Vatican City, Sep 20, 2019 / 11:50 am (CNA).- The heads of dicasteries and Vatican City State institutions met Friday to discuss finances and how to reverse a reportedly rapidly growing deficit in the Holy See’s budget.

Matteo Bruni, Holy See press office director, confirmed to CNA that the meeting took place Sept. 20 among heads of dicasteries of the Roman Curia and of institutions connected to the Holy See and Vatican City State.

According to the Wall Street Journal, in May Pope Francis asked Cardinal Reinhard Marx of Munich and Freising, coordinator of the Council for the Economy, which oversees Vatican finances, to convoke the meeting to consider solutions and to “inform the respective heads about the gravity of the situation.”

The Holy See sustained a deficit of roughly 70 million euros ($77 million) in 2018, doubled from the previous year, according to Vatican officials, The Wall Street Journal reports.

The Sept. 20 meeting was intended to increase awareness of the issue among Vatican officials, many of whom are unaware of the gravity of the situation, according to Joseph Zahra, a Maltese economist who is a member of the Council for the Economy.

Zahra also said the Vatican will be releasing a financial report this fall, the first since 2015.

Vatican finances have been one of the major focuses of Pope Francis’ reform efforts, though he has faced serious setbacks.

Efforts began in 2013, with the creation of an investigatory commission to examine the Holy See's administrative structures. Consisting of seven lay experts, one clerical secretary, and external consultants, the commission met from August 2013 to May 2014.

This work was later overshadowed when, in 2015, two former members of the commission were arrested for stealing and leaking confidential information about Francis’ papacy.

In February 2014, Pope Francis made his first major structural changes to the Roman Curia, establishing the Council for the Economy and the Office of Auditor General, an autonomous office with the power to conduct special investigations.

He also created the Secretariat for the Economy, appointing Cardinal George Pell as prefect, but that office is now vacant, as Pell returned to his home country to defend himself against charges of child sex abuse, of which he was convicted. The cardinal is appealing his conviction.

Vatican City, Sep 20, 2019 / 08:25 am (CNA).- Cardinal Reinhard Marx, president of the German Episcopal Conference, has held talks with Pope Francis and Cardinal Marc Ouellet, prefect of the Congregation for Bishops, about the German bishops’ plans for a “binding synodal path.”

The meetings, held in Rome Sept. 19, followed a public exchange between the German hierarchy and the Vatican over the draft statutes for a “Synodal Assembly” to be formed by the bishops in partnership with the Central Committee of German Catholics.

In a media release issued by the German bishops’ conference on Friday, Marx called the meetings “constructive,” but offered no details about any further instructions given by the pope or the Curia concerning the synodal plans.

“In both talks, a constructive dialogue took place, which will feed into the deliberations of the general assembly of the German Episcopal Conference next week.” The release noted that Marx was in Rome for meetings of the pope’s Council of Cardinal Advisors, and the Vatican Council for the Economy, both of which Marx is a member.

The German bishops will meet in plenary session on Sept. 23-26 and are expected to formally adopt a set of statutes for the synodal process.

Pope Francis wrote to the German bishops in June, expressing a series of concerns with the German proposals, and warning them to proceed in communion with Rome and the whole Church.

That letter was, according to Cardinal Walter Kasper, “set aside” by the executive committee of the German bishops’ conference, who voted in August to endorse a set of statues codifying their previous plans, while rejecting an alternative proposal drafted to accommodate the pope’s concerns.

Earlier this month, Cardinal Ouellet wrote to Marx, presenting a four-page legal assessment of the synodal plans. That document, issued by the Pontifical Commission for Legislative Texts, concluded that the proposed synodal assembly was “not ecclesiologically valid,” and set out to treat matters of universal Church teaching and discipline which “cannot be the object of the deliberations or decisions of a particular Church without contravening what is expressed by the Holy Father in his letter.”

The most recent version of the synodal statues, approved in August and unchanged through September, were due to be adopted by the German bishops at their plenary assembly next week.

In response to Ouellet’s intervention, Marx indicated that the synodal plans would proceed as planned, saying that Rome could not apply a canonical criticism to what he called a “sui generis process” that would be “helpful for the guidance of the universal Church and for other episcopal conferences.”

It is unclear if any changes will be made to that document following Marx’s “constructive dialogue” with the pope and Cardinal Ouellet. It is also unclear if the alternative statutes for a “Francis-model” of the synodal process will be given new consideration by the bishops, despite their rejection by the executive committee last month.

The German synodal process is scheduled to begin on the first day of Advent.

Vatican City, Sep 20, 2019 / 08:02 am (CNA).- Pope Francis told a group of Italian doctors Friday they must resist the temptation to participate in assisted suicide or euthanasia, which trades the dignity of the patient for a “false compassion.”

“It is important that the doctor does not lose sight of the singularity of each patient, with his dignity and fragility. A man or a woman to accompany with conscience, with intelligence and heart, especially in the most serious situations,” the pope said Sept. 20.

“With this attitude, one can and must reject the temptation – induced also by legislative changes – to use medicine to support a possible desire for death by the patient, providing assistance to suicide or causing death directly with euthanasia.”

Euthanasia or assisted suicide are “hasty paths,” and not an expression of a person’s freedom, as they might seem, he continued, adding that to be asked to help cause the premature death of a patient is a “discarding of the patient” and “false compassion.”  

Quoting the New Charter for Health Care Workers, published in 2017 by the Pontifical Council for Health Care Workers, he said: “There is no right to arbitrarily dispose of one’s life, so that no doctor can be the executive guardian of a non-existent right.”

The pope’s audience took place with around 350 members of the Italian National Federation of Orders of Surgical Doctors and Dentists.

The president of the organization, Filippo Anelli, gave a signed message to Pope Francis talking about the “profound unease” with which Italian doctors live their profession today, “the result of a distortion of the values that sustain our society.”

“This is why the crisis that affects the profession today requires a special awareness and effort not only from doctors but also from all civil society in order to restore the right gradation of values, recognizing the citizen’s right to health and the doctor’s role as a professional who protects that right to the health of the citizen and his community,” the message states.

Pope Francis said medicine, by definition, “is service to human life, and as such it involves an essential and inalienable reference to the person in his spiritual and material integrity, in his individual and social dimension.”

It is not just about the illness, he continued, adding that it is a person with a disease, not a disease with a person. “It is with this integrally human vision that doctors are called to relate to the patient.”
 
“It is for the doctors to possess, together with the due technical and professional competence, a code of values and meanings with which to give meaning to the illness and to one’s work and to make every single clinical case a human encounter.”

Quoting St. John Paul II’s encyclical Evangelium vitae, Pope Francis said: “the responsibility of health workers ‘is today enormously increased and finds its deepest inspiration and its strongest support precisely in the intrinsic and unavoidable ethical dimension of the health profession, as the ancient and ever current Hippocratic oath, according to which every doctor is asked to commit himself to absolute respect for human life and its sacredness.’”

 

Vatican City, Sep 19, 2019 / 10:14 am (CNA).- Pope Francis’ now six-member Council of Cardinal Advisors met this week to continue work on the forthcoming apostolic constitution, incorporating into the draft suggestions submitted by bishops’ conferences and others during the summer.

According to a brief press release from the Holy See press office Thursday, the council met Sept. 17-19, with a focus on “re-reading and modifying the draft of the new Apostolic Constitution,” which has the provisional title Praedicate evangelium.

“This first rereading, which has come to an end, was a passage of listening and reflection that responds to the indications of the Holy Father in the sense of communion and synodality,” the statement said.

The new constitution has been the advisory group’s key reform project since its establishment in 2013, one month after Pope Francis’ election.

The document is expected to place renewed emphasis on evangelization as the structural priority of the Church’s mission, with some predicting the merger of the Vatican’s Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples and the Pontifical Council for the Promotion of the New Evangelization into a single larger department.

Praedicate evangelium will replace Pastor bonus, the current apostolic constitution on the Roman Curia promulgated by Pope John Paul II on June 28, 1988, and subsequently modified by both popes Benedict and Francis.

Pope Francis attended the council’s meetings, the advisory group's 31st, when not in other audiences and appointments. On Wednesday morning the pope held his usual general audience, and Thursday morning he had a full slate of appointments, including with Cardinal Reinhard Marx, Archbishop of Munich and Freising and the coordinator of the Council for the Economy, who is also president of the German bishops’ conference.

The Council of Cardinal Advisors is often referred to informally as the “C9,” although there have been only six members since December 2018, when three of the original members, Cardinals George Pell, Francisco Javier Errazuriz, and Laurent Monsengwo, were removed, ostensibly for reasons of age.

In addition to Marx, the other members of the pope’s advisory council are Cardinals Pietro Parolin, Óscar Andrés Rodríguez Maradiaga, Seán Patrick O’Malley, Giuseppe Bertello and Oswald Gracias.

Bishops Marcello Semeraro and Marco Mellino, the secretary and adjunct secretary of the council, were also present at the meetings this week.

The next round of gatherings will take place Dec. 2-4.

Naples, Italy, Sep 19, 2019 / 10:06 am (CNA).- The miracle of the liquefiction of the blood of early Church martyr St. Januarius took place Thursday in Naples.

The blood was shown to have liquefied shortly after 10 a.m. during Mass in the Naples’ Cathedral of the Assumption of Mary.

The Mass was celebrated by Cardinal Crescenzio Sepe, Archbishop of Naples, who in his homily, strongly criticized the violent crime of Neapolitan streets.

Despite the city’s recurring miracle, “the evil that the hateful and violent killers commit in Naples is limitless,” he said.” In effect they try to kill at birth just the possibility of making a future…”

This, he noted, generates fear and insecurity, and goes against the common good. 

“We must ask ourselves: does Naples still have a great and sincere heart? Us citizens of today's Naples have to answer this question with truth, therefore, with realism, with honesty and courageously, without letting ourselves be taken by a false nostalgia of the times we once had,” he stated.

St. Januarius, or San Gennaro in Italian, the patron of Naples, was a bishop of the city in the third century, whose bones and blood are preserved in the cathedral as relics. He is believed to have been martyred during Diocletian persecution.

The reputed miracle is locally known and accepted, though has not been the subject of official Church recognition. The liquefaction reportedly happens at least three times a year: Sept. 19, the saint's feast day, the Saturday before the first Sunday of May, and Dec. 16, the anniversary of the 1631 eruption of Mount Vesuvius.

During the miracle, the dried, red-colored mass confined to one side of the reliquary becomes blood that covers the entire glass. In local lore, the failure of the blood to liquefy signals war, famine, disease or other disaster.

The blood did not liquefy in December 2016, but Monsignor Vincenzo De Gregorio, abbot of the Chapel of the Treasure of San Gennaro, said it was a sign that Catholics should pray rather than worry about what the lack of miracle could mean.

“We must not think of disasters and calamities. We are men of faith and we must pray,” he said at the time.

The vial has sometimes changed upon the visit of a pope.

On March 21, 2015, Pope Francis met with priests, religious and seminarians at the cathedral and gave a blessing with the relic.

Sepe then received the vial back from the pope and noted that the blood had partially liquefied.

The last time blood liquefied in the presence of a pope was in 1848 when Bl. Pius IX visited. The phenomenon didn’t happen when St. John Paul II visited the city in October 1979, or when Benedict XVI visited in October 2007.

 

Vatican City, Sep 19, 2019 / 07:30 am (CNA).- Pope Francis said Thursday that canon law is essential for ecumenical dialogue with Orthodox and Oriental Churches.

“Many of the theological dialogues pursued by the Catholic Church, especially with the Orthodox Church and the Oriental Churches, are of an ecclesiological nature. They have a canonical dimension too, since ecclesiology finds expression in the institutions and the law of the Churches,” Pope Francis said Sept. 19.

In an audience with members of the Society for the Law of the Eastern Churches, Pope Francis said: “Canon law is essential for ecumenical dialogue,” adding that “ecumenical dialogue also enriches canon law.”

Canon law is the Church’s legal discipline, it gives expression to concepts like natural and divine law, and orders the Church as an ecclesiastical society. It explains and safeguards the rights and duties of the faithful of all orders of church life: laity, clergy, bishops, and religious.

As the Society for the Law of the Eastern Churches marks its fiftieth anniversary this year, Pope Francis remarked that the society’s founder, Father Ivan Žužek, made significant contributions to the Code of Canons of the Eastern Churches.

The pope met with Patriarch Bartholomew I of Constantinople the day prior for lunch in Vatican City. Bartholomew, to whom Pope Francis gifted relics of St. Peter earlier this year, was the law society’s first vice president.

Pope Francis said that the Church can learn from the synodal experience of the Eastern churches.

“Synodality expresses the ecumenical dimension of canon law,” Pope Francis said, explaining: “the commitment to build a synodal Church — a mission to which we are all called, each with the role entrusted him by the Lord — has significant ecumenical implications.”

“How much we can learn from one another in all areas of ecclesial life: theology, the experience of spirituality and liturgy, pastoral activity and, certainly, canon law,” he said.

“Based on the common canonical heritage of the first millennium, the current theological dialogue between the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church seeks precisely a common understanding of primacy and synodality and their relationship in the service of the unity of the Church,” Pope Francis said.

Vatican City, Sep 19, 2019 / 12:00 am (CNA).- A book on papal communication aims to connect the history of the Vatican’s communications office with the theology of the Second Vatican Council.

"I welcomed this publication with great pleasure," Alessandro Gisotti, deputy editorial director at Vatican Media, during a September launch event for “Anche i Papi comunicano,” - “The popes also communicate.”

 "I believe it is also a sign of gratitude to all the colleagues who accompanied me during the months in which I held the position of director of the Press Room. I was part of this story and now that it has been dedicated to Navarro Valls the Press Room is even more the home of journalists,” Gisotti added, according to a report from Vatican Media.

The book is authored by Veronica Giacometti, an editor at Italian news agency ACI Stampa and a former intern at Radio Vaticano. ACI Stampa is CNA’s Italian-language partner agency.

Gisotti said the book is important because it connects contemporary Catholic communicators to the Church’s tradition.

"Tradition means transmitting knowledge, it is important that Vatican experts know how popes have communicated in recent decades," he said.

“Popes communicate first of all with their presence. A president, if he does not act, is thought not exist. But the pope exists and communicates as Peter's successor, he is the message itself, therefore political categories cannot be applied to his communication,” Gisotti said.

Giacometti told Vatican Media that she wrote the book to be a resource to Vatican journalists.

This book can be a working tool. It contains basic information (for Vatican journalists.) For example, what is a bolletino, how is the press office structured," among other questions, she said.

Giacometti said she aimed to put the traditions of Vatican journalists on paper.

Alan Holdren, director of EWTN’s Rome office, and long-time Vatican journalist, also spoke at the launch event.

“I think all of us feel this need to know where we have come from. I have been here for 10 years, my first days of journalism at the Vatican were right in the Vatican’s press room. I spent a year and a half there, every day of the week, to report the facts about the pope. The press room for us is a meeting point, a welcome point, a point of information that is essential to carry out our profession,” Holdren said.

 

Vatican City, Sep 18, 2019 / 04:00 pm (CNA).- This week, Cardinal Reinhard Marx, president of the German bishops’ conference, travels to Rome. There he will meet with Cardinal Marc Ouellet, head of the Vatican’s Congregation for Bishops, to clear up some “misunderstandings” about the German bishops’ intended synodal process.

The stakes of the closed-door meeting are high. 

The German bishops seem poised to press ahead with plans for a “synodal assembly,” despite criticism of the plan from Curial offices and the pope himself. The matter seems likely to escalate into an open conflict between the Apostolic See and one of the most influential bishops’ conferences in the global Church.

Marx first announced the “binding synodal path” earlier this year. In addition to creating a new Synodal Assembly in partnership with the Central Committee of German Catholics, the bishops intend – indeed have already begun – a review of universal Church teaching and discipline on a range of sensitive matters, including sexual morality, the role of women in offices and ministry, and clerical celibacy.

Critics say the German plan disregards, or defies, the universality of teaching and discipline that makes the Catholic Church catholic. 

In June, Pope Francis wrote a letter to Germany Catholics offering a corrective to their bishops’ plans. He warned against a “new Pelagianism” and the temptation to “adapt” the Church “to the spirit of the age.”

Most specifically, the pope warned the German bishops against striking out on their own. Communion with the whole Church, he said, and respect for the hierarchy, are vital to any authentic understanding of synodality.

“Every time an ecclesial community tried to resolve its problems alone, trusting and focusing exclusively on its forces or its methods, its intelligence, its will or prestige, it ended up increasing and perpetuating the evils it tried to solve,” he told the Germans.

Cardinal Walter Kasper summarized recently the pope’s effect on the German bishops: “In Germany, the Pope's letter was much praised, but then put aside and [the process] continued as previously planned.”

On Sept. 4, Ouellet wrote to the German bishops, presenting an official assessment of the German plans from the Pontifical Commission for Legislative Texts, which concluded that the synod’s proposed structures were “not ecclesiologically valid” and that its proposed subject matter “cannot be the object of the deliberations or decisions of a particular Church without contravening what is expressed by the Holy Father in his letter.”

Marx has insisted that the Vatican’s critique is based on an old draft of their plans, and that the current version renders them moot. But, as CNA reported, the most recent version effectively retained the provisions and themes opposed by Rome, and Vatican officials were already in possession of the new draft by the time Ouellet’s letter was sent – to the point that Ouellet’s letter even noted that he had seen the minutes of the August 19 executive session.

One official at the Congregation told CNA that there is a sense in Rome that Cardinal Marx wants to deflect criticism onto past documents in the hopes of keeping the synodal process moving faster than Rome can keep up.

“We see this happening: the Germans say we have already made the changes you want, and by the time there can be a response saying “no, the concerns remain,” the next step is already made,” an official at the Congregation for Bishops told CNA.

“If we come to [the point where] the Holy Father [is] saying ‘stop, do not begin the synod,’ they will reply ‘we already began – now we must finish!’”

Any official account of this week’s meeting between Marx and Ouellet is highly unlikely – the Congregation for Bishops has a long track record of declining to comment on its work, even on the most internationally pressing issues. Whatever account Marx offers will likely be his own impression, and may not be shared by the congregation.

The first tangible indication of whether an understanding has actually been reached will likely come next week, when the German bishops are scheduled to vote on the draft statues for the Synodal Assembly.

If the bishops pass an unaltered text from the one adopted by their executive committee last month, it will indicate either that the Vatican has acquiesced to the German plans, or that Ouellet’s letter has been “put aside,” as was the pope’s in June.

If the German bishops proceed with their plans over Vatican objections, the pope could be expected to address the matter during the upcoming Amazon synod. 

Thus far, the language of Rome to Germany has been couched in terms of “concern” and “guidance.” But should the Germans ignore a further, perhaps even explicit, instruction by Francis to halt the synodal plans, it will raise serious questions – first about the legitimacy of the entire enterprise, and then about the relationship of the Church in Germany to the Apostolic See.

Sources close to the German bishops’ conference have told CNA that Marx sees the German synodal plans as the means of reshaping the global Church. “The cardinal believes it is the German Church’s duty to lead on the path for others to follow on these matters,” one senior German Church official said.

“There is no question of wishing to break the communion with the universal Church, but to remake it for a more modern Church.”

Some officials in Rome have told CNA they suspect that Marx simply does not believe the pope is willing to act decisively to halt the German plans.

“They [the German bishops] do not ask permission to begin, or listen to the instructions given. They just continue, continue, and then – what?” one senior official at the Pontifical Commission or Legislative Texts told CNA.

“In the end, the idea of schism is unthinkable for everyone. But if no one thinks it can happen, you can do anything you like - the Holy Father says no, but a cardinal can say yes.”

The official at the Congregation for Bishops agreed, telling CNA that the German bishops’ continued action appeared calculated.

“Dialogue in communion means you listen to what the pope says,” he said. “If you don’t listen, there is no communion.”

Vatican City, Sep 18, 2019 / 04:34 am (CNA).- Because of sinfulness, human projects will always fail, but the Church remains steadfast, even in times of scandal, because she is sustained by the Holy Spirit, Pope Francis said Wednesday.

“Let us think of the history of Christians, including the history of the Church, with so many sins, with so many scandals, with so many bad things in these two millennia. And why did it not collapse? Because God is there,” the pope said Sept. 18.

“We are sinners, and so often we even give scandal. But God is with us,” he added. “But the Lord always saves. Strength is ‘God with us.’”

In contrast, human projects always fail, Pope Francis noted, pointing to the many political projects of history, including the empires and dictatorships of the last century.

“They felt very powerful, they thought they dominated the world. And then they all collapsed,” he stated. “Even today, think of today’s empires: they will collapse, if God is not with them, because the strength that men have in themselves is not lasting. Only the strength of God endures.”

During his weekly general audience in St. Peter’s Square, Pope Francis continued his catechesis on the Acts of the Apostles with a reflection on the importance of the Holy Spirit.

In the fifth chapter of Acts, the Apostles are facing opposition from Jews, but they “respond with courage,” showing they possess the “obedience of faith,” Francis said.

They have this courage, he said, because from Pentecost they are no longer alone, but the Holy Spirit is working through them.

“They feel they cannot say, ‘I’ alone,” he added. “Strengthened by this covenant, the Apostles do not let themselves be intimidated by anyone. They had an impressive courage!”

Pope Francis noted that at Jesus’ arrest, the disciples ran away like cowards. “But, from cowards they have become so brave. Why? Because the Holy Spirit was with them.”

“The same happens to us: if we have the Holy Spirit inside, we will have the courage to move forward, the courage to win many struggles, not for ourselves but for the Spirit that is with us,” he said, pointing to the martyrs, who gave their lives and never hid their Christian identity.

The pope recalled, in particular, the Coptic Orthodox Christians who were killed in Libya in 2015. “But the last word they said was, ‘Jesus, Jesus.’ They were filled with the Holy Spirit,” he said.

In Acts, the Apostles are living like “megaphones” of the Holy Spirit, and this “makes the Jewish ‘religious system’ tremble,” feel threatened and respond with violence and death threats, Francis explained.

However, the pope said, one Pharisee in the Sanhedrin, Gamaliel, tries to stem this reaction, showing how to practice discernment. He shows that what is of God will last while human projects may first succeed but then become “shipwrecked.”

“Gamaliel concludes that, if the disciples of Jesus of Nazareth believed an impostor, they are destined to disappear into thin air; if instead they follow one who comes from God, it is better to give up fighting them; and warns: ‘Do not happen to find yourself even fighting against God’ (Acts 5:39). He teaches us to make this discernment,” he stated.

Gamaliel’s reasoned words teach people to “recognize the tree by its fruits.”

“We ask the Holy Spirit to act in us so that, both personally and as a community, we can acquire the habitus of discernment,” Francis concluded.

WASHINGTON, D.C. - Two new polls have revealed widespread discrimination against healthcare workers of faith, as well as broad public support for conscience rights laws and protections. The findings were released today by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) Committees on Pro-Life Activities; Religious Liberty; Domestic and Social Development; and the Subcommittee for the Promotion and Defense of Marriage, as well as the Christian Medical & Dental Associations (CMDA), the largest faith-based association for healthcare professionals.
 
The findings come in the wake of enforcement actions taken by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) against the University of Vermont Medical Center, which is alleged to have coerced a nurse into participating in an abortion against her beliefs.

Archbishop Joseph F. Naumann, of Kansas City in Kansas and Chairman of the Committee on Pro-Life Activities; Bishop Robert J. McManus, of Worcester and Chairman of the Committee for Religious Liberty; Bishop Frank J. Dewane, of Venice, and Chairman of the Committee on Domestic Justice and Human Development, and Bishop James D. Conley, of Lincoln and Chairman of the Subcommittee for Promotion and Defense of Marriage offered the following statement on the findings:

“An overwhelming majority of Americans agree: no healthcare professional should be forced to violate deeply-held beliefs in order to keep a job. The practice of medicine depends on those courageous and generous enough to serve all people—especially the poor and marginalized—with the highest ethical standards. If we exclude people of faith from the medical profession, Americans will suffer, especially those most in need.”

For more information, click here: http://www.usccb.org/about/pro-life-activities/conscience-protection-teleconference.cfm

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Keywords: USCCB, United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, Archbishop Joseph F. Naumann, Bishop J. McManus, Bishop James D. Conley, Bishop Frank Dewane, Committee on Pro-Life Activities, Committee for Religious Liberty, Committee on Domestic Justice and Human Development, Subcommittee Promotion and Defense of Marriage, healthcare, conscience protection

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