: “Neonates born from commissioned embryos and carried by gestational surrogates have increased adverse perinatal outcomes, including preterm birth, low birth weight, hypertension, maternal gestational diabetes, and placenta previa, compared with singletons conceived spontaneously and carried by the same woman. Our data suggest that assisted reproductive procedures may potentially affect embryo quality and that its negative impact can not be overcome even with a proven healthy uterine environment.” (see chart below) THE REALITY IS THAT THE nEWBORn BABY IS TRAUMATIZED

As ThemBeforeUs.com puts it, “If a child of surrogacy is one of the 7% who are born alive, she will lose the only person she has ever known upon birth.

When she is inconsolable because she misses her birth mother — the only person whose voice, smell, and heartbeat she knows — and is unable to express her longing, she will be called colicky. The reality is that she is traumatized.”

Comments Katy Faust, founder and president of Them Before Us: “The question of surrogacy comes down to, will we force the weak (children) to sacrifice for the strong (adults)?

“Or will we live up to Christian principles which always insist that the strong sacrifice for the weak.

“The Pope has made his position clear.

“Children deserve protection.”m

surrogacy Is a betrayal of woman Is she a mother or a “holdIng tank”? n BY AnTHOnY ESOLEn

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uddenly a woman in the crowd us have drummed out of their own O gloriosa Domina raised her voice and said to small brains by force of a most per- excelsa super sidera, Jesus, “Blessed is the womb verse will not to see, not to know. qui te creavit provide, Think then about the warmth of lactasti sacro ubere. that bore you, and the breasts that you sucked!” And Jesus replied, the relationship between mother and “Rather, blessed are all they who child, between Mary and Jesus. O glorious Lady, hear the word of God and keep it” Giotto paints the Nativity, in the raised high beyond the stars: Arena Chapel, with Mary holding He who in his providence created (Lk. 11:27-28).

Pope Francis has recently issued the child and gazing deeply into his you, to Him have you given a severe condemnation of surrogacy, eyes. Andrea Mantegna’s Mary, in milk from your sacred breast. the practice of inseminating a wo- his painting of the Presentation, man so that she will serve as a hu- grasps the child with sure and proIt is a bond no man can ever know. man holding tank or incubator for tective hands as she hears the Wealthy women used to hire wet the child you want, a child which, prophecy of the aged Simeon. But nurses to suckle their children till because of your own they were weaned, so that they, debility or because you the wealthy, could go about their are not even a man and business unimpeded, though it is woman to begin with, hard for me to imagine anything you cannot have. He more important or more beautiful says it is a kind of rape than nursing the infant child. And of womanhood and mosometimes, of course, mothers therhood, the reduction who were in ill health or whose of a woman to a mabreasts did not provide enough chine, a betrayal of the nourishment would need to have beauty and the nature of some other nursing woman nearthe woman’s body. by. But if we look askance at the It is sometimes sugwet nurse, as at best an unfortugested that our society nate necessity, how on earth can is besotted with sex. we justify using a woman to bear That is true in a sad and and to nurse a child and then to trivial sense, and yet take that child from her? facade of Santa Maria in Trastevere church in Rome quite false at heart. We Mosaic on the showing What becomes of a child so Mary nursing the baby Jesus may be obsessed, to the forcibly deprived of a mother, in point of tedium, with the procuring that touch of the hand pales in com- the case of two men who so offend of sexual pleasure, but we are parison with the dwelling of the against the nature of motherhood — sheathed in calluses when it comes child in her womb, and the child’s or what in every case of surrogacy beto noticing and appreciating the dis- taking milk from her own breast, comes of the mother so forcibly detinct beauties of male and female such as we find portrayed in mosaic, prived of the child, or what may aland making them brightly manifest from the 12th century, on the façade ready have become of her as she by our dress, our customs, and our of Santa Maria del Trastevere, in bears and nurses a stranger-to-be — general behavior. Even the word Rome (see photo above). The open- we are apparently not supposed to “mother” now is controversial. We ing stanza of one of the old hymns ask. But shutting your eyes does not are to call her a “pregnant person,” for Candlemas, the Feast of the Pre- make the evil go away. It hardens the as if a man could ever conceive a sentation, gives us the glorious hu- heart and permits the evil to set down child. Thus, what a small child once mility of it, in terms that are frankly roots and runners, till at last the knew at a glance, the elites among and beautifully physical: whole field is overcome.m MARCH-APRIL 2024 INSIDE THE VATICAN 15

NEWS

Cardinal flies to rome to Convey afriCan rejeCtion of Fiducia SupplicanS Cardinal ambongo, adviser to the PoPe, flew to rome to Protest to PoPe franCis... n BY ACI PREnSA/CnA

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ardinal Fridolin Ambongo Besengu, OFM Cap, president of the Symposium of Episcopal Conferences of Africa and Madagascar (SECAM), recently recounted step by step how the rejection of the blessing of homosexual couples was handled on the African continent and at the Vatican during January.

In an interview posted January 18 on the French lay Catholic blog Le Salon Beige, the cardinal explained what happened in Africa after the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith (DDF), headed by Argentine Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández, published the declaration Fiducia Supplicans, which allows the blessing of same-sex couples and couples in irregular situations.

REACTIOnS In AFRICA “When on December 18, we received the document Fiducia Supplicans, signed by the prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith and co-signed by His Holiness Pope Francis, it caused a shockwave in Africa,” Cardinal Ambongo said.

“We didn’t understand what was happening at the Church level. Furthermore, other churches that called us said: ‘We count on the Catholic Church to oppose this ideology.

Now, you are the first to authorize the blessing of homosexual couples.’

All of you, all of you, have suffered for this. A lot. Everyone has suffered for this,” the cardinal lamented.

“The reactions began. And with all responsibility, I wrote to all the episcopal conferences of Africa and Madagascar,” continued Ambongo, who is the archbishop of Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

16 INSIDE THE VATICAN MARCH-APRIL 2024

Cardinal Fridolin Ambongo Besungu, President of SECAM (Symposium of Episcopal Conferences of Africa and Madagascar) since 2023, has also been a member of Pope Francis’ Council of Cardinal Advisers since 2020 (photo: Wikipedia)

“IN AFRICA THERE IS NO PLACE TO BLESS HOMOSEXUAL COUPLES”

“The episcopal conferences wrote. I printed all the reactions from all the episcopal conferences. I made a synthesis in a document,” he said.

Ambongo said he then wrote a seven-page letter on January 11 to Pope Francis not only as president of SECAM but also as “his adviser, member of the council of the nine cardinals who accompany the Pope for the reform of the Church.”

He then traveled to Rome to meet with the pontiff, telling one of the Pope’s private secretaries why he had come and giving him all the documentation: the reactions of the episcopal conferences, the synthesis, and his personal letter.

That same day the Holy Father received him: “The Pope was very sad,” Ambongo said. “I must say that

he was the first to suffer from all the reactions that came from all over the world. He suffers for it because he is a human being. This doesn’t make him happy.

“I reached an agreement with him because I told him that the solution to this issue is no longer to send us documents with theological or philosophical definitions of blessings.

The people are not interested in that.

What is of interest now is a communication that reassures the people in Africa, that calms the spirits of the faithful. And he, as a pastor, was touched by this situation,” the African cardinal concluded.

WORKInG WITH FERnÁnDEZ The Holy Father put Ambongo in contact with Cardinal Fernández, who agreed to work with him the next day at the DDF, “the most important dicastery from the point of view of the Catholic faith.”

“With the prefect, myself in front of the computer, a secretary writing, we prepared a document,” Ambongo said. “And we prepared the document in dialogue and agreement with Pope Francis, so that at every moment we called him to ask him questions, to see if he agreed with that formulation, etc.”

When completed, Ambongo said, “I signed the document as president of SECAM on behalf of the entire Catholic Church in Africa. And the prefect of the dicastery signed it, not the document that was made public, but the document that we keep in the archives.” The document is entitled “No to the blessing of homosexual couples in the Catholic Churches,” the cardinal said.

“IT IS NOT SURPRISING THE BISHOPS OF AFRICA ARE HERALDS OF TRUTH” An excerpt from the “Christmas Message” of Cardinal Robert Sarah, 78, former prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, published by the website Settimo Cielo on the Feast of the Epiphany, January 6, 2024 The Declaration Fiducia Supplicans writes that the blessing is instead intended for people who “ask that all that is true, good and humanly valuable in their lives and in their relationships be invested, healed and elevated by the presence of the Spirit Holy” (n. 31). But what is good, true and humanly valid in a homosexual relationship, defined by the Holy Scriptures and Tradition as a serious and “intrinsically disordered” depravity? How can such a writing correspond to the Book of Wisdom which states: “Troubled thoughts lead away from God, and Power, when tested, confounds fools.” No, Wisdom does not enter an evil soul, it does not dwell

in a body dependent on sin. For the Holy Spirit, the teacher, flees deceit” (Wis 1:3-5). The only thing to ask of people who are in an unnatural relationship is to convert and conform to the Word of God. [...]

The Church of Africa is the voice of the poor, the simple and the small. It is responsible for proclaiming the Word of God to Western Christians who, because they are rich, endowed with multiple skills in philosophy, theological, biblical and canonical sciences, believe themselves to be evolved, modern and wise in wisdom of the world. But “the foolishness of God is wiser than men” (1Cor 1:25). It is therefore not surprising that the bishops of Africa, in their poverty, are today the heralds of this divine truth in the face of the power and wealth of certain episcopates in the West. For “whatever is foolish in the world, this is what God has choCardinal Robert Sarah of Guinea, former sen to confound the wise; God has prefect of the Congregation for Divine chosen what is weak in the world to Worship and the Discipline of the shame what is strong.” (1Cor 1:27).n Sacraments, wrote his own response to the Fiducia Supplicans controversy

Ambongo clarified that “I signed it in Rome.”

“This is to express our position today in Africa and we do it in a spirit of communion, of synodality with Pope Francis, and with the prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith: In Africa there is no place to bless homosexual couples. Not at all,” he stressed.

On Jauary. 11, the African bishops published a five-page statement stating: “The Episcopal Conferences of all Africa, which have strongly reaffirmed their communion with Pope Francis, believe that the extra-liturgical blessings proposed in the declaration Fiducia Supplicans cannot be carried out in Africa without exposing themselves to scandals.”

Ambongo stressed that, although Africa opposes the blessing of samesex couples, it is necessary to “respect homosexual people because they are human beings… They are creatures of God. And as creatures of God, if an individual homosexual

(photo: Grzegorz Galazka)

“THE ONLY THING TO ASK OF PEOPLE WHO ARE IN AN UNNATURAL RELATIONSHIP IS TO CONVERT AND CONFORM TO THE WORD OF GOD”

asks for a blessing, we bless the person.”

The cardinal pointed out that these blessings for individual persons are given “in the hope that the grace of the blessing can help them convert.”

He added: “And if we bless a homosexual, it is also to say that ‘your sexual orientation is not in accordance with the will of God and we hope that the blessing can help you change because homosexuality is condemned in the Bible and by the magisterium of the Church.’

“We cannot be promoters of sexual deviation,” he said. “Let them do it in their homes, but not in ours.”

MARRIAGE, FAMILY In AFRICA VS. THE WEST Ambongo also lamented that currently “in the West, since they don’t like children, they want to attack the basic cell of humanity, which is the family. If you destroy the family, you destroy society.”

The cardinal remarked that now in the West the meaning of marriage has also been lost and culture “is in decline,” something that also affects the economy. “Little by little, they are going to disappear. They will disappear. We wish them a good demise,” he continued.

“However, our culture in Africa is not like that. Yes, we have many defects, but we cannot be reproached for homosexuality. You can find isolated cases, like those in Uganda,” he said, but “society doesn’t work that way. That practice does not exist among us.”

This story was first published by ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner.m MARCH-APRIL 2024 INSIDE THE VATICAN 17

NEWS

“everyOne is in danger”: christians in gaza fear effects Of israel-hamas war One Of the less-discussed effects Of the OngOing israel-hamas war in gaza, which erupted OctOber 7, is the threat tO, and pOssible eliminatiOn Of, christian cOmmunities in gaza and thrOughOut the hOly land n BY CHRISTOPHER HART-MOYnIHAn

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church, and the Latin Patriarhough their numbers are chate released a statement small, Palestinian Chrisdecrying the killing as “withtians constitute one of the out warning” and “in cold oldest communities of Chrisblood.” The Greek Orthodox tians in the entire world. Of Patriarchate of Jerusalem, for course, the communities of the its part, labeled the bombing early Church were centered in of its St. Porphyrius Church the Holy Land, where the apos“a war crime that cannot be tles were from and where Jesus ignored” in an October 19 Christ carried out his ministry. statement. Both Catholic and In the first century A.D., Orthodox religious leaders groups of Christians formed have also made repeated calls churches and communities in populated urban centers in and Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa (the tallest man in the back) together with for a ceasefire that have conaround the Holy Land: places other heads of Christian communities in the Holy Land: Syriac, Coptic, tinued to go unheeded.

Anglican, Ethiopian, and Greek and Armenian Orthodox.

Over the course of the now such as Jerusalem, Tyre, Si- In the circles below: Father Gabriel Romanelli and Father Youssef Assad four-month-old war, various don, and Antioch. These communities maintained their direct con- leaders in the Holy Land have tried to sources have also been tracking Chrisnection to Christ and the apostles while strike a balance between making polit- tian or Christian-affiliated sites the Christian faith also spread far and ical statements and supporting suffer- bombed during Israel’s invasion of ing Christians. On February 7, Gaza. One of the most tragic such wide across the Roman Empire, during a phone call with Car- occurrences was the destruction of the largely due to the efforts of St. dinal Pierbattista Pizzabal- Greek Orthodox St. Porphyrius Church Paul, St. Peter, and other evanla, the Latin Patriarch of in Gaza City — Gaza’s oldest church. gelizers.

Jerusalem, Pope Francis The church was bombed on October The rise of Arab Muslim expressed his “constant 19, on the 13th day of the war, political power across the care” for the Holy killing at least 18 people. Israeli Middle East in the 7th century Family Catholic Pararmed forces subsequently A.D. led to centuries of a slow ish in Gaza — the only released a statement that the decline for the region’s Christians. church was not the target of For the last millennium, the status of Catholic parish in the Gaza the attack.

Middle Eastern Christians has re- Strip, which has housed and The Qatar-based news mained precarious, oscillating between sheltered hundreds of disservice Al Jazeera recently second-class citizenship and outright placed people since the outquoted several Christians from persecution. And while the Israeli-Pal- break of the war. According to Vatestinian conflict, now almost a century ican News, “The Holy Father has been Gaza as saying that they think the curold, has often been fought along ethnic in contact with the parish priest, Father rent war will be the death blow for their and ideological rather than religious Gabriel Romanelli, and the associate community in the Holy Land. Mitri lines, it has also had the effect of further pastor, Father Youssef Assad, almost Raheb, an Evangelical Lutheran pastor and founder of Dar al-Kalima Univerweakening and diminishing the already daily to inquire about the situation.”

Previously, Francis had condemned sity in Bethlehem, said it was conceivembattled communities of Palestinian the killing of two women sheltering at able that the current conflict would Christians.

Since the outbreak of war between the parish by an IDF sniper on Decem- spell the end of its long history in this Israel and Hamas on October 7, 2023, ber 16, saying that only families, nuns, strip of land. “This community is under both Catholic and Orthodox Church and the disabled were sheltering at the threat of extinction,” Raheb said. “I’m 18 INSIDE THE VATICAN MARCH-APRIL 2024

not sure if it will survive the Israeli leader in Bishop Porphyry, whose stantinople that centuries later, in 1054, bombing, and even if it survives, I think forceful efforts to Christianize the city divided into Roman Catholicism and many will want to emigrate.” are commemorated by the [now- Eastern Orthodoxy. Miaphysites, East“We know that within this genera- destroyed] historical church building ern Orthodox and Roman Catholics tion, Christianity will cease to exist in dedicated to his memory today.” today all have churches in the land that Gaza,” he added.

The descendants of these early com- was Roman Palestine.”

Gaza was a hub of Christian mis- munities are still present in the Holy While the Christian presence is sionary activity from the 4th century, Land today: most are Eastern Ortho- dwindling in Gaza, equally worrisome when it grew in prominence due to its dox, following the Greek Orthodox is the exodus of the larger community position astride several of the major Patriarch of Jerusalem, Theophilos III. in the West Bank. trade routes of late antiquity. Like According to censuses taken in other port cities of the eastern 2007 and 2017, respectively, there For nearly 2,000 years...

Mediterranean such as Antioch were 3,000 Christians living in he Christians left in Palestine and Israel are (near modern-day Antakya, TurGaza, while 47,000 were residing few in number but they belong to several difkey), Berytus (modern-day Beirut, in the West Bank (there are likely ferent churches. The Greek Orthodox Church of Antioch and the Syriac Orthodox Church of AntiLebanon), and Alexandria (in modless than 1,000 Christians living in och both have a presence in the Holy Land, as ern-day Egypt), Gaza was a gate Gaza at present). well as the Roman Catholic Church. between East and West. In these In addition to these, there are Eusebius, writing in the early 300s, was not cities, religious and cultural curalso Christian communities within the only ancient source to take note of the Chrisrents from the Greco-Roman world Israel itself as well as within the tian religious presence in Gaza. Toward the end of the 300s, a western Christian nun named to the west, the older Babylonian kingdom of Jordan. Some estiEgeria wrote a journal of her travels to Christian and Persian world to the east, and mates put the total number of sites in Egypt, Mount Sinai, Roman Palestine, the (possibly) even more ancient Christians under the jurisdiction of Syria and Mesopotamia. She described stopEgyptian civilization to the south the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of ping to see the places of biblical events and met, clashed, and often harmoJerusalem at 150,000. According to receiving the blessing of Christian monks living in each region. nized in unpredictable ways. Gaza Raheb’s research, “Attacks on clerAfter 1948, when the state of Israel was itself was located on the coastal gy and churches [have] quadrupled established and 700,000 Palestinians were disroad, known as the Derech Hayam this year compared to last year.” placed from their homes in what they came to in the Bible and as the Via Maris by Raheb sees a January 26 attack call the Nakba, or “catastrophe,” more Palestinthe Romans. The port was a major on an Armenian bar in the Christian ian Christians joined the community on the coastal enclave. center of the incense and spice quarter of Jerusalem’s old city by Estimates have indicated that the number of trade and during the Christian periIsraeli settlers, during which the Christians in Gaza dropped in recent years from od, Gaza, with its connection to the settlers shouted “Death to Arabs… the 3,000 registered in 2007, when Hamas earliest years of Christianity, conDeath to Christians,” and an attack assumed complete control of the strip, triggering tributed a great deal to the developseveral days later on Armenians Israel’s blockade and accelerating the departure of Christians from the poverty-stricken ment of Byzantine spirituality and leaving a memorial service in the enclave. Now the community fears extinction. monasticism.

Armenian Quarter during which In Acts 26, Philip baptizes an settlers climbed the walls of the “court official of Candace, queen of the There are also Syriac, Coptic, Ethiopi- Armenian convent while trying to Ethiopians” near Gaza, along “the road an, and Armenian Orthodox communi- lower its flag (which displays a cross), that goes down from Jerusalem to ties present among the Christians of the along with several other prominent Gaza.” Church historian Eusebius of Holy Land. Prof. Shepardson explains events, as indicators of a broader trend.

Caesarea, in his History of Martyrs in that, following the Council of ChalPerhaps the starkest statement on Palestine, writes in the early 4th centu- cedon in 451, a division of Christians of the circumstances Christians in the ry of Christians from Gaza dying in the the Near East took place: “Many of Holy Land are facing was made by a persecutions of Emperor Diocletian Roman Palestine’s neighbors in Egypt, 31-year-old Christian from Gaza who alongside their bishop, Sylvanus.

Syria and Mesopotamia rejected this spoke to Al Jazeera in the aftermath of According to University of Ten- council because they believed the Son the bombing of St. Porphyrius, a man nessee Professor of Religious Studies of God had a single nature, at once who identified himself only as Fadi.

Christine Shepardson, Gaza itself was human and divine. They are called “This message is to Biden, the pres“a center of Greek learning,” to which ‘miaphysite’ Christians, which in ident of the United States,” Fadi said.

Christianity spread after flourishing in Greek means ‘one nature.’ Most Chris- “The Christian community in Gaza is the nearby port city of Maiuma: “In the tians of Roman Palestine, however, being targeted. No one is safe and early fifth century, the small Christian accepted the council and remained in everyone is in danger. Everyone should community of Gaza found a zealous the imperial church of Rome and Con- move to stop this.”m

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MARCH-APRIL 2024 INSIDE THE VATICAN 19

NEWS

among PoSSible deStinationS in 2024: FranciS’ home country — Finally n BY ZEnIT nEWS/ITV STAFF

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n the 11 years since Pope Francis assumed the Petrine office, on March 13, 2013, he has never once returned to his homeland, and many have found it puzzling.

Pope John Paul II immediately returned to his homeland, Poland, the year after he became Pope in 1978, with a pilgrimage to nine Polish cities in June 1979. He traveled to Poland twice more during his pontificate. Benedict XVI visited Germany several times as Pope. Yet Francis, despite visiting both Paraguay and Bolivia — both countries bordering Argentina — during a 2015 trip, has never gone “home.” Some wonder if there has been something stopping him. Indeed, Francis referred to the Argentine government as a perceived roadblock when he said in a recent January 14, 2024 interview that a trip to Argentina is now possible “because there is a change of government.”

So this year Pope Francis will have perhaps his best opportunity to finally return to the land of his birth, where he spent his entire life and ecclesial career until being elected Pope. In the January interview, the pontiff said: “In August, I have to make the trip to Polynesia, very far away, and after that, the one to Argentina would be made if it can be done. I want to go there.” Regarding Argentina, the Pope added: “There, people are suffering a lot. It is a difficult time for the country. The possibility of making a trip in the second half of the year is being considered because there is a change of government, there are new things…” The Pope already has an official invitation from the new president, Javier Milei, 53.

20 INSIDE THE VATICAN MARCH-APRIL 2024

Since he became PoPe 11 yearS ago, FranciS haS covered more than a quarter

FRANCE

million mileS — but never to argentina.

UNITED STATES VIETNAM

that could change thiS year

CANARY ISLANDS

INDONESIA

ARGENTINA

PAPUA NEW GUINEA

POLYNESIA TIMOR EST

CHILE NEW ZELAND

As for Polynesia, it is not exactly known which country in that geographical region he would visit (Polynesia is composed of four nations, namely: Samoa, Kiribati, Tonga, and Tuvalu, and by five territories of the United States, France, new Zealand, Chile, and the United Kingdom located in that area).

A HISTORIC VISIT TO COMMUnIST VIETnAM? But Polynesia and Argentina are not the only possible destinations for 2024. In a papal audience granted to members of the Communist Party of Vietnam on January 18, Pope Francis told them that he intends to visit their country. The Pope’s desire must have some seriousness, as the Secretary for Relations with States, Archbishop Richard Paul Gallagher, now has plans to visit Vietnam in April 2024.

And as far as is known, after him, Cardinal Parolin, the Secretary of State of the Pope, will also go to Vietnam. Moreover, in December 2023, Vietnamese President Vo Van Thuong sent a letter to the Pope inviting him

to visit the country. During the return trip from Mongolia, Pope Francis expressed his desire to go to Vietnam.

Pope Francis will visit Papua new Guinea in August, the country's foreign minister, Justin Tkatchenko, said in January. The government has received an “official note” that Francis will visit “in August for three days.” Reportedly, the Pope could at that time also visit East Timor and Indonesia in August — countries he planned to visit in 2020 — but that has not been officially confirmed.

The Canary Islands could be another destination for the Pope in 2024. On January 15, Francis received the president of the Canary Islands, an autonomous community of Spain, and the three bishops from Tenerife and the titular and auxiliary bishops of Gran Canaria. The Pope learned about the drama resulting from migration waves from Africa and expressed a desire to visit the region. The Canary Islands are on the way to... Argentina, and thus, this trip possibly could take place in the second half of 2024 as well.m

NEWS

PoPe to Vatican journalists: “Build Bridges instead of diVisions” n BY DEVIn WATKInS (VATICAn nEWS) Clementine Hall. January 22, 2014. Francis addresses Vatican journalists for the first time (Vatican Media)

“The beauty of your work around Peter is that it is founded on the solid rock of responsibility in truth, not on the fragile sands of gossip and ideological interpretations.” ope Francis offered that reminder recently to 150odd journalists accredited to the Vatican, frequently known by the insider term “Vaticanisti.”

Francis met early on January 22 with members of the International Association of Journalists Accredited to the Vatican and noted that being a journalist is a vocation, something like that of a doctor, “who chooses to love humanity by caring for its illnesses.”

“In a way, this is what a journalist does, choosing to personally touch the wounds of society and the world,” he said. “It’s a calling that emerges from a young age and leads to understanding, shedding light on, and recounting.”

election and ahead of the continuation of the Second Vatican Council.

He said the work of journalists covering the Vatican and the Church should not be guided by secular and political categories.

Rather, he added, their service “must take into account what truly informs the life of the Church, namely its religious and moral purposes and its unique spiritual qualities.”

Pope Francis thanked the Vaticanisti for seeking to look beyond appearances and avoiding the twin pitfalls of turning news about the Vatican into a mere spectacle or of idealizing it under the guise of politics.

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LOVInG HUMAnITY, LEARnInG HUMILITY

The Holy Father went on to express his gratitude to the Vaticanisti for their journalistic work and for their “constancy and patience” in building “bridges of knowledge and communication instead of divisions and diffidence.”

Reflecting on the identity of a reporter, the Pope cited the words of an 80-year-old Vatican journalist — Luigi Accattoli.

“In my many years of Vatican journalism,” wrote Accattoli, “I have learned the art of seeking and narrating stories of life, which is a way of loving humanity [...]. I have learned humility. I have encountered many men of God

who have helped me to believe and to remain human.”

Pope Francis repeated Accattoli’s summary of his life as a Vaticanista.

“Despite the difficulties, this is a beautiful encouragement: love humanity; learn humility,” he said.

SUBTLETY OF SPIRIT, JOURnALISTIC SKILL

The Pope also recalled an admonition given to reporters by his predecessor, Pope St. Paul VI, soon after his

RESPECTFUL HAnDLInG OF SCAnDALS

The Pope answers to Traditional Mass question

Speaking to British reporter Michael Haynes, 28, of LifeSiteNews at the Pope’s January 22 audience with journalists, Pope Francis defended his 2021 restrictions on the Church’s traditional liturgy.

“Read the motu proprio; everything is there for you, ” Pope Francis told Haynes when asked why – given that so many young people love the traditional Mass – he had enacted restrictions on it.

In the letter explaining his reasons for releasing Traditionis Custodes, Pope Francis said he was trying to stop “the instrumental use of the Missale Romanum of 1962,” which he said “is often characterized by a rejection not only of the liturgical reform, but of the Vatican Council II itself, claiming, with unfounded and unsustainable assertions, that it betrayed the Tradition and the ‘true Church.’”

Further, Francis cited a survey of the world’s bishops carried out by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) regarding the Traditional Mass as another reason for the suppression of the Traditional Mass.

The actual survey results have never been released, however, prompting some, like the late Pope Benedict XVI’s longtime secretary, Archbishop Georg Gänswein, to view this rationale as “mysterious.”

Departing from his prepared text, Pope Francis thanked the Vatican journalists for “the delicacy that you often show in speaking about the scandals of the Church,” referring to respect for the victims and to the “silence” full of shame regarding the more lurid details.

“Thank you,” he said. “Thank you for this attitude when you have to talk about scandals.”

The work of journalists covering the Vatican, he said, requires combining “subtlety of spirit” with journalistic skill, in order to communicate Vatican events “with testimony, even before using words.”

Their task, he concluded, “lies in not hiding reality and its miseries, not sugarcoating the tensions but at the same time not creating unnecessary noise, rather striving to capture the essential, in light of the nature of the Church.”m

MARCH-APRIL 2024 INSIDE THE VATICAN 21

INTERVIEW

the “heartache” of PoPe emerituS benedict xVi PaPal biograPher Peter Seewald on TradiTiones CusTodes, homoSexuality and doctrine... n BY NICO SPUNTONI

Monastery Mater Ecclesiae, Vatican Gardens. Pope Francis during one of his courtesy visits to Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI in the presence of Benedict’s secretary, Archbishop George Ganswein

A remarkable new interview concerning the relationship between Pope Benedict XVI, who died December 31, 2022, and Pope Francis appeared December 27, 2023 on the Italian website, La Nuova Bussola Quotidiana (“The New Daily Compass”).

In the interview, German writer Peter Seewald, who worked closely with Benedict for more than 25 years, reveals that Francis didn’t tell Benedict he was tearing up Summorum Pontificum. The Pope Emeritus was “stabbed in the heart,” learning about the new document restricting the celebration of the old Mass only from the media, Seewald says. — RM

J

oseph Aloisius Ratzinger would have been a figure to be remembered in the history of the Church even if he had not been elected to the papal throne.

In 2005, however, the Lord called one of the greatest living theologians, the man to whom St. John Paul II entrusted the custody of Catholic orthodoxy for 23 years, to become Pope.

Benedict XVI’s pontificate ended, traumatically, more than a decade ago, and his earthly life ended a year ago, depriving the precincts of St Peter’s of that “service of prayer” promised at his last general audience on February 27, 2013.

What has become of Ratzinger’s legacy in the current pontificate?

This is a question the Daily Compass asked Peter Seewald, a German journalist, friend and biographer of Benedict XVI with whom he has written four interview-books.

Nico Spuntoni: Is it fair to say that the relationship between Benedict XVI and Francis was “very close,” as Francis recently declared?

PETER SEEWALD: Good question. We all remember the warm words that Cardinal Ratzinger spoke at the requiem for John Paul II. Words that touched the heart, that spoke of Christian love, of respect. But no one remembers 22

INSIDE THE VATICAN MARCH-APRIL 2024

Bergoglio’s words at the requiem for Benedict XVI. They were as cold as the whole ceremony, which had to be rather brief so as not to honor his predecessor too much.

At least that was my impression.

Your judgment is harsh.

I mean, how does one manifest friendship? With a mere statement in words, or by living it? The differences between Benedict XVI and his successor were great from the start. In temperament, culture, intellect and above all in the direction of the pontificates. In the beginning, Benedict did not know much about Bergoglio, except that as a bishop in Argentina he was known for his authoritarian leadership. He promised his successor obedience. Francis obviously regarded it as a kind of “blank check.” Even his predecessor remained silent so as not to give the slightest impression of wanting to interfere in his successor’s governance. Benedict trusted Francis. But he was bitterly disappointed several times.

What do you mean by this?

Bergoglio continued to write nice letters to the Pope Emeritus after his election. He knew he could not hold a candle to this great and noble spirit. He also repeatedly spoke of the gifts of his predecessor, calling him a “great Pope” whose legacy will become more evident from generation to generation.

Clockwise from upper left, men removed from their office or post by Pope Francis: Cardinal Gerhard Ludwig Müller former Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith, US Bishop Joseph Strickland, US Cardinal Raymond Leo Burke and Hong Kong's Cardinal Joseph Zen

In his small monastery in the center of the Vatican, the But if one really speaks of a “great Pope” out of conelderly Pope Emeritus acted like the light on the mountain. viction, shouldn’t one do everything possible to cultivate The Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben also sees it as his legacy? Just as Benedict XVI did with regard to John a katechon, a restraint, based on the Apostle Paul’s Second Paul II? Letter to the Thessalonians. The term katechon is also As we can see today, Pope Francis has done very little interpreted as “obstacle.” For something or someone who indeed to remain in continuity with his predecessors. stands in the way of the end times.

What does this mean in concrete terms?

According to Agamben, Ratzinger, as a young theoloBergoglio is not a European. He has little knowledge of gian, in an interpretation of St Augustine, distinguished our continent’s culture. Above all, he seems to have an between a Church of the wicked and a Church of the rightaversion to the Westernized traditions of the Catholic eous. From the beginning, the Church.

Church was inextricably mixed: it As a South American and a is both the Church of Christ and the Jesuit, he has erased much of what Church of the Antichrist. was precious and dear to Ratzinger.

From this point of view, BeneDecisions were mostly made dict’s resignation inevitably led to autocratically, by a small circle of the separation of the “good” Church followers. from the “black” Church, the separSuffice it to recall the ban on the ation of the wheat from the chaff.

Tridentine Mass. Benedict had built However, Hong Kong’s Cardia small bridge to a largely forgotten nal Joseph Zen recently pointed treasure island, which until then had out that Benedict himself had only been accessible through diffirepeatedly warned of the “danger of cult terrain. It was a matter close to a doctrinal landslide.” the German Pope’s heart and there When I asked Pope Benedict was really no reason to tear down why he could not die, he replied that this bridge again. It was obviously a he had to stay. As a kind of memordemonstration of the new power. ial to the authentic message of The subsequent purge of staff comChrist. pleted the picture. Many people What are the most critical who supported Ratzinger’s course aspects of Fiducia supplicans? and Catholic doctrine were “guilIn his speeches, Pope Francis lotined.” says many right things. But a pastor, Are you talking about the foras the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, mer Prefect of the Congregation “M ANY PEOPLE WHO SUPPORTED Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa for the Doctrine of Faith, Cardinal Gerhard Ludwig Müller, and RATZINGER’S COURSE AND CATHOLIC (presumably a genuine candidate for the next conclave) recently clarthe case of Monsignor Georg DOCTRINE WERE ‘GUILLOTINED’” ified, should on the one hand “listen Gänswein? to the flock,” but on the other hand “also lead, offer guidIt was an unprecedented event in the history of the ance and say where they should go.” Pizzaballa said: “One Church that Archbishop Gänswein, the closest collabomust not make oneself dependent on the expectations of rator of a highly deserving Pope, the greatest theologian others.” ever to sit on the See of Peter, was thrown out of the VatiThe problem with Francis in the past has been that he can in disgrace. He was not even given a word of pro has failed to keep many of his promises, sometimes saying forma thanks for his work. Of course, the purge primarily “white” and sometimes “black,” making ambiguous stateconcerned the man whose lineage Gänswein represents, ments, contradicting himself repeatedly and causing conBenedict XVI. siderable confusion.

More recently, it was US Bishop Strickland, BeneIn the case of a document like Fiducia supplicans, dict’s friend and a critic of Bergoglio, who was removed which can be interpreted in so many different ways, there from office on the pretext of financial misconduct — an is also the fact that what has just been considered correct obviously implausible reason. And when a Ratzinger supis suddenly declared wrong without much of a decisionporter like 75-year-old Cardinal Burke is deprived ovmaturation process. Not to mention the divisive effect this ernight of his home and salary without any explanation, it has on the Church and the absolutely disastrous timing of is difficult to recognise the Christian fraternity in all this. its publication.

You mentioned the lack of continuity: do you think The big issue before Christmas was not the commema document like Fiducia supplicans would have been oration of Christ’s birth, but the apparently much more published if Benedict XVI had still been alive?

MARCH-APRIL 2024 INSIDE THE VATICAN

23

INTERVIEW ThE hEaRTachE of PoPE EmERITus BENEdIcT XVI longer be needed as a watchdog important blessing of same-sex office for the true Catholic faith, couples by the Church! The media Francis explained (in his letter to far from the Church were enthusiFernandez upon his appointment), astic about it and no one thought but as a promoter of the charism of about the fact that such an importhe theologians. Nobody knows tant document was not — as was what this actually means. Reality is customary under Benedict XVI — always more important than the discussed and approved by the Pleidea, he added. nary Assembly of the Congregation Put simply: what is important is for the Doctrine of the Faith, but not what the Council, for example, was simply decreed autocratically. said about the faith, but what people In your opinion, would CardiPope Francis with Víctor Manuel Fernandez.

(Photo: Vatican Media - Ag.Siciliani) are asking for. At the same time, nal Víctor Manuel Fernández, Francis softened John Paul II’s artiauthor of the Declaration, have “VÍCTOR MANUEL FERNÁNDEZ IS cle on the organization of the dicasbeen appointed head of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith NOT QUALIFIED FOR THIS IMPORTANT tery, which concerned the protecTASK, EXCEPT FOR ONE THING: tion of the “truth of the faith and the if Benedict had remained alive? integrity of morals.”

Difficult to say. Francis and his HE IS THE PROTÉGÉ OF AN Above all, Fernández should circle could assume that although ARGENTINEAN POPE” (Pope Francis wrote to him) “take the Emeritus was faithful to his into account the most recent magisterium” in his interprepromise of obedience, he would no longer remain silent if tations, namely, that of his Argentine mentor. the level of destruction of the Church, which God apparIt seemed a quid pro quo that the Pope exempted the ently allowed, became unbearable. Immediately after his new Prefect for the Doctrine of the Faith from having to death, the considerations that were still valid during his deal with sexual abuse in the Church. Ratzinger, his prelifetime were abandoned. decessor in the post, had however brought this area under It became right that a man like Víctor Manuel Fernánhis authority because he saw that elsewhere crimes were dez, who was quickly given a cardinal’s hat, should be swept under the carpet and victims appointed to the post of Prefect for left alone. However, Fernández is the Doctrine of the Faith. The Ar“WITH SUMMORUM PONTIFICUM gentinean is not qualified for this RATZINGER WANTED TO PACIFY THE no stranger to this topic. The Argenimportant task, except for one CHURCH WITHOUT QUESTIONING THE tine daily La Izquierda Diario reported that, as archbishop of La thing: he is the protégé of an Argentinean Pope. Until now, aptitude VALIDITY OF THE MASS ACCORDING Plata, he had covered up at least 11 TO THE 1969 ROMAN MISSAL” cases of sexual abuse by priests “in was the main criterion for these various forms.” appointments, but under Bergoglio Another proof of discontinuity it seems that only loyalty to the line was the repeal of the liberalizacounts. Even before taking office, tion of celebrations in the ExtraFernández had announced a kind of ordinary Form of the Roman rite. self-demonization of the Catholic In the letter to the bishops accomChurch. He wanted to change the panying the publication of Tradicatechism, relativize Bible statetionis Custodes, Francis said that ments, and question celibacy. He the intention of Summorum Ponknew he would not have much time tificum had been “often gravely left. He realised that he would not disregarded.” Had Benedict XVI be able to stay with any subsequent really failed so badly with the soPope. He was in a hurry. called Latin Mass?

So he immediately raised his oriOn the contrary. Ratzinger wantentation as a leader towards new ed to pacify the Church without doctrine. He speaks then of an “exquestioning the validity of the Mass panded understanding” of things: according to the 1969 Roman Misthis is the door which opens to the sal. “The way we treat the liturgy,” legitimization of previously unhe explained, “determines the desknown interpretations of the Cathtiny of the faith and the Church.” olic faith.

Francis, on the other hand, deIn the future, the Dicastery for scribed the traditional forms as a the Doctrine of the Faith will no 24 INSIDE THE VATICAN MARCH-APRIL 2024

You met him often even after his resignation: is it “nostalgic disease.” If the intention had indeed been true that Benedict XVI had been very concerned in “gravely disregarded,” it would have been appropriate, recent years about the situation in the German Church first, to obtain an opinion from Benedict, and, second, to and in particular about the consequences of the soprove this accusation. But there is no investigation into called Synodal Path? this, let alone any documentation of the alleged cases.

Ratzinger repeatedly expressed this concern also as And the claim that the majority of bishops voted in Prefect for the Doctrine of the Faith. In fact, he had already favor of repealing Benedict’s Summorum Pontificum in a felt offended after the Second Vatican Council, when he worldwide poll is not true, according to my information. criticized its watering-down and reinterpretation. He What I find particularly shameful is that the Pope Emeriaccused the Catholic establishment in his country of distus was not even informed of this act, but had to learn playing mostly busyness, self-promotion and boring about it from the press. He was stabbed in the heart. debates on structural issues “that First he spoke of abuse. You, completely miss the mission of the who reconstructed the facts of Catholic Church,” instead of a Father Peter H.’s case in the “dynamic of faith.” He said it is a biography Benedict XVI — A huge mistake to think that it is Life, can you explain why [Presienough to wear a different cloak to dent of the German Bishops’ be loved and recognised by others Conference] Bishop Bätzing was again. Christianity can only be a wrong when he asked Ratzinger true partner in the difficult issues of to apologize for his handling of modern civilization through its resabuse as Archbishop of Munich? olutely presented ethics.

The president of the German For Ratzinger, renewal consists Bishops’ Conference knows that in rediscovering the fundamental no one else in the Catholic Church 2020. Peter Seewald presented to Pope Emeritus competences of the Church. Reforhas taken such decisive steps in the August Benedict XVI the last of his biographical volumes fight against sexual abuse as the dedicated to him, the result of his conversations already mation, he emphasised, means preformer Prefect of the Faith and from his role as head of the Holy Office (now Dicastery for serving in renewal, renewing in the Doctrine of the Faith) preservation, to bring the witness Pope. Italian journalist Gianluigi (Photo - Jakob John Seewald) of faith with new clarity into the Nuzzi said that Benedict has “removed the cloak of silence and “THE POPE EMERITUS ALWAYS ADDED darkness of the world. The search forced his Church to focus on the IN OUR CONVERSATIONS WHAT HE WAS for what is contemporary must never lead to the abandonment of victims.” He has done much more than Pope Francis against this scan- DEEPLY CONVINCED OF: ‘IN THE END, what is true and valid and to adapCHRIST WILL PREVAIL!’” tation to what is current. In this dalous evil. regard, he was skeptical of the elitBishop Bätzig’s claim that the ist “Synodal Way,” whose practitioners are in no way Pope Emeritus did not apologize for “what was done to the legitimized by the people of the Church. Moreover, as he victims with the transfer of an abuser” is pure misinformagrew older, this development saddened him greatly. Durtion. One thing is certain: in his statement of February 6, ing one of our meetings, he had to ask himself how many 2022, following the controversy on the much-discussed dioceses in his country could still be called Catholic in Munich report, the Pope Emeritus made it clear that he terms of leadership. could “only express once again my deep shame, my great He was not resigned to this. He also saw the many sorrow and my sincere apology to all victims of sexual youth initiatives rediscovering Catholicism and thus abuse.” He has “assumed a great responsibility in the attracting more and more people, while on the contrary Catholic Church. My sorrow is even greater for the crimes those that claim to be particularly contemporary are not and errors that have occurred during my tenure and in the only experiencing increasing spiritual dryness, but also an places concerned [...]. The victims of sexual abuse have impoverishment of personnel, not to mention a loss of my deepest sympathy and I regret each and every case.” members.

With regard to the case of the priest Peter H. from But even if the current situation of the Church and the Essen, dating from when Ratzinger was bishop of Muworld did not give cause for rejoicing, the Pope Emeritus nich, the team of legal advisors of the Pope Emeritus conalways added in our conversations what he was deeply cluded that the former bishop of Munich, as he himself convinced of: “In the end, Christ will prevail!”m stated, was neither aware that the priest “was an abuser, nor that he was used in pastoral care.” The lawyers said This interview was originally published on the webthat the report “contains no evidence of an allegation of site La Nuova Bussola Quotidiana, at https://lanuovmisconduct or assistance in a cover-up.” The documents abq.it, and is republished here with kind permission. unreservedly support Benedict XVI’s statements.

MARCH-APRIL 2024 INSIDE THE VATICAN 25

CONFERENCES BENEDICT XVI’S LEGACY

Benedict XVi cOntinues tO speak tO the wOrld One year after his death, schOlars and friends illuminate his life and wOrk n BY ITV STAFF/NCR Conference at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome, titled “Benedict XVI’s Legacy: Unfinished Debates on Faith, Culture and Politics,” November 29, 2023 (Photo: Isabella H. de Carvalho/Aleteia)

Bottom, Former Vatican ambassador Mary Ann Glendon Opposite page, top: Fr. Vincent Twomey, professor emeritus of moral theology and a student and friend of Joseph Ratzinger, and Cardinal Gerhard Müller, prefect emeritus of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith

D

espite the now 11 years that have passed since XVI Institute of Regensburg, Germany. Harvard Law Pope Benedict XVI abdicated the papal throne, professor emerita and former American Ambassador to Catholics around the world remain determined the Vatican, Mary Ann Glendon, 85, gave the keynote to uphold and expand the legacy of the late Pope Emerspeech at the conference honoring the life and work of itus — a legacy that Benedict biographPope Benedict XVI a year after his er and friend Peter Seewald recently death. described as “being erased.”

Glendon told her listeners that on the To this end, a November 29 conferplane on his way to the USA in 2008, ence at the Pontifical Gregorian UniPope Benedict XVI had reminded jourversity in Rome, titled “Benedict XVI’s nalists that his impending visit to the Legacy: Unfinished Debates on Faith, UN on the occasion of the anniversary Culture and Politics,” was held to disof the Declaration of Human Rights was cuss Benedict XVI’s analysis of human especially significant, as the world was rights by focusing on a speech he gave experiencing a “crisis in values” — a at the United Nations in 2008. crisis that is, if anything, more dire The conference, the first in a today.

MARY ANN GLENDON series which continues at the UniIn his UN speech, she related, “I WAS PRESENT AT THE UNITED versity of Notre Dame in South he began by explaining his appreBend, Indiana, USA, April 8-9, NATIONS WHEN BENEDICT GAVE HIS ciation for this document before 2024, was sponsored by Notre SPEECH IN 2008... THE APPLAUSE HE following with “the most cautionDame’s De Nicola Center for ary, sober, discussion of human RECEIVED WAS A RECOGNITION OF Ethics and Culture, The Vatican rights that has ever been issued THE POPE AS A GLOBAL MORAL Foundation Joseph Ratzingerfrom a papal pen before or since.”

WITNESS” Benedict XVI, and the Benedict According to Professor Glendon, 26

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among the “10 threats to the human Teutonico within the Vatican walls. rights project” identified by Benedict in Divine Word Missionary Fr. Vincent his writing and speaking, particularly Twomey, former Holy See Press Office relevant today is that the “concept of director Federico Lombardi, SJ, Cardihuman dignity is highly contested,” nal Gerhard Ludwig Müller, EWTN’s clouding the understanding of the founeditorial director Matthew Bunson, dation of human rights. Another she Swiss Cardinal Kurt Koch, Fr. Ralph highlighted is Benedict XVI’s analysis Weinmann and Archbishop Georg that there has been a shift from “the proGänswein, longtime personal secretary tection of human dignity” generalto Pope Benedict, all participated ly understood towards “the satisin the 2-day conference.

FR. VINCENT TWOMEY faction of simple interests — often BENEDICT’S “LASTING LEGACY WILL particular” ones.

RATZInGER’S WRITInGS A KEY “Efforts seem to have steadily BE HIS WRITINGS… ALL HIS WRITINGS TO LIBERATIOn AS PROFESSOR, FROM DIFFERENT increased to achieve international Fr. Twomey, 82, told an interSTAGES , HIS WRITINGS AS recognition as rights for claims viewer after his remarks that Benthat have neither broad consensus edict’s “lasting legacy will be his ARCHBISHOP, AS CARDINAL, AS around the world nor firm groundwritings… all his writings as proPREFECT AND AS POPE... THEY ALL ing in international law, and that fessor, from different stages, his HAVE A MARVELOUS RICHNESS AND has become a major contributor to writings as archbishop, as cardiULTIMATELY THEY ARE INSPIRED, IN the human rights crisis,” she said. nal, as prefect and as Pope... they THE HUMAN FASHION AT LEAST, BY Glendon was actually present at all have a marvelous richness and the UN when Benedict gave his AN EXTRAORDINARY LOVE FOR JESUS ultimately they are inspired, in the 2008 speech, for which he rehuman fashion at least, by an CHRIST” ceived a standing ovation. The forextraordinary love for Jesus mer ambassador viewed the applause as honoring the Christ.

Pope “as a global moral witness.”

“Of course the world has gone crazy because there is “I think also […] it was in gratitude for hearing a few no longer a public acceptance of God and therefore of words of truth being spoken by someone who wasn’t the limits, moral limits, of what we can do… But he was there just as a representative of a sovereign entity that full of hope, in God the Creator… which means that no was his own, but who was speaking to all of humanity,” matter what we do, man cannot destroy it…” she concluded.

“Wherever there are men and women, and very often Professors Jean-Pierre Schouppe (Pontifical Univerchildren, who recognize the truth,” continued Fr. Twomsity of Santa Croce) and Laurent Trigeaud (Université de ey, “then God becomes present in that society. My great Paris Panthéon-Assas) also spoke in reference to Profeshope for the future is the young people I know of, who sor Glendon’s remarks. have discovered [Ratzinger’s] writings; The conference preceded by one day they are, as it were, the key to their the ceremony awarding the 2023 Ratz‘livelihood’ so they can be liberated inger Prize to Professors Francesc Torfrom this terrible darkness that surralba Roselló and Pablo Blanco Sartoat rounds us. in the Apostolic Palace in Rome.

“All these problems today are forms of escapism… suicide, alcohol, drugs, LIFE, TEACHInG, LEGACY sex… all forms of escape, because man A second conference celebrating the hos lost the heart of transcendence. And legacy of Joseph Ratzinger/Pope Benethen there is no hope, no faith, and no dict XVI, titled “Remembering love…”

Benedict XVI: Life, Teaching, CARDINAL GERHARD MÜLLER Legacy,” was held a month later, “HE WAS GOInG TO A FRIEnD” “JOSEPH RATZINGER’S ENTIRE on December 30-31, 2023, and Archbishop Gänswein, 67, CHRISTOLOGY AND PIETY co-hosted by EWTN, the Fundatio noted how prophetic Benedict Christiana Virtus, and the Vatican FOR CHRIST IS A UNIQUE TESTIMONY XVI was in his teaching and writJoseph Ratzinger-Benedict XVI ing, and how he had warned “decTO JESUS WHO LEADS US IN OUR Foundation, drawing on scholars, ades earlier” that when society forFAITH AND BRINGS US experts, and some of his friends. It gets God, everything implodes. He TO PERFECTION” took place at the Campo Santo also remembered how, for BeneMARCH-APRIL 2024 INSIDE THE VATICAN

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CONFERENCES BENEDICT XVI’S LEGACY dict, reason and faith were “the The German cardinal, who ARCHBISHOP GEORGE GÄNSWEIN founded the Benedict XVI Instigreat themes of his life and also as Pope,” and how he saw beauty at tute to make available Joseph “...FOR BENEDICT, REASON the service of truth.

Ratzinger’s collected works, said AND FAITH WERE “THE GREAT “Beauty is the little sister of the Benedict XVI “confessed during THEMES OF HIS LIFE AND ALSO AS truth, the fruit of the truth,” the his lifetime that [Christ] is truly POPE,” AND HOW HE SAW BEAUTY risen, that he is the living God, that archbishop said, recalling BeneAT THE SERVICE OF TRUTH.” dict’s teaching. “Where there is we trust in him and so know we are truth there is beauty; people sense on the right path.” Christianity for that by heart and that’s very important.”

Joseph Ratzinger, the cardinal reminded the audience, Archbishop Gänswein told the conference that Bene“is not a theory but a relationship with a Person, our Savdict “practiced what he had always taught: to prepare the ior.” way to eternal life.” He added, “My impression was that he was going to a friend, a friend to whom he was dedi“In THE EUCHARIST WE ARE UnITED cated all his life.”

WITH BEnEDICT XVI” At a Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica to mark Benedict’s CHRISTIAnITY IS nOT A THEORY, passing on December 31, 2022, Gänswein spoke of how BUT A RELATIOnSHIP the Church’s faithful, both her living members and Reflecting on the centrality of Christ in Benedict’s “deceased loved ones,” are united through the Eucharist. theology, Cardinal Gerhard Müller, 76, prefect emeritus “In the Eucharist we also remain united with Beneof the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, said dict XVI,” he said, “sincerely grateful to God for the gift “Joseph Ratzinger’s entire Christology and piety for of his life, the richness of his magisterium, the depth of Christ is a unique testimony to Jesus who leads us in our his theology and the shining example of this ‘simple and faith and brings us to perfection.” humble worker in the vineyard of the Lord.’ Amen.”m

Was BenedIct XVI’s PontIfIcate a success or a faILure?

Introductory remarks for a conference on “BenedIct XVI’s Legacy: unfInIshed deBates on faIth, cuLture and PoLItIcs,” heLd In rome on noVemBer 29, 2023, By a noted hIstorIan and Professor at the PontIfIcaL gregorIan unIVersIty n BY FR. ROBERTO REGOLI

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et us begin with a clear and straightforward question: Was Benedict XVI’s pontificate a success or a failure?

What does “success” or “failure” mean when it comes to a pontificate? It’s impossible to give a short, simple answer. I can only go back to an event that took place over a thousand years ago.

Gregory VII, a zealous, reforming Pope who confronted major crises in the Church in the 11th century, died in exile in Salerno. His pontificate seemed to end in failure. And yet it was the most important pontificate of the entire second millennium. It gave later Christianity its character and left a permanent imprint on the exer-

Author Fr. Roberto Regoli points his finger at Archbishop George Gänswein on the occasion of the presentation of Regoli’s book, Beyond the crisis of the Church: The pontificate of Benedict XVI in the great hall of the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome, where Joseph Ratzinger taught in 1972-1973

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cise of Church governance.

Benedict XVI was not in exile, but he was hidden from the world.

It is from this perspective that we can think about Benedict XVI’s legacy. After his election in 2005, it seemed that Benedict was going to be a transitional pontiff because of his advanced age and the fact that he was unlikely to deviate from the general magisterial approach of his predecessor, John Paul II. Yet the reality at the moment of his resignation in 2013 did not conform with these initial expectations. His pontificate proved to be much more significant.

It was not the pontificate of “restora-

Joseph Ratzinger at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome, as cardinal and during his visit as pope in November 2006.

Below, Roberto Regoli's 2016 book Beyond the Crisis of the Church offers the reader an overview of Joseph Ratzinger's life and papacy

tion,” which many feared — and conversation between Ratzinger and others hoped — it would be. More the philosopher Jürgen Habermas in than anything else, it was a pontifi2004, as well as an exchange between cate of consolidation, one that also Italian Marxist intellectuals and Ratzraised the stakes and took risks. inger’s theology.

Benedict XVI knew how to conBenedict XVI urged the Church to front the sexual abuse crisis. engage with an ever-growing number Benedict XVI’s pontificate was of cultural, political, and ethical phealso one of ecclesial and papal renomena. Without excessively worryform. It was no coincidence that the ing about reaching a perfect consenPope coordinated a simultaneous, sus, the Pope launched processes that systematic reform on the liturgical would lead to significant encounters and theological fronts through and dialogues about man’s ultimate “ecumenical” initiatives (primarily identity. In doing so, he roused up with the Lefebvrites and the Anglisupporters and naysayers alike. His cans), as well as on the canonical private deliberations about a possible front (changing the 1983 Code with resignation, however, may have the creation of “personal ordinaristunted the natural development of ates”). these new pathways.

Peter Seewald once asked BeneIn the face of all this, the initial dict: “Are you the end of the old or question returns: How are we to evalFR. ROBERTO REGOLI the beginning of the new?” He uate this pontificate? responded: “Both.” The question “IN A TIRED AND SELF-DESTRUCTIVE Only an immersion in Ratzinger’s and the answer are short and con- ERA THAT EXALTS MAN BUT, IN THE point of view will help us arrive at a cise. His pontificate eschews all proper consideration of his legacy.

END, CONTINUOUSLY HUMILIATES rigid categories.

For his gaze was fixed on Christ. In HIM, BENEDICT XVI CHOSE BOTH Benedict built on the foundation the end, it is “recognizing that the traFAITH IN GOD AND IN MAN. HE laid by John Paul II, who focused on ditio of the faith is precisely a matter the themes of anthropology and the of the exchange of glances” — our CHOSE THE HARMONY BETWEEN defense of the human person, preresponses to Christ’s loving gaze — FAITH AND REASON. THIS IS HIS paring the ground for a consistent “which taste of history, and which LEGACY” teaching on politics and bioethics. make history.”

The central themes that emerged from BeneBenedict himself gave an assessment of his dict’s pontificate were human rights and relipontificate on February 27, 2013, the day before gious freedom. These themes were addressed the sede vacante began: from a specifically theological, rather than philo“It has been a portion of the Church’s journey sophical or political, perspective. Benedict bewhich has had moments of joy and light, but also lieved that, because the state can only ever be a moments which were not easy; I have felt like St. civitas terrena and never a civitas Dei, authentic Peter with the Apostles in the boat on the Sea of Christianity must avoid both theologizing poliGalilee: the Lord has given us so many days of sun tics and politicizing theology. and of light winds, days when the catch was abunThe pontificate of Benedict XVI did not comdant; there were also moments when the waters promise with Western societies that rejected were rough and the winds against us, as throughGod’s truth. At the same time, Benedict XVI knew that it out Church history, and the Lord seemed to be sleeping. But was important to recognize that the moral truths present in I have always known that the Lord is in the boat, and I have modernity come from Christianity. Modernity is not a always known that the boat of the Church is not mine but monolith. Various elements of value are found within it. his. Nor does the Lord let it sink; it is he who guides it, sureAccording to Benedict, however, only a theological vision ly also through those whom he has chosen, because he so can fully explain the basis of those values. wished. This has been, and is, a certainty which nothing Benedict XVI’s general approach provoked many reaccan shake.” tions in the intellectual world. While the radical neo-EnlightBenedict XVI’s legacy is thus one of radical faith in enment crowd never budged, figures such as Marcello Pera, God. Moreover, in a tired and self-destructive era that an Italian philosopher and former president of the Italian exalts man but, in the end, continuously humiliates him, Senate, decided to explore and compare his own thinking Benedict XVI chose both faith in God and in man. He chose openly with Benedict’s. There was also an extraordinary the harmony between faith and reason. This is his legacy.m MARCH-APRIL 2024 INSIDE THE VATICAN 29

BEATIFICATION

herOism inspired by lOve: martyrdOm Of the blessed Ulma family On the 80th anniversary Of their death, their stOry is reaching the wOrld n BY AnnA ARTYMIAK September 10, 2023 in Markowa, Poland.

The President of the Republic of Poland Andrzej Duda was present during the beatification Mass for the “Blessed Martyrs of Markowa.” ceklebrated by Cardinal Semeraro, on behalf of Pope Francis, where he for the first time in the history of the Church beatified an entire family: the Ulma family.

(Photos - Grezgorz Galazka)

A STORY FROM A VILLAGE In THE POLISH PODKARPACKIE (SUBCARPATHIAn) REGIOn

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s the dark clouds of World War II loomed over Poland, fear of the Germans coming from the west and the Russians from the east paralyzed Poles’ daily lives.

Amidst the wartime conflagration, the lament of orphaned children, and the sobs of wives and mothers whose husbands and sons had been brutally taken from them, a great love blossomed between a village girl and a Jewish boy in Osobnica, in the Podkarpackie region of Poland. To no avail were the parents’ explanations that the war was not conducive to love, that a relationship between a Polish girl and a Jewish boy had no chance of survival. Young Maria’s heart burned with a flame that nothing could extinguish. The name of the Jewish boy was forgotten, but thanks to the courage and great sacrifice of Marysia (Maria) Byczek from a village near Jasło, his story still lives on.

According to the account of Paulina Buglewicz, neé Byczek, Maria’s sister, the girl helped the boy hide from the Germans. Unfortunately, when the German Opera30

INSIDE THE VATICAN MARCH-APRIL 2024

tion Reinhardt, which was supposed to annihilate all Jews, raged, the unfortunate young man fell into the hands of the executioners. Maria, now expecting his child, had to overcome many difficulties to find out the whereabouts of her beloved.

When she determined that he had been transported to a transit camp, or ghetto, in Przemyśl, she set out for it on foot. Despite her already visible pregnancy, she undertook the dangerous journey of more than 120 kilometers (almost 75 miles). When she reached her destination, due to a happy coincidence she found her beloved. Bribing the Germans, she flipped loaves of bread over the fence to the Jewish side for some time, bringing relief to her beloved’s Jewish brethren. Unfortunately, the Germans soon evacuated the Jews to a death camp.

Maria returned on foot to her hometown of Osobnica, where she soon gave birth to a son, Antoni. The young mother, though occasionally exposed to neighborhood mischief, was helped in raising her son by her sister Paulina, who had already been married during the war and was raising several children of her own. The

ity born of their faith in Christ. fruit of the love of a young Polish woman and a murOn that tragic night of March 24, 1944, German dered Jew, Antoni grew up with his cousin-brothers, and policemen stationed near the town of Łańcut in Poland after his mother’s untimely death (in the mid-1950s) he circled the Ulmas’ house while it was yet dark. The famwas left in the care of this family. ily were awakened from their sleep and taken out of the As soon as he grew up, he left for work in Silesia, building together with their eight Jewish friends: five where he started his own family. In Osobnica, the modmen from the Szall family from Łańcut, and their neighest grave of his mother remained in the cemetery, which bors from the Goldman, Grünfeld and Didner families her son came to visit. “From my childhood I remember from Markowa, whom they hid for a year and a half. uncle Antek, who, when visiting the cemetery, would The Germans first killed stop at my family home, the Jews, who were sleeping which years ago had also in the attic but then were been his home,” says Urszuawakened, brought out the la Buglewicz-Kamińska, the house and shot; after them, great-niece of Maria – a simthey killed Józef and the visple girl who fell in love with ibly pregnant Wiktoria. The a Jewish young man, and children were screaming and spared no effort to save him. crying; after a short converThis and many, if not sation the head of the group, most, of the stories of other Eilert Dieken, made a deciheroic Polish families who sion to shoot all the little saved, or at least tried to Ulmas also. The whole vilsave, their Jewish neighbors lage could hear the children’s or friends will never be pubA panoramic view of the Mass and, below, among the state and civil cries, which after each shot lished. A great number of authorities present, a representative of the Jewish community, became quieter and quieter, these people were themthe Chief Rabbi of Warsaw, Michael Schudrich until there was a complete, selves killed by the Germans during World War II; later, MOST STORIES OF HEROIC POLISH FAMILIES terrifying silence.

When the executors left, during the era of commuWILL NEVER BE PUBLISHED people went to the Ulmas’ nism in Poland, it was forbidhome. “I could never forget den to tell the whole truth it. The walls were dripping about what happened during with blood. I couldn’t help the war. The fear of persecuthe tears coming to my eyes tion prevented many families — and still they come, from transmitting their famithough now less often,” ly stories to the next generaconfessed one of the last tion. witnesses of this tragic AnOTHER HEROIC POLISH night, Stanisława Kuźniar, FAMILY Wiktoria’s relative and little For Urszula, whose greatWładziu’s godmother. A aunt is the Maria of our openfew of the people present ing story, as for many other asked the Germans to at Polish families last year, the least bury the Jews and September 10, 2023 beatification in Markowa of the Catholic Poles in two different tombs. Later on they Ulma family, who also lived in the same Podkarpackie moved the bodies of the whole family to be buried in region of Poland, is in some way also a recognition of four large, simple cassocks. The smaller children were the heroic conduct of their own relatives. Before World buried with their parents, and older ones together in War II there lived in Poland the biggest Jewish commupairs. It was then that they learned that the seventh child nity in Europe, with Warsaw as the city with the second had begun to be born when its mother was killed. They largest Jewish community in the world, after New York. could see that the baby’s head and part of an arm had This year, on March 24, 2024, is the 80th anniversary already emerged from the mother’s womb. of the tragic death of the Ulmas — Józef (44) and WikThe Ulmas, who spent their whole lives in Markowa toria (32) Ulma and their seven children: Stasia (8), in the Subcarpathian region — before World War II, the Basia (6), Władziu (5), Franuś (4), Antoś (3), Marysia biggest village in Poland — are not only an inspiration (1,5) and the last not yet fully born — as martyrs of charto all today, but they can become our intercessors in MARCH-APRIL 2024 INSIDE THE VATICAN

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BEATIFICATION UlmA FAmIly heaven. In these times especially, when the dark clouds of war loom over Ukraine, the Middle East and many other forgotten parts of the world, they can be to us patron saints for all who seek peace.

Although they were a humble family, there were many books in their home and Józef even subscribed to scientific journals to learn more about technical innovations. He can be considered a saint patron for inventors as he constructed a mill using electricity, and was the first in his village to use electricity to light his home rather than the kerosene lamps that were still in universal use at that time. Even today, the modern electric mills in Markowa still function along the lines of his innovations.

MODELS OF FAITH AnD FAMILY LIFE Józef and Wiktoria and their children lived a saintly life marked by reading and contemplation of the Gospel. The copy of their Bible is a silent witness of their deep faith. They underlined there the Parable of the Good Samaritan THE FIRST “BLESSED and wrote next to it the PHOTOGRAPHER” word “tak” (“yes” in PolAt the Pontifical Uniish). It is unknown today if versity of the Holy Cross they wrote it when the Szain Rome on December 4, lls first came to their house the opening of a photo asking for help, but one exhibition, including thing is certain: they didn’t Ulma family photos, by hesitate to help them. Their Grzegorz Galazka, entidecision shows how they tled “Blessed Martyrs of both deeply lived their Markowa,” took place.

THEY DECIDED TO HAVE CHILDREN DESPITE THE The presentation of the faith, and raised their children in that deep faith as exhibit was sponsored by CRUEL WAR RAGING well. (It is impressive that the Bernardinum publishtheir children never said ing house, as part of an anything to betray the fact international promotion that Jews were staying in focusing attention on the their house.)

Blessed Ulma family.

In the family memory Among those present were they were a loving couple: the Ambassador of the among many other saintly Republic of Poland to the married couples, they are Holy See, Voivodeship another couple becoming a Wladyslaw Ortyl, and spemodel for couples and parcial guest Cardinal Marcelents of today. Though they lo Semeraro, prefect of the didn’t have an easy life, Dicastery for the Causes of they trusted in God in their Saints, who, on behalf of difficulties, they were Pope Francis, beatified the humble and they were open Ulma family on September to life: they decided to have Photos taken by the father, Józef Ulma, of his family, before his and their 10 in Markowa. more children despite the Cardinal Semeraro death. They were: Józef (44) and Wiktoria (32) Ulma, and their seven cruel war raging around children: Stasia (8), Basia (6), Władziu (5), Franuś (4), Antoś (3), Marysia emphasized the unique(1.5) and the last not yet fully born... them. ness of the blessed Ulma They can also be taken as a model for modern farmfamily for a number of reasons, including the fact that ing families and those who run their own businesses. they were the first entire family to be elevated to the Wiktoria worked alongside and supported her husband altar together, and the first who suffered martyrdom in all their daily duties, at home and work. together for the hospitality they showed. Their story Józef and Wiktoria were not only hardworking; the expresses what Pope Francis has recently said, that holilife of the mind was also important to them. Children ness is realized “in community.” The cardinal noted that were kind and well-educated. The oldest attended their sacrifice is part of what St. John Paul II at the turn school, but when the war began, they turned to educatof the millennium called the “age of martyrs.” ing their children at home; thus, Józef and Wiktoria and “The beatification was emotionally very powerful,” their children can be models and patrons for teachers, he said. “For many reasons it had, and has, this beatifistudents and homeschooling families. cation character of uniqueness — uniqueness especial32 INSIDE THE VATICAN MARCH-APRIL 2024

ly because it is about an entire family. The Ulma family adding, “we can say, a ‘fellow photographer.’” was killed, slaughtered — as I like to say — for guardGałązka, also a Pole, confided that he experiences ing the ‘Christian roots.’ And that’s why they gave life help in his work through the intercession of Blessed [to others]; they were aware of the risks, but they felt the Józef Ulma. “Since he has been blessed, for some time duty to which the Lord God was calling them at that now, when I go to take pictures in the Vatican, following time — to host, to welcome, to guard. This is all theolthe Pope, I turn to him in a short prayer, and I must say ogy about the duty of hospitality.” that my work has become more joyful, more peaceful…

He then added: “Looking at this beautiful album, I also it seems that my pictures come out better.” don’t think there are any other blessed people who PATROnS OF LIFE have had their lives docuAlthough the day chosen mented, as happened in the for their liturgical feast is the case of the Ulma family, day of Józef and Wiktoria’s thanks to [Józef Ulma’s] wedding, July 7, the day of interest. We can ask the Holy their death, on the Feast of the Father before the canonizaAnnunciation, is very symtion to make Józef Ulma the bolic as it is celebrated in the patron saint of photograCatholic Church as a day of phers.” These words were the sanctity of life. In Poland rewarded with applause. At many faithful undertake the the same time thanking Arch“spiritual adoption” of an bishop Szal for the relics of unborn child,with a 9-month the Ulma family he had prayer for a child who is at received, he confided that risk of abortion and whose THE PHOTOS OF THE “BLESSED he keeps the reliquary on the name only God knows.

PHOTOGRAPHER” JÓZEF ULMA SPEAK TODAY altar at which he celebrates In fact, their dedication to Mass every day. life was just celebrated at this Then, on December 6, year’s March for Life in Grzegorz Gałązka told stuWashington, D.C., on Janudents at the Santa Croce uniary 19, 2024: relics of the versity about the bright spots entire Ulma family were and the shadows of the work available for veneration in of a photojournalist. The connection with the March, meeting was held as part of beginning January 12 at the the Wednesday series called National Shrine of Pope John Conversations around InstiPaul II, who was of course a tutional Communication, fellow Pole. The first-class and the topic was: “Holiness relics were part of another and photography: the Ulma exhibit entitled “The Good family, the blessed martyrs Samaritans of Markowa: The of Markowa.”

Sacrificial Love of the Ulma In his introduction, he Family,” continuing until the The relics of the Blessed Ulma Family on display in the Church of St. noted that a photographer Dorothy in Markowa, next to the baptismal font, where the entire family was end of March, just after the (Photo Grezgorz Galazka). Above, Cardinal Semeraro with Galazka at shouldn’t talk much, but baptized. actual 80th anniversary of his photo exhibit in Rome on December 4, 2023. (Photo Katarzyna) Artymiak) instead his photos should the Ulma family’s martyrspeak. “Also with the blessed photographer Józef dom on March 24.

Ulma: it is possible that he too did not speak much, but Today the tomb of the Blessed Ulma family is located his photos that we see today speak volumes. They say a in their parish church of St. Dorothy in Markowa, at the lot about the times he lived in before World War II, but side altar on the left, on the same side as the image of also during World War II, where you can say that war Our Lady of Markowa. always brings evil wherever it is. This is very sad.” This A simple tombstone is also kept at the nearby parish was the reality of war that the future Blessed lived in. cemetery.

Józef demonstrated the value of family: “The family People from all over come to pray for the intercesis always an important matter, but today, perhaps it is sion of this humble Catholic family whose “yes” written more important than all other things. This is what our next to the Parable of the Good Samaritan led to their new blessed photographer shows us,” noted Gałązka, destruction, all overshadowed now by their glory.m MARCH-APRIL 2024 INSIDE THE VATICAN 33

INTERVIEW

russIA’s new AmbAssAdor to the holy see AmbAssAdor IvAn soltAnovsky: the holy see Is An “Independent Actor wIth globAl outreAch And ImportAnce” n BY VICTOR GAETAn*

Below left, in on Decdember 1, 1989, Pope John Paul II met Mikhail Gorbachev and his wife, Raissa. Also present was Cardinal Agostino Casaroli a proponent of Vatican “Ostpolitik.” Below right, in 2007, Pope Benedict XVI met with Vladimir Putin in the presence of Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, Vatican Secretary of State (Vatican/Pool/Galazka)

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mbassador Ivan Soltanovsky Below, Pope Francis meets H.E. Mr. Ivan Soltanovsky, on the from St. Peter’s Basilica. In this, presented his credentials to occasion of the delivery of his credentials as Ambassador of his first Interview with a Western the Russian Federation to the Holy See, on September 18, Pope Francis on September journalist, Ambassador Ivan Solt2023 (Photo: Vatican Media - Ag.Siciliani) 18, 2023 as the third ambassador to anovsky shares the Russian perthe Holy See from the Russian Fedspective. eration. He also represents Russia to the Sovereign Order of Malta. DurVictor Gaetan: Pope Francis ing their historic meeting in 1989, prioritizes personal dialogue St. John Paul II and the Soviet with all parties to any conflict.

Union’s President Mikhail GorHe writes in Evangelii Gaudium: bachev announced the establish“When we live out a spirituality ment of diplomatic relations beof drawing nearer to others and tween Moscow and the Vatican and seeking their welfare, our hearts the first envoys were exchanged in are opened wide to the Lord’s 1990. Seven Russian envoys have greatest and most beautiful gifts. served at the Holy See since. (Pope Whenever we encounter another Benedict XVI and Russia’s Presiperson in love, we learn somedent Vladimir Putin established full thing new about God. Whenever diplomatic relations between the two countries in our eyes are opened to acknowledge the other, we December 2009.) grow in the light of faith and knowledge of God.” In the following interview, Ambassador Soltanovsky (para. 272). How important is Russia’s relationship explains the Russian perspective on relations with the with the Holy See? Holy See in the current historical phase. A career diploAMBASSADOR IVAN SOLANOVSKY: Very important. We mat, Ivan Soltanovsky has specialized in multilateral see the Holy See to be quite an independent actor with relations, as a representative to the OSCE (1996-2000), global outreach and importance. It is quite advanced in NATO (2003-2009), and served as Russia’s Permanent its approach to sensitive issues. It is always engaged in Representative to the Council of Europe (2015-2022). dialogue based on mutual respect.

Victor Gaetan interviewed him about his career and I read the encyclical Fratelli Tutti and have great Russia’s relationship with the Holy See in Russia’s respect for it. Pope Francis describes the world as a polyembassy on Rome’s Via della Conciliazione, a few steps hedron with different facets and each facet has its own 34

INSIDE THE VATICAN MARCH-APRIL 2024

Vladimir Putin with Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill of Moscow during a religious demonstration in support of the institution of the family

and 2009, were those considered “good years” for value. He is talking about multipolarity. Diversity withrelations between Russia and the United States? in harmony. This respect for different civilizations, civThey were pragmatic and open years for cooperation. ilizational identity, is very important. For example, in I would not use the term “good.” They were certainly Russia we consider traditional family values, sometimes better years. Discussions were quite active with the attacked, to be fundamental. We believe in these values.

Americans and NATO on the real problems of security.

So, this is the conceptual background for our cooperWe had a system of communication in different areas. ation. It’s important for us to promote dialogue with the But as we see now, they were not committed to sincere Vatican as we find similarities with our vision in the predialogue and serious discussions on the real problems of sent-day situation. security. The idea of providing equal security for all, not What did you discuss with Pope Francis when you only for NATO members, remained alien to them. presented your credentials in September?

As far as the U.S. is concerned, I personally did not My conversation with Pope Francis, in accordance have direct discussions with with the Holy See Protocol them. I worked on different topand tradition, was tête-aics, including peaceful cooperatête, without other persons tion in space. The international present, except an interspace station was an excellent preter. So, I would like to example of cooperation with stick to the tradition and NASA. But I do not idealize that share with you only my pertime at all. The American estabsonal impression of the 15lishment never fully understood 20 minutes talk: It was open, the experience of Russia of the sincere, and full of respect early 1990s, that was unfortufor each other, with an undernate and tragic in many ways. standing that we should In the early 1990s, Russia maintain dialogue on imporwas treated as a vanquished tant questions. I was imcountry by the West. In conpressed by the Pope’s deep trast, the Vatican tradition of diploand universal knowledge of conmacy teaches that to promote rectemporary realities.

“POPE FRANCIS IN THE onciliation, we must never create a Your assignment to the Holy ENCYCLICAL FRATELLI TUTTI sense of “winners versus losers.”

See seems quite different from TALKS ABOUT D IVERSITY WITHIN There’s a lot of evidence that the past posts. Is it?

HARMONY. THIS RESPECT FOR Soviet system was undone from Logically, this post is very differwithin, because much of the Coment but there are some similarities DIFFERENT CIVILIZATIONS, munist system had been brought with my assignments to NATO and CIVILIZATIONAL IDENTITY, IS about by a foreign ideology. What is the Council of Europe. The prior two were multilateral and this is VERY IMPORTANT. FOR EXAMPLE, the truth? Did the West “win” or IN RUSSIA WE CONSIDER did the political system change bilateral. But when you think about TRADITIONAL FAMILY VALUES, from within, in order to restore the global vision of the Vatican, you Russian identity? can compare it to a big international SOMETIMES ATTACKED, TO BE You have both a philosophical and organization. I find interesting sim- FUNDAMENTAL. WE BELIEVE IN political question. Western leaders ilarities, as a professional, trying to THESE VALUES” deceived our leaders with, “Don’t build bridges within an international worry about us expanding NATO frontiers close to Rusorganization. Regarding NATO, we tried to improve sia, and even to countries bordering Russia.” It was a relations with important structures, but unfortunately mistake not to have a legally binding agreement that times have changed drastically. would exclude any possibility of this security risk for my The Vatican has its own face. While with NATO, I country. The Moscow leaders were too idealistic in bedon’t know if individual countries have their own face lieving the words of their Western counterparts. because they speak with one voice and the voice is supWe had many good things in the Soviet Union, such posedly international. And this voice is 100% anti-Russas excellent preschool and a social welfare system, but ian. negative things too. Perestroika [reform] was at the time With the Vatican, it is absolutely different for me. The supported by the majority of people. We had foreign long history of Vatican diplomacy is very enriching. pressure and internal problems. Ultimately, there was Pope Francis today has eyes wide open. tragedy for the whole country because there was a lot of When you served as Russia’s Deputy Permanent economic suffering. So, the country had to reestablish Representative to NATO in Brussels between 2003 MARCH-APRIL 2024 INSIDE THE VATICAN

35

INTERVIEW RussIa’s NEW ambassadoR To ThE holy sEE itself despite many mistakes country, at least as they were and many losses. perceived by political leaders A certain philosophical of the USSR at that time. Now transformation emerged at it seems to have been a misthe beginning of the 2000s. take.

The West tried to impose During your time workconditions. In those years we ing with the Council of had direct dialogue with the Europe, what were good or West, but we believe we were great encounters? perceived as weak, and they I had good relations with tried to impose certain condimany counterparts. Before tions. Although not perfect 2008, you couldn’t think times, at least we discussed about Europe without considthings. ering Russia. You can’t erase RusVatican, 2023. H.E. Mr. Ivan Soltanovsky with Cardinal Pietro Parolin, Vatican Secretary of State.

Where were you at Christmas sia from the map.

(Photo: Vatican Media - Ag.Siciliani) 1991, when President Mikhail Switching to a more personal Bottom, the new Ambassador during the interview granted to Victor Gaetan, distinguished senior Gorbachev resigned, and the question, are you a member of a correspondent for the National Catholic Register Soviet Union ceased to exist?

Church?

I was in India. This was a sad I am on the way to being a true “THERE ARE SOME SIMILARITIES event, well, mostly sad when you believer. I go to church in Rome, WITH MY PREVIOUS ASSIGNMENTS see your national flag taken down. but not to a particular church.

Yet the sight of the historical RussWhen did you begin the TO NATO AND THE COUNCIL ian [Tsarist] tricolor was very process of getting on the way to OF EUROPE. THESE WERE powerful because it meant the rebelief?

MULTILATERAL AND THIS IS instatement of Russia’s heritage.

I can’t tell you the exact day, if At that time, we had hope, because BILATERAL. BUT WHEN YOU THINK one wants to be sincere, and I’m ABOUT THE GLOBAL VISION we hoped the new leaders would trying to be sincere because to be a hold the reins, but destructive OF THE VATICAN, YOU CAN COMPARE true believer one needs to go forces took over, especially in the through many things and not just to IT TO A BIG INTERNATIONAL economy. We were faced with this visit occasionally.

ORGANIZATION” question: How to stabilize our For me, it was because every country? How to reestablish selfhuman needs a relation to God. respect in the face of economic colFor me it means praying for the lapse? well-being of family, parents, and From what you observed in friends.

Brussels, how much leverage did For me, it all began about five the NATO Secretary-General years ago. Then I started preparahave? tions for my assignment in Rome It depends on the personality. and being here certainly stimulates They are, in my humble undergoing deeper into the fabric of standing, technocrats. Policy manfaith, understanding the dogma of agers. Generally, I don’t recall, nor belief. did my colleagues, that, well, the secretary general of This interview was originally published NATO is someone of the caliber of De Gaulle or Giulio

by Agenzia Fides.

Andreotti or Helmut Kohl, for whom we have high esteem. We participated not for confrontation but for *Victor Gaetan is a senior correspondent for the peaceful talk. Today’s Western leaders, with very rare National Catholic Register, focusing on international exceptions, tend to demonize Russia and the Russian issues. He received a license (B.A.) in Ottoman and people, and that’s crazy.

Byzantine Studies from Sorbonne University in Paris, Because you specialized in Pakistan and Afghanan M.A. from the Fletcher School of International istan, I wonder: Zbigniew Brzezinski said the U.S. Law and Diplomacy, and a Ph.D. in Ideology in intentionally trapped the Soviet Union by luring the Literature from Tufts University. His book God’s country into Afghanistan. How does a Russian diploDiplomats: Pope Francis, Vatican Diplomacy and mat respond to that?

America’s Armageddon (Rowman & Littlefield, 2021) It was a mistake. The Afghan experience was painful, comes out in paperback in July. but we were responding to the security challenges to our Visit his website at VictorGaetan.orgm 36 INSIDE THE VATICAN MARCH-APRIL 2024

PoPe Francis’ homily

hiS royal throne iS the wood oF the croSS From the homily oF PoPe Francis on Palm Sunday, march 24, 2013, now 11 yearS ago. it waS juSt 11 dayS aFter FranciS’ march 13, 2013, election...

St. Peter’S BaSilica — March 24, 2013 Entry into Jerusalem by the Italian Baroque painter from Verona, Alessandro Turchi (15781649). The painting is now in the Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia

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hy does Jesus enter Jerusalem? Or better: how does Jesus enter Jerusalem? The crowds acclaim him as King. And he does not deny it, he does not tell them to be silent (cf. Lk 19:39-40).

But what kind of a King is Jesus? Let us take a look at him: he is riding on a donkey, he is not accompanied by a court, he is not surrounded by an army as a symbol of power. He is received by humble people, simple folk who have the sense to see something more in Jesus; they have that sense of the faith which says: here is the Saviour. Jesus does not enter the Holy City to receive the honors reserved to earthly kings, to the powerful, to rulers; he enters to be scourged, insulted and abused, as Isaiah foretold in the First Reading (cf. Is 50:6). He enters to receive a crown of thorns, a staff, a purple robe: his kingship becomes an object of derision. He enters to climb Calvary, carrying his burden of wood.

And this brings us to the second word: Cross. Jesus enters Jerusalem in order to die on the Cross. And it is precisely here that his kingship shines forth in godly fashion: his royal throne is the wood of the Cross! It reminds me of what Benedict XVI said to the Cardinals: “You are princes, but of a king crucified.” That is the

throne of Jesus. Jesus takes it upon himself…

Why the Cross? Because Jesus takes upon himself the evil, the filth, the sin of the world, including the sin of all of us, and he cleanses it, he cleanses it with his blood, with the mercy and the love of God. Let us look around: how many wounds are inflicted upon humanity by evil! Wars, violence, economic conflicts that hit the weakest, greed for money that you can’t take with you and have to leave. When we were small, our grandmother used to say: a shroud has no pocket. Love of power, corruption, divisions, crimes against human life and against creation!

And — as each one of us knows and is aware — our personal sins: our failures in love and respect towards God, towards our neighbor and towards the whole of creation. Jesus on the Cross feels the whole weight of the evil, and with the force of God’s love he conquers it, he defeats it with his resurrection.

This is the good that Jesus does for us on the throne of the Cross. Christ’s Cross embraced with love never leads to sadness, but to joy, to the joy of having been saved and of doing a little of what he did on the day of his death.m MARCH-APRIL 2024 INSIDE THE VATICAN 37

INTERVIEW

the Polish city where Jesus APPeAred A convent in thousAnd-yeAr-old Plock is where the divine Mercy devotion begAn n BY BARBARA MIDDLETOn

work on the convent window panes. She prayed with all her heart in the darkness of the night adorned with snowflakes swirling mysteriously. Never in her dreams had this 25-yearold sister expected that the day of February 22 would pass into our history and on to the devotees of Divine Mercy on all the continents.

She wrote in her spiritual diary: “In the evening, when I was in my cell, I saw the Lord Sister Salvatrice Musial, O.L.M. has been in the Congregation Jesus clothed in a white garof Sisters of Our Lady of Mercy for 30 years. Her name, of Italian origin, means “God saves” ment. One hand [was] raised in the gesture of blessing, the other was touching the garment at Barbara Middleton: What “I DESIRE THAT THERE BE the breast. From beneath the garled you to write a book on the life A FEAST OF MERCY” ment slightly drawn aside at the of Sister Faustina? breast, there were emanating two large rays, one red, the SISTER SALVATRICE MUSIAL, O.L.M.: I did not origiother pale. In silence I kept my gaze fixed on the Lord: nally plan to write a book about St. Faustina’s life; there My soul was struck with awe, but also with great joy. are already plenty available. I was transferred to the conAfter a while, Jesus said to me, ‘Paint an image accordvent in Plock myself for two years, and we all realized ing to the pattern you see, with the signature: Jesus, I that there is no existing publication exploring the theme trust in you. I desire that this image be venerated, first of this magnificent place in Sister Faustina’s life — yet, in your chapel, and then throughout the world’” (Diary, it was there that the mission of her entire life originated.

47).

“I promise that the soul that will venerate this image Tell me, please, about the first apparition of Jesus will not perish. I also promise victory over its enemies to Sr Faustina. What did Jesus ask? already here on earth, especially at the hour of death. I The first apparition of Merciful Jesus took place at Myself will defend it as My own glory.” (Diary 48). the convent in Plock. Those who visit there can see an The first confidant Sister Faustina entrusted with her inscription: “In this house on the 22nd February 1931 mystery was a confessor of the sisters. The priest, being Sister Faustina experienced her first revelation of the certain that it was all about “painting” an image of Jesus Image of Merciful Jesus.” deep in her soul, was not able to help her. Upon leaving It was winter time. the confessional, sister Faustina heard Jesus saying: “My Older generations can recall severe winters typical of image already is in your soul” (Diary 49). Jesus addiPoland then. Perhaps, on that very night, on the first tionally requested the establishment of the Feast of Sunday of Lent, Sister Faustina observed trees covered Mercy in the whole Church: “I desire that there be a in a royal robe of white snow and admired artistic frostPolish Sr. Salvatrice Musial, O.L.M., is a member of the Congregation of Sisters of Our Lady of Mercy, to which St. Faustina Kowalska, who received from Jesus the commission to establish a worldwide devotion to His Divine Mercy, also belonged.

Sr. Musial has written a book on the convent in Plock, Poland, where the seed of the Divine Mercy devotion was first planted by Jesus in the heart of a humble nun on February 22, 1931.

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INSIDE THE VATICAN MARCH-APRIL 2024

The cover of Sr. Salvatrice Musial’s book, Saint Faustina in Plock.

Bottom, bakery in the basement of the Plock convent where Sr. Faustina worked, preserved as it was in the 1930s

Feast of Mercy. I want this image, which you will paint with a brush, to be solemnly blessed on the first Sunday after Easter; that Sunday is to be the Feast of Mercy.”

Sister Faustina also turned to her Mother Superior, who did not take the situation seriously, saying: “Well, paint the image then, Sister!” Mother Superior also asked for a sign from God. The Lord Jesus assured Sister Faustina that He would make all clear to the Superior through the graces that he would grant through this image (cf. Diary 51).

of their splendor, but they remain a joy for the eyes and hearts of the residents and an attraction for tourists.

What were the duties of Sister Faustina in Plock?

Due to the works of mercy carried out by the Congregation of Sisters of Our Lady of Mercy, the Plock convent, like the Congregation’s others, was commonly referred to as the “House of Mercy.” The sisters with a proper education helped women and girls living in the streets or coming from broken families.

During Sister Faustina’s stay, nearly 40 sisters lived in the Plock How long did Sr Faustina stay convent and 100 girls aged 14-18 in the monastery in Plock? were accommodated in the House St. Faustina arrived in Plock in of Mercy. The girls earned a living May or June of 1930 and stayed by washing laundry and pressing there for two years, interrupted by clothes, as well as embroidery, her trips to nearby Biala — a vilsewing, baking bread and planting lage where the convent in Plock flowers. had purchased in 1928 a huge farm The sisters and their pupils with a mansion. This affiliate conbaked bread in a bakery well vent served as an agricultural “hinterland” to supply food for the con- “IN GOD’S PLAN, SHE WAS NEVER TO known to the residents of Tumsk Hill. Since she was not very eduvent, and also a house for girls.

RETURN TO PLOCK...” cated, Sister Faustina’s main duty Plock is not only one of the oldwas helping Sister Krystyna est Polish towns, but also one of Korzeniowska bake during both the most beautiful in the Polish day and night shifts. For some Masovia District. Situated on the period, she was also responsible high, steep embankment of the for the cash register. Today, one Vistula River, Plock was the place can still visit the old bakery with of residence of medieval Polish its famous furnace. monarchs, bishops and princes.

In Plock, Sister Faustina also occasionally worked in the conWhat was the Plock that Sisvent kitchen, the “heart” of a home. Contemporary ter Faustina arrived in like? kitchens are elegant and functional, but according to the At that time, the town of 30,000 was suffering from a memory of Sister Paulina Kosinska, the convent kitchen serious economic crisis. Sister Faustina prayed for all “was just a passageway, which was so narrow that it those she had met or only had heard of — for mothers took an angel’s patience and virtue not to get angry with and fathers of families; for pupils rushing for classes to those passing by and constantly poking Sister Faustina, the famous Jesuit “Malachowianka” school adjacent to but there was no other passage available. Sisters were the Convent lot; for the municipal officers; for workers constantly called to answer the convent gate, but sister taking part in demonstrations against exploitation, some Faustina was always smiling and calm, she never manwounded in resulting clashes; for the unemployed and ifested a sign of impatience with the sisters, nor that she the poor, who used to visit the convent to get help and was tired of it. relief.

“It was only when Faustina left that the muttering Even more, the city of that pre-war time offered sheland complaining about the situation started. Only then ter and homes for thousands of Jews. did our eyes open — said the sisters — about how much Sister Faustina most probably prayed in the picshe could bear but had never uttered a word of comturesque Roman Cathedral on the Tumsk Hill, or the plaint nor let it show on her face.” parish church of St. Bartholomew; she may have In November, 1932, Sister Faustina left for Warsaw admired the blue ribbon of the Vistula River, with ruins to start her preparations for her perpetual vows. In God’s along it dating back 1,000 years, to the times of the kings plan, she was never to return to Plock.

— the remnants of the castle and battlements with lookPart 2 of this interview will appear out towers — as well as the stately Benedictine Abbey. in the next issue of ITV.m The troubled history of this place may have stolen some MARCH-APRIL 2024 INSIDE THE VATICAN

39

FOOTSTEPS On ThE WAY

the Jubilee Year 2025 – a holY Year of hoPe Pilgrims to rome — and “sPiritual Pilgrims” — can receive sPecial graces during the coming Jubilee n BY AnnA ARTYMIAK

The jubilee logo, designed by Italian artist Giacomo Travisani.

Great Jubilee Year of 2000.

St. Peter's Square during the world day dedicated to young people.

(Photo Grzegorz Galazka)

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The term “Jubilee” comes from the name of an his year on Christmas Eve, 2024, Pope Francis, instrument, the yobel, the ram’s horn, used by Jews like Pope John Paul II in 1999, will open the in Biblical times to proclaim the Day of Atonement Holy Door to begin a Jubilee Year in 2025. It (Yom Kippur). will be an ordinary holy year — in accordance with The origins of the Catholic tradition of the the tradition of the Church to celebrate such a year jubilee year in the Eternal City are very surprising. every 25 years, to give every generation a chance to It was all started by the faithful themselves in experience that special time of grace and mercy in 1300. Today, it is hard to discover their life. Those who participate in a Holy Year pilgrimage are granted whether they were inspired by “JUBILEE” IS FROM YOBEL, THE RAM’S Holy Scripture or not, but at the a plenary indulgence; those who HORN USED TO PROCLAIM THE are unable to attend in person for time numerous pilgrims coming from both the West and East of the concrete reasons are invited to parJEWISH DAY OF ATONEMENT Christian world insisted that Pope ticipate spiritually, “offering up the Boniface VIII (reign: 1294-1303) give them a special blesssufferings of their daily lives, and participating in the ing. An eyewitness to that event was a certain Guglielmo VenEucharistic celebration.” tura who, in his “Memoriale,” noted that the pilgrims asked The last ordinary holy year, the Great Jubilee Year of 2000, the Holy Father: which took place under John Paul II, was one of the biggest “Give us your blessing before we die. We heard from the events in the history of mankind. The Holy Father Francis antichi (“ancient ones”) that every one hundred years every wants the coming Jubilee Year 2025 to be lived as a “year of Christian who had visited the tombs of the Blessed Apostle hope,” very symbolic in times when the world’s wars seem to Peter and Paul would have been free as much from guilt as be unending and multiplying.

Catholic tradition refers back to the Jewish tradition of the from punishment.”

Apparently, around the year 1300, a Roman man who was “jubilees” present in the Bible (cf. Leviticus 25:8-13), although in Rome it was started simply for pilgrims. In prepamore than 100 years old confirmed that he remembered his parents saying that in 1200, the Pope had given a special ration for the coming holy year, Pope Francis has decided to promise of grace to pilgrims in the holy city of Rome. Pope dedicate the year 2024 to prayer in its personal and community Boniface didn’t immediately deny the truth of this assertion, dimension.

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In this watercolor, Boniface VIII announces the Jubilee of 1300

but to ascertain its truth, he gathered his the Jubilee of the World of Communicacardinals to discuss the case. Although tions, and concluding on December 14 they were unable to find any document with the last jubilee, the Jubilee of Pristestifying to such an act, he responded oners, to whom Pope Francis pays special positively to the pilgrims’ request, estabattention. lishing that the pilgrims who came to Throughout the year, individual Rome throughout that year and visited the jubilees are scheduled which include churches of the Apostles Peter and Paul jubilees for teenagers, children, and parfor 15 days would receive an indulgence. ents and grandparents; musicians, health (In those days, a new calendar year began care workers, and policemen and military in Rome on Christmas day.) personnel; deacons, bishops and the EastSince that time the jubilee year has ern Churches; Marian spirituality, consebecome a Catholic tradition. It was origcrated life and Missionaries of Mercy. In inally intended to be celebrated every one addition there will be celebrated on hundred years; in 1343 Pope Clement VI March 28 the traditional 24 Hours for reduced the gap between Jubilees to every the Lord, a Night of Confession. In St. 50 years. The rule to celebrate it every 25 Peter’s Basilica there will be celebrated years was established with the Holy Year the Penitential Liturgy with the Sacraof 1470 under Pope Paul II. ment of Confession; Pope Francis himself According to a historical tradition, the always confesses first, and then hears the jubilee years have been announced almost confessions of others, a chosen group of always by a Pontifical “Bull of Indiction” 5-10 people.

THE INDULGENCE in which the Holy Father indicates the The entire calendar of jubilee celebraIS A FULL EXPRESSION dates of the beginning and end of the Holy tions is available on the Jubilee website.

OF THE MERCY OF GOD Year. Already the Dicastery of EvangelTo know the exact day of the closure of ization has informed the public to expect that Pope Francis the Jubilee Year we will have to wait for Pope Francis’ Bull of will release the Bull for the Holy Year of 2025 on May 9, 2024.

Indiction.

The coming Jubilee Year of 2025 will be the second under The 2024 Year of Prayer in preparation for the Holy Year is the pontificate of Francis: the extraordinary Jubilee, the Year an invitation of Pope Francis to rediscover the centrality of of Mercy, was celebrated in 2016. This time, Pope Francis prayer in our personal and community life. Therefore the bishinvites the faithful to live the holy year as “Pilgrims in Hope” ops are invited to promote diverse initiatives on the diocesan — which is the motto of the jubilee of 2025. The jubilee logo, level for the faithful as “pilgrims of prayer” like courses, designed by Italian artist Giacomo schools of prayer, etc. As a practical Travisani, shows four stylized fig- FROM THE LETTER OF THE HOLY FATHER help, the Dicastery for Evangeures, representing all of humanity FRANCIS TO THE MOST REVEREND RINO lization, which is responsible coming from the four corners of the FISICHELLA, PRESIDENT OF THE PONTIFICAL for the organization of the comearth. They embrace each other to COUNCIL FOR THE NEW EVANGELIZATION ing jubilee year, published a FOR THE JUBILEE 2025 indicate the solidarity and fraternity series of “Prayer Notebooks” which should unite all peoples. The based on many forms of prayer from he Jubilee has always been an event of rough waves under the figures symthe rich Catholic tradition. The Notegreat spiritual, ecclesial, and social signifibolize the fact that life’s pilgrimage cance in the life of the Church. Ever since 1300, book can be found on the special does not always go smoothly in calm when Boniface VIII instituted the first Holy Year jubilee website: iubilaeum2025.va. waters. The anchor is a symbol of – initially celebrated every hundred years, An even more immediate way to take then, following its biblical precedent, every fifty hope. The dynamic cross of Christ years, and finally every twenty-five years – part in the Jubilee Year is to volunbends down towards humanity, not God’s holy and faithful people have experi- teer; there are no restrictions on age leaving us all alone, but stretching enced this celebration as a special gift of grace, or nationality. Details will be reout to us to offer the certainty of its characterized by the forgiveness of sins and in leased soon. particular by the indulgence, which is a full presence and the security of hope.

There is, however, nothing like A hymn, “Pilgrims of Hope,” by expression of the mercy of God. The faithful, experiencing the Jubilee Year in at the conclusion of a lengthy pilPierangelo Sequeri with music by frequently Rome as a pilgrim, and Inside the grimage, draw from the spiritual treasury of the Francesco Meneghello, has also Church by passing through the Holy Door and Vatican Pilgrimages will be leading a been written for the jubilee year. series of pilgrimages to the Eternal venerating the relics of the Apostles Peter and The Dicastery of Evangelization Paul preserved in Roman basilicas. Down the City which will help pilgrims to has already published the calendar of centuries, millions upon millions of pilgrims immerse themselves in the spirit of main events with the Holy Father for have journeyed to these sacred places, bear- prayer and the spirit of hope that the living witness to the faith professed in every different groups, beginning on Jan- ing 2025 Jubilee Year of Hope brings to age.n uary 24-26 with the celebration of the world.m

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SCRIPTURE

what is really your “MaMMon”? (it is not siMply your Money) Money is just one of the things we serve in place of god n BY AnTHOnY ESOLEn Christ and the Rich Young Man, painted in 1889 by Heinrich Hofmann (1824-1911)

“N

o one can serve two lords,” riches, who wishes to tempt the knight says Jesus. “He will hate the WHEN THE RICH YOUNG MAN, to his damnation. Here is how the old one and love the other, or DISCOURAGED, ABANDONS THE man identifies himself: cleave to the one and despise the God of the world and worldlings I IDEA OF FOLLOWING JESUS, other. You cannot serve both God and me call, THEN JESUS SAYS THAT mammon” (Mt. 6:24; translation Great Mammon, greatest god IT IS EASIER FOR A CAMEL mine). below the sky, TO PASS THROUGH THE EYE Here we have one of the great ridThat of my plenty pour out unto all, dles of the Gospels. Exactly what is And unto none my graces do envy: OF A NEEDLE THAN FOR this “mammon”? It’s traditionally Riches, renown, and principality, A RICH MAN TO ENTER THE held to refer to earthly riches, and that Honor, estate, and all this world’s KINGDOM OF GOD is certainly a great part of the meangood, ing. It is not the whole, and the closer we look at the For which men swink and sweat incessantly, Semitic word, the more of a challenge Jesus’ words pose From me do flow into an ample flood, to us.

And in the hollow earth have their eternal brood.

The poet Edmund Spenser, writing in the 1590s, Notice that this “Mammon” is not simply a god of seems to have understood its further implications. In The money. He represents a broad range of things that worldFaerie Queene, the knight of temperance, Sir Guyon, ly people seek – the marks of honor and success. He and meets a dismal-looking old fellow sitting upon a heap of Sir Guyon get into quite a concentrated argument over 42

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the character of both money and the good things you can aside all that was ours [Greek idia] and followed you” acquire by it, with Guyon backing into the partly-correct (Lk. 18:28). They rely on nothing now but Jesus. He is but partly-inadequate position, that you do not need so all their steadfastness; he is all their treasure. much if you practice temperance.

Hence we can understand the admonitory parable that If frail men would but think, says he in the poem, with Jesus tells, of the rich man who aimed to take things easy how small allowance in his old age. He had had good harvests, so he was going Untroubled Nature doth herself suffice, to pull down his granaries and build bigger ones, which Such superfluities they would despise, would last him for many years, so that he could eat, Which with sad cares impeach our native joys. drink, and be merry. But God said, “Fool! Tonight your The problem, however, is not just how you use your worldly goods, or how much of them you have, but where your heart lies, what you worship, for what or whom do you give your life. Thus there can be only one lord, as we hear in the great prayer of the Jews: “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one: and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength” (Dt. 6:4). No one and nothing can share the throne with God. So far I don’t believe I have said anything that our readers have not heard a hundred times. And yet that word mammon remains. It is used only in four places in the New Testament, never in the Old; it appears soul shall be required of you, and During his teaching to the apostles, Jesus often quotes the Old Testament to be an Aramaic word, derived to whom shall all your provisions from the extremely common Hebbelong?” (Lk. 12:16-20). rew root verb ’aman, meaning, in its “HEAR, O ISRAEL, THE LORD OUR We are not told that this man various grammatical forms, to veri- GOD, THE LORD IS ONE: AND YOU had gotten his wealth by ill means. fy, to support, to stand firm, to SHALL LOVE THE LORD YOUR GOD Perhaps he and his field hands believe, to be faithful, to trust. The worked very hard. He had, so to WITH ALL YOUR HEART, AND WITH first m in mammon is a typical speak, built up a fine annuity for ALL YOUR SOUL, AND WITH ALL Hebrew way of making a noun out his evening years. He was like the YOUR STRENGTH” (DT. 6:4). NO of a verb. Mammon, then, would industrious ant, not the heedless name something to trust in. Indeed, ONE AND NOTHING CAN SHARE THE grasshopper. Yet God calls him the related verbal noun ’emunah “fool.” The Greek aphron suggests THRONE WITH GOD means faithfulness, truth, trustwora dimwit, but in the Old Testament, thiness, and is predicated especially of God: “Your the truly foolish man is one who builds on the sand of his mercy, O Lord, is in the heavens, and your faithfulness own power and wisdom. He is the fool who has said in extends to the clouds” (Ps. 36:5). his heart that God is not around to bother with him one How then to render Jesus’ words? Suppose we paraway or the other: in effect, There is no God (Ps. 14:1). phrase them in this way: “No man can serve as his Lord Where does our treasure lie? Where do we place our both God and all those good things wherein people usutrust? All the mammon of the world, all those firm founally place their confidence.” Those things would include dations, the wealthy bank accounts, the prestigious more than wealth, as I believe Spenser saw. They schools, the positions with titles to them, success in the include power, esteem, rank, family connections, and so world’s eyes and the good opinion of men, all that people on. And that is why, when the rich young man, disheartbank upon, is sand. It must be. It shifts its place, the ened, leaves Jesus, and Jesus says that it is easier for a water washes it away, and if nothing else, death is our camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich end, and not all the world’s riches, and not all our worman to enter the kingdom of God, Peter says, if I may rying about them, can keep us from the grave. There is translate again, somewhat freely, “See, we have cast only one God. In Him alone shall we trust.m MARCH-APRIL 2024 INSIDE THE VATICAN

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SPIRITUALITY BEHIND BARS

the weapons of our warfare In the battle for souls, God has placed the means to wIn In our hands n BY MARCELLUS ROBERTS * “Battle of David and Goliath”

by Daniele da Volterra, Louvre Museum, Paris

W

ake up! This age in possibly be at “Christianwhich we live is an rock-bottom.” Outwardly, age of legends, where there is no perceptible differspiritual truths transform the ence. Christians at rock-botmundane into the mystical, tom reason and respond to and words of worship decorlife like their non-Christian ate the halls and walls of counterparts; they blend in hearts belonging to earth’s with the darkness and live holiest heroes. You and I, my like night creatures too. They OUR SKILLS, OUR WEAPONS brother, my sister, fortunate solhave no oil in their lamps; thus, AND OUR GOD diers of Christ, we ride with a Satan intends to recruit their YOUNG DAVID REFUSED KING SAUL’S mighty company of “innumervoices for his chorus of weeping able angels in festal gathering… and gnashing of teeth. But not if ARMAMENTS AND CHOSE FIVE SMOOTH the assembly of the first-born STONES AND A SLING INSTEAD, CONFIDENT we can stop him. who are enrolled in heaven… a We march onto the battlefield IN HIS WEAPONS... HE SLEW THE judge who is God of all… the of prayer to recover our woundPHILISTINE GIANT IN THE NAME OF THE spirits of just men made pered. The indelible mark of BapLORD OF HOSTS, CONFIDENT IN HIS GOD tism on the soul helps us to idenfect… and… Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant.” (Hebrews tify fallen comrades. Come 12:22-24) Heaven or Hell, these hardened sinners are eternally ChrisOurs is a faith confirmed by chrism and the eyes of our tians. Let me clarify: Every baptized criminal is not only a understanding are filled with a heavenly light, flowing from child of God by creation, but by adoption as well, and, ipso the potency of this anointing. St. Robert Bellarmine says, facto, a child of Holy Mother Church, “of the household of “by virtue of this anointing it [the sacrament of Confirmafaith.” (Galatians 6:10) tion] strengthens it [the soul] to make war on demons and Confidence in three key areas — our skills, our weapons boldly profess the Christian faith beyond any fear of torand our God — is necessary for success on the battlefield of ment or death” (Doctrina Christiana). We were baptized for prayer. Young David carried himself with this kind of conour salvation. We were confirmed for war. fidence. He had no problem informing King Saul about how The Church Militant has an objective that includes freehe delivered his father’s lambs from the lions and bears, ing our fallen members who have been “hardened by the confident in his skills. He refused King Saul’s armaments deceitfulness of sin” (Hebrews 3:13). To be hardened in sin and chose five smooth stones and a sling instead, confident is the lowest degree and classification of the Christian life. in his weapons.

It should strike us as strange, but true, that even the best cask Then David met the Philistine giant on the battlefield and of wine, the kind Christ crafts at a moment’s notice and slew him in the name of the Lord of Hosts, confident in his saves for last, has its dregs: Christians who mortally sin God. with consistency and refuse to turn to God in prayer.

Jesus Christ, the most confident warrior of them all, simIt’s flawed theology to think that because a person has hit ply graced a given place with His Presence and the demons “sleazeball-bottom” or “drug-binge-bottom,” they couldn’t trembled, fled or begged to be banished, a proximity effect.

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This is when the enemy exposes his position out of terror gences, Norms and Grants.” that holiness has drawn near. It is this level of holiness that A single copy rises slowly from the stack and opens to a needs to be our aspiration if we intend on gaining significant page, pulsing with a glowing passage that reads, “Any of the territory in the hearts and minds of hardened sinners during Christian faithful who, being at least inwardly contrite, perour few years on earth. form a work carrying with it a partial indulgence, receive, Most of us have a long way to go before we’re living like through the Church the remission of temporal punishment heroes. Jean Baptiste Chautard, OLSO, in his spiritual clasequivalent to what their own act already receives.” (Apossic, The Soul of the Apostolate, mentions nine degrees of the tolic Constitution Indulgentium doctrina, norm 5) Christian life, arranged in ascending order from hardened in The Handbook of Indulgences is a collection of apsin to complete sanctity. At the sixth degree, called “Ferproved devotions that carry with them a double-shot of vor,” the Christian no longer deliberately commits venial merit from the inexhaustible treasury of Jesus Christ, the sin, and mortal sin has been totally Blessed Virgin Mary and all the holy defeated. The eighth degree is called angels and saints. How could any ChrisTHE HANDBOOK OF “Heroic Perfection,” and at this level, a tian avoid desiring the skill proper to INDULGENCES Christian no longer thinks of himself but wielding such a powerful weapon? Who A COLLECTION OF APPROVED could fearful be, on the battlefield of prefers to suffer for the conversion of sinners rather than experience even the DEVOTIONS THAT CARRY WITH prayer, carrying cold steel of this callawful joys of this life. We have a long THEM A DOUBLE-SHOT OF MERIT iber? The Almighty God, who equips way to go, but we have got to find a way His soldiers for victory, deserves all the FROM THE INEXHAUSTIBLE to move on up a little higher. praise.

TREASURY OF JESUS CHRIST, Get excited about this doctrine on THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARY THE GIFT OF OUR PROVIDENT FATHER both sides of the razor wire. It is a docOkay. Listen carefully. Press up, up, AND ALL THE HOLY ANGELS AND trine that gives hope, and if holiness is down, down, left, right, left, right, A, B, the game, indulgences are a gamer’s SAINTS Select, Start. Confused? Most gamers dream. We could decide to shadow box know exactly what I’m talking about. This is with the air, but St. Paul doesn’t advise it. This the Konami code. Konami, the Japanese videocollection of devotions can subdue the passions, game development company, programmed discipline the body and bring both under the special features into its games that greatly Holy Spirit’s rule. Athletes call it trimming fat; increased the likelihood of a player’s success.

I call it gaining confidence in our skills, our I knew kids who never played these games weapons and our God. without first entering this code and accessing its hidden advantages. Has our Provident THE WEAPONS OF OUR WARFARE HAVE A DIVINE POWER Father, the programmer of all that is good, We live in an age of legends, where eternal included an equivalent hack among His holy souls teeter on the brink of destruction. Fear doctrines and dogma? Of course He has. Come, must be swallowed up in confidence, and our follow me, I’ll show you… marching orders: holiness at all costs. So, before The sun is at full strength, and after breachtaking up arms again, admire the doctrine of indulgences ing the brow of a grassy hill, you and I push forward into a once more.

Test its swift stroke; eye its harmonious curves; dense and somber forest of fir, hemlock and cedar. The marvel at the skill evinced in its forging. How it bends but trees, pushing upward for light, are very tall and free from doesn’t break; cease resisting your attraction to the efficienlimbs for more than half their height. Their tops form a concy of this powerful spiritual weapon. tinuous cover which the sun rarely penetrates, and on which Now go, warrior, knowing the words once written the light snows of early winter fall and melt, without reachremain true: “for the weapons of our warfare are not worldly ing the ground. but have divine power to destroy strongholds.” (2 CorinthiWe stop midway and drive shovels into deep, moss-covans 10:4) ered alluvial soil until a hollow, wooden trunk fills the forest silence. From the hole we recover a chest; yes, a treasure *Marcellus Allen Roberts is a 40-year-old Prison chest secured by ninety-five locks. Some are simple, others Oblate of St. Benedict’s Abbey, Atchison, Kansas. He is are quite complex mechanisms, but they all crumble beserving a 25-year penance in the state of Texas. He neath the blows of our Tridentine hammer. entered the Catholic Church in 2015, completed his It takes the both of us to pull back the heavy lid and the noviciate year in 2016, and now serves the Catholic sight leaves us staring, bleary-eyed and astonished at what community on George Beto Unit as cantor and catechist. we see. Books! Stacks and stacks of thin, blood-burgundy, He is writing a regular column for Inside the Vatican hardback books, all of them emblazoned with the same because Rome has need of his words... m words in shimmering gold leaf: “The handbook of IndulMARCH-APRIL 2024 INSIDE THE VATICAN

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C AT H O L I C I S M A n D O R T H O D O X Y E D I T E D B Y: C H R I S T I N A D E A R D U R F F

The Message of the Icon

BY ROBERT WIESnER

THE CREED: THE ASCENSION “HE ASCENDED INTO HEAVEN AND IS SEATED AT THE RIGHT HAND OF THE FATHER”

F

or forty days the Apostles enjoyed the company of their beloved risen Jesus. This was to be the final training period for their ordained mission, the mission clearly stated by St. Matthew (20:19): “Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.”

St. Luke adds the detail that they are to begin at Jerusalem in his Gospel and then at the beginning of Acts gives a planned schedule: “But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be witnesses to Me in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.” (1:8) Naturally enough, the Apostles felt a bit bereft when Jesus left them; they stared into the heavens, probably hoping for one last glimpse of their Master. Given their instructions, however, this state of inaction could not be allowed to continue. Their tasks lay on the earth and the angels were sent to remind them that their feet best remain on the ground; they had things to do, places to go and people to meet. We are not told much about those days between the Ascension and Pentecost.

Prayer is mentioned, but there were some practical measures taken as well, most notably the selection of Matthias to replace Judas the traitor.

Given the monumental scope of their commission, there must have been some discussion of just how to begin this ministry. Certain tasks may have been assigned according to the capabilities of the twelve. Perhaps Peter may have directed Matthew to begin compiling a theological and scriptural history of the Messiah.

The Apostles knew that Jesus was the Messiah, but the Jews as a whole needed some persuasion. The necessity was obvious that Scripture must be searched for evi-

dence that Jesus did indeed fulfill all the prophecies and descriptions of the Messiah, from the very beginnings of Torah. The Jews were to be the first “target audience” of the great evangelizing effort; this may also be the explanation of the traditional belief that Matthew’s Gospel was the first written. Peter’s sermon on the day of Pentecost may well have been the first fruit of Matthew’s labors.

Jerusalem and Judea were only the beginning of the ministry. Acts does record that there were about one hundred disciples present when the selection of Matthias as the twelfth Apostle was ratified. Since Jesus taught as far north as Galilee and even ventured into pagan territory from time to time, it seems likely that some of those present came from localities well outside Judea itself. Volunteers may have been found to travel a bit farther afield even in these early days.

Advance scouts may have been designated to explore the situation in Samaria, for instance, to see what had become of the believers in Sychar, famously the scene for Jesus’ discussion with Photini at Jacob’s well. Acts does later mention that believers there had not even heard of the Holy Spirit; spiritual ground had been broken, but the building of the Kingdom was in serious need of urgent further construction.

God’s plans often make a complete hash of human effort; ultimately the work of evangelizing the world is the work of the Holy Spirit. Scripture does not give us a comprehensive look at the conferences the Apostles may have conducted in Jerusalem before they spread throughout the world, but since their work was to be a human endeavor, albeit guided by the Holy Spirit, it does seem likely that counsel was taken in their company even before Pentecost.m

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East-West Watch

BY PETER ANDERSON

DEFROCKING — A WEAPON AGAINST DISSENT IN OCTOBER 2023, A MOSCOW PATRIARCHATE COURT FOUND ARCHIMANDRITE CYRIL HOVORUN GUILTY OF “PERJURY” FOR CELEBRATING THE DIVINE LITURGY WITH A BISHOP OF THE ECUMENICAL PATRIARCHATE Archimandrite Cyril Hovorun at the Gregorian University, Rome, in October 2023. He teaches at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, California, USA. He has been defrocked by the Russian Orthodox Church (The photo is from his Facebook page — https://www.facebook.com/hovorun)

O

n the Russian Federation, the Moscow Patriarchate, headed

by Patriarch Kirill, is using a powerful weapon to suppress dissent among its clergy with respect to the war in Ukraine. That weapon is defrocking, or threatening to defrock, clergy. The use of this weapon by the Moscow Patriarchate is most likely encouraged by the Putin administration to eliminate opposition to its actions in Ukraine.

Unlike the Catholic Church, Orthodox believe that a bishop or a synod has the power to erase completely the ordination of a priest and reduce the person to the state that the person had before the ordination. On the other hand, the Catholic Church conclusively decided at the Council of Trent that ordination leaves an indelible mark on the soul which no one, including the Pope, can remove. It is true that in the Catholic Church a priest can be “dismissed from the clerical state.” However, this simply means that the priest is prohibited from saying Mass and performing other sacraments. If the priest violates this prohibition, he still has the power to change bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Our Lord.

Before being defrocked, dissenting Orthodox priests have been subjected to Church trials in Russia. At the trials the priests have not been charged directly with failure to support the Ukrainian war, but rather failure to follow the orders of the bishop or synod. Two examples illustrate this.

In May 2023, Father Ioann Koval, a priest in the Lublino district of Moscow, was found guilty of disobedience by a diocesan court for repeatedly substituting the word “peace” for the word “victory” in the required Russian prayer relating to the Ukrainian war. The prayer had been composed by Patriarch Kirill in September 2022 and made a mandatory prayer for all Orthodox parishes in Russia. The diocesan court ruled that Koval should be defrocked. The rationale of the diocesan court was that Koval had engaged in acts of disobedience by changing the wording of the prayer.

In a second example, a Moscow diocesan court in October 2023 found that Archimandrite Cyril Hovorun was guilty of “perjury” as a result of his celebrating the Divine Liturgy in Kyiv with a bishop of the Ecumenical Patriarchate. The reasoning was that Hovorun had signed a written oath of fidelity when ordained and that he had broken this oath by carrying out the concelebration.

Specifically, he had not followed the decision of the Holy Synod of the Moscow Patriarchate, made in October 2018, prohibiting its clergy from serving with clergy of the Ecumenical Patriarchate. The diocesan court concluded that Hovorun should be defrocked; this penalty was carried out on December 29, 2023, when Patriarch Kirill issued the following decree addressed to Archimandrite Cyril Hovorun: “Hereby, on the basis of the decision of the diocesan Church court of the Moscow diocese dated October 31, 2023, you are deposed from the priesthood in connection with violation of the 25th rule of the Holy Apostles.”

Hovorun, who was born in Ukraine in 1974, was a brilliant rising star in the Moscow Patriarchate. However, in 2012 he left Russia to pursue an academic career in the West and has not returned. He has written extensively and has lectured throughout the world. Since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, he has probably been the person most often sought in the West for interviews or panel discussions relating to the religious situation in Ukraine. As a Ukrainian, he is very critical of the actions of Russia and the Moscow Patriarchate. There are good reasons to believe that the real motive for the defrocking decision was to punish a very well-known critic.

In my opinion, it is very sad that the Orthodox Church in Russia has become a tool in Putin’s war efforts. The Church produced so many martyrs for the faith during the years of communist persecution and has an incredibly rich spiritual tradition. It is a Church in need of our prayers.m

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C AT H O L I C I S M A N D O R T H O D O X Y E D I T E D B Y: C H R I S T I N A D E A R D U R F F

NEWS from the EAST

BY MATTHEW TROJACEK

SYRIANS ARE ON THE BRINK experience they have gained. In this way, in the name of OF STARVATION, CHURCH LEADER SAYS the whole Catholic Church, you offer a concrete and Catholics warn that Syrians are on the brink of starvaimpartial service that benefits the sister Churches of the tion as the United Nations food program cut off its assisEast and contributes to the preparation of clergy and laity tance in the country in January. who, thanks to their studies, will serve the mission of the “The Syrian people are condemned to die without one Body of Christ.” (Press.Vatican) being able to say a word,” Archbishop Jacques Mourad of NEW LEADER OF SYRO-MALABAR CHURCH Homs told Vatican Radio. “It FACES DAUNTING TASK AS DISSENTING is a terrible and unfair deciPRIESTS REMAIN DEFIANT sion. …And for what? What The new archbishop of the divided is the fault of the Syrian peoSyro-Malabar Church (SMC) in India ple?” he asked. has been well received by the faithful, The U.N. World Food Program, but there is no sign that the differences or WFP, said it decided to end its main over the liturgy that have split his assistance program this January across Church are close to being resolved. war-torn Syria, where over 12 million Upon assuming his office, Archpeople lack regular access to sufficient bishop Raphael Thattil was welfood. It cited a funding crisis resulting comed with a grand reception held on from the COVID-19 pandemic, the war People displaced by fighting between the Syrian January 22 at Thiruvananthapuram, the in Ukraine and now the conflict in Gaza Democratic Forces and Islamic State at a refugee capital of southern Kerala state. Now camp in Ain Issa. In the circle, Archbishop as reasons for the decision. he has his work cut out for him as he Jacques Mourad, head the Archdiocese of Homs In recent years, WFP also scaled seeks to carry out the Holy Father’s down provisions to Syria and neighboring countries, like wishes that the Church there follow one, unified liturgy.

Jordan, which hosts millions of Syrians fleeing the conFor decades, a dispute over the liturgy has divided the flict, which is now in its 13th year. The devastating earthChurch into two camps: priests from the Archeparchy of quake that hit northwest Syria, bordering Turkey, in FebErnakulam-Angamaly who celebrate the Mass “ad popuruary 2023, also has further exacerbated the food crisis. lum” (facing the people) as they have since the Second “The Church, along with nongovernmental organizaVatican Council (1962–1965), and other dioceses that tions, cannot cover all the needs of the Syrian people continue to celebrate the Eucharistic liturgy “ad orientem” because their financial capacity is limited,” explained (facing the East/altar).

Archbishop Mourad, who was appointed a year ago to The Synod of the Syro-Malabar Church in August 2021 head the Archdiocese of Homs, the third largest city in mandated a uniform Mass liturgy in which the priest faces Syria. (OSV) the altar after the offertory while the priests of the Ernakulam Archdiocese rejected this and have continued to celeAUDIENCE WITH THE CATHOLIC brate Mass facing the people.

COMMITTEE FOR CULTURAL Synodal and papal exhortations for the Church to unify COLLABORATION WITH THE ORTHODOX under one Mass led to several protests from clergy and January 12, in the Vatican Apostolic Palace, the Holy laypeople. Then, Pope Francis on December 7, 2023, Father Francis received in audience the Catholic Commitissued a demand that all dioceses comply with a Christmas tee for Cultural Collaboration with the Orthodox Churchdeadline for the celebration of a “unified” synodal Mass. es and the Oriental Orthodox Churches, on the occasion of (CNA) the 60th anniversary of the institution.

The following is an excerpt from the address delivered BELARUS CATHOLICS FACE by the Pope to those present at the meeting: NEW WAVE OF ARRESTS “Thanks to the constant and generous support of its Priests and lay Catholics from Belarus said they still benefactors, whom I thank most heartily, your Committee hope their Church’s situation will improve, despite the provides students from the Orthodox and Oriental Orthocontinued arrests of clergy and new religious restrictions dox Churches the opportunity to complete their formation that are imminent. at Catholic academic institutes, in order then to return to “Priests are being targeted on various pretexts, and their own communities and to share the knowledge and many Catholics feel pressured and harassed,” explained page 48

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Father Dzmitry Prystupa, from Baranavichy in Belarus’ southern Diocese of Pinsk.

“It’s painful that there’s no free speech in our church — and that the good news, so strongly linked with truth and justice, has to be announced selectively, subject to official surveillance and verification. But I still think we should trust our church’s leaders to do their best,” he said.

The priest spoke amid the country’s plans to enforce a new Freedom of Conscience and Religious Organizations law, signed December 30 by President Alexander Lukashenko and published January 5, which will restrict educational and missionary activity by churches and require all parishes to reapply for legal status.

In an OSV News interview, Father Prystupa said fellow clergy were still coming to terms with the law’s implications, adding that he regretted that Lukashenko’s regime only thought “in a narrative of political opposition.” (OSV)

clergy from the building. Between February 1 and July 31, 2023, a dozen cases of physical violence and several cases of threats of violence resulting from conflicts between parishioners of different Orthodox Christian communities were documented. On April 4, 2023, Khmelnytskyy city council ruled to terminate all agreements of municipal land possession by UOC. Later that day, Khmelnytskyy region council ruled a similar decision, banning UOC in the entire region. Several city and regional councils also banned ‘activities of the UOC’ in their respective areas.”

In its response published on January 22, the Permanent Mission of Ukraine to the UN Office and Other International Organizations in Geneva denied the incident.

(OrthoChristian)

AFTER 1500 YEARS, FIRST LITURGY In BYZAnTInE CHURCH In JORDAn For the first time in over a millennium, the Divine Liturgy was celebrated in a Byzantine-era UKRAInIAn OFFICIALS church in Petra, Jordan.

DEnY VIOLEnCE AGAInST On Monday, January 22, ArchORTHODOX FAITHFUL bishop Christophoros of KyriakOn November 8, the UN’s Special Rapporteur on the rights to free- Archbishop Christophoros of Kyriakoupolis celebrated the oupolis of the Orthodox PatriarDivine Liturgy in the Monastery of the Theotokos chate of Jerusalem celebrated the dom of peaceful assembly and of of the Life-giving Spring in Dibin, Jordan Divine Liturgy together with a association, Special Rapporteur on group of priests. The service was attended by the sisterminority issues, and Special Rapporteur on freedom of hood of the Monastery of the Theotokos of the Life-givreligion or belief issued a statement concerning the situaing Spring in Dibin, reports the Archdiocese of Jordan. tion surrounding the Holy Dormition-Kiev Caves Lavra The church was built in 450 AD and contains in its and other incidents of violence against Ukrainian Orthomidst columns and distinctive mosaic floors, Greek dox Christians. inscriptions, a semicircular apse for the church, and is The UN officials wrote: considered one of the largest churches in the city of Petra.

“In the aftermath of the developments relating to the The outer section contains a large baptismal font and a Kyiv-Perchersk Lavra, a notable increase in incidents of water well surrounded by ancient Roman columns. hate speech and calls to violence against believers of the According to papyrus scrolls found in a cave adjaUOC were recorded from several areas, mainly withcent to the church dating back to the 6th century, in the Western regions of Ukraine. For instance, on the church was consecrated to the Most Holy March 28, 2023, unidentified individuals forceTheotokos. It was built in the form of a basilica fully broke into the remaining UOC church in with two semi-circular side apses. (OrthoChrisIvano-Frankivsk. This attack involved spraying tian)m teargas and forcible removal of believers and

The Christian Churches, the communities of the disciples of Christ, were intended to be united as one; Pope John Paul II proclaimed, “The Church must breathe with Her two lungs!” Unfortunately, the Churches are not united. This is a great scandal, an impediment to the witness of the Church. Since unity was desired by Christ Himself, we must work to end this disunity and accomplish the will of the Lord.

PLEASE COnSIDER JOInInG US In THIS WORK! By check – make check payable to: Urbi et Orbi Communications 14 W. Main St., Front Royal, VA 22630 USoffice@InsideTheVatican.com +1-202-536-4555 URBI ET ORBI COMMUnICATIOnS IS A 501(C) 3 nOT-FOR-PROFIT ORGAnIZATIOn

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page 49

TRadiTion and BeauTy

wHen MaRy sPOke TO Me THe ReGina COeLi sHOwed Me a sPaRk OF THe beauTy THaT COMes FROM GOd n BY AURELIO POFIRI* Andrea Mantegna, The Madonna of the Cherubim, Italy, Lombardy, Milan, baroque palace Brera, Brera Pinacoteca

I

n the Easter season there is a song that is particularly familiar to all Catholic faithful, the Regina Coeli. This is one of the four Marian antiphons, according to the liturgical seasons, that were sung at the end of the Mass, together with Alma Redemptoris Mater, Ave Regina Coelorum and Salve Regina. Today, only the last and Regina Coeli are still sung in many places.

Unfortunately, the abandonment of these antiphons is another of the fruits of the difficult times we live in as regards the Catholic liturgy.

Of these antiphons, we have each one in a solemn tone and in a simpler version, and it is certainly the latter that is more popular as it can be performed by the musically untrained congregation. Naturally, the solemn tone is very elaborate, melismatic (using multi-syllabic notes), and more suitable to be performed by a group of professional singers or monks accustomed to Gregorian chant.

They are very beautiful melodies, full of melismas that make singing almost a feast. The simple version, however, allows everyone to join in the singing of this beautiful antiphon: “This joyful 50

Latin Regina Caeli Regina caeli, laetare, alleluia.

Quia quem meruisti portare, alleluia.

Resurrexit, sicut dixit, alleluia.

Ora pro nobis Deum, alleluia.

Gaude et laetare, Virgo Maria, alleluia.

Quia surrexit Dominus vere, alleluia.

English Queen of Heaven Queen of Heaven, rejoice, alleluia.

For He whom you did merit to bear, alleluia.

Has risen, as he said, alleluia.

Pray for us to God, alleluia.

Rejoice and be glad, O Virgin Mary, alleluia.

For the Lord has truly risen, alleluia.

INSIDE THE VATICAN MARCH-APRIL 2024

prayer is addressed to Mary, mother of the Risen One and, since 1742, it has traditionally been sung or recited in the Easter season, that is, from Easter Sunday until the day of Pentecost replacing the Angelus. Its composition dates back to the 10th century, but the author is unknown. Tradition has it that Pope Gregory the Great, one Easter morning in Rome, heard angels singing the first three lines of the Regina Coeli, to which he added the fourth. Another theory states that the author was Pope Gregory V. The melody in use dates back to the 12th century, but was simplified in the 17th century.” (gregorianum.org) The success of the antiphon Regina Coeli is also due to the fact that it is quite schematic in its structure: there are four sentences, all ending with an alleluia. In addition to its objective brevity, this makes the song easily memorized. As well, the opening is very moving: the Queen of heaven, the Blessed Virgin Mary, is asked to rejoice. We, in fact, are the ones who invite the Blessed Virgin to rejoice, because the One she carried in her womb has now risen. In the last sentence we have recourse to her intercession, asking her to

plead for us before God. The decided, on the afternoon of Latin succession of hallelujahs creEaster day, to visit St. Peter’s Salve Regina ates a joyful atmosphere that Basilica in the Vatican. I reSalve, regina, mater misericordiae, well justifies the fame of the member that upon entering the vita, dulcedo et spes nostra, salve. song. immense Basilica, we headed Ad te clamamus exsules filii Hevae, In his homily on Holy Satto the altar of the chair, where ad te suspiramus gementes et flentes urday 2006, Pope Benedict the singing of vespers was in hac lacrimarum valle.

XVI shows us the connection ending. We had to wait for the between the event of Easter procession of canons and Eia ergo, advocata nostra, illos tuos and our baptism: “It is clear singers to return to the sacmisericordes oculos ad nos converte, that this event is not some mirristy. I was struck by two et Jesum, benedictum fructum ventris tui, acle of the past whose occurthings: the choral clothes of nobis, post hoc exsilium, ostende. rence could be ultimately the singers and canons, and the O clemens, o pia, o dulcis Virgo Maria. indifferent to us. It is a qualitasinging of the Regina Coeli tive leap in the history of ‘evowhich was performed by lution,’ and of life in general, everyone, canons, singers and English towards a new future life, faithful.

Hail, Holy Queen towards a new world which, I don’t know why I was so Hail, holy Queen, mother of mercy, starting from Christ, already struck by all this, but I rememHail our life, our sweetness, and our hope. continually penetrates this ber going to the sacristy to ask To you we cry, poor banished children of Eve; world of ours, transforms it the master of the choir, once to you we send up our sighs, and attracts us to it. But how called Cappella Giulia, if I mourning and weeping in this valley of tears. does this happen? How can could join them. The master this event actually reach me agreed to my request and from Turn, then, most gracious advocate, and draw my life towards itself that moment my adventure your eyes of mercy toward us; and upwards? The answer, perwith St. Peter’s Basilica in the and after this, our exile, haps surprising at first but Vatican began, which ended in show unto us the blessed fruit of your womb, Jesus. completely real, is: this event 2008, about 18 years later, O clement, O loving, O sweet Virgin Mary. comes to me through faith and when I moved to Macau, in Baptism. This is why Baptism China, to teach. That Regina is part of the Easter Vigil, as also underlined in this celCoeli was like a door that showed me that there was ebration by the conferring of the Sacraments of Christsomething more to the liturgy than what I had, unfortuian Initiation on some adults coming from different nately, been accustomed to. countries. Baptism means precisely this, that a past I later realized that the terrible “infection” that had event is not in question, but that a qualitative leap in unitorn apart the liturgy and sacred music had also torn versal history comes to me and attracts me. Baptism is apart the Church environments in which one would something very different from an act of ecclesial socialexpect a dignity in the worship of God that would be ization, from a slightly old-fashioned and complicated appropriate to those environments’ history and tradition. rite for welcoming people into the Church. It is also But no — in the following decades I realized that the dismore than a simple washing, a kind of purification and ease was progressing in the veins of the Church inexbeautification of the soul. It is truly death and resurrecorably and today, the same Rome that should be the tion, rebirth, transformation into a new life.” glory of the Catholic world is a very pale reflection of Through the singing of the Regina Coeli, we always what it once was. Yet I cannot forget how the Blessed try to remind ourselves of this new life that awaits us.

Virgin Mary in a certain sense spoke to me and made me For me, the Regina Coeli is linked to a particular memfeel a spark of that beauty which has its origin in God, a ory that goes back at least 30 years. Like many, I grew beauty which — unfortunately — I was later given the up in the ecclesiastical musical atmosphere of the postopportunity to contemplate almost exclusively in its terVatican II era, an atmosphere that unfortunately still rible decadence. affects us today. Not that there aren’t also well-written songs, but what is mostly offered is a cheap musical pro*Aurelio Porfiri is an extensively published composer, duction. At that time, still young, I had become passionconductor, writer and educator. He has lived and ate about the pipe organ that I had learned to know and worked for 7 years in Macau, China and is the appreciate, even if my knowledge of sacred music was founder of the publishing company Chorabooks. Find very incomplete. I attended a parish in a central area of him on his YouTube channel Ritorno a Itaca and on Rome. I remember that, with friends in this parish, we Facebook.m MARCH-APRIL 2024 INSIDE THE VATICAN

51

Of Book, Art and People

St. Peter’S baldacchino under reStoration for 2025 holy year n BY LUCY GORDAn

Above, self-portrait by Gianlorenzo Bernini (1623), now in Rome’s Borghese Gallery.

(Photo, Wikipedia)

Left, Bernini’s Baldacchino (Photo, Wikipedia)

Below: Bernini’s bust of his patron, Pope Urban VIII in Palazzo Barberini, Rome, and an anonymous portrait of his colleague, Francesco Borromini.

(Photos, Wikipedia)

G

ian Lorenzo Bernini was Cardinal Maffeo Barberini’s favorite artist. On his ascent to the papal throne in 1623 Urban VIII remarked, “It’s a great fortune for you, O Cavaliere, to see Cardinal Maffeo Barberini made Pope, but our fortune is even greater to have Cavalier Bernini alive in our pontificate.” Thus, not surprisingly, the Pope immediately appointed Bernini curator of the papal art collection, director of the papal foundry at Castel Sant’Angelo, and commissioner of Piazza Navona’s fountains. He also commissioned him to create the baldacchino or canopy over the high altar directly under the dome and directly above the tomb of St. Peter in the newly finished St. Peter’s Basilica. It was similar in style to the Old St. Peter’s ciborium, but this time made mostly of bronze not cloth.

The term “baldachin” derives from Baldac, the ancient name of the city of Baghdad in Iraq, known for its precious silk fabrics. Thus, although of bronze, Bernini made his to resemble the 52 INSIDE THE VATICAN MARCH-APRIL 2024

richly adorned cloths with scalloped edges and long tassels of ciboria over the high altars of older churches.

The first of Bernini’s works to combine sculpture and architecture and designed as a massive spiraling gilded bronze four-pillared canopy, topped with statues of angel and cherubs, and a cross, the baldacchino became the Basilica’s visual centerpiece. Nearly 30 meters tall with an estimated weight of 63 tons, it cost 200,000 Roman scudi (about 8 million US dollars today). Its four pillars are decorated with small gilded reliefs of cherubs, flies, a lizard eating a scorpion, rosaries, and heraldic emblems of the Barberini family: bees and laurel leaves.

One curiosity: the changing face of a woman depicted at the base of the baldacchino’s four pillars.

These four pillars rest on four 8feet tall marble plinths decorated with eight of the Barberini’s coatof-arms, a shield with three bees.

Each of the shields shows a woman’s face at the top and a satyr’s head at the bottom. The shields look nearly identical, but if

Details of Bernini’s spiraling pillars and of Borromini’s decorations atop the baldacchino's canopy.

Pietro Zander, head of the art heritage unit of the Fabbrica of San Pietro.

the Fabbrica of San Pietro, the Holy See’s department one looks closely one sees dramatic changes in the face in charge of the Basilica, announced that Bernini’s earof the woman. She seems to be calm, then in pain, then liest artistic masterpiece was in a “degraded state of in intense pain. On the last column, her face is replaced conservation” in spite of being cleaned twice a year: afby... a baby’s face. There are several interpretations of ter Easter, and after Christmas. Its gilded decorations the meaning of these faces. One is that the young are obscured by a heavy patina of dust, grime, and woman is Giulia Barberini, a niece of Pope Urban VIII. mold, and paint is peeling off its wooden parts (which The Pope loved her very much and he was worried account for 20% of the baldaccchino). Beabout her difficult pregnancy. Urban VIII sides natural aging, Zander explained that and Bernini were on friendly terms and the large number of visitors to the Basilica, Bernini represented Giulia’s laborious desometimes as many as 50,000 a day, alters livery. Moving from the southeast corner the Basilica’s microclimate, its temperature clockwise to the northeast corner, the enand humidity, enough to corrode the structire labor is depicted. The last face shows ture’s bronze and oxidize its iron and causes a little angelic baby smiling: Giulia’s dethe constant expansion and compression of livery ended well! its wood. He said that over the next 10 Bernini worked alongside his father months, 2024 being the 400th anniversary of Pietro and his brother Luigi as well as Urban VIII’s commission, the baldacchino Francesco Borromini, later his rival. would undergo an extensive “makeover” to When Bernini completed his work 12 be completed in time for the opening on years later, nothing like it had ever been Sister María Antonia de Paz y Figueroa (1703-1799).

Christmas Eve of the 2025 Holy Year. The seen before. No wonder that after visiting Patrick Kelly, Supreme only other major restoration of the balthe Basilica in 1873, the overwhelmed Below, Knight of the Knights of dacchino dates to 1758. novelist Henry James said of the balColumbus with Pope Francis This year’s state-of-the-art dacchino: “You have only to restoration began on February stroll and stroll and gaze and 12, the day after Pope Francis gaze; to watch the glorious alpresided over the canonization tar-canopy lift its bronze arof Argentina’s first female saint chitecture, its colossal embroiin a mass at St. Peter’s high altar. dered contortions, like a temBorn in a wealthy family but ple within a temple, and feel who felt her religious vocation yourself at the bottom of the early, Sister María Antonia de abysmal shaft of the dome Paz y Figueroa (1703-1799), afdwindle to a crawling dot.” fectionately known as Mama At a press conference on Antula, established the DaughJanuary 11, Pietro Zander, ters of the Divine Savior, evanhead of the art heritage unit of MARCH-APRIL 2024 INSIDE THE VATICAN 53

Of Book, Art and People (Courtesy of the Knights of Columbus)

gelistic collaborators of the Jesuits. sination attempt on his life, St. John The restoration cost of 700,000 euPaul II had a mosaic of the fresco made ros (US$768,000), will be paid by and installed in St. Peter’s Square); of the Knights of Columbus, a global the 12th-century fresco “Madonna del Catholic fraternal order founded in Soccorso,” often restored over the cen1882 to serve the needs of a largely turies, in the Gregorian Chapel in Italian immigrant Catholic commu2013; and of the large wooden 14thnity by a young parish priest in century crucifix in 2013.

New Haven, Connecticut, now “The three phases of restoration Blessed Fr. Michael McGivney. work,” Cardinal Marco Gambetti, The Knights today have 2 million Archpriest of the Basilica, told the Presenting the “Madonna del Soccorso” members in 13 countries. press, “will begin with provisional after its restoration paid for by the Knights of Columbus This is their latest collaboration work and planning, continue with prein restoring artworks in Vatican City. The collaboration liminary and onsite diagnostics and documentation usbegan with the construction of a new chapel dedicated ing, for examples, drone videography (teamed with Mito the Patron saints of Europe, Benedict, Cyril, and crosoft to take 6,000 detailed photographs) and 3-D Methodius, in the Vatican Grottoes in 1980-81. Other models using Building Information Modeling (BIM-H), collaborations in St. Peter’s Basilica include the and then, with 10-12 experts working every day from an restoration and consolidation of its façade in 1985-86; all-enclosing scaffolding to be constructed over four renovation of two ancient rooms, “Of the Architects” weeks after Easter, will focus on the actual restoration and “Of the Glass,” in 1987; restoration of the dome in and conservation. the Chapel of the Blessed Sacrament in 1992; restora“During this last phase, these dozen workers will untion of Pope Innocent VIII’s bronze funerary monudertake a deep cleaning using soft brushes and vacuum ment in 2010-11; of the 15th-century fresco “Madonna cleaners and apply surface protection to the metals and della Colonna” in 2012-13 (after May 13, 1981’s assasacrylic resin to fill cracks in the wood.”m

54 INSIDE THE VATICAN MARCH-APRIL 2024

THE END EXCERPTS fRom LoRD of THE WoRLD

“THEy’RE going — To WiPE ouT RomE” MORE THEN A CENTURY AGO, MONSIGNOR ROBERT HUGH BEnSOn FORESAW THE RISE OF SECULAR HUMANISM, THE CONTRACTION OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH, AND THE COMING OF THE ANTICHRIST n BY ITV STAFF Editor’s Note: The passage below is from the novel Lord of the World, written by the English Catholic convert Monsignor Robert Hugh Benson (the son of the Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury) in 1907. He attempts a vision of the world more than a century in the future — in the early 21st century… our own time… predicting the

LORD OF THE WORLD

BY ROBERT HUGH BENSON (1907) BOOK II, THE EnCOUnTER, CHAPTER VI, SECTIOnS III-IV (Note: On a mission to Rome to stop a violent plot among Catholics outraged at government imposition of a new “humanist liturgy” on the Church, Percy learns he is too late.)

The car was now ascending; rapidly towards the pass up across the huge tumbled slopes, ravines, and cliffs that lie like outworks of the enormous wall. Seen from this great height they were in themselves comparatively insignificant, but they at least suggested the vastness of the bastions of which they were no more than buttresses. As Percy turned, he could see the moonless sky alight with frosty stars, and the dimness of the illumination made the scene even more impressive; but as he turned again, there was a change. The vast air about him seemed now to be perceived through frosted glass. The velvet blackness of the pine forests had faded to heavy grey, the pale glint of water and ice seen and gone again in a moment, the monstrous nakedness of rock spires and slopes, rising towards him and sliding away again beneath with a crawling motion— all these had lost their distinctness of outline, and were veiled in invisible white.

As he looked yet higher to right and left the sight became terrifying, for the giant walls of rock rushing towards him, the huge grotesque shapes towering on all sides, ran upward into a curtain of cloud visible only from the dancing radiance thrown upon it by the brilliantly lighted car. Even as he looked, two straight fingers of splendor, resembling horns, shot out, as the bow searchlights were turned on; and the car itself, already traveling at half-speed, dropped to quarterspeed, and began to sway softly from side to side as the huge air-planes beat the mist through which they moved, and the antennae of light pierced it.

Still up they went, and on—yet swift enough to let Percy see one great pinnacle rear itself, elongate, sink down into a 56

INSIDE THE VATICAN MARCH-APRIL 2024

rise of Communism, the fall of faith in many places, the advance of technology (he foresees helicopters) and so forth up until... the Second Coming of the Lord, with which his vision ends. For this reason, and also because Pope Benedict and Pope Francis have repeatedly cited the book, saying its clarification of the danger of a type of humanitarianism without God is a true danger that we do face, we print a selection from it in ITV, now and in the months ahead.

cruel needle, and vanish into nothingness a thousand feet below. The motion grew yet more nauseous, as the car moved up at a sharp angle preserving its level, simultaneously rising, advancing and swaying. Once, hoarse and sonorous, an unfrozen torrent roared like a beast, it seemed within twenty yards, and was dumb again on the instant. Now, too, the horns began to cry, long, lamentable hootings, ringing sadly in that echoing desolation like the wail of wandering souls; and as Percy, awed beyond feeling, wiped the gathering moisture from the glass, and stared again, it appeared as if he floated now, motionless except for the slight rocking beneath his feet, in a world of whiteness, as remote from earth as from heaven, poised in hopeless infinite space, blind, alone, frozen, lost in a white hell of desolation.

Once, as he stared, a huge whiteness moved towards him through the veil, slid slowly sideways and down, disclosing, as the car veered, a gigantic slope smooth as oil, with one cluster of black rock cutting it like the fingers of a man’s hand groping from a mountainous wave.

Then, as once more the car cried aloud like a lost sheep, there answered it, it seemed scarcely ten yards away, first one windy scream of dismay, another and another; a clang of bells, a chorus broke out; and the air was full of the beating of wings.

IV There was one horrible instant before a clang of a bell, the answering scream, and a whirling motion showed that the steersman was alert. Then like a stone the car dropped, and Percy clutched at the rail before him to steady the terrible sensation of falling into emptiness. He could hear behind him the crash of crockery, the bumping of heavy bodies, and as the car again checked on its wide wings, a rush of footsteps broke out and a cry or two of dismay. Outside, but high and far away, the hooting went on; the air was full of it, and in a flash he recognised that it could not be one or ten or twenty cars, but at least a hundred that had answered the call, and that somewhere overhead were hooting and flapping. The invisible ravines and cliffs on all sides took up the crying; long wails whooped and moaned and died amid a clash of bells, further and further

God as depicted by British poet William Blake as the “architect of creation,” the “Ancient of Days,” now in the British Museum, London

every instant, but now in every direction, behind, above, in front, and far to right and left.

Once more the car began to move, sinking in a long still curve towards the face of the mountain; and as it checked, and began to sway again on its huge wings, he turned to the door, seeing as he did so, through the cloudy windows in the glow of light, a spire of rock not thirty feet below rising from the mist, and one smooth shoulder of snow curving away into invisibility.

Within, the car shewed brutal signs of the sudden check: the doors of the dining compartments, as he passed along, were flung wide; glasses, plates, pools of wine and tumbled fruit rolled to and fro on the heaving floors; one man, sitting helplessly on the ground, rolled vacant, terrified eyes upon the priest. He glanced in at the door through which he had come just now, and Father Corkran staggered up from his seat and came towards him, reeling at the motion underfoot; simultaneously there was a rush from the opposite door, where a party of Americans had been dining; and as Percy, beckoning with his head, turned again to go down to the stern-end of the ship, he found the narrow passage blocked with the crowd that had run out. A babble of talking and cries made questions impossible; and Percy, with his chaplain behind him, gripped the aluminum paneling, and step by step began to make his way in search of his friends.

Half-way down the passage, as he pushed and struggled, a voice made itself heard above the din; and in the momentary silence that followed, again sounded the far-away crying of the volors overhead.

“Seats, gentlemen, seats,” roared the voice. “We are moving immediately.”

Then the crowd melted as the conductor came through, red-faced and determined, and Percy, springing into his wake, found his way clear to the stern.

The Cardinal seemed none the worse. He had been asleep, he explained, and saved himself in time from rolling on to the floor; but his old face twitched as he talked.

“But what is it?” he said. “What is the meaning?”

Father Bechlin related how he had actually seen one of the troop of volors within five yards of the window; it was crowded with faces, he said, from stem to stern. Then it had soared suddenly, and vanished in whorls of mist.

Percy shook his head, saying nothing. He had no explanation.

“They are inquiring, I understand,” said Father Bechlin again. “The conductor was at his instrument just now.”

There was nothing to be seen from the windows now. Only, as Percy stared out, still dazed with the shock, he saw the cruel needle of rock wavering beneath as if seen through water, and the huge shoulder of snow swaying softly up and down. It was quieter outside. It appeared that the flock had passed, only somewhere from an infinite height still sounded a fitful wailing, as if a lonely bird were wandering, lost in space.

“That is the signaling volor,” murmured Percy to himself.

He had no theory—no suggestion. Yet the matter seemed an ominous one. It was unheard of that an encounter with a

hundred volors should take place, and he wondered why they were going southwards. Again the name of Felsenburgh came to his mind. What if that sinister man were still somewhere overhead?

“Eminence,” began the old man again. But at that instant the car began to move.

A bell clanged, a vibration tingled underfoot, and then, soft as a flake of snow, the great ship began to rise, its movement perceptible only by the sudden drop and vanishing of the spire of rock at which Percy still stared. Slowly the snowfield too began to flit downwards, a black cleft, whisked smoothly into sight from above, and disappeared again below, and a moment later once more the car seemed poised in white space as it climbed the slope of air down which it had dropped just now.

Again the wind-chord rent the atmosphere; and this time the answer was as faint and distant as a cry from another world. The speed quickened, and the steady throb of the screw began to replace the swaying motion of the wings. Again came the hoot, wild and echoing through the barren wilderness of rock walls beneath, and again with a sudden impulse the car soared. It was going in great circles now, cautious as a cat, climbing, climbing, punctuating the ascent with cry after cry, searching the blind air for dangers. Once again a vast white slope came into sight, illuminated by the glare from the windows, sinking ever more and more swiftly, receding and approaching—until for one instant a jagged line of rocks grinned like teeth through the mist, dropped away and vanished, and with a clash of bells, and a last scream of warning, the throb of the screw passed from a whirr to a rising note, and the note to stillness, as the huge ship, clear at last of the frontier peaks, shook out her wings steady once more, and set out for her humming flight through space…. Whatever it was, was behind them now, vanished into the thick night.

There was a sound of talking from the interior of the car, hasty, breathless voices, questioning, exclaiming, and the authoritative terse answer of the guard. A step came along outside, and Percy sprang to meet it, but, as he laid his hand on the door, it was pushed from without, and to his astonishment the English guard came straight through, closing it behind him.

He stood there, looking strangely at the four priests, with compressed lips and anxious eyes.

“Well?” cried Percy.

“All right, gentlemen. But I’m thinking you’d better descend at Paris. I know who you are, gentlemen—and though I’m not a Catholic—-” He stopped again.

“For God’s sake, man—-” began Percy.

“Oh! the news, gentlemen. Well, it was two hundred cars going to Rome. There is a Catholic plot, sir, discovered in London—-” “Well?”

“To wipe out the Abbey. So they’re going—-” “Ah!” “Yes, sir—to wipe out Rome.”

Then he was gone again.m MARCH-APRIL 2024 INSIDE THE VATICAN

57

VATICAN WATCH

By Matthew Trojacek with CNA Reports - Grzegorz Galazka and CNA photos

DECEMBER MONDAY 11

POPE FRANCIS EXPRESSES CONCERN ABOUT ITALY’S FUTURE Pope Francis on December 11 received the prefects of the Italian Republic in the Clementine Hall of the Apostolic Palace and expressed his concern about the low birth rate in the country, lamenting that many times “dogs take the place of children.”

The Pope reminded that the task of these government authorities is to act as intermediaries “between the state and the territory, constantly linking the whole with the parts, the center with the peripheries, the common good with care for people.”

The pontiff highlighted three challenges that the prefects face: public order, critical environmental issues, and taking care of the migrants flowing in.

Regarding public order, the pontiff stressed that it’s a priority, where “respect for the law with care for humanity” must be combined. (CNA) SUNDAY 17

POPE FRANCIS CELEBRATES 87TH BIRTHDAY WITH CHILDREN WHO RECEIVE AID FROM VATICAN CLINIC Pope Francis celebrated his 87th birthday on December 17 by meeting with children and families who are assisted by the Vatican’s Santa Marta Pediatric Dispensary.

Addressing the families present — who presented the Holy Father with a cake and a bouquet of sunflowers and sang “Happy Birthday” — the Pope used the opportunity to speak on the importance of preparing for Christmas.

“We think and remember when Jesus came; he came to be with us,” the Pope said to the nearly 200 families gathered in the Paul VI Audience Hall at the Vatican.

Reminding the children that this is a season to “prepare our hearts for Christmas, to receive Jesus,” the Pope challenged them: “What will I ask Jesus? What will I ask Jesus this Christmas? Now each of you think: What will I ask Jesus? In silence, eyes closed, and you think: What will I ask Jesus? Have you thought about it yet? All right.”

“And I wish you a merry Christmas, a merry Christmas to all of you! Always with a smile, and may the Lord give you everything you want,” he added. (CNA) 60 INSIDE THE VATICAN MARCH-APRIL 2024

FRIDAY 22

POPE FRANCIS SENDS PAPAL ALMONER TO HOLY LAND FOR CHRISTMAS AS A SIGN OF SOLIDARITY Pope Francis sent Cardinal Konrad Krajewski to the Holy Land for Christmas as his personal representative to bring solidarity to people suffering amid the war.

“The Holy Father really wanted me to be in the Holy Land to represent him, to pray, and be close to people who are suffering greatly,” Krajewski said in an interview with Vatican Radio.

“So I will spend these days in prayer in this place, so dear to all Christians,” he said.

The Vatican Dicastery for the Service of Charity announced Krajewski’s visit on December 22 as a “concrete sign” of solidarity with all who “experience firsthand the consequences of war in this Christmas season.” (CNA) FRIDAY 29

POPE FRANCIS SPEAKS WITH ZELENSKYY ABOUT PEACE EFFORTS IN UKRAINE Pope Francis spoke by telephone with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on December 28 to discuss peace efforts to end the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian war, according to a video message Zelenskyy posted on X, formerly known as Twitter.

“We discussed our joint work on the Peace Formula,” Zelenskyy said. “More than 80 states are already involved at the level of their representatives. There will be more. I am grateful to the Vatican for supporting our work.”

Zelenskyy said the pontiff expressed “his wishes of peace — just peace for all of us.” (CNA)

DECEMBER WEDNESDAY 3

BENEDICTINE NUNS MOVE INTO MATER ECCLESIAE MONASTERY The Argentine Benedictine nuns invited by Pope Francis to reside in Mater Ecclesiae, the monastery in the heart of the Vatican Gardens that was the home of the Pope Emeritus, Benedict XVI, for almost a decade after his historic resignation, arrived at their new home on January 3.

The six nuns belong to the Benedictine Order of the Abbey of Santa Scholastica in Victoria, Buenos Aires Province (Diocese of San Isidro), Argentina. The Pope in-

Opposite page, Pope Francis celebrated his 87th birthday on December 17 by meeting with children and families. (Photo Grzegorz Galazka).

Bottom, Cardinal Konrad Krajewski during mass in the Grotto of the Nativity for Christmas. His mission: to bring hope to people suffering amid the war

vited them with a handwritten letter dated October 1, 2023, and the nuns “generously accepted the invitation.”

Following his resignation from the papacy on February 11, 2013, Benedict XVI expressed a desire to reside in Mater Ecclesiae, where he dedicated himself to prayer, study and music until his death on December 31, 2022.

(VaticanNews)

be afraid,” the Pope said during the event at the Paul VI Audience Hall.

Highlighting the nexus between social, economic, and ecological issues, the Pope said that “politics that is truly at the service of humanity cannot let itself be dictated to by finance and market mechanisms.” (CNA)

THURSDAY 4

PONTIFICAL UNIVERSITIES TO OFFER ONLINE COURSE ON INTEGRAL ECOLOGY Pontifical universities in Rome are coming together to launch a new Joint Diploma in Integral Ecology. This is a key concept for Pope Francis, stressing the interconnectedness of environmental, economic, political, social, and ethical issues.

The course will run from January to June 2024, and be taught by an international group of prominent academics, leaders and activists.

In a press release, the Pontifical Universities said that the course was a response to “the unprecedented challenge facing the planet.”

“In 2015,” they write, “Pope Francis gifted us Laudato si’”, his landmark Encyclical calling all people of good will to action on climate change.

However, they say, as Pope Francis recognizes in his more recent Exhortation Laudate Deum, “our responses have not been adequate,” and “the world in which we live is collapsing and may be nearing breaking point.” (VaticanNews)

WEDNESDAY 17

POPE FRANCIS: CATHOLIC NEWS MEDIA CAN’T BE ‘NEUTRAL’ IN THE MESSAGE THEY CONVEY Pope Francis said people working in Catholic media must not refrain from being involved in the evangelizing mission of the Church and that, therefore, “they cannot remain ‘neutral’ with respect to the message they convey.”

The pontiff made his remarks at a January 4 audience with a delegation from the Society of Catholic Publicists of Germany on the 75th anniversary of its foundation.

According to Vatican News, the Holy Father also explained that “interreligious dialogue, ecumenism, and the defense of peace, freedom, and human dignity” should be the goals of communication professionals, especially if they are Catholic.

“How many conflicts today, instead of being extinguished by dialogue, are fueled by fake news or inflammatory statements in the media! That’s why it’s all the more important that you, strong in your Christian roots and in living the faith daily, ‘demilitarized’ in your heart by the Gospel, support the disarmament of language,” the Pope said in his discourse, which he gave in writing to the delegation.

To achieve this “demilitarization” of language, he shared four guidelines that Catholics in the media can put into practice: “Foster a tone of peace and understanding, build bridges, be available to listen, and engage in respectful communication toward others and their reasons.” (CNA) FRIDAY 12

POPE FRANCIS CALLS FOR GREATER DIALOGUE AND COOPERATION BETWEEN CHRISTIANS, MARXISTS Pope Francis called for cooperation between Christians and Marxists as a way to achieve greater “dialogue” and help in the search for the “common good.”

“I thank you for your commitment to dialogue,” the Pope said in a private meeting on January 10 with 15 representatives of DIALOP (Transversal Dialogue Project), an association of European leftist politicians and academics that seeks to bridge Catholic social teaching and Marxist theory.

“There is always a great need for dialogue, so do not

MONDAY 29

IN NEW INTERVIEW, POPE AFFIRMS BLESSINGS OF PEOPLE, NOT UNIONS Making a list of which sinners are welcome in the Church and which sinners are not goes against the teaching of the Gospel, Pope Francis told an Italian newspaper.

The Pope said more than one person had asked him why he approved the declaration of the Dicastery of the Doctrine of the Faith permitting priests to give informal blessings to gay couples and couples not married in the Church as long as those blessings do not give the appearance of blessing the couple’s union.

“I respond that the Gospel is to sanctify everyone,” the Pope said in the interview with La Stampa published January 29.

Pope Francis said that when he was in Lisbon, Portugal, in August for World Youth Day and repeatedly said the Church is open to “todos, todos, todos” — everyone, everyone, everyone — he was affirming the Gospel, and particularly the parable about the wedding feast where the invited guests don’t arrive so the king tells his servants to go out to the streets and invite everyone, “good and bad alike.” (OSV)n MARCH-APRIL 2024 INSIDE THE VATICAN 61

PEOPLE B M Y

ATTHEW TROJACEK with G. Galazka photos

n CARDINAL BECCIU FRANCE REAFFIRMS ROLE AS PROTECTOR OF SPEAKS OF ‘DRAWING UP A CHRISTIAN COMMUNITIES IN JERUSALEM BALANCE SHEET’ OF ONE’S Dressed in ceremoLIFE BEFORE GOD IN HOMILY nial attire and surAfter being convicted on rounded by Francisseveral counts of embezzlecan friars, gendarmes, ment of Vatican funds, Carand ecclesiastics, the dinal Angelo Becciu gave a new French Consul GenNew Year’s Eve homily receral in Jerusalem — Nicolas Kasommending the congregation sianides — braved the rain on Jandraw up “a balance sheet” of one’s peruary 11 as he and his entourage sonal life before God, according to an Italprocessed from the Jaffa Gate to the Basilica of the Holy Sepulchre. ian media outlet.

Dating back to a request by the Ottoman Empire in the 16th century, Cardinal Becciu, who was sentenced to France is one of the guardians of the “Status Quo” (an understanding five and a half years in prison by the Vatamong religious communities with respect to nine shared religious sites ican’s criminal court on December 16, celin Jerusalem and Bethlehem) along with three other Latin nations — ebrated Christmas in his hometown on the Italy, Spain, and Belgium. However, it is the only country that enjoys Italian island of Sardinia and presided the privilege of a solemn reception at the Holy Sepulchre. The Francisover a Mass in the Cathedral of the can Custos of the Holy Land accompanies the Consul General to the Blessed Immaculate Virgin of Ozieri on tomb of Christ, where the Gospel passage of the Resurrection is proDecember 31. claimed.

“Recalling the past means drawing up a “France has accompanied, supported, and sometimes facilitated our balance sheet of our personal lives before mission with the local Christians, and this is still the case today, particGod, without closing our eyes to the isularly through the financing of schools and the Terra Sancta Museum,” sues that grip the society in which we live said Fra Francesco Patton OFM, the Custos of the Holy Land. both locally and universally,” Cardinal Becciu said in his homily. n CARDINAL CZERNY: ‘WE NEED A NEW “It also means having a calm and practical look at that HUMANISTIC ECONOMY’ reality, that mystery, which we hold most dear: the Cardinal Michael Czerny, the Prefect of Church of God,” he said. (NCRegister) the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development, traveled to Germany on Jann CARDINAL ZEN: FIDUCIA SUPPLICANS uary 26 to receive the 2024 Klaus Hemmer‘CREATES CONFUSION’; SUGGESTS le Award, recognizing his tireless commitFERNÁNDEZ SHOULD RESIGN ment to human dignity and human rights.

Cardinal Joseph Zen Ze-kiun said Pope The award is conferred every two years by the FocoFrancis’ recent declaration allowing the lare Movement in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland to blessing of same-sex couples under certain individuals who promote dialogue between churches, reconditions “creates confusion” and sugligions, and different worldviews. gested that its author, Cardinal Víctor The late theologian and Bishop of Aachen Klaus Manuel Fernández, should resign or be disHemmerle (1929-1994) dedicated his life to promoting missed. dialogue and inspired the founder of the movement, In a statement published January 23 on his blog, Zen Chiara Lubich. said the declaration Fiducia Supplicans contains numerThe title of Cardinal Czerny’s new German-language ous passages in need of clarification and “leaves many book is, in English, “We Are All Siblings — A Sign of the questions unanswered,” according to an unofficial transTimes: The Social Teaching of Pope Francis.” (Vaticanlation.

News) The 91-year-old Hong Kong cardinal emeritus highlighted in particular how the declaration appeared to him n HONG KONG CARDINAL CALLS FOR to condone sexual behavior in same-sex relationships by GREATER CATHOLIC-ANGLICAN UNITY implying such a relationship has an “intrinsic goodness” Cardinal Stephen Chow Sau-yan of Hong Kong has and can “mature” and “grow.” urged the Catholic and Anglican churches to Noting how the declaration appears to be similar to demonstrate greater unity in their individual Pope Francis’ response to one of five “dubia” that the carand collective missions while refraining dinal and four other cardinals sent last summer in which from competing against each other. they sought clarification on same-sex blessings, Zen said “We, Anglicans and Roman Catholics, Fiducia Supplicans makes the claim that “same-sex sexare called to be Jesus’ partners, individually ual love is ‘similar’ to marital love!” (CNA) 60 INSIDE THE VATICAN MARCH-APRIL 2024

VATICAN TO PUBLISH PRIVATE HOMILIES OF POPE BENEDICT XVI The Vatican will publish the previously uncirculated “private” homilies of the late Pope Benedict XVI in the coming year, the Holy See has announced.

The Vatican Publishing House said December 23 that it intends to release “a book of some 130 homilies given and collectively,” Chow said while addressing an ecumenical gathering at the Anglican Canterbury Cathedral in England on January 28.

Chow told the gathering that all were called like the twelve apostles and disciples to not “form camps working for their own missions or competing against each other.”

Chow’s sermon during the service, presided over by Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby, was part of the “Week of Prayer for Christian Unity,” conducted on the sidelines of the Jan. 22-29 “Growing Together” ecumenical summit, the Anglican Communion News Service (ACNS) reported on January 29. (UCANews) n FRANCE’S CATHOLIC BISHOPS STRONGLY BACK FARMERS France’s bishops stand in solidarity with farmers protesting across the country.

After days of protests in the local provinces, farmers were determined to block the main roads leading to Paris, with spectacular traffic jams of tractors and farm vehicles forming January 29 across the French capital. Protesting farmers hoped to create what they described as a “siege”

by the late Pope Benedict XVI at private Sunday Masses.”

The homilies were reportedly transcribed by members of Memores Domini, a lay association that lived with Benedict, the news service said. Four female members of the organization worked in Benedict XVI’s papal household and also moved with him to the Mater Ecclesiae Monastery after his retirement. (CNA) intended to squeeze more concessions from the government, led by new Prime Minister Gabriel Attal, less than a month into the job.

While trying to increase food production and yet reduce the impact of agriculture on the environment, the farmers are faced with rising costs, including soaring energy prices. They feel they are being unfairly accused of going against ecological concerns by the European Union.

Several French bishops issued statements, expressing solidarity with their struggle.

Bishop Jean-Marc Micas of Tarbes and Lourdes, the diocese of the famous Marian shrine, in the Pyrenees, personally visited the roads blocked by tractors to greet the protesters. (UCANews)

n MYANMAR CONFLICT ‘DEEPLY IMPACTING’ CHRISTIAN MAJORITY STATE The conflict following the 2021 military coup in Buddhist-majority Myanmar has seriously impacted Christians and their places of worship in the country’s only Christian-majority state, according to a report released this week.

The report by the Myanmar Witness project of the UK-based Centre for InforHOLY SEE APPOINTS THIRD CHINESE BISHOP IN LESS mation Resilience analyzed five case studTHAN A WEEK, SIGNALING SHIFT TOWARD BEIJING ies of airstrikes in western Chin state in 2023.

The Vatican announced on De“These examples indicate how conflict cember 29 the appointment of Faacross Chin is impacting churches — sites ther Peter Wu Yishun as the bishthat come under special protection under op of the Apostolic Prefecture of international Hague Conventions,” it said Shaowu (Minbei), the third apin the report released on January 24. pointment of a bishop in China in The military regime is intolerant tojust a week. wards non-Buddhist religious minorities.

According to the announceIn 2017, the military undertook a brutal ment, Wu was nominated as bishop of Shaowu, which is situated in the southeastern coastal province of Fu- counterinsurgency campaign in the westjian, on December 16, 2023, “within the framework of the Provisional ern Rakhine state that saw more than Agreement between the Holy See and the People’s Republic of China.” 740,000 members of the Muslim RoThe Mass of episcopal consecration was celebrated in hingya minority fleeing to neighboring the Church of Chengguan in the district of Jianyang in the Bangladesh.

The mountainous and underdeveloped city of Nanping and celebrated by Joseph Li Shan, the archbishop of Beijing, president of the Chinese Catholic Chin state, where 85 percent of its 478,000 Patriotic Association (CCPA), and vice chairman of the people are Christians, has been at the forefront of resistance. (UCANews)m Chinese Catholic Bishops’ Conference. (CNA) MARCH-APRIL 2024 INSIDE THE VATICAN 61

Food FoR THoUGHT n BY MOTHER MARTHA

F

In his opening remarks Beck or my “Food For Thought” indicated some of the elements escolumn of October 2014, op chef Heinz Beck, Rome’s only speaKs aT The NITed aTIoNs sential for a healthy diet: Bilancio Energetico – to maintain a balchef with three Michelin stars, ance between caloric intake and energy expenditure to told me: “During my 20 years at La Pergola my cuisine avoid obesity; Alimenti Nutrienti – to eat a diet rich in has passed through several styles: from traditional, to fruit, vegetables, and cereals, lean proteins and healthy creative with imaginative side dishes, to technically cutfats; Controllo delle Porzioni – portions based on qualting-edge, to attentive to health issues. Healthy menus ity not quantity; Assunzione di Sodio – adding only are my top priority. I’ve lightened my dishes by removsmall amounts of salt to avoid high blood pressure; ing non-essential ingredients so today my cuisine is Idratazione Adequata – drinking adequate amounts of modern, Mediterranean, and, above all, healthy. Since water to keep hydrated; Supporto Psicologico ed Emowe live much longer, we must eat healthily so as not to tivo – if necessary getting psychologdevelop pathologies like Type 2 diaical support to control emotivity, betes, cholesterol, cirrhosis of the stress, and depression which can inliver and high blood pressure, which fluence our eating habits negatively. derive from unhealthy nutrition.

Lack of proper attention to nutriHowever, I’m not a doctor, dietician tional rules and a balanced diet can or nutritionist; I’m a chef who pays have profoundly negative effects on attention to the wellbeing of his society. He continued by saying that a guests.” healthy diet not only reduces the illSince April 2014, Beck has colnesses of an individual, but it’s imporlaborated with the Catholic Universitant for public health because it rety Hospital Agostino Gemelli — the duces the cost of healthcare for all. hospital in which the Popes are treatAs for the environment, modern ed when ill. over-use of water, and harmful deforHe creates healthy, yet enjoyable, estation, usually in the Third World, menus for its in-house patients, as cause enormous damage to the enviwell as for those recently sent home ronment. and anyone interested in healthy eatThus, Beck emphasized: “Our ing habits (www.gemellifornelli.it). choices of the foods we eat have an Now, nearly ten years later, after important impact on our health, but publishing two science-based books Portrait of Heinz Beck by Adriano Truscello, also on the environment around us. in Italian about healthy nutrition, and courtesy of Barbara Manto & Partners “Our awareness of the environopening several new restaurants in mental impact of our food choices have stimulated disItaly and Dubai, London, Portugal, and Tokyo, besides cussion about the importance of ‘sustainable diets,’ his flagship La Pergola, Beck, still Rome’s only chef those which keep us healthy as well as protecting the with three Michelin stars, took his nutritional philosoenvironment. phy out of the kitchen and begun to consider its impact “To make responsible choices, learning about on food production and on the environment. healthy nutrition must start at an early age, with school On November 16, 2023, he participated in the panel programs which teach young people about how to eat a discussion of the Symposium “Traditional Diets for balanced diet, to avoid eating too much food, especially Sustainable Wellbeing,” sponsored by the Missions of food high in calories and low in nutrients.

Argentina, Japan and Italy to the United Nations, the “We chefs and other professionals in the food sector FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization), and UNmust emphasize not only the better quality of raw mateESCO, and held at the world’s most international forials produced at ‘Km.0’ and thus their better nutritional rum, the U.N., in New York. value, but also warn against the dangers of damaging Other members of the panel were Professors agricultural practices, raw material transformation and Francesco Zurlo and Matteo Oreste Ingaramo of Mipreservation...” lan’s Polytechnic University; Professor Carlo Di Cristo, La Pergola closed on November 21, 2023 for a coman expert in yeast and fermentation; Nicoletta Mantoplete restyling and will reopen on April 30. On October vani, opera singer Luciano Pavarotti’s widow and pres10, 2024, Beck will celebrate the restaurant’s 30th anident of her late husband’s namesake foundation; niversary, as well as his own as Executive Chef.

Camilla Baresani, cultural and food journalist, and AnTanti auguri!m tonella Bondi, olfactory designer.

T

62 INSIDE THE VATICAN JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2024

heINZ BecK U N