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Coming full circle, Lorenzo Cardinal Antonetti passed away today in Romagnano Sesia, the town where he was born more than 90 years ago.
A lifelong diplomat and Curial prelate, Cardinal Antonetti obtained doctorates in theology and canon law (from the Angelicum and the Gregoriana, respectively) before moving on to the Pontifical Ecclesiastical Academy, which trains the diplomats in service to the Holy See.
Antonetti was ordained a priest for his native Diocese of Novara, in the north of Italy, by the bishop of that diocese at the time, Msgr. Leone Ossola in 1945. In 1951, he moved to Rome and started working at the Secretariat of State.
Fr. Antonetti worked at several nunciatures across the globe: in Lebanon from 1952 to 1955, and in Venezuela from 1956-1959. Following another four years at the Secretariat of State, he was also attached to the nunciature in France, from 1963 to 1967. The following year, he was deemed ready for his own assignment as a Nuncio.
In 1968, Cardinal Cicognani consecrated him as bishop, with the titular see of Roselle. Archbishop Antonetti was sent to Central America to serve as the Apostolic Nuncio to Honduras and Nicaragua. Five years later, in 1973, he was moved to Zaire, where he served another four years as Pro-Nuncio.
Recalled to Rome in 1977, Archbishop Antonetti was appointed as secretary to the Administration of the Patrimony of the Apostolic See, which oversees and manages all properties of the Holy See. Following another assignment as Nuncio, this time to France from 1988 to 1995, Archbishop Antonetti returned to the Administration as its Pro-President. In 1998, after his creation as cardinal, he would become President.
Cardinal Antonetti was given the deaconry of Sant’Agnese in Agone. Ten years after his creation, in 2008, he opted to be elevated to the dignity of Cardinal-Priest.
Less then a year after his creation, well after his age of retirement, Cardinal Antonetti became the Pontifical Delegate for the Papal Basilica of St. Francis of Assisi, a function he would perform until his retirement in 2006.
With the passing of Cardinal Antonetti, there are now 205 cardinals, of whom 113 are electors.
Amid the unprecedented events of yesterday, regular things continue, including a cardinal exchanging the temporal for the eternal. Jean Cardinal Honoré passed away yesterday afternoon at the age of 92.
He was ordained a priest in the middle of the Second World War for the Diocese of Rennes, France. In the first years of his priesthood, Fr. Honoré taught in both Rennes and Saint-Malo, as well as at the local seminary. From 1958 to 1964 he was secretary general of the National Commission for Religious Education and director of the National Centre of Religious Teaching. He then became rector of the Catholic University of Angers, and in 1972 he was appointed as bishop of Évreux. Nine years later, in 1981, he became Archbishop of Tours. After his retirement in 1997, Archbishop Honoré was created a cardinal in 2001. He was cardinal-priest of Santa Maria della Salute a Primavalle.
Considered a specialist on Blessed Cardinal Newman, he took his episcopal motto from him: cor ad cor loquitur, heart speaks unto heart.
Cardinal Honoré was not in Rome to greet the Pope, but died in his home in Tours.
He’s shown up on my computer screen more than once in recent weeks: a young French priest from Marseille who has gotten attention for dressing like a priest wherever he goes. In this video (in French with Dutch subtitles) he explains why.
Fr. Zanotti-Sorkine: “But I also think, you see, that the priesthood must be visible!”
Interviewer: “That is why, if I may, you wear the cassock?”
Fr. Zanotti-Sorkine: “Yes, the cassock, I truly wear it for the 96% who do not come to Church. Because, these throngs who stay outside, who do not go to the churches, how do you want them to have the chance to encounter a priest? It is necessary that, in the bars I visit, on this great boulevard I walk every day, that there is the possibility for everyone to come to me, to speak to me, to entrust me with something in their lives. This cassock, it is essential!”
Interviewer: “That is how that happens?”
Fr. Zanotti-Sorkine: “That is indeed how that happens! I think we should really have a major examination of conscience here, because at this time we are about 15,000 priests in France, do you realise that? 9,000 are active, I think. There are also 4,000 religious! I am certain that when everyone, by a decree from heaven, would again wear the cassock, put on the hood, well, what would happen: every day many people would meet servants of God, and the Church would once again take her place in social events.”
Interviewer: “You are not making friends by saying this.”
Fr. Zanotti-Sorkine: “But that does not matter, I am saying it for the Lord, and I am saying it for the future of Christianity!
The visibility of the priest through outward appearances has nothing to do with vanity or a sense of importance. Rather, the cassock and, more frequently, the Roman collar, serve two purposes: wearing it, the priest is continuously reminded of his very nature as one ordained to serve God in a very particular way. And his visibility as such makes him available for the people he is tasked to serve. If they don’t recognise him for what he is, they do not know to come to him with their needs.
Father Michel-Marie’s enthusiasm is a reflection of the importance of priestly attire. No vanity, but availability and service.
HT to Fr. Andy Penne.
Following a flurry of interesting appointments (among them the appointment of a coadjutor archbishop for Ireland’s premier see and the confirmation of a new patriarch for Egypt’s Catholic Copts), there was also a creation that affects the Ukrainian Catholics in our part of the world.
The Apostolic Exarchate of France, which also covered Switzerland and the Benelux was elevated as the Eparchy, or Diocese, of St. Vladimir the Great of Paris. Bishop Borys Gudziak (pictured), appointed as apostolic exarch only six months ago, becomes the first bishop of this new diocese. He is now a full ordinary and therefore no longer the titular diocese of Carcabia. Many responsibilities that previously were held by the Holy See, now fall under the bishop, and the new diocese falls directly under the major archbishop of the Ukrainian Church, Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk.
The diocese is home to some 20,000 Ukrainian Catholics spread over five countries. It’s home base is the Cathedral of St. Vladimir the Great in Paris. The vast majority of faithful reside in France and Belgium. There seems to be little to no organisation in the Netherlands, although the territory does belong to the new diocese.
A day before, the Apostolic Exarchate of Great Britain become the Eparchy of the Holy Family of London, leaving only the Apostolic Exarchate of Germany and Scandinavia as the only Ukrainian jurisdiction in Europe that is not (yet) a diocese.
Photo credit: Yaryna Brylynska
Erstwhile diplomat and retired Major Penitentiary Fortunato Cardinal Baldelli passed away yesterday at the age of 77. The College of Cardinals now numbers 205, of whom 116 are electors.
Fortunato Baldelli was born in 1935, as one of eight children in the mountains of Perugia in Italy. He entered seminary in Assisi in 1947 and was able to continue his priestly formation despite the death of his parents, thanks to his brother priests and Bishop Giuseppe Nicolini of Assisi. It did take until 1961 before he was ordained for the Diocese of Assisi-Nocera Umbra-Gualdo Tadino. In those 14 years he studied at the Pontifical Lateran University in Rome, earning a licentiate in theology, and at the Pontifical Ecclesiastical Academy, where he studied diplomacy.
Following his ordination, Father Baldelli became vice-rector of Assisi’s minor seminary. In 1966, he earned a doctorate in canon law and entered the Holy See’s diplomatic service. After assignments in Cuba and Egypt, Fr. Baldelli returned to Rome, where he worked at the Secretariat of State and later at the Council for the Public Affairs of the Church. In 1979 he was tasked to be a special envoy, with the duties of a permanent observer, at the Council of Europe in Strasbourg.
In 1983, Blessed Pope John Paul II consecrated Fr. Baldelli as titular archbishop of Bevagna, and sent him to Angola as apostolic delegate. In 1985 he also became Apostolic pro-Nuncio to São Tomé and Principe. In 1991, he left Africa to become Nuncio in the Dominican Republic, where he was succeeded in 1994 by one Archbishop Bacqué, who would later become Nuncio to the Netherlands. From 1994 to 1999, Archbishop Baldelli was Nuncio in Peru, and after that in France. In 2009 he returned to Rome, and was appointed as Major Penitentiary of the Apostolic penitentiary.
Archbishop Baldelli was created a cardinal in the consistory of 2010, and became cardinal deacon of Sant’Anselmo all’Aventino (incidentally the seat of the Primate of the Benedictine Order, Notker Wolf, re-elected as such today). In January of this year, Cardinal Baldelli retired as Major Penitentiary.
Cardinal Baldelli was a member of the Secretariat of State and the Congregation for the Causes of the Saints.
Yesterday, the Holy Father appointed Father Borys Gudziak, 51, as the new apostolic exarch of France for the Ukrainian Greek Catholics. He will be the chief shepherd of the small community of this church’s faithful living in diaspora in France, Switzerland, Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands.
While exact numbers are hard to find online, the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, if we take the numbers for Belgium as a basis, likely counts several thousand faithful and a handful of priests in the Netherlands. Based primarily in the Ukraine and Belarus, the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church is in union with Rome but maintains her Byzantine traditions. It has been a heavily persecuted church, which accounts for the many refugees living in other countries.
American-born Bishop-elect Gudziak was until now the rector of the Ukrainian Catholic University in Lviv. He succeeds 83-year-old Bishop Michel Hrynchyshyn, who had been the bishop since 1982. Msgr. Gudziak’s titular see, reflecting the subordinate status of his apostolic exarchate, is Carcabia in Tunisia. Previous titular bishops of this see include Cardinal Cláudio Hummes, the prefect emeritus of the Congregation for the Clergy.
Bishop-elect Gudziak was born in Syracuse, New York in 1960 and gained his PhD in Byzantine and Slavic Studies from Harvard University. A date for his consecration, most likely at the Parisian Cathedral of Saint Vladimir the Great, has yet to be announced.
Most readers, even those who, like me, don’t follow politics too closely, will have noticed that there is a new president in France. François Hollande, who indeed has Dutch forebears, does not only win the highest political office in the country, but also a whole raft of religious titles and privileges, as the Belgian Church news website Kerknet reports, taking information from French newspaper ‘La Croix’. France is often said to be the ‘eldest daughter of the Church’ and that has consequences, although mostly ceremonial, even for an agnostic president.
The most important title, which the president inherits from the French monarchs, is that of honorary canon of the Basilica of St. John Lateran in Rome, the cathedral of the Diocese of Rome. King Louis XI first received this title in 1482, and it was reinstated when King Henry IV renounced Protestantism and donated the Benedictine monastery of Clairac (and all its income) to the basilica in 1064. Since 1957, the title is given automatically to all French heads of state. President Hollande can also use the title of proto-dean of the cathedral of Embrun and of the Basilica of Notre-Dame de Cléry near Orléans, and that of honorary dean of Saint-Jean-de-Maurienne in Savoie. He is also automatically honorary dean of Saint-Hilaire in Poitiers, Saint-Julien in Mans, Saint-Martin in Tours, Saint-Maurice d’Angers, Saint-Jean in Lyon, Saint-Étienne in Cahors and Saint-Germain des Prés in Paris.
Politically, the French president is head of state of Andorra, a position he shares with the bishop of the Spanish Diocese of Urgell, Archbishop Joan Enric Vives i Sicília.
Lastly, the president of France can give the red cardinal’s hat to the Papal Nuncio in Paris, if the latter is created a cardinal. That happened, for example, in 1953 with Cardinal Angelo Roncalli (later Pope John XXIII) and in 1959 with Cardinal Paolo Marella (later the archpriest of St. Peter’s and vice-dean of the College of Cardinals). That won’t be happening anymore, though, since new cardinals generally receive their hat from the pope directly. But, in theory, it is still an option.
It just goes to show that the separation of church and state isn’t always simple.
Photo credit: Jean-Marc Ayrault/Wikipedia/Flickr
From the Catholic News Agency come snippets of an interview with Rabbi Jack Bemporad, director of ther Center for Interreligious Understanding in New Jersey, United States. Rabbi Bemporad is presented as a ‘lone voice’ accusing the media attacks on the person of Pope Benedict XVI “one dimensional”. He said so after the comparison drawn in Father Raneiro Cantalamessa’s Good Friday homily, between anti-Semitism and the media depiction of the Catholic Church. Although the rabbi concedes that Fr. Cantalemessa used a “poor example”, his “point is correct”.
“We’re so quick to judge, we’re so quick to condemn,” Rabbi Bemporad said. “There’s no charity, there’s no compassion, no sympathy, and no, by the way, self-criticism”.
“The tragedy of the media,” Rabbi Bemporad went on, “is that it has a capacity to educate, instead what it does is cater to the worst element in human beings. The most voyeuristic element”.
The crimes committed by certain representatives of the Church are horrible and should be condemned by all well-thinking people. There is no disagreement about that. But in the light of these terrible acts we must keep a clear mind in order to come up with solutions. I’ve stated this before: the emotional response is understandable but immature. Immaturity is not bad, but it does indicate that there is a mature response which will ultimately lead to solutions that are agreeable for all. At the moment, major parts of the media remain stuck in the immature emotional response, mindlessly lashing out at anything that even looks Catholic. In that process the innocent are accused and slandered along with the guilty. That can never be the goal of a society which considers itself civilised.
As the visible head of the Church, Pope Benedict XVI deserves and needs our support. In France, several bishops and representatives of religious communities and laity have taken the initiative to write a letter of support to the pope. You can sign it here.
