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Polish Archbishop Jozef Michalik Sex Abuse Comments Prompt Outrage: 'Child Seeking Love' Because Of Divorced Parents


WARSAW, POLAND: Archbishop Jozef Michalik, 63, of Przmysl poses for a portrait 18 March 2004 in Warsaw, after he was elected president of the Polish Episcopal Conference succeeding Cardinal Jozef Glemp, who has held the post for 23 years.
(JANEK SKARZYNSKI/AFP/Getty Images)

By Dagmara Leszkowicz
Posted: 10/08/2013 3:03 pm EDT | Updated: 10/08/2013 4:41 pm EDT

WARSAW (Reuters) - Poland's most senior Catholic cleric said children with divorced parents were sometimes more vulnerable to sexual abuse by priests, remarks that prompted a storm of outrage though the church later said it was a slip of the tongue.

The comments from Archbishop Jozef Michalik entrenched the view among some younger Poles that the church is out of touch with modern society and failing to properly confront allegations of sexual abuse by priests.

In comments shown on Tuesday by broadcaster TVN24, Michalik said child sexual abuse by priests was unacceptable, but the debate about it needed to be broadened out beyond the immediate physical or psychological wounds inflicted on the victims.

"And one has to say ... how many wounds are inflicted when parents divorce? We often hear that this inappropriate attitude (paedophilia), or abuse, manifests itself when a child is seeking love," said the clergyman, who is head of the Roman Catholic episcopate in Poland.

"It (the child) clings, it searches. It gets lost itself and then draws another person into this."

After the comments were broadcast, Polish social media networks reverberated with angry comments.

"This is disgusting, and is soaked in a sick logic, when a victim is responsible for a crime," wrote one person, who gave her name as Anna, posting on Facebook.

Another poster on the site, who identified himself as Adam, wrote: "While reading this, we can only be happy that this 'Polish institution' has committed ritual suicide."

Church authorities later on Tuesday convened a news conference to try to calm the outrage. A spokesman for the episcopate said the archbishop's comments had been a "a pure slip of the tongue" and the archbishop has been misunderstood.

Michalik himself, who was present at the news conference, apologised for the situation. "The context of my comment was as follows: a child is always innocent. But it can be hurt not only by priests but also by its own environment," he said.

Poland is one of Europe's most devoutly Catholic countries. The church's role at the centre of public life was cemented when clergymen, led by Polish-born Pope John Paul II, helped bring down Communist rule in the late 1980s.

That role is now being challenged by a generation of Poles who feel uncomfortable with the church's traditional views on issues such as abortion, divorce and same-sex partnerships.

While the Catholic church in countries such as Ireland and the United States has taken steps to be more assertive about uncovering child sex abuse by priests, in Poland it remains largely a taboo subject.

Abuse allegations are reported from time to time in the Polish media, but there has so far been no far-reaching public debate about the issue.

Pope Francis said soon after he was elected as Roman Catholic pontiff this year that he wanted to act decisively to root out sexual abuse of children by priests and ensure the perpetrators are punished.

(Editing by Christian Lowe/Mark Heinrich)

Copyright 2013 Thomson Reuters

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Poland's Catholic Church Slammed On Sex Abuse And Excuse That Children Are Partly To Blame

By MONIKA SCISLOWSKA
10/23/13 02:17 AM ET EDT

WARSAW, Poland (AP) — The leader of Poland's Catholic Church has come under a wave of condemnation by appearing to suggest that children are partly to blame for being sexually abused by priests.

Archbishop Jozef Michalik, head of Poland's influential Episcopate, was commenting this month on revelations about Polish pedophile priests. A child from a troubled family, Michalik told reporters, "seeks closeness with others and may get lost and may get the other person involved, too."

The words triggered an immediate uproar — one that Michalik tried to stamp out the same day by apologizing and saying he had been misunderstood. He had not, he said, meant to suggest that child victims were in any way responsible.

But the damage was done.

Ordinary citizens joined prominent politicians in expressing outrage, and intense debate continues more than two weeks later. The media pointed out that Michalik had supported a parish priest convicted in 2004 of child sex abuse, and one of the priest's victims said she was horrified by Michalik's latest remarks.

"Archbishop Michalik's words make us feel fear and revulsion," Ewa Orlowska said.

The archbishop's comments forced the Episcopate's spokesman, the Rev. Jozef Kloch, to state that Poland's church has "zero tolerance" for pedophilia but that it needs to learn how to approach and talk about the matter. The controversy has since led bishops under Michalik to apologize for "priests who have harmed children."

It all comes amid a tide of allegations that Poland's church is sweeping cases of sex abuse under the carpet, putting it at odds with Vatican efforts since 2001 to punish abusers. The scrutiny has also further undermined the church's status in Poland as a moral and political leader — cemented by Polish-born Pope John Paul II through his critical role in inspiring the fight against communism. The church's defenders say that priests are being singled out for condemnation when teachers and sports coaches have also been caught sexually abusing kids.

John Paul himself came under criticism for a reluctance to heed accusations against priests. While the Vatican in 2001 ordered bishops to submit cases of alleged pedophilia to the Holy See's review, it was largely the initiative of then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger. After the church sex abuse scandal erupted in 2002 in the United States, Ratzinger pressed for faster ways to permanently remove abusers from the church.

The crackdown against pedophile priests gained intensity once Ratzinger became Benedict XVI. In 2011, Benedict instructed bishops' conferences around the world to submit their own guidelines for keeping molesters out of the priesthood and to protect children.

Poland's Episcopate has issued guidelines for the church's punishment of priests and support for the victims. But it sees no need to report priests to state investigators and says that the financial compensation rests with the wrongdoer, not with the church. That approach may soon be tested by a man who is readying Poland's first sex abuse lawsuit against the church.

In several countries, including the U.S., Canada and Australia, the church has been paying millions in compensation over sex abuse cases.

Michalik also recently raised eyebrows by saying that the roots of pedophilia lay in pornography and divorce, both of which are "painful and long-lasting wounds."

The debate started last month after Dominican Republic investigators revealed child sex abuse allegations against two Polish clergymen: Archbishop Jozef Wesolowski, the Vatican's ambassador, and Rev. Wojciech Gil, a parish priest. Wesolowski has been forcibly removed by the Vatican. Gil has denied sex abuse and suggested that Dominican drug mafia is taking revenge on him for his educational work.

Some 27 Polish priests have been tried for sex abuse since 2001, but most cases ended in suspended prison term — indicating a general leniency for the church in Poland, where religion is taught in schools and senior church officials attend state ceremonies.

© 2013 Associated Press

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/23/poland-catholic-abuse_n_4150497.html [with comments] [also at e.g. http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/leader-of-polands-catholic-church-under-fire-over-remarks-about-child-sex-abuse-by-priests/2013/10/23/3153bfae-3bab-11e3-b0e7-716179a2c2c7_story.html [with comments]


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Record crowds expected for John Paul II, John XXIII canonizations


Pope John Paul II participates in a procession in August, 2000.
RNS file photo courtesy Universal Press Syndicate.


Cardinals open the procession to carry the body of Pope John Paul II through Saint Peter's Square inside the Basilica in Rome, Italy on April 04th, 2005.
Getty
[ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/23/john-paul-ii-john-xxiii-canonization_n_4145302.html ]

Eric J. Lyman | Oct 22, 2013

ROME (RNS) - Vatican officials say they expect next year’s celebration for the canonizations of former popes John Paul II and John XXIII to be attended by as many as 100 heads of state in what is likely to be the biggest draw in the city since John Paul’s funeral in 2005.

The crowd estimates were made Tuesday (Oct. 22), the feast day for John Paul. This will be the last time he will be venerated as Blessed Pope John Paul II; after the canonization ceremony on April 27, 2014, he will be known as St. Pope John Paul II.

John Paul’s 2005 funeral may have been the single largest gathering in Christian history, with estimates as high as 4 million mourners gathered in the Italian capital, along with at least 80 presidents, prime ministers and monarchs.

Around 1 million faithful were estimated to have been on hand for the 2011 Mass that beatified John Paul, and nearly that many for the conclave that resulted in Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio becoming Pope Francis earlier this year.

Next year’s canonization ceremony — which is expected to draw tens of thousands of visitors from John Paul’s native Poland — should surpass both those events in terms of attendance, according to city officials.

© 2013 Religion News LLC

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Vatican Halts Catholic Remarriage Debate; Annulment Still Required For Divorced Couples To Receive Communion


German Archbishop Gerhard Mueller

By NICOLE WINFIELD
10/22/13 01:03 PM ET EDT

VATICAN CITY (AP) — The Vatican on Tuesday quashed hopes that there might be some wiggle room on one of its longstanding rules about the indissolubility of marriage, making clear that a recent German initiative on the matter was contrary to church teaching.

The Vatican's chief doctrine official, German Archbishop Gerhard Mueller, wrote Tuesday that there is no way for Catholics who divorce and remarry to receive Communion unless they get an annulment, a church ruling that their first marriage never really existed.

"God's mercy does not dispense us from following his commandments or the rules of the church," he wrote in the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano.

Church teaching holds that Catholics who don't have their first marriage annulled before remarrying cannot participate fully in the church's sacraments because they are essentially living in sin and committing adultery. Such annulments are often impossible to get or can take years to process. The issue has vexed the Vatican for decades and has left generations of Catholics feeling shunned by their church.

Earlier this month, the German diocese of Freiburg upset the Vatican when it issued a set of guidelines explaining how such remarried Catholics could get around the rule. It said if certain criteria are met — if the spouses were trying to live according to the faith and acted with laudable motivation — they could receive Communion and other sacraments of the church.

The Vatican immediately shot down the initiative but said the matter would be discussed at a church meeting next year on the family.

Mueller's article in the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano seemed aimed at ending the debate before it even off the ground.

Mueller cited repeated documents from popes past and his own office, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, in rejecting arguments that mercy should win out over church rules or that people should follow their own consciences to decide if their first marriage was valid or not.

"It is not for the individuals concerned to decide on its validity, but rather for the church," he wrote.

Pope Francis has acknowledged the need to address the issue and has said the church's tribunal system needs to be fixed.

© 2013 Associated Press

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/22/catholic-remarriage-_n_4143563.html [with comments]


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Bishop’s suspension a symptom of German Catholic Church’s wealth


Bishop Franz-Peter Tebartz-van Elst of Limburg, Germany, leaves a meeting of the Synod of Bishops on the new evangelization at the Vatican in this Oct. 19, 2012.
Photo by Alessia Giuliani, courtesy CNS


(2006) Christian Weisner
Photo courtesy Christian Weisner


Head of the German Bishop’s Conference, Robert Zollitsch.
Photo courtesy Andreas Gerhard/Bishopric of Freiburg.

Nele Mailin Obermueller and Jabeen Bhatti | Oct 23, 2013

BERLIN (RNS) The $20,000 bathtub and $482,000 walk-in closets ordered by “Bishop Bling-Bling” — the moniker of Franz-Peter Tebartz-van Elst, the now-suspended bishop of Limburg — have scandalized the German public.

But Tebartz-van Elst, 52, is only the latest German clergyman to run into trouble since Pope Francis took the helm of the Roman Catholic Church. Francis temporarily suspended [ http://news.yahoo.com/pope-expels-german-luxury-bishop-diocese-102947374.html ] the bishop on Wednesday while a church commission investigates the expenditures on the $42 million residence complex.

As the new pontiff tries to reform the way the church does business, German dioceses, which reportedly include the world’s wealthiest in Cologne, are chafing under the new direction as membership numbers continue to dwindle.

“Tebartz-van Elst is just the tip of the iceberg,” said Christian Weisner, spokesman for the German branch of We Are Church, an organization advocating Catholic Church reform. “There is a real clash of cultures between Germany’s current cardinals and bishops — nominated under John Paul II or Benedict XVI — and Pope Francis.”

Since becoming pope, Francis has repeatedly urged the church to strip itself of all “vanity, arrogance and pride” and humbly serve the poorest in society. Under Francis, priests living in luxury are no longer merely unseemly, but a scandal.

Still, even as Francis drives around Vatican City in a 20-year-old white Renault clunker gifted by an Italian priest, the head of the German Bishops’ Conference, Archbishop Robert Zollitsch, balked at the idea of giving up his company car, a BMW 740d.

“To me that car is not a status symbol, it is the office I use when I am traveling,” Zollitsch said at a press event in early October, when asked whether he would trade it down.

In Germany, most of the church’s top officials drive high-powered Mercedes, BMWs or Audis.

Other German clergymen have been chastised for lavish expenditures. Cardinal Reinhard Marx of Munich’s archdiocese spent around $11 million renovating the archbishop’s residence and another $13 million for a guesthouse in Rome.

Still, for German Catholics, those luxuries pale in comparison to the current case surrounding Tebartz-van Elst and the renovation of his residence in Limburg, which is close to Frankfurt. Originally, the refurbishment of the estate’s 10 buildings had been slated to cost $7.5 million but it ballooned to almost six times that amount because of extravagances such as expensive fixtures.

Carsten Frerk, who specializes on church finances in Germany, said German bishops’ reluctance to follow Francis’ new course is no surprise.

“The German Catholic Church is one of the country’s wealthiest and largest organizations and its top officials expect a certain lifestyle,” said Frerk, who has published two books on the German churches’ wealth and what he describes as their opaque financing. “But they are wary of the extent of their wealth becoming broadly known because it might lead to fewer donations.”

There are 23 million German Catholics who have declared their faith and by law must pay 8 to 10 percent of their incomes to their respective churches. That brought the Catholic Church $7.1 billion in tax revenue in 2012.

Since the secularization process instigated by Napoleon in the early 19th century, the state also pays the Protestant and Catholic churches an annual allowance as compensation, which yielded a combined total of about $12 million for the Christian groups in 2012.

But the 27 Catholic dioceses in Germany have a large number of assets, such as real estate or bonds. According to John Berwick, religious affairs analyst for German broadcaster Deutsche Welle, the diocese of Cologne is richer than the Vatican.

Meanwhile, the case of Tebartz-van Elst has focused the spotlight on the church’s opaque financing.

In 2010, 25 of Germany’s 27 dioceses refused to supply the newsweekly Der Spiegel with information on their budgets and assets. Following the Tebartz-van Elst scandal, several bishoprics — including Cologne, Hamburg, Essen and Munster — have made their financial figures public.

There are advantages to the German church’s wealth. Mathew Schmalz, theologian and professor at the Massachusetts-based College of the Holy Cross, who now lives in Sri Lanka, said that without its resources, the church could not support projects in developing countries.

And in Germany, that is the crux of the problem, say analysts. It is important to show congregations that clergy are not the arrogant, aloof spiritual advisers that many German Catholics believe they have become.

For example, after the spending on the renovations came to light, petitions for Tebartz-van Elst to step down circulated. But the bishop remained silent.

And even though he flew to Rome for an audience with the pope on a budget flight rather than the first-class fare, many say such a gesture was too little too late.

Now the question remains to what extent the traditional German church can keep step with Pope Francis’ reforms and whether their efforts could put a stop to their bleeding membership rolls — predicted to reduce Christians to a minority within Germany in the next 20 years.

In 2010, 181,000 left the church after the sexual abuse scandals involving German priests were made public. Another 126,000 in 2011 and 118,000 in 2012 followed suit.

“I think this conflict surrounding Tebartz-van Elst, who is not willing to resign, will be one of the defining moments for the future course of the Catholic Church,” Weisner said. “This is a historic moment in time and a unique chance for renewal.”

(Sumi Somaskanda contributed to this story from Berlin.)

© 2013 Religion News LLC

http://www.religionnews.com/2013/10/23/bishops-suspension-symptom-german-catholic-churchs-wealth/ [with comments]


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Pope Francis breathes new life into Cardinal Bernardin’s contested legacy


(1983) Pope John Paul II places a red biretta on the head of Archbishop Joseph L. Bernardin of Chicago as he was elevated to cardinal during a Feb. 2 consistory at the Vatican. Cardinal Bernardin was one of 18 new cardinals invested at the service.
Religion News Service file photo


(1982) The Rev. Daniel E. Pilarczyk (right) succeeded Archbishop Joseph L. Bernardin (left), who became archbishop of Chicago in July 1982.
Religion New Service file photo

David Gibson | Oct 24, 2013

(RNS) The election of Pope Francis in March heralded a season of surprises for the Catholic Church, but perhaps none so unexpected – and unsettling for conservatives – as the re-emergence of the late Chicago Cardinal Joseph Bernardin as a model for the American Catholic future.

While there is no indication that Francis knows the writings of Bernardin, who died in 1996, many say the pope’s remarks repeatedly evoke Bernardin’s signature teachings on the “consistent ethic of life” – the view that church doctrine champions the poor and vulnerable from womb to tomb – and on finding “common ground” to heal divisions in the church.

Ironically, the re-emergence of Bernardin — a man who was admired by a young Chicago organizer named Barack Obama — is exposing the very rifts he sought to bridge, especially among conservatives who thought his broad view of Catholicism was buried with him in Mount Carmel Cemetery outside Chicago.

Francis, for example, repeatedly stresses economic justice and care for the poor as priorities for Catholics, and he warned [ http://www.religionnews.com/2013/10/01/excerpts-pope-francis-new-interview/ ] that the church has become “obsessed” with a few issues, such as abortion, contraception and homosexuality, and needs a “new balance.”

The new pope has also sought to steer the hierarchy away from conservative politics and toward a broad-based view of Catholicism “that is not just top-down but also horizontal” — focused on dialogue in the church and with the wider world.

“The point that (Bernardin’s) consistent ethic makes is exactly the same point that Pope Francis is making – let’s look at the whole picture and not just focus almost exclusively on three or so issues,” said Archbishop Michael Sheehan of Santa Fe, N.M., who had been close friends with Bernardin since the 1970s.

“I certainly think that if Cardinal Bernardin were alive he would be very pleased with what Pope Francis is saying and doing,” echoed Archbishop Joseph Fiorenza, retired archbishop of Galveston-Houston, whose 1998-2001 term as president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops was seen as one of the last in the mold of Bernardin.

“The consistent ethic of life theory that Bernardin proposed is getting a second look,” Fiorenza said.

Several other bishops, church officials and observers agreed. But if those assessments are manna to Catholics hungry for a new direction in the church, they are anathema to conservatives who believe Bernardin epitomized everything that was wrong with the U.S. church before Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI pushed the hierarchy to the right.

“The Bernardin Era is over and the Bernardin Machine is no more,” the conservative writer George Weigel wrote in the journal First Things [ http://www.firstthings.com/article/2011/01/the-end-of-the-bernardin-era ] in a 2011 essay that trumpeted the end of a time “in which a liberal consensus dominated both the internal life of the Church and the Church’s address to public policy.”

The fact that Weigel and others would still be driving a stake through the heart of Bernardin’s legacy – as Peter Steinfels put it in a rejoinder [ https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/fabricating-bernardin ] in Commonweal magazine – 15 years after his death is a testimony to the stature Bernardin once had, and the angst he can still inspire.

In fact, a generation ago, Bernardin was viewed as the quintessential American churchman – a longtime president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and then its resident wise man, coaxing the hierarchy into approving landmark documents on war and poverty that shaped the public debate on faith in America.

Yet the “John Paul II bishops” who came to power in the 1980s and beyond saw Bernardin’s style and views as too accommodating, and too reluctant to mount the barricades on behalf of a more assertive Catholic identity marked by a few hallmark issues rather than a spectrum of teachings.

In the end, the cardinal who championed consultation and reconciliation was unceremoniously pushed aside by many of his own colleagues. In 1996, as he approached the end of a poignant battle with pancreatic cancer, Bernardin launched the “Common Ground Initiative” as a final effort to try to end the growing polarization in the church.

But in rare public rebukes against one of their own, churchmen such as Cardinal Bernard Law, then of Boston, questioned Bernardin’s project [ http://www.nytimes.com/1996/08/24/us/cardinal-opposed-in-effort-to-find-common-ground.html ] in ways that are strikingly similar to the criticism Francis has faced from conservatives.

Now, however, Francis is pope, and that gives Bernardin’s acolytes some measure of hope. But the real question is whether the U.S. hierarchy is too far removed from the Bernardin era for it to make a difference.

In 2010, Bishop Gerald Kicanas of Tucson, Ariz., a Chicago priest who had served under Bernardin, was in line to be elected president of the USCCB when conservatives engineered the election of New York Cardinal Timothy Dolan instead, a maneuver seen as the definitive end [ http://www.catholicworldreport.com/Item/481/the_end_of_the_bernardin_era.aspx ] of Bernardin’s influence.

“While there are still those in the conference who might like to return to the Old Ways (of Bernardin), the pope isn’t interested in that and neither, in my judgment, are a critical mass of the bishops,” Weigel wrote in an email.

While Weigel sees few similarities between Francis and Bernardin, many others [ http://www.osvdailytake.com/2013/10/shaw-getting-grasp-on-pope-francis.html ] see a broad overlap [ http://chiesa.espresso.repubblica.it/articolo/1350615?eng=y ], and they say that Francis is leading by example, whether the American churchmen see Bernardin’s shadow or not. They also say that Bernardin’s approach is needed more than ever as the hierarchy has strained to speak with one voice on crucial issues.

“I think the conference has missed the skills of Cardinal Bernardin,” said Sheehan.

The same could be said for Catholics in general, said Bishop Michael Warfel of Great Falls-Billings, Mont., current chair of the Catholic Common Ground Initiative [ http://www.catholiccommonground.org/board ], which has struggled to remain viable in the years since Bernardin died.

“I find it ironic that it’s almost easier for Christians to talk to Jews or Muslims than it is for some Catholics to talk to each other,” Warfel said. He added that, like Bernardin, Francis “is really providing a witness to a way of leading. … He doesn’t just want to have window-dressing dialogue.”

The Rev. Thomas Nairn, a leading Catholic ethicist who has edited two books on Bernardin’s consistent ethic of life, also notes that despite attacks on Bernardin himself, the principles that he preached remain embedded in Catholic discourse.

Papal encyclicals and documents from the U.S. bishops, such as their election-year guide for Catholic voters, reflect Bernardin’s “seamless garment” ethic that decries the death penalty as well as abortion and poverty. Bernardin’s ideas are central to the DNA of the Catholic health care system, and ethicists and moral theologians invoke his ideas, even if the younger generation prefers to associate them with John Paul or Benedict.

“Cardinal Bernardin always talked about the consistent ethic as both a principle and an attitude,” Nairn said. What is new, he said, is that Francis “has returned not only to the principle of the consistent ethic of life but he has also returned to Cardinal Bernardin’s tone.”

© 2013 Religion News LLC

http://www.religionnews.com/2013/10/24/pope-francis-breathes-new-life-cardinal-bernardins-contested-legacy/ [with comments]


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Pope Francis' Controversial Remarks Prompt Vatican 'Damage Control'

By NICOLE WINFIELD
10/09/13 09:20 AM ET EDT

VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Francis has grabbed headlines with his off-the-cuff homilies, crowd-pleasing one-liners and lengthy interviews during which he has pontificated on everything from the church's "obsession" with rules to how he won't judge gays. But his chattiness has gotten him into some trouble, and the Vatican has gone into damage-control mode to clarify, correct or put his comments into context. Here's a look at some of Francis' more eyebrow-raising comments, and the efforts by the Vatican's spin doctors to address them.

DID FRANCIS REALLY CONSIDER TURNING DOWN THE JOB?

In an interview with the Rome daily La Repubblica, editor Eugenio Scalfari quoted the pope as saying he was "seized by a great anxiety" moments after his election and asked the cardinals in the Sistine Chapel to give him a few minutes time to think things over.

"To make it go away and relax, I closed my eyes and made every thought disappear, even the thought of refusing to accept the position, as the liturgical procedure allows," he was quoted as saying. "At a certain point I was filled with a great light. It lasted a moment, but to me it seemed very long. Then the light faded, I got up suddenly and walked into the room where the cardinals were waiting." The pope was quoted as saying he signed the acceptance form and went out on the balcony to be introduced to the world as Pope Francis.

But the Rev. Thomas Rosica, who helps with Vatican media relations, later said the interview didn't reflect Francis' real words. He said Scalfari neither recorded the conversation nor took notes, reconstructing the conversation from memory and printing it as a verbatim interview. The Vatican doesn't dispute the overall thrust of the interview, which Scalfari said he submitted to Francis for review and which the Vatican newspaper reprinted verbatim. But Rosica said the purported "mystical" experience recounted by Repubblica after the election didn't happen, though Francis himself has said previously and in public that "I didn't want to be pope."

CAN ATHEISTS BE SAVED?

One of the novelties introduced by Francis has been his daily 7 a.m. Mass in the Vatican hotel, to which groups and individuals are invited. Francis delivers homilies each day, the contents of which are summarized by Vatican Radio. On May 22, he caused no shortage of confusion when he suggested that even atheists could find salvation.

According to church teaching, the Catholic Church holds the "fullness of the means of salvation" — a message that has long been taken to mean that only Catholics can find salvation. But in his homily, Francis said: "The Lord has redeemed all of us, all of us, with the Blood of Christ: all of us, not just Catholics. Everyone! 'Father, the atheists?' Even the atheists. Everyone!"

Rosica issued a lengthy "explanatory note" a few days later after being inundated with questions about whether Francis was changing church doctrine on salvation. He noted that church teaching also holds that "those who through no fault of their own" don't know about Jesus but seek God and try to do his will can also attain eternal salvation.

"Always keep in mind the audience and context of Pope Francis' homilies," Rosica cautioned. "His words are not spoken in the context of a theological faculty or academy nor in interreligious dialogue or debate. He speaks in the context of Mass."

SHOULD THE VATICAN BANK BE SAVED?

On April 24, Francis invited members of the Vatican bank to join him for Mass in the hotel. The Institute for Religious Works, as the bank is known, has been plagued by scandals — most recently over the arrest of a Vatican monsignor on charges he tried to smuggle some 20 million euro ($26 million) into Italy from Switzerland without declaring it at customs.

Given the scandals, the arrival of a reform-minded, non-nonsense pope has prompted a flurry of speculation that Francis might shut the bank down. So imagine the headlines that followed his April 24 homily, when he lamented how the church can sometimes become too bureaucratic, too much like an aid group, and that bureaucracies are necessary up to a point.

"The church isn't an NGO, it's a story of love," Francis told the bank's staff in the pews. "But there are the IOR folks here, excuse me, OK? Everything is necessary, offices are necessary, OK, but they're only necessary up to a certain point: as a help to this story of love. But when the organization loses this primary place, when the love is gone, the poor church becomes an NGO. And this isn't the way to go."

Archbishop Angelo Becciu, under secretary of the Vatican secretariat of state, told the Vatican newspaper a few days later that Francis was by no means hinting that he might shut down the Vatican bank.

THE VICAR OF CHRIST SAID WHAT?

Sometimes, Francis' one-liners don't warrant Vatican clarification, but they're worth repeating simply because they came from the lips of the Successor of Peter, Vicar of Christ, Supreme Pontiff of the Universal Church:

— Francis urged the church to "strip" itself of its worldy attachment to wealth during his Oct. 4 trip to Assisi and focus instead on the basics of Christ's teachings. "You might say, 'Can't we have a more human Christianity, without the cross, without Jesus, without stripping ourselves?'" he asked rhetorically. "In this way we'd become pastry-shop Christians, like a pretty cake and nice sweet things. Pretty, but not true Christians."

— Francis was asked June 7 why he chose to live in the Vatican hotel rather than the fancier Apostolic Palace where his predecessors lived. "If I was living alone, isolated, it wouldn't be good for me," he told students of Jesuit schools. "A professor asked me the same question, 'Why don't you go and live there (in the papal apartments)'? And I replied: 'Listen to me professor, it is for psychiatric reasons.'"

— The pope has urged nuns and sisters to be like joyful mothers to the church, caring for its flock, and not act like they're "old maids." ''It makes me sad when I find sisters who aren't joyful," he lamented during his Oct. 4 visit to a cloistered convent in Assisi. "They might smile, but with just a smile they could be flight attendants!"

Given Francis' wry sense of humor and willingness to regularly ditch speeches prepared for him, the Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, said he wants the faithful to know the difference between a pontifical joke and an encyclical, a clever quip in a homily and infallible teaching.

"There are different genres of expression, some are magisterial and official, others are more pastoral," Lombardi told The Associated Press. "They have a different doctrinal value."

© 2013 Associated Press

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/09/vatican-damage-control-pope-francis_n_4070255.html [with embedded video report, and comments]


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Vatican Jesus Medal Recalled After Embarrassing Misspelling


10/11/2013
[...]
The medal, produced by the Italian State Mint [commemorate the pontificate of Pope Francis { http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/10/10/vatican-recalls-papal-medal-after-jesus-name-misspelled/ }], has the inscription "Franciscus Pont. Max. An. I." as well as a portrait of Pope Francis on the front side.
The reverse side was meant to carry "the quotation that moved the young Jorge Mario Bergoglio when he felt the call to the priesthood: 'Vidit ergo Jesus publicanum et quia miserando atque eligendo vidit, ait illi sequere me,'" according to Catholic Culture [ http://www.catholicculture.org/news/headlines/index.cfm?storyid=19277 ]. The motto is taken from a homily about the call of St. Matthew, and in English reads as, “Jesus saw the tax collector and by having mercy chose him as an Apostle saying to him: Follow me," according to Catholic World Report [ http://www.catholicworldreport.com/Blog/2096/pope_francis_coat_of_arms_and_motto_explained.aspx ].
[...]
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/10/vatican-jesus-medal_n_4080403.html [with comments]


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