Tag Archives: Topic: Vatican

Catholic News Service: “Same-sex unions ‘penalize’ traditional couples and distort the true nature of the family, Pope Benedict XVI said. The many crises that families face are ’caused by the rapid social and cultural changes’ in society, the pope said Jan. 14 in a speech to officials from the city and province of Rome and the Lazio region of Italy.”

Spero News: “Radical leaders and Islamic movements incite crowds and warn Christians against forming a party to repeal the law, a step that would bring chaos. The government denies it plans changes to the law. Civil society leaders appreciate Benedict XVI’s speech. Bilawal Bhutto defends minorities. Muslim …”

Religion Clause Blog: “Yesterday Pope Benedict XVI delivered his annual address (full text) to the diplomatic corps accredited to the Holy See– ambassadors from 178 countries. Zenit reports that Vatican officials characterized the Pope’s remarks as opening a new chapter in the commitment to religious liberty.”

Associated Press: “Pope Benedict XVI urged Pakistan to reverse its blasphemy laws, saying Monday they were a pretext for violence against non-Muslims, and demanded that all governments do more so Christians can practice their faith without fear.”

CatholicCulture.org: “Father Federico Lombardi, director of the Holy See Press Office, has responded to criticism of Pope Benedict by the former grand mufti of Egypt.”

Vatican Radio: “‘An offense against God and all humanity’, that is how Pope Benedict XVI has described the New Year’s eve bombing of a Coptic Orthodox Church in Alexandria, Egypt, and the ongoing campaign of violence against Christians in Iraq. Speaking to a densely packed St Peter’s Square after the Sunday Angelus prayer, the Pope spoke of his sorrow and pain on hearing news of the latest spate of killings targeting Christians communities.”

AGI: “The imam of Al-Azhar condemned the Alexandria attack but criticised the Pope’s ‘interference.’”

Reuters: “‘We hope the Vatican can face the facts of China’s religious freedom and the development of Catholicism in China, and take concrete actions to promote positive conditions for China-Vatican relations,’ ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu told a regular news briefing. She did not elaborate.” More from The Daily Telegraph.

Associated Press: “Iraqi Christians celebrated a somber Christmas in a Baghdad cathedral stained with dried blood, while Pope Benedict XVI exhorted Chinese Catholics to stay loyal despite restrictions on them in a holiday address laced with worry for the world’s Christian minorities.”

The Globe and Mail: “China fired back at the Vatican on Wednesday after the Holy See’s recent criticism of Beijing’s religious appointments, calling such a move ‘dangerous’ and harmful to the Catholic church’s development in China.”

Zenit: “The religious dimension fosters genuine progress, and the state would do well to protect its role in the public sphere, says Benedict XVI. The Pope said this today upon receiving in audience Francesco Maria Greco, the new ambassador of Italy to the Holy See, who was presenting his letters of credence.”

MSNBC: “A judge has upheld the seizure of euro23 million ($30.2 million) in Vatican assets in a money-laundering probe involving the Holy See’s bank, the second time the bank has been denied the return of the funds.”

Reuters: “Pope Benedict’s invitation to address German parliament during his visit to his homeland next September 22-25 has not sat well with some members of the opposition. Volker Beck, the Green party floor leader, has protested that inviting a religious leader to address parliament, the Bundestag, is unprecedented and the wrong place to speak about religion.”

Associated Press: “The Vatican accused China on Friday of spurning efforts for improved ties with the Holy See, condemning the government-backed church as violating religious freedom and human rights.”

Associated Press: “Pope Benedict XVI singled out Christians as the religious group that suffers from the most persecution on Thursday, denouncing lack of freedom of worship as an ‘intolerable’ threat to world security.”

Card. Joseph Zen Zekiun: “The Eighth Assembly of the Representatives of the Chinese Catholics was ‘victoriously’ successful, as ‘victoriously successful’ was the preventing of Liu Xiaobo from going to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. Are our leaders are truly proud of similar ‘victories’? The fact that China has become an economic power, allows them to ignore so shamefully the human rights? Those who bow to you for business interests, do they respect you in their hearts? Wake up! Please, save a little the dignity of our great nation, famous for its ancient civilization and its refined etiquette.”

Zenit: “Threats to life, especially abortion, euthanasia and the destruction of embryos, have ‘introduced unheard of challenges for Christian social doctrine and call for adequate answers,’ says the president of the Vatican’s health care council.”

Zenit: “Father Lombardi noted: “The importance of the new report is precisely in its giving a long and detailed series of examples of intolerance toward Christians in Europe: acts of vandalism, of hatred, toward Churches and religious symbols, manifestations of hatred and offences against persons.”

Catholic Herald: “Relations between China and the Vatican are in danger of disintegrating after authorities forced bishops loyal to the Pope to attend a meeting of the state-run Church. Dozens of Chinese bishops were taken to Beijing against their will to take part in the National Congress of Chinese Catholic Representatives to vote for new leaders of the Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association and the Council of Chinese Bishops.”

AP: “China’s bishops opened a meeting Tuesday to choose leaders of the government-backed Catholic church amid tensions with the Vatican after it denounced the recent ordination of a bishop who did not have the pope’s approval.”

Catholic Culture: “This isn’t a trivial concern, the Pope adds: ‘The greatest attention is needed here in order to prevent the intrusion of this kind of ambiguity and to head off a situation where the celibacy of priests would practically end up being identified with the tendency to homosexuality.’”

LifeSiteNews: “Even if homosexuality were innate, it would not make the behavior morally acceptable, Pope Benedict told interviewer Peter Seewald in the new interview book ‘Light of the World.’ ”

Associated Press: “The Vatican on Wednesday denounced China for ordaining a bishop without papal consent, accusing the government-backed church of gravely damaging the faith and warning that the bishop risked excommunication.”

Vatican Information Service: Communique on Episcopal Ordination in Chengde, China

Catholic News Agency: “The head of the Church of England, Archbishop Rowan Williams of Canterbury met privately in Rome with Pope Benedict XVI on Nov. 18 . . . Asked about the Pope’s invitation to Anglicans and his creation of personal ordinariates, Archbishop Williams said: ‘I don’t see it as an aggressive act, meant to destabilize the relations of the churches, and it remains to be seen just how large a movement we’re talking about.’”

Slate: “The Chinese must choose between their government and the pope. There are actually two strains of Catholicism in China. The official, ‘above-ground’ version operates in state-approved churches and is overseen by the Chinese Catholic Bishops Conference and the state-affiliated Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association rather than by the pope.”

Wall Street Journal: “The Vatican on Sunday rushed to clarify a recent interview by Pope Benedict XVI, in which the pontiff states for the first time that there may be some cases in which the Roman Catholic Church’s ban on condoms isn’t absolute . . . The pope then added: ‘There may be a basis in the case of some individuals, as perhaps when a male prostitute uses a condom, where this can be a first step in the direction of a moralization, a first assumption of responsibility, on the way toward recovering an awareness that not everything is allowed and that one cannot do whatever one wants.’” Full text of the Pope’s comments is here.

Vatican Information Service: Note by Fr. Lombardi concerning a new book on the Pope

Jimmy Akin: The Pope Said WHAT about Condoms???

Janet E. Smith: What does the Holy Father really say about condoms in the new book?

Associated Press: “About 50 Church of England priests have expressed interest in joining five of their bishops in converting to Roman Catholicism, a senior Catholic leader said Friday.”

Associated Press: “The world’s cardinals met Friday in a rare Vatican summit to discuss the most pressing issues facing the church, including the sex abuse scandal, religious freedom and the conversion of Anglicans to Catholicism.”

LifeSiteNews: “Stung by plummeting poll numbers and stark criticisms by Pope Benedict XVI during his recent national visit, Spain’s socialist prime minister Jose Luis Zapatero is defending some of his most controversial policies, including legalizing abortion on demand during the first fourteen weeks of pregnancy, and institutionalizing homosexual ‘marriage.’”

Yahoo (Reuters): “The Vatican warned Beijing on Thursday not to force Catholic bishops loyal to the pope to attend the ordination of a bishop who is a member of the state-backed church that does not recognize the pontiff.”

Associated Press: “Pope Benedict XVI on Wednesday urged the release of a Christian woman in Pakistan facing the death sentence on a charge of blasphemy.”

Irish Times: “An Irish Catholic priest has been banned by the Vatican from publishing any more of his writings after he suggested homosexuality is ‘simply a facet of the human condition.’”

LifeSiteNews: “The family is under sustained attack from new ideologies that ‘trivialize the human body,’ and distort the purpose and meaning of marriage, Pope Benedict XVI said in a document released by the Vatican today.”

Catholic News Service: “Reflecting on his recent trip to Spain, Pope Benedict XVI spoke of the need to support marriage and family and for dialogue between religious, political and economic spheres to encourage a just society in Europe.”

The Oklahoman (RNS): “Pope Benedict XVI denounced abortion, same-sex marriage and the absence of religion in public life during a weekend (Nov. 6-7) visit to Spain, a country he called the ‘focal point’ of tensions between faith and secularism in Europe.”

Associated Press: “Five Church of England bishops announced Monday they are converting to Catholicism following an invitation to disaffected Anglicans from Pope Benedict XVI – the highest-profile defectors among conservatives opposed to gay bishops and female clergy.”

Thomas Venzor, Protecting the Unborn Child: The Current State of International Law Concerning the So-Called Right to Abortion and Intervention by the Holy See (October 21, 2010). Nebraska Law Review, Vol. 89, 2011. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1695703

“This paper proposes that there are three areas where the ‘right’ to abortion might be invoked (i.e., mother’s life; preservation of the mother’s health; mother has suffered rape or incest). Outside of these three situations, any legal notion that access to abortion ought to be a human right is mostly unfounded and, perhaps, wishful thinking. Furthermore, although these three situations would hold the best argumentative grounds for a right to abortion, it remains difficult to claim that these situations would actually qualify to the extent of a right under international law.”

EU Observer: “The gay and lesbian community in Barcelona is preparing a two-minute kissing session in front of Pope Benedict XVI to express their ‘discontent’ over the anti-gay stance of the Catholic Church.”

CatholicCulture.org: “The Vatican’s representative at the UN denounced discrimination against Christians in an emotional address on November 1.”

CatholicCulture.org: “In an October 30 editorial, Father Federico Lombardi, the director of the Holy See Press Office, issued a call for full religious freedom in the Middle East.” The editorial is here.

OneNewsNow: “An immigration reform activist is pleased Pope Benedict recently issued a statement supporting the right of nation states to protect their borders and regulate immigration. But he’s concerned that many Catholic priests have condoned illegal immigration . . . ‘But I wish that the American bishops would listen to what the pope says because they have been advocating for essentially open immigration here in the United States,’ [Ira Mehlman, a spokesman for the Federation for American Immigration Reform] laments.”

LifeSiteNews: “Pro-life advocates should call on the Vatican to appoint bishops who will teach and defend the Church’s teaching on the transmission of human life, pro-life veteran John Smeaton, national director of the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC), told the International Pro-Life Conference in Ottawa on Friday.”

Catholic News Agency: “The special Synod for Bishops for the Middle East is winding down. It will conclude with a celebration of Mass by Pope Benedict XVI on Oct. 24. Participants seem increasingly concerned about the growth of extremist forms of ‘political Islam’ in the region.”

Associated Press: “A Rome court on Wednesday upheld the seizure of euro23 million ($33 million) from a Vatican bank account, prompting the Vatican to react in ‘astonishment.’”

CNSNews: “Catholic politicians who publicly support abortion or homosexual marriage and then seek to turn away from such ‘gravely sinful acts’ must perform ‘public’ actions of ‘repentance,’ said Raymond Burke, the archbishop emeritus of St. Louis and the current head of the highest court at the Vatican, the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura.”

Reuters: “With Christianity dwindling in its Middle Eastern birthplace, Pope Benedict has convened Catholic bishops from the region to debate how to save its minority communities and promote harmony with their Muslim neighbors.”

Associated Press: “The Vatican’s top bioethics official says Robert Edwards, who received the Nobel Prize in medicine Monday for developing in vitro fertilization, opened ‘a new and important chapter in the field of human reproduction’ but is also responsible for the destruction of embryos and the creation of a ‘market’ in donor eggs.”

Zenit: “Benedict XVI is urging the bishops of Europe to work for the defense of the family and human life, and to fight against intolerance and discrimination of Christians.”

LifeSiteNews: “Last Monday, when the head of the Catholic Bishops of England and Wales (CBEW) told a BBC interviewer that the U.K. bishops had not opposed the creation of legal civil partnerships for homosexuals, he was speaking from a longstanding policy that was published in 2005. But a source close to the CBEW has told LifeSiteNews.com that that policy was rejected by the Vatican for not being in line with Catholic teaching. The UK bishops, however, have implemented it without change, ignoring Vatican-mandated corrections.”

Zenit: “The Holy See is stressing the necessary role of parents in the lives of their children, especially in the area of education on sexuality. This was one of the points underlined by the Holy See delegation to the 2010 U.N. World Youth Conference in Leon, which took place Aug. 23-26.”

Vatican Information Service: “The nature and aims of the transactions under investigation could have been clarified with great simplicity, being cash transactions the beneficiary of which is the Institute itself, on accounts it holds at other credit institutions. The current problem was caused by a misunderstanding (now being examined) between the IOR and the bank which received the transfer order.”

The Toronto Star: “The head of the Vatican bank is under investigation for suspected money laundering and police have frozen 23 million euros ($30.21 million U.S.) of its funds, Italian judicial sources said on Tuesday.”

Christian Science Monitor: “‘Milan civil institution must guarantee everyone religious freedom,’ Cardinal Dionigi Tettamanzi, the church’s highest authority in town, told La Repubblica daily newspaper on Sept. 4. ‘Muslims have the right to practice their faith while respecting the law. Often the mosque issue has been distorted for political reasons, while it could become a instrument for civil coexistence.’”

Guardian: “Speaking at St Mary’s University College in Strawberry Hill, south-west London, Benedict told an audience of religious leaders from different faiths that the human and natural sciences provided us with an ‘invaluable understanding’ of aspects of our existence. But he said science could not satisfy the ‘fundamental’ question about why we exist. ‘They cannot satisfy the deepest longings of the human heart, they cannot fully explain to us our origin and our destiny, why and for what purpose we exist, nor indeed can they provide us with an exhaustive answer to the question “Why is there something rather than nothing?”‘”

“They are said to be from a variety of nationalities including a number of Algerian origin.”

LifeSiteNews: “Many pro-life advocates coming to Rome, especially those from North America with its strong democratic tradition, believe that meeting with Curial officials is the equivalent to lobbying congressmen or MPs. But in Rome, [Joseph Meaney, Director of International Coordination for Human Life International (HLI)] said, pounding on desks is almost sure to backfire. The secret to understanding the Vatican, he said, is understanding it as a ‘deeply Italian’ and hierarchical institution. And in Italian culture, ‘the personal contact’ is the key. In its structure, the Vatican is wholly different from any democratic state. The language of the work is Italian, and often higher level officials will speak only Italian. But more significantly, ‘the style of governance and of work is very Italian.’”

RaelPress: “The European Raelian Movement (ERM) has filed a lawsuit in the High Court, Queen’s Bench Division, against Pope Benedict XVI, formerly Cardinal Ratzinger. Allegations in the suit include charges of violating international human rights laws, perpetrating genocide by continuing to claim that condoms don’t stop the spread of AIDS, and stating that Pope Benedict and the Vatican orchestrated a campaign of disinformation against the business of the ERM after its membership reported on these matters.” Via Religion Clause.

Catholic News Agency: “Although the charismatic Christian church planning a Koran burning on Sept. 11 only has around 50 members, the spectre of the impact on Muslim relations led the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Inter-religious Dialogue to issue a statement today expressing its ‘great concern’ over the plan and stating that ‘deplorable acts of violence … cannot be counteracted’ by burning another religion’s sacred book.”

Guardian: “According to Geoffrey Robertson QC, whose book The Case of the Pope is published tomorrow: ‘Canon law has been allowed to trump criminal law in countries throughout the world. This is a very serious matter‚ the pope through his pretensions to statehood refuses to acknowledge that child sex abuse is a serious crime as well as a sin’ . . . Robertson also argues that the pope cannot legally be considered a head of state and, therefore, covered by diplomatic immunity. The lawyer is highly critical of the British government, which he accuses of failing to understand the international law surrounding sovereignty.”

John Allen writing at the National Catholic Reporter: “In a rare stroke of good news for Rome vis-à-vis the sexual abuse crisis, attorneys for three alleged victims in Kentucky have said they’re dropping what many analysts regarded as the most serious civil lawsuit against the Holy See in American courts.”

Associated Press: “Dublin Archbishop Diarmuid Martin has told priests that the Vatican has rejected the resignations of his two auxiliary bishops following their reported involvement in the Roman Catholic Church’s cover-up of child abuse.”

Catholic Culture: “A Chinese bishop who left the ‘underground’ Church to join the government-backed Catholic Patriotic Association has been installed as the bishop of the Baoding diocese. To complicate matters, the ‘underground’ Church in Baoding already has a bishop, who has been imprisoned since 1997 . . . the appointment of . . . was made by the Patriotic Association without approval from the Holy See. ”

Catholic News Agency: “The legal decision listed as its 77th ‘finding of fact’: ‘Religious beliefs that gay and lesbian relationships are sinful or inferior to heterosexual relationships harm gays and lesbians’ . . . In a list of supporting citations, the ruling quoted a 2003 document issued by the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), ‘Considerations Regarding Proposals To Give Legal Recognition To Unions Between Homosexual Persons.’”

Catholic News Agency: “The new president of the Pontifical Academy for Life, Archbishop Ignacio Carrasco de Paula, announced that his dicastery is preparing a document on the effects of abortion on women, often called post-abortion syndrome. The document will focus on the study of the ‘habit of abortion’ and is expected to be published next year.”

LifeSiteNews: “With the Vatican reeling from another sex scandal, this time in the heart of the Eternal City, the Vicar of Rome is sending an unequivocal message to homosexual priests: come out of the closet, and get out of the priesthood. Cardinal Agostino Vallini, the prelate in charge of administering the Rome diocese, the episcopal see of Pope Benedict XVI, made the statements in response to an exposé by Panorama.”

Findlaw (AP): “Cuba has promised the Roman Catholic Church it will free 52 political prisoners, slashing the number held by nearly a third in what would be the communist-led island’s largest release of dissidents since Pope John Paul II visited in 1998.”

Rev. Tomasz Trafny, head of Science and Faith Department at the Pontifical Council for Culture, writing at The Washington Post / On Faith: “In an effort to explore the cultural impact of the advancement of sciences and to find common ground for progress in the field of biomedical research with special focus on regenerative medicine, the Pontifical Council for Culture with NeoStem Inc. – an international biopharmaceutical company entrenched in groundbreaking advances in adult stem cell research – have developed a mutual collaboration. Both institutions wish to take a stand on an important yet controversial subject: not all stem cell research is harmful to human life.”

Vatican Radio interviews Jeffrey Lena, the California-based attorney currently representing the Holy See in the Oregon case of Holy See vs John Doe: “What the Supreme Court did was decide that it wasn’t going to address a question which we had wished to bring before it. That was a question that on the substantive law I think we were right. The United States agreed with us, but the Supreme Court simply determined that at this time, it was not interested in hearing the case. The fact that it wasn’t interested in hearing the case, as I say, did not deny immunity and was no comment on the merits of our position.”

E. Christian Brugger, D.Phil., Senior Fellow in Ethics at the Culture of Life Foundation: “Some may believe that only extraordinary situations can constitute legitimate reasons for practicing NFP to defer pregnancy (e.g., severe illness of a spouse; extreme financial difficulties; mental breakdown, etc.). In my opinion, this extreme interpretation is incorrect and can result in avoidable harms. … A few concrete examples of ‘iustae causae’ for deferring pregnancy might include: 1) Physical or mental illness of one of the spouses; 2) Serious financial instability (e.g., during a period of unemployment); 3) Needs arising from caring for ‘high-needs’ children; 4) The instability of transitional periods such as spouses in graduate school; 5) Debilitating stress that can arise from having a large family in societies where large families are no longer valued.”

Reuters: “In a statement, the Vatican’s lawyer, Jeffrey Lena, said when the case returns to a U.S. district court it would show it cannot be held responsible for the actions of the priest as he was not a Vatican employee.”

FOX News: “The earliest known icons of the Apostles Peter and Paul have been discovered in a catacomb under an eight-story modern office building in a working-class neighborhood of Rome, Vatican officials said Tuesday.”

Associated Press: “Pope Benedict XVI is creating a new Vatican office to fight secularization and ‘re-evangelize’ the West – a tacit acknowledgment that his attempts to reinvigorate Christianity in Europe haven’t succeeded and need a new boost.”

New York Times: “Four days after a series of police raids of Catholic institutions in Belgium that drew sharp criticism from the pope, the reason for the unusually aggressive operation has emerged: a formal accusation that the church was hiding information on sexual abuse lodged by the former president of an internal church commission handling such cases.”

Catholic News Service: “The U.S. Supreme Court has left standing a lower court ruling that will allow an Oregon man to try to hold the Vatican financially responsible for his sexual abuse by a priest, if he can persuade the court that the priest was an employee of the Vatican. By declining to take Holy See v. John Doe, the court June 28 left intact the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that said because of the way Oregon law defines employment, the Vatican is not protected under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act from potential liability for the actions of a priest who Doe, the unidentified plaintiff, said sexually abused him in the 1960s.” | Related: Charles J. Chaput: Suing the Church

AP: “A Catholic panel investigating clerical sex abuse in Belgium is shutting down to protest a police raid on its church offices last week, the group’s chairman said Monday.”

AP: “A meeting between the Vatican’s foreign minister and President Raul Castro sparked hopes Sunday that more of the island’s political prisoners may be released or transferred to jails closer to home.”