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As expected, there was little fuss about the return of Pope emeritus Benedict XVI to the Vatican. A welcome by Cardinals Bertello, Sodano and Bertone and assorted other prelates, followed by a simple welcome by Pope Francis at the Mater Ecclesiae monastery.
No speeches, no formalities, just a beloved father coming home.
The final act of the story is upon us. Following the announcement, the abdication, the retreat to Castel Gandolfo and the meeting with the new Pope, Pope emeritus Benedict XVI is set to come home to the Vatican this afternoon. In a reversal of that moving afternoon at the end of February, Benedict will return by helicopter, meet with some Vatican workers, including Cardinals Sodano and Bertone, before heading to the monastery in the Vatican gardens which will be his home for his remaining years. There, Pope Francis will welcome him.
Whether we’ll get to see any of this is anyone’s guess. Of course, there will be footage of the helicopter returning, but much of the return will be private, I expect. Still, there’s always the hope of getting a glimpse of our retired Holy Father. Retired, but still beloved. And like I said on that day, that feeling is mutual: “Although we may not see or even be aware of it, in the gardens of Vatican City there will be a loving heart, continuously praying for all of us.”
Photo credit: Alberto Pizzoli/AFP/Getty Images
In a sede vacante, nothing, it seems, is permanent, not even the daily running of the Holy See. While Cardinals Bertone and Sodano, as Camerlengo and Dean of the College of Cardinals respectively, have certain specific duties, these do not extend as far as the duties that a Pope or the Curia in normal circumstances would have. We are all waiting, in this period, for normalcy to resume, but for that we need a visible head, a new Supreme Pontiff.
In the meantime, starting this morning, the cardinals are presented with the current affairs in the Church during their General Congregations and if a situation calls for it they can act together, or task one of their own to perform his duties as he would when there is a Pope. In the case of Cardinal Bertone, he is aided by three cardinals, one each from the orders of bishops, priests and deacons, in managing the Holy See. These three cardinals are appointed for three days only, another indication of the impermanence of their authority. For the first three-day period, which started yesterday and will end tomorrow, the names of Cardinals Giovanni Re, Crescenzio Sepe and Franc Rode were drawn by lot.
The actual decisions and actions undertaken during the General Congregations, and of course the conclave, are subject to an oath of secrecy that the cardinals made yesterday morning. Cardinal Wilfrid Napier (pictured above with Cardinal Collins before the start of the first Congregation), who is perhaps the most active tweeting cardinal at the moment, told his followers this morning: “Given that Pledge of Confidentiality covers matters discussed in General Congregations, only very general comments can be made. Keep praying.” Several cardinals have already shut down their Twitter account or gone radio silent until after the conclave. A full list of twittering cardinals can be found here.
But in the meantime, while much may get done, we are still awaiting the arrival of the final cardinal electors. Only after they arrive can a date for the conclave be decided upon. Until then, with the final arrived expected to be Hong Kong’s Cardinal John Tong Hon sometime tomorrow, the cardinals will continue meeting once a day in the morning.
Photo credit: l’Osservatore Romano
Today, all the cardinals of the Church received the official letter summoning them to Rome. Cardinal Sodano, as dean of the College of Cardinals, signed the letter. Cardinal Simonis, emeritus archbishop of Utrecht, was one of the cardinals who received the summons, although, like many others, he is already in Rome. The image below shows the letter in the hands of the cardinal, who won’t be able to vote in the conclave, as he is over the age of 80. But all cardinals, elector or not, are expected to take their responsibilities in managing the goods and needs of the Church and the faithful during the sede vacante, as well as preparing for the conclave.Cardinal Sodano’s letter invites the cardinals to the first two General Congregations on Monday. A date for the conclave may be decided upon then, but that is by no means certain. All indications are that the cardinals want time to talk and think.
The electors number 117, although two of them have chosen to remain at home. So here they are, the 115 cardinal electors who will soon be entering the conclave, which they will not be leaving until they have elected a new Supreme Pontiff. As Emeritus Pope Benedict (how odd it is to write that!) said yesterday morning, the new Pope is among them.
A short primer on who’s who among the electors, ordered by precedence (and from left to right and top to bottom, starting at top left and ending at bottom right, in the collage above):
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Giovanni Cardinal Re, Prefect emeritus of the Congregation for Bishops
- Tarcisio Cardinal Bertone, Secretary of State and Chamberlain of the Holy Roman Church
- Antonios Cardinal Naguib, Patriarch emeritus of Alexandria of the Copts
- Béchara Cardinal Raï, Patriarch of Antioch of the Maronites
- Godfried Cardinal Danneels, Archbishop emeritus of Mechelen-Brussels
- Joachim Cardinal Meisner, Archbishop of Köln
- Nicolás Cardinal López Rodríguez, Archbishop of Santo Domingo
- Roger Cardinal Mahony, Archbishop emeritus of Los Angeles
- Jaime Cardinal Ortega y Alamino, Archbishop of Havana
- Jean-Claude Cardinal Turcotte, Archbishop emeritus of Montréal
- Vinko Cardinal Puljic, Archbishop of Vrhbosna
- Juan Cardinal Sandoval Íñiguez, Archbishop emeritus of Guadalajara
- Antonio Cardinal Rouco Varela, Archbishop of Madrid
- Dionigi Cardinal Tettamanzi, Archbishop emeritus of Milan
- Polycarp Cardinal Pengo, Archbishop of Dar-es-Salaam
- Christoph Cardinal Schönborn, Archbishop of Vienna
- Norberto Cardinal Rivera Carrera, Archbishop of Mexico
- Francis Cardinal George, Archbishop of Chicago
- Zenon Cardinal Grocholewski, President of the Congregation for Catholic Education
- Crescenzio Cardinal Sepe, Archbishop of Naples
- Walter Cardinal Kasper, President emeritus of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity
- Ivan Cardinal Dias, Prefect emeritus of the Congregation fo the Evangelisation of Peoples
- Geraldo Cardinal Agnelo, Archbishop emritus of São Salvador da Bahia
- Audrys Cardinal Backis, Archbishop of Vilnius
- Francisco Cardinal Errázuriz Ossa, Archbishop emritus of Santiago
- Julio Cardinal Terrazas Sandoval, Archbishop of Santa Cruz de la Sierra
- Wilfrid Cardinal Napier, Archbishop of Durban
- Oscar Cardinal Rodríguez Maradiaga, Archbishop of Tegucigalpa
- Juan Cardinal Cipriani Thorne, Archbishop of Lima
- Cláudio Cardinal Hummes, Prefect emeritus of the Congregation for Clergy
- Jorge Cardinal Bergoglio, Archbishop of Buenos Aires
- José Cardinal Policarpo, Patriarch of Lisbon
- Severino Cardinal Poletto, Archbishop of Turin
- Karl Cardinal Lehmann, Bishop of Mainz
- Angelo Cardinal Scola, Archbishop of Milan
- Anthony Cardinal Okogie, Archbishop emeritus of Lagos
- Gabriel Cardinal Zubeir Wako, Archbishop of Khartoum
- Carlos Cardinal Amigo Vallejo, Archbishop emeritus of Sevilla
- Justin Cardinal Rigali, Archbishop emeritus of Philadelphia
- Ennio Cardinal Antonelli, President emeritus of the Pontifical Council for the Family
- Peter Cardinal Turkson, President of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace
- Telesphore Cardinal Toppo, Archbishop of Ranchi
- George Cardinal Pell, Archbishop of Sydney
- Josip Cardinal Bozanic, Archbishop of Zagreb
- Jean-Baptiste Cardinal Pham Minh Man, Archbishop of Ho Chi Minh City
- Philippe Cardinal Barbarin, Archbishop of Lyon
- Péter Cardinal Erdö, Archbishop of Esztergom-Budapest
- Marc Cardinal Ouellet, Prefect of the Congregation for Bishops
- Agostino Cardinal Vallini, Archpriest of St. John Lateran
- Jorge Cardinal Urosa Savino, Archbishop of Caracas
- Jean-Pierre Cardinal Ricard, Archbishop of Bordeaux
- Antonio Cardinal Cañizares Llovera, Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments
- Seán Cardinal O’Malley, Archbishop of Boston
- Stanislaw Cardinal Dziwisz, Archbishop of Kraków
- Carlo Cardinal Caffarra, Archbishop of Bologna
- Seán Cardinal Brady, Archbishop of Armagh
- Lluís Cardinal Martínez Sistach, Archbishop of Barcelona
- André Cardinal Vingt-Trois, Archbishop of Paris
- Angelo Cardinal Bagnasco, Archbishop of Genoa
- Théodore-Adrien Cardinal Sarr, Archbishop of Dakar
- Oswald Cardinal Gracias, Archbishop of Bombay
- Francisco Cardinal Robles Ortega, Archbishop of Guadalajara
- Daniel Cardinal DiNardo, Archbishop of Galveston-Houston
- Odilo Cardinal Scherer, Archbishop of São Paulo
- John Cardinal Njue, Archbishop of Nairobi
- Raúl Cardinal Vela Chiriboga, Archbishop emeritus of Quito
- Laurent Cardinal Monsengwo Pasinya, Archbishop of Kinshasa
- Paolo Cardinal Romeo, Archbishop of Palermo
- Donald Cardinal Wuerl, Archbishop of Washington
- Raymundo Cardinal Assis, Archbishop of Aparecida
- Kazimierz Cardinal Nycz, Archbishop of Warsaw
- Albert Cardinal Patabendige Don, Archbishop of Colombo
- Reinhard Cardinal Marx, Archbishop of Munich and Freising
- George Cardinal Alencherry, Major Archbishop of Ernakulam-Angamaly of the Syro-Malabars
- Thomas Cardinal Collins, Archbishop of Toronto
- Dominik Cardinal Duka, Archbishop of Prague
- Willem Cardinal Eijk, Archbishop of Utrecht
- Giuseppe Cardinal Betori, Archbishop of Florence
- Timothy Cardinal Dolan, Archbishop of New York
- Rainer Cardinal Woelki, Archbishop of Berlin
- John Cardinal Tong Hon, Bishop of Hong Kong
- Baselios Cardinal Thottunkal, Major Archbishop of Trivandrum of the Syro-Malankars
- John Cardinal Onaiyekan, Archbishop of Abuja
- Jesús Cardinal Salazar Gómez, Archbishop of Bogotá
- Luis Cardinal Tagle, Archbishop of Manila
- Jean-Louis Cardinal Tauran, President of the Pontifical Council for Inter-Religious Dialogue
- Attilio Cardinal Nicora, President of the Financial Information Authority
- William Cardinal Levada, Prefect emeritus of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith
- Franc Cardinal Rode, Prefect emeritus of the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life
- Leonardo Cardinal Sandri, Prefect of the Congregation for the Oriental Churches
- Giovanni Cardinal Lajolo, President emeritus of the Governorate of the Vatican City State
- Paul Cardinal Cordes, President emeritus of the Pontifical Council “Cor Unum”
- Angelo Cardinal Comastri, Archpriest of St. Peter’s Basilica
- Stanislaw Cardinal Rylko, President of the Pontifical Council for the Laity
- Raffaele Cardinal Farina, Librarian emeritus of the Vatican Apostolic Library
- Angelo Cardinal Amato, Prefect of the Congregation for the Causes of the Saints
- Robert Cardinal Sarah, President of the Pontifical Council “Cor Unum”
- Francesco Cardinal Monterisi, Archpriest emeritus of St. Paul-Outside-the-Walls
- Raymond Cardinal Burke, Prefect of the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura
- Kurt Cardinal Koch, President of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity
- Paolo Cardinal Sardi, Partron of the Sovereign Military Hospitaller Order of St. John of Jerusalem of Rhodes and of Malta
- Mauro Cardinal Piacenza, Prefect of the Congregation for Clergy
- Velasio Cardinal De Paolis, Pontifical Delegate for the Congregation of the Legionaries of Christ
- Gianfranco Cardinal Ravasi, President of the Pontifical Council for Culture
- Fernando Cardinal Filoni, Prefect of the Congregation for the Evangelisation of Peoples
- Manuel Cardinal Monteiro de Castro, Major Penitentiary of the Apostolic Penitentiary
- Santos Cardinal Abril y Castelló, Archpriest of St. Mary Major
- Antonio Cardinal Vegliò, President of the Pontifical Council for the Pastoral Care of Migrants and Itinerant People
- Giuseppe Cardinal Bertello, President of the Governorate of the Vatican City State
- Francesco Cardinal Coccopalmerio, President of the Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts
- João Cardinal Bráz de Aviz, Prefect of the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life
- Edwin Cardinal O’Brien, Grand Master of the Equestrian Order of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem
- Domenico Cardinal Calcagno, President of the Adminstration of the Patrimony of the Apostolic See
- Giuseppe Cardinal Versaldi, President of the Prefecture for the Economic Affairs of the Holy See
- James Cardinal Harvey, Archpriest of St. Paul-Outside-the-Walls
Who we will see in white on the balcony of St. Peter’s sometime later this month remains anyone’s guess. Only Our Lord knows and, as Cardinal Pell said, it is up to the electors to find out.
Photo credit: [1] RKK.nl, [2] collage my own.
And here we go… Today we enter the last two days of the 265th papacy. As Benedict undoubtedly looks forward to starting the twilight years of his service to the Church, in St. Peter’s Square, the crowds have been lining up since the early hours of the morning to get their final glimpse of our Holy Father.
Set to begin at 10:30 local time, Pope Benedict XVI’s final general audience promises to be only a slight departure from the norm. The Holy Father will teach one last time, but we’ll have to wait and see what his choice of topic will be. He will take an extra long tour across the square before returning to the Apostolic Palace, where he will meet with some of the dignitaries who have travelled to Rome today. There will be no brief meetings with visiting prelates and pilgrim groups at the end of the audience this time around.
And at the same time this will be like no other general audience before. It will be a historical event: an abdicating Pope bidding farewell to his flock – present in the tens of thousands in Rome, and in the hundreds of millions across the globe. And without doubt it will be emotional. Unavoidable distant in space, the Holy Father is still close in the hearts of many, not least mine.
Sure, we will see him in images and video tomorrow, as he bids his farewells to the cardinals and the Curia, with Cardinal Bertone seeing him off from the Vatican, and Cardinal Sodano greeting him one last time on the helicopter pad at 5pm tomorrow afternoon. Cardinal Giuseppe Bertello, the Governor of the Vatican City State, will welcome the Pope at Castel Gandolfo. Appearing on the balcony of the traditional papal summer residence, we will what now seems to be our last glimpse of the Pope, hours before he becomes Pope Emeritus. at 8pm. At that point the Swiss Guards will salute and depart - tasked as they are with the protection of the Roman Pontiff, and tomorrow evening there will be no such person…
And after that rollercoaster ride the next will probably stand ready on Monday, as the cardinals will start their General Congregations in preparation of the conclave.
Photo credit: Looking more tired than we have seen him before, Pope Benedict XVI sits before his last Angelus prayer on Sunday [l'Osservatore Romano].
Because of a lack of words on the blog today, here are some photos of the last days, a period of farewell and gratitude:
Shaking hands with Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, after the latter had given an emotional thank you message on behalf of the Curia.
And so, the last public liturgy of Pope Benedict XVI ends, as he is helped off the steps of the sanctuary on Ash Wednesday.
Cardinal Agostino Vallini welcomes the Pope, father and teacher.
Professor Pope. Benedict in his element, speaking to the priests of Rome about the Second Vatican Council, spontaneously and without prepared notes.
Now that we have gotten somewhat used to yesterday’s news, and all speculation has, well, not died down, but channeled into a few set directions, here’s a look at the major players in the coming sede vacante period.
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The Apostolic Penitentiary, concerned with questions of conscience from the faithful and the pressing matters related to it, will continue to function during the sede vacante. Cardinal Manuel Monteiro de Castro, who leads the office, will remain in office likewise.
Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone (pictured) will remain on as Camerlengo. He will head the management of the goods and finances of the Holy See. He will also chair the daily meetings of the College of Cardinals for the daily affairs of the Church. Upon the election of the new pope, he will accompany him to the papal apartments and hand him the keys. Cardinal Bertone will also declare the result of every ballot during the conclave. Upon his invitation, the cardinals will meet for discussion and reflection when needed. The vice-chamberlain, Archbishop Pier Luigi Celata, will work with him outside the conclave.- The cleric prelates of the Apostolic Chamber will assist the Camerlengo. They are Msgr. Assunto Scotti, Msgr. Luigi Cerchiaro, Msgr. Paolo Luca Braida (Italians all), Msgr. Philip James Whitmore (British), Msgr. Winfried König (German), Msgr. Osvaldo Neves de Almeida (Argentinian) and Msgr. Krzysztof Józef Nykiel (Polish).
During the sede vacante, the archpriests of the papal basilicas will take over the Pope’s liturgical duties. They are Cardinal Agostino Vallini (pictured) for St. John Lateran, Cardinal Angelo Comastri for St. Peter’s, Cardinal James Harvey for St. Paul-Outside-the-Walls and Cardinal Santos Abril y Castelló for St. Mary Major.- Also involved in the papal liturgies during the sede vacante are the Master of Ceremonies, Msgr. Guido Marini, and the Almoner of His Holiness, Archbishop Guido Pozzo.
- The pastoral care of the Diocese of Rome will be the responsibility of the Vicars-General: Cardinal Agostino Vallini. for Rome and Cardinal Angelo Comastri for the Vatican City State.
- After the cardinals have entered the Sistine Chapel for the conclave, and after they have all taken the oath, Msgr. Guido Marini will call “Extra omnes!”. He will distribute the ballot papers to the cardinals and then leave the chapel..
- Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, in place of the Cardinal-Dean (Cardinal Sodano is 85 and therefore too old to take part in the conclave), will announce the start of the first ballot after any remaining questions have been answered. Cardinal Re will also ask the newly elected Pope if he accepts his election. If Cardinal Re himself is elected, that task falls to Cardinal Bertone.
Cardinal James Harvey (pictured), as the junior Cardinal-Deacon, will lock the doors of the Sistine Chapel before the first ballot. He will be responsible for who enters and leaves during the voting: assistants to those cardinals who may be too ill to be in the Sistine Chapel can leave and return to collect those cardinals’ ballots.- Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran, as the College of Cardinals’ Protodeacon (the most senior Cardinal-Deacon) will have the honour to announce the “habemus papam” to the masses on St. Peter’s Square.
The Curia of the Church will in many ways cease to function once the Pope has abdicated. Only some pressing matters may be handled by the College of Cardinals, but she is not allowed to do anything that is normally under a Pope’s authority.
Come the evening of 28 February, the Church will have to make do without a Supreme Pontiff. For how long, we don’t know, and it is certainly a different situation than the last time this happened.
A pope stepping down, a conclave without mourning a deceased Holy Father, but with the all the chaos, temporary suspensions of functions and preparations to gather all the cardinals and prepare the Sistine Chapel that come with the election of a new pope.
So what can we expect in the coming weeks, which will certainly be interesting, emotional and exciting?
Things will change at the time that Pope Benedict XVI has indicated: 8pm on Thursday 28 February. At that time, he will no longer be pope, and the See of Peter will be officially vacant. Pope Benedict XVI will then no longer be called that, although it remains to be seen how we will refer to him in the future. The former Pope will remove to Castel Gandolfo and, at a later date, he will take up residence in a monastery within the Vatican walls.
A limited set of duties normally held by the Pope, will fall to the College of Cardinals. The heads of the Curial offices will resign as well, although they will be reinstated by the new pope, as is standard. The exceptions are Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone as Camerlengo - he will continue to manage the properties of the Church; Cardinal Manuel Monteiro de Castro as Major Penitentiary; and all Holy See representatives across the world. The vicars-general of the Diocese of Rome, Cardinals Angelo Comastri and Agostino Vallini, will also continue in their pastoral duties.
The major event of the sede vacante will of course be the conclave to elect the new Pope. During today’s press briefing, Fr. Federico Lombardi said that this will take place in mid-March, and we’ll have a new Pope before Easter. Barring any deaths, 117 cardinal electors will travel to Rome to participate in the conclave.
Several cardinals and other officials will have specific duties in the conclave. The Dean of the College Cardinals, being over 80, will not be present, so his duties will be taken over by Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re. Also accompanying the cardinals will be Msgr. Guido Marini, the Papal Master of Ceremonies. He will lock the door of the Sistine Chapel, after calling “Extra omnes!”, “Everybody (who is not an elector), out!”. Archbishop Lorenzo Baldisseri, the secretary of the College of Cardinals, will also be present. Neither of them will, however, attend the actual voting.
The conclave may take several days and will take place in utter secrecy. Although the electors are not obliged to elect one of their own, they most probably will. On this page I provide a list of members of the College of Cardinals. The names in bold are those of cardinal electors at this moment. One name will be removed from that list, as Cardinal Lubomyr Husar will reach the age of 80 before the Pope’s retirement. A closer look at the electors and some guesses about the future will follow later.
Photo credit: [1] Visibly aged since his election, Pope Benedict pictured during a visit to a seminary in Rome, last week.
Although much of the attention was on the prefect of the house, there was more in today’s ceremonies at St. Peter’s Basilica.
It was the Gänswein Show, certainly, but not only that. The popular new Prefect of the Papal Household was made an archbishop yesterday, but so were three others: Fortunatus Nwachukwu, the former Head of Protocol at the Secretariat of State who will take up duties as Apostolic Nuncio to Nicaragua; Nicolas Thevenin, formerly a Protonotary in the Apostolic Household and now the new Nuncio to Guatemala; and Angelo Zani, the new Secretary for the Congregation for Catholic Education.
The four new archbishops were consecrated by Pope Benedict XVI, with Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone and Zenon Grocholewski serving as co-consecrators. And it is from the former of these that the meat of the day comes: like previous Epiphany homilies, this year‘s again strongly ties the office of bishops into the feast of the Epiphany. Taking the Epiphany as the feast of the destination of the pilgrimage of the people of God, the Pope writes, “It is the task of the Bishop in this pilgrimage not merely to walk beside the others, but to go before them, showing the way.”
The Holy Father than poses the concrete question of whether we can see the Magi as examples of ”what a Bishop is and how he is to carry out his task.”
“Here we come to the question: What sort of man must he be, upon whom hands are laid in episcopal ordination in the Church of Jesus Christ? We can say that he must above all be a man concerned for God, for only then will he also be truly concerned about men. Inversely, we could also say that a Bishop must be a man concerned for others, one who is concerned about what happens to them. He must be a man for others. But he can only truly be so if he is a man seized by God, if concern for God has also become for him concern for God’s creature who is man. Like the Wise Men from the East, a Bishop must not be someone who merely does his job and is content with that. No, he must be gripped by God’s concern for men and women. He must in some way think and feel with God. Human beings have an innate restlessness for God, but this restlessness is a participation in God’s own restlessness for us. Since God is concerned about us, he follows us even to the crib, even to the Cross. “Thou with weary steps hast sought me, crucified hast dearly bought me, may thy pains not be in vain”, the Church prays in the Dies Irae. The restlessness of men for God and hence the restlessness of God for men must unsettle the Bishop. This is what we mean when we say that, above all else, the Bishop must be a man of faith. For faith is nothing less than being interiorly seized by God, something which guides us along the pathways of life. Faith draws us into a state of being seized by the restlessness of God and it makes us pilgrims who are on an inner journey towards the true King of the world and his promise of justice, truth and love. On this pilgrimage the Bishop must go ahead, he must be the guide pointing out to men and women the way to faith, hope and love.”
There’s plenty more food for thought, and not only for bishops, in the homily. Read the English text via the link above, or a Dutch translation via RKDocumenten.nl here.
Opening the thirteenth general congregation on Tuesday morning, Archbishop Nikola Eterovic read a special message from the 90-year-old bishop of Fengxiang in China, Msgr. Lucas Ly Jingfeng, who wrote:
“Most Reverend and Excellent Fathers of the XIII Assembly of the Synod,
I would like to congratulate you, who could participate at the Synod and give homage to the Sepulcher of Saint Peter. I am very sad that you could not listen to any of the voices of the Chinese Church. Wishing to share at least some words with you, and above all with our Pope Benedict XVI, I am sending this brief message. I would like to say that our Church in China, in particular the laity, has always maintained up to today piety, faithfulness, sincerity and devotion to the first Christians, even while undergoing fifty years of persecutions. I would also like to add that I pray intensely and constantly to God the Omnipotent so that our piety, our faithfulness, our sincerity and our devotion may turn around tepidness, unfaithfulness and the secularization that have arisen abroad because of an openness and freedom without reins. In the Year of the Faith, in your synodal discussions you can see how our faith in China could be maintained unfailingly until today. And as the great Chinese philosopher Lao Tse said: “Just as calamity generates prosperity, thus in weakness calamity hides itself”. In the Church outside of China, tepidity, unfaithfulness and secularization of the faithful has spread to much of the clergy. Instead, in the Chinese Church the laity is more pious than the clergy. Could not perhaps piety, faithfulness, sincerity and the devotion of the Christian laity shake up the external clergy? I was very moved by the lament by Pope Benedict XVI: “As we know, in vast areas of the earth faith risks being extinguished, like a flame that is no longer fed. We are facing a profound crisis of faith, a loss of the religious sense that constitutes the greatest challenge to the Church today. The renewal of faith must therefore take priority in the commitment of the entire Church in our time” (Speech by the Holy Father Benedict XVI to the participants of the plenary of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, January 27th 2012). However, I believe that our faith as Chinese Christians could console the Pope. I will not mention politics, which is always transeunte.
Lucas LY”
A loving and heartfelt message from the Church in China.
Following this, interventions continued, by 22 Synod fathers and 7 auditors in the morning sessions. The first speaker was Telesphore Cardinal Toppo, archbishop of Ranchi in India, who pulled few punches in his call towards religious congregation to become missionary again:
“I would like to make a humble appeal to the religious orders to become missionary again! In the history of evangelization, all the religious orders led by the Holy Spirit have done outstanding and marvelous work. Can we say the same of the Religious Congregations today? Could it be that they have begun working like Multinationals, doing very good and necessary work to meet the material needs of humanity, but have forgotten that the primary purpose of their founding was to bring the kerygma, the Gospel, to a lost world? We must appreciate many Youth Groups and new Ecclesial Movements who are taking up the challenge. But, in my opinion this Synod must appeal to the Religious men and women to explicitly and directly take up the work of evangelization and transmission of faith in collaboration with the local bishops! I would also like to call upon the Sacred Congregation for Consecrated life to be pro active in promoting the sensus ecclesiae among all religious.”
Bishop Joseph Zziwa of Kiyinda-Mityana in Uganda called for the Church to fight for the return of religious education in schools, identifying the problem as follows:
“[I]n some countries, in recent years, catechesis or teaching religion has been sidelined or removed from the education system even in Catholic-founded Schools or institutions of learning. The situation is aggravated in public institutions where there are no programs of catechesis or Christian religious education at all for our Catholic students. Religious education is considered to be a private matter, to be attended to only in the church or at home.”
This is certainly the situation in the west, not least here in the Netherlands.
A topic that some noted seemed to be missing from the Synod deliberations, was touched upon by Archbishop Geraldo Lyrio Rocha, of Mariana in Brazil, when he said:
“As the liturgy is the special place where the presence of the Gospel is alive and therefore the privileged place for education in the faith, or rather “the permanent holy mystagogy of the Church”, this must appear in the very manner in which it is celebrated. The fascinating and contagious beauty of the mystery hidden in rites and symbols must be capable of being expressed in all its strength for the liturgy to truly evangelize. Therefore the new evangelization depends to a great extent on the capacity to make the liturgy the source of spiritual life. Probably our most demanding task and the greatest challenge is to succeed in ensuring that our liturgical celebrations are ever more beautiful and transparent in their divine beauty, source of new and renewing strength that brings joy and hope to the Christian, in order to live in Christ and in the love of the Lord.”
Without the liturgy, the earthly reflection of the divine worship of God, we are unable to know and relate to our heavenly Father, let alone let others come to know Him.
Archbishop Ignatius Suharyo Hardjoatmodjo, of Jakarta in Indonesia, shares a personal anecdote to illustrate that evangelisation is sometimes as simple as leading by example:
“I would like to share with you a simple experience I had during my visit to a parish where I met a local catechist. I asked him, “How many catechumens do you have?” I was surprised to hear that he had more than ninety catechumens. It was quite a lot. I asked him further, “Have you ever asked your catechumens why they wish to be baptized into the Catholic Church?” He answered, “Many of them said that they were touched by the way Catholics pray during public events such as wedding feasts or funeral services”. The prayers are so touching to their hearts, because in those occasions the invocations and benedictions are delivered in their vernacular mother tongue so that they readily understand the content, whereas before they usually heard prayers recited in a foreign language, as Muslims pray in Arabic.”
One of the auditors, experts in various fields, who offered an intervention, was Mikhail Fateev of a St. Petersburg, Russia, television channel. He pointed at that, i the necessary ecumenical outreach in Russia people are less interested in meeting ‘fellow Christians’ than ‘Catholic Christians’:
“[I]n search for unity we should not reject or forget our Catholic identity. The people are more ready to speak with us as exactly with the Catholics, not as with “common Christians”. We could see this after a meeting organized by the lay Catholics in one of the largest bookstores of Saint Petersburg. The event attracted much interest in media. So we decided to start a series of public meetings and discussions on Catholic Church, its faith and traditions. We, Catholics, went out to meet the people and were met with a great interest!”
Something to keep in mind in our own ecumenical efforts: our own identity is the first step towards commonality.
At the start of the afternoon session, Secretary of State Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone spoke and announced a delegation to Syria to express the Holy See’s solidarity with the Syrian people, their spiritual closeness to the Christians there, and to encourage an agreement to resolve the ongoing civil war. The delegation is set to leave for Damascus next week, and will consist of Laurent Cardinal Monsengwo Pasinya (Archbishop of Kinshasa), Jean-Louis Cardinal Tauran (President of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue), Timothy Cardinal Dolan (Archbishop of New York), Bishop Fabio Suescun Mutis (Military Ordinar of Colombia), Bishop Joseph Nguyen Nang (Bishop of Phat Diem), Archbishop Dominique Mamberti (Secretary for Relations with States) and Msgr. Alberto Ortega (official of the Secretariat of State).
Nine interventions followed in the course of the fourteenth general congregation, including one by Bishop Everard de Jong (pictured, far left), the single Dutch delegate to the Synod. He spoke about the importance of prayer, especially to the Holy Spirit, in the new evangelisation. “It was Pentecost that started the first evangelization, and we need a new Pentecost,” he said, suggesting also that the Holy Father introduce Benedictine prayers at the end of Mass, as was standard in the past, or perhaps a constant novena to the Holy Spirit.
“We do not only have to present the gospel and the catechism, but have to promote the spiritual exercises, in which we confront people with the Jesus of the gospels and the Church, and help them to compare the influence of His Spirit in their lives with the outcomes of a more hedonistic way of life (cfr. Ga. 5:29-23). Thus they will be led to the knowledge and recognition of the objective truth of their human nature, its deepest desires, and God in their conscience. In this way they will discover St. Peter and his successors, and the church (Cf. Bl. John Henry Card. Newman (1801-1890). This means we should give priests and religious a better spiritual formation, in order to be spiritual directors, to be real spiritual fathers and mothers.”
Bishop de Jong also spoke about family and life:
“Families are essential in the transmission of the gospel. In this context our society does not know sin anymore. Still, sin has its influence on the openness to the gospel-message. Pornography, sexuality outside marriage of man and woman, contraception, abortion, will close the heart. Who, indeed, can say yes to God, the giver of life in abundance, if he or she, consciously or unconsciously, says no to human life? This means that the Church should courageously promote the gospel of life, including the theology of the body, natural family planning, and at the same time announce the very merciful God.”
After the interventions from the Synod fathers, six fraternal delegates and one special guest also offered their thoughts, among them Brother Alois, the prior of Taizé, who spoke about the need for communion as a fruitful basis for hope and faith.
Photo credit: [2] Wilson Dias/ABr, [4] Lidy Peters/RKK
