Unveiled on the final day of a “Towards Healing and Renewal” conference sponsored by the Vatican, the new online forum will provide training and certificate programs in four languages.
The center will cost 1.2 million euros ($1.92 million) for the first three years, partly funded by the U.S.-based Papal Foundation charity. The Rev. Hans Zollner, one of the conference organizers, stressed that all the foundation’s expenditures are expressly approved by Pope Benedict XVI.
The conference also highlighted the global scope of the child abuse crisis. Bishops from Asia, South America and Asia admitted that sexual abuse is not just a “Western problem,” even if the numbers of reported cases outside Europe and North America remain small.
The Rev. Edenio Valle of Brazil said bishops there had “no idea of what could or should be done.” Archbishop Luis Antonio Tagle of Manila, Philippines, said Asia’s “culture of shame” may be responsible for victims’ silence.
Even in the U.S., “many victims of sexual assault never report” the violence, warned Michael Bemi and Patricia Neal, who helped craft the “Protecting God’s Children” program that’s used in 115 U.S. dioceses.
Though a church-sponsored independent study identified at least 15,000 abuse victims from 1950-2009, others estimate the total number could be as high as 100,000 as some victims remain silent.
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Cardinal William J. Levada, a former archbishop of San Francisco who now heads the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith with jurisdiction over abuse cases, stopped short, however, of requiring bishops to report abuse cases to prosecutors or police.
Speaking to a Vatican-sponsored conference on the church’s response to the scandal at Rome’s Gregorian University, Levada admitted that the church’s relations with civil authorities “may be different from one nation to another,” but stressed that this must not affect the basic principle of cooperation.
He also urged bishops to be “more proactive” in their response to the crisis, rather than wait for the scandal to erupt in the media.
Last May, the Vatican gave all bishops conferences around the world one year to draft voluntary “guidelines” on preventing abuse, caring for victims, disciplining abusive priests, and reporting suspected abuse to local police.
An estimated 4,000 cases of sexual abuse by clergy have been reported to Levada’s Vatican department during the last 10 years, he said.
Levada also highlighted the importance of listening to victims’ grievances, accompanying them “on the often long path of healing,” and encouraging them to follow the example of Pope Benedict XVI in meeting with victims.
In a message sent to the conference participants, Benedict wrote that victims healing must be of “paramount concern” for the church. The Chicago-based Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests dismissed the conference as “window dressing” that will not result in real reform.
]]>A statement issued on Saturday (Feb. 4) by the current and past leaders of the Vatican’s Governorate, which oversees the management of Vatican City, has dismissed claims made by Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano as “erroneous,” “unfounded” and “based on groundless fears.”
Vigano, who had been secretary general of the Governorate from 2009 until his appointment as papal nuncio to Washington last October, expressed his worries directly to Pope Benedict XVI in two letters unearthed by an Italian TV program in January.
Vigano told the pope that Vatican City’s management was “disastrous,” and asked Benedict to not transfer him to Washington. The move, he said, would cause “disarray and discouragement” among those who worked against “numerous situations of corruption and waste.”
The Vatican’s top spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, had initially threatened to sue the TV program that revealed the letters and dismissed its coverage as “biased.” Lombardi also reaffirmed the pope’s “unquestionable respect and trust” towards Vigano.
Saturday’s statement strikes a different chord, however, saying that Vigano’s assertions portray the Vatican’s Governorate as an “untrustworthy entity, controlled by dark forces.”
The statement was signed by Vigano’s former superior, Cardinal Giovanni Lajolo, and by Giovanni’s deputy, Bishop Giorgio Corbellini, and by the Governorate’s current president and secretary general.
]]>Benedict did not explicitly refer to Twitter in his yearly message for World Communications Day, but Monsignor Claudio Maria Celli, president of the Pontifical Council for Social Communications, told reporters that “it’s safe to say that a reference to ‘tweets’ is there.”
Benedict wrote that in today’s world, “various types of websites, applications and social networks” can help people “find time for reflection and authentic questioning.”
A number of high-ranking churchmen already use Twitter. Cardinals Sean O’Malley of Boston; Odilo Scherer of Sao Paulo, Brazil; and Gianfranco Ravasi, president of the Pontifical Council for Culture, have thousands of followers. According to Celli, most of the visitors to the Vatican’s online news portal, www.news.va, arrive from social networks.
In his message, the pope also focused on the value of silence in communication, saying that without it, meaningful messages “cannot exist.”
“When messages and information are plentiful,” he wrote, silence becomes essential if we are to distinguish what is important from what is insignificant or secondary.”
]]>The movement relies on tightly knit small groups, modeled on early Christian communities, that share a decade-long spiritual growth path under the guidance of a priest.
Pope Benedict XVI told around 7,000 members of the movement that Neocatechumenal communities could continue in their tradition of celebrating a special Saturday evening Mass, as long as the local bishop approved and the celebrations remained open to the public.
Nevertheless, he encouraged the movement’s members not to remain “separate” from their parish community.
The pope praised the Neocatechumenal Way as a “special gift” of the Holy Spirit for modern times, especially as secularism “has eclipsed the sense of God and obscured Christian values.” The movement, he said, can help Christians rediscover the “beauty” of their faith.
The Way’s founder, Kiko Arguello, said Friday’s approval was a “historic moment” after the “many troubles” the movement had faced in the process of receiving the Vatican’s approval.
The movement’s focus on preaching in secular contexts resonates with Benedict’s recent focus on “re-evangelizing” Western countries where the faith has grown weak.
At the end of the audience, Benedict sent out 17 new teams of Neocatechumenal missionaries, who will work mostly in Europe and in the U.S. Each team is made up of three or four families accompanied by a priest.
]]>But the clergy abuse scandals rocking Europe, coupled with Pope Benedict XVI’s conservative stances on contraception, hardened Lebouvier’s views. Last October, a court in Normandy ruled in favor of his lawsuit to have his name permanently deleted from church records — making the 71-year-old retiree the first Frenchman to be officially “de-baptized.”
“I took the judicial route to get myself de-baptized because of the church’s excesses,” said Lebouvier, speaking by telephone from his village of Fleury, near the D-Day beaches.
“It’s a sort of honesty toward the church because they have a guy on their register who doesn’t believe in God.”
Lebouvier’s case is among a growing wave of de-baptisms in Europe, one of the most visible manifestations of the continent’s secular drift. Websites offering informal de-baptism certificates have mushroomed. Other Christians are formally breaking from the church by opting out of state church taxes.
“The movement is happening across Europe,” said Anne Morelli, who heads a center studying religion and secularity at the Free University of Brussels. “It was very apparent during 2011 — in the Netherlands, Germany, Belgium and Austria. It is obviously related to the scandals of pedophile priests, but it has been going on for some time.”
While there are no official statistics, experts and secular activists count the numbers of de-baptisms in the tens of thousands. It’s a phenomenon that has touched Protestant as well as Catholic communities.
In France, the de-baptism drive affects a relatively tiny proportion of Christians, experts say. Still, Lebouvier’s case may create a precedent.
The local bishop of Coutances, Stanislas Lalanne, has appealed the court ruling, a process that could take years.
“Baptism is a spiritual gift, it’s bigger than we are,” said Bernard Podvin, spokesman for the French Bishops Confederation, who would not comment on the specifics of the Normandy case. “It can’t be confined to a purely administrative framework.”
But if Lebouvier wins, de-baptism could become standard practice here, and trigger copycat lawsuits across Europe.
“The church is afraid the movement might amplify,” said Marc Blondel, president of the Paris-based National Federation of Freethinkers, who says he will launch another de-baptism drive if Lebouvier prevails.
Lebouvier’s split from the church took decades. Born in a deeply conservative and religious community, he went to Catholic school. But instead of becoming the priest his mother had wished, he became a baker, moving to Paris and joining a leftist trade union.
“I changed 180 degrees, “ he said. “It took time, but it happened.”
Change is afoot elsewhere. In neighboring Belgium, which has been hit hard by the church sex scandals, de-baptism requests in the French-speaking region alone soared to roughly 2,000 in 2010, compared to 66 two years earlier, according to the Brussels Federation of Friends of Secular Morality. The numbers of people reportedly leaving the Dutch church reportedly shot up 25 percent.
In Britain, a de-baptism certificate offered as a joke by the National Secular Society has since turned serious after tens of thousands of people downloaded it.
“Some people actually do feel actively hostile toward churches,” said society president Terry Sanderson. “And they want to express that by saying, ‘I’m not one of your members.’”
In Germany, a record 181,000 Catholics formally split from the Catholic Church in 2011 — the first time that Catholic defections outpaced Protestants leaving. Rather than requesting de-baptisms, Germans fill out government paperwork saying they no longer want to pay church taxes.
“I don’t think they want to get rid of their belief, their connection to Jesus and the baptism, but they don’t want to be connected with the church hierarchy,” said Christian Weisner, German spokesman for the international lay reform movement We are Church.
At stake for many cash-strapped European churches is not just faith, but euros.
“It’s not by chance that in Germany, Austria and Belgium that the movement is strongest,” says Belgian researcher Morelli, noting countries that levy church taxes, which France does not. “It’s also a struggle about subsidies the population must pay for a church that doesn’t represent them.”
The bigger worry, experts say, are plummeting rates of new baptisms. Half a century ago, for example, 90 percent of French children were baptized, said Sorbonne University religion professor Philippe Portier. Today, roughly one in three are.
“The church considers de-baptisms a very marginal phenomena and its strategy right now is to resist it,” Portier said. “It is much more active when it comes to reversing the drop in (new) baptisms — there it’s put in place a new evangelizing strategy.”
The parish at Paris’ historic Saint-Germain-des-Pres, for example, is offering a myriad of activities, from ski retreats to support networks for young professionals. At a recent evening youth Mass, the church was overflowing.
The parish priest, the Rev. Benoist de Sinety, is counting on faith, not numbers.
“What is striking today is that those who want to be Christian really want to be Christian,” he said. “I rejoice in the fact that people are free to choose.”
]]>Most recently, Zavala had overseen the bishops’ communications office and media outreach, and his own scandal could also hamper the bishops’ high-profile public campaign against gay marriage.
It is also a setback for efforts by the American bishops to develop Hispanic leaders to minister to the burgeoning population of Hispanic Catholics in the United States.
Hispanics account for most of the growth in U.S. Catholicism, and within a generation they are projected to be the majority ethnic group in the church. But out of nearly 300 active bishops in the United States, just 26 are Hispanics. There are 13 retired Latino prelates, including Zavala.
The Vatican provided no explanation for Zavala’s resignation, saying only that it had been accepted under the canon law requiring a bishop to step down “because of illness or some other grave reason.”
Los Angeles Archbishop Jose Gomez said in a letter released Wednesday that Zavala told him in early December that he is the father of two teenage children, both still minors, who live with their mother in another state.
Assuming the two children are 17 or younger, they would have been born after Zavala had been appointed a bishop. Calling the news “sad and difficult,” Gomez said that Zavala has been out of ministry and “living privately.”
He said the archdiocese “has reached out to the mother and children to provide spiritual care as well as funding to assist the children with college costs.”
He did not identify the family out of respect for their privacy, nor did he provide any details on how involved Zavala was with the children and their mother, and whether or how he had been providing for them financially.
Gomez appointed Monsignor James Loughnane, a priest who has worked many years in the San Gabriel area that Bishop Zavala oversaw, to take over Zavala’s duties until a replacement is named.
Benedict made his remarks in his annual Christmas speech to the Roman Curia, the Catholic Church’s central administration at the Vatican.
The pope acknowledged that “such values as solidarity, commitment to one’s neighbor and responsibility toward the poor and suffering are largely uncontroversial,” but said the “motivation is often lacking … to make sacrifices.”
While the remedy for selfishness lies in “proclamation of the gospel,” the pope said Europe is now undergoing a crisis of faith evident in the troubles of the Roman Catholic Church.
“Regular churchgoers are growing older all the time and … their number is constantly diminishing,” and “recruitment of priests is stagnating” while “skepticism and unbelief are growing.”
Benedict drew a contrast between Europe’s anemic religious life and Africa’s “joyful passion for faith,” which he experienced last month during a three-day visit to the West African country of Benin.
“None of the faith fatigue that is so prevalent (in Europe), none of the oft-encountered sense of having had enough of Christianity, was detectable there,” the pope said.
Benedict noted the benefits of religious faith to African society, which he said provides the “strength to serve Christ in hard-pressed situations of human suffering, the strength to put oneself at his disposal, without looking round for one’s own advantage.”
]]>“Supported by divine Providence, I have the intention to make an apostolic trip to Mexico and Cuba before Easter,” he said at the end of his homily during a special Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the independence of Latin American countries.
According to reports in South American news outlets, the visit will occur March 23-29.
The Vatican’s chief spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, said the trip would coincide with the 400th anniversary of the image of the Virgin of Charity, the patroness of Cuba.
Lombardi had also warned that the pope would not travel to Mexico City as the city’s high altitude made it an “inadvisable” destination for the 84-year-old pope.
Benedict said he hoped his trip would contribute to the construction of a society “rooted in the development of the common good, the triumph of love and the spread of justice.”
After a historic visit by the late Pope John Paul II in 1998, relations between the Vatican and Cuba’s communist regime have improved in recent years. This year church officials helped secure the release of 115 political prisoners who left Cuba to go into exile in Spain.
The Vatican ambassador to Cuba, Monsignor Giovanni Angelo Becciu, a key figure in Vatican dialogue with the Castro regime, was promoted last May to the No. 2 position in the Vatican’s Secretariate of State.
]]>Mother Marianne Cope, a German-born Franciscan nun who spent 30 years caring for lepers on the island of Molokai, died of natural causes in 1918. She succeeded St. Damien de Veuster, a Belgian priest known as “Father Damien,” who died of leprosy in 1889. Damien, who was canonized in 2009, is considered the patron saint of Hawaii and of HIV/AIDS patients.
Pope John Paul II declared Marianne “Blessed” in 2004, after recognizing as miraculous the 1993 cure of a teenage cancer patient in Syracuse, N.Y., who was dying of organ failure until a Franciscan nun prayed for Marianne’s intercession. A second miracle, occurring after beatification, is required for canonization.
On Tuesday (Dec. 6), the Sisters of St. Francis of the Neumann Communities, based in Syracuse, announced that the Vatican’s Congregation for the Causes of Saints had recognized another healing as both medically “inexplicable” and due to Marianne’s intercession.
The canonization still requires the approval of Pope Benedict XVI, expected sometime next year, and the sisters say they will not reveal the details of the miracle until then.
“For little Hawaii, with our population and we’ve come up with two saints,” Sister Joan of Arc Souza of Honolulu told the local KHON2 television station. “This is spectacular.”
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