1. Top Vatican official wishes Trump a ‘truly fruitful’ presidency, By Inés San Martín, Vatican Correspondent, Crux, November 9, 2016.
Pope Francis’ right-hand man has congratulated the newly-elected American Donald Trump by wishing him a “truly fruitful” government while urging him to work for world peace.
“We assure him of our prayers, so that the Lord may enlighten him and support him in the service of his country, and of course, also in serving the well-being and peace of the world,” said Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican’s Secretary of State.
“I believe that today there’s a need for all to work to change the world’s situation, that is one of great lacerations, great conflict,” he continued, talking to journalists at the start of the academic year at the Pontifical Lateran University in Rome.
Parolin, who heads the Holy See’s diplomatic corps, began by asking for respect for “the will of the American people in this exercise of democracy,” adding that he had been informed of the vast turnout at the US election.
https://cruxnow.com/vatican/2016/11/09/top-vatican-official-wishes-trump-truly-fruitful-presidency/
2. Where could President Trump and Pope Francis do business?, By John L. Allen Jr. , Editor, Crux, November 9, 2016.
Defying every last scrap of conventional political wisdom, Donald Trump stunned the world Tuesday night by capturing the American presidency.
Given the role the United States plays on the global stage, actors all over the world right now are scrambling to figure out what Trump’s victory means about the direction America is taking, and how best to react.
One of those actors, of course, will be the Vatican.
To use the categories made famous by Joseph Nye, the Vatican is the world’s most important “soft power,” the only major world religion which has at its core a sovereign state with its own diplomatic corps; the United States, with military expenditures exceeding all other nations combined, is the planet’s most important “hard power.”
Inevitably, therefore, the relationship between these two players is important, and this morning, personnel in the Vatican’s Secretariat of State, which has primary responsibility for foreign policy, are undoubtedly trying like mad to get a read on where things stand.
For the Vatican, it will be important to send signals of openness and a desire for dialogue, and to avoid perceptions right out of the gate of girding for battle with the new American administration.
A face-value reading of the obvious contrasts between Donald Trump and Pope Francis would suggest a tense, complicated relationship. On the other hand, given that shocks to the system are now simply par for the political course all over the world, perhaps a partnership between these two figures could emerge as one of the biggest surprises of all.
https://cruxnow.com/analysis/2016/11/09/president-trump-pope-francis-business/
3. Trump’s Triumph Powered by Religious Voters, Unprecedented dissatisfaction with America’s political class undergirded an utterly unexpected victory, but Trump’s successful appeal to Evangelical and many Catholic voters was another crucial factor, By Matthew Bunson, National Catholic Register, November 9, 2016.
But in the end, the victory of Donald Trump as president was both a rejection of Hillary Clinton and a personal achievement for the billionaire political neophyte who made the entire campaign about him. He managed to survive scandals that would have crippled any other candidate, his own lack of discipline and what many openly called a narcissistic personality to become in the last few weeks a fierce campaigner in states that logic said were out of reach.
And then there is a vital component to his victory that will be the source of study and great interest to sociologists, political scientists and pundits. The next days will allow for careful study of the numbers, but the exit polls found initially that Trump may have carried the largest Evangelical vote in history and a majority of the Catholic vote.
Let us pray for our new president and our divided country. And let us hope that the new Commander-in-Chief might embrace the suggestion of the observation of Alexis de Tocqueville in Democracy in America. “Liberty,” he wrote, “cannot be established without morality, nor morality without faith.”
http://www.ncregister.com/daily-news/trumps-triumph-powered-by-religious-voters
4. Pope: Be on guard against pursuit of power and wealth, Pope Francis’ Daily Homily, November 8, 2016, 1:49 PM.
We cannot serve God well if we hunger after power and wealth. That was Pope Francis’ message as he reflected on the daily readings at his Santa Marta Mass on Tuesday morning.
Pope Francis began his homily by saying that if we want to be good and faithful servants of the Lord, we must guard against dishonestly and the pursuit of power. But how often, he said, do we see or hear ourselves saying, even in our own homes, that “I’m in charge here?” Jesus taught us that leaders are those who serve others, and if we want to be first, we must become the servant of all. The Pope stressed that Jesus turns the values of our world upside-down, showing that the search for power is an obstacle to becoming a servant of the Lord.
A second obstacle, he continued, is dishonesty which can also be found in the life of the Church. Jesus told us that we cannot serve two masters – God and money, the Pope warned, so we have to choose to serve one or the other. Dishonesty, he continued, is not just being a sinner, since we are all sinners and can repent of those sins. But dishonesty, he said, is being duplicitous and playing one hand off against the other, playing the ‘God’ card and the ‘world’ card at the same time.
