Pope Francis: Atheists can be good

[AdamSmith]

Pope Francis to encounter a church in crisis in Brazil

By Alessandro Speciale| Religion News Service, Updated: Thursday, July 18, 2:30 PM

Washington Post

VATICAN CITY — Six years ago, then-Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio of Buenos Aires attended a gathering of Latin American bishops at the Marian shrine of Aparecida in Rio de Janeiro and called for the Roman Catholic Church to go toward the “outskirts, not only geographically but . existentially.”

Two years after the 2005 papal conclave where Bergoglio was the runner-up to Pope Benedict XVI, the speech helped raise his profile as a man to watch.

Next week, Bergoglio will return to Aparecida and Rio, this time as Pope Francis. Though he won’t visit his native Argentina, the visit will draw attention to Latin America’s first pope and his appeal for a poor church that eschews worldly power.

Francis will arrive in Rio on Monday (July 22) to preside over World Youth Day, a triennial gathering of the world’s Catholic youth that is sometimes dubbed a “Catholic Woodstock” where papal star power takes center stage.

Brazil will encounter a pope unlike any in the church’s modern history, and Francis will find a church in crisis in the world’s most populous Catholic nation.

In the first few months of his pontificate, Francis has set the church on a path of renewal through his simple, no-nonsense style that has won widespread support from Catholics and non-Catholics alike.

In Rio, Francis’ trademark style will be on clear display: He will visit a “favela,” or slum, on foot and tour one of the world’s most dangerous cities in an open-top car, shunning the bulletproof popemobile of his predecessors.

“He feels that for him, communicating directly with the people is better that way,” explained the Vatican’s chief spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, on Wednesday.

Organizers expect more than 1 million young pilgrims, from 170 countries, to flock to Rio for the weeklong event.

Brazil is home to some 123 millions Catholics and more than 400 bishops. Despite these numbers, according to a report by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life published on Thursday, the Catholic share of Brazil’s population has shrunk from 92 percent in 1970 to 65 percent in 2010.

This is largely a consequence of the growth of the country’s evangelical and Protestant churches, which have surged from less than 5 million members 40 years ago to 42 million in the latest census.

Most worrisome, according to the report, the growth of Protestantism seems to be a consequence of “religious switching,” with the Catholic Church losing popularity among “younger Brazilians and city dwellers.” The trend seems to be accelerating in recent years, and World Youth Day’s organizers hope a charismatic pope can help revitalize the Brazilian church.

Disaffection with the church seems to reflect the wider discontentment in Brazilian society that erupted in unprecedented unrest that has shaken the country in recent weeks.

Protesting against widespread corruption and lavish government spending, hundreds of thousands of young Brazilians took to the streets in late June. The protests rocked the center-left government of President Dilma Rousseff just as Brazil prepares to showcase its newfound global power in hosting World Youth Day, soccer’s World Cup in 2014 and the Summer Olympics in 2016.

Brazil’s defense ministry has deployed nearly 3,000 extra soldiers for the pope’s visit, and the Vatican is watching the situation closely. Lombardi said he is confident that “everyone will understand that the pope’s message is a message of solidarity with the whole society, calling for a peaceful life and adequate development for everyone.”

Even if it pales in comparison with the estimated $13 billion the government is spending on the World Cup, the papal visit’s $150 million price tag — a third of it covered by Brazil — probably won’t make things easier. Responding to critics, Cardinal Odilo Scherer of Sao Paulo countered that the price is for World Youth Day should be considered an “investment in the young people.”

While the papal trip to Brazil had originally been organized for Benedict, Francis — who has traveled away from Rome only once since his election — soon confirmed he would keep his predecessor’s engagement.

Nevertheless, as Lombardi explained on Wednesday, he has asked for some changes to the original schedule.

The visit to the Varginha favela, in one of Rio’s poorest and most troubled areas, was arranged in response to Francis’ personal demands, as well as a visit to a hospital for alcohol and drug addicts. Francis also is scheduled to meet a group of juvenile inmates.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/on-faith/pope-francis-to-encounter-a-church-in-crisis-in-brazil/2013/07/18/11bebef6-efd8-11e2-8c36-0e868255a989_story.html

[Lucky]

I like this pope so far. When he finally speaks about gay issues as pope I wonder if I will still like him.

[AdamSmith]

Signorile had some interesting speculation on that point.

Is Pope Francis Waving a White Flag on Gay Marriage?

Michelangelo Signorile

Editor-at-large, HuffPost Gay Voices

Posted: 06/14/2013 12:02 pm

This week we saw reports about Pope Francis cryptically acknowledging the existence of a "gay lobby" in the Vatican, about which he supposedly believes something has to be done. But if I were on a crusade against gay marriage, like Maggie Gallagher or Brian Brown of the National Organization for Marriage (both devout Catholics), I don't think I'd be very happy with this pope so far. In fact, I'd say he stinks.

Let's put all of this in some perspective. In the time since Francis became pope, France became the largest predominantly Catholic country to pass marriage equality, right in the Vatican's backyard. In the U.S., three states, including Rhode Island, which has the highest percentage of Catholics in the country, passed marriage equality. Predominantly Catholic Mexico continues to move forward on the issue in the courts, and Brazil's National Council of Justice green-lighted gay marriage in that country, which would become the largest country in South America and the largest predominantly Catholic country in the world to allow gay marriage. Another Latin American country near the Argentine pope's old stomping grounds, Uruguay, passed marriage equality in recent months, as did New Zealand.

And Pope Francis had nothing publicly to say about any of it. Zero. Zilch. Nada. He was busy washing the feet of the poor and tweeting about how selflessness is a virtue. Go figure.

Back when Spain passed marriage equality in 2005, Pope Benedict whirled himself into a frenzy, railing against it regularly. He told Catholic officials there that any support of the law would cost them their jobs and told secular public servants who are Catholic to flout the law and refuse to marry gays. He traveled to Spain and railed some more, oblivious to protests of his trip. From then on, he regularly attacked gay marriage, even calling it a "threat to the future of humanity."

And now here is Francis allegedly saying, according to a Chilean newspaper that quoted a source who took notes inside a private meeting of the Latin American Confederation of Men and Women Religious during a discussion about corruption inside the Vatican, that "they speak of a 'gay lobby,' and that is true. It is there.... [W]e will have to see what we can do [about it]." No context was offered as to whether Francis asked about it or brought it up on his own (nor was there an elaboration of exactly what Francis would do about the "gay lobby"), and the Vatican ran from the statement, declining fuller comment, saying that it was a private meeting, not for public consumption. Later, CLAR released a statement refuting the statement entirely, saying that the assertion that there is a gay lobby at the Vatican "cannot be attributed with certainty to the Holy Father."

The backtracking likely happened under pressure from the Vatican, which underscores that Francis just doesn't seem as if he wants to be out front on this issue. That was even clearer when Francis met this morning with the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, who'd railed against gay marriage in the United Kingdom, which is about to pass marriage equality. According to the Associated Press:

In his remarks to Welby, Francis said he hoped they could collaborate in promoting the sacredness of life "and the stability of families founded on marriage." ...

Significantly, though, Francis didn't specify that marriage should be based on a union between a man and woman, which is how Benedict XVI and John Paul II routinely defined it in a way that made clear their opposition to same-sex marriage.

Vatican officials said Francis' phrasing was a diplomatic attempt to make his point without making a provocative pronouncement....

A diplomatic way of being against gay marriage? Wow. Once politicians start doing that -- such as when Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama both stopped defining marriage as "between a man and woman" a few years back -- they eventually support same-sex marriage. I'm not saying Francis is anywhere near there (though he did reportedly support civil unions, as I noted in a post a couple of months back). But having harshly railed against gay marriage back when he was in Argentina, only to lose that battle, he may be seeing that the handwriting is on the wall and that he's got better things to do with his time. And that can only be seen as a loss for Maggie Gallagher and other anti-equality advocates who hoped the pope would loudly lead their crusade.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michelangelo-signorile/is-pope-francis-waving-a_b_3442274.html

[AdamSmith]

Pope Francis the Unconventional

Pope Francis, who heads to Brazil on Monday for World Youth Day, has won the hearts of millions of Roman Catholics. That may come in handy as he seeks to reform the Vatican. By Henry Chu Reporting from Vatican City

July 20, 2013

He wades into crowds without hesitation, shaking hands and kissing babies. He cracks jokes and delivers unscripted remarks, to the occasional dismay of staffers scrambling to keep up.

Four months in office, Pope Francis is engaged in what seems like a U.S. presidential campaign in reverse: Without really trying or even wanting it, he has won election to the top job. Now he's out in the field pressing the flesh, listening to constituents and working to win hearts and minds -- and (given his line of business) souls.

By most measures, he is succeeding. As he prepares for his first overseas trip as pope, starting Monday, Francis has earned near-universal praise for his jovial manner, his evident love of people, his simple lifestyle, his commitment to the downtrodden and his determination to put a personal stamp on the papacy.

Like a spiritual rock star, he routinely packs St. Peter's Square for his weekly appearance to bless the faithful. Hundreds of thousands of devotees, perhaps millions, are expected to turn out to see Francis, the first Latin American pontiff, during his trip to Brazil, the world's most populous Roman Catholic nation.

But many of his toughest decisions lie ahead as he seeks to set the Roman Catholic Church on a new path and to shake up the scandal-plagued, faction-ridden Vatican. Building up a reservoir of public support and improving the church's image outside Vatican City should serve him well in that mission.

"It definitely helps him and strengthens his position, because now the church's voice is listened to instead of just rejected," said Alessandro Speciale, the Vatican correspondent for Religion News Service.

No one suggests that the pope's energetic outreach is merely an act. Even cynics acknowledge that, back in Argentina, then-Archbishop Jorge Mario Bergoglio was known for a populist touch, humble living and plain speaking, a product of his Jesuit background.

Since his election here in March to replace Benedict XVI, Francis' decisions to forgo many of the trappings of office, such as frequent use of the papal limo, and to speak up for the marginalized, including immigrants and Muslims, are genuine expressions of his personality and beliefs, analysts say.

"He's not an actor," said Andrea Tornielli, coordinator of the Vatican Insider website. "He's himself."

But Francis' unassailable humility has had tactical benefits and disrupted business as usual within the Vatican.

Take his insistence on living in the Casa Santa Marta guesthouse on the Vatican grounds, rather than the papal penthouse of the Apostolic Palace. Though Francis, who is 76, says he prefers the simplicity of his present lodgings, the decision has enabled him to exercise greater control over his agenda. Powerful aides at times have restricted access to his predecessors, sometimes for their own ends.

"No one decides how he allots his time, who sees him. He picks up the phone and calls up people," Speciale said. (There are reports that the pontiff still says, "It's Jorge," when he rings someone.)

"This is really revolutionary," Speciale added. "This was the main thing he did to ensure he was free to pursue his agenda, to maintain his wider view and not to be isolated."

At the guesthouse, the leader of the world's 1.2 billion Roman Catholics has met not just with cardinals and other senior church officials, some of whom used to wait months to bend the pope's ear. He also has found time for lower-ranking priests, bureaucrats and Vatican workers. One of his first Masses at the guesthouse was attended by the Vatican's gardeners and cleaners.

The Italian media have dubbed Francis "the world's parish priest" because of his accessibility and warm pastoral style, a stark contrast to Benedict's bookish, almost otherworldly air. Francis now celebrates Mass nearly every morning with whoever is at Casa Santa Marta and delivers homilies noted for their homespun, chatty wisdom.

In a departure from past practice, however, the homilies have not been transcribed and published on the Vatican website. Analysts say this reflects Francis' informality but also the bewilderment of aides who are unsure what to do with some of his comments. In May, for example, he appeared to suggest in off-the-cuff remarks that atheists could go to heaven if they did good works. A few days later, Vatican officials issued a "clarification" denying the idea or any change in church doctrine.

Many Catholics, both laypeople and clerics, are eager for Francis to clean up the Curia, the Vatican administration, which has seen a string of embarrassing scandals.

The Curia's problems are rumored to be a prime reason Benedict chose to become the first pope in several centuries to step down voluntarily. Many of the cardinals who elected Francis have urged him to bring thoroughgoing reform to the Vatican.

But overhauling an ancient institution is a monumental task.

"When Pope Benedict was elected, there were many expectations because the church needed to be reformed.... We were disappointed because few things changed," said Antonio Sabetta, a professor at Pontifical Lateran University in Rome. "Now the expectations are bigger."

Vatican watchers predict that Francis' first major moves will occur after the summer — among them, a shake-up of high-ranking personnel. That will probably include replacing controversial Secretary of State Tarcisio Bertone, the top administration official, or perhaps eliminating the post altogether.

Within weeks of his inauguration, the pope appointed a commission to advise him on reform. The eight members are cardinals who work outside the Curia and hail from six continents, including an American, Sean O'Malley of Boston. The panel will hold its first meeting in October.

"Pope Francis is a Jesuit.... They listen to people," Sabetta said. "They don't decide immediately. They want to know everything. At the end of the day, they make a decision."

Although resistance is likely from those who fear for their jobs or their perks, momentum and wider opinion could work in the pope's favor. So will a steely resolve that experts say lies beneath Francis' genial, grandfatherly manner.

"Awareness of [the need for] changes is so strong, not only outside the church but also inside the church, that it will be easier to do this and to prevail over people trying to fight changes," Sabetta said. "He is very determined."

Followers are heartened by the pope's crackdown at the troubled Vatican bank, which has long been suspected of money laundering. A monsignor is under investigation by Italian authorities on suspicion of fraud, which prompted the bank's director and deputy director to resign this month.

Another papal commission has been assigned to review the bank for Francis, who has declared a wish to see a "poor church for the poor," and who is reported to have said that St. Peter "did not have a bank account."

Any grumbling over the new leadership has been relatively quiet so far. Some are waiting for Francis to address the church's sexual abuse scandals; others complain that his common touch removes the aura of sacredness that should surround the papacy.

And some senior clerics are struggling to adapt to the new tone of austerity and simplicity.

"With bishops and cardinals, you can't just push a button to synchronize them with this new frequency," said Tornielli of Vatican Insider. "It's a big change."

But many Catholics find their new leader and his example inspiring, and he clearly feeds off their enthusiastic support.

Luisa Ferreira, 65, a Brazilian visiting St. Peter's Square shortly before the pope's arrival in her country, said Francis' message was good, but difficult. "The church needs to practice what it preaches."

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-pope-francis-20130721-dto,0,2614668.htmlstory

[AdamSmith]

Found this image profoundly moving.

Pope Francis sits in the last seat while praying in the St. Martha House chapel.

http://margefenelon.com/2415/pope-francis-decides-to-stay-at-st-martha-house-and-i-so-called-it/

[wayout]

Found this image profoundly moving.

Totally agree.... says so much with a single picture. I have to raise a concern that I have with this pope. He is raising expectations that he will perhaps do some things that are desperately necessary to transform the Catholic church. I hope that he can but perhaps those expectations may be unrealistic as to what he actually can and will do. Don't get me wrong, I am excited about the possibilities but also in the back of my mind I have to admit that I am worried somewhat that without something significant there will be a sudden let down and disappointment that will overshadow the various positives he has or will achieve.

[AdamSmith]

A blunt Pope Francis targets free market economics

Published: Tuesday, 6 Aug 2013 | 3:21 PM ET

By: Mark Koba | Senior Editor, CNBC

Since taking over as head of the Roman Catholic Church in March, Pope Francis has made several stark comments on world economic issues: He's cited the pitfalls of capitalism, decried global income inequality and equated low-wage labor to a form of "slavery."

He's even described the financial corruption in the church he leads as a "spiritual sickness."

Analysts say Pope Francis—leader of some 1.2 billion Catholics—is not necessarily calling for the demise of free market theory. Instead, he's issuing a very strong warning to economic leaders over its future.

"Like many people he thinks capitalism won't survive unless it decreases income disparity," said George Haley, professor of marketing and international business at the University of New Haven.

"I think it's fair to say he's arguing for a more European version of capitalism going forward, especially after the Great Recession, so there's more of a safety net for people when they need it," Haley added.

"I don't think he's attacking capitalism or the wealthy, because if he did, that strategy would fail," said Joseph Pastore, a business professor at Pace University.

"But he is rightly focusing on issues of equality and justice in economics," Pastore said.

At least some in the business community have taken notice of the pope's message.

"His comments are of high importance to me," said Rohit Arora, CEO of Biz2Credit, an online site that connects small-business owners with financing.

"The kind of issues he's talking about are too often ignored by religious and business leaders," Arora said.

Surprising as they may be, the pope's comments on global economics are in line with his personal thinking, said Mathew Schmalz, a professor of religious studies at the College of the Holy Cross.

"Being a Jesuit priest and having spent so much time in Argentina as bishop and cardinal had a great effect on him," Schmalz said. "He's seen a lot of poverty close up and raised the issue in Argentina before becoming pope."

A history of Papal comments

Papal statements on social and economic justice are not new. During the past 100 years or so, popes have made their thoughts on the issues known through open letters—what the church calls encyclicals.

In 1891, Pope Leo XIII issued an encyclical that rejected both communism and unrestricted capitalism, while affirming the right to private property. But he also supported the rights of labor to form unions, and the need for some "amelioration of the misery and wretchedness pressing so unjustly on the majority of the working class."

Pope John XXIII issued an encyclical in 1961 backing free market ideas, but said that from a Catholic perspective, "the global economy serves a higher good; if the economy booms, but human dignity suffers, the result is unmistakably evil."

Pope John Paul II, known for his strong anti-communist feelings, issued an encyclical in 1989 warning capitalist nations against letting the collapse of communism "blind them to the need to repair injustices in their own economic system."

More recently, Pope Benedict, whose resignation in February of this year opened the way for Francis to head the chrurch, issued an encyclical in 2009 that called for a world political body to manage the global economy—as well as for more government regulation to pull the world out of the Great Recession.

"Pope Francis speaks in continuity with all the popes that spoke about economic issues," said Mary Catherine Sommers, a professor of philosophy at the University of St. Thomas.

"The church doesn't choose economic systems any more than political systems around the world but it does keep an eye on human systems," said Sommers, who is a member of the American Catholic Philosophical Association, a group that fosters Catholic discussion on issues.

Michael Bellafiore, a Jesuit priest and professor of theology at the University of Scranton, said Francis and the church have a role to play in shaping the business world.

"The church's task is to form consciences," said Bellafiore. "As such, corporations, banks, unions, investors all have to rise above their immediate interests and compromise. Pope Francis can promote leadership in the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression."

Attacked as socialist

For his comments, Francis has been called a socialist or left-leaning by conservative economists. And not all Catholics share the same enthusiasm for his thoughts.

"Personally, I"m much more market friendly, as was John Paul II," said Bill Donohue, president of the Catholic League, an anti-defamation group based in New York.

"I certainly applaud him for recognizing that unrestrained capitalism needs more order," Donahoe said. "If he's emphasizing we can't forget the poor, I'm all for that. But if he's leaning toward a more liberation theology, the more socialist model, which I don't think he is, then I'm against it."

"A lot of Catholics won't like what he says about economics," said Schmalz.

"That includes the bureaucracy in the Vatican, which tends to be conservative on moral and economic issues," Schmalz added.

For his part, Biz2Credit's Arora said he has faith in the pope's good intentions but would like to know more about which economic direction the pontiff's headed.

"Right now, neither capitalism nor socialism offer solutions for the world's income inequality, which is the biggest problem." said Arora. "If the pope is serious about this, I think he needs to come up with specifics and a third way. So far he hasn't."

Francis also has the problem of setting a good example from a church—reportedly worth at least $8 billion—that has had its share of controversies and issues of corruption.

"The Catholic church is very wealthy, and that's why it's important he doesn't take an us-against-them attitude when he talks about the poor," said Pace University's Pastore. "It can look hypocritical."

"He's called for reforms with the Vatican bank and he's rejecting the rich cars and living quarters popes have used in the past," said Schmalz. "But how far he can go with the church remains to be seen."

The University of St. Thomas' Sommers said any pope is always walking a fine line between the spiritual and material world.

"The church has to deal with reality and that means sometimes making compromises," Sommers said. "But the church has many priests who live in poverty voluntarily. There are more of them than other kinds of priests."

Francis likely to keep talking

Whether Francis or any religious figure can influence economic decision-making remains uncertain.

The general public remains skeptical, or at least those on social networks are, according to findings from NetBase. The software firm surveyed online global comments (some 29,000) from March to Aug. 1, finding an overall 54 percent negative to 46 percent positive reaction to his statements on wage labor, capitalism and Income equality.

But Arora argued the pope needs to take advantage of his role as a global leader to help the poor.

"The debate is fine but we need solutions," Arora said. "How do we stop income inequality and low wages? I'd like him to tell us."

One way to turn words into action is to use the full force of the church, said the University of New Haven's Haley.

"If Francis is serious about this, he could use the Vatican's diplomatic corps to lobby various governments to come up with plans to deal with the world's economic woes," Haley said.

And unlike other popes, Francis has an advantage now that others didn't, said Pastore.

"Social media and media in general help him get his message out to a global public and he's being noticed because of that," Pastore said. "But what he needs to do is get folks that are capitalists to join the conversation."

'We need people to have wealth, we need the capacity to have economic activity and all this should be part of the discussion," Pastore added. "The problem is I think most of big business and many in government will ignore him."

Whether Francis is condemned as a socialist, anti-capitalist or a liberal thinker, Schmalz said the pope is likely to keep talking about social and economic issues.

"It would take a lot to pull him back and I don't see him tapering off," Schmalz said. "I think he feels compelled to bring these issues up. The question is, will there be any real concrete changes in economic thinking? We'll have to wait and see."

http://www.cnbc.com/id/100931792

[AdamSmith]

'Ciao Michele, it's Pope Francis'

An Italian man whose brother was shot dead in June has spoken of his shock when he answered the phone to Pope Francis, calling this week to offer his condolences.

By Josephine McKenna, Rome

5:00PM BST 09 Aug 2013

The Telegraph

Michele Ferri is the brother of 51-year-old Andrea, a petrol station manager who was allegedly gunned down by two men including one young employee he treated like a son.

The death shocked the north-eastern town of Pesaro.

Michele Ferri wrote a letter to the Pope telling him of his inability to forgive the killers and was shocked when he picked up the telephone on Wednesday evening to hear: "Ciao Michele, it's Pope Francis."

At first Mr Ferri thought it was a joke but said he was overcome with emotion when he realised it was really Francis on the line from the Vatican.

"He told me he cried when he read the letter I wrote to him," Mr Ferri said.

The Pope also asked to speak to Mr Ferri's mother to express his personal sympathy.

The telephone call is the latest in a series of spontaneous personal gestures by Pope Francis that have surprised Catholics around the world since he was elected Pope in March.

"I forgot to ask him if he wanted to visit us in Pesaro," Mr Ferri said.

Father Mario Amadeo, a town priest who knows the family well and conducted the funeral in June, said he did not know about the letter to the Pope until Mr Ferri's mother told him.

"It's a very beautiful gesture that indicates the kindness and greatness of this Pope," he said.

Pope Francis has adopted an informal approach since the night of his election when he greeted the crowds in St Peter's Square with a simple "Buona sera" or good evening. He has made daily contact with ordinary people a priority ever since and told a friend earlier this year he shunned the papal apartments because he did not want to be isolated.

Two men have been arrested and accused of firing seven shots at Mr Ferri through the windscreen of his car as he was driving home and fleeing with the key to his company safe.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/vaticancityandholysee/10233855/Ciao-Michele-its-Pope-Francis.html

[Guest hitoallusa]

What a wonderful story.

[AdamSmith]

This is the story linked above about his not wanting to be isolated in the papal apartments. Familiar by now, but well told here.

Pope Francis shunned official papal apartments to live 'normal life'

Pope Francis has revealed for the first time the reasons for his decision to shun the official papal apartments and instead live in a much more modest Vatican 'hotel'.

By Nick Squires, Rome

2:47PM BST 29 May 2013

The Telegraph

He has told a friend that he likes being in daily contact with ordinary people, does not want to be isolated and enjoys sitting down to meals with visiting clergy.

The Pope, 76, who on first seeing the papal apartments reportedly exclaimed "But there is room here for 300 people!" hinted that the arrangement may be permanent.

The Pope broke with Vatican tradition when he decided, after being elected on March 13 during a secret conclave of cardinals, not to live in the apostolic apartments.

^{Pope Francis' bedroom at the Vatican's Santa Marta hotel (AP)}

Instead he opted to remain in the Casa Santa Marta, a Vatican residence which accommodates visiting clergy and lay people, where he had stayed with his fellow cardinals during the conclave.

He lives in a suite of rooms in the residence, which sits in the shadow of St Peter's Basilica, on the other side of the Vatican city state to the apostolic apartments.

He explained his choice in a letter written two weeks ago to an old friend, Father Enrique Martinez, a priest at the Church of the Annunciation in La Rioja.

"I didn't want to go and live in the apostolic palace. I go over there just to work and for audiences.

"I've remained living in the Casa Santa Marta, which is a residence which accommodates bishops, priests and lay people." There he feels "part of a family" he wrote in the letter, which was obtained by Clarin, an Argentinian daily.

"I'm visible to people and I lead a normal life – a public Mass in the morning, I eat in the refectory with everyone else, et cetera. All this is good for me and prevents me from being isolated.

"I'm trying to stay the same and to act as I did in Buenos Aires because if you change at my age you just look ridiculous." The Pope, the first Jesuit pontiff in history and the first to come from the Americas, said his election was "something totally surprising" which he considers "a gift from God".

His predecessor, Benedict XVI, is living a quiet life of retirement in a former convent on the other side of the Vatican.

The Pope got soaked on Wednesday as he was driven around St Peter's Square in an open-air white jeep as part of his weekly audience.

Despite driving rain, he waved to the crowds and kissed babies who were handed up to him.

When he reached a covered platform overlooking the piazza, he was given a roll of paper towels with which to mop his face. He thanked the crowd for braving the bad weather.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/the-pope/10086876/Pope-Francis-shunned-official-papal-apartments-to-live-normal-life.html

[AdamSmith]

Behind the new Pope's smile . . .

Luke Coppen on a biography of the Pontiff that raises questions about his background

Luke Coppen – 17 August 2013

Independent

In the year 2000, Jorge Mario Bergoglio went to Germany to resolve one of the most painful episodes of his life. The then Archbishop of Buenos Aires travelled there in search of an elderly fellow Jesuit, Franz Jalics. When they finally met, for the first time in decades, an eyewitness said they fell into each other's arms and wept.

The two men had first crossed paths some 40 years earlier, when Jalics taught the young Bergoglio philosophy. It wasn't long before the student became the older man's superior: just three months after taking his final vows, Bergoglio was appointed head of the Jesuit order in Argentina. Jalics and a fellow priest, Orlando Yorio, asked his permission to live among the poor in a city slum and he readily gave it.

Two years later, in 1976, the military launched a coup and began what it called, with sinister euphemism, the Proceso de Reorganización Nacional.

Suspected left-wing activists were captured, tortured, drugged and then pushed, still conscious, out of aeroplanes over the Atlantic. One Sunday in May they came for Yorio and Jalics.

What happened next – and why – is the subject of an ongoing polemic that went global on March 13 this year, when Bergoglio was elected Pope.

Did he provoke the kidnapping by withdrawing his support for the priests after they refused his command to leave the slum? Or did he work courageously behind the scenes to free them, broken but alive, five months later?

In Pope Francis: Untying the Knots, Paul Vallely skilfully unravels the competing narrative threads, without ever oversimplifying either Argentine politics or the new Pontiff's complex personality.

It may surprise those who know Bergoglio only as the beaming, baby-kissing Bishop of Rome that he was once nicknamed the "man who never smiles". Today, he deliberately avoids referring to himself as "the Pope", yet he was once seen as deeply authoritarian. He is famous for his low-key liturgies, but as a young priest he reportedly justified his High Church-style by saying: "Ordinary people like a touch of Evita."

He now enjoys incredible popularity, but other Jesuits disliked him so much that after stepping down as their leader he was sent to a lowly post 400 miles away from Buenos Aires. He has said he wants a "poor church for the poor", but he was suspicious of those, like Yorio and Jalics, who were inspired by Liberation Theology to live among the needy. (When Bergoglio was made a bishop in 1992 Yorio left Argentina in disgust and died eight years later without ever being reconciled with the future Pope.)

It's not easy to explain all these apparent contradictions, but Vallely does so brilliantly. He shows how Pope Francis's personality was transformed in the crucible of Argentina's Dirty War, emerging with the old imperfections – aloofness, inflexibility and a taste for power – burned away. When drug dealers threatened to kill one of his slum priests four years ago, he acted without hesitation, telling the cleric: "If someone has to die, I would prefer it be me" and offering to sleep at his house.

Almost every page of the book contains this kind of telling detail, which Vallely has gleaned from pounding the streets of Buenos Aires. Not surprisingly, there are a few signs of hasty publication: there is some repetition and the final chapter on the papal reform programme is inevitably quite sketchy. But for such a sophisticated biography to appear now, less than six months after the papal election, is little short of a publishing miracle.

Luke Coppen is editor of The Catholic Herald.

http://www.independent.ie/entertainment/books-arts/behind-the-new-popes-smile-29505848.html

[AdamSmith]

Pope Francis: Untying the Knots by Paul Vallely – review

The new pope kept his silence as terror stalked Argentina in the 1960s. Is he really as humble as the Vatican says?, asks Hugh O'Shaughn

• Hugh O'Shaughnessy
• The Observer, Saturday 17 August 2013

Jorge Mario Bergoglio in a 1950s family portrait. Back row (l-r): his brother Alberto Horacio, Jorge Mario Bergoglio, his brother Oscar Adrian, his sister Marta Regina. Front row (l-r): his sister Maria Elena, his mother Regina, his father Mario Jose Francisco. Photograph: EPA

I don't remember hearing the name of Jorge Mario Bergoglio, who became Pope Francis in March, or any of his fellow Argentinian Jesuits when I was in Buenos Aires in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. They seemed strangely silent in such harrowing times when the fundaments of decent civilisation were being set at nought throughout the western hemisphere at the multiplying demands of the cold war.

Pope Francis: Untying the Knots

by Paul Vallely

They kept their peace, for instance, when their brother bishop Enrique Angelelli was murdered by the country's uniformed terrorists at the orders of General Jorge Videla and Admiral Emilio Massera.

I do remember the lines of armed police with their dogs in Calle Florida, the Knightsbridge of the Argentinian capital; I'll never forget the ESMA, the naval mechanical school, the handsome white building on its wide avenue in the Barrio Norte, the smart part of town where uniformed torturers learned their repulsive technique of sending their opponents screaming to their death – sometimes from aircraft over the waters of the river Plate – as the regime's servants made a few pesos plundering their property and selling their babies to the highest bidders in the name of the defence of "western Christian civilisation". Signs outside the ESMA, I recall, reminded motorists not to linger lest they be shot.

These were times of western-supported terrorism imposed on Argentina by a succession of local monsters who combined with their neighbours, Alfredo Stroessner in Paraguay, the Brazilian generals, Augusto Pinochet in Chile, Hugo Banzer in Bolivia and the military non-entities who disgraced the international reputation of Uruguay. Outside help was supplied from Washington not just by Henry Kissinger but also, US writers tend to forget, by Jimmy Carter.

The Catholic church in Argentina had few to rival in valour Cardinal Raúl Silva in Santiago in his opposition to the military putsch, or Paulo Evaristo Lins Arns, pastor of São Paulo, and Hélder Câmara of Olinda and Recife, Archbishop Óscar Romero of San Salvador and their six fellow Jesuits of the same city who were assassinated by marksmen trained in the US.

I don't remember Bergoglio and company because they outrageously kept their silence over the 30,000 dead in the military terrorists' onslaught against society. Indeed the Argentinian Jesuit leadership did its best to minimise the crimes and was aided by the Vatican's diplomats, notably Archbishop Pio Laghi. The latter reckoned his spiritual duty to believers would be famously advanced by regularly playing tennis with the cowardly Massera, the master of the ESMA.

The character of the times was confirmed when John Paul II went on to appoint Laghi to the nunciature in Washington where Bush I called him "an old family friend" and helped the Polish pope to destroy the Sandinistas in Nicaragua.

The choice of Bergoglio that the cardinal-electors made at the last papal conclave was widely greeted with dismay; many Catholics were aghast that the winning candidate could be selected from a crew that for years had been led by Antonio Quarracino, the capital's archbishop who had a penchant for large limousines and expensive, tasteless hotels.

Paul Vallely is to be complimented for the rapid work he put into this biography of the new pope, though it is peppered with all too many minor errors. Happily the author refused to accept the impression carefully fostered by the Vatican that we have a profoundly humble and good-hearted pope suitable for embrace by any bien pensant. Vallely has wisely distanced himself from the hysterical demands for an immediate canonisation that shouts of "Santo subito!" represented on the death of John Paul II, the artificer of the long and tenacious campaign to push John XXIII's thrilling and much needed reforms of the Second Vatican Council into history. Nor does the author think that taking public transport is the key to sainthood.

Vallely's attitude is rather to accept the evidence of Argentinian authors such as Horacio Verbitsky. These say that the conservative Bergoglio was passive in front of the crimes of the day and deaf to the cries of the poor and indeed of some of his fellow Jesuits who were closer to the lessons of the gospel than he himself was. The author says the new pontiff has mended his ways.

He underlines the new pope's constant confession that he had erred greatly as a Jesuit – ignoring the victims of western-supported terrorism, betraying friends to the torturers and halting efforts to stop the impoverishment of millions.

Vallely remarks, "Bergoglio behaved recklessly and has been trying to atone for his behaviour ever since."

That prompts two thoughts. First, let's hope that Vallely has read Bergoglio correctly, second, when will British Catholic leaders forswear the search for honours and, in this time of creeping war and impoverishment, start following the examples of such as Cardinal Silva and Archbishop Romero?

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/aug/18/pope-francis-untying-the-knots-review

[AdamSmith]

Argentina Rape Victim Stunned by Phone Call From Pope

Wednesday, 28 Aug 2013 04:58 AM

By Joel Himelfarb

Alejandra Pereyra, 44, said she felt she had been “touched by the hand of God” after receiving the phone call from Pope Francis.

Pereyra wrote to the Pope, who was archbishop of Buenos Aires before being elected pontiff in March, about 10 days ago. She said that after she had been raped by a policeman, Argentinean authorities tried to suppress her complaint and that the perpetrator had received a promotion.

She was amazed to hear from the 76-year-old Pope personally when he called her on Sunday using a landline from the Vatican.

“My mobile phone rang and when I asked who it was, he responded, ’The Pope’,” Pereyra told an Argentinean television network. “I just froze.”

They talked for approximately 30 minutes, during which time they discussed issues of “faith and trust,” according to the London Daily Telegraph.

“The Pope listened to what I said with much attention,” she said. “He told me that I was not alone and that I must have faith in the justice system.”

The Pope “told me that he receives thousands of letters a day but that the one that I wrote had touched his heart,” Pereyra added.

She said she would “do everything possible” to travel to Rome to meet the Pope in person.

“He said he would receive me,” said Pereyra, who comes from Rio Segundo, located about 450 miles northwest of Buenos Aires.

http://www.newsmaxworld.com/newswidget/pope-rape-victim-call/2013/08/28/id/522584?promo_code=13074-1&utm_source=13074The_hill&utm_medium=nmwidget&utm_campaign=widgetphase1

Pope calls Argentinian rape victim with words of comfort

The Pope has struck again with his habit of telephoning ordinary people who have sent him letters, calling a woman in his native Argentina who was allegedly raped by a policeman.

By Nick Squires, Rome

3:46PM BST 27 Aug 2013

Alejandra Pereyra, 44, said she felt she had been “touched by the hand of God” after receiving the phone call from Pope Francis, who as on previous occasions telephoned her on a landline from the Vatican.

Ms Pereyra wrote to the Pope, who was archbishop of Buenos Aires before being elected pontiff in March, about 10 days ago, saying that she had been raped by a policeman but that the authorities in Argentina had tried to suppress her complaint and that the officer had received a promotion.

She was amazed to hear from the 76-year-old Pope personally when he called her on Sunday.

“At about 3:30pm, my mobile phone rang and when I asked who it was, he responded, ’The Pope’,” she told an Argentinian television network. “I just froze.” They had a conversation of about half an hour, during which they discussed “faith and trust”.

“The Pope listened to what I said with much attention,” she said. “He told me that I was not alone and that I must have faith in the justice system. He told me that he receives thousands of letters a day but that the one that I wrote had touched his heart.”

She said she would “do everything possible” to travel to Rome to meet the Pope in person. “He said he would receive me,” said Ms Pereyra, who comes from the city of Rio Segundo, about 450 miles northwest of Buenos Aires.

Aside from rejecting much of the pomp and splendour of the papal office, Pope Francis has struck a relaxed, informal style and established a reputation for making personal phone calls to people who have written to him.

Last week he called an Italian teenager who had written him a letter.

Stefano Cabizza, 19, an information technology student from near Padua in northern Italy, was stunned to have the leader of the world’s 1.2bn Catholics phone him up for a chat.

Five days after his election, the Pope called his local news kiosk in Buenos Aires to ask the owners to cancel his newspaper subscription.

He also called his shoemaker, telling him not to start making the soft red loafers favoured by Benedict XVI but to continue producing his favourite but very ordinary black leather shoes.

On Monday he called the mother of an Italian petrol station owner who was shot dead in a robbery in June.

The calls have become so frequent that Corriere della Sera, one of Italy’s leading newspapers, recently ran a humorous front page article containing advice for people who find the Pope on the other end of the line.

Resist the temptation to be too informal, wrote Beppe Severgnini, a noted author and humorist. “Don’t call him ‘Franci’ or ‘Cecco’ (a diminutive of Francesco). But don’t call him ‘Magnifico’ or ‘Megagalattico’ either.” Avoid talking about the scandals that have shaken the Vatican in recent years, but mention his predecessor, 86-year-old Benedict, whom Francis often fondly refers to, the paper said.

“Don’t be afraid to just be normal. If he had wanted to be bored, he would have called a government minister.”

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/italy/10269017/Pope-calls-Argentinian-rape-victim-with-words-of-comfort.html

[Guest hitoallusa]

I think we have a good Pope....

[AdamSmith]

Long engrossing interview with Francis:

http://www.americamagazine.org/pope-interview

[AdamSmith]

Some commentary on the above interview by the interviewer:

http://www.americamagazine.org/content/all-things/listening-pope

[wayout]

Thanks for posting this AS. A very interesting, educational and enjoyable read. One gets some important insights into the man and his love of the Church without being oblivious to the realities it faces. I continue to be optimistic that he will make an even greater positive difference in the future.

[AdamSmith]

Key quotes from Pope Francis interview with atheist journalist: Stop ‘Vatican centric’ thinking

• By Elizabeth Tenety, Washington Post
• October 1 at 1:20 pm

In an interview published Tuesday with La Repubblica journalist Eugenio Scalfari, Pope Francis added more meat to his previous critique of the Catholic Church’s hierarchy, with the leader of the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics picturing a world without religious proselytism, calling for all people to follow their own consciences, and laying out a plan for reforming the Vatican.

In a phone call arranging the interview, scheduled as follow-up to a previous public exchange the two had on the pages of the Italian newspaper, Francis promised to embrace Scalfari, an atheist, with a hug during their meeting, an event that included jokes as well as heartfelt discussion of one another’s beliefs. Scalfari’s report, translated into English on La Repubblica’s Web site, shows a pope who rejects blind deference to hierarchy, one who is eager to engage with the world beyond the walls of the church, even when his words may make Catholics uncomfortable.

“I have the humility and ambition to want to do something,” Francis said, ”to be open to modern culture,” a mission that he said church had previously promised but failed to follow through on.

That vision, said Francis during the interview, includes a broad view of moral decision-making, outreach to non-believers and a restructuring of the church to make it more “horizontal.”

Below are some key quotes from the interview.

On atheists and believers trying to convert one another:

Proselytism is solemn nonsense, it makes no sense. We need to get to know each other, listen to each other and improve our knowledge of the world around us. Sometimes after a meeting I want to arrange another one because new ideas are born and I discover new needs. This is important: to get to know people, listen, expand the circle of ideas. The world is criss-crossed by roads that come closer together and move apart, but the important thing is that they lead towards the Good.

On following your conscience:

Q. Your Holiness, is there is a single vision of the Good? And who decides what it is?

A. Each of us has a vision of good and of evil. We have to encourage people to move towards what they think is Good.

Q. Your Holiness, you wrote that in your letter to me. The conscience is autonomous, you said, and everyone must obey his conscience. I think that’s one of the most courageous steps taken by a Pope.

A. And I repeat it here. Everyone has his own idea of good and evil and must choose to follow the good and fight evil as he conceives them. That would be enough to make the world a better place.

On a “Vatican-centric” view of the church and world:

Heads of the Church have often been narcissists, flattered and thrilled by their courtiers. The court is the leprosy of the papacy.

It is what in an army is called the quartermaster’s office, it manages the services that serve the Holy See. But it has one defect: It is Vatican-centric. It sees and looks after the interests of the Vatican, which are still, for the most part, temporal interests. This Vatican-centric view neglects the world around us. I do not share this view and I’ll do everything I can to change it. The Church is or should go back to being a community of God’s people, and priests, pastors and bishops who have the care of souls, are at the service of the people of God.

On clericalism:

When I meet a clericalist, I suddenly become anti-clerical. Clericalism should not have anything to do with Christianity. St. Paul, who was the first to speak to the Gentiles, the pagans, to believers in other religions, was the first to teach us that.

On a rare mystical experience after being elected pope:

Before I accepted, I asked if I could spend a few minutes in the room next to the one with the balcony overlooking the square. My head was completely empty and I was seized by a great anxiety. 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. I closed my eyes and I no longer had any anxiety or emotion. 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 and the table on which was the act of acceptance.

On the role of the church in the modern world:

…Our goal is not to proselytize but to listen to needs, desires and disappointments, despair, hope. We must restore hope to young people, help the old, be open to the future, spread love. Be poor among the poor. We need to include the excluded and preach peace. Vatican II, inspired by Pope Paul VI and John, decided to look to the future with a modern spirit and to be open to modern culture. The Council Fathers knew that being open to modern culture meant religious ecumenism and dialogue with non-believers. But afterwards very little was done in that direction. I have the humility and ambition to want to do something.

On restructuring the church:

I am the Bishop of Rome and Pope of the Catholic world. The first thing I decided was to appoint a group of eight cardinals to be my advisers. Not courtiers but wise people who share my own feelings. This is the beginning of a Church with an organization that is not just top-down but also horizontal.

Read the full interview for more of Francis’s views on the value of liberation theology, and a fascinating exchange between Scalfari and Francis on how atheists and Catholics see reality.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/on-faith/wp/2013/10/01/key-quotes-from-pope-francis-interview-with-atheist-journalist-stop-vatican-centric-thinking/

[wayout]

I find his comments on clericalism to be very interesting and fairly significant. I imagine this is one area in particular that he will get quite a bit of pushback on within the Church. I also find it interesting how he is creating a sort of "board of directors" composed of cardinals to help advise him in a real way, with the Pope being the "chairman". Seems as though he may have gotten his business degree somewhere along the way.

[AdamSmith]

Vatican's new Secretary of State says clerical celibacy "open to discussion":

http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/09/11/20433950-pope-francis-no-2-clerical-celibacy-is-open-to-discussion

[AdamSmith]

Pope Francis sends e-mail on Holocaust to American Jewish leader

• By Elizabeth Tenety, The Washington Post
• October 18 at 12:35 pm

Pope Francis reached out to an American Jewish leader, the son of two Holocaust survivors, in a recent e-mail exchange.

The pope contacted Menachem Rosensaft, an American professor specializing in the law of genocide and war crimes trials at Columbia and Cornell, after Rosensaft sent a sermon he delivered in September on believing in God after the Holocaust, along with a personal note, to the Vatican.

Vatican officials confirmed the e-mail.

In the short note, Francis alluded to Rosensaft’s reflection on the possibility of God’s presence during the Holocaust, which the professor believes gave his father strength to pray even during his imprisonment and torture, and his mother the courage to rescue and tend to 149 children, largely orphans, inside a Nazi concentration camp during World War II.

Francis wrote to Rosensaft, translated by The Post from Spanish:

“When you, with humility, are telling us where God was in that moment, I felt within me that you had transcended all possible explanations and that, after a long pilgrimage — sometimes sad, tedious or dull – you came to discover a certain logic and it is from there that you were speaking to us; the logic of First Kings 19:12, the logic of that “gentle breeze” (I know that it is a very poor translation of the rich Hebrew expression) that constitutes the only possible hermeneutic interpretation.

“Thank you from my heart. And, please, do not forget to pray for me. May the Lord bless you.”

In Jewish circles, the response to the theological questions raised by the Holocaust has ranged from a rejection of God’s existence to a teaching in some ultra-Orthodox circles that sees the Holocaust as divine punishment. But for others, like Rosensaft, the Holocaust gave rise to a new way of thinking about God’s faithfulness amidst profound suffering. Rosensaft said that the pope’s acknowledgement that God was present even during the time of genocide through acts of courage and kindness “is a tremendous spiritual gift” that gives meaning to survivors of any act of violence.

“What I have tried to say in my sermon, which is why it is so gratifying to have Pope Francis validate this, was that God was not the perpetrator of the horrors but God’s divine presence is in the continued humanity of the victims, that the divine presence was within those who rescued, who saved, who helped,” Rosensaft said.

The outreach of the leader of the Catholic Church to the Jewish community in the context of the Holocaust and its fallout is also historically consequential.

The legacy of the Catholic Church’s actions and inactions during the genocide that led to the death of 6 million Jews, and 5 million others targeted by Nazis, continues to shadow Catholic-Jewish relations.

The church council known as Vatican II, which took place in the early 1960s, is often pointed to as a turning point in relations between the two groups, in particular the generation of Nostra Aetate, a Catholic document which formally denounced anti-Semitism and acknowledged the common spiritual heritage between the faiths.

Since assuming the papacy, Francis, who as Cardinal Bergoglio in Argentina was known to be close with Jewish leaders, has continued to cultivate relationships with Jewish groups.

In early September, Francis welcomed Ronald Lauder, the president of the World Jewish Congress, to the Vatican and, according to AP reports of their meeting, spoke of a need for the church to look into the controversial Polish ban on the Kosher practice of slaughtering animals. After their meeting, Lauder said in a statement that “in the past 2,000 years, ties between the Catholic Church and Jews had never been this good.”

In the last week, the Vatican denied the request by the family of Nazi war criminal Erich Priebke for a funeral Mass. The Society of Saint Pius X (SSPX), a breakaway Catholic sect still in dialogue with Rome, apparently offered to host the funeral, but then delayed the event due to outside pressure.

On Friday, the Vatican announced plans for Francis to visit Israel, perhaps as early as 2014, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Rosensaft sees Francis’s outreach to him as part of an ongoing evolution of understanding between the two religious traditions.

“I think having the pope raise the issue to this level means that we are going to hopefully have an integration of Holocaust memory not just into the Jewish theological framework but also into the Catholic teachings. Perhaps then we can move forward together.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/on-faith/wp/2013/10/18/pope-francis-sends-e-mail-on-holocaust-to-american-jewish-leader/

Because You Never Know When Pope Francis Might Send You An E-Mail

October 19, 2013

By Frank Weathers,Why I Am Catholic

Didn’t know I could do that, did you?

First it was phone calls, then it was letters and interviews. And now il Papa just might e-mail you like he did Menachem Rosensaft.

Rosensaft is an American professor who specializes in genocide and war crimes trial law at Cornell and Columbia universities. He wrote Pope Francis to share a sermon he had delivered that centered around keeping faith in God throughout the dark days of the Holocaust.

In her article at the Washington Post, Elizabeth Tenety says the Vatican confirms that Pope Francis e-mailed Rosensaft, and she supplied the following excerpt from it.

“When you, with humility, are telling us where God was in that moment, I felt within me that you had transcended all possible explanations and that, after a long pilgrimage — sometimes sad, tedious or dull – you came to discover a certain logic and it is from there that you were speaking to us; the logic of

First Kings 19:12

, the logic of that “gentle breeze” (I know that it is a very poor translation of the rich Hebrew expression) that constitutes the only possible hermeneutic interpretation.

“Thank you from my heart. And, please, do not forget to pray for me. May the Lord bless you.”

Read the rest of the article.

I like that Tenety references, and provides a link to, Nostra Aetate, the Church’s Declaration On the Relation Of The Church To Non-Christian Religions.

In our time, when day by day mankind is being drawn closer together, and the ties between different peoples are becoming stronger, the Church examines more closely her relationship to non-Christian religions. In her task of promoting unity and love among men, indeed among nations, she considers above all in this declaration what men have in common and what draws them to fellowship.

One is the community of all peoples,

one their origin

, for God made the whole human race to live over the face of the earth. One also is their final goal, God. His providence, His manifestations of goodness, His saving design extend to all men,(

Wis. 8:1

;

Acts 14:17

;

Rom. 2:6-7

;

1 Tim. 2:4

) until that time when the elect will be united in the Holy City, the city ablaze with the glory of God, where the nations will walk in His light.

(Rev. 21:23

)

Men expect from the various religions answers to the unsolved riddles of the human condition, which today, even as in former times, deeply stir the hearts of men: What is man? What is the meaning, the aim of our life? What is moral good, what is sin? Whence suffering and what purpose does it serve? Which is the road to true happiness? What are death, judgment and retribution after death? What, finally, is that ultimate inexpressible mystery which encompasses our existence: whence do we come, and where are we going?

Perhaps you think you know the answers to all of these questions. Perhaps, like me, you believe the answers to these mysteries are found in the teachings of the Catholic Church. Perhaps you don’t. What cannot be denied is that the Church has thought long and hard on these issues, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. So when she says,

We cannot truly call on God, the Father of all, if we refuse to treat in a brotherly way any man, created as he is in the image of God. Man’s relation to God the Father and his relation to men his brothers are so linked together that Scripture says: “He who does not love does not know God” (

1 John 4:8

).

No foundation therefore remains for any theory or practice that leads to discrimination between man and man or people and people, so far as their human dignity and the rights flowing from it are concerned.

The Church reproves, as foreign to the mind of Christ, any discrimination against men or harassment of them because of their race, color, condition of life, or religion. On the contrary, following in the footsteps of the holy Apostles Peter and Paul, this sacred synod ardently implores the Christian faithful to “maintain good fellowship among the nations” (

1 Peter 2:12

), and, if possible, to live for their part in peace with all men,(

Rom. 12:18

) so that they may truly be sons of the Father who is in heaven.(

Matt. 5:45

)

and you feel like running away because you have to change in order to conform to the mind of Christ (and his Church), think before you leap.

Remember the words of the first Captain of the Barque,

Be sober and vigilant. Your opponent the devil is prowling around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. Resist him, steadfast in faith, knowing that your fellow believers throughout the world undergo the same sufferings.

The God of all grace who called you to his eternal glory through Christ Jesus will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you after you have suffered a little.

To him be dominion forever. Amen.

In the wise words of Chef from Apocalypse Now, “never get off the boat.”

And if you ever write to Pope Francis, and you don’t want to give him your phone number, make sure you give him your e-mail address. He loves using every possible method to keep in touch with God’s children. Because he puts the “new” in New Evangelization.

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/yimcatholic/2013/10/because-you-never-know-when-pope-francis-might-send-you-an-e-mail.html

[AdamSmith]

This is the sermon by Rosensaft that moved Francis to email him.

The Days of Awe and the years of horror

• By Menachem Z. Rosensaft
• The Washington Post
• September 11 at 7:59 am

Guest sermon delivered at Park Avenue Synagogue in New York City on Shabbat Shuva, the Saturday between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, September 7, 2013

Exactly 16 years ago, on Shabbat Shuva, the Saturday between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, I sat in this sanctuary together with our daughter Jodi. My mother had died the previous evening, only a few hours after the end of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. After being increasingly ill for months, she had finally succumbed to the hepatitis she had contracted at Auschwitz-Birkenau. We then met with Rabbi David Lincoln to discuss her funeral, which was going to take place two days later, on Monday.

In the hospital, my mother had been upset that she would not be able to go to the cemetery where my father is buried. He had died 22 years earlier midway between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. We had gone to his graveside every year on the day after Shabbat Shuva. I had tried to reassure her that my wife Jeanie, Jodi and I would represent her. As it turned out, my mother was indeed with us at Mt. Carmel Cemetery that year -she was laid to rest beside my father on his Yahrzeit, the anniversary of his death.

For the past 38 years, I have been listening to the Torah reading for Shabbat Shuva while thinking first of my father and then of both my parents. It is a deeply unsettling text.

In his final substantive address to the Israelites, Moses prophesies a future of misery and despair for the people he has led for 40 years. Emphasizing in Deuteronomy 32:4 that God is “faithful . . . never false, true and upright,” Moses tells the Israelites that they and their descendants would be responsible for all the manifold misfortunes and disasters that would befall them over the course of generations, and describes in graphic detail how their God would wreak destruction on them for their apparently inevitable collective treachery and sins. “I will sweep misfortunes on them, use up My arrows on them: Wasting famine, ravaging plague, deadly pestilence, and fanged beasts will I let lose against them. . . . The sword shall deal death without, as shall the terror within.” (Deuteronomy 32:23-25)

And, as Moses takes great pains to make clear, this divine devastation would not be unleashed only on those who had committed transgressions, but on the entire people, young and old, women, children and infants alike, the innocent as well as the guilty.

Even more disturbing to me is God’s declaration that “I will hide My countenance” from the Israelites in the moments of their greatest distress, their greatest need. (Deuteronomy 32:20)

This is not a new image. “Then My anger will flare up against them on that day, and I will abandon them and hide My countenance from them” we read in the previous week’s Torah reading, followed by “And I will keep My countenance hidden on that day because of all the evil they have committed by turning to other gods.” (Deuteronomy 31:17-18)

Both my parents survived Auschwitz-Birkenau and Bergen-Belsen. My mother described her 15 months at Birkenau as “a time of humiliation, torture, starvation, disease, fear, hopelessness, and despair.” After managing to escape and being recaptured, my father was imprisoned and tortured for months at Auschwitz in Block 11, the so-called Death Block. What sins could they have committed to deserve such punishment?

My parents’ entire immediate families were murdered in the Shoah. My mother’s five-a-and-half-year-old son, my brother, was one of more than one million Jewish children who were killed by the Germans and their accomplices only and exclusively because they were Jewish. Again, what possible transgressions could any of them have committed to cause God to turn away from them?

Every year, I am forced to remember my parents in the context of a Torah reading that challenges my ability to relate to God. How, we ask ourselves, can we believe in God in the aftermath of the Shoah? Shouldn’t an omniscient God have had to know that the cataclysm was being perpetrated? And shouldn’t an omnipotent God have been able to prevent it?

But then again, isn’t any attempt on our part to want to understand the very essence of divinity presumptive in the extreme? Any exploration of this formidable if not utterly impenetrable topic must, in my opinion at least, be approached with tremendous reticence and humility. In the introduction to his book, Faith After the Holocaust, Rabbi Eliezer Berkovits observed that, “Those who were not there and, yet, readily accept the Holocaust as the will of God that must not be questioned, desecrate the holy disbelief of those whose faith was murdered. And those who were not there, and yet join with self-assurance the rank of the disbelievers, desecrate the holy faith of the believers.”

There are those who believe that the brutal annihilation of millions was God’s wish and had a divine purpose. Rabbi Joel Teitelbaum, the leader of the ultra-Orthodox rabidly anti-Zionist Satmar Hasidim – whose own life, incidentally, was saved by a Zionist – blamed the Holocaust on Zionists who had refused to wait for the Messianic redemption and instead sought to implement a secular Jewish national agenda. Others went even further. Rabbi Eliezer Schach, a spiritual leader of the non-Hasidic Ashkenazi ultra-Orthodox in Israel, declared that the Holocaust was God’s divine punishment for all the perceived heresies committed by Jews under the influence of Zionism, socialism and the Enlightenment.

My friend Rabbi David Ellenson, the President of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, has called my attention to a manuscript written after the Holocaust by Rabbi Yechiel Yaakov Weinberg, the last head of the Hildesheimer Rabbinical Seminary in Berlin and a giant of pre-World War II modern Orthodoxy, in which Weinberg wrote that, “The Rabbinerseminar was destroyed on account of our many sins.” The troubling corollary that follows from this one simple sentence is that the Germans who were responsible for murdering the institutions’ teachers and students were somehow the instruments of a divine vengeance.

To his credit, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the Lubavitcher Rebbe, categorically rejected this approach. “The destruction of six million Jews in such a horrific manner that surpassed the cruelty of all previous generations,” he declared, “could not possibly be because of a punishment for sins. Even the Satan himself could not possibly find a sufficient number of sins that would warrant such genocide!”

In a similar vein, the Talmudist David Weiss Halivni, who survived several Nazi death and concentration camps, has dismissed as “obscene” any suggestion that the Holocaust was “a divine response to the spread of the German culture of Haskalah [the Enlightenment], or secularism, among the Jews.” Any such rationalizations, he wrote in his memoirs, “are theologically offensive . . . . A justification, by definition, means: it should have happened, it’s justice, it’s the fitting course of events. People who make such statements suggest, in effect, that had it not happened, they would have worked to bring it about.”

Nevertheless, the Lubavitcher Rebbe insisted that the Holocaust had to have been part of a divine plan, even if human beings could not comprehend God’s reasons. Holocaust historian Yehuda Bauer has quoted Schneerson as writing that, “It is clear that ‘no evil descends from Above’ and buried within torment and suffering is a core of exalted spiritual good. . . . So it is not impossible for the physical destruction of the Holocaust to be spiritually beneficial.”

In mid-October 1943, during Sukkot, my father smuggled a tiny apple into the Birkenau barrack where the inmates had gathered to pray so that the highly respected Rabbi of the Polish city of Zawiercie, known as the Zawiercier Rov, could recite the Kiddush blessings. Throughout the prayers, my father recalled, the aged Rov stared at the apple, obviously conflicted. At the end of the clandestine service, he picked up the apple and said, in Yiddish, almost to himself, “Un iber dem zol ikh itzt zogn, ‘ve-akhalta ve-savata u-verakhta et Hashem Elohekha . . . .’” And over this, I should now say, “And you will eat, and you will be satisfied, and you will bless your God . . . .” “Kh’vel nisht essen,” I will not eat, he said, “veil ikh vel nisht zat sein,” because I will not be satisfied, “un ikh vill nisht bentchn” and I refuse to bentch, to sanctify God. And with that, the Zawiercier Rov put down the apple and turned away.

The Zawiercier Rov never lost his faith in God. Like the Hasidic master, Levi Itzhak of Berditchev, however, he was profoundly, desperately angry with Him, and this anger caused him to confront God from the innermost depths of his being.

One evening around the same time, my father and a group of Jews from Zawiercie were sitting in their barrack when the Zawiercier Rov suddenly said, again in Yiddish, “You know, der Rebboine shel-oilem ken zein a ligner,” the Master of the Universe can be a liar. Asked how this could possibly be, the rabbi explained, “If God were to open His window now and look down and see us here, He would immediately look away and say, “Ikh hob dos nisht geton,” I did not do this—and that, the Zawiercier Rov said, would be the lie.

The following year, the Jewish kapo – an inmate assigned supervisory tasks by the Germans – in charge of Block 11, where my father had been an inmate for more than five months, wanted my father to conduct the Yom Kippur service. Emaciated, starved, my father chanted Kol Nidrefrom memory in the Death Block of Auschwitz, and then led the prayers there that evening and the following day for his fellow prisoners. As a reward, the kapo gave my father and the other inmates of Block 11 an extra bowl of soup to break the fast.

“You have screened Yourself off with a cloud, so that no prayer can pass through,” we read in the Book of Lamentations. And yet it is told that Reb Azriel David Fastag, a disciple of the Hasidic Rebbe of Modzhitz, spontaneously composed and began to sing what has become the best-known melody to Maimonides’ 12th Principle of Jewish Faith while in a cattle car from the Warsaw Ghetto to the Treblinka death camp: “I believe with perfect faith in the coming of the Messiah; and even though he may tarry, nevertheless I will wait every day for him to come.”

A young Jew managed to escape from the Treblinka-bound train, taking with him the niggun, the melody of Reb Azriel David Fastag’s “Ani Ma’amin.” Eventually the melody reached the Modzhitzer Rebbe who is said to have exclaimed, “With this niggun the Jewish people went to the gas chambers, and with this niggun, the Jews will march to greet the Messiah.”

Very much in the spirit of the Shabbat Shuva Torah reading, Professor Weiss Halivni has written that, “There were two major theological events in Jewish history: Revelation at Sinai and revelation at Auschwitz. . . . At Sinai, God appeared before Israel, addressed us, and gave us instructions; at Auschwitz, God absented Himself from Israel, abandoned us, and handed us over to the enemy.”

Which raises a fundamental question: How can we pray to or have any relationship with God if we believe, in Weiss Halivni’s words, that He abandoned us, and handed us over to the enemy?

But maybe, just maybe, Professor David Weiss Halivni, the Lubavitcher Rebbe, and Rabbi Yechiel Yaakov Weinberg all looked for God’s presence and power in the wrong place. What if God was very much there during the Holocaust, but not with the killers, with the forces that inflicted the Holocaust on humankind? What if He was in fact alongside and within the victims, those who perished and those who survived?

Could it be that God, the true God, did not hide His face from Reb Azriel David Fastag in the cattle car to Treblinka but instead gave him the inspiration and strength to compose his niggun? And could it also be that God was praying alongside my father in Block 11 on Yom Kippur in 1943?

On the façade above the main entrance of our synagogue is a relief sculpture of the Polish-Jewish educator Janusz Korczak surrounded by children who are desperately holding on to him. Born Henryk Goldschmidt, Korczak, a secular Jew, founded and directed an orphanage in Warsaw. After the German occupation of Poland, Korczak declined numerous offers to save himself, refusing to leave his children behind in the Warsaw Ghetto. On August 5, 1942, Korczak led the children through the streets of the Ghetto to the Umschlagsplatz, the deportation square, from which they were taken by train to the gas chambers of Treblinka. Abandoned by the world, seemingly abandoned by God, Korczak did not want his children to feel that he, too, had abandoned them.

My mother was sent from Auschwitz-Birkenau to the concentration camp of Bergen-Belsen in November of 1944. By that time, her parents, her first husband, her child, her brother and her sister had all been murdered. She was utterly alone and by all rights should have succumbed to despair. Instead, she had used her medical skills at Birkenau to enable countless women to survive, more often than not at the risk of her own life. Assigned to that camp’s infirmary, she had performed rudimentary surgery, camouflaging women’s wounds, sending them out of the barrack on work detail in advance of selections and thus keeping many of them out of the gas chambers.

At Bergen-Belsen in late December of 1944, my mother and several other Jewish women inmates took a group of Dutch Jewish children into their barrack. My mother then proceeded to organize what became known as a Kinderheim, a children’s home, within the concentration camp. One of my mother’s fellow inmates subsequently recalled that my mother “walked from block to block, found the children, took them, lived with them, and took care of them.… Most of them were orphans, and she was like a mother to them . . . .” Among them were children from Poland, Czechoslovakia and elsewhere. Some had been brought to Bergen-Belsen from Buchenwald, others from Theresienstadt.

My mother wrote in her memoirs that she and the other women in her group “had been given the opportunity to take care of these abandoned Jewish children, and we gave them all our love and whatever strength was left within us.”

Despite the horrific conditions at Bergen-Belsen in the winter and spring of 1945, despite a raging typhus epidemic and other virulent diseases, despite the lack of food and medicine, my mother and her fellow prisoners kept 149 Jewish children alive until the day of their liberation on April 15, 1945.

If God was at Treblinka, I want to believe that He was within Janusz Korczak as he accompanied his children to their death. I feel certain that the mystical divine spark that characterizes Jewish faith, the Shekhina, was within my mother as she and the other women in her group rescued 149 Jewish children from almost certain death at Bergen-Belsen.

Perhaps God was also within every Jewish parent who comforted a child on the way to a gas chamber, and within every Jew who told a story or a joke or sang a melody in a death camp barrack to alleviate another Jew’s agony. Perhaps it was the Shekhina that enabled young Jews like Jeanie’s father to take up arms against the Germans in ghettos and forests. Perhaps God was within the Ukrainian farmer who hid Jeanie’s mother and grandparents, and within all the other non-Jews who defied the forces of evil by saving Jews in Nazi-occupied Europe.

And so it is, as I remember my parents on their Yahrzeit, that I have come to the conclusion that perhaps God did not hide His face from them after all during the years of the Shoah. Perhaps it was a divine spirit within them that enabled them to survive with their humanity intact. And perhaps it is to that God that we should be addressing our prayers during these Days of Awe and throughout the year.

Menachem Z. Rosensaft is general counsel of the World Jewish Congress, vice president of the American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors and Their Descendants, and a past president of Park Avenue Synagogue in New York City. He teaches about the law of genocide and war crimes trials at the law schools of Columbia, Cornell and Syracuse Universities.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/on-faith/wp/2013/09/11/the-days-of-awe-and-the-years-of-horror/

[AdamSmith]

The Oskar Schindler Of Argentina?

Oct 13 2013 @ 10:46am

Andrew Sullivan

The Dish

John L. Allen, Jr. details a new Italian book that claims that title for the man who became Pope Francis:

In reply to persistent charges that the young Fr. Jorge Mario Bergoglio was complicit in Argentina’s infamous “dirty war” from 1976 to 1983, when roughly 30,000 people disappeared, Scavo asserts that Bergoglio was actually a Jesuit version of Oskar Schindler – quietly saving lives rather than engaging in noisy public protest.

The future pope, Scavo writes, saved as many as a thousand targets of the military dictatorship by providing shelter in a Jesuit college, passing them off as seminarians or laity on retreat, then helping them move out of Argentina.

In one case, according to Scavo, Bergoglio gave a man who bore him a passing resemblance his own passport and priest’s clothing to make his escape.

http://dish.andrewsullivan.com/2013/10/13/the-oskar-schindler-of-argentina/

Book says pope saved more than 1,000 in 'Dirty War'

John L. Allen Jr. | Oct. 7, 2013 NCR Today

Rome

Perhaps the single public figure on the planet right now least in need of rehabilitation of his image is Pope Francis, who's got poll numbers in most places of which politicians and celebrities alike can only dream.

Nevertheless, rehabilitation is precisely what Italian journalist Nello Scavo delivers in his new book Bergoglio's List: The Untold Story of the People Saved by Francis during the Dictatorship, which was presented today at the headquarters of the Jesuit journal Civiltà Cattolica in Rome.

In reply to persistent charges that the young Fr. Jorge Mario Bergoglio was complicit in Argentina's infamous "dirty war" from 1976 to 1983, when roughly 30,000 people disappeared, Scavo asserts that Bergoglio was actually a Jesuit version of Oskar Schindler – quietly saving lives rather than engaging in noisy public protest.

The future pope, Scavo writes, saved as many as a thousand targets of the military dictatorship by providing shelter in a Jesuit college, passing them off as seminarians or laity on retreat, then helping them move out of Argentina.

In one case, according to Scavo, Bergoglio gave a man who bore him a passing resemblance his own passport and priest's clothing to make his escape.

In other cases, Scavo says, people were saved "indirectly" by Bergoglio, because the targets he helped stay out of prison would have named others who would also likely have been arrested and tortured.

Scavo provides names and details for roughly a dozen people rescued by Bergoglio and claims that each one of those people told him they knew "at least 20 or 30 more." Taken together with the indirect effects of his actions, Scavo says, Bergoglio was arguably responsible for saving more than the 1,200 lives attributed to Schindler's intervention during World War II.

One such survivor is today a mayor in Uruguay named Gonzalo Mosca, who was accompanied by Bergoglio onto the airplane that carried him to safety while being hunted by the police. Another is an Argentine lawyer and human rights activist named Alicia Oliveira, whose three small children were lodged in a Jesuit college by Bergoglio while she remained in hiding. Twice a week, she said, Bergoglio would take her to see her children, despite the fact that a warrant was out for her arrest.

"Nobody needs to explain to me who Jorge Bergoglio is," she told Scavo. "He helped many persecuted people escape, putting his own life at risk."

The rescued also include Alfredo Somoza, an atheist novelist who today lives in Milan, and Ana and Sergio Gobulin, a married couple now living in the Italian province of Pordenone. The pope has remained friends with the Gobulins, according to Scavo, speaking from time to time on the telephone.

Scavo claims the story of Bergoglio's pipeline has been previously untold because Bergoglio himself has never called attention to it, and in fact the pope didn't cooperate with the book project.

There are already plans for translations of the book in at least eight languages, including English, and there's also been at least two proposals for a movie a-la "Schindler's List."

Nevertheless, there are signs that the book may not resolve all the debates over Bergoglio's role in the dirty war.

The book itself carries a preface by Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, the Argentinian Noble Peace Prize Winner, which lauds Bergoglio's aid to victims but also questions his public silence during that period.

"He did not participate in the struggle in defense of human rights against the military dictatorship," Esquivel writes.

On Sunday, leftist Argentinian journalist Horacio Verbitsky published a new piece questioning the reconciliation between the pope and a Jesuit named Franz Jalics, one of two Jesuits arrested and tortured in 1976. Verbitsky,a former leftist guerilla, is close to the government of Christina Kirchner in Argentina, and has long been one of the most acerbic critics of Bergoglio's history during the dictatorship.

Jalics and the other Jesuit, Orlando Yorio, who has since died, originally suggested that Bergoglio had turned them in. Yet Jalics, a native on Hungary who today lives in a German monastery, withdrew that charge in a March 20, 2013, statement: "The fact is, Orlando Yorio and I were not denounced by Father Bergoglio."

Francis and Jalics met in person in Rome this past Saturday, Oct. 5, with Jalics assisting the pope in celebrating Mass.

In his Oct. 6 piece for the Argentine newspaper Página/12, Verbitsky asked rhetorically what "private revelation" had caused Jalics to withdraw his accusation. He insisted that Bergoglio must have known about such crackdowns on clergy, because it was common practice for the military to inform their bishops or religious superiors beforehand.

Scavo defends Bergoglio's choice not to engage in overt opposition by comparison to the role of Pope Pius XII during World War II – the price of being able to save lives behind the scenes, Scavo contends, was being careful in public.

"What use would a human rights champion be in jail, or even dead?" Scavo said.

"At the time Bergoglio wasn't known, so a public denunciation by him wouldn't have had any effect on the leaders of the coup," he said. "Let's also not forget that the regime assassinated roughly thirty bishops, priests and sisters, as well a hundred catechists believed to be communists."

This morning's event was hosted at Civiltà Cattolica by Jesuit Fr. Antonio Spadaro, who conducted a recent blockbuster interview with Francis on behalf of 16 Jesuit publications. Italian filmmaker Liliana Cavani told the crowd that the pope's role as revealed in the book reminds her of a "fisherman from Lampedusa," where a recent shipwreck left more than 200 dead, and where local fisherman worked around the clock to pull survivors from the water.

"Not being able to save everyone, he at least wanted to save someone," Cavani said.

Bergoglio's List is published in Italian by EMI, a missionary publishing house. An official from the publisher told NCR today it will be issued in English translation by Tan Books, though with a release date next year.

http://ncronline.org/blogs/ncr-today/book-says-pope-saved-more-1000-dirty-war

[MsGuy]

Do Vegas bookies have an over/under on how soon this new Pope will be found dead in his apartments?

I'm thinking with every statement, his health gets more precarious.

[AdamSmith]

I speculated here before that has to be one reason he is living in Casa Santa Marta -- to lessen the danger of ending up like John Paul I.