1. Jesuits confirm expulsion of a priest artist and lament that Vatican norms block harsher sanctions, By Nicole Winfield, Associated Press, July 24, 2023, 4:22 AM
The Jesuits said Monday that a famous artist priest is definitively expelled from the religious order for sexually, spiritually and psychologically abusing women, and lamented they couldn’t prosecute him more vigorously under the Vatican’s internal procedures.
The Rev. Marko Ivan Rupnik remains a Catholic priest but is no longer a Jesuit priest, after he didn’t appeal his June expulsion decree, said Rupnik’s former superior, the Rev. Johan Verschueren.
Rupnik, a Slovenian priest, is one of the most celebrated religious artists in the Catholic Church. His mosaics decorate churches and basilicas around the world, including at the Vatican.
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/07/24/vatican-jesuit-abuse-rupnik-pope/05036460-29dd-11ee-a948-a5b8a9b62d84_story.html
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2. China could be next stop for Pope’s Ukraine peace envoy, By Elise Ann Allen, Crux, July 24, 2023
After making trips to Kyiv, Moscow, and Washington D.C. as part of his peace mission on behalf of Pope Francis for the war in Ukraine, Italian Cardinal Matteo Zuppi now may be heading to Beijing, according to accounts in the Italian media.
After being named by Pope Francis as his personal peace envoy for the Ukraine war earlier this summer, Zuppi made a June 5-6 visit to Kyiv, where he met Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and other top-level Church and government leaders, and to Moscow June 28-29, where he met members of Russia’s foreign ministry as well as Patriarch Kirill of Moscow, but did not meet with President Vladimir Putin.
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Should Zuppi visit Beijing, it would mark a significant step forward in terms of Vatican-China relations, as the two have not had formal diplomatic ties for more than 70 years, when Chinese leader Mao took power and forced the then-nuncio to China, Archbishop Antonio Riberi, to leave two years later.
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A source with knowledge of the proposal for the liaison office has stressed that Vatican officials have been pushing for a permanent presence in China for “a long time” and that they want the office to be in Beijing, but insisted that it would not be “a diplomatic” presence.
Rather, the idea is to have a permanent representative to help ensure that decisions, particularly those regarding episcopal appointments in light of the 2018 agreement, are made in collaboration, and to establish a consistent and regular communication between Chinese bishops and Rome.
Zuppi’s visit to China thus likely would be seen not only as an attempt to de-escalate the Russia-Ukraine war, but also as part of the Vatican’s own long-term agenda of forging stronger ties with China.
https://cruxnow.com/vatican/2023/07/china-could-be-next-stop-for-popes-ukraine-peace-envoy
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3. U.S. bishops announce where millions of dollars in charitable donations are going, By Joe Bukuras, Catholic News Agency, July 24, 2023
The United States Catholic bishops announced Thursday where millions of dollars raised by American dioceses will go for charitable purposes around the world.
The funds raised from parish collections, mail-in donations, and other initiatives were coordinated by the U.S. bishops’ National Collections Committee.
Bishop James S. Wall of Gallup, New Mexico, chairman of the USCCB Committee on National Collections, said in a statement announcing the grants that “St. Paul wrote that when one Christian suffers, all Christians suffer — because we are all part of one Body of Christ.”
“That unity is the heart of these collections. They bring faith, hope, and love to people in despair, often in some of the most harsh and remote places on earth, and to disaster victims in our own nation,” he said.
The grants come from four different national collections that American dioceses contributed to, namely the Collection for the Church in Central and Eastern Europe, the Collection for the Church in Latin America, the Solidarity Fund for the Church in Africa, and the 2022 Bishops Emergency Disaster Fund.
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https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/254865/us-bishops-announce-where-millions-of-dollars-in-charitable-donations-are-going
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4. India may be Pope’s biggest headache in campaign for ‘synodalization’, By John L. Allen Jr., Crux, July 23, 2023, Opinion
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What all this suggests is that Pope Francis faces a headache in India which, if anything, is arguably even more pernicious than the one created by the controversial “synodal path” in Germany.
On the one hand, the clergy and laity of Ernakulam-Angamaly seem to be demanding precisely what the pontiff’s version of “synodality” is intended to achieve, i.e., broadening the circle of voices in the conversation beyond the hierarchy, listening instead to the whole Church.
Yet at the same time, the pope has to be concerned of what people will make of the Syro-Malabar mess. If this is where “synodalization” in the pope’s sense leads, some may be tempted to ask, is it really a consummation devoutly to be wished?
It’s hard to imagine too many Catholics who would sign on to the idea of seeing their own diocesan cathedral effectively shut down for more than a year, for example, due to the inability of competing factions to reach a compromise on how to celebrate the Mass.
The Syro-Malabar Synod has asked the Vatican to dispatch a papal delegate to the archdiocese in an effort to resolve the difficulties. Whoever gets the job won’t just hold the fate of Ernakulam-Angamaly in his hands, but, to some extent, the pope’s broader synodal agenda.
https://cruxnow.com/news-analysis/2023/07/india-may-be-popes-biggest-headache-in-campaign-for-synodalization
__________________________________________________________TCA Media Monitoring provides a snapshot from national newspapers and major Catholic press outlets of coverage regarding significant Catholic Church news and current issues with which the Catholic Church is traditionally or prominently engaged. The opinions and views expressed in the articles do not necessarily reflect the views of The Catholic Association. |
