February Monday 11 POPE BENEDICT ANNOUNCES HE WILL RESIGN “After having repeatedly examined my conscience before God, I have come to the certainty that my strengths, due to an advanced age, are no longer suited to an adequate exercise of the Petrine ministry,” the pontiff told the cardinals and announced that he would be resigning at the [...]
“There is only one embassy to the Holy See in Rome with windows from which you are in line of sight with the papal apartments and could wave to the Pope,”says the new Australian ambassador to the Holy See with a humorous smile, as he receives me on a rainy day in his office just across [...]
With his Apostolic Letter Porta Fidei, the Holy Father, now emeritus, had proclaimed a Year of Faith (October 11, 2012-November 24, 2013) to commemorate the Second Vatican Council’s opening 50 years ago and the publication of the Catechism of the Catholic Church 20 years ago. Only five days before Pope Benedict XVI’s resignation, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone [...]
DURING THE SEDE VACANTE Cardinal TARCISIO BERTONE leaves his position as secretary of state; with the interregnum the real work begins in his position as CAMERLENGO or CHAMBERLAIN of the Holy Roman Church; during the period when there is no Pope, he is charged with administering the temporal goods of the Church. When the private residence [...]
A number of gestures and actions by the newly-elected Pope, former Argentinian Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, now Pope Francis (but without the ordinal I, as expressly pointed out by the Sala Stampa Vaticana’s Father Lombardi) in the initial days of his pontificate have been hailed with words like humility, simplicity, care for the poor and marginalized, [...]
We have heard three verses from the First Letter of St. Peter (cf. 1:3-5). Before going into this text, it seems to me important to be aware of the fact that it is Peter who is speaking. The first two words of the Letter are “Petrus apostolus” (cf. v.1): he speaks and he speaks to the [...]
Pope Benedict waves after attending a meeting with seminarians at the major seminary of the Diocese of Rome Feb. 8 (CNS photo) On Friday, February 8, 2013, Pope Benedict gave a deeply Roman, Petrine lesson in his meeting with the seminarians of Rome in the chapel of the Pontifical Roman Seminary. Three days later, on [...]
The white smoke came at 7:06 p.m. on the evening of the second day of the Conclave, after the fifth vote. The College of Cardinals chose Argentine Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio, S.J., 76, to become the 266th Pope of the Roman Catholic Church, the first Pope ever from Latin America and the first Jesuit ever. He is [...]
In the presence of the entire College of Cardinals, Cardinal Angelo Sodano, 85, the Dean of the College (he did not enter the Conclave to vote, because he is past the age of 80), delivered the homily “Pro Eligendo Romano Pontifice” (“For the Election of the Roman Pontiff”) in St. Peter’s Basilica — the last homily [...]
In our day, we tend to think of North Africa as being under the dominion of Islam, but in the second century AD the region was part of the Roman Empire, and by the third century, under Emperor Constantine, it began to become Christian. This was once the land of Saint Augustine, and it remained Christian [...]