February 21, 2013, Thursday — Blackmail

“Therefore is my spirit overwhelmed within me; my heart within me is desolate.” –Psalm 143:4
The Secret Report Given to the Pope on December 17

Today a veil of secrecy was shredded in this eternal city.

Today therefore marked the beginning of a difficult, important struggle for the purification of the government of the Church desired for so many years by Joseph Ratzinger.

We were given a glimpse today into some of the reasons, previously unknown, that prompted Pope Benedict XVI to announce his resignation on February 11, to take effect February 28, in seven days, reasons that apparently “overwhelmed his spirit within him” and “made his heart desolate.”

It is a story that in many ways seems the plot of a novel.

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It is a story of blackmail and betrayal at the highest levels of the Church, and, allegedly, of a homosexual lobby organized within the Vatican to influence and obtain important decisions.

To recount this story, I will simply set forth how I learned about it, in the course of an ordinary day in Rome.

“What Can You Tell Me About the American Cardinals?”

I began my day at 6 a.m., editing a book I am preparing on one of the cardinals whom I admire greatly. (I had not expected the conclave to come so soon, and had expected to prepare the book at a more leisurely pace for publication later this year.)

At 9:45 a.m., I went to the Vatican and shortly after 10 a.m. met for 30 minutes with a European cardinal who will be going into the Conclave in a few days, a good and wise man who might himself be a candidate to be the next Pope.

He asked me a number of questions about the American cardinals. I answered as cautiously and as truthfully as I could.

The cardinal’s questions, and his interest in my remarks, made clear to me that the cardinals themselves may be trying to understand each other, in order to understand who among them may have the qualities of a strong, effective, global leader for the Church in this unprecedented time.

At 10:50 a.m., I walked into the press office, greeted Salvatore Izzo as he sat typing in the first booth (I regard him as one of the leading Vaticanisti), greeted Ania Artymiak, who writes for Inside the Vatican, and then greeted Paddy Agnew from Dublin, Ireland, correspondent for the Irish Times, whom I have known since the 1980s.

Paddy was busily typing away. Next to his computer, spread out on the large table in the center of the press office, was an Italian newspaper opened to p. 17.
It was a full-page story about something related to the Vatican. There was a large picture of Pope Benedict and Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, and three smaller photos.

The striking thing was that Paddy had marked almost every single paragraph of the story with colored markers, some in yellow, some in red, some in blue.

“What’s that?” I asked. “Something important?”

“Read it,” he said, typing away. “It’s from this morning’s La Repubblica. Someone has leaked the results of the cardinals’ commission investigation…”

(Note: La Repubblica of Rome is a sort of center-left paper founded in the mid-1970s along with three other papers of a similar outlook: El Pais in Madrid, Spain; Liberation in Paris, France; and The Independent in London, England. I’m not saying there was a relationship between the papers, or that the same people were behind all of them, just making the observation that they were all founded at nearly the same time, and all have more or less the same, secular humanist, line, and all in some way helped prepare the way for the development of the European Union as it exists today.)

I looked at the headline: “Non fornicare, non rubare” – i due commandamenti violati nel dossier che sconvolge il Papa (“Thou shalt not commit adultery, thou shalt not steal” — the two commandments violated in the dossier that shocked the Pope”).

I looked at the sub-title: “Lotte di potere e denaro. E l’ipotesi di una lobby gay.” (“Fights for power and money. And the hypothesis of a gay lobby.”)

And I saw a sentence, highlighted in yellow, at the center of the article: “La Relazione e esplicita. Alcuni alti prelati subiscono ‘l’influenza esterna’ — noi diremmo il ricatto — di laici a cui sono legati da vincoli di ‘natura mondana.’” (“The Report is explicit. A number of high-ranking prelates are being subjected to ‘external influence’ — we would say blackmail — from laypeople to whom they are linked by ties of a ‘worldly nature.’”)

“Blackmail?” I said.

“That’s what they are saying,” Paddy replied.

I looked at the three smaller photos in the article:

Marco Simeon

“Marco Simeon, 33 anni, ex direttore delle relazioni istituzionali e internazionali della Rai” (Marco Simeon, 33, director of institutional and internationals relations at RAI, the Italian national television network);
“Ettore Balestrero, 47 anni, sotto-segretario ai Rapporti con gli stati della segretaria del Vaticano” (Ettore Balestrero, 47, under-secretary of Relations with States of the Vatican Secretariat of State);

“Rene Bruelhart, 40 anni, direttore dell’Autorita di informazione finanziaria della Santa Sede” (Rene Bruelhart (photo, bottom), 40, director of the Authority of Financial Information of the Holy See).

The essence of the article was this. Pope Benedict last year had asked three cardinals to investigate the “Vatileaks” affair. He had chosen three cardinals older than age 80 — Julian Herranz, Josef Tomko, and Salvatore De Giorgi — to conduct the investigation. They had begun their work last April, even before the Vatileaks scandal really “broke” in May. They were given the authority to summon any Vatican official, including other cardinals, to be questioned.

Monsignor Ettore Balestero

The three, evidently with a small but dedicated staff to help them, worked all year, interviewing dozens of officials. Their investigation paralleled the investigation of the Vatican police, but was of an even higher level, since the three cardinals could also interview other cardinals.

Each session began with the same set of questions, and then additional questions were asked related to the specific work of each official. (So, these sessions were very well prepared.)

Each session was recorded and then transcribed.

Eventually, the cardinals were able to compare testimony, see patterns, find connections, drawn flow charts.

The members of the Curia were charted according to their region of origin, their religious orders, and also identified as part of (or not part of) “a network across all groups based on sexual orientation” (“una rete trasversale accomunata dall’orientamento sessuale“).

On December 17, the three cardinals submitted their report to Pope Benedict. The report was some 300 pages long, and there was only one copy. And that copy is in the possession of the Pope.

Rene Bruelhart

Eight weeks later, the Pope resigned his office, saying there was a need for a younger, stronger man to carry out the needed work of the papacy…

“Ok,” I said to Paddy. “I’ll go out and buy my own copy of the paper.”

I walked out of the press office and ran immediately into Cardinal Jose Saraiva Martins (he is now 81, so he will not vote in the Conclave). I have known him for many years. Since he is from Portugal, and knew Sister Lucy personally, we have spoken on occasion about the apparitions at Fatima in 1917, about the “Third Secret” of Fatima, and about the Consecration of Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary.

It was Saraiva Martins who, as Prefect for the Congregation for the Causes of the Saints, announced in Coimbra, Portugal (where Sister Lucy lived and died), in February 2008 that Pope Benedict had authorized the opening of Lucy’s cause of beatification, revealing at the same time that she left a series of important unpublished writings.

“Since the death of Sister Lucia, it has been obvious how much the reputation of holiness of this humble nun has spread throughout Portugal and the rest of the world,” the cardinal said, explaining Benedict’s decision to suspend the five-year waiting period before beginning the process of beatification. (She died in 2005, just a few weeks before Pope John Paul II.)

“Your eminence,” I said. “Bella giornata” (“beautiful day”).

“Yes, it is,” he said.

We spoke for several minutes. Then I recalled the reason I had left the press office.

“There is news today in the Italian press,” I said. “Evidently something has been leaked regarding the results of the Vatileaks investigation carried out by the three cardinals.”

“Oh?” he said, raising an eyebrow.

“Well, we don’t yet know the accuracy of the report, but there is a full page today in La Repubblica. Apparently there is even talk of some curial officials being blackmailed… I’m going over to the kiosk now to buy a copy of the paper. If you would like, I’ll buy a second copy for you.”

“Please do,” he said.

While we were speaking, Italian journalist Iacopo Scaramuzzi, another excellent Vaticanist, came up. He waited respectfully a few steps away, and came up when I nodded to him and stepped away toward the kiosk. I bought the two copies of La Repubblica. When I returned, Scaramuzzi was asking Saraiva Martins questions about the Pope’s resignation, about the Pope’s mood during these days of Spiritual Exercises, and about the qualities of spirit and character that the next Pope will need.

As the two spoke, a reporter and cameraman from Associated Press walked up. “May we?” they asked, with the camera already rolling. For a while they filmed the conversation, and then the AP journalist broke in, asking if Saraiva Martins had read the news that had broken that morning in La Repubblica, about the alleged blackmail of Vatican officials. Saraiva Martins glanced at me, holding the two copies of the paper, then said, “No, I cannot make any comment on that. I haven’t yet read the article.”

A moment later, the interview was over, and Saraiva Martins and I began to walk away toward his residence nearby. I waited until we were under the colonnade opposite the press office, in front of the Ancora bookstore, then handed him the second copy of La Repubblica. He thanked me and he said we could speak again after the end of the Spiritual Exercises on Saturday.

Back in the press office, Paddy Agnew was already completing his story. This is what he wrote — clearly, succinctly, without extraneous detail:

Irish Times

Pope’s decision ‘partly prompted’ by claims over influence of gay lobby

PADDY AGNEW, in Rome

Italian daily La Repubblica this morning sensationally claims that Pope Benedict’s resignation was at least partly prompted by an internal report prepared by three senior cardinals, alleging that various lobbies, including a gay lobby, exercise an “inappropriate influence” in internal Holy See affairs.

The newspaper suggests that such was Benedict’s dismay when presented with the details of the report on December 17th that it hardened his long-meditated decision to resign. The internal report prepared by Cardinals Julian Herranz, Josef Tomko and Salvatore De Giorgi had been commissioned by Benedict himself.

He had ordered it in response to the so-called Vatileaks scandal which culminated with the arrest and subsequent conviction last autumn of the Pope’s butler, Paolo Gabriele, found guilty of having stolen confidential documents from the papal apartment.

In this morning’s article, it is claimed that the cardinals reported that various lobbies within the Holy See were consistently breaking the sixth and seventh commandments, namely “thou shalt not steal” and “thou shalt not commit adultery”.

The “stealing” was in particular related to the Vatican Bank, IOR, whilst the sexual offences were related to the influence of an active gay lobby within the Vatican.

Last week, when presiding over the Ash Wednesday celebrations in St. Peter’s Basilica, Pope Benedict spoke of “divisions” which “besmirch” the face of the church. In a famous homily at the 2005 Via Crucis Easter celebrations in Rome, just days before the death of John Paul II, the then Cardinal Ratzinger had spoken of the “filth” in the church, a comment interpreted by many as a reference to the worldwide clerical abuse scandal.

However, La Repubblica claims the cardinals’ 300 page report speaks of “Impropriam Influentiam” on the part of various lobbies, some of them of a “worldly nature”, reflecting an “outside influence”. The Rome daily recalls the figure of papal gentleman, Angelo Balducci, accused three years ago of being a member of a gay ring active within the Vatican and involving choristers and seminarians.

The paper does not explain the source of its information on the cardinals report nor does it provide a direct quotation from any part of the report. Rather it claims that its findings are based on information received from an unnamed Vatican source.

A Vatican spokesman this morning had no comment to make on the allegations.

The Leak

I realized I needed to sit down and read the article through still more carefully. With no sources cited, there was a risk that it was inaccurate, or wildly exaggerated. And I wondered who had gotten the story.

I looked at the author’s name: Concita De Gregorio.

“Who’s that?” I asked Izzo.

“She’s not a Vaticanist,” he said. “But that is one of the best pieces she’s ever written.” He gave a thumbs up signal. “However, it’s actually based on a piece by Ignazio Ingrao which appeared yesterday in Panorama.”

“Ah!” I said.

Now I was getting the genealogy of the story.

So, I needed to read the Panorama article and then… talk to Ingrao.

(to be continued)

February 19, 2013, Tuesday — In the Vatican Gardens

Pope Benedict’s Future Residence

The Vatican Gardens are not large — the entire state is only 108 acres, and the gardens make up only about half of that area, so, about 50 acres of greenery. But it is enough room to take a good half-hour walk.

It is here, in the building just to the right of the center in the photo above, that Pope Benedict will live after he resigns on February 28.

The map of Vatican City below has three red circles drawn on it.

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You can orient yourself by starting on the right, where you can see part of St. Peter’s Square, and looking toward the middle of the photo, where you can see the dome of St. Peter’s Basilica. To the left of the dome, that is, behind the basilica, are the Vatican Gardens. The Pope’s future residence is a convent on the upper left side of the photo, circled in red.

The Pope’s current residence is on the top floor of the Apostolic Palace. His rooms are on the far end, and ar circled in red on the upper right of the photo. He has lived there since shortly after he was elected Pope on April 19, 2005, that is, for nearly eight years now.

The Pope worked from 1982 to 2005, for 23 years, in the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, also known by its old Italian name, the Sant’Uffizio, or Holy Office. The Palace of the Holt Office is circled in red on the lower right of the photo.

Not circled on the photo is the Domus Santa Marta — the building where the cardinals will stay during the papal conclave, which is now expected to start sometime in mid-March, though no official date has yet been set.

The Domus is the building at the very bottom edge of the photo, in the exact center, across a little piazza from the dome of the basilica.

Below, from AFP, is a larger picture of the Pope’s future residence inside the gardens, with the dome of St. Peter’s Basilica in the background.

This is the building the Pope will be living in starting in May, after spending two months at Castel Gandolfo outside of Rome.

The building is called the Mater Ecclesiae convent — “Mother of the Church.”

So this will be the view the former Pope will see each morning.

The building was once the home of the Vatican’s head gardener and was then used as a retreat for cloistered nuns – the last of whom vacated the property in November.

Adjoining the residence is a small chapel.

The Domus Sanctae Marthae, where the cardinals will sleep and eat during the conclave, was built in the 1990s by Pope John Paul II to provide an alternative to the close, cramped quarters cardinals had formerly used inside the Apostolic Palace itself.

Benedikt Steinschulte

“There was only one lavatory for every 10 cardinals in the Apostolic Palace, and no doors on the showers,” said Benedikt Steinschulte (photo), an official from the Pontifical Council for Social Communications, who led a tour of journalists inside the Vatican this morning.

Each morning the cardinals will be escorted from the Domus to the Sistine Chapel, where the voting will take place.

The able-bodied will walk — the walk takes about seven minutes — while older cardinals will be transported by mini-bus.

(A map of Vatican City; the cardinals, staying at the Domus Santa Marta at the bottom of the map in the middle, will walk or take a minbus to the Sistine Chapel, just on the other side of St. Peter’s Basilica, by walking around the back of the basilica)

The road behind the basilica will be closed to all pedestrians and traffic to ensure that the electors remain in total seclusion from the outside world.

The Domus and the Sistine Chapel will be swept for bugs and other listening devices before the Conclave begins.

“They can’t talk to anybody, they can’t use their mobile phones – they are totally closed off,” said Steinschulte, a powerfully-built German who is close to Pope Benedict and has worked in the Vatican for nearly 30 years. “After all, the word conclave comes from ‘cum clave’ – “with a key,” meaning locked in with a key.”

The Domus has 108 suites and 23 single rooms, all with private bathrooms – a great improvement on the accommodation endured by cardinals during past conclaves.

Vatican City has a permanent population of about 500, including cardinals, bishops and the 150 members of the Swiss Guard.

The Vatican also has said that Benedict will send his last Tweet on February 28, his final day in office, and after that his Twitter handle, @pontifex, will fall silent.

It will be up to the new Pope to decide whether he wishes to revive a papal account.

It is not clear whether the Vatican Gardens will be “off limits” to visitors in the years to come. Up until now, it has been possible for visitors to walk in the gardens after requesting a special pass, which was readily granted.

February 19, 2013, Tuesday — Hilarion’s Reflection

“He [Pope Benedict] saw [at the end of Pope John Paul II's pontitifcate] the process of aging and dying, but not in the way the mass media look at it. He saw it with the eyes of a Church man, and understood that actually for some time the Church was left without real governance under a living Pope, or the governance was entrusted to other people. I believe as a witness to this he did not want to repeat this experience in his own life.” –Russian Orthodox Metropolitan Hilarion Alfeyev, in a February 17 Russian television interview on Pope Benedict’s decision to step down from the papacy

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The View from Moscow

Metropolitan Hilarion Alfeyev, 46, is head of the Department of External Relations of the Russian Orthodox Church.

He is, in this post, more or less the “foreign minister” of the 100 million-strong Russian Orthodox Church.

His post is the one held by the present patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church, Kirill, before Kirill became patriarch on February 1, 2009. Hilarion, therefore, is one of the chief spokesmen of the Russian Orthodox Church.

It is revealing that Hilarion, in this interview, reveals how confusing this decision of Pope Benedict is even to high-ranking Church leaders around the world.

For example, Hilarion says he doesn’t know the answer to a question about whether Benedict will be an “emeritus Pope,” or whether the Catholic Church will still look to Benedict for some measure of the charism of infallibility.

This lack of clarity is important to realize for all who read this — it means that many of the consequences of Pope Benedict’s decision are still not known and understood even by leading Christian theologians.

In this sense, it is perfectly fine for each of us to acknowledge that we do not yet know the answers to many questions regarding the Pope’s resignation.

Time alone will provide answers.

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Special Note of Invitation: I would like to again issue an invitation to all readers of this newsflash to continue joining our new foundation, called the Urbi et Orbi Foundation.

This new Foundation intends to work to buid a basis for greater Christian unity, especially between the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Churches. Toward that end, we will work on common projects with the Orthodox, and especially with the Russian Orthodox, to build trust and friendship.

We will begin with a number of charitable and cultural projects, ranging from support for orphaned children to support for Catholic-Orthodox theological dialogue to a concert in Rome this autumn to be offered by the Russian Orthodox to the new Pope.

Some of these projects will be co-sponsored by the St. Gregory Foundation, a Russian Orthodox charitable foundation founded by Metropolitan Hilarion, with whom we have worked in the past.

I have been in contact in recent days with a number of Vatican officials, all of whom have expressed support and encouragement for this new initiative.

To join the Foundation, all that is necessary is to send an email expressing an interest in joining, including all contact information. You will then be enrolled and kept informed about our work.

However, we are especially looking for 100 “Founding Members” who will each contribute $2,500 to help get this initiative off the ground with an initial capital of $250,000. Smaller donations are also welcome, and needed.

Anyone who who like to make become a Founding Member may contact me via email by replying to this newsflash. I will respond personally to each email.

—Robert Moynihan

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“Both the Orthodox and the Catholics have a common faith in One God glorified in the Trinity”

Here below is the text, in English, of Metropolitan Hilarion Alefeyev’s February 17 interview with the the Russian television program Vesti v Subbotu (News on Saturday). Hilarion was interviewed by Sergey Brilev, anchorman of the Vesti v Subbotu (News on Saturday) program of the Russia 1 TV network, about Pope Benedict’s decision to retire and Orthodox-Catholic relations.

There is certain ticklishness in what we are going to discuss because neither you nor I are Catholic. You, though, are one who is much more well-versed in, if I may say, the Church mechanics, but not necessarily wishing to reveal it all to journalists. Nevertheless, tell me, how have you taken the news about the resignation of the Pope of Rome?

Metropolitan Hilarion: This news was a surprise for everybody including the Pope’s closest entourage. The dean of the Cardinals College Angelo Sodano is known to say that it was “like a bolt from the blue.”

Actually the Pope of Rome had dropped some hints in recent years that it might happen, and it was not accidental that he visited the tomb of Celestine V, one of few Popes who abdicated and was later canonized. Pope Benedict XVI was contemplating it.

I believe his decision resulted from his responsible attitude to his office. Most likely, having assessed his physical resources, he made this, I would say, wise decision.

There are several details I would like to move back to consecutively. I will cite you yourselves. You said that it was “an act of personal courage” on the part of the Pope of Rome himself but at the same time there are words of his brother Georg who said, “No, everything is all right with his health; he is simply tired.” I render it freely but in essence the words sounded exactly like that. In this connection, there is still certain scepticism with regard to this decision of Benedict XVI. I can already feel that you do not share it, but how would you comment on it?

Metropolitan Hilarion: I do not share this scepticism, nor do I agree with the opinion of some people who are ready to speak about a conspiracy theory in this situation.

I personally met with the Pope on three occasions. Certainly, his health is not bad for his age, though in the few years I have had an opportunity to observe him, he has visibly aged, and, as they say, slipped a lot. Besides, it should be taken into account that he has never seen his office as ceremonial, and I believe never craved for it but took the election as a cross placed on him to bear. I believe he made his decision from the feeling of responsibility as he understands that with time he will get older and weaker. That is why he made the decision to give his post up to somebody else.

Let me ask a question than may seem to many to have a second bottom. Perhaps it really has it. According to many, Benedict XVI’s decision was catalysed by the criticism leveled against the Catholic Church as, regrettably, cases of abuse of children and many other things have accumulated in it. For instance, the case of his butler was rather loud. I refer to it because the Russian Orthodox Church has sometimes found itself attacked by both open and covert ill-wishers, etc. Was the criticism voiced a catalyst, or no? What do you think?

Metropolitan Hilarion: It is difficult to say. I believe the Pope has weighed all the circumstances. Really, the Catholic Church has recently come to face new challenges. In some sense, they are old because under Pope John Paul II the Catholic Church was criticized for conservatism and traditionalism. The criticism came from the extremely liberal Western society. At the same time, Pope John Paul II was popular with the mass media; one can say he was a media-star.

In those years, Benedict XVI was at his side. He was a cardinal then, leading one of the major congregations. He saw the process of aging and dying, but not in the way the mass media look at it. He saw it with the eyes of a Church man and understood that actually for some time the Church was left without real governance under a living Pope or the governance was entrusted to other people. I believe as a witness to this he did not want to repeat this experience in his own life.

You spoke about Celestine V. He is mentioned in Dante’s Divine Comedy and the author seems to accuse him of faint-heartedness.

Metropolitan Hilarion: Here is for you an example of different views of the church reality. Dante put Celestine V in Hell while the Catholic Church has canonized him.

Never in my life have I thought that I would catch you up on a word, but unexpectedly I did. Speaking now about the first hierarch of the Catholic Church, you mentioned simply a Pope. At the same time, as far as I can understand it, in the Orthodox system of coordinates one should necessarily add the words “of Rome,” for there is the Pope of Alexandria, who is much more close to the Russian Orthodox Church canonically.

It is just an introduction to the question I wanted to ask. You and the Catholics have a common negative agenda, for instance, the unacceptability of homosexual marriages for both Russian Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism – the fact often mentioned now in the news. Do you have a common positive agenda?

Metropolitan Hilarion: Yes, we have, because, in the first place, both the Orthodox and the Catholics have a common faith in One God glorified in the Trinity, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Both the Orthodox and the Catholics are at one in confessing Christ as God-Man. We have differences in dogmatic matters, not as strong as those on which we agree. We disagree on the understanding of the procession of the Holy Spirit. The Orthodox confess that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father, while the Catholics say the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son. It is a long historical dispute; it has lasted for over a millennium.

In addition, we have common approaches to all the fundamental moral and social issues. For instance, our family ethics is almost identical. Why do the Catholics stand out against the legalization of abortion, support of homosexual unions and adoption by homosexual couples? Because both the Orthodox Church and the Catholic Church build their moral teaching on the biblical foundation. We share it.

Incidentally, there is also a biblical foundation concerning the description of the job of the Pope of Rome, sorry for the somewhat Soviet term. The Lord describes the Apostle Peter as “the rock” upon which His Church is built (cf. Mt. 16:18), but there is no mention in the Bible about this to be continued by some elected people. In this connection, I am going to ask you a rather slippery question: Does Russian Orthodoxy accept the papacy as such?

Metropolitan Hilarion: We do not accept the papacy in the form it has developed in the second millennium.

We always state that in the first millennium when Christianity was united in East and West, the Pope of Rome was the Patriarch of the West, that is to say, he was one of the heads of Local Churches.

After the division between East and West later, the primacy in the Orthodox family went to the Patriarch of Constantinople, while in the West a theory was developed whereby the Pope actually stands above the Church, as he is immune from prosecution by the Church and he confirms the decisions of Councils, while in the Orthodox East it is a Council that confirms any decision of a Patriarch, and so on.

By the way, the present situation raises certain dilemmas before the Catholics themselves. For instance, it is not known at present with what title Benedict XVI will retire. Will his title be the Pope of Rome Emeritus (honorary) or will he become again Cardinal Ratzinger? Will he preserve the name he took when he became Pope? Furthermore, there is the question of the infallibility of the Pope, which we, Orthodox, challenge as well. Will it remain with him or will the infallibility abandon him at 20:00 on February 28?

Along with relations between Orthodoxy and the Holy See, there are relations of Russia as a state with the state of Vatican. By the way, the Holy See and the Vatican are sometimes confused while these are different notions. In the last four years, the level of diplomatic relations between the two states has been elevated to the level of ambassadors, which was not the case before. Has it helped you or not?

Metropolitan Hilarion: I believe it has neither helped nor impeded, because relations between Churches are different from those between states.

We have our own accumulated problems in relations with the Catholic Church, the more so that the Russian Church is not only the Church of the Russian Federation but also the Church of Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Moldova, and a number of other countries.

In which, I would add, you collide with the Catholics…

Metropolitan Hilarion: I will mention in particular what happened in late 1980s-early 1990s in Western Ukraine. This situation remains to be an unhealed wound on the body of the Orthodox Church and a stumbling block in the Orthodox-Catholic dialogue.

But in the1990s, the Orthodox and the Catholic condemned unia together. It was a very important step and very important achievement in the Orthodox-Catholic dialogue.

Few are aware of it but the Catholics agreed that unia was not a way towards unity, that it is a mistaken strategy, a mistaken policy. Nevertheless, some consequences of that policy have remained, preventing us from living together and moving together on the way of Christian witness.

Correct me if I am wrong. It seems that uniate cardinals are members of the conclave which is to elect the Pope of Rome.

Metropolitan Hilarion: Yes, in the conclave there are cardinals of the so-called Eastern Rite, but precisely Cardinal Husar, who until recently headed the Greek-Catholic Church, will not sit in the conclave, because a few days before Benedict XVI’s retirement he will be 80.

Thank you very much. Using our language, we will closely follow the development of the situation.

Metropolitan Hilarion: Thank you.

Published on the wesite of the Russian Orthodox Department of External Relations Communication Service, at this link.

February 18, 2013, Monday — Benedict’s Vision

“We have nothing to give God, we have only our sin to place before him. And this he receives and makes his own, while in return he gives us himself and his glory.” –Pope Benedict XVI, September 25, 2011, during his visit to Germany, meeting with Catholics engaged in the life of the Church and society, in Freiburg im Breisgau

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The Pope’s Vision for the Future

A vision for the future of the Church set forth in 1969, 44 years ago, by the relatively young theologian Joseph Ratzinger, then 42 — so at almost the exact midpoint of his life from his birth in 1927 until now — was recalled today by Italian writer Marco Bardazzi on the Vatican Insider website.

It was a vision of a Church with “far fewer members” and with “little influence over political decisions,” to the point of being almost “socially irrelevant” and forced to “start over.”

But it was also a vision of a Church that would find herself again and be reborn a “simpler and more spiritual” entity following “enormous confusion.”

The vision was set forth is a series of five radio homilies by Ratzinger in 1969, and was published in book form just two years ago by Ignatius Press as Faith and the Future.

Ratzinger said he was convinced the modern Church was going through a dramatic era similar to the Enlightenment and the French Revolution.

“We are at a huge turning point in the evolution of mankind,” he said. “This moment makes the move from medieval to modern times seem insignificant.”

From the crisis “will emerge a Church that has lost a great deal,” he warned. “It will become small and will have to start pretty much all over again. It will no longer have use of the structures it built in its years of prosperity… It will be a more spiritual Church, and will not claim a political mandate flirting with the Right one minute and the Left the next. It will be poor and will become the Church of the destitute.The process outlined by Ratzinger was a “long” one “but when all the suffering is past, a great power will emerge from a more spiritual and simple Church.”

Then, and only then, Ratzinger concluded, would Catholics begin to see “that small flock of faithful as something completely new… as a source of hope for themselves, the answer they had always secretly been searching for.”

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The Destruction of the Church’s Mission through Worldliness

Has Benedict’s vision for the Church’s future change over the past 44 years?

An exceptional talk he gave on the matter a year and a half ago offers insight into the Pope’s mind on this question. His talk is worth recalling now, in light of his announcement of his resignation on February 11, to take effect on February 28.

On his September 22-25, 2011 apostolic journey to Germany, Benedict went into his vision for the Church’s future in some detail in an address to Catholic workers in Freiburg im Breisgau on the final day of the trip, on Sunday, September 25.

“For some decades now we have been experiencing a decline in religious practice and we have been seeing substantial numbers of the baptized drifting away from Church life,” Benedict began.

So, in a sense, he was saying that the vision he had set forth in 1969 had, by 2011, come to pass.

He then posed the question this situation inevitably calls forth: should the Church not change?

“This prompts the question: should the Church not change? Must she not adapt her offices and structures to the present day, in order to reach the searching and doubting people of today?”

His answer?

“Yes, there are grounds for change,” he said. “There is a need for change. Every Christian and the whole community of the faithful are called to constant change.”

But, what type of change?

His answer: that the Church must “set herself apart from her surroundings, become in a certain sense ‘unworldly.’”

This is an arduous way of changing, a counter-cultural way.

And this is why the Church’s relationship to the world must always be nuanced.

Yes, the Church must change, and make herself “up-to-date.”

But she must not conform to the modern or progressive world; rather, she must “set herself apart from her surroundings” and “become in a certain sense ‘unworldly.’”

And the reason for this is that the Church’s mission is to point men and women beyond themselves, beyond whatever “present” they inhabit, beyond whatever “modern world” they live in, to what is eternal, that is, to God.

Benedict said (the italics are my own):

“The Church’s mission has its origins in the mystery of the triune God, in the mystery of his creative love. And love is not just somehow within God, it is God, he himself is love by nature.

“And divine love does not want to exist only for itself, by nature it wants to pour itself out. It has come down to humanity, to us, in a particular way through the incarnation and self-offering of God’s Son: by virtue of the fact that Christ, the Son of God, as it were stepped outside the framework of his divinity, took flesh and became man, not merely to confirm the world in its worldliness and to be its companion, leaving it to carry on just as it is, but in order to change it.”

Benedict then set forth a vision of an “economy” that is not an exchange of goods and sevrices between men, but an exchange between men and God.

“The Christ event includes the inconceivable fact of what the Church Fathers call a sacrum commercium, an exchange between God and man,” Benedict said.

“The Fathers explain it in this way: we have nothing to give God, we have only our sin to place before him. And this he receives and makes his own, while in return he gives us himself and his glory: a truly unequal exchange, which is brought to completion in the life and passion of Christ.

“He becomes, as it were, a ‘sinner,’ he takes sin upon himself, takes what is ours and gives us what is his…

“The Church owes her whole being to this unequal exchange. She has nothing of her own to offer to him who founded her, such that she might say: here is something wonderful that we did! Her raison d’être consists in being a tool of redemption, in letting herself be saturated by God’s word and in bringing the world into loving unity with God.

“The Church is immersed in the Redeemer’s outreach to men. When she is truly herself, she is always on the move, she constantly has to place herself at the service of the mission that she has received from the Lord. And therefore she must always open up afresh to the cares of the world, to which she herself belongs, and give herself over to them, in order to make present and continue the holy exchange that began with the Incarnation.”

But this mission, to be a “tool of redemption,” to bring the world into loving unity with God, can be frustrated.

“In the concrete history of the Church, however, a contrary tendency is also manifested, namely that the Church becomes self-satisfied, settles down in this world, becomes self-sufficient and adapts herself to the standards of the world,” Benedict said.

“Not infrequently, she gives greater weight to organization and institutionalization than to her vocation to openness towards God, her vocation to opening up the world towards the other.”

And here Benedict spoke about the mission of the Church, and of each member of the Church, using words which may shed light on his decision to resign the papacy.

“In order to accomplish her true task adequately,” Benedict said a year and a half ago, “the Church must constantly renew the effort to detach herself from her tendency towards worldliness and once again to become open towards God. In this she follows the words of Jesus: “They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world” (Jn 17:16), and in precisely this way he gives himself to the world.”

Benedict’s decision to “leave the world” and, as it were, become “hidden” in a small convent inside the Vatican walls, may be seen as his attempt to try to accomplish his true task, which is “to open up the world towards the other.”

He added, provocatively:

“One could almost say that history comes to the aid of the Church here through the various periods of secularization, which have contributed significantly to her purification and inner reform.”

He is saying that those periods in which the Church has seemingly been diminished by secualr forces, by the powers of this world, are actually periods which are needd to bring about the Church’s “purification and inner reform.”

And this is the vision that Benedict has for our future.

That we will lose many privileges, and many glories, from a human perspective. Cathedrals may close. Schools and universities may be abandoned or lost. Religious orders may die out. Secular laws may put great pressure on the Church.

But all of this can be freeing.

And of this can be a way of liberating the Church from a facade of holiness, and bringing about true holiness.

“Secularizing trends – whether by expropriation of Church goods, or elimination of privileges or the like – have always meant a profound liberation of the Church from forms of worldliness, for in the process she, as it were, sets aside her worldly wealth and once again completely embraces her worldly poverty,” Benedict said.

The destiny of the tribe of Levi…

“In this she shares the destiny of the tribe of Levi, which, according to the Old Testament account, was the only tribe in Israel with no ancestral land of its own, taking as its portion only God himself, his word and his signs,” he said.

“At those moments in history, the Church shared with that tribe the demands of a poverty that was open to the world, in order to be released from her material ties: and in this way her missionary activity regained credibility.”

And this is the key phrase: “in this way her missionary activity regained credibility.”

For that is what Benedict is after, in the end.

As a theologian, as a bishop, as a Pope, he wants the message of Christ to be seen for what it is, something life-giving, something liberating.

And if that message is losing credibility, the whole mission of the Church is in jeopardy.

If scandals, if corruption, if hypocrisy, if cover-ups, have made the message of the Church a message no one can hear within a sneer, then something must be done to free the message once again.

Something dramatic.

For the sake of the message.

Something like taking an action not taken in centuries.

Something like resigning the papacy and devoting one’s life to prayer.

“History has shown that, when the Church becomes less worldly, her missionary witness shines more brightly,” Benedict said.

“Once liberated from material and political burdens and privileges, the Church can reach out more effectively and in a truly Christian way to the whole world, she can be truly open to the world…

“The Church opens herself to the world not in order to win men for an institution with its own claims to power, but in order to lead them to themselves by leading them to him of whom each person can say with Saint Augustine: he is closer to me than I am to myself (cf. Confessions, III,6,11). He who is infinitely above me is yet so deeply within me that he is my true interiority.

“This form of openness to the world on the Church’s part also serves to indicate how the individual Christian can be open to the world in effective and appropriate ways.”

It is in these lines that one may find Benedict’s true interpretation of the Second Vatican Council, and the Council’s search to “open up” the Church so that her message could be better heard by the world. The entire point of the “opening up” was not to become worldly, but to be able to preach to the worldly.

“It is not a question here of finding a new strategy to relaunch the Church,” Benedict said. “Rather, it is a question of setting aside mere strategy and seeking total transparency, not bracketing or ignoring anything from the truth of our present situation, but living the faith fully here and now in the utterly sober light of day, appropriating it completely, and stripping away from it anything that only seems to belong to faith, but in truth is mere convention or habit.

“To put it another way: for people of every era, and not just our own, the Christian faith is a scandal,” Benedict said. “That the eternal God should know us and care about us, that the intangible should at a particular moment have become tangible, that he who is immortal should have suffered and died on the Cross, that we who are mortal should be given the promise of resurrection and eternal life – for people of any era, to believe all this is a bold claim.

“This scandal, which cannot be eliminated unless one were to eliminate Christianity itself, has unfortunately been overshadowed in recent times by other painful scandals on the part of the preachers of the faith,” he continued.

“A dangerous situation arises when these scandals take the place of the primary skandalon of the Cross and in so doing they put it beyond reach, concealing the true demands of the Christian Gospel behind the unworthiness of those who proclaim it.”

One senses in these words the terrible consequences of the priestly abuse of children for the Church, but not so much for the Church as institution as for the Church as the source of a message of healing and holiness.

The scandals have rendered the Church almost incapable of preaching her essential message.

This, too, helps explain why Benedict decided to resign.

“All the more, then, it is time once again to discover the right form of detachment from the world, to move resolutely away from the Church’s worldliness,” Benedict said.

The Pope then summed up his argument to the German Catholics he was speaking to:

“Openness to the concerns of the world means, then, for the Church that is detached from worldliness, bearing witness to the primacy of God’s love according to the Gospel through word and deed, here and now, a task which at the same time points beyond the present world because this present life is also bound up with eternal life.

“As individuals and as the community of the Church, let us live the simplicity of a great love, which is both the simplest and hardest thing on earth, because it demands no more and no less than the gift of oneself.”

Those lines are worth repeating. They seem to describe the choice that Benedict has made:

“As individuals and as the community of the Church, let us live the simplicity of a great love, which is both the simplest and hardest thing on earth, because it demands no more and no less than the gift of oneself.”

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Last train leaving the station?

Italian Vaticanist Andrea Tornielli today published on the Vatican Insider website an interesting report on a letter Archbishop Gerhard Müller, Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, has sent to the Society of St. Pius X (the followers of Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre) asking the Society to give a positive response to the Vatican’s conditions for ecclesial reunion by February 22, the Feast of the Chair of St. Peter.

Tornielli describes is as a “final chance” to reconcile with Rome before Benedict XVI’s resignation comes into effect.

Tornielli writes:

“Following the ‘personal’ and highly spiritual letter sent by U.S. Archbishop Augustin Di Noia, to the Lefebvrists last December, a new letter dated January 8 has reached the SSPX’s Superior, Bishop Bernard Fellay. It would not be correct to call it an ultimatum as such but the document signed by the Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and President of the Pontifical Commission Ecclesia Dei, Archbishop Gerhard Ludwig Müller, imposes a deadline on the Lefebvrists for the first time — a particularly dramatic move in light of Benedict XVI’s shock resignation.”

Tornielli says the existence of the letter was confirmed by the Abbot Claude Barthe, a careful observer of relations between Rome and the traditionalists, in an interview in the French magazine Présent on February 16.

“Everyone knows by now that the Ecclesia Dei Commission sent a letter to Bishop Fellay on 8 January and that he is expected to reply by 22 February, the day of the Feast of the Chair of Peter,” Barthe is quoted as saying. “This could also be the day the Prelature of Saint Pius X is founded. If it does indeed happen, it would mark the real end of Benedict XVI’s papacy: Mgr. Lefebvre’s rehabilitation. You can imagine what a clap of thunder that would be and what an effect it will have on March’s scheduled events” (in other words, the Conclave).

But “it seems unlikely that Lefebvrists will agree to sign the doctrinal preamble the Holy See sent to them last June,” Tornielli writes.

Last June, the then-Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Cardinal William Levada, delivered a final version of the doctrinal preamble to Fellay, together with a proposal for a Canonical settlement which involved transforming the SSPX into a Personal Prelature.

“The document required Lefebvrists to recognize that the (papal) magisterium is the authentic interpreter of Tradition, that the Second Vatican Council agrees with Tradition, and that the post-conciliar liturgical reform promulgated by Paul VI was not only valid but legitimate as well,” Tornielli writes.

SSPX leaders have made various statements and given interviews in which they have said that it is difficult for them to accept the conditions laid out by the Holy See.

It is within the realm of possibility, then, that there could be one more dramatic act of this pontificate before it ends: the reconciliation of the SSPX with Rome, ending the one official schism since the Second Vatican Council. The SSPX would then become the second Personal Prelature in the Church, following Opus Dei.

But it would depend on the SSPX finding a way in conscience to sign the document that the Vatican has asked them to sign prior to February 22.

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Dolan Downplays His Chances to Be Elected Pope

The archbishop of New York, Cardinal Timothy Dolan, asked yesterday to comment on what he thought about the fact that some view him as one of the favorites to be elected Pope, said whoever thought this must be “smoking marijuana.”

He also said he felt the Conclave should not be rushed (there have been reports that its start may be moved forward from March 15 — 15 days after the See of Peter is vacant — to March 10, since so many of the cardinals are already setting out for Rome, or soon will be).

“I haven’t heard anything about it (the Conclave) yet, I am waiting for instructions,” Dolan said. “We are aware of the fact that we need to be patient because there are many sensitive issues that need to be addressed. However, I would think one would not want to rush into the conclave. The most important thing is to be there for Pope Benedict XVI, to express our love and best wishes to him, to pray together and then make the decisions that need to be made.”

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Twelve to Watch as Cardinals Gather in Rome

A report today by Cindy Wooden and Francis X. Rocca of Catholic News Service lists 12 cardinals as “likely to serve as trusted advisers to the rest in the discussions and election.”

It is not said that the 12 cardinals are likely candidates for the papacy, only that they are likely to have a major voice in the deliberations.

They are, in alphabetical order (their descriptions are slightly edited and abridged):

– Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan, 63. The archbishop of New York City impressed many in the College of Cardinals in February 2012 when he delivered the main presentation at a meeting Pope Benedict XVI had called to discuss the new evangelization. The Pope himself praised the New York archbishop’s presentation as “enthusiastic, joyful and profound.” Still, most believe the cardinals will never elect an American Pope, lest the leadership of the Church appear linked to the United States.

– Cardinal Peter Erdo of Esztergom-Budapest, 60. Although not a familiar name in the press, this tall, powerful Hungarian is a major figure among his peers in Europe, the Church’s traditional heartland and the region of more than half the cardinal electors. He was elected to a second five-year term as president of the Council of European Bishops’ Conferences in 2011.

– Cardinal Marc Ouellet, 68. This Canadian is Prefect of the Congregation for Bishops, which coordinates the naming of bishops in dioceses around the world. His work has brought him into contact with most of his fellow cardinal-electors. As president of the Pontifical Commission for Latin America, he is well acquainted with one of the Church’s largest and fastest-growing regions. He is also a respected theologian.

– Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi, 70. The President of the Pontifical Council for Culture, his was chosen by Pope Benedict to lead his 2013 Lenten retreat, now going on in the Vatican. The cardinal, a scripture scholar, has been leading the universal Church’s efforts to dialogue with nonbelievers, trying to make Christianity intelligible to the modern mind.

– Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga of Tegucigalpa, 70. This Honduran is president of Caritas Internationalis, the umbrella group of national Catholic charities around the world. As a result, many of his peers have come to know the cardinal as the person spearheading assistance to the neediest of their people. He aroused controversy in 2002 with remarks about clerical abuse that struck some as overly defensive of accused priests and the Church’s past policies. He was already widely mentioned as a possible pope before the 2005 conclave that elected Pope Benedict.

– Cardinal Leonardo Sandri, 69. He was born in Argentina to parents of Italian descent. As Prefect of the Congregation for Eastern Churches, he is familiar with the challenges facing Eastern Catholics and the pastoral concerns of the Church in the Middle East. He has worked in the Vatican for more than a dozen years, and previously served as nuncio to Venezuela and then Mexico. His only experience in a parish was a brief assignment shortly after his ordination as a priest.

– Cardinal Robert Sarah, 67. From Guinea, Africa, he is president of the Pontifical Council Cor Unum, which promotes Catholic charitable giving. He has used his leadership to emphasize Pope Benedict’s teaching that Catholic charitable activity must not be simple philanthropy, but an expression of faith, rooted in prayer and Catholic identity. A scripture scholar and former diocesan bishop, he served nine years as secretary of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples.

– Cardinal Odilo Scherer. He is a leading voice of the Church in Latin America. This 63-year-old Brazilian is archbishop of Sao Paulo, Brazil’s largest diocese. The son of German immigrants, he also has strong ties to Rome. He studied philosophy and theology at Rome’s Pontifical Brazilian College and Pontifical Gregorian University and worked as an official of the Congregation for Bishops from 1994 to 2001.

– Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn, 68. The archbishop of Vienna, Austria, has known Pope Benedict for almost 40 years, having studied under him at the University of Regensburg, Germany. Even before his former professor became Pope, the cardinal was well known at the Vatican and in wider Church circles. He was invited in 1996 to preach Blessed John Paul II’s Lenten retreat and was the main editor of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, published in 1992.

– Cardinal Angelo Scola, 71. Scola is the archbishop of Milan, Italy, the archdiocese led by both Popes Pius XI and Paul VI when they were elected. He previously served as patriarch of Venice, once the see of Blessed John XXIII. The cardinal, a respected academic theologian rather than a popular preacher, has longstanding ties to one of the new Church movements, Communion and Liberation, which is based in his archdiocese.

– Cardinal Luis Tagle, 55, of Manila, the Philippines, is one of the youngest and newest members of the College of Cardinals. Although he did not receive his red hat until November 2012, he had already made a name for himself at the world Synod of Bishops on the Word of God in 2008. He is a popular speaker with a doctorate in systematic theology and has served on the International Theological Commission, an advisory body to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

– Cardinal Peter Turkson, 64. He is the former archbishop of Cape Coast, Ghana, and current president of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace. The cardinal, a biblical scholar who was active in ecumenical and interreligious dialogue, has frequently appeared on lists of possible Popes. He aroused controversy in 2011 with a proposal for a “world central bank” to regulate the global financial industry, and then in October 2012 when he showed bishops at the Vatican a video warning about the growth of Muslim populations in Europe.

Link to the article
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St. Malachy’s Prophecy

St. Malachy (1094-1148) in the mid-1100s prophesied that more than 100 Popes would succeed one another before the end of the world. According to his list, the next Pope after Pope Benedict XVI would be the last Pope of the Roman Catholic Church.

According to the Prophecy of St. Malachy, the last Pope will be called “Peter the Roman” or “Petrus Romanus.” Here is the prophecy in Latin:

“Petrus Romanus, qui paſcet oues in multis tribulationibus: quibus tranſactis ciuitas ſepticollis diruetur, & Iudex tremẽdus iudicabit populum ſuum. Finis.”

And in English:

“Peter the Roman, who will nourish the sheep in many tribulations; when they are finished, the city of seven hills will be destroyed, and the fearsome Judge will judge His people. The End.”

February 17, 2013, Sunday — Next-To-Last Angelus

“Today we contemplate Christ in the desert.” –Pope Benedict XVI, during his next-to-last noon Angelus today in St. Peter’s Square

“We ask him to give us strength to fight our weaknesses”

Tens of thousands filled St. Peter’s Square today to see Benedict XVI for what may turn out to be one of his very last appearances in public. Together, they prayed the noon Angelus prayer.

Benedict is expected to appear in public for his last noon Angelus next Sunday, and then at his last General Audience next Wednesday, February 27.

The Pope will then step down from his office on Thursday, February 28 — 10 days from now.

The Pope today taught about the meaning of Lent. Pilgrims in the square below cheered him, thanking him for the eight years of his pontificate.

The Pope thanked the crowd, in different languages, for their support and prayers these last few days.

He asked pilgrims to continue to pray for him and the next Pope.

In English, the Pope said: “I greet all the English-speaking visitors and pilgrims present for today’s Angelus.

“Today we contemplate Christ in the desert, fasting, praying, and being tempted.

“As we begin our Lenten journey, we join him and we ask him to give us strength to fight our weaknesses.

“Let me also thank you for the prayers and support you have shown me in these days. May God bless all of you!”

Here is a video of the Pope from today:

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“The Angel of the Lord declared unto Mary…”

The Angelus (Latin for “angel”) is a devotion in memory of the Incarnation, the central mystery of the Christian faith.

The name Angelus is derived from its incipit: Angelus Domini nuntiavit Mariæ (“… the Angel of the Lord declared unto Mary …”).

The devotion was traditionally recited in Roman Catholic churches, convents, and monasteries three times daily: 6:00 a.m., noon, and 6:00 p.m. (many churches still follow the devotion, and some practice it at home).

Since the pontificate of John XXIII (1958-1963), it has been recited by the Pope’s each Sunday at noon in St. Peter’s Square.

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“In every moment of our lives we must choose whether to follow God or our own egoism”

During the Italian part of his teaching during the noon Angelus, Pope Benedict XVI reflected on the temptations of Jesus in the desert.

“The central nucleus of temptations consists always in using God for one’s own ends,” the Pope said.

He said: “Nei momenti decisivi della vita, ma, a ben vedere, in ogni momento, siamo di fronte a un bivio: vogliamo seguire l’io o Dio? L’interesse individuale oppure il vero Bene, ciò che realmente è bene?“. (“In the decisive moments of life — but, if we see clearly, in every moment — we are faced with a choice: do we want to follow the ‘I’, or God? Individual interest or the true Good, that which really is good?”)

“In questo Anno della fede la Quaresima è un tempo favorevole per riscoprire la fede in Dio come criterio-base della nostra vita e della vita della Chiesa. Ciò comporta sempre una lotta, un combattimento spirituale, perché lo spirito del male naturalmente si oppone alla nostra santificazione e cerca di farci deviare dalla via di Dio”. (“In this Year of Faith, Lent is a favorable time to rediscover faith in God as the fundamental criterion of our life and of the life of the Church. This always entails a struggle, a spiritual combat, because the spirit of evil naturally sets itself against our sanctification and seeks to make us deviate from the way of God.”)

“Al momento di iniziare il suo ministero pubblico, Gesù dovette smascherare e respingere le false immagini di Messia che il tentatore gli proponeva. Ma queste tentazioni sono anche false immagini di uomo, che in ogni tempo insidiano la coscienza, travestendosi da proposte convenienti ed efficaci, addirittura buone“. (“At the beginning of his public ministry Jesus had to unmask and reject the false images of the Messiah that the tempter proposed to him. But these temptations are also false images of man, which always assail our conscience, disguising themselves as suitable and efficacious, even good, proposals.”)

The evangelists Matthew and Luke present three temptations of Jesus, differing in part only in their order, the Pope said.

“Il loro nucleo centrale consiste sempre nello strumentalizzare Dio per i propri fini, dando più importanza al successo o ai beni materiali. Il tentatore è subdolo: non spinge direttamente verso il male, ma verso un falso bene, facendo credere che le vere realtà sono il potere e ciò che soddisfa i bisogni primari.” (“The nucleus of these temptations always consists in using God for one’s own ends, giving more importance to success or to material goods. The tempter is deceptive: he does not direct us immediately toward evil, but toward a false good, making us believe that the true realities are power and what satisfies primary needs.”)

“In questo modo, Dio diventa secondario, si riduce a un mezzo, in definitiva diventa irreale, non conta più, svanisce. In ultima analisi, nelle tentazioni è in gioco la fede, perché è in gioco Dio. Nei momenti decisivi della vita, ma, a ben vedere, in ogni momento, siamo di fronte a un bivio: vogliamo seguire l’io o Dio? L’interesse individuale oppure il vero Bene, ciò che realmente è bene?”. (“In this way, God becomes secondary; he is reduced to a means, in the end he becomes unreal, no longer counts, disappears. In the final analysis, in temptations, faith is at stake, because God is at stake. In the decisive moments of life and, if we see clearly, at every moment of life, we are faced with a choice: do we want to follow the “I” or God? Do we want to follow individual interest or the true Good, that which is really good?”)

The Pope continued:

“Come ci insegnano i Padri della Chiesa, le tentazioni fanno parte della ‘discesa’ di Gesù nella nostra condizione umana, nell’abisso del peccato e delle sue conseguenze.” (“As the Fathers of the Church teach us, temptations are part of Jesus’s ‘descent’ into our human condition, into the abyss of sin and its consequences.”)

“Una ‘discesa’ che Gesù ha percorso sino alla fine, sino alla morte di croce e agli inferi dell’estrema lontananza da Dio.” (“A ‘descent’ that Jesus undertook to the very end, to the point of death on the cross and the descent into the netherworld (inferi) of extreme distance from God.”)

“In questo modo, Egli è la mano che Dio ha teso all’uomo, alla pecorella smarrita, per riportarla in salvo.” (“In this way, he is the hand that God stretched out to man, to the lost sheep, to bring him back to safety.”)

“Come insegna sant’Agostino, Gesù ha preso da noi le tentazioni, per donare a noi la sua vittoria.” (“As St. Augustine teaches, Jesus has taken temptations from us, to give us his victory (cf. Enarr. in Psalmos, 60,3: PL 36, 724).”)

“Non abbiamo dunque paura di affrontare anche noi il combattimento contro lo spirito del male: l’importante è che lo facciamo con Lui, con Cristo, il Vincitore.” (“We are not, therefore, afraid to face, we also, the combat against the spirit of evil: the important thing is that we do it with Him, with Christ, the Victor.”)

He ended his teaching with these words:

“And to stand with Him we turn to the Mother, Mary: let us invoke her with filial confidence in the hour of trial, and she will make us feel the powerful presence her divine Son, to reject the temptations with the Word of Christ, and so to put God once again at the center of our life.”

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Spiritual Exercises Begin

“We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.”
― T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets

This evening just before 6 p.m., from around Vatican City, one by one, the monsignors, archbishops and cardinals of the Roman Curia could be seen walking from their residences to the Apostolic Palace to begin a week of Spiritual Exercises — the last of this pontificate.

They seemed like pilgrims on a journey.

I was remined of the lines from T.S. Eliot where he says that there is no journey worth making that does not end at a cathedral.

And I was thinking how few journeys would be worth making in our world, if there were no more cathedrals, or if the cathedrals that remained were all moth-balled, and simply museums, and no sacrifices were offered on their altars, and no living presence remained in their tabernacles.

And, in a certain sense, it seemed to me this evening that I understood, for the first time, watching Cardinal Ouellet, and Cardinal Kasper, and Archbishop Mueller, walking into St. Anne’s Gate (photos below) and watching others walk around the back of the basilica from the Domus Santa Marta, why the Pope had decided to resign his papacy, why he had decided to “step down from the cross,” to use the words of Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz the other day.

It is because he wants to pray.

It is because he wants to ascend the steps of his own interior castle, toward the Lord, while he yet lives.

It is because he wishes to make through this gesture a final statement, which is this: that the human person, in prayer, in communion with God, is moving toward that which is the end of all our seeking.

That it is in prayer, in conversation with the hidden, but real, God, that the greatest, final work of any man or woman is accomplished.

For it is prayer that draws us into the very life of the divinity.

Benedict is not ending his mission as a man. In some ways, it is just beginning now. For we will all know that, in that small convent in the Vatican gardens, there will be living, though hidden from our eyes, a man in communion with God, supplicating God, listening to God, being silent with God. And in this sense, there will be a pulsing power beyond all the powers of this very technological world which will ascend and descend, from Benedict to God, and from God to Benedict, while he yet lives.

Benedict is retiring to a life of prayer, but in that prayer, he is giving to the Church, and to the world, the greatest gift that he could give.

And that is why, tonight in Rome, there was a rainbow over the city, as if to pose a heavenly counter-sign to the lightning bolt that struck the cathedral dome last Monday.

A week that began with mist and rain and thunder ended with cardinals walking toward their last gathering with the Pope, and a rainbow over the eternal city, beginning from the Archangel Michael, above the Castel Sant’Angelo.

I took this as a sign, though no one in the media may report it. And here is what it looked like:

February 16, 2013, Saturday — Last Meetings, and Looking Forward

One Sunday during Lent is referred to as Laetare (“Rejoice!”) Sunday.

Laetare Sunday this year will fall on March 10.

That is the day Vatican officials now say may be the day that the Conclave to elect the new Pope may begin.

(Here below is the first line of the Gregorian chant introit from which Laetare Sunday gets its name; below that are the Latin and English of the introit.)

“Laetare Jerusalem: et conventum facite omnes qui diligitis eam: gaudete cum laetitia, qui in tristitia fuistis: ut exsultetis,et satiemini ab uberibus consolationis vestrae. Psalm Laetatus sum in his quae dicta sunt mihi: in domum Domini ibimus.”

“Rejoice, O Jerusalem: and come together all you that love her: rejoice with joy, you that have been in sorrow: that you may exult, and be filled from the breasts of your consolation. Psalm: I rejoiced when they said to me: ‘we shall go to up to the house of the Lord!’”

If the Pope is elected relatively quickly, his first Mass and installation might be on the following Sunday, March 17, St. Patrick’s Day, or possibly on Tuesday, March 19, the Feast of St. Joseph, spouse of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

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Angelus Tomorrow

Tomorrow at noon, as many as 150,000 people are expected to come to St. Peter’s Square for the Pope’s Angelus and blessing.

Gianfranco Ravasi

From tomorrow evening, the Vatican will close for a week, and the Curia will listen to Italian Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi (see left), a biblical scholar and the head of the Vatican’s Council for Culture. Ravasi will lead the Curia in a series of spiritual reflections known as Lenten Spiritual Exercises. Pope Benedict is expected to attend every session. (Pope Benedict is known to like and respect Ravasi; last year, Benedict chose Ravasi to preach these exercises; whether the Pope knew then that he would be resigning now, is not clear; but Ravasi’s week-long appearance before the Roman Curia just before the upcoming March Conclave is thought to make his possible candidacy as the choice to be the next Pope more viable; at the very least, Ravasi will enter the Conclave as someone the Curial cardinals — along with Pope Benedict himself — will have just spent a week listening to, so they will be able to judge well his his scholarship and teaching ability and possible effectiveness as a Pope).

Cardinals Already Gathering

Some cardinals have already come to Rome, five days after Pope Benedicts’s surprise announcement on Monday, February 11, that he would step down from his office. More will gather this coming week and during the first days of next week, leading up to February 28, the date the Pope will step down.

The Pope is now expected to have his last public general audience on Wednesday, February 27, and then to receive his cardinals on the morning of February 28. Many are expecting the Pope to us those two occasions — the last General Audience and the meeting with cardinals the following day — to give some indication of his hopes and wishes for the Church, the Conclave, and, by implication, for the next Pope and papacy. So those two talks will be closely watched.

The Pope will leave the Vatican at about 5 p.m. on February 28, a Thursday, and fly by helicopter to spend two months at Castel Gandolfo, outside of Rome. He will cease to be Pope at 8 p.m. that evening.

It is now expected that many, of not all, of the 117 cardinals who will vote for the next Pope will already be here in Rome by that day. (It had been thought that the cardinals would be invited to gather only in the days after February 28, when the See of Peter is actually vacant; but it is now thought that they will come to Rome earlier. Still, there is not yet clarity on this point.)

The cardinals will meet and discuss things among themselves for a number of days under the direction of Cardinal Tarciso Bertone, the present Secretary of State, who is also the “Camerlengo” in charge of the upcoming Conclave.

Then they will go into the Conclave.

That moment is now expected, not on March 15, but on March 10. Again, there is not yet complete clarity on this schedule.

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Today’s Meetings

The Pope seemed calm and rested today in his final meetings before the Spiritual Exercises.

For his final “diplomatic” appointment as Pope, he received the president of Guatemala.

Father Federico Lombardi, director of the Press Office, who was present, asked the Pope if he could express to the journalists the Pope’s gratitude for their work. “Ma certamente” (“But certainly”), Benedict replied.

During the coming week, the Pope will meet only once each day with his secretary, Archbishop Georg Gaenswein, Prefect of the Pontifical Household, to sign documents.

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The Pope with Scola

Pope Benedict today also received his last group of Italian bishops, coming from the region of Milan, led by Milan’s archbishop, Cardinal Angelo Scola, 71. Because he was Patriatch of Venice before becoming archbishop of Milan, and because Venice produced two Pope of the last five (John XXIII and John Paul I), and because Milan produced another Pope (Paul VI), Scola is regarded as one of the leading Italian candidates to become Pope. (I remember meeting him when he was a young monsignor and came to visit us in the offices of 30 Giorni magazine; I remember him as being joyful, but very intelligent, serious and thoughtful in those days. Scola was close to the journalists of the Communion and Liberation movement, who produced the magazine, as was Cardinal Ratzinger also at that time.)

Angelo Scola

During today’s meeting, Benedict XVI “era il piu’ sereno” (“was the most serene”) of all those in the room, Scola said later.

“Il Papa ha insistito moltissimo, ma e’ il tema di questo grande pontificato, sulla gioia della fede che era stata sottolineata anche da tutti i vescovi che sono intervenuti nel dialogo col Santo Padre” (“The Pope emphasized very much — but it is the theme of this great pontificate — the joy of the faith, which was also underlined by all of the bishops who spoke during the conversation with the Holy Father”), Scola told Vatican Radio.

“We were all deeply moved,” Scola said. (“Tutti eravamo molto commossi“).

“We noted at the end that we felt the responsibility of being the last bishops to be received by him in ad limina visits, and he said to us: ‘This responsibility means that you must become a light for all,” Scola said. (“Noi abbiamo ricordato alla fine che sentiamo la responsabilita’ di essere stati gli ultimi ricevuti nella visita ad Limina, e lui ci ha detto: ‘questa responsabilita’ significa che dovete diventare una luce per tutti‘”).

“We hope we will be capable of being that,” Scola concluded. (“Speriamo di esserne capaci.)

Cardinal Dionigi Tettamanzi, emeritus archbishop of Milan, 78, was also part of the group received by the Pope.

It is generally believed that, if an Italian is to issue from this Conclave as Pope, the Italian cardinals, who will have 28 votes out of 117, or nearly 25%, will have to remain united. However, as one Roman friend put it to me, “this hase never happened, and it will not happen.”

If the Italians were to “break precedent,” however, and find a way to be united, it is not unlikely that they could gather another 12 or 14 votes from other countries, and form a formidable group of about 40 votes. Such a group could block the election of any other candidate, as the next Pope must receive a 2/3s majority, or 78 votes. If 40 votes are withheld from any candidate, the most that candidate could receive would be 77. Any successful candidate would then have to gain the approval of this compact group — or the group would have to lose its compactness.

The Italian journalist Salvatore Izzo wrote today: “E’ possibile che questa volta i 28 cardinali cerchino di compattarsi e cio’ favorirebbe l’altro possibile candidato, il presidente della Cei Angelo Bagnasco, universalmente stimato e meno connotato di Scola, che ha un passato in Comunione e Liberazione” (“It is possible that in this conclave the 28 (Italian) cardinals may seek to create a compact group and this would favor the other possible (Italian) candidate, the president of the Italian bishops’ conference, Angelo Bagnasco, univeraally respected and having less ‘baggage’ than Scola, who has a past in Communion and Liberation.”) [Note: The reason a “past with Communion and Liberation” should be in some way a “negative” for Scola is that Communion and Liberation, once one of the most promising of the “New Movements” in the Church in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, filled with energy and Christian commitment, increasingly became deeply involved with Italian politics and, perhaps inevitably, the compromises that seem to be required by involvement with the “art of compromise” that politics have been defined as being.

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The Pope and His Butler

Pope Benedict has given new insight into his reaction to the “Vatileaks” scandal.

The insights came in an interview some weeks ago to the German writer Peter Seewald, who did two interview-books with him in the 1990s and another during the first years of the pontificate. Parts of the interview were published today in the German magazine Focus.

Pope Benedict XVI told Seewald that he found the conduct of his butler, Paolo Gabriele, who was convicted and jailed for stealing confidential papers from the Vatican, “incomprehensible,” it emerged today.

“La psicologia di Paolo Gabriele mi è incomprensibile” (“The psychology of Paolo Gabriele is incomprehensible to me”), he was quoted as saying.

Giacomo Galeazzi reported today on Vatican Insider that the Curia has prepared a document that will prevent Gabriele from ever revealing more about what he knows of the Vatican secret documents that he photocopied. He reported that Gabriele will sign the document in “the next few days.”

For his part, Gabriele is “molto turbato, addolorato e dispiaciuto per le dimissioni del Papa” (“very upset, saddened and unhappy over the resignation of the Pope”), Italian media is reporting based on “sources close to the ex-butler of the Pope.”

These reports are also saying that, after pardoning Gabriele, Pope Benedict continued to have contacts with Gabriele, showing his paternal affection for Gabriele and his family (“Benedetto XVI ha continuato ad avere contatti e rapporti con il suo ex maggiordomo Paolo Gabriele, dimostrando a lui e alla sua famiglia interessamento e grande affetto paterno“).

Vatican insiders have said the Pope, 85, was deeply hurt by the betrayal of his trust by a key member of his inner circle and have speculated that it was one of the factors that prompted his resignation announcement on Monday.

But the Pontiff appeared to downplay the impact of the scandal, saying: “It is not as though I were somehow falling into a kind of desperation or world-weariness.”

Gianmaria Vian, editor of the Osservatore Romano, the Vatican newspaper, has said that the Pope first started considering the option of resigning as far back as March last year, during a trip to Mexico, particularly after he had a fall in which he banged his head.

He had reportedly made up his mind to step aside by the time he went on an official visit to Lebanon in September. In the conversation with Seewald, he said his strength was ebbing.

The German journalist asked him what more people could expect of his papacy and he replied: “From me? Not much more. I’m an old man and my strength is diminishing. And I think what I have done is enough.”

Although it was not widely noted at the time, Benedict prepared the way for his decision an an interview with Seewald in 2010, published as Light of the World.

“If a pope clearly realizes that he is no longer physically, psychologically and spiritually capable of handling the duties of his office, then he has a right, and under some circumstances, also an obligation to resign,” the book quoted the Pontiff as saying.

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Last Mass

Paul Badde, a German writer for Die Welt who has also written for Inside the Vatican, and who is a friend also of Seewald, has just published a moving account of Pope Benedict’s last public Mass on Ash Wednesday.

Badde, who has spent the past 10 years reporting from Rome, first on the end of the pontificate of John Paul II and now on the pontificate of Pope Benedict, his fellow countryman whom he also has known personally for many years, even before he was Pope, was able to receive communion from Pope Benedict at that last Mass.

“Er schaut mir in die Augen,” Badde writes. “Die goldene Patene, die ein Diakon zwischen uns hält, spiegelt spielendes Licht aus der Kuppel zurück in seine Züge. Er ist Jahrhunderte alt. Seine Augen erinnern mich an die Augen meiner Mutter. ‘Corpus Christi,’ sagt er, als ich in die Knie gehe. ‘Amen,’ antworte ich… (“He looks into my eyes. The golden paten that a deacon holds between us, reflects the play of light from the cupola above and from his vestments. He is centuries old. His eyes remind me of the eyes of my mother. ‘Body of Christ,’ he says, as I drop to me knees. ‘Amen,’ I answer…”)

It was the Pope’s last Mass from the high altar above the tomb of St. Peter.

Here is a link to the complete article in the original German. 

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A Cloistered Nun Speaks

One of the seven cloistered nuns who until last October lived in the Mater Ecclesiae (“Mother of the Church”) convent in the Vatican gardens, where Pope Benedict will live after his two months at Castel Gandolfo, has given an interesting interview to Vatican Radio.

The nuns were all Spanish except for one Italian, Sister Maria Francesca. This is what she had to say about living in the Vatican Gardens:

“E’ stata un’esperienza unica, ed è un’esperienza di quelle per cui uno comincia a misurare la vita da ‘prima’ di questo e ‘dopo’ questo. Quello che l’ha caratterizzata è stata essenzialmente la presenza del Santo Padre, cioè questa vita data e offerta per lui con una vicinanza, tra l’altro, fisica: la posizione del monastero è dentro i Giardini Vaticani. Proprio questa vicinanza implicava dei contatti con il Santo Padre ed il primo, il più importante in assoluto, è quello della preghiera. Noi eravamo lì essenzialmente per lui, per la Chiesa, per i suoi collaboratori della Curia. Tutte le mattine, aprendo le finestre della nostra casa, vedevamo il Palazzo Apostolico ed era un modo per mandare la preghiera quasi ‘fisicamente’ verso di lui.” (“It was a unique experience, one of those experiences that one measures one’s life by, ‘before’ and ‘after’ the experience. What characterized it was essentially the presence of the Holy Father, that is, this life given and offered for him with a nearness which was, among other things, physical: the position of the convent is inside the Vatican Gardens. Precisely this nearness implied contacts with the Holy Father, and the first, the most important of all, was that of prayer. We were there essentially for him, for the Church, for his co-workers of the Curia. Every morning, opening the windows of our house, we saw the Apostolic Palace and it was a way to send our prayer ‘physically’ toward him.’)

She said she met the Pope only two times, once on December 14, 2010, on the 400th anniversary of her order’s founding, and on October 14, 2012, a week before leaving the Vatican. On that last occasion, they met the Pope in his apartment.

What struck her, she said, was his very great capacity to be “present” and “open” to each person in front of him.

Asked what message she would like to communicate to the Pope, she said: “We love him very much. We loved him very much, and we love him very much.” (“Lo amiamo tanto. Lo abbiamo amato tanto e lo amiamo tanto.”)

February 15, 2013, Friday — Less Than Two Weeks

Halfway through February, Benedict XVI has less than two weeks left as Pope. His pontificate will end at 8 p.m. on February 28.

The city has begun to accept the fact that the previously unthinkable will actually occur: that Benedict will step down from the papacy, and devote himself to a life of prayer “hidden from the world” in a convent in the Vatican gardens.

After dramatic days, days of lighting bolts striking down on the very cupola of St. Peter’s Basilica a few hours after his announcement of his decision to step down, days of drenching rain, of bitter chill, of long nights and grey days, today was warmer, sunnier, though still quite cold.

(Here below is an image of the remarkable lightning bolt which struck St. Peter’s Dome at about 6 pm in the evening on Monday, February 11; the Pope had announced his decision to renounce his office at about 11:40 am, about 6 hours before. There are other photos which seem clearer, but I chose this photo because it shows dramtically how grey and miserable that evening really was.)

For the Pope, today was a normal working day.

Benedict received the President of Romania, Traian Basescu, at 11 this morning. (Trajan was the name of the Roman emperor who conquered Dacia, as it was then called, in about the year 100 A.D., and the president of Romania’s name, being the same, still echoed that distant conquest from 1,900 years ago.)

There was nothing unusual: 20 minutes of private conversation (the Romanian language, because of Trajan’s conquest, is derived from Latin and so quite close to Italian), an exchange of gifts, and greetings afterward to two journalists, Salvatore Mazza of Avvenire and Cindy Wooden of Catholic News Service, who formed the “pool” to observe the occasion and report back to the other journalists waiting in the press office.

“In the name of all the Vaticanists, we thank you for your commitment to the service of the Church, we are all praying for you,” said Mazza, president of the association of journalists accredited at the Vatican.

“Thank you for your teaching and for helping us to explain everything with clarity, this helped us in our work,” said Wooden.

“Grazie a voi per la preghiera,” (“Thanks to you for your prayer”), the Pope answered.

Toward noon, the Pope received a charitable group “Pro Petri Sede” (“For the See of Peter”) from Belgium, Luxembourg and The Netherlands. Benedict greeted the group in French.

To close his working day, he received a group of Italian bishops from Liguria, the region around Genoa, headed by Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco, archbishop of Genoa and president of the Italian bishops’ conference.

Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco

Bagnasco (photo above) is a man some Church watchers believe coud be a leading candidate to be the next Pope.

Bagnasco was born in Pontevico, near Genoa, where his family was evacuated during World War II. He once said in an interview: “I became an altar boy in my parish in the historic center of Genoa, in Piazza Sarzano, when I was six years old. My old parish priest was Abbot Giovanni Battista Gazzolo, first, and afterwards Monsignor Carlo Viacava while his deputy was a young curate, Don Gianni Zamiti — the latter two are still alive and overjoyed that their little altar boy has become their archbishop — who supervised us on afternoons in the parish club where we went to play. The desire to become a priest was born precisely when I was in elementary school, but I didn’t confide it to anybody. Afterwards I went to a co-ed middle school, always with that desire in my heart.”

Bagnasco attended the liceum of classics at the archdiocosean seminary of Genoa, and was ordained to the priesthood on June 29, 1966, by the then-archbishop of Genoa, Cardinal Giuseppe Siri.

While a priest in Genoa, he received a degree in philosophy from the University of Genoa, served as professor of metaphysics and contemporary atheism at the Theological Faculty of Northern Italy, and led the archdiocesan liturgical and catechesis offices. Cardinal Bagnasco has expressed strong opposition to abortion, especially with regards to the RU-486 pill, which has abortive effects on the conceived embryos. He has also opposed homosexual unions, and as a consequence has received death threats.

(By chance, I was able to see Bagnasco this afternoon, as he walked down the Borgo Pio. He is not tall, and when one meets him he seems a simple, humble, intelligent, thoughtful man.)

New President for the Vatican Bank

In the press office, several dozen journalists listened to Fr. Federico Lombardi’s 1 p.m. briefing today on the Vatican’s decision to name a new president for the Vatican bank.

The choice, announced at mid-day today after a vacancy dating back more than 8 months, to last May, fell on German lawyer and financier Ernst von Freyberg.

This decision is likely to be one of the last major acts of Benedict’s papacy.

The Pope gave von Freyberg his personal support on Friday, according to a Vatican statement.

Freyberg is a member of the ancient Sovereign Military Order of Malta. He replaces Ettore Gotti Tedeschi, an Italian banker close to Opus Dei who was removed from the post in late May, accused of both negligence and “increasingly eccentric behavior.”

Von Freyberg’s task as president of the Vatican bank will be to bring about greater transparency in the bank’s activities, as long desired by Pope Benedict XVI.

US and European regulators have expressed doubts about the Vatican’s compliance with international transparency standards. Italian authorities on January 1 month blocked the use of credit cards in the Vatican, a block which ended on February 12 when the Vatican reached an agreement with a Swiss payment company to allow the resumption of card payments. (However, I was still not able to pay a bill with a credit card in the Vatican on Wednesday and Thursday.)

When I spoke with one of my confidants later in the afternoon, he said to me that he believed that the issue of the Vatican bank was one all the cardinals in the college should demand clarity on before the Conclave begins.

He also told me that he thought Benedict had taken his decision in part because he feared the consequences of a stroke. That is, the Pope decided that it would be more harmful and destabilizing to the Church if he were suddenly incapacitated or paralyzed, than if he were to renounce his office while still in relatively good health. My friend told me that there had been a history of strokes in the Ratzinger family and that it was a matter of real concern.

Izzo’s Note

In the press office, I saw Salvatore Izzo, the correpsondent for the Italian news agency AGI, who is one of the most respected Vaticanists. I have known him for more than 25 years, since the 1980s.

In an article he published today, he noted that Cardinal Roger Mahony of Los Angeles will participate in the March Conclave to elect the new Pope, though Mahony’s successor as the archbishop of Los Angeles, Jose Gomez, has told Mahony he may not exercise any public function in the Los Angeles arcdiocese, following the release by court order of previously secret Church documents, which seem to show that Mahony did not actively pursue some 129 cases of alleged abuse of children by arcdiocesan priests.

Izzo cites Gomez as saying: “Leggere questi documenti e’ stata un’esperienza brutale e dolorosa” (“Reading thesd documents has been a brutal and sad experience”). Gomez informed the Pope of his decision in Mahony’s case, Izzo writes.

Izzo notes that Ireland’s Primate, Cardinal Sean Brady, to whom the Pope has recently sent a coadjutor with full powers “perche’ riconosciuto responsabile anche lui di almeno un insabbiamento” (“because he too has been recognized as responsible for at least one cover-up”) will also participate in the Conclave.

But, Izzo adds, there will also be in the Sistine Chapel “campioni” (“champions”) of the struggle against abuse of children.

Izzo names two cardinals of this type: “il cappuccino statunitense Sean O’Malley, che a Boston ha restituito credibilita’ alla Chiesa dopo la “fuga” a Roma del suo predecessore, Bernard Law” (“the American Capuchin friar Sean O’Malley, who in Boston restored credibility to the Church after the ‘flight’ to Rome of his predecessor, Bernard Law”)… “e il domenicano Christoph Schoenborn, allievo prediletto di Papa Ratzinger” (“and the Dominican Christoph Schoenborn, favorite ex-student of Pope Ratzinger”).

Izzo says that only O’Malley came to Schoenborn’s defense a couple of years ago when a number of cardinals criticized Schoenborn for being too harsh against Church prelates in cases concerning the alleged abuse of children — a charge now also being made in some ecclesial circles against Gomez.

Izzo then gives a lengthy account of Schoenborn’s behavior in the case of Cardinal Hermann Groer, his predecessor as archbishop of Vienna.

Schoenborn became Groer’s auxiliary in 1994. Groer was still solidly entrenched at that time, though disturbing allegations were beginning to emerge from ex-Benedictine novices who had suffered under Groer’s “attentions,” Izzo writes.

Groer denied all charges, and his fellow bishops at first defended him, calling the attacks “slanders” and “anti-clerical attacks.”

In Rome at that time, this was the generally accepetd line — but not by Joseph Ratzinger, then head of the Congreagtion for the Doctrine of the Faith, “che sul tema risulto’ in minoranza e per questo proprio in quel periodo aveva chiesto per la prima volta al Papa di lasciare il suo incarico di prefetto” (“who in this matter ended in the minority and for this reason precisely at that time asked for the first time that the Pope [John Paul II] allow him [Ratzinger] to leave his office as Prefect”).

When the accusations against Groer became more detailed and grave, Pope John Paul took action, making Schoenborn his coadjutor with full powers. Groer resigned a few months later. Schoenborn in Lent of 1996 preached the Lenten Spiritual Exercises in the Vatican, and was given the pallium as Vienna’s archbishop on June 29, 1996. He was made a cardinal in 1998.

Groer retired to a convent of nuns in Dreden, Germany, where he passed away.

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Friday evening

As evening came on, Vatican City was quiet. The offices of the Curia will be closed next week, as Italian Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi preaches the spiritual exercises, which the Pope will attend.

The following week will be the Pope’s last week as Pope. He will leave his post on Thursday, February 28. He will fly that afternoon by helicopter to Castel Gandolfo, about 20 miles from the Vatican in the Alban hills.

The Conclave is now expected to begin on or about March 15. It is not known how long it will last. The Conclave to elect Pope Benedict only lasted two days. But it is not impossible that the Conclave could last five, six, or seven days, or even longer.

As I walked away from Vatican City this evening, I ran into a cardinal from Latin America who was walking alone.

“Fa freddo,” I said. (“Cold night.”)

“Molto” (“Very”), he replied.

We spoke for a few minutes. After we talked about the historic events of these days, I told him I had just received a phone call from Moscow from a member of the Russian Orthodox Church, who was proposing a concert in honor of the Virgin Mary in Rome in October, offered by the Russian Orthodox Church to the new Pope, and the former Pope, as a sign of friendship between separated Christians. He had asked me to help organize it.

The cardinal said the theme of Christian unity was important, not only to him, and to many of the cardinals. “We need to find those deep truths we share in order to build true unity of faith,” he said.

I noticed a string of beads in the cardinal’s hands.

“Sorry I interrupted you,” I said.

“Now I will finish,” he replied.

He was praying the rosary.

I left him near St. Peter’s Square as night fell, and the wind grew chill.

February 14, 2013, Thursday — Without a Script

“Only a permanent formation of the heart and mind can actually create intelligibility and participation which is more than one external activity, which is an entering of the person, of his or her being into communion with the Church and thus in fellowship with Christ.”—Pope Benedict XVI this morning, in his annual address to the clergy of Rome, in the Paul VI Audience Hall in Vatican City; the talk was delivered without a written text, as in a conversation, or university seminar.

Pope to Rome’s priests: The Second Vatican Council, As I Saw It

The remarkable thing about Pope Benedict’s talk today to the clergy of Rome, several thousand strong, was that he did not speak from a prepared text. He spoke freely, familiarly. It was an impressive performance.

For nearly 50 minutes, the 85-year-old pontiff — who on Monday stunned the world with the abrupt announcement of his decision to leave the papacy on February 28 — spoke “a braccio” (“off the cuff”) somehwat as a professor may speak to his students in a university seminar.

It seemed that this “professor Pope” has, in the final days of his papacy, in fact truly become the “professor Pope.”

It is as if the weight of speaking with magisterial authority, which already in the past seemed to make this Pope occasionally uncomfortable (as when he issued his books on Jesus under the names both of “Joseph Ratzinger” and of “Pope Benedict XVI”) is already, two weeks before his resignation, being lifted off of his shoulders.

His manner of speaking today reminded me of several conversations I was able to have with him in the 1990s, when he, as Cardinal Ratzinger, spoke with me, a young journalist, about some of the matters he discussed today.

Benedict seemed very much at ease, though he was evidently a bit tired (one of his eyes sometimes almost closed as he spoke).

The Pope offered a personal account to Rome’s clergy of his own experience of the Second Vatican Council, and of what the Council intended.

Because it is one of the last times he will speak publicly to a large audience as Pope, the talk was closely followed by Vatican watchers.

What was the Pope’s “message” as he prepares to renounce his office on February 28?

Essentially, that the documents of Vatican II were works of great value which responded to real concerns and problems facing the Church, but which were later distorted, often by the world’s media, which had their own agenda, leading to much confusion and “misery.”

In particular, Benedict said that the popular understanding of Vatican II has been distorted presentations of the Council as a political struggle for “popular sovereignty” in the Church. This “Council of the media” was responsible for “many calamities, so many problems, so much misery,” the Pope said. He listed the miseries: “Seminaries closed, convents closed, liturgy trivialized.”

But the Pope said that the “true Council” is today “emerging with all its spiritual strength,” and he called on the priests to “work so that the true Council with the power of the Holy Spirit is realized and the Church is really renewed.”

At the very beginning if his papacy, almost 8 years ago, Benedict called for a reading of Vatican II “in continuity” with the Church’s 2,000-year doctrine, not as a “rupture” with that past. His talk today was a re-emphasis of this teaching.

Before the Pope’s talk, the priests greeted him with a standing ovation and a shout of “Viva il Papa!” (“Long Live the Pope!”). Cardinal Agostino Vallini, the vicar for Rome, read a short tribute to the Pope, comparing the occasion to the departure of St. Paul from Ephesus in the Acts of the Apostles.

The cardinal then began to weep slightly, saying, “in the name of all the priests of Rome, who truly love the Pope, we commit ourselves to pray still for you and for your intentions, so that our grateful love may become, if possible, even greater.”

An excerpt of Pope Benedict’s address in video form can be seen here:

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The Vatican Radio Transcription of the Pope’s February 14 Talk to the Clergy of Rome (slightly edited for clarity)

No official text of the talk has yet been made available — because there was no official written text to begin with — but Vatican Radio today published a transcription of nearly all of the Pope’s talk.

Still, because there are a number of small mistakes and omissions in the text, I have edited it very slightly in the version published below.

The Vatican Radio text may be found in its original form by clicking here.

“It is a special and providential gift,” began the Pope, “that, before leaving the Petrine ministry, I can once again meet my clergy, the clergy of Rome. It is always a great joy to see how the Church lives, and how in Rome, the Church is alive: there are pastors who in the spirit of the supreme Shepherd, guide the flock of Christ.”

“It is a truly Catholic and universal clergy,” he added, “and is part of the essence of the Church of Rome itself, to reflect the universality, the catholicity, of all nations, of all races, of all cultures.”

“At the same time, I am very grateful to the Cardinal Vicar who is helping to reawaken, to rediscover the vocations in Rome itself, because if, on the one hand, Rome is the city of universality, it must be also a city with its own strong, robust faith, from which vocations are also born. And I am convinced that, with the help of the Lord, we can find the vocations He Himself gifts us, guide them, help them to develop and thus help the work in the vineyard of the Lord.”

“Today,” continued the Pope, “you have confessed the Creed before the Tomb of St. Peter: in the Year of the Faith, I see this as a very appropriate, perhaps even necessary, act, that the clergy of Rome meet at the Tomb of the Apostle of which the Lord said, ‘To you I entrust my Church. Upon you I build my Church.’ Before the Lord, together with Peter, you have confessed: ‘you are Christ, the Son of the living God.’ Thus the Church grows: together with Peter, confessing Christ, following Christ. And we do this always. I am very grateful for your prayers that I have felt, as I said Wednesday, almost physically. Though I am now retiring to a life of prayer, I will always be close to all you and I am sure all of you will be close to me, even though I remain hidden to the world. ”

“For today, given the conditions of my age,” he said, “I could not prepare a great, real address, as one might expect, but rather I thought of chatting about the Second Vatican Council, as I saw it.”

The Pope began with an anecdote: “In 1959, I was appointed professor at the University of Bonn, which is attended by students, seminarians of the diocese of Cologne and other surrounding dioceses. So, I came into contact with the Cardinal of Cologne, Cardinal Frings. Cardinal Siri of Genoa — I think it was in 1961 — had organized a series of conferences with several cardinals in Europe, and the Council had invited the archbishop of Cologne to hold a conference, entitled: ‘The Council and the World of Modern Thought.’ The Cardinal invited me — the youngest of the professors — to write a project; he liked the project and proposed this text, as I had written it to the public, in Genoa.”

“Shortly after,” he continued, “Pope John invited him to come [to Rome] and he was afraid he had perhaps said maybe something incorrect, false, and that he had been asked to come for a reprimand, perhaps even to deprive him of his red hat… (priests laughing). Yes… when his secretary dressed him for the audience, he said: ‘Perhaps now I will be wearing this stuff for the last time…’ (the priests laugh). Then he went in. Pope John came towards him and hugged him, saying, ‘Thank you, Your Eminence, you said things I have wanted to say, but I had not found the words to say’… (the priests laugh, applaud) Thus, the Cardinal knew he was on the right track, and I was invited to accompany him to the Council, first as his personal advisor, then — in the first period, perhaps in November ’62 — I was also appointed as an official peritus [expert] for the Council.”

Benedict XVI continued: “So, we went to the Council not only with joy, but with enthusiasm. The expectation was incredible. We hoped that everything would be renewed, that a new Pentecost really would come, a new era of the Church, because the Church was not robust enough at that time: the Sunday practice was still good, even vocations to the priesthood and religious life were already somewhat fewer, but still sufficient. But nevertheless, there was the feeling that the Church was going on, but getting smaller, that somehow it seemed like a reality of the past and not the bearer of the future. And now, we hoped that this relationship would be renewed, changed, that the Church would once again source of strength for today and tomorrow.”

The Pope then recalled how they saw “that the relationship between the Church and the modern period was one of some ‘contrasts’ from the outset, starting with the error in the Galileo case, “and the idea was to correct this wrong start” and to find a new relationship between the Church and the best forces in the world, “to open up the future of humanity, to open up to real progress.”

The Pope recalled: “We were full of hope, enthusiasm and also of good will.”

“I remember,” he said, “the Roman Synod was considered as a negative model” where — it was said — they read prepared texts, and the members of the Synod simply approved them, and that was how the Synod was held. The bishops agreed not to do so because they themselves were the subject of the Council. So — he continued — even Cardinal Frings, who was famous for his absolute, almost meticulous, fidelity to the Holy Father, said that the Pope has summoned the bishops in an ecumenical council as a subject to renew the Church.

Benedict XVI recalled that “the first time this attitude became clear, was immediately on the first day.”

On the first day, the Commissions were to be elected and the lists and nominations were impartially prepared. And these lists were to be voted on. But soon the Fathers said, “No, are not simply going to vote on already made lists. We are the subject.”

They had to move the elections — he continued — because the Fathers themselves wanted to get to know each other a little, they wanted to make their own lists. So it was done.

“It was a revolutionary act,” he said, “but an act of conscience, of responsibility on the part of the Council Fathers.”

So, the Pope said, a strong activity of mutual understanding began. And this, he said, was customary for the entire period of the Council: “small transversal meetings.” In this way he became familiar with the great figures like Father de Lubac, Danielou, Congar, and so on. And this, he said “was an experience of the universality of the Church and of the reality of the Church, that does not merely receive imperatives from above, but grows and advances together, under the leadership, of course, of the Successor of Peter.”

He then reiterated that everyone “arrived with great expectations” because “there had never been a Council of this size,” but not everyone knew how to make it work. The French, German, Belgian, Dutch episcopates, the so-called “Rhineland Alliance,” had “the most clearly defined intentions.”

And in the first part of the Council, he said, it was they who suggested the road ahead, then it’s activities rapidly expanded and soon all participated in the “creativity of the Council.”

The French and the Germans, he observed, had many interests in common, even with quite different nuances.

Their initial intention, seemingly simple, “was the reform of the liturgy, which had begun with Pius XII,” which had already reformed Holy Week; their second intention was ecclesiology; their third the Word of God, Revelation, and then also ecumenism. The French, much more than the Germans, he noted, still had the problem of dealing with the situation of the relationship between the Church and the world.

Referring to the reform of the liturgy, the Pope recalled that “after the First World War, a liturgical movement had grown in Western Central Europe,” as “the rediscovery of the richness and depth of the liturgy,” which hitherto was almost locked within the priest’s Roman Missal, while the people prayed with their prayer books “that were made according to the heart of the people,” so that “the task was to translate the high content, the language of the classical liturgy, into more moving words, that were closer to the heart of the people. But they were almost two parallel liturgies: the priest with the altar servers, who celebrated the Mass according to the Missal, and the lay people who prayed the Mass with their prayer books.”

“Now,” he continued, “the beauty, the depth, the Missal’s wealth of human and spiritual history” was rediscovered, as well as the need more than one representative of the people, a small altar boy, to respond “Et cum spiritu tuo” etc., to allow for “a real dialogue between priest and people,” so that the liturgy of the altar and the liturgy of the people really were “one single liturgy, one active participation.

“And so it was that the liturgy was rediscovered, renewed.”

The Pope said he saw the fact that the Council started with the liturgy as a very positive sign, because in this way “the primacy of God” was self-evident.

Some, he noted, criticized the Council because it spoke about many things, but not about God: instead, it spoke of God and its first act was to speak of God and open to the entire holy people the possibility of worshiping God, in the common celebration of the liturgy of the Body and Blood of Christ.

In this sense, he observed, beyond the practical factors that advised against immediately starting with controversial issues, it was actually “an act of Providence” that the Council began with the liturgy, God, Adoration.

The Holy Father then recalled the essential ideas of the Council: especially the paschal mystery as a center of Christian existence, and therefore of Christian life, as expressed in Easter and Sunday, which is always the day of the Resurrection, “over and over again we begin our time with the Resurrection, with an encounter with the Risen One.”

In this sense, he observed, it is unfortunate that today, Sunday has been transformed into the end of the week, while it is the first day, it is the beginning: “inwardly we must bear in mind this is the beginning, the beginning of Creation, the beginning of the re-creation of the Church, our encounter with the Creator and with the Risen Christ.”

The Pope stressed the importance of this dual content of Sunday: it is the first day, that is the feast of the Creation, as we believe in God the Creator, and an encounter with the Risen One who renews Creation: “its real purpose is to create a world which is a response to God’s love. ”

The Council also pondered the principals of the intelligibility of the Liturgy, instead of being locked up in an unknown language, which was no longer spoken, and active participation.

“Unfortunately,” he said, “these principles were also poorly understood.”

In fact, intelligibility does not mean “banalizing,” because the great texts of the liturgy, even in the spoken languages, are not easily intelligible, he said. “They require an ongoing formation of the Christian, so that he may grow and enter deeper into the depths of the mystery, and thus comprehend.”

And also concerning the Word of God, he asked, who can honestly say they understand the texts of Scripture, simply because they are in their own language?

“Only a permanent formation of the heart and mind can actually create intelligibility and participation which is more than one external activity, which is an entering of the person, of his or her being into communion with the Church and thus in fellowship with Christ,” he said.

The Pope then addressed the second issue: the Church.

He recalled that the First Vatican Council was interrupted by the Franco-Prussian War and so had emphasized only the doctrine on primacy, which was described as “thanks to God at that historical moment” and “it was very much needed for the Church in the time that followed.”

But, he said, “it was just one element in a broader ecclesiology,” already in preparation.

So a a fragment remained from the Council. So from the beginning, he said, the intention was to realise a more complete ecclesiology at a later time.

Here, too, he said, the conditions seemed very good, because after the First World War, the sense of Church was reborn in a new way.

A sense of the Church began to reawaken in people’s souls and the Protestant bishop spoke of the “century of the Church.”

What was especially rediscovered from Vatican I, was the concept of the mystical body of Christ. The aim was to speak about and understand the Church not as an organization, something structural, legal, institutional, which it also is, but as an organism, a vital reality that enters my soul, so that I myself, with my own soul as a believer, am a constructive element of the Church as such. In this sense, Pius XII wrote the encyclical Mystici Corporis Christi, as a step towards a completion of the ecclesiology of Vatican I.

“I would say the theological discussion of the 1930s-1940s, even 1920s, was completely under the sign of the words Mystici Corporis,” the Pope said.

“It was a discovery that created so much joy in this time and in this context the formula arose: ‘We are the Church, the Church is not a structure, something … we Christians, together, we are all the living body of the Church.’

“And of course this is true in the sense that we, the true ‘we’ of believers, along with the ‘I’ of Christ, the Church. Each one of us, not we, a group that claims to be the Church. No: this ‘we are Church’ requires my inclusion in the great ‘we’ of believers of all times and places.

So, the Pope said, this was the first idea: to complete the [Vatican I] ecclesiology in theological way, but progressing in a structural manner, that is, alongside the succession of Peter, his unique function, to even better define the function of the bishops of the episcopal body.

To do this, he said, the word “collegiality” was found, “which provoked great, intense and even – I would say – exaggerated discussions.”

“But it was the word (it might have been another one), but this ord was needed to express that the bishops, together, are the continuation of the Twelve, the body of the Apostles.

“We said: only one bishop, that of Rome, is the successor of one particular apostle, Peter. All others become successors of the apostles entering the body that continues the body of the apostles. And just so the body of bishops, the college, is the continuation of the body of the Twelve, so it is necessary, it has its function, its rights and duties.

“It appeared to many,” the Pope said, “as a struggle for power, and maybe some did think about power, but basically it was not about power, but the complementarity of the factors and the completeness of the body of the Church with the bishops, the successors the apostles as bearers, and each of them is a pillar of the Church together with this great body.”

“These,” he continued, “were the two fundamental elements in the search for a comprehensive theological vision of ecclesiology. Meanwhile, after the 1940s, in the 1950s, a little criticism of the concept of the Body of Christ had already been born: ‘mystical body,’ some said, is too exclusive and risks overshadowing the concept of the ‘people of God.’ And the Council,” he observed, “rightly, accepted this fact, which in the Fathers is considered an expression of the continuity between the Old and New Testaments. We Gentiles, we are not in and of ourselves the people of God, but we become the children of Abraham and therefore the people of God, by entering into communion with Christ who is the only seed of Abraham. And entering into communion with Him, being one with Him, we too are ‘people of God.’ That is, the concept of ‘people of God’ implies continuity of the Testaments, continuity of God’s history in the world, with men, but also implies a Christological element. Only through Christology do we become the ‘people of God,’ and the two concepts are combined. And the Council,” said the Pope, “decided to create a Trinitarian construction of ecclesiology: the People of God-the-Father-Body of Christ-Temple of the Holy Spirit.

“But only after the Council,” he continued, “was an element that had been somewhat hidden, brought to light, even as early as the Council itself, that is, the link between the People of God, the (mystical) Body of Christ, and their communion with Christ, in the Eucharistic union.

“Here we become the body of Christ, that is, the relationship between the people of God and the Body of Christ creates a new reality, that is, the communion.”

“And the Council,” he continued, “led to the concept of communion as a central concept. I would say philologically that it had not yet fully matured in the Council, but it is the result of the Council that the concept of communion becomes more and more an expression of the sense of the Church, communion in different dimensions, communion with the Triune God, who Himself is communion between the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, sacramental communion, concrete communion in the Episcopate and in the life of the Church.

“The problem of Revelation provoked even greater discussion: at issue was the relationship between Scripture and tradition, and above all this interested exegetes of a greater freedom, who felt somewhat, shall we say, in a situation of negativity before Protestants, who were making great discoveries, while Catholics felt a little ‘handicapped’ by the need to submit themselves to Magisterium. There was therefore a very concrete issue at stake: how free are exegetes? How does one read Scriptures well? What is meant by tradition?

“It was a pluri-dimensional battle that I can not outline now, but certainly what is important is that Scripture is the Word of God and the Church is subject to the Scriptures, obeys the Word of God, and is not above Scripture. Yet, Scripture is Scripture only because there is the living Church, its living subject; without the living subject of the Church Scripture is only a book, open to different interpretations, but which does not give any final clarity.

“Here, the battle, as I said, was difficult and the intervention of Pope Paul VI was decisive. This intervention shows all the delicacy of the Pope, his responsibility for the outcome of the Council, but also his great respect for the Council.

“The idea had emerged that Scripture is complete, everything can be found therein, so there was no need for tradition, and that Magisterium has nothing to say to us. Then the Pope sent the Council, I believe, 14 formulas of a sentence to be included in the text on Revelation and gave us, gave the Fathers, the freedom to choose one of 14 (formulas), but said: ‘One has to be chosen to complete the text.’

“I remember, more or less, that the formula spoke of the Church’s certainty of the faith not being based solely on a book, but needing the illuminated subject of the Church, guided by the Holy Spirit. Only in this way can Scripture speak and bring to bear all of its authority.

“We chose this phrase in the Doctrinal Commission, one of the 14 formulas. It is crucial, I think, to show the indispensability, the necessity of the Church, and to understand what tradition means, the living body in which the Word lives from the beginning and from which it receives its light, in which it was born.

“Because the simple fact of the Canon (the list of the books included in the Bible) is an ecclesial fact: that these writings are Scripture is the result of the illumination of the Church that found this canon of Scripture within herself, she found (this Canon), she did not make it, but found it. Only and always in this communion of the living Church can one really understand and read the Scriptures as the Word of God, as the Word that guides us in life and in death.

“As I said, this was a difficult discussion, but thanks to the Pope and thanks, let’s say, to the light of the Holy Spirit who was present at the Council, a document that is one of the most beautiful and also innovative of the whole Council was created, which demands further study, because even today exegesis tends to read Scripture outside of the Church, outside of faith, only in the so-called spirit of the historical-critical method — an important method, but never able to give solutions as a final certainty (which comes) only if we believe that these are not human words: they are the words of God. And only if (we), the living subjects to whom God has spoken, to whom God speaks, are alive, can we correctly interpret Sacred Scripture.

“And there is still much to be done, as I said in the preface of my book on Jesus, to arrive at a reading of Scripture that is really in the spirit of the Council. Here the application of the Council is not yet complete, it has yet to be accomplished.

“Finally, ecumenism. I do not want to enter into these problems, but it was obvious, especially after the suffering of Christians in the time of National Socialism, that Christians could find unity, at least seek unity, but also that only God can give unity. We are still on this journey.

“Now, with these issues, the Rhine alliance, so to speak, had done its work: the second part of the Council is much broader.

“Now the themes of ‘the world today,’ ‘the modern era and the Church,’ emerged with greater urgency, and with them, the themes of responsibility for the building of this world, society’s responsibility for the future of this world and eschatological hope, the ethical responsibility of Christians, where they find their guides, and then religious freedom, progress and all that, and relations with other religions.

“Now all the players in the Council really entered into discussions, not only the Americas-United States with a strong interest in religious freedom. In the third session they told the Pope: ‘We cannot go home without bringing with us a declaration on religious freedom passed by the Council.’

“The Pope [Paul VI], however, had firmness and decision, the patience to delay the text until the fourth session, to reach a maturation and a fairly complete consensus among the Fathers of the Council.

“I say, not only the Americans had now entered with great force into the Council arena, but also Latin America, knowing full well the misery of their people, a Catholic continent and their responsibility for the situation of the faith of these people.

“And Africa, Asia, also saw the need for interreligious dialogue: increased problems that we Germans, I must say, at the beginning had not seen. I cannot go into greater depth on this now.

“The great document Gaudium et Spes describes very well the problem analyzed between Christian eschatology and worldly progress, between our responsibility for the society of tomorrow and the responsibility of the Christian before eternity, and so it also renewed Christian ethics, the foundations.

“But unexpectedly, a document that responded in a more synthetic and concrete manner to the great challenges of the time, took shape outside of this great document, namely Nostra Aetate.

“From the beginning, there were our Jewish friends, who said to us Germans especially, but not only to us, that after the sad events of this century, this decade of National Socialism, the Catholic Church had to say a word on the Old Testament, the Jewish people. They also said ‘it was clear that the Church is not responsible for the Shoah. Those who have committed these crimes were Christians, for the most part, we must deepen and renew the Christian conscience, even if we know that the true believers always resisted these things.’ [Note: I believe these lines of the Vatican Radio transcription need to be checked against the Pope's actual words in his talk, which I am unable to access at this time.]

“And so, it was clear that we had to reflect on our relationship with the world of the ancient people of God. We also understood that the Arab countries, the bishops of the Arab countries, were not happy with this. They feared a glorification of the State of Israel, which they did not want to, of course. They said, ‘Well, a truly theological indication on the Jewish people is good, it is necessary, but if you are to speak about this, you must also speak of Islam. Only in this way can we be balanced. Islam is also a great challenge and the Church should clarify its relationship with Islam.’ This is something that we didn’t really understand at the time, a little, but not much. Today we know how necessary it was.

“And when we started to work also on Islam, they said: ‘But there are also other religions of the world: all of Asia! Think about Buddhism, Hinduism…’

“And so, instead of an initial declaration originally meant only for the ancient people of God, a text on interreligious dialogue was created anticipating by 30 years what would later reveal itself in all of its intensity and importance. I can not enter into it now, but if you read the text, you see that it is very dense and prepared by people who really knew the truth, and it briefly indicates, in a few words, what is essential. Thus also the foundations of a dialogue in diversity, in faith to the uniqueness of Christ, who is One.

“It is not possible for a believer to think that religions are all variations on a theme of ‘no.’

“There is a reality of the living God who has spoken, and is a God, a God incarnate, therefore the Word of God is really the Word of God.

“But there is religious experience, with a certain human light of creation, and therefore it is necessary and possible to enter into dialogue and thus open up to each other and open all peoples up to the peace of God, of all his children, and his entire family.

“Thus, these two documents, religious freedom and Nostra Aetate associated with Gaudium et Spes are a very important trilogy, the importance of which has only been revealed over the decades, and we are still working to understand this uniqueness of the revelation of God, uniqueness of God incarnate in Christ and the multiplicity of religions with which we seek peace and also an open heart to the light of the Holy Spirit who enlightens and guides to Christ.

“I would now like to add yet a third point: there was the Council of the Fathers, the true Council, but there was also the Council of the media. It was almost a Council in and of itself, and the world perceived the Council through them, through the media.

“So the immediate message of the Council that got thorough to the people, was that of the media, not that of the Fathers.

“And while the Council of the Fathers evolved within the faith, it was a Council of the faith that sought the intellectus, that sought to understand, to try to understand the signs of God at that moment, that tried to meet the challenge of God in this time to find the words for today and tomorrow.

“So while the whole Council, as I said, moved within the faith, as fides quaerens intellectum, the Council of journalists did not, naturally, take place within the world of faith, but within the categories of the media of today, that is outside of the faith, with different hermeneutics.

“It was a hermeneutic of politics.

“The media saw the Council as a political struggle, a struggle for power between different currents within the Church. It was obvious that the media would take the side of whatever faction best suited their world.

“There were those who sought a decentralization of the Church, power for the bishops and then, through the Word for the ‘People of God,’ the power of the people, the laity.

“There was this triple issue: the power of the Pope, then transferred to the power of the bishops, and then the power of all… popular sovereignty.

“Naturally they saw this as the part to be approved, to promulgate, to help.

“This was the case for the liturgy: there was no interest in the liturgy as an act of faith, but as a something to be made understandable, similar to a community activity, something profane. And we know that there was a trend, which was also historically based, that said: ‘Sacredness is a pagan thing, possibly even from the Old Testament. In the New Testament the only important thing is that Christ died outside: that is, outside the gates, that is, in the secular world.’

“Sacredness ended up as profanity even in worship: worship is not worship but an act that brings people together, communal participation and thus participation as activity.

“And these translations, trivializing the idea of ​​the Council, were virulent in the practice of implementing the liturgical reform, born in a vision of the Council outside of its own key vision of faith.

“And it was so, also in the matter of Scripture: Scripture is a book, historical, to treat historically and nothing else, and so on.

“And we know that this Council of the media was accessible to all. So, dominant, more efficient, this Council created many calamities, so many problems, so much misery, in reality: seminaries closed, convents closed liturgy trivialized… and the true Council has struggled to materialize, to be realized: the virtual Council was stronger than the real Council.

“But the real strength of the Council was present and slowly it has emerged and is becoming the real power which is also true reform, true renewal of the Church.

“It seems to me that 50 years after the Council, we see how this Virtual Council is breaking down, getting lost and the true Council is emerging with all its spiritual strength.

“And it is our task, in this Year of Faith, starting from this Year of Faith, to work so that the true Council with the power of the Holy Spirit is realized and Church is really renewed.

“We hope that the Lord will help us. I, retired in prayer, will always be with you, and together we will move ahead with the Lord in certainty. The Lord is victorious. Thank you.”

February 13, 2013, Wednesday — Ash Wednesday

“Thus says the Lord, return to me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning” (Joel 2:12).”—Pope Benedict XVI, citing the Prophet Joel, at his final public Mass as Pope, this evening in St. Peter’s Basilica in Vatican City

After Pope Benedict XVI received ashes on his head this evening from Cardinal Angelo Comastri, archpriest of St. Peter’s Basilica, he spoke in his Ash Wednesday homily about the need for Christians to be united, and strongly warned against Church divisions.

Some observers took the words as a veiled reference to “infighting” in the Vatican itself.

“The face of the Church is at times disfigured by the sins against the unity of the Church and the divisions of the ecclesial body,” Pope Benedict said, from the pulpit of St. Peter’s Basilica. “I am thinking in particular about sins against the unity of the Church, the divisions in the ecclesial body. Living Lent in a more intense and evident ecclesial communion, overcoming individualism and rivalry, is a humble and precious sign for those who are far from the faith or indifferent.”

One Vatican observer commented: “The Pope’s Ash Wednesday homily underscored the persistent infighting in Church ranks.”

The deep message of the homily is that divisions in the Church scandalize non-Christians. Ending these divisions would therefore be evangelically powerful — an effective sign of the truth of the Gospel.

The Pope himself placed ashes on the heads of several cardinals and a group of Dominican and Benedictine priests.

Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the Vatican Secretary of State, his voice filled with emotion, then said: “We wouldn’t be sincere, Your Holiness, if we didn’t say tonight there’s a veil of sadness over our hearts.”

“Thank you for giving us the luminous example of a simple and humble laborer in the vineyard of the Lord,” Bertone said, referring to the words Pope Benedict used in his first public statement following his election in 2005.

His voice cracking, Bertone described Benedict as a “laborer who knew at every moment to do what is most important, bring God to men and bring men to God.”

At the end of the Mass, Benedict received a long, emotional ovation from the thousands of faithful who packed the basilica, including dozens of cardinals who removed their miters in a sign of respect to the outgoing pontiff.

The standing ovation lasted more than a minute. It ended when the Pope, looking surprised but not displeased, said: “Grazie (“Thank you”). Let’s return to prayer.”

Ash Wednesday marks the start of Lent. By Easter, which falls on March 31, the Church will likely have a new Pope.

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The Pope’s Ash Wednesday Homily

Here is the complete text of the Pope’s Ash Wednesday homily, furnished in English translation by the Zenit news agency.

Venerable Brothers,

Dear Brothers and Sisters!

Today, Ash Wednesday, we begin a new Lenten journey, a journey that extends for 40 days and leads us to the joy of Easter, the victory of Life over death.

Following the ancient Roman tradition of Lenten stationes, we have gathered for the celebration of the Eucharist. The tradition says that the first statio should take place in the Basilica of Santa Sabina on the Aventine Hill. The circumstances have suggested that we gather in St. Peter’s Basilica.

Tonight we are great in number around the tomb of the Apostle Peter, also to request his intercession for the Church’s journey at this particular time, renewing our faith in the Supreme Pastor, Christ the Lord.

For me it is a good opportunity to thank everyone, especially the faithful of the Diocese of Rome, as I prepare to conclude my Petrine ministry, and ask for a special remembrance in prayer.

The readings that have been proclaimed provide us with ideas that, with the grace of God, we are called to make concrete attitudes and behaviors during this Lent. The Church proposes to us, first, the strong appeal that the prophet Joel addressed to the people of Israel, “Thus says the Lord, return to me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning” (2:12).

Please note the phrase “with all my heart,” which means from the center of our thoughts and feelings, from the roots of our decisions, choices and actions, with a gesture of total and radical freedom.

But is this return to God possible?

Yes, because there is a force that does not reside in our hearts, but that emanates from the heart of God. It is the power of his mercy.

The prophet says, further: “Return to the Lord your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, rich in faithful love, ready to repent of evil” (v. 13).

The return to the Lord is possible as a ‘grace’, because it is the work of God and the fruit of that faith that we place in His mercy.

But this return to God becomes a reality in our lives only when the grace of God penetrates to our inmost being and shakes it, giving us the power to “rend our hearts.”

The same prophet causes these words from God to resonate: “Rend your hearts and not your garments” (v. 13).

In fact, even today, many are ready to “rend their garments” before scandals and injustices — of course, made by others — but few seem willing to act on their own “heart”, on their own conscience and their own intentions, letting the Lord transform, renew and convert.

That “return to me with all your heart,” then, is a reminder that involves not only the individual, but the community.

We have heard, also in the first reading: “Play the horn in Zion, proclaim a solemn fast, call a sacred assembly. Gather the people, convoke a solemn assembly, call the old, gather the children and the infants at the breast; let the bridegroom leave his room and the bride her bridal chamber”(vv.15-16).

The community dimension is an essential element in faith and Christian life. Christ came “to gather into one the children of God who are scattered abroad” (cfr. Jn 11:52). The “we” of the Church is the community in which Jesus brings us together (cf. Jn 12:32): faith is necessarily ecclesial.

And this is important to remember and to live in this time of Lent: each person is aware that he or she does not face the penitential journey alone, but together with many brothers and sisters in the Church.

Finally, the prophet focuses on the prayers of the priests, who, with tears in their eyes, turn to God, saying: “Do not expose your heritage to the reproach and derision of the nations. Why should they say among the peoples, ‘Where is their God?’ “(v. 17).

This prayer makes us reflect on the importance of the testimony of faith and Christian life of each of us and our community to show the face of the Church and how that face is sometimes disfigured.

I am thinking in particular about sins against the unity of the Church, the divisions in the ecclesial body.

Living Lent in a more intense and evident ecclesial communion, overcoming individualism and rivalry, is a humble and precious sign for those who are far from the faith or indifferent.

“Behold, now is the acceptable time, now is the day of salvation” (2 Cor 6:2). The words of the Apostle Paul to the Christians of Corinth resonate for us, too, with an urgency that does not allow omission or inaction.

The word “now” repeated several times says that we cannot let this time pass us by, it is offered to us as a unique opportunity. And the Apostle’s gaze focuses on the sharing that Christ chose to characterize his life, taking on everything human to the point of bearing the very burden of men’s sins.

The phrase St. Paul uses is very strong: “God made him sin for our sake.”

Jesus, the innocent one, the Holy One, “He who knew no sin” (2 Cor 5:21), bears the burden of sin, sharing with humanity its outcome of death, and death on the cross.

The reconciliation offered to us has cost a high price, that of the cross raised on Golgotha, on which was hung the Son of God made man. In this immersion of God in human suffering and in the abyss of evil lies the root of our justification.

The “return to God with all your heart” in our Lenten journey passes through the cross, following Christ on the road to Calvary, the total gift of self. It is a way on which to learn every day to come out more and more from our selfishness and our closures, to make room for God who opens and transforms the heart.

And St. Paul recalls how the announcement of the Cross resounds to us through the preaching of the Word, of which the Apostle himself is an ambassador; it is a call for us to make this Lenten journey characterized by a more careful and assiduous listening to the Word of God, the light that illuminates our steps.

In the Gospel of Matthew, to which belongs the so-called Sermon on the Mount, Jesus refers to three fundamental practices required by Mosaic Law: almsgiving, prayer and fasting; they are also traditional indications in the Lenten journey to respond to the invitation to “return to God with all your heart.”

But Jesus emphasizes that it is both the quality and the truth of the relationship with God that determines the authenticity of each religious gesture.

For this reason He denounces religious hypocrisy, the behavior that wants to be seen, attitudes seeking applause and approval.

The true disciple does not serve himself or the “public”, but his Lord, in simplicity and generosity: “And your Father, who sees in secret, will reward you” (Mt 6:4.6.18).

Our witness, then, will always be more effective the less we seek our own glory, and we will know that the reward of the righteous is God himself, being united to Him, here below, on the journey of faith, and, at the end of life, in the peace and light of coming face to face with Him forever (cf. 1 Cor 13:12).

Dear brothers and sisters, we begin our Lenten journey, trusting and joyful.

May the invitation to conversion resonate strongly in us, to “return to God with all your heart”, accepting His grace that makes us new men, with the surprising novelty that is sharing in the very life of Jesus.

Let none of us, therefore, be deaf to this appeal, that is addressed to us also in the austere rite, so simple and yet so beautiful, of the imposition of ashes, which we will perform shortly. May the Virgin Mary accompany us in this time, the Mother of the Church and model of every true disciple of the Lord. Amen!

[Original text: Italian]

[Translation for Zenit News Agency by Peter Waymel]

(February 13, 2013) © Innovative Media Inc.

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Staying inside Vatican City

Once the Pope steps down, he will be flown by helicopter to Castel Gandolfo, the papal summer residence on Rome’s outskirts, while the Vatican puts the finishing touches on his future home: a convent within Vatican walls that has recently been renovated by the Pope’s order.

The Rev. Thomas J. Reese, Senior Fellow at the Woodstock Theological Center at Georgetown University, was quoted today as saying: “I think it was a mistake for him to announce that he will be living inside the Vatican. The Vatican belongs to the new Pope, and [Benedict XVI] needs the Pope’s permission to live there.”

But if Benedict remains in the Vatican, he will be able to consult with the new Pope, much as an aged father consults with a son. This physical closeness could be a guarantee of communion and continuity that could not be guaranteed so effectively in any other way.

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 Wednesday General Audience, complete text 

Here is the Pope’s complete address from today General Audience, which I discussed in an earlier newsflash. The essential teaching here is that man should not place himself above God, or attempt to become God:

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

Today, Ash Wednesday, we begin the liturgical time of Lent, 40 days that prepare us for the celebration of Holy Easter, it is a time of particular commitment in our spiritual journey. The number 40 occurs several times in the Bible. In particular, it recalls the 40 years that the Israelites wandered in the wilderness: a long period of formation to become the people of God, but also a long period in which the temptation to be unfaithful to the covenant with the Lord was always present. Forty were also the days of the Prophet Elijah’s journey to reach the Mount of God, Horeb; as well as the time that Jesus spent in the desert before beginning his public life and where he was tempted by the devil.

In this Catechesis I would like to dwell on this moment of earthly life of the Son of God, which we will read of in the Gospel this Sunday.

First of all, the desert, where Jesus withdrew to, is the place of silence, of poverty, where man is deprived of material support and is placed in front of the fundamental questions of life, where he is pushed to towards the essentials in life and for this very reason it becomes easier for him to find God.

But the desert is also a place of death, because where there is no water there is no life, and it is a place of solitude where man feels temptation more intensely.

Jesus goes into the desert, and there is tempted to leave the path indicated by God the Father to follow other easier and worldly paths (cf. Lk 4:1-13). So he takes on our temptations and carries our misery, to conquer evil and open up the path to God, the path of conversion.

In reflecting on the temptations Jesus is subjected to in the desert we are invited, each one of us, to respond to one fundamental question: what is truly important in our lives?

In the first temptation the devil offers to change a stone into bread to sate Jesus’ hunger. Jesus replies that the man also lives by bread but not by bread alone: ​​without a response to the hunger for truth, hunger for God, man can not be saved (cf. vv. 3-4).

In the second, the devil offers Jesus the path of power: he leads him up on high and gives him dominion over the world, but this is not the path of God: Jesus clearly understands that it is not earthly power that saves the world, but the power of the Cross, humility, love (cf. vv. 5-8).

In the third, the devil suggests Jesus throw himself down from the pinnacle of the Temple of Jerusalem and be saved by God through his angels, that is, to do something sensational to test God, but the answer is that God is not an object on which to impose our conditions: He is the Lord of all (cf. vv. 9-12).

What is the core of the three temptations that Jesus is subjected to? It is the proposal to exploit God, to use Him for his own interests, for his own glory and success. So, in essence, to put himself in the place of God, removing Him from his own existence and making him seem superfluous. Everyone should then ask: what is the role God in my life? Is He the Lord or am I?

Overcoming the temptation to place God in submission to oneself and one’s own interests or to put Him in a corner and converting oneself to the proper order of priorities, giving God the first place, is a journey that every Christian must undergo.

“Conversion”, an invitation that we will hear many times in Lent, means following Jesus in so that his Gospel is a real life guide, it means allowing God transform us, no longer thinking that we are the only protagonists of our existence, recognizing that we are creatures who depend on God, His love, and that only by “losing” our life in Him can we truly have it.

This means making our choices in the light of the Word of God.

Today we can no longer be Christians as a simple consequence of the fact that we live in a society that has Christian roots: even those born to a Christian family and formed in the faith must, each and every day, renew the choice to be a Christian, to give God first place, before the temptations continuously suggested by a secularized culture, before the criticism of many of our contemporaries.

The tests which modern society subjects Christians to, in fact, are many, and affect the personal and social life. It is not easy to be faithful to Christian marriage, practice mercy in everyday life, leave space for prayer and inner silence, it is not easy to publicly oppose choices that many take for granted, such as abortion in the event of an unwanted pregnancy, euthanasia in case of serious illness, or the selection of embryos to prevent hereditary diseases. The temptation to set aside one’s faith is always present and conversion becomes a response to God which must be confirmed several times throughout one’s life.

The major conversions like that of St. Paul on the road to Damascus, or St. Augustine, are an example and stimulus, but also in our time when the sense of the sacred is eclipsed, God’s grace is at work and works wonders in life of many people.

The Lord never gets tired of knocking at the door of man in social and cultural contexts that seem engulfed by secularization, as was the case for the Russian Orthodox Pavel Florensky. After acompletely agnostic education, to the point he felt an outright hostility towards religious teachings taught in school, the scientist Florensky came to exclaim: “No, you can not live without God,” and to change his life completely, so much so he became a monk.

I also think the figure of Etty Hillesum, a young Dutch woman of Jewish origin who died in Auschwitz. Initially far from God, she found Him looking deep inside herself and wrote: “There is a well very deep inside of me. And God is in that well. Sometimes I can reach Him, more often He is covered by stone and sand: then God is buried. We must dig Him up again “(Diary, 97).

In her scattered and restless life, she finds God in the middle of the great tragedy of the twentieth century, the Shoah. This young fragile and dissatisfied woman, transfigured by faith, becomes a woman full of love and inner peace, able to say: “I live in constant intimacy with God.”

The ability to oppose the ideological blandishments of her time to choose the search for truth and open herself up to the discovery of faith is evidenced by another woman of our time, the American Dorothy Day. In her autobiography, she confesses openly to having given in to the temptation that everything could be solved with politics, adhering to the Marxist proposal: “I wanted to be with the protesters, go to jail, write, influence others and leave my dreams to the world. How much ambition and how much searching for myself in all this!”

The journey towards faith in such a secularized environment was particularly difficult, but Grace acts nonetheless, as she points out: “It is certain that I felt the need to go to church more often, to kneel, to bow my head in prayer. A blind instinct, one might say, because I was not conscious of praying. But I went, I slipped into the atmosphere of prayer…” God guided her to a conscious adherence to the Church, in a lifetime spent dedicated to the underprivileged.

In our time there are no few conversions understood as the return of those who, after a Christian education, perhaps a superficial one, moved away from the faith for years and then rediscovered Christ and his Gospel. In the Book of Revelation we read: “Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, [then] I will enter his house and dine with him, and he with me”(3, 20). Our inner person must prepare to be visited by God, and for this reason we should allow ourselves be invaded by illusions, by appearances, by material things.

In this time of Lent, in the Year of the faith, we renew our commitment to the process of conversion, to overcoming the tendency to close in on ourselves and instead, to making room for God, looking at our daily reality with His eyes.

The alternative between being wrapped up in our egoism and being open to the love of God and others, we could say corresponds to the alternatives to the temptations of Jesus: the alternative, that is, between human power and love of the Cross, between a redemption seen only in material well-being and redemption as the work of God, to whom we give primacy in our lives.

Conversion means not closing in on ourselves in the pursuit of success, prestige, position, but making sure that each and every day, in the small things, truth, faith in God and love become most important.

Below the Holy Father’s summary and greetings in English

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

Today, Ash Wednesday, we begin our yearly Lenten journey of conversion in preparation for Easter.

The 40 days of Lent recall Israel’s sojourn in the desert and the temptations of Jesus at the beginning of his public ministry.

The desert, as the place of silent encounter with God and decision about the deepest meaning and direction of our lives, is also a place of temptation. In his temptation in the desert, Jesus showed us that fidelity to God’s will must guide our lives and thinking, especially amid today’s secularized society.

While the Lord continues to raise up examples of radical conversion, like Pavel Florensky, Etty Hillesum and Dorothy Day, he also constantly challenges those who have been raised in the faith to deeper conversion.

In this Lenten season, Christ once again knocks at our door (cf. Rev 3:20) and invites us to open our minds and hearts to his love and his truth. May Jesus’ example of overcoming temptation inspire us to embrace God’s will and to see all things in the light of his saving truth.

I offer a warm welcome to all the English-speaking visitors present at today’s Audience, including those from England, Denmark and the United States. My particular greeting goes to the many student groups present. With prayers that this Lenten season will prove spiritually fruitful for you and your families, I invoke upon all of you God’s blessings of joy and peace.

February 13, 2013, Wednesday — Pope Benedict’s Unfolding Spiritual Testament as He Prepares to Resign on February 28

“While the Lord continues to raise up examples of radical conversion, like Pavel Florensky, Etty Hillesum and Dorothy Day, he also constantly challenges those who have been raised in the faith to deeper conversion.”—Pope Benedict XVI, at his next-to-last General Audience, this monring in the Paul VI Audience Hall in Vatican City

Benedict Reaches Out

Jews, Protestant evangelicals, and Orthodox Christians will find Pope Benedict’s words this morning of particular interest.

The Pope, in different ways, is reaching out to each group.

And in this outreach, Pope Benedict does not cease to surprise, even to astonish.

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Outreach to Orthodox, Jews, and Evangelicals

Pope Benedict continues to give us hints about what he wants those who listen to him and who follow him — both Roman Catholics and all other men and women of good will — to focus on in the days ahead, in our increasingly secularized world.

What Benedict wants all to focus on, Catholic and non-Catholics, believers and unbelievers, is the great “missing element,” the great “not present” in our modern world and society: that is, the hidden God who is the source of all being and goodness, and the true end and answer to all human hopes and longings.

This morning, speaking in English during his General Audience (his next to last General Audience as Pope), Pope Benedict mentioned three people as examples of “radical conversion” who were “raised up by the Lord” as “examples” during the past century: Pavel Florensky, Etty Hillesum and Dorothy Day.

Benedict’s choice of these three, from a certain perspective, could not have been more provocative... because none of the three can be considered a “model” Catholic. None of them were raised in the faith.

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Special note to readers

Special Note: In the days ahead, I plan to continue to write about the Pope’s resignation and the upcoming conclave. I plan to include some discussion of the prophetic 1917 message of Our Lady Fatima, and how it relates to our present situation in the Church and in the world. Please stay tuned.

Also, the next two issues of Inside the Vatican magazine will be “Special Commemorative Editions” readers may wish to collect as keepsakes.

The March 2013 issue will focus of Pope Benedict and his pontificate, while looking forward to the Conclave and the choice of a new Pope.

The April 2013 issue will focus on the Conclave and the new Pope chosen at the conclave.

So please consider subscribing to the magazine, so you do not miss these historic issues.

For these two special issues, we are actively seeking:

1) supporting sponsors, who can be listed (if desired) on a special page in the magazine, and

2) supporting advertisers, who would like to sponsor a page of the magazine to bid farewell to Pope Benedict as Pope, or to greet the new Pope after he is elected.

Those who might wish to support these two issues of the magazine, or take out an advertisement for your family, your parish, or your organization, please contact us via email at the following address: jelliot@insidethevatican.com.

—Robert Moynihan, Editor, Inside the Vatican magazine

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“Seekers” of God

In fact, the first two, a Russian Orthodox theologian (Pavel Florensky, who was executed by the Soviet regime in the 1930s) and a Jewish woman writer killed at Auschwitz (Etty Hillesum), were never Catholics at all.

And the third, an American convert to Catholicism (Dorothy Day, co-founder of the Catholic Worker movement), has always been controversial because she was an active Communist as a young woman, and remained “leftist” in many of her views throughout her life. (I had the chance to meet Dorothy once, in 1976 in New York City.)

But each of these people was a “seeker of God.”

Each was true to that desire, that longing, in their hearts, which set them out, as it sent out St. Augustine, on a search for truth, on a search for that ground of reality which could satisfy their deepest longings.

This is the common thread.

This is what Pope Benedict is stressing today.

He is reaching out to all and saying to all, be true to your deepest longings, to your deepest desire to reach that hidden infinite, that absolute which is also personal, which your soul longs for.

And he is saying that this “remaining true” is an inspiration also for those raised in the faith. He said this morning that the Lord “also constantly challenges those who have been raised in the faith to deeper conversion.”

This is the messge of the Pope to Catholics at this time.

The message is: deeper conversion.

The Pope is at pains to make one, central point: that, though values, morals, customs and traditions are critical for mankind, for sinful and imperfect men and women, to come to a more reasonable, more balanced and more “sane” (healthy, healthful, vibrant) human life, the true, mysterious, radical “source” of the fullness of human life and health and sanity and blessedness — that is, the fullness of being saved from frustration and sin and death, the fullness of salvation, of eternal life — is an encounter with, a connection to, a sharing of the very divine life of, God, and of the Son of God, the risen Lord, Jesus of Nazareth.

Those evangelical, Protestant Christians who feel that the Catholic Church, with its vast, global structure of offices, laws and institutions, has lost sight of this central fact, of the need for a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, should feel moved to reconsider their position by these very clear words of this Pope, who is now speaking in the final 15 days of his papacy, so his words in these days may be seen as a sort of spiritual testament.

He is placing God at the center. He is placing Christ at the center. Not himself, not his papacy, not the institutional Church.

Those Jews who have half-suspected, or have even been inwardly certain, that this Pope, a German who was forcibly conscripted into Hitler’s army in 1943, was not a friend to the Jewish people, should be startled by his choice of a young Jewish woman, killed at Auschwitz, as one of the “models” of spirituality he would choose to present at one of his final public audiences.

And those Orthodox who wonder if the Roman pontiff truly respects the Orthodox and their profound spiritual life and tradition, should be moved by the fact that the first name mentioned today by the Pope, in the next-to-last general audience of his pontificate, is the martyred Russian Orthodox theologian, Pavel Florensky.

Here is a video of the Pope’s words: it may be of interest to you to seen how the Pope appears, in these historic days:

Here is a brief report, from Rome Reports, on what the Pope said today:

February 13, 2013. (Romereports) “I thank you all for the love and prayers that have accompanied me. Thank you,” said the Pope. “In these difficult days, I’ve felt almost physically, the power of prayer that comes through the love for the Church and your personal prayers. Continue to pray for me, for the Church and the future Pope. The Lord will guide.”

Looking calm and serene, Benedict XVI led his first public appearance, after announcing his resignation. Before a full crowd, he once again said he made the decision with complete liberty. He echoed Monday’s statement by saying that he does not have the strength to carry out the office.

Then he continued with his weekly catechesis, on Ash Wednesday.

He talked about the temptation Jesus experienced when He was in the desert. In today’s modern world, said the Pope, temptation is to push faith aside and seek false solutions.

“While the Lord continues to raise up examples of radical conversion, like Pavel Florensky, Etty Hillesum and Dorothy Day, he also constantly challenges those who have been raised in the faith to deeper conversion.”

During this Lenten season, the Pope invited people to open their minds and hearts, as Christ knocks on their door. A source of true inspiration, he says, is that Jesus himself overcame temptation out in the desert.

The Vatican’s Paul VI Hall was full of pilgrims who greeted the Pope, interrupting him with applause throughout, to show their gratitude for the last eight years.

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Background Information on Pavel Florensky, Etty Hillesum and Dorothy Day

Pavel Florensky

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Philosophers Pavel Florensky and Sergei Bulgakov, a painting by Mikhail Nesterov (1917). Florensky is on the left.

Pavel Alexandrovich Florensky (also P. A. Florenskiĭ, Florenskii, Florenskij, Russian: Па́вел Алекса́ндрович Флоре́нский) (January 21 [O.S. January 9] 1882 – December 1937) was a Russian Orthodox theologian, priest, philosopher, mathematician, physicist, electrical engineer, inventor and Neomartyr.

Early life

Pavel Aleksandrovich Florensky was born on January 21, 1882, into the family of a railroad engineer, (Aleksandr Florensky) in the town of Yevlakh in western Azerbaijan. His father came from a family of Russian Orthodox priests while his mother Olga (Salomia) Saparova (Saparyan, Sapharashvili) was of the Tbilisi Armenian nobility…

After graduating from Tbilisi gymnasium in 1899, Florensky underwent a religious crisis caused by an awareness of the limits and relativity of rational knowledge and decided to construct his own solution on the basis of mathematics. He entered the department of mathematics of Moscow State University and studied under Nikolai Bugaev, and became friends with his son, the future poet and theorist of Russian symbolism, Andrei Bely. He also took courses on ancient philosophy. During this period the young Florensky, who had no religious upbringing, began taking an interest in studies beyond “the limitations of physical knowledge…”

In 1904 he graduated from Moscow State University and declined a teaching position at the University: instead, he proceeded to study theology at the Ecclesiastical Academy in Sergiyev Posad. During his theological studies there, he came into contact with Elder Isidore on a visit to Gethsemane Hermitage, and Isidore was to become his spiritual guide and father.

Together with fellow students Ern, Svenitsky and Brikhnichev he founded a society, the Christian Struggle Union (Союз Христиaнской Борьбы), with the revolutionary aim of rebuilding Russian society according to the principles of Vladimir Solovyov. Subsequently he was arrested for membership in this society in 1906: however, he later lost his interest in the Radical Christianity movement.

Intellectual interests

During his studies at the Ecclesiastical Academy, Florensky’s interests included philosophy, religion, art and folklore. He became a prominent member of the Russian Symbolism movement, together with his friend Andrei Bely and published works in the magazines New Way (Новый Путь) and Libra (Весы). He also started his main philosophical work, The Pillar and Ground of the Truth: an Essay in Orthodox Theodicy in Twelve Letters. The complete book was published only in 1924 but most of it was finished at the time of his graduation from the academy in 1908.

According to Princeton University Press: “The book is a series of twelve letters to a ‘brother’ or ‘friend,’ who may be understood symbolically as Christ. Central to Florensky’s work is an exploration of the various meanings of Christian love, which is viewed as a combination of philia (friendship) and agape (universal love). He describes the ancient Christian rites of the adelphopoiesis (brother-making), which joins male friends in chaste bonds of love. In addition, Florensky was one of the first thinkers in the twentieth century to develop the idea of the Divine Sophia, who has become one of the central concerns of feminist theologians.”

After graduating from the academy, he married Anna Giatsintova, the sister of a friend, in August 1910, a move which shocked his friends who were familiar with his aversion to marriage.

He continued to teach philosophy and lived at Troitse-Sergiyeva Lavra until 1919. In 1911 he was ordained into the priesthood. In 1914 he wrote his dissertation, About Spiritual Truth. He published works on philosophy, theology, art theory, mathematics and electrodynamics. Between 1911 and 1917 he was the chief editor of the most authoritative Orthodox theological publication of that time, Bogoslovskiy Vestnik. He was also a spiritual teacher of the controversial Russian writer Vasily Rozanov, urging him to reconcile with the Orthodox Church.

Period of Communist rule in Russia

After the October Revolution he formulated his position as: “I have developed my own philosophical and scientific worldview, which, though it contradicts the vulgar interpretation of communism… does not prevent me from honestly working in the service of the state.”

After the Bolsheviks closed the Troitse-Sergiyeva Lavra (1918) and the Sergievo-Posad Church (1921), where he was the priest, he moved to Moscow to work on the State Plan for Electrification of Russia (ГОЭЛРО) under the recommendation of Leon Trotsky who strongly believed in Florensky’s ability to help the government in the electrification of rural Russia. According to contemporaries, Florensky in his priest’s cassock, working alongside other leaders of a Government department, was a remarkable sight.

In 1924, he published a large monograph on dielectrics, and his The Pillar and Ground of the Truth: an Essay in Orthodox Theodicy in Twelve Letters. He worked simultaneously as the Scientific Secretary of the Historical Commission on Troitse-Sergiyeva Lavra and published his works on ancient Russian art. He was rumoured to be the main organizer of a secret endeavour to save the relics of St. Sergii Radonezhsky whose destruction had been ordered by the government.

In the second half of the 1920s, he mostly worked on physics and electrodynamics, eventually publishing his paper Imaginary numbers in Geometry («Мнимости в геометрии. Расширение области двухмерных образов геометрии») devoted to the geometrical interpretation of Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity. Among other things, he proclaimed that the geometry of imaginary numbers predicted by the theory of relativity for a body moving faster than light is the geometry of the Kingdom of God. For mentioning the Kingdom of Go d in that work, he was accused of agitation by Soviet authorities.

1928-1937: Exile, imprisonment, death

In 1928, Florensky was exiled to Nizhny Novgorod. After the intercession of Ekaterina Peshkova (wife of Maxim Gorky), Florensky was allowed to return to Moscow.

On the 26 February 1933 he was arrested again, on suspicion of engaging in a conspiracy with Pavel Gidiulianov, a professor of canon law who was a complete stranger to Florenskiy, to overthrow the state and restore with Nazi assistance a fascist monarchy.

He defended himself vigorously against the imputations until he realized that by showing a willingness to admit them, though false, he would enable several acquaintances to resecure their liberty.

He was sentenced to ten years in the Labor Camps by the infamous Article 58 of Joseph Stalin’s criminal code (clauses ten and eleven: “agitation against the Soviet system” and “publishing agitation materials against the Soviet system”). The published agitation materials were the monograph about the theory of relativity. His manner of continuing to wear priestly gard annoyed his employers. The state offered him numerous opportunities to go into exile in Paris, but he declined them.

He served at the Baikal Amur Mainline camp, until 1934 when he was moved to Solovki, there he conducted research into producing iodine and agar out of the local seaweed. In 1937 he was transferred to Saint Petersburg (then known as Leningrad) where he was sentenced by an extrajudicial NKVD troika to execution.

According to a legend he was sentenced for the refusal to disclose the location of the head of St. Sergii Radonezhsky that the communists wanted to destroy. The Saint’s head was indeed saved and in 1946, the Troitse-Sergiyeva Lavra was opened again. The relics of St. Sergii became fashionable once more. The Saint’s relics were returned to Lavra by Pavel Golubtsov, later known as archbishop Sergiy.

Official Soviet information stated that Florensky died December 8, 1943 somewhere in Siberia, but a study of the NKVD archives after the dissolution of the Soviet Unionhave shown that information to be false. Florensky was shot immediately after the NKVD troika session in December 1937. Most probably he was executed at the Rzhevsky Artillery Range, near Toksovo, which is located about twenty kilometers northeast of Saint Petersburg and was buried in a secret grave in Koirangakangas near Toksovo together with 30,000 others who were executed by NKVD at the same time.

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Etty Hillesum

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, and other websites

“And I also believe, childishly perhaps but stubbornly, that the earth will become more habitable again only through the love that the Jew Paul described to the citizens of Corinth in the thirteenth chapter of his first letter.”—Etty Hillesum, Jewish writer who died at Auschwitz

Esther “Etty” Hillesum (15 January 1914 in Middelburg, Netherlands-30 November 1943 in Auschwitz, Poland) was a young Jewish woman whose letters and diaries, kept between 1941 and 1943, describe life in Amsterdam during the German occupation. They were published posthumously in 1981.

During the last two years of her life, she kept a journal of her thoughts, particularly about her relationship with a man named Julius Spier, a mentor, friend, and lover, and her developing relationship with God.

Etty was influenced by Spier and her reading of works such as the poetry of Rilke, the novels of Dostoevsky, and the Gospels. In the face of the very worst of human hatred, Etty was able to find inner peace through a refusal to reciprocate that hate. As such, her work, entitled An Interrupted Life and Letters from Westerbork deserve our attention. Below are some of my favorite quotes from her work. I hope you enjoy.

“Unless every smallest detail in your daily life is in harmony with the high ideals you profess, then those ideals have no meaning.” (p 114)

“I imagine that there are people who pray with their eyes turned heavenward. They seek God outside themselves. And there are those who bow their head and bury it in their hands. I think that these seek God inside.” (p 44)

“Perhaps my purpose in life is to come to grips with myself, properly to grips with myself, with everything that bothers and tortures me and clamors for inner solution and formulation. For these problems are not just mine alone. And if at the end of a long life I am able to give some form to the chaos inside me, I may well have fulfilled my own small purpose.” (p 36)

“What needs eradicating is the evil in man, not man himself.” (p 86)

“God, do not let me dissipate my strength, not the least little bit of strength, on useless hatred against these soldiers. Let me save my strength for better things.” (p 109)

“God, I try to look things straight in the face, even the worst crimes, and to discover the small, naked human being amid the monstrous wreckage caused by man’s senseless deeds.” (p 134)

“I love people so terribly, because in every human being I love something of You [God]. And I seek you everywhere in them and often do find something of You.” (p 198)

“You have placed me before Your ultimate mystery [death], oh God. I am grateful to You for that, I even have the strength to accept it and to know there is no answer. That we must be able to bear Your mysteries.” (p 199)

“‘After this war, two torrents will be unleashed on the world: a torrent of loving-kindness and a torrent of hatred.’ And then I knew: I should take the field against hatred.” (p 208)

“Klaas, all I really wanted to say is this: we have so much work to do on ourselves that we shouldn’t even be thinking of hating our so-called enemies. We are hurtful enough to one another as it is…It is the only thing we can do, Klaas, I see no alternative, each of us must turn inward and destroy in himself all that he thinks he ought to destroy in others. And remember that every atom of hate we add to this world makes it still more inhospitable.” When Klaas makes the objection that this sounds like Christianity, Etty says: “Yes, Christianity, and why ever not?” (pp 211-212)

“And I also believe, childishly perhaps but stubbornly, that the earth will become more habitable again only through the love that the Jew Paul described to the citizens of Corinth in the thirteenth chapter of his first letter.” (p 256)

“I have broken my body like bread and shared it out among men. And why not, they were hungry and had gone without for so long.” (p 230)

Etty Hillesum was only 27 when her journal begins, and we get to see her work out her confusion, anxiety, etc. in the course of her writing. Her relationships with men were passionate, but confused. She was, in short, not perfect.

At the same time, we get to see her come to know God — truly know his truth, and we hear her preach it (as above), and live it. She died in Auschwitz on November 30th, 1943, a year after St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (a Jewish-Catholic), and two years after St. Maximillian Kolbe.

Biography

Esther (Etty) Hillesum was born on 15 January 1914 in her parents’ home at Molenwater 77 in the town of Middelburg, where her father Levie (Louis) Hillesum had been teaching classical languages since 1911. In Amsterdam, on 7 December 1912, he married Etty’s mother, Riva (Rebecca) Bernstein, who was also living in Middelburg at the time. Etty’s father was born in Amsterdam on 25 May 1880, as the youngest of four children, to the merchant Jacob Samuel Hillesum and his wife Esther Hillesum-Loeza; Etty, therefore, was named after her paternal grandmother. The family lived at the time at Sint Antoniesbreestraat 31.

Louis Hillesum studied classical languages at the University of Amsterdam. In 1902 he completed his bachelor’s degree, followed in 1905 by his master’s (both degrees cum laude). On 10 July 1908 he published his Latin thesis De imperfecti et aoristi usu Thucydidis (On Thucydides’ use of the imperfect and the aorist, also awarded cum laude). Middelburg was his first teaching assignment. In 1914 he began teaching the classics at the Hilversum gymnasium (grammar school), but, due to deafness in one ear and impaired vision, had trouble maintaining order in the large classes at that institution. That is why, in 1916, he moved to a smaller gymnasium in the town of Tiel. In 1918 he became teacher of classics and deputy headmaster inWinschoten. In 1924 he was appointed to similar positions at the gymnasium in Deventer, where he became headmaster on 1 February 1928. He rema ined there until his dismissal on 29 November 1940, at the request of the occupation government that was imposed by Nazi Germany….

Childhood

Etty spent her childhood years in Middelburg, Hilversum (1914–16), Tiel (1916–18), Winschoten (1918–24) and Deventer, from July 1924 on, where she entered the fifth form of the Graaf van Burenschool. The family lived at number 51 on the A. J. Duymaer van Twiststraat (at present time number 2). Later (in 1933) they moved to the Geert Grootestraat 9, but by then Etty was no longer living at home. After primary school, Etty attended the gymnasium (grammar school) in Deventer, where her father was deputy headmaster. Unlike her younger brother Jaap, who was an extremely gifted pupil, Etty’s marks were not particularly worthy of note.

At school she also studied Hebrew and for a time attended the meetings of a Zionist young people’s group in Deventer. After completing her school years, she went to Amsterdam to study law. She took lodgings with the Horowitz family, at the Ruysdaelstraat 321, where her brother Mischa had been staying since July 1931. Six months later she moved to the Apollolaan 29, in where her brother Jaap also lived from September 1933 while he was studying medicine. In November, Jaap moved to the Jan Willem Brouwerstraat 22hs; Etty followed one month later.

As from September 1934, Etty’s name once again appeared in the registry at Deventer. On 6 June 1935 she took her bachelor’s exams in Amsterdam. At that time she was living with her brother Jaap at Keizersgracht 612c. In March 1937 she took a room in the house of the accountant Hendrik (Hans) J. Wegerif, at Gabriel Metsustraat 61, an address also officially registered as the residence of her brother Jaap from October 1936 to September 1937. Wegerif, a widower, hired Etty as his housekeeper, but also began an affair with her. It was in this house that she lived until her definitive departure for Westerbork in 1943.

University years

Not much is known about Etty’s university years. She moved in left-wing, anti-fascist student circles and was politically and socially aware without belonging to a political party. Her acquaintances from this period were amazed to learn of her spiritual development during the war years, a period in which she adopted clearly different interests and a different circle of friends, although she did maintain a number of her pre-war contacts. Etty took her master’s exams in Dutch Law (public law in particular) on 23 June and 4 July 1939. Her academic results were not striking. In addition, she studied Slavic languages at Amsterdam and Leiden, but the conditions of war prevented her from completing this study with an exam. She did, however, continue to study Russian language and literature until the very end and also gave lessons in these subjects. She taught a course at the Volksuniversiteit and later gave private lessons until her definitive departure for the Westerbork transit c amp. The diaries were written largely in her room on the Gabriel Metsustraat, where not only she and Wegerif but also Wegerif’s son, Hans, and a chemistry student by the name of Bernard Meijlink were living.

Julius Spier

It was through Bernard Meijlink that on Monday, 3 February 1941, Etty went to serve as “model” to the psycho-chirologist Julius Spier at the Courbetstraat 27 in Amsterdam. Spier (who is almost always referred to in the diaries as “S.”) was born at Frankfurt am Main in 1887, the sixth of seven children. At the age of fourteen he was apprenticed to the Beer Sontheimer trading firm. There he succeeded in working his way up to a managerial position. His original ambition of becoming a singer was foiled by an illness that left him hard of hearing.

Spier enjoyed moving in artistic circles and set up his own publishing house, by the name of “Iris.” In addition, from 1904 on he had a pronounced interest in chirology. Following his 25th jubilee at Beer Sontheimer in 1926, Spier withdrew from business life to dedicate himself to the study of chirology. He underwent instructive analysis withC. G. Jung in Zurich and at Jung’s recommendation opened a practice in 1929 as psycho-chirologist on the Aschaffenburgerstrasse in Berlin. The practice there was extremely successful. Spier also taught courses. In 1934 he divorced his wife, Hedl (Hedwig) Rocco, to whom he had been married since 1917, and left the two children, Ruth and Wolfgang, with her. He had a number of affairs but finally became engaged to his pupil, Hertha Levi, who emigrated to London in 1937 or 1938. Spier also left Nazi Germany and came to Amsterdam in 1939 as a legal immig rant. After first living with his sister on the Muzenplein, and later in a room on the Scheldestraat, from late 1940 on he rented two rooms from the Nethe family at the Courbetstraat 27. There he also set up practice and taught courses. The students at those courses and their friends invited “models,” whose hands Spier analysed by way of practical example.

Gera Bongers, the sister of Bernard Meijlink’s fiancee, Loes, was one of Spier’s student, and it was through Bernard that Etty was invited to have her hands analysed during a Monday evening class. This fairly chance encounter proved formative for the course of Etty’s life. She was immediately impressed by Spier’s personality and decided to go into therapy with him. On 8 March 1941 she drafted a letter to Spier in an exercise book and began on her diary the next day, probably at Spier’s advice and as part of her therapy. Little wonder then that the relationship with Spier was a major theme in her diaries. For Etty, however, keeping a diary was useful for more than therapy alone; it also fit well with her literary ambitions. The diaries could later provide material for a novel, for example. In this context, it is also worth noting that her letters contain quotes from her diary. Although S pier’s patient, Etty also became his secretary and friend. Because Spier wished to remain faithful to Hertha Levi and because Etty already had a relationship with Wegerif, a certain distance was always present in the relationship between Etty and Spier, despite its importance to both. Spier had a very great influence on Etty’s spiritual development; he taught her how to deal with her depressive and egocentric bent and introduced her to the Bible and St. Augustine. Etty had been reading other authors, such as Rilke and Dostoevsky, since the 1930s, but under Spier’s influence their work also took on deeper meaning for her. In the course of time, the relationship with Spier assumed a less central position in Etty’s life. When he died on 15 September 1942, therefore, she had developed enough to be able to assimilate his death with a certain ease—particularly because she realised as well the fate that would otherwise have awaited him as a Jew.

Westerbork

In the diaries, one can clearly see how the deepening anti-Jewish measures affected Etty Hillesum’s life; yet one also sees her determination to continue her spiritual and intellectual development. When she was expecting a summons to report to Camp Westerbork, she applied—at the recommendation of her brother Jaap—for a position with the Jewish Council. Through patronage, she received an appointment to the office on the Lijnbaansgracht (later the Oude Schans) on 15 July 1942. She performed her administrative duties for the Jewish Council with reluctance and had a negative opinion of the Council’s role. However, she found useful the work she was to do later for the department of “Social Welfare for People in Transit” at Westerbork, where she was transferred at her own request on 30 July 1942.

There it was that she met Joseph (Jopie) I. Vleeschhouwer and M. Osias Kormann, the two men who would go on to play a major role in her life. Her first stay at Westerbork did not last long; on 14 August 1942 she was back in Amsterdam. From there she left on 19 August to visit her parents for the last time in Deventer. Somewhere around 21 August she returned to Westerbork, but an illness forced her to go home on 5 December 1942. It was not until 5 June 1943 that she had recovered sufficiently to be allowed to return to Westerbork. Unlike what one might expect, she was very keen to get back to the camp and resume her work so as to provide a bit of support for the people as they were preparing themselves for transport. It was for this reason that Etty Hillesum consistently turned down offers to go into hiding. She said that she wished to “share her people’s fate.”

Etty’s departure from Amsterdam on 6 June proved definitive, for on 5 July 1943 an end was put to the special status granted to personnel at the Westerbork section of the Jewish Council. Half of the personnel had to return to Amsterdam, while the other half became camp internees. Etty joined the latter group: she wished to remain with her father, mother, and brother Mischa, who had meanwhile been brought to Westerbork.

Etty’s parents had moved on 7 January 1943 to the Retiefstraat 11 hs in Amsterdam, after having first attempted to use doctor’s orders to circumvent their forced removal from Deventer. During the great raid of 20 and 21 June 1943, they were picked up—along with Mischa, who had come to live with them—and transported to Westerbork. At the time this occurred, efforts were already being made to obtain special dispensation for Mischa on the grounds of his musical talent. The sisters Milli Ortmann and Grete Wendelgelst in particular were behind these efforts. Both Willem Mengelberg and Willem Andriessen wrote letters of recommendation, which have been preserved. These attempts proved fruitless, due to Mischa’s insistence that his parents also accompany him to the special camp at Barneveld. This was not allowed; Mischa did, however, receive a number of special privileges during his stay at Westerbork. When his mother wrote a letter to Rauter in which she asked for a few privileges as well, Rauter was enraged and on 6 September 1943, ordered the entire family to be immediately sent on transport. The camp commander at Westerbork, Gemmeker, interpreted this as an order to send Etty on the next day’s transport as well, despite the attempts by her contacts in the camp to protect her from this. On 7 September 1943, the Hillesum family left Westerbork.

Only Jaap Hillesum did not go with them; at the time, he was still in Amsterdam. He arrived in Westerbork in late September 1943. In February 1944 he was deported toBergen-Belsen. When that camp was partially evacuated, he was placed on a train with other prisoners. After a journey full of deprivation and hardship, the train was finally liberated by Russian soldiers in April 1945. Like so many others, however, Jaap Hillesum did not survive the journey.

Etty’s father and mother either died during transport to Auschwitz or were gassed immediately upon arrival. The date of death given was 10 September 1943. According to the Red Cross, Etty died at Auschwitz on 30 November 1943. Her brother Mischa died on 31 March 1944, also at Auschwitz.

The diaries

Before her final departure for Westerbork, Etty gave her Amsterdam diaries to Maria Tuinzing, who had meanwhile come to live in the house on the Gabriel Metsustraat as well. Etty asked her to pass them along to the writer Klaas Smelik with the request that they be published if she did not return. In 1946 or 1947, Maria Tuinzig turned over the exercise books and a bundle of letters to Klaas Smelik. His daughter Johanna (Jopie) Smelik then typed out sections of the diaries, but Klaas Smelik’s attempts to have the diaries published in the 1950s proved fruitless. Two letters Etty had written, in December 1942 and on 24 August 1943, concerning conditions in Westerbork, did get published. They appeared in the autumn of 1943 in an illegal edition by David Koning at the recommendation of Etty’s friend Petra (Pim) Eldering. This edition, with a run of one hundred copies, was printed by B. H. Nooy of Purmerend under the title Drie brieven van den kunstschilder Johannes Baptiste van de r Pluym (1843–1912) [Three Letters from the Painter Johannes Baptiste van der Pluym (1843–1912)]. The two letters were preceded by a foreword with a biography of the artist and followed by a third letter, both written by David Koning to camouflage the true contents. The revenues from the publication were used to provide assistance to Jews in hiding. These letters have since been republished on several occasions.

In late 1979, Klaas A.D. Smelik, now director of the Etty Hillesum Research Centre, approached the publisher J. G. Gaarlandt with a request to publish the diaries left to him by his father, Klaas Smelik. This resulted in the publication in 1981 of Het verstoorde leven (An Interrupted Life) and in 1986 of all Hillesum’s known writings in Dutch, later translated in English. An Interrupted Life was republished in 1999 by Persephone Books.

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Dorothy Day in 1916 at the age of 19

Dorothy Day

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia and other web site.

Dorothy Day, Obl.S.B. (November 8, 1897 – November 29, 1980) was an American journalist, social activist, and devoutCatholic convert; she advocated the Catholic economic theory of distributism. Day “believed all states were inherently totalitarian,” and was considered to be an anarchist and did not hesitate to use the term.

In the 1930s, Day worked closely with fellow activist Peter Maurin to establish the Catholic Worker movement, a nonviolent, pacifist movement that continues to combine direct aid for the poor and homeless with nonviolent direct action on their behalf.

The cause for Day’s canonization is open in the Catholic Church, and she is thus formally referred to as a Servant of God.

Early life

Dorothy Day was born in the Brooklyn Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York, and raised in San Francisco andChicago. She was born into a family described by one biographer as “solid, patriotic, and middle class.” Her father, John Day, was a Tennessee native of Scots-Irish heritage, while her mother, Grace Satterlee, a native of upstate New York, was of English ancestry Her parents were married in an Episcopalian church located in Greenwich Village, a neighborhood where Day would spend much of her young adulthood.

In 1904, her father, who was a sports writer, took a position with a newspaper in San Francisco. They lived in Oakland, California, until the San Francisco Earthquake of 1906 destroyed the newspaper’s facilities and her father lost his job. The earthquake’s devastation and how people helped homeless victims became strongly ingrained in the young Dorothy’s memory. The family then relocated to Chicago.

Day was an avid reader as a child. She was particularly fond of Upton Sinclair, Jack London, and hagiographies of Catholic saints. She had also read Peter Kropotkin, an advocate of anarchist communism, which, along with these others, influenced her ideas in how society could be organized.

In 1914, Day attended the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign on a scholarship, but dropped out after two years and moved to New York City.

Day was a reluctant scholar. Her reading was chiefly in a radical social direction. She avoided campus social life and insisted on supporting herself rather than live on money from her father, a characteristic she was to maintain for the rest of her life, to the point of buying all her clothing and shoes from discount stores to save money.

Settling on the Lower East Side, she worked on the staffs of Socialist publications (The Liberator, The Masses, The Call), though she “smilingly explained to impatient socialists that she was ‘a pacifist even in the class war.’”

She also engaged in anti-war and women’s suffrage protests, spent several months in Greenwich Village, where she became close to Eugene O’Neill, and later joined the Industrial Workers of the World (‘Wobblies’).

She rejoiced at the success of the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, as she relates in “From Union Square to Rome”.” She maintained friendships with such prominent American Communists as Mike Gold, Anna Louise Strong, and Elizabeth Gurley Flynn (who became the head of the Communist Party USA), all of whom she praised and eulogized in the Catholic Worker. In the November 1949 issue, she described herself as an “ex-Communist,” and in the January 1970 issue she declared that the Catholic Worker is “a revolutionary headquarters rather than a Bowery mission, as most newspapers like to picture us.”

Spiritual awakening

Roots

Dorothy’s parents were nominal Christians, rarely attending church. As a young child, she showed a marked religious streak, though, reading the Bible frequently. When she was ten she started to attend an Episcopalian church, after its rector had convinced their mother to let the Day brothers join the church choir; she became taken with the liturgy and its music. She studied the catechism and was baptized and confirmed in the church. Despite this she saw herself as agnostic.

Initially Day lived a bohemian life; her short marriage to Berkeley Tobey occurred “on the rebound” after an “unhappy love affair with a tough ex-newspaperman named Lionel Moise” and an abortion, which she later described in her semi-autobiographical novel, The Eleventh Virgin ISBN 978-0983760511 (1924)—a book she later regretted writing.

The sale of the movie rights to the novel enabled her to settle down, using the proceeds to buy a beach cottage on Staten Island, New York. She lived there with Forster Batterham, a biologist with whom she shared a deep interest in social activism. It was a time of idyllic peace for her, as she shared the company of good friends and enjoyed the beauty of nature, which Batterham helped her to appreciate.

During this period, however, Day began a time of spiritual awakening which would lead her to embrace Catholicism. She had picked up a rosary in New Orleans during the course of her many moves around the country and started to recite the canticlesshe had learned at her childhood church in Chicago. She began to attend Mass on Sundays at the nearby Catholic church.

This growing interest in religion became a continuing source of conflict and division between Day and Batterham, who had a deep aversion to religion. Unexpectedly, Day found that she was pregnant. As her partner opposed having children, this became another source of conflict. Despite his opposition, she resolved to have her child and to have it baptized, to give the child a spiritual foundation she had lost herself. In all her travels, Day had identified with the people of the working class, and everywhere she went the majority had been Catholics. Thus, she chose to give her allegiance to that faith.

After the birth of her daughter, Tamar Teresa (1926–2008), Day chanced to meet Sister Aloysius, S.C., a Catholic Religious Sister, walking down her street. She asked the Sister how she could have the child baptized. Sister Aloysius helped her, requiring Day to memorize the Baltimore Catechism for this. Tamar’s baptism was opposed by Batterham, who continued to live with Day and the child in Staten Island when he was not working in Manhattan. Day loved him deeply and respected him for his stand on social causes, putting off any move to join the Church because she did not want to lose him. This tension, she reported, led to illness and resulted in a nervous condition.

Conversion

Exasperated, Day broke up with Batterham; she refused to take him back when he returned after an emotional “explosion” had occurred. She then went immediately to Sister Aloysius to arrange for admission to the Catholic Church.

This took place in December 1927, with her conditional baptism (due to her prior baptism in the Episcopalian Church) at Our Lady Help of Christians Parish on Staten Island. In her 1952 autobiography, The Long Loneliness, Day recalled that immediately after her baptism she made her first Confession and the following day she made her First Communion.

In the summer of 1929, Day decided to leave New York temporarily, partly to put the situation with Batterham behind her, and also to accept work as a screen writer in Hollywood. She moved with Tamar to Los Angeles. She returned to New York just as the effects of the Great Depression were beginning to be felt. Later, Day began writing for Catholic publications, such as Commonweal and America on the events of that situation around the country. She began to feel separated from the protesters in the streets, feeling a lack of leadership from her new faith.

In the early 1940s she became a Benedictine oblate, which gave her a spiritual practice and connection that sustained her throughout the rest of her life. As described in her letters in “All the Way to Heaven,” she left the Benedictines for a time to consider joining the Fraternity of Jesu Caritas, which was inspired by the example of Charles de Foucauld. Day felt unwelcome there and disagreed with how meetings were run. When she decided to return to the Benedictines and withdraw herself as a candidate in the Fraternity, she wrote to a friend, “I just wanted to let you know that I feel even closer to it all, tho it is not possible for me to be a recognized ‘Little Sister,’ or formally a part of it”.

The Catholic Worker Movement

Peter Maurin

In 1932, Day met Peter Maurin, the man she would always credit as the founder of the movement with which she is identified. Maurin, a French immigrant and something of a vagabond, claimed to be from a family which had occupied the same farm which their distant ancestor had received as a bonus for service in the Roman army. He had entered the Brothers of the Christian Schools in his native France, before emigrating, first to Canada, then to the United States.

Despite his lack of formal credentials, Maurin was a man of deep intellect and decidedly strong views. He had a vision of social justice and its connection with the poor which was partly inspired by St. Francis of Assisi. He had a vision of action based on a sharing of ideas and subsequent action by the poor themselves. Maurin was deeply versed in the writings of the Church Fathersand the papal documents on social matters which had been issued by Pope Leo XIII and his successors. Through this knowledge, Maurin provided Day with the grounding in Catholic theology of the need for social action both felt. Years later Day described how Maurin also broadened her knowledge by bringing “a digest of the writings of Kropotkin one day, calling my attention especially toFields, Factories, and Workshops; Day observed: “I was familiar with Kropotkin only through his Memoirs of a Revolutionist, which had originally run serially in the Atlantic Monthly. (Oh, far-[past] day of American freedom, when Karl Marx could write for the morning Tribune in New York, and Kropotkin could not only be published in the Atlantic, but be received as a guest into the homes of New England Unitarians, and in Jane Addams’ Hull House in Chicago!)”

The Catholic Worker

The Catholic Worker movement started with the publication of the Catholic Worker, first issued on May 1, 1933. It was established to promote Catholic social teaching in the depths of the Great Depression and to stake out a neutral, pacifist position in the war-torn 1930s. (See the Catholic Worker: The Aims and Means of the Catholic Worker.) This grew into a “house of hospitality” in the slums of New York City and then a series of farms for people to live together communally.

The movement quickly spread to other cities in the United States and to Canada and the United Kingdom; more than 30 independent but affiliated CW communities had been founded by 1941. Well over 100 communities exist today, including several in Australia, the United Kingdom, Canada,Germany, the Netherlands, the Republic of Ireland, Mexico, New Zealand, and Sweden.

Fame

By the 1960s, Day was embraced by a significant number of Catholics, while at the same time, she earned the praise of counterculture leaders such as Abbie Hoffman, who characterized her as the first hippie, a description of which Day approved, though there is some evidence which indicates Day might not always have taken a positive view of the hippie movement.

Although Day had written passionately about women’s rights, free love, and birth control in the 1910s, she opposed the sexual revolution of the 1960s and beyond, saying she had seen the ill effects of a similar sexual revolution in the 1920s. Day had a progressive attitude toward social and economic rights, alloyed with a very orthodox and traditional sense of Catholic morality and piety. A daily communicant, Day was unable to prevent the irregularities that occurred at the Tivoli Catholic Worker Farm. In her diary she relates the criticisms of Stanley Vishnewski, then declares, “But I have no power to control smoking of pot, for instance, or sexual promiscuity, or solitary sins.”

Her devotion to her church was neither conventional nor unquestioning, however. She alienated many U.S. Catholics (including some clerical leaders) with her condemnation of the authoritarian Falangist Francisco Franco during the Spanish Civil War; and, possibly in response to her criticism of Cardinal Francis Spellman, she came under pressure by the Archdiocese of New York in 1951 to change the name of her newspaper, “because the word Catholic implies an official church connection when such was not the case.”

The newspaper’s name was not changed.

Awards

In 1971, Day was awarded the Pacem in Terris Award of the Interracial Council of the Catholic Diocese of Davenport, Iowa. It was named after the 1963 encyclical by Pope John XXIII which calls upon all people of good will to secure peace among all nations. Pacem in Terris is Latin for “Peace on Earth.” Day was accorded many other honors in her last decade of life, including the Laetare Medal from the University of Notre Dame in 1972.

Later life and death

Despite suffering from poor health, Day traveled around the world to preach the power of God’s love and the way of pacifism. She went to India, where she met Mother Teresa and saw her work. In 1971, with the financial support of Corliss Lamont, who she described as a “‘pinko’ millionaire who lived modestly and helped the [Communist Party USA],” Day made a trip to the Soviet Union as part of a “peace pilgrimage.”

She met with three members of the Writers’ Union to defend Alexander Solzhenitsyn against charges that he “sold out” the USSR; Day informed her readers that “Solzhenitsin lives in poverty and has been expelled from the Writers Union and cannot be published in his own country. He is harassed continually, and recently his small cottage in the country has been vandalized and papers destroyed, and a friend of his who went to bring some of his papers to him was seized and beaten. The letter Solzhenitsin wrote protesting this was widely printed in the west, and I was happy to see as a result a letter of apology by the authorities in Moscow, saying that it was the local police who had acted so violently.”

The travel restrictions on tourists did not prevent Day from going to the Kremlin, and she reported: “I was moved to see the names of the Americans, Ruthenberg and Bill Haywood, on the Kremlin Wall in Roman letters, and the name of Jack Reed (with whom I worked on the old Masses), in Cyrillac characters in a flower-covered grave…. I felt that my former roommate, at the University of Illinois, Rayna Prohme, should have had a flower-bedecked grave along the Kremlin wall also. She had edited a paper in Hankow, had accompanied Madame Sun Yat Sen to Moscow when Chiang Kai Shek had taken over the Communist dominated city, and was preparing to continue her work as a dedicated Communist when she died in Moscow.”

She joined Cesar Chavez in his efforts to provide justice for farm laborers in the fields of California. There, at the age of 75, she was arrested with other protesters and spent ten days in jail. From 1972 to 1978 she was a part-time resident of the now-demolished Spanish Camp community in the Annadale section of Staten Island.

Day gave her final public appearance at the Eucharistic Congress held on August 6, 1976, in the City of Philadelphia to honor the Bicentennial of the United States. She spoke on the love God has for humanity and the need to spread that love throughout creation. Day characteristically tied in her message to the anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima on that day.

Shortly after this, Day suffered a heart attack. She died on November 29, 1980, at Maryhouse in New York City.

Day was buried in the Cemetery of the Resurrection on Staten Island, just a few blocks from the location of the beachside cottage where she first became interested in Catholicism.

Cause for sainthood

A proposal for Day’s canonization was put forth publicly by the Claretian Missionaries in 1983. At the request of Cardinal John J. O’Connor, made as head of the diocese in which she lived, in March 2000 Pope John Paul II granted the Archdiocese of New York permission to open this cause, thereby officially allowing her to be called a “Servant of God” in the eyes of the Catholic Church.

In keeping with canon law, the Archdiocese of New York then submitted this cause for endorsement by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, the national organization of the bishop of the country. In November 2012, during the course of a semi-annual meeting, and at the urging of the current Archbishop of New York, Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan, President of the organization, the Conference formally endorsed this cause.

In introducing this “consultative” item, Cardinal Dolan gave his fellow bishops the following “clarification”: “you’re not being asked to indicate whether or not you consent to the cause–I hope you do–but if you have any objections, there’ll be chances for you to express those during the cause. What I’m seeking your opinion about is the opportuneness of advancing the cause on the local level.”

In the Episcopal Church, Dorothy Day is listed as a person “worthy of commemoration” in the liturgical calendar but for whom not enough time has elapsed since her death; the current guidelines of the Episcopal Church for an official commemoration in the calendar include waiting fifty years after the death of the one being commemorated. “Local and regional commemorations” are encouraged.

February 12, 2013, Tuesday — Further Reflections on Pope Benedict’s Decision to Resign at the End of February

Today the Vatican announced that its ability to process credit card transactions, interrupted since January 1 by a decision of the Bank of Italy, had been restored.

The renewed access to international financial networks comes one day after Pope Benedict announced that he will step down from his office as successor of Peter on February 28 at 8 p.m. in the evening.

Purchasers of tickets in the Vatican Museums had been unable to use credit cards since January 1. (I myself experienced this situation when I purchased museum tickets for pilgrims visiting the Sistine Chapel with me a few days ago, and I was asked to pay for the tickets in cash. The morning I purchased the tickets, there was not a single other person in the area where tickets are purchased — the most deserted I had ever seen the museum entrance area.)

Observers had estimated that the Vatican was losing about 30,000 euros per day in lost sales due to people not having enough cash with them to buy tickets, or other items, like guidebooks, or coffee-table books, on sale in the museums. From January 1 to February 11, then, a total of 42 days, the Vatican may have lost $1.26 million in sales.

Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi, S.J., said Swiss card payment specialist Aduno had been contracted to provide the service, blocked for the last six weeks.

“Credit card payments in the state of the Vatican City are working again, and so pilgrims as well as tourists who visit the church of St. Peter’s every day can now use the ordinary payment service, including paying for the Vatican museums,” Lombardi told reporters.

The Italian central bank prevented the Vatican’s long-standing credit card transaction provider Deutsche Bank (DB), based in Germany, from continuing to offer payment services at the start of 2013.

But Bank of Italy said it was not required to approve the new arrangement because Aduno is not based in the European Union, but in Switzerland (not a member of the European Union).

In a statement explaining its decision last month, the Bank of Italy said EU law prevented EU banks from operating in non-EU states unless they had an adequate supervisory system or were deemed “equivalent” for anti-money laundering purposes. The Vatican failed on both counts, it said.

A spokeswoman for Aduno, which is owned by Switzerland’s banks, said the company had started to provide card payments services at Vatican museums Tuesday, and would offer online payments for the museum website in the coming days.

Pope Benedict has made cleaning up the Vatican’s reputation for murky finances one of his priorities, introducing new rules and hiring a top Swiss financial lawyer to raise standards to international levels. This effort has been controversial and has provoked opposition to the Pope.

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Yesterday I wrote that Pope Benedict would distribute ashes at Ash Wednesday services tomorrow at the Church of Santa Sabina on the Aventine Hill. Today the Vatican announced that the ceremony will not be at Santa Sabina, the traditional site, but in St. Peter’s Basilica, which will enable many more people to be present, as Santa Sabine is tiny compared to St. Peter’s.

The Curia will on Sunday begin a week of Spiritual Exercises in the Vatican preached by Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi.

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It is now about 36 hours since Pope Benedict made his historic, unexpected announcement. I am trying to weigh the theological consequences of the decision. Does the Pope’s action change the Catholic understanding of the papal office? Does the decision to renounce the papacy allow the Orthodox to consider the papal office less of an impediement to Catholic-Orthodox communion? Is the Pope’s decision, which is clearly a prudential decision, a wise and good one, in the end? Or will the decision lead to uncertainties, difficulties, confusions, for the life of the Church, which a different decision — remaining in the papal office until the end of life, as has always been the tradition of the Church — might not have caused to arise?

It seems to me that we still are lacking some information about the Pope’s decision, which makes it difficult to judge what he did, and why. For example, one wonders whether the Pope, realizing that he is getting older, and more tired, might not have decided to announce that he would cancel all meetings, move to a convent in the Vatican (as he is doing), devote himself to prayer, and appear in public only very rarely. In this way, he would have remained Pope, but carried out the work of the office in a very different, and physically less demanding way. Would that not have been possible? Does every Pope have to be as physically active as was Pope John Paul II at the beginning of his pontificate?

This train of thought leads to the question of the context of this decision. Are there facts the Pope has weighed in making this decision that we simply don’t know about, or don’t know fully? The global economy, for example, remains fragile due (it seems) to high levels of debt, levels which have not declined but actually have increased since the 2008 financial crisis, which (it was claimed at the time) narrowly missed ending in the catastrophic crippling of the global financial system. Does the Pope have information about the possible course of events in the months ahead that led him to conclude that he needed to allow a younger, more energetic man to take over his office from him, so that the Church’s highest authority could take action quickly and decisively as events unfold?

Based on the information we have been given, the decision still seems a bit mysterious. Perhaps in coming days, the reasons for the Pope’s decision will become clearer.

February 11, 2013, Monday — Reflections on Pope Benedict’s Decision to Resign at the End of February

This evening I drove through a nearly empty Vatican city. A cold February rain fell as I went from the Domus Santa Marta, where the cardinals will stay during the upcoming conclave, around the back of the basilica, through the archway just below the Sistine Chapel, where the cardinals will vote in the first days of March, down the narrow brick ramp then out across the Piazza del Belvedere, where the Vatican Library is located, and through the arch toward the Porta Sant’Anna, where two Swiss Guards stood shivering in the drizzle.

At about 6 p.m., a thunderstorm broke over the city, and lightning bolts seemed to strike down against St. Peter’s dome. A bitter cold rain fell in sheets.

It was an odd day, a surreal day, this day of the announcement that Pope Benedict will resign his office… I am still finding it difficult to believe that in 20 days we will no longer have his magisterial teaching, and I am still wondering if we know the full background, all the reasons, for this unexpected decision.

But even as I write these words, I realize that they are not quite accurate.

First, Pope Benedict has not decided to “resign” his office, but to renounce it. The distinction is important. He will not be a “retired Pope,” but he will be, according to Vatican officials I spoke with today, simply “Cardinal Ratzinger” once again. There will be no danger of “two Popes” — this present Pope will no longer be a Pope, not even a retired one. (But even to write that causes me to shake my head a bit at the strangeness of the words.)

Second, the decision was not really “unexpected.” In fact, almost three years ago, in mid-2010, in an article entitled “The Celestine Sign,” I argued that the Pope was giving us a hint that he was considering abdicating his papacy. (Here is a link the the complete article: http://moynihanreport.itvworking.com/from-the-desk-of/the-celestine-sign )

The hint was Benedict’s devotion to Pope Celestine V, who resigned the papacy in 1294.

So we knew already knew three years ago that the Pope might do what he announced this morning, when he announced, in Latin, that he will leave his office on February 28, precisely at 8 pm in the evening.

We knew that he might do it, but no one knew he would do it now, while the Year of Faith is underway, while his promised encyclical on faith is not yet published, and while his campaign for a purification of the Church has not reached a final conclusion. “I thought he might resign, but only at age 90,” a Vatican monisgnor told me this afternoon. (Note: Edward Pentin has reported that the text of the expected encyclical is a “beautiful” text and that Benedict planned to use the encyclical to share his reflections on what it means to be a Christian today, the role of faith in the life of man and society and the value of Christian truths. These will be linked to the “mystery” of Easter, at a time when, in many respects, the world is in crisis. Vatican Insider claims the new encyclical has been getting “rave reviews” from those who have already seen drafts. “The text of the Pope is beautiful,” a senior prelate in the Curia is reported as saying. “With his simple language, Benedict XVI expresses even the most complex and profound truths which are able to reach a diffusion that goes beyond imagination.” But will this encyclical come out before February 28?)

Here is the beginning and end of my article from three years ago:

“The Celestine Sign”

by Robert Moynihan, Inside the Vatican

A little more than a year ago, on April 29, 2009, Benedict did something unusual. He left his own “pallium,” the sign of his episcopal authority and his connection to Christ, on a tomb in Aquila, Italy. The tomb held the remains of a relatively obscure medieval Pope named was Celestine V (1209-1296). (See the photo below; the pallium is the white cloth the Pope is putting on top of the tomb.)

Why?

…I am not suggesting Pope Benedict XVI is thinking of following in the footsteps of the saintly Pope Celestine and resigning.

I am suggesting that the studious Pope Benedict and the studious monk-Pope are “connected” in a mysterious way.

I believe Benedict’s decisions to leave his pallium in Aquila, where Celestine’s tomb is located, and to schedule a prayer before his relics this coming Sunday, are not haphazard.

These decisions are indicators, ways of communicating truths through gestures. They contain a message the Pope cannot deliver any other way.

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The Upcoming Conclave

If the Pope leaves office on February 28, the Conclave to elect his successor should begin very soon after that. The 117 cardinals currently eligible to vote should gather in Rome, at the Domus Santa Marta, and, after some time spent together in prayer and discussion, begin to vote for the successor to Pope Benedict XVI. The election should be held in the first days of March. If it goes quickly, a new Pope could be installed before the 10th of March.

Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, 79, will be the Senior Cardinal Bishop, performing the duties of the Cardinal Dean (Cardinal Angelo Sodano, 85, the current Dean, and arguable the most powerful cardinal of the past two decades or so, is no longer a Cardinal elector due to reasons of age — the limit for a cardinal to vote is age 80).

Predictably, the media is already presenting the possible names of who the successor will be. But we should be aware that most media outlets claimed, after the death of Pope John Paul II in 2005, that Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger had no chance. On one prominent list of papabili, he was not even listed.

So one maxim to keep in mind is the old one: “He who enters the Conclave as a Pope, exits as a Cardinal.”

Cardinal Lubomyr Husar, Major Archbishop Emeritus of Kiev (Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church) will miss the conclave, since the Holy See will become vacant two days after his 80th birthday.

Here is a list of the cardinal electors under age 80, with their date of birth, their age, the date they were made a cardinal, and their name and title. In this list, I have bold-faced some of the more well-known names:

Cardinals Ranjith and Burke are among those who have publicly celebrated Mass in the extraordinary form, and would be considered “favorable to tradition”; Bagnasco was a disciple of Cardinal Giuseppe Siri of Genoa, who died in 1989. Ouellet, Scola and Piacenza are well-regarded by many. Barbarin, the Archbishop of Lyon in France, has a well-run seminary and a daily Tridentine Mass in Lyon. Piacenza is also a disciple of Siri and has been seen to celebrate Mass in the old rite. He also is very familiar with how the Curia works. At 68, he is comparatively young. Peter Cardinal Turkson, 63, one of the cardinals in the last Conclave who selected Pope Benedict, is regarded as a leading cardinal from Africa. He is President of the Vatican’s Pontifical Council of Justice and Peace, a position he has held since 2009. He recently called for global public authority and a central world bank in a document regarding the banking industry. On one popular Catholic blog, one commenter wrote: “From my research in Catholic prophecy, it will be Cardinal Comastri, and he will take the name of Pius XIII.”

The Church will begin its celebration of Lent on Wednesday, with Ash Wednesday being celebrated in Rome by Pope Benedict at Santa Sabina on the Aventine Hill, where he will distribute ashes. The Curia will then on Sunday begin a week of Spiritual Exercises in the Vatican preached by Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi. The Pope will then abandon his papal office on February 28, in the middle of Lent, and the Conclave will then occur, still in the middle of Lent.

February 11, 2013, Monday — Pope Benedict to Resign at the end of February

Pope Benedict XVI said today that he plans on resigning the papal office on February 28th. Below please find his announcement.

The announcement comes on the Feast Day of Our Lady of Lourdes, an important Marian feast day.

Benedict reportedly will retire to a monastery and devote the rest of his life to prayer. (It is being reported that he will live henceforth in a monastic residence inside the Vatican.)

It is reported that he will not be involved in the selection of the new Pope.

Note: I saw the Pope twice this week, once at a concert (on Monday evening, where I was sitting about 20 yards away from him) and at his General Audience on Wednesday. For a man of 85, he looked well, though he did seem tired. My sense of his decision, based on what I have seen in the past few days, is that he feels the challenges a Pope faces, including daily meetings and nearly daily public addresses, require a physical strength he feels he he will soon lack. And that is what he says in his statement below.

On Saturday, I intended a funderal Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica for a cardinal who died last week (Cardinal Giovanni Cheli). Pope Benedict was scheduled to attend, but at the very last minute, he canceled his attendance. This was an indication to me already Saturday evening that he was unusually tired (he had spent several hours that monring with the Order of the Knights of Malta). Normally he would have been present at a cardinal’s funeral.

At this moment, I have as many questions about this decision as all of you reading this. I am in Rome now, and will stay here to report as best I can on these unprecedented developments during the next few weeks. I will send out this newsletter covering all aspects of this unprecedented decision for the life of the Church: the reasons for the Pope’s decision, the possible candidates to be elected as the next Pope, and the consequences for the Church and the world.

Full text of Pope’s February 11th Declaration to the College of Cardinals 

Dear Brothers,

I have convoked you to this Consistory, not only for the three canonizations, but also to communicate to you a decision of great importance for the life of the Church. After having repeatedly examined my conscience before God, I have come to the certainty that my strengths, due to an advanced age, are no longer suited to an adequate exercise of the Petrine ministry. I am well aware that this ministry, due to its essential spiritual nature, must be carried out not only with words and deeds, but no less with prayer and suffering. However, in today’s world, subject to so many rapid changes and shaken by questions of deep relevance for the life of faith, in order to govern the bark of Saint Peter and proclaim the Gospel, both strength of mind and body are necessary, strength which in the last few months, has deteriorated in me to the extent that I have had to recognize my incapacity to adequately fulfill the ministry entrusted to me. For this reason, and well aware of the seriousness of this act, with full freedom I declare that I renounce the ministry of Bishop of Rome, Successor of Saint Peter, entrusted to me by the Cardinals on 19 April 2005, in such a way, that as from 28 February 2013, at 20:00 hours, the See of Rome, the See of Saint Peter, will be vacant and a Conclave to elect the new Supreme Pontiff will have to be convoked by those whose competence it is.

Dear Brothers, I thank you most sincerely for all the love and work with which you have supported me in my ministry and I ask pardon for all my defects. And now, let us entrust the Holy Church to the care of Our Supreme Pastor, Our Lord Jesus Christ, and implore his holy Mother Mary, so that she may assist the Cardinal Fathers with her maternal solicitude, in electing a new Supreme Pontiff. With regard to myself, I wish to also devotedly serve the Holy Church of God in the future through a life dedicated to prayer.

From the Vatican, 10 February 2013

BENEDICTUS PP XVI

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Pope’s Sunday Angelus: Do not be discouraged in proclaiming the Gospel

In his remarks at the weekly Angelus, Pope Benedict XVI spoke about the call of the first disciples, the subject of Sunday’s Gospel.

The Holy Father noted that when the Lord calls someone to follow Him, God is more concerned about the faith of the one called than about his personal qualities or abilities.

While the call of St. Peter and the other disciples was in many ways unique, the Pope said, his experience is “representative of the call of every apostle of the Gospel.” We must never grow discouraged, he said, “in proclaiming Christ to all people, even to the ends of the earth.”

Sunday’s Gospel, said Pope Benedict, can be seen especially as a reflection on the vocation to the priesthood or the religious life. Such a call is the work of God. “The human person is not the author of his own vocation,” the Pope explained. A vocation “is a response to a divine call.” He prayed “this Word of God might revive in us and in our Christian communities courage, confidence, and enthusiasm in proclaiming and witnessing to the Gospel.

Following the Angelus prayer, the Holy Father recalled those in the Far East who are celebrating the lunar new year. “Peace, harmony, and gratitude to Heaven are the universal values that are celebrated on this happy occasion,” he said. And he prayed for all those celebrating the new year, that their hopes for a happy and prosperous life would be fulfilled.

Pope Benedict also called attention to the celebration of the annual World Day of the Sick, taking place tomorrow on the feast of Our Lady of Lourdes. “With prayer and affection I will be close to all the sick,” he said. And he said he would be spiritually united to all those who will gather tomorrow at the Marian Shrine of Altötting, Germany, for the solemn commemoration of the World Day of the Sick.

Finally, Pope Benedict concluded his weekly address with greetings in various languages for pilgrims and visitors from around the world:

“I am pleased to greet all the visitors present at today’s Angelus, especially the young people of Saint Patrick’s Evangelisation School, London. In today’s Gospel, the crowds press round Jesus, ‘listening to the word of God.’ May we too listen attentively to Jesus’ words, as He calls us, like Simon Peter, to go out fearlessly and draw others to Christ. God bless you and your loved ones!”

Listen to Christopher Wells’ report:

Below, please find the full text of the Holy Father’s Angelus address:

Dear brothers and sisters!

In today’s liturgy, the Gospel according to Luke presents the story of the calling of the first disciples, with an original version that differs from that of the other two Synoptics, Mark and Matthew (cf. Mk 1:16-20, Mt 4:18-22). The call, in fact, was preceded by the teaching of Jesus to the crowd and a miraculous catch of fish, carried out by the will of the Lord (Lk 5.1 to 6). In fact, while the crowd rushes to the shore of Lake Gennesaret to hear Jesus, He sees Simon discouraged because he has caught nothing all night.

First Jesus asks to get into Simon’s boat in order to preach to the people standing a short distance from the shore; then, having finished preaching, He commands Simon to go out into the deep with his friends and cast their nets (cf. v. 5). Simon obeys, and they catch an incredible amount of fish. In this way, the evangelist shows how the first disciples followed Jesus, trusting him, relying on His Word, all the while accompanied by miraculous signs. We note that, before this sign, Simon addresses himself to Jesus, calling Him “Master” (v. 5), while afterwards he calls Him “Lord” (v. 7). This is the pedagogy of God’s call, which does not consider the quality of those who are chosen so much as their faith, like that of Simon that says: “At your word, I will let down the nets” (v. 5).

The image of the fish refers to the Church’s mission. St. Augustine says in this regard, “Twice the disciples went out to fish at the Lord’s command: one time before the Passion and the other after the Resurrection. In the two scenes of fishing, the entire Church is depicted: the Church as it is now and as it will be after the resurrection of the dead. Now it gathers together a multitude, impossible to number, comprising the good and the bad; after the resurrection, it will include only the good” (Speech 248.1).

The experience of Peter, certainly unique, is nonetheless representative of the call of every apostle of the Gospel, who must never be discouraged in proclaiming Christ to all men, even to the ends of the world. Above all, today’s text is a reflection on the vocation to the priesthood and the consecrated life. It is the work of God. The human person is not the author of his own vocation; it is a response to divine call. Human weakness should not be afraid if God calls. It is necessary to have confidence in His strength, which acts in our poverty; we must rely more and more on the power of his mercy, which transforms and renews.

Dear brothers and sisters, may this Word of God revive in us and in our Christian communities the courage, confidence and enthusiasm in proclaiming and witnessing to the Gospel. Failures and difficulties do not lead to discouragement: it is our task to cast our nets in faith—the Lord will do the rest. We must trust, too, in the intercession of the Virgin Mary, the Queen of Apostles. To the Lord’s call, she, well aware of her own smallness, answered with total confidence: “Here I am.” With her maternal help, let renew our willingness to follow Jesus, Master and Lord.

After the Angelus

Today, the various peoples of the Far East celebrate the Lunar New Year. Peace, harmony, and gratitude to Heaven are the universal values ​​that are celebrated on this happy occasion and are desired by all to build their own family, society and nation. I hope that that those Peoples will be able to fulfill their aspirations for a happy and prosperous life. I send a special greeting to the Catholics of those countries, that in this Year of Faith they will be guided by the wisdom of Christ.

Tomorrow, the liturgical memorial of Our Lady of Lourdes, is also the World Day of the Sick. The solemn celebration will take place at the Marian Shrine of Altötting in Bavaria. With prayer and affection I will be close to all the sick and I unite myself spiritually to those who gather in the Sanctuary, who are particularly dear to me.