Saturday, May 26, 2012 11:07:56 PM
Vatican Bank Chief Ousted After Money-Laundering Scandal
Head of the Vatican bank Ettore Gotti Tedeschi.
Andrew Medichini/AP Photo
By Flavia Krause-Jackson and Lorenzo Totaro - May 25, 2012 9:58 AM CT
The Vatican bank, whose reputation took a blow over an investigation into money laundering, has fired Chairman Ettore Gotti Tedeschi after a tenure stained by a financial scandal.
In a vote of no-confidence, the board of directors unanimously agreed to remove Tedeschi, a Banco Santander SA (SAN) banker who took the job in 2009, from his post for failing “to carry out various duties of primary importance,” according to a statement yesterday by Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi.
Tedeschi said he was “torn” between wanting to explain the truth and not upsetting Pope Benedict XVI, according to an interview with Italian news agency Ansa today. “My love for the Pope prevails even over defending my reputation, which has been cowardly questioned,” he was cited as saying.
The bank, which is formally called the Institute for the Works of Religion, said it’s now hunting for a replacement who can “restore” relations with the financial community. Set up in 1942 by Pope Pius XII to manage the Vatican’s finances, the bank, known by its Italian initials as the IOR, reports directly to the pope.
Money-Laundering Probe
After barely a year in office, Tedeschi, who also teaches ethics in finance at Milan’s Catholic University, was taken by surprise when Italian prosecutors in 2010 seized 23 million euros ($29 million) from a Rome bank account registered to the IOR amid suspicions of money-laundering violations.
He and Director General Paolo Cipriani were placed under investigation for allegedly omitting data in wire transfers from an Italian account. The publication this month of confidential leaked documents in a book titled “Your Holiness” by journalist Gianluigi Nuzzi also painted a poor picture of Tedeschi as the man in charge of the church’s money.
Lombardi said today that Vatican authorities had detained a layman for alleged possession of secret papal documents, adding that the case was not related to Tedeschi.
The suspect was “in a state of arrest” and being questioned by Vatican investigators, Lombardi said by phone. Il Foglio newspaper identified the man as the pope’s chamberlain, citing unidentified church officials in a report posted on its website.
Calls for Transparency
The Italian prosecutors’ probe triggered calls to bring the city-state in line with European Union financial rules and become more transparent.
Tedeschi responded by saying the investigation was yet another example of the Catholic Church coming under “fierce attack.” At the time, Pope Benedict XVI was beset by allegations of sexual abuse of minors by priests.
The cardinals on the IOR’s governing council are to meet today to decide on the next steps, according to the Vatican statement.
The institute is no stranger to scandal. It was implicated in the fraudulent bankruptcy of Banco Ambrosiano in 1982. The bank’s former Chairman Roberto Calvi, dubbed “God’s banker,” was found hanged under London’s Blackfriars Bridge in June of that year. The Vatican paid $240 million to compensate Ambrosiano’s account holders without admitting any wrongdoing.
To contact the reporters on this story: Flavia Krause-Jackson in United Nations at fjackson@bloomberg.net Lorenzo Totaro in Rome at ltotaro@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: John Walcott at jwalcott9@bloomberg.net Craig Stirling at cstirling1@bloomberg.net
©2012 BLOOMBERG L.P.
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Vatican bank chief ousted in no-confidence vote
By NICOLE WINFIELD
The Associated Press
May 24, 2012, 7:18PM ET
VATICAN CITY
The president of the Vatican bank has effectively been ousted after receiving a unanimous vote of no-confidence from bank overseers for having leaked documents and failed to do his job at a critical time in the Holy See's efforts to show financial transparency, the Vatican and officials said.
Ettore Gotti Tedeschi has been a polarizing figure ever since he was named president of the bank, known as the Institute for Religious Works, or IOR, in 2009. He is under investigation for alleged money laundering by Italian magistrates, but the investigation isn't believed to have factored into the decision since the Vatican considers the probe to be motivated by outside political interests.
The Vatican said in a statement Thursday that the vote was taken because of Gotti Tedeschi's failure to fulfill the "primary functions of his office." He himself has told prosecutors that he barely paid attention to the bank's works, showing up only two days a week while tending to his primary position as head of Spain's Banco Santander's Italian unit in Milan.
In addition, Gotti Tedeschi was found to have leaked confidential documents to serve his personal and political interests, according to a person familiar with the Vatican's investigation. The person requested anonymity because he was not authorized to speak about the matter.
The Vatican is in the midst of a scandal over leaked documents and has begun a criminal investigation into the source of the leaks, as well as appointed a commission of cardinals to get to the bottom of it.
In the statement, the Vatican said the board had grown increasingly concerned about the governance of the bank and that the situation had deteriorated recently.
During a regularly scheduled board meeting Thursday, the five superintendents, who include the former No. 2 at Deutsche Bank, Ronaldo Hermann Schmitz, and Carl Anderson, head of the Knights of Columbus, a major U.S. Catholic fundraising organization, unanimously adopted a no-confidence motion and recommended that Gotti Tedeschi's mandate be terminated.
His fate isn't final. On Friday the cardinals who sit on the IOR's governing council are to meet to consider the board's decision. While it wasn't clear if they could ignore the no-confidence vote, the Vatican made clear the search was already on for a replacement.
"The council is now looking forward to search for a new and excellent president who will help the institute rebuild relationships between the institute and the financial community based on mutual respect based on internationally accepted banking standards," the IOR said.
The no-confidence vote comes at a critical time for the Holy See in its efforts to shed the IOR's image as a secretive tax haven battered by years of scandal.
The Holy See is heading into a July meeting of Moneyval, a Council of Europe committee that will determine whether it has complied with international norms to fight money laundering and terror financing. Transparency of the IOR's finances has been one of several criteria that the Moneyval evaluators have investigated.
It wasn't clear if the timing of Gotti Tedeschi's ouster was aimed at sending a message to the Moneyval investigators, but just last week the Holy See met with them to discuss the preliminary findings of their report.
Gotti Tedeschi has long painted himself as the symbol of Vatican financial transparency, but the vote Thursday indicated that his primary collaborators on the board had found him to be anything but. He was faulted for not keeping the board of superintendents apprised of the work of the bank, among other failings.
Recently, he raised eyebrows when he made a joke about Hitler, war and economics.
Gotti Tedeschi was a frequent contributor to the Vatican newspaper and went on a very public speaking tour extolling the benefits of a morality-based financial system and citing frequently from the pope's encyclical on the subject, "Charity in Truth."
Italian authorities placed Gotti Tedeschi and the IOR's top manager under investigation in September 2010 and seized (EURO)23 ($30 million) from a Vatican bank account at the Rome branch of Credito Artigiano Spa, after the bank informed the Bank of Italy about possible violations of anti-money laundering norms.
Gotti Tedeschi and the Vatican have denied any wrongdoing, calling the investigation a misunderstanding. No charges have been filed, and the money was subsequently released after the Vatican passed a series of measures to combat money laundering and create a financial watchdog authority -- key requirements for the Moneyval process.
The Vatican bank was founded in 1942 by Pope Pius XII to manage assets destined for religious or charitable works. Located in a tower just inside the gates of Vatican City, it also manages the pension system for the Vatican's thousands of employees.
The bank is not open to the public. Depositors are usually limited to Vatican employees, religious orders and people who transfer money for the pope's charities.
The Vatican bank's finances have long been shrouded in secrecy. Most famously, it was implicated in a scandal over the collapse of the Banco Ambrosiano in the 1980s in one of Italy's largest fraud cases. Roberto Calvi, the head of Banco Ambrosiano, was found hanging from Blackfriars Bridge in London in 1982 in circumstances that remain mysterious.
Banco Ambrosiano collapsed following the disappearance of $1.3 billion in loans the bank had made to several dummy companies in Latin America. The Vatican had provided letters of credit for the loans.
While denying any wrongdoing, the Vatican bank agreed to pay $250 million to Ambrosiano's creditors.
Copyright 2012 The Associated Press
http://www.businessweek.com/ap/2012-05/D9UVC3GG2.htm
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Pope’s Butler Formally Charged With Leaks
By REUTERS
Published: May 26, 2012
Paolo Gabriele, left, butler to Pope Benedict XVI, in 2008.
Luca Bruno/Associated Press
By REUTERS
Published: May 26, 2012
VATICAN CITY (Reuters) — Vatican magistrates formally charged the butler of Pope Benedict XVI on Saturday with illegal possession of secret documents and said a wider investigation would take place to see if any accomplices had helped him leak them.
Some of the documents that the butler, Paolo Gabriele, is suspected of leaking claim cronyism and corruption in Vatican contracts, in a scandal that has come to be known as VatiLeaks. A Vatican statement referred to Mr. Gabriele, 46, who until his arrest on Wednesday night had been serving the pope meals and helping him dress, as “the defendant.”
It said that a preliminary inquiry had become a formal investigation, meaning that Mr. Gabriele had been formally charged, and that he had chosen two lawyers to defend him.
Because the Vatican has no jail, Mr. Gabriele was being held in one of the three so-called secure rooms in the offices of the Vatican’s tiny police force inside the walled city-state.
The Vatican promised that he would have “all the juridical guarantees foreseen by the criminal code of the State of Vatican City.”
A Vatican official said the investigation would try to determine whether Mr. Gabriele had acted alone.
The pope was said to be “pained” that someone in his household had been accused of betraying him. Mr. Gabriele lived in the Vatican with his wife and three children.
Commentators in Italian newspapers said they doubted that Mr. Gabriele could have acted alone, and some speculated that he had been a pawn in an internal power struggle.
“Never has the sense of disorientation in the Catholic Church reached these levels,” Alberto Melloni, a historian of the Roman Catholic Church, wrote in the newspaper Corriere della Sera. “But now there is something even more, a sense of systemic disorder.”
If convicted, Mr. Gabriele could face a sentence of up to 30 years for illegal possession of documents of a head of state. He would be likely to serve any time in an Italian jail because of an agreement between Italy and the Vatican.
The scandal involves the leaking of a string of documents to the Italian news media in January and February, including personal letters to the pope. Some of the documents claimed corruption, mismanagement and cronyism in the awarding of contracts for work in the Vatican and internal disagreement on the management of the Vatican bank.
Mr. Gabriele worked in the papal apartments of the Apostolic Palace, serving at the papal tables, handing rosaries to visiting dignitaries and riding in the first seat of the popemobile at papal audiences. He was privy to the goings-on in the most private rooms in the Vatican.
The pope had ordered several investigations, including one led by the Vatican police and another by a commission of cardinals.
The leaked documents included letters by an archbishop who was transferred to Washington after reporting what he saw as a web of corruption and cronyism, a memo that put a number of cardinals in a bad light and documents suggesting that there were internal conflicts about the Vatican Bank.
Private letters to the Vatican secretary of state and the pope from Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, a former deputy governor of Vatican City and currently the ambassador to Washington, showed that Archbishop Viganò had been transferred [ http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/27/world/europe/archbishop-viganos-transfer-hints-at-vatican-power-struggle.html ] after he exposed what he described as the awarding of contracts to Italian contractors at inflated prices.
Copyright 2012 Reuters
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/27/world/europe/pope-benedicts-butler-formally-charged-with-leaks.html
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In Vatican Whodunit, a Punch Line of a Suspect
Paolo Gabriele, front left, with Pope Benedict XVI, at St. Peter's Square in Vatican City on Wednesday.
Claudio Peri/European Pressphoto Agency
According to news reports, Mr. Gabriele, a butler who serves in the apartments of Pope Benedict XVI, was arrested Friday in connection with the leak of confidential Vatican letters.
Alessandro Bianchi/Reuters
By RACHEL DONADIO
Published: May 25, 2012
ROME — A mysterious source named Maria. A room furnished with a single chair where sensitive Vatican [ http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/r/roman_catholic_church/index.html ] documents are turned over to an investigative journalist at regular meetings. The arrest of the pope’s butler. Perhaps the greatest breach in centuries in the wall of secrecy that surrounds the Vatican.
An on-again-off-again scandal that the Italian press has called VatiLeaks burst into the open on Friday with the arrest by Vatican gendarmes of a man, identified in news reports as Paolo Gabriele, the pope’s butler, who the Vatican said was in possession of confidential documents and was suspected of leaking private letters, some of which were addressed to Pope Benedict XVI [ http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/b/benedict_xvi/index.html ].
The arrest follows by a day the ouster of the president of the Vatican Bank, Ettore Gotti Tedeschi, amid conflicts over how to bring the secretive institution in line with international transparency standards [ http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/31/world/europe/31vatican.html ] and days after the publication of a sensational book, “Your Holiness: The Secret Papers of Benedict XVI,” in which the journalist Gianluigi Nuzzi, aided by “Maria,” discloses a huge cache of private Vatican correspondence, many revealing clashes over the management at the Vatican bank and allegations of corruption and cronyism.
The letters, which have made their way into the Italian news media in recent months, draw a portrait of an ancient institution in chaotic disarray behind its high, stately walls, where various factions vie for power, influence and financial control in the twilight years of Benedict’s papacy.
“Of course there are problems, big problems,” said Andrea Tornielli, a Vatican expert for the Italian daily La Stampa and its Web site, Vatican Insider [ http://vaticaninsider.lastampa.it/homepage/ ]. “What is happening now shows that there’s a crisis.”
It was not clear whether the bank president’s ouster and the arrest of the man found with confidential documents were directly related, although Mr. Nuzzi’s book includes various memos from Mr. Gotti Tedeschi about the Vatican bank.
The Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, declined to identify the person who was arrested, saying only that he was not a priest or member of a religious order and that he had been detained for further investigation. (This year, the pope called for investigations into the leaks by the Vatican police and a committee of cardinals.)
But Italian news media reported that he was Mr. Gabriele, 40, and a butler in the papal household. Some publications even showed images of him holding a white umbrella above the pope [ http://www.corriere.it/gallery/cronache/05-2012/maggiordomo/1/sempre-fianco-papa_0be30612-a67e-11e1-adca-f1e67e46c97e.shtml#3 ] and pouring him wine [ http://video.repubblica.it/dossier/scandalo-vaticano/vaticano-paolo-gabriele-serve-a-tavola-il-papa/96419/94801 ] at dinner.
The twist that “the butler did it” was fully worthy of a whodunit that began earlier this year when documents began appearing in the Italian press. In one, a Sicilian cardinal, writing in German in order to be more stealthy, said he had heard in China about a bizarre plot to kill the pope. At the time, Father Lombardi called the accounts “delirious and incomprehensible.”
In another letter from 2011 [ http://www.ilfattoquotidiano.it/tag/vigano/ ] that appeared in the Italian press this year and is also published in Mr. Nuzzi’s book, Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, then the deputy governor of Vatican City [ http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/vaticancity/index.html ], wrote directly to Benedict. In it, he argued that transferring him to another post would impede his efforts to fight “corruption and abuse” in various Vatican offices, sending the wrong signal about in his efforts to rein in cronyism in the awarding of contracts for construction work at the Vatican.
Nevertheless, the Vatican secretary of state, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, named Archbishop Viganò papal nuncio to Washington, where he has had to contend with multimillion-dollar lawsuits against American dioceses over the sexual abuse scandal that has plagued the Roman Catholic Church, according to Mr. Nuzzi’s book.
At a news conference this week, Mr. Nuzzi said he believed that his source had been motivated by “courage, as well as the unbearable complicity with people that are committing the most serious crimes.”
He added: “I think that 20 years ago this book would have never come out. There are documents that hint at relations between states, and that’s why I think they are very relevant; they are not private documents regarding the Holy Father or one of the cardinals.”
The release of documents in which Vatican officials discuss one of the great unsolved mysteries in Italy, the 1983 disappearance of Emanuela Orlandi, the 15-year-old daughter of a Vatican employee led to the reopening of a criminal investigation [ http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/15/world/europe/opening-of-crypt-revives-a-mystery.html ].
The book also provides a unique window into the nexus between Italian banking and media power and the Vatican. In one letter from last Christmas, Bruno Vespa, Italy’s most well-known television host, sent a check for $12,500 to the pope’s private secretary, Msgr. Georg Gänswein, “a small sum at the disposal of the pope’s charity,” and asked when he could have a private audience. The director of Italy’s Intesa San Paolo bank, Giovanni Bazoli, sent a $32,000 check, “with my most deferential salutations.”
Other letters addressed to Monsignor Gänswein are written in obsequious baroque Italian, in which everyone from Jesuits to officials in the government of former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi to Mercedes-Benz directors responsible for maintaining the popemobile write seeking favors, recommendations and most of all, the pope’s ear.
But other documents hint at more complex dealings. In one letter, Mr. Gotti Tedeschi defends himself to Monsignor Gänswein after he and another Vatican bank official had been placed under investigation by Rome magistrates in September 2010 for having failed to adequately explain the origins of funds transferred [ http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/30/world/europe/30vatican.html ] from one account held by the Vatican bank to two others it holds.
Since so many documents have been leaked from the Vatican this year, there were some doubts expressed that the butler arrested on Friday was the true — or only — source. “It doesn’t seem likely that he is the only one responsible for VatiLeaks because many of the documents that came out didn’t ever pass through the pope’s apartment where he works,” said Paolo Rodari, a Vatican expert for the Italian daily Il Foglio. “His arrest seems more the Vatican’s desire to find a scapegoat.”
Cardinal Bertone has emerged as a central, contentious figure in the VatiLeaks drama. Many critics, including some inside the Vatican, see him as a poor administrator who as the Vatican’s C.E.O. has struggled to manage the scandal-ridden papacy of a German intellectual with little interest in day-to-day affairs of state. Vatican observers say that many of the leaked documents are aimed at undermining the cardinal’s influence.
That clash has played out most visibly in the controversy over the Vatican bank, which has struggled to comply with international standards to stop money laundering. Defenders of Mr. Gotti Tedeschi see him as trying to improve the transparency of the Vatican finances, while they see Cardinal Bertone as trying to impede his efforts.
In a statement on Thursday, the Vatican said simply that the five-member board of the Vatican bank had voted no confidence in Mr. Gotti Tedeschi “for not having carried out functions of primary importance for his role.”
Others familiar with the Vatican bank said that Mr. Gotti Tedeschi had not been fully involved in its oversight because he maintained his full-time job as the head of Italian operations for Spain’s Banco Santander in Milan.
On Friday, Reuters reported that Mr. Gotti Tedeschi had said, “I have paid for my transparency,” while the Ansa news agency reported [ http://www.ansa.it/web/notizie/rubriche/politica/2012/05/24/-VATICANO-GOTTI-TEDESCHI-DIMESSO-PRESIDENTE-IOR-_6926868.html ] that he was torn between “telling the truth and not disturbing the pope.”
Gaia Pianigiani contributed reporting.
© 2012 The New York Times Company
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/26/world/europe/popes-butler-arrested-in-vatican-letters-leak.html [with comments]
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Vatican Raises Caysasay Shrine Status
By LESLIE ANN G. AQUINO
May 25, 2012, 9:16pm
MANILA, Philippines --- Devotees who visit and pray at the Shrine of the Our Lady of Caysasay in Taal, Batangas, will now be able to receive the same plenary indulgence granted to pilgrims who visit the ancient church of St. Mary Major in Rome.
In a decree, the Vatican has granted to Caysasay Shrine the same special privilege attached to the Roman Basilica.
The decree was signed by Cardinal Bernard Francis Law, archpriest-emeritus of St. Mary Major, according to an article posted on the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) website.
Plenary indulgence, according to Canon Law, is the remission of sins of one whose offenses have already been forgiven.
But to gain the plenary indulgence, a penitent must fulfill certain requirements, including going to confession and praying for the intention of the Pope.
Fr. Nonie Dolor, the archdiocesan media director, said the Vatican's pronouncement was timely as the archdiocese is preparing for the grand celebration of its 40th anniversary.
He said a Mass of Declaration to be presided by Lipa Archbishop Ramon C. Arguelles will be celebrated at the Shrine on June 3 to formally announce to the public the special privilege granted by the Vatican.
The ceremonies will include the reading of the decree and placing the original Latin text and its translation as a marker at the Shrine's entrance.
The Marian icon now known as Our Lady of Caysasay was found by a local fisherman at the Pansipit River, according to a local legend.
The people had the Marian image enshrined at Labac where devotees flock every Saturday to pay homage.
Miracles attributed to the image attracted many devotees to make annual pilgrimages to the Shrine, especially Chinese Catholics who regard the image of Our Lady of Caysasay as their own.
Copyright 2012. Manila Bulletin
http://www.mb.com.ph/articles/360454/vatican-raises-caysasay-shrine-status
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Vatican gives special status to Philippine shrine
By Jerome Aning
Philippine Daily Inquirer/Asia News Network
Saturday, May 26, 2012
Devotees making a pilgrimage to the Shrine of Our Lady of Caysasay in the historic town of Taal in Batangas will now be able to receive the same plenary indulgence granted to pilgrims who visit the ancient basilica of St. Mary Major (Sta. Maria Maggiore) in Rome.
According to the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines (CBCP), the Vatican has issued a decree signed by Cardinal Bernard Francis Law, archpriest emeritus of St. Mary Major, granting the Caysasay Shrine the same special privilege attached to the Roman basilica.
Pilgrims who visit and pray at the Shrine will receive plenary indulgence provided they fulfill the prescribed conditions of going to confession, participating in a Mass and praying for the intention of the Holy Father. A plenary indulgence is a complete remission of all temporal punishment due to sin.
The CBCP quoted Fr. Nonie Dolor, the Lipa Archdiocese media director, saying that the Vatican's pronouncement was "very timely" as the archdiocese was preparing for the grand celebration of its 40th anniversary.
Dolor said a Mass of Declaration to be presided by Lipa Archbishop Ramon Arguelles will be celebrated at the Shrine on June 3 to formally announce to the public the special privilege granted by the Vatican.
The ceremonies will include the reading of the decree and placing the original Latin text and its translation as a marker at the Shrine's entrance, according to Shrine rector Fr. Jose Maria Loyola Cumagun.
On Saturdays, the day set for devotion to the Our Lady of Caysasay, the otherwise sleepy shrine becomes vibrant when pilgrims flock to the place to pay homage to the Blessed Virgin.
The Marian icon was said to have been found by a local fisherman at the Pansipit River, according to a local legend.
The people had the Marian image enshrined at Labac where devotees flock every Saturday to pay homage.
Miracles attributed to the image attracted many devotees to make annual pilgrimages to the Shrine, especially Chinese Catholics.
Last year, a similar declaration was granted by the Vatican to the shrine of the Our Lady of Manaoag in Pangasinan.
The St. Mary Major basilica is one of the Catholic major basilicas that formed traditional Seven Pilgim Churches of Rome.
The basilica was one of the first built in honor of the Blessed Virgin to highlight her being declared as Mother of God by the Council of Ephesus in 431 AD. The basilica hosts pieces of wood said to have come from the Nativity crib.
Copyright © 2012 Singapore Press Holdings Ltd. Co.
http://www.asiaone.com/News/AsiaOne%2BNews/Asia/Story/A1Story20120526-348560.html
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Vatican publishes rules for verifying Marian apparitions
A statue of Mary and a crucifix are seen on Apparition Hill in Medjugorje, Bosnia-Herzegovina, in this Feb. 28, 2011, file photo. The site is where six village children first claimed to see Mary in June 1981. The Vatican has released translations in five languages of a 1978 document on rules for dealing with alleged Marian apparitions. The document had previously only been available in Latin.
(CNS photo/Paul Haring)
By Carol Glatz
Catholic News Service
Posted By The Catholic Free Press May 25, 2012 | 5:58 pm
VATICAN CITY (CNS) — To help bishops determine the credibility of alleged Marian apparitions, the Vatican has translated and published procedural rules from 1978 that had previously been available only in Latin.
The “Norms regarding the manner of proceedings in the discernment of presumed apparitions or revelations” were approved by Pope Paul VI in 1978 and distributed to the world’s bishops, but never officially published or translated into modern languages.
However, over the past three decades, unauthorized translations have appeared around the world, according to U.S. Cardinal William J. Levada, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
The doctrinal office “believes it is now opportune to publish these ‘Norms,’ providing translations in the principle languages” so as to “aid the pastors of the Catholic Church in their difficult task of discerning presumed apparitions, revelations, messages or, more generally, extraordinary phenomena of presumed supernatural origin,” the cardinal wrote in a note dated December 2011.
His note and the newly translated norms were published recently on the congregation’s website www.doctrinafidei.va.
Cardinal Levada wrote that he hoped the norms “might be useful to theologians and experts in this field of the lived experience of the church, whose delicacy requires an ever-more thorough consideration.”
More than 1,500 visions of Mary have been reported around the world, but in the past century only nine cases have received church approval as worthy of belief.
Determining the veracity of an apparition falls to the local bishop, and the Vatican’s doctrinal congregation established the norms to guide the process.
Granting approval is never brief, with some cases taking hundreds of years. Visionaries and witnesses must be questioned and the fruits of the apparitions, such as conversions, miracles and healings, must be examined.
According to the norms, the local bishop should set up a commission of experts, including theologians, canonists, psychologists and doctors, to help him determine the facts, the mental, moral and spiritual wholesomeness and seriousness of the visionary, and whether the message and testimony are free from theological and doctrinal error.
A bishop can come to one of three conclusions: He can determine the apparition to be true and worthy of belief; he can say it is not true, which leaves open the possibility for an appeal; or he can say that at the moment he doesn’t know and needs more help.
In the last scenario, the investigation is brought to the country’s bishops’ conference. If that body cannot come to a conclusion, the matter is turned over to the pope, who delegates the doctrinal congregation to step in and give advice or appoint others to investigate.
The alleged apparitions at Medjugorje in Bosnia-Herzegovina are an example of a situation in which the country’s bishops requested the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith to intervene.
In that case, the congregation established an international commission in 2010 to investigate the claims of six young people who said Mary had appeared to them daily beginning in 1981.
The apparitions purportedly continue and thousands travel to the small town each month to meet the alleged seers and to pray.
Pope Benedict XVI has reaffirmed that the church never requires the faithful to believe in apparitions, not even those recognized by the church.
In his note, Cardinal Levada quoted the pope saying “The criterion for judging the truth of a private revelation is its orientation to Christ himself,” in that it doesn’t lead people away from Jesus, but urges them toward closer communion with Christ and the Gospel.
The cardinal also quoted from the writings of St. John of the Cross, who emphasized that God said everything he had to say in Jesus Christ — in his one and only son and Word.
“Any person questioning God or desiring some vision or revelation would be guilty not only of foolish behavior but also of offending him, by not fixing his eyes entirely on Christ and by living with the desire for some other novelty,” the saint wrote.
Church approval of a private revelation, in essence, is just the church’s way of saying the message is not contrary to the faith or morality, it is licit to make the message public “and the faithful are authorized to give to it their prudent adhesion,” the pope said in his 2010 Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation, “Verbum Domini” (“The Word of the Lord”).
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Editor’s Note: The text of the Vatican norms in English is available online at: http://www.doctrinafidei.va/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_19780225_norme-apparizioni_en.html
The text in Spanish is available online at: http://www.doctrinafidei.va/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_19780225_norme-apparizioni_sp.html
Cardinal Levada’s preface in English is available online at: http://www.doctrinafidei.va/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_20111214_prefazione-levada_en.html
The text of the cardinal’s preface in Spanish is available online at: http://www.doctrinafidei.va/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_20111214_prefazione-levada_sp.html
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Copyright © 2012 Catholic Free Press
http://www.catholicfreepress.org/spiritual/2012/05/25/vatican-publishes-rules-for-verifying-marian-apparitions/
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Head of the Vatican bank Ettore Gotti Tedeschi.
Andrew Medichini/AP Photo
By Flavia Krause-Jackson and Lorenzo Totaro - May 25, 2012 9:58 AM CT
The Vatican bank, whose reputation took a blow over an investigation into money laundering, has fired Chairman Ettore Gotti Tedeschi after a tenure stained by a financial scandal.
In a vote of no-confidence, the board of directors unanimously agreed to remove Tedeschi, a Banco Santander SA (SAN) banker who took the job in 2009, from his post for failing “to carry out various duties of primary importance,” according to a statement yesterday by Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi.
Tedeschi said he was “torn” between wanting to explain the truth and not upsetting Pope Benedict XVI, according to an interview with Italian news agency Ansa today. “My love for the Pope prevails even over defending my reputation, which has been cowardly questioned,” he was cited as saying.
The bank, which is formally called the Institute for the Works of Religion, said it’s now hunting for a replacement who can “restore” relations with the financial community. Set up in 1942 by Pope Pius XII to manage the Vatican’s finances, the bank, known by its Italian initials as the IOR, reports directly to the pope.
Money-Laundering Probe
After barely a year in office, Tedeschi, who also teaches ethics in finance at Milan’s Catholic University, was taken by surprise when Italian prosecutors in 2010 seized 23 million euros ($29 million) from a Rome bank account registered to the IOR amid suspicions of money-laundering violations.
He and Director General Paolo Cipriani were placed under investigation for allegedly omitting data in wire transfers from an Italian account. The publication this month of confidential leaked documents in a book titled “Your Holiness” by journalist Gianluigi Nuzzi also painted a poor picture of Tedeschi as the man in charge of the church’s money.
Lombardi said today that Vatican authorities had detained a layman for alleged possession of secret papal documents, adding that the case was not related to Tedeschi.
The suspect was “in a state of arrest” and being questioned by Vatican investigators, Lombardi said by phone. Il Foglio newspaper identified the man as the pope’s chamberlain, citing unidentified church officials in a report posted on its website.
Calls for Transparency
The Italian prosecutors’ probe triggered calls to bring the city-state in line with European Union financial rules and become more transparent.
Tedeschi responded by saying the investigation was yet another example of the Catholic Church coming under “fierce attack.” At the time, Pope Benedict XVI was beset by allegations of sexual abuse of minors by priests.
The cardinals on the IOR’s governing council are to meet today to decide on the next steps, according to the Vatican statement.
The institute is no stranger to scandal. It was implicated in the fraudulent bankruptcy of Banco Ambrosiano in 1982. The bank’s former Chairman Roberto Calvi, dubbed “God’s banker,” was found hanged under London’s Blackfriars Bridge in June of that year. The Vatican paid $240 million to compensate Ambrosiano’s account holders without admitting any wrongdoing.
To contact the reporters on this story: Flavia Krause-Jackson in United Nations at fjackson@bloomberg.net Lorenzo Totaro in Rome at ltotaro@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: John Walcott at jwalcott9@bloomberg.net Craig Stirling at cstirling1@bloomberg.net
©2012 BLOOMBERG L.P.
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Vatican bank chief ousted in no-confidence vote
By NICOLE WINFIELD
The Associated Press
May 24, 2012, 7:18PM ET
VATICAN CITY
The president of the Vatican bank has effectively been ousted after receiving a unanimous vote of no-confidence from bank overseers for having leaked documents and failed to do his job at a critical time in the Holy See's efforts to show financial transparency, the Vatican and officials said.
Ettore Gotti Tedeschi has been a polarizing figure ever since he was named president of the bank, known as the Institute for Religious Works, or IOR, in 2009. He is under investigation for alleged money laundering by Italian magistrates, but the investigation isn't believed to have factored into the decision since the Vatican considers the probe to be motivated by outside political interests.
The Vatican said in a statement Thursday that the vote was taken because of Gotti Tedeschi's failure to fulfill the "primary functions of his office." He himself has told prosecutors that he barely paid attention to the bank's works, showing up only two days a week while tending to his primary position as head of Spain's Banco Santander's Italian unit in Milan.
In addition, Gotti Tedeschi was found to have leaked confidential documents to serve his personal and political interests, according to a person familiar with the Vatican's investigation. The person requested anonymity because he was not authorized to speak about the matter.
The Vatican is in the midst of a scandal over leaked documents and has begun a criminal investigation into the source of the leaks, as well as appointed a commission of cardinals to get to the bottom of it.
In the statement, the Vatican said the board had grown increasingly concerned about the governance of the bank and that the situation had deteriorated recently.
During a regularly scheduled board meeting Thursday, the five superintendents, who include the former No. 2 at Deutsche Bank, Ronaldo Hermann Schmitz, and Carl Anderson, head of the Knights of Columbus, a major U.S. Catholic fundraising organization, unanimously adopted a no-confidence motion and recommended that Gotti Tedeschi's mandate be terminated.
His fate isn't final. On Friday the cardinals who sit on the IOR's governing council are to meet to consider the board's decision. While it wasn't clear if they could ignore the no-confidence vote, the Vatican made clear the search was already on for a replacement.
"The council is now looking forward to search for a new and excellent president who will help the institute rebuild relationships between the institute and the financial community based on mutual respect based on internationally accepted banking standards," the IOR said.
The no-confidence vote comes at a critical time for the Holy See in its efforts to shed the IOR's image as a secretive tax haven battered by years of scandal.
The Holy See is heading into a July meeting of Moneyval, a Council of Europe committee that will determine whether it has complied with international norms to fight money laundering and terror financing. Transparency of the IOR's finances has been one of several criteria that the Moneyval evaluators have investigated.
It wasn't clear if the timing of Gotti Tedeschi's ouster was aimed at sending a message to the Moneyval investigators, but just last week the Holy See met with them to discuss the preliminary findings of their report.
Gotti Tedeschi has long painted himself as the symbol of Vatican financial transparency, but the vote Thursday indicated that his primary collaborators on the board had found him to be anything but. He was faulted for not keeping the board of superintendents apprised of the work of the bank, among other failings.
Recently, he raised eyebrows when he made a joke about Hitler, war and economics.
Gotti Tedeschi was a frequent contributor to the Vatican newspaper and went on a very public speaking tour extolling the benefits of a morality-based financial system and citing frequently from the pope's encyclical on the subject, "Charity in Truth."
Italian authorities placed Gotti Tedeschi and the IOR's top manager under investigation in September 2010 and seized (EURO)23 ($30 million) from a Vatican bank account at the Rome branch of Credito Artigiano Spa, after the bank informed the Bank of Italy about possible violations of anti-money laundering norms.
Gotti Tedeschi and the Vatican have denied any wrongdoing, calling the investigation a misunderstanding. No charges have been filed, and the money was subsequently released after the Vatican passed a series of measures to combat money laundering and create a financial watchdog authority -- key requirements for the Moneyval process.
The Vatican bank was founded in 1942 by Pope Pius XII to manage assets destined for religious or charitable works. Located in a tower just inside the gates of Vatican City, it also manages the pension system for the Vatican's thousands of employees.
The bank is not open to the public. Depositors are usually limited to Vatican employees, religious orders and people who transfer money for the pope's charities.
The Vatican bank's finances have long been shrouded in secrecy. Most famously, it was implicated in a scandal over the collapse of the Banco Ambrosiano in the 1980s in one of Italy's largest fraud cases. Roberto Calvi, the head of Banco Ambrosiano, was found hanging from Blackfriars Bridge in London in 1982 in circumstances that remain mysterious.
Banco Ambrosiano collapsed following the disappearance of $1.3 billion in loans the bank had made to several dummy companies in Latin America. The Vatican had provided letters of credit for the loans.
While denying any wrongdoing, the Vatican bank agreed to pay $250 million to Ambrosiano's creditors.
Copyright 2012 The Associated Press
http://www.businessweek.com/ap/2012-05/D9UVC3GG2.htm
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Pope’s Butler Formally Charged With Leaks
By REUTERS
Published: May 26, 2012
Paolo Gabriele, left, butler to Pope Benedict XVI, in 2008.
Luca Bruno/Associated Press
By REUTERS
Published: May 26, 2012
VATICAN CITY (Reuters) — Vatican magistrates formally charged the butler of Pope Benedict XVI on Saturday with illegal possession of secret documents and said a wider investigation would take place to see if any accomplices had helped him leak them.
Some of the documents that the butler, Paolo Gabriele, is suspected of leaking claim cronyism and corruption in Vatican contracts, in a scandal that has come to be known as VatiLeaks. A Vatican statement referred to Mr. Gabriele, 46, who until his arrest on Wednesday night had been serving the pope meals and helping him dress, as “the defendant.”
It said that a preliminary inquiry had become a formal investigation, meaning that Mr. Gabriele had been formally charged, and that he had chosen two lawyers to defend him.
Because the Vatican has no jail, Mr. Gabriele was being held in one of the three so-called secure rooms in the offices of the Vatican’s tiny police force inside the walled city-state.
The Vatican promised that he would have “all the juridical guarantees foreseen by the criminal code of the State of Vatican City.”
A Vatican official said the investigation would try to determine whether Mr. Gabriele had acted alone.
The pope was said to be “pained” that someone in his household had been accused of betraying him. Mr. Gabriele lived in the Vatican with his wife and three children.
Commentators in Italian newspapers said they doubted that Mr. Gabriele could have acted alone, and some speculated that he had been a pawn in an internal power struggle.
“Never has the sense of disorientation in the Catholic Church reached these levels,” Alberto Melloni, a historian of the Roman Catholic Church, wrote in the newspaper Corriere della Sera. “But now there is something even more, a sense of systemic disorder.”
If convicted, Mr. Gabriele could face a sentence of up to 30 years for illegal possession of documents of a head of state. He would be likely to serve any time in an Italian jail because of an agreement between Italy and the Vatican.
The scandal involves the leaking of a string of documents to the Italian news media in January and February, including personal letters to the pope. Some of the documents claimed corruption, mismanagement and cronyism in the awarding of contracts for work in the Vatican and internal disagreement on the management of the Vatican bank.
Mr. Gabriele worked in the papal apartments of the Apostolic Palace, serving at the papal tables, handing rosaries to visiting dignitaries and riding in the first seat of the popemobile at papal audiences. He was privy to the goings-on in the most private rooms in the Vatican.
The pope had ordered several investigations, including one led by the Vatican police and another by a commission of cardinals.
The leaked documents included letters by an archbishop who was transferred to Washington after reporting what he saw as a web of corruption and cronyism, a memo that put a number of cardinals in a bad light and documents suggesting that there were internal conflicts about the Vatican Bank.
Private letters to the Vatican secretary of state and the pope from Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, a former deputy governor of Vatican City and currently the ambassador to Washington, showed that Archbishop Viganò had been transferred [ http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/27/world/europe/archbishop-viganos-transfer-hints-at-vatican-power-struggle.html ] after he exposed what he described as the awarding of contracts to Italian contractors at inflated prices.
Copyright 2012 Reuters
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/27/world/europe/pope-benedicts-butler-formally-charged-with-leaks.html
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In Vatican Whodunit, a Punch Line of a Suspect
Paolo Gabriele, front left, with Pope Benedict XVI, at St. Peter's Square in Vatican City on Wednesday.
Claudio Peri/European Pressphoto Agency
According to news reports, Mr. Gabriele, a butler who serves in the apartments of Pope Benedict XVI, was arrested Friday in connection with the leak of confidential Vatican letters.
Alessandro Bianchi/Reuters
By RACHEL DONADIO
Published: May 25, 2012
ROME — A mysterious source named Maria. A room furnished with a single chair where sensitive Vatican [ http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/r/roman_catholic_church/index.html ] documents are turned over to an investigative journalist at regular meetings. The arrest of the pope’s butler. Perhaps the greatest breach in centuries in the wall of secrecy that surrounds the Vatican.
An on-again-off-again scandal that the Italian press has called VatiLeaks burst into the open on Friday with the arrest by Vatican gendarmes of a man, identified in news reports as Paolo Gabriele, the pope’s butler, who the Vatican said was in possession of confidential documents and was suspected of leaking private letters, some of which were addressed to Pope Benedict XVI [ http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/b/benedict_xvi/index.html ].
The arrest follows by a day the ouster of the president of the Vatican Bank, Ettore Gotti Tedeschi, amid conflicts over how to bring the secretive institution in line with international transparency standards [ http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/31/world/europe/31vatican.html ] and days after the publication of a sensational book, “Your Holiness: The Secret Papers of Benedict XVI,” in which the journalist Gianluigi Nuzzi, aided by “Maria,” discloses a huge cache of private Vatican correspondence, many revealing clashes over the management at the Vatican bank and allegations of corruption and cronyism.
The letters, which have made their way into the Italian news media in recent months, draw a portrait of an ancient institution in chaotic disarray behind its high, stately walls, where various factions vie for power, influence and financial control in the twilight years of Benedict’s papacy.
“Of course there are problems, big problems,” said Andrea Tornielli, a Vatican expert for the Italian daily La Stampa and its Web site, Vatican Insider [ http://vaticaninsider.lastampa.it/homepage/ ]. “What is happening now shows that there’s a crisis.”
It was not clear whether the bank president’s ouster and the arrest of the man found with confidential documents were directly related, although Mr. Nuzzi’s book includes various memos from Mr. Gotti Tedeschi about the Vatican bank.
The Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, declined to identify the person who was arrested, saying only that he was not a priest or member of a religious order and that he had been detained for further investigation. (This year, the pope called for investigations into the leaks by the Vatican police and a committee of cardinals.)
But Italian news media reported that he was Mr. Gabriele, 40, and a butler in the papal household. Some publications even showed images of him holding a white umbrella above the pope [ http://www.corriere.it/gallery/cronache/05-2012/maggiordomo/1/sempre-fianco-papa_0be30612-a67e-11e1-adca-f1e67e46c97e.shtml#3 ] and pouring him wine [ http://video.repubblica.it/dossier/scandalo-vaticano/vaticano-paolo-gabriele-serve-a-tavola-il-papa/96419/94801 ] at dinner.
The twist that “the butler did it” was fully worthy of a whodunit that began earlier this year when documents began appearing in the Italian press. In one, a Sicilian cardinal, writing in German in order to be more stealthy, said he had heard in China about a bizarre plot to kill the pope. At the time, Father Lombardi called the accounts “delirious and incomprehensible.”
In another letter from 2011 [ http://www.ilfattoquotidiano.it/tag/vigano/ ] that appeared in the Italian press this year and is also published in Mr. Nuzzi’s book, Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, then the deputy governor of Vatican City [ http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/vaticancity/index.html ], wrote directly to Benedict. In it, he argued that transferring him to another post would impede his efforts to fight “corruption and abuse” in various Vatican offices, sending the wrong signal about in his efforts to rein in cronyism in the awarding of contracts for construction work at the Vatican.
Nevertheless, the Vatican secretary of state, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, named Archbishop Viganò papal nuncio to Washington, where he has had to contend with multimillion-dollar lawsuits against American dioceses over the sexual abuse scandal that has plagued the Roman Catholic Church, according to Mr. Nuzzi’s book.
At a news conference this week, Mr. Nuzzi said he believed that his source had been motivated by “courage, as well as the unbearable complicity with people that are committing the most serious crimes.”
He added: “I think that 20 years ago this book would have never come out. There are documents that hint at relations between states, and that’s why I think they are very relevant; they are not private documents regarding the Holy Father or one of the cardinals.”
The release of documents in which Vatican officials discuss one of the great unsolved mysteries in Italy, the 1983 disappearance of Emanuela Orlandi, the 15-year-old daughter of a Vatican employee led to the reopening of a criminal investigation [ http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/15/world/europe/opening-of-crypt-revives-a-mystery.html ].
The book also provides a unique window into the nexus between Italian banking and media power and the Vatican. In one letter from last Christmas, Bruno Vespa, Italy’s most well-known television host, sent a check for $12,500 to the pope’s private secretary, Msgr. Georg Gänswein, “a small sum at the disposal of the pope’s charity,” and asked when he could have a private audience. The director of Italy’s Intesa San Paolo bank, Giovanni Bazoli, sent a $32,000 check, “with my most deferential salutations.”
Other letters addressed to Monsignor Gänswein are written in obsequious baroque Italian, in which everyone from Jesuits to officials in the government of former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi to Mercedes-Benz directors responsible for maintaining the popemobile write seeking favors, recommendations and most of all, the pope’s ear.
But other documents hint at more complex dealings. In one letter, Mr. Gotti Tedeschi defends himself to Monsignor Gänswein after he and another Vatican bank official had been placed under investigation by Rome magistrates in September 2010 for having failed to adequately explain the origins of funds transferred [ http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/30/world/europe/30vatican.html ] from one account held by the Vatican bank to two others it holds.
Since so many documents have been leaked from the Vatican this year, there were some doubts expressed that the butler arrested on Friday was the true — or only — source. “It doesn’t seem likely that he is the only one responsible for VatiLeaks because many of the documents that came out didn’t ever pass through the pope’s apartment where he works,” said Paolo Rodari, a Vatican expert for the Italian daily Il Foglio. “His arrest seems more the Vatican’s desire to find a scapegoat.”
Cardinal Bertone has emerged as a central, contentious figure in the VatiLeaks drama. Many critics, including some inside the Vatican, see him as a poor administrator who as the Vatican’s C.E.O. has struggled to manage the scandal-ridden papacy of a German intellectual with little interest in day-to-day affairs of state. Vatican observers say that many of the leaked documents are aimed at undermining the cardinal’s influence.
That clash has played out most visibly in the controversy over the Vatican bank, which has struggled to comply with international standards to stop money laundering. Defenders of Mr. Gotti Tedeschi see him as trying to improve the transparency of the Vatican finances, while they see Cardinal Bertone as trying to impede his efforts.
In a statement on Thursday, the Vatican said simply that the five-member board of the Vatican bank had voted no confidence in Mr. Gotti Tedeschi “for not having carried out functions of primary importance for his role.”
Others familiar with the Vatican bank said that Mr. Gotti Tedeschi had not been fully involved in its oversight because he maintained his full-time job as the head of Italian operations for Spain’s Banco Santander in Milan.
On Friday, Reuters reported that Mr. Gotti Tedeschi had said, “I have paid for my transparency,” while the Ansa news agency reported [ http://www.ansa.it/web/notizie/rubriche/politica/2012/05/24/-VATICANO-GOTTI-TEDESCHI-DIMESSO-PRESIDENTE-IOR-_6926868.html ] that he was torn between “telling the truth and not disturbing the pope.”
Gaia Pianigiani contributed reporting.
© 2012 The New York Times Company
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/26/world/europe/popes-butler-arrested-in-vatican-letters-leak.html [with comments]
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Vatican Raises Caysasay Shrine Status
By LESLIE ANN G. AQUINO
May 25, 2012, 9:16pm
MANILA, Philippines --- Devotees who visit and pray at the Shrine of the Our Lady of Caysasay in Taal, Batangas, will now be able to receive the same plenary indulgence granted to pilgrims who visit the ancient church of St. Mary Major in Rome.
In a decree, the Vatican has granted to Caysasay Shrine the same special privilege attached to the Roman Basilica.
The decree was signed by Cardinal Bernard Francis Law, archpriest-emeritus of St. Mary Major, according to an article posted on the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) website.
Plenary indulgence, according to Canon Law, is the remission of sins of one whose offenses have already been forgiven.
But to gain the plenary indulgence, a penitent must fulfill certain requirements, including going to confession and praying for the intention of the Pope.
Fr. Nonie Dolor, the archdiocesan media director, said the Vatican's pronouncement was timely as the archdiocese is preparing for the grand celebration of its 40th anniversary.
He said a Mass of Declaration to be presided by Lipa Archbishop Ramon C. Arguelles will be celebrated at the Shrine on June 3 to formally announce to the public the special privilege granted by the Vatican.
The ceremonies will include the reading of the decree and placing the original Latin text and its translation as a marker at the Shrine's entrance.
The Marian icon now known as Our Lady of Caysasay was found by a local fisherman at the Pansipit River, according to a local legend.
The people had the Marian image enshrined at Labac where devotees flock every Saturday to pay homage.
Miracles attributed to the image attracted many devotees to make annual pilgrimages to the Shrine, especially Chinese Catholics who regard the image of Our Lady of Caysasay as their own.
Copyright 2012. Manila Bulletin
http://www.mb.com.ph/articles/360454/vatican-raises-caysasay-shrine-status
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Vatican gives special status to Philippine shrine
By Jerome Aning
Philippine Daily Inquirer/Asia News Network
Saturday, May 26, 2012
Devotees making a pilgrimage to the Shrine of Our Lady of Caysasay in the historic town of Taal in Batangas will now be able to receive the same plenary indulgence granted to pilgrims who visit the ancient basilica of St. Mary Major (Sta. Maria Maggiore) in Rome.
According to the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines (CBCP), the Vatican has issued a decree signed by Cardinal Bernard Francis Law, archpriest emeritus of St. Mary Major, granting the Caysasay Shrine the same special privilege attached to the Roman basilica.
Pilgrims who visit and pray at the Shrine will receive plenary indulgence provided they fulfill the prescribed conditions of going to confession, participating in a Mass and praying for the intention of the Holy Father. A plenary indulgence is a complete remission of all temporal punishment due to sin.
The CBCP quoted Fr. Nonie Dolor, the Lipa Archdiocese media director, saying that the Vatican's pronouncement was "very timely" as the archdiocese was preparing for the grand celebration of its 40th anniversary.
Dolor said a Mass of Declaration to be presided by Lipa Archbishop Ramon Arguelles will be celebrated at the Shrine on June 3 to formally announce to the public the special privilege granted by the Vatican.
The ceremonies will include the reading of the decree and placing the original Latin text and its translation as a marker at the Shrine's entrance, according to Shrine rector Fr. Jose Maria Loyola Cumagun.
On Saturdays, the day set for devotion to the Our Lady of Caysasay, the otherwise sleepy shrine becomes vibrant when pilgrims flock to the place to pay homage to the Blessed Virgin.
The Marian icon was said to have been found by a local fisherman at the Pansipit River, according to a local legend.
The people had the Marian image enshrined at Labac where devotees flock every Saturday to pay homage.
Miracles attributed to the image attracted many devotees to make annual pilgrimages to the Shrine, especially Chinese Catholics.
Last year, a similar declaration was granted by the Vatican to the shrine of the Our Lady of Manaoag in Pangasinan.
The St. Mary Major basilica is one of the Catholic major basilicas that formed traditional Seven Pilgim Churches of Rome.
The basilica was one of the first built in honor of the Blessed Virgin to highlight her being declared as Mother of God by the Council of Ephesus in 431 AD. The basilica hosts pieces of wood said to have come from the Nativity crib.
Copyright © 2012 Singapore Press Holdings Ltd. Co.
http://www.asiaone.com/News/AsiaOne%2BNews/Asia/Story/A1Story20120526-348560.html
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Vatican publishes rules for verifying Marian apparitions
A statue of Mary and a crucifix are seen on Apparition Hill in Medjugorje, Bosnia-Herzegovina, in this Feb. 28, 2011, file photo. The site is where six village children first claimed to see Mary in June 1981. The Vatican has released translations in five languages of a 1978 document on rules for dealing with alleged Marian apparitions. The document had previously only been available in Latin.
(CNS photo/Paul Haring)
By Carol Glatz
Catholic News Service
Posted By The Catholic Free Press May 25, 2012 | 5:58 pm
VATICAN CITY (CNS) — To help bishops determine the credibility of alleged Marian apparitions, the Vatican has translated and published procedural rules from 1978 that had previously been available only in Latin.
The “Norms regarding the manner of proceedings in the discernment of presumed apparitions or revelations” were approved by Pope Paul VI in 1978 and distributed to the world’s bishops, but never officially published or translated into modern languages.
However, over the past three decades, unauthorized translations have appeared around the world, according to U.S. Cardinal William J. Levada, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
The doctrinal office “believes it is now opportune to publish these ‘Norms,’ providing translations in the principle languages” so as to “aid the pastors of the Catholic Church in their difficult task of discerning presumed apparitions, revelations, messages or, more generally, extraordinary phenomena of presumed supernatural origin,” the cardinal wrote in a note dated December 2011.
His note and the newly translated norms were published recently on the congregation’s website www.doctrinafidei.va.
Cardinal Levada wrote that he hoped the norms “might be useful to theologians and experts in this field of the lived experience of the church, whose delicacy requires an ever-more thorough consideration.”
More than 1,500 visions of Mary have been reported around the world, but in the past century only nine cases have received church approval as worthy of belief.
Determining the veracity of an apparition falls to the local bishop, and the Vatican’s doctrinal congregation established the norms to guide the process.
Granting approval is never brief, with some cases taking hundreds of years. Visionaries and witnesses must be questioned and the fruits of the apparitions, such as conversions, miracles and healings, must be examined.
According to the norms, the local bishop should set up a commission of experts, including theologians, canonists, psychologists and doctors, to help him determine the facts, the mental, moral and spiritual wholesomeness and seriousness of the visionary, and whether the message and testimony are free from theological and doctrinal error.
A bishop can come to one of three conclusions: He can determine the apparition to be true and worthy of belief; he can say it is not true, which leaves open the possibility for an appeal; or he can say that at the moment he doesn’t know and needs more help.
In the last scenario, the investigation is brought to the country’s bishops’ conference. If that body cannot come to a conclusion, the matter is turned over to the pope, who delegates the doctrinal congregation to step in and give advice or appoint others to investigate.
The alleged apparitions at Medjugorje in Bosnia-Herzegovina are an example of a situation in which the country’s bishops requested the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith to intervene.
In that case, the congregation established an international commission in 2010 to investigate the claims of six young people who said Mary had appeared to them daily beginning in 1981.
The apparitions purportedly continue and thousands travel to the small town each month to meet the alleged seers and to pray.
Pope Benedict XVI has reaffirmed that the church never requires the faithful to believe in apparitions, not even those recognized by the church.
In his note, Cardinal Levada quoted the pope saying “The criterion for judging the truth of a private revelation is its orientation to Christ himself,” in that it doesn’t lead people away from Jesus, but urges them toward closer communion with Christ and the Gospel.
The cardinal also quoted from the writings of St. John of the Cross, who emphasized that God said everything he had to say in Jesus Christ — in his one and only son and Word.
“Any person questioning God or desiring some vision or revelation would be guilty not only of foolish behavior but also of offending him, by not fixing his eyes entirely on Christ and by living with the desire for some other novelty,” the saint wrote.
Church approval of a private revelation, in essence, is just the church’s way of saying the message is not contrary to the faith or morality, it is licit to make the message public “and the faithful are authorized to give to it their prudent adhesion,” the pope said in his 2010 Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation, “Verbum Domini” (“The Word of the Lord”).
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Editor’s Note: The text of the Vatican norms in English is available online at: http://www.doctrinafidei.va/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_19780225_norme-apparizioni_en.html
The text in Spanish is available online at: http://www.doctrinafidei.va/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_19780225_norme-apparizioni_sp.html
Cardinal Levada’s preface in English is available online at: http://www.doctrinafidei.va/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_20111214_prefazione-levada_en.html
The text of the cardinal’s preface in Spanish is available online at: http://www.doctrinafidei.va/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_20111214_prefazione-levada_sp.html
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Copyright © 2012 Catholic Free Press
http://www.catholicfreepress.org/spiritual/2012/05/25/vatican-publishes-rules-for-verifying-marian-apparitions/
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