Percă has never led his archdiocese in normal times. He was installed as Metropolitan Archbishop of Bucharest in January 2020, shortly before the coronavirus pandemic engulfed Romania.

In a Feb. 21 interview with CNA, Percă acknowledged his first 12 months as archbishop have been "pretty hard."

Archbishop Percă has been unable to introduce a "concrete pastoral program" because of COVID-19 restrictions. He has also been unable to meet as many members of his flock as he would have liked.

Like many Church leaders in Europe, Percă worries that the pandemic will have a long-term impact on Mass attendance.

"At the moment, it is difficult to make a prediction about what the local Church in Bucharest will look like after the coronavirus crisis. The perspective points to a decrease in the presence of believers in churches for liturgical celebrations," he commented.

"I am afraid that the fear caused by the pandemic in different categories of believers will extend over time. They will find it easier to watch the celebrations in their homes, sitting comfortably in their armchairs, than to travel the distance to their churches."

The archbishop is already looking ahead to the post-coronavirus era. He will govern an archdiocese much changed from when he inherited it from Archbishop Ioan Robu, who served from 1983-2019.

"It has often been heard, even since reaching the height of the crisis caused by the coronavirus pandemic, that after this crisis, that the world will no longer be as it was, that we have to be more responsible to those around us and to the environment, that we have to consider solidarity between people as a priority," Percă said.

"I believe that it will be difficult to achieve these ideals in the short term. I think there is the need to form a ‘post-COVID-19' generation that will establish a different kind of relationship between people."

The archbishop added that the Church must work for fundamental cultural change.

"So, I wonder how we can prepare the young generation for the ‘post-COVID-19' period. We need to change the underlying cultural orientation; first of all, we Christians need to do it, by cultivating a very strong sense of responsibility," he reflected.

Sources

Catholic News Agency

That may have changed during an in-flight press conference on Sunday as Pope Francis returned to Rome after visiting Romania.

Asked what advice he could offer Romanians about the relationship between the Catholic Church and Orthodox, Francis began by saying the first thing was to develop "relationship in general ... the relationship of the outstretched hand when there are conflicts."

Then, after noting his sense of brotherhood with the Orthodox Patriarch Daniel, he continued:

"I always have this idea: Ecumenism is not reaching the end of the game, of the discussion.

"Ecumenism is walking together, walking together, praying together... The ecumenism of prayer.

"In history, we have the ecumenism of blood. When they killed Christians they did not ask: Are you Catholic? Are you Orthodox? Are you Lutheran? No, [they asked] are you Christian! And the blood mixed together. It is the ecumensim of witness. Another ecumenism, of prayer, of blood.

"... and then the ecumenism of the poor, those that work together. That we must work to help the sick, the infirm, for example, the people that are a little at the margin, below the poverty line, to help," Francis said.

He then went on to say "Matthew: 25 is a beautiful ecumenical programme, it comes from Jesus.

"To walk together: this is already Christian unity, but do not wait for theologians to agree to arrive at communion.

"Communion happens every day with prayer, with the memory of our martyrs, with works of charity and even of loving one another.

"Ecumenism is not getting to the end of discussions, it's done walking together," Francis said.

In his view, the journey is more important than the destination.

"There is already Christian unity" he pointed out.

"Let's not wait for the theologians to come to agreement on the Eucharist."

Source

• Religion News Service
• Catholic News Agency
• Image:Catholic News Agency
  

In one of a handful of scriptural references, he is the apostle who tells Jesus that five loaves and two fishes won't feed 5,000 people; a miracle soon proves otherwise.

Like other widely honoured saints, Andrew himself defies the laws of finitude by appealing to so many people in so many places.

Thirtieth November is a big feast day for Scotland, Romania, Cyprus, the Greek port of Patras and for Christians in Istanbul; in 13 days' time, the same feast will be celebrated in places where the old church calendar is kept, such as Russia and Ukraine.

And whenever it is observed, the annual feast day of Saint Andrew brings reminders that the first apostle of Jesus Christ, one of two fisherman brothers, can still create political waves.

Take Scotland. Andrew has been that country's official patron saint since 1320, and he was venerated there for centuries before that.

The diagonal white cross of Saint Andrew was flying defiantly in Edinburgh today, although yesterday's helicopter crash in Glasgow cast a pall over the commemorations.

Alex Salmond, head of the Scottish Nationalists, used the national holiday to stir patriotic feeling ahead of next year's independence ballot. Even his reaction to the helicopter crash mentioned the saint; he said today was a good moment to take pride in Scotland's resilience.

Meanwhile David Cameron has hoisted the Scottish emblem over his prime-ministerial residence in London and issued a Saint Andrew's message with the opposite intention: to remind the Scots of how well they have done as Brits. Continue reading.

Source: The Economist

Image: Form Ministry

Ion Mihai Pacepa, who defected to the United States in 1978, previously claimed he was part of a KGB-led campaign of disinformation to discredit the wartime pontiff, centred on Rolf Hochhuth's 1968 play The Deputy.

Historians and Cold War-era diplomats initially doubted the story. One of them, Ronald Rychlak, an American law professor and specialist on Pius XII, decided to examine Pacepa's claim for himself.

Rychlak became so convinced of the veracity of Pacepa's story that he has now co-authored a book called Disinformation with the former spy.

"Bit by bit, all the pieces fell in place," Rychlak said. "The new picture answered many questions and made sense out of things that had previously been inexplicable."

Pacepa is now 84 and living in hiding. When Edward Pentin, the Rome correspondent of the National Catholic Register, tracked him down, he said there is "plenty of hard evidence proving that the portrayal of Pius XII as Hitler's Pope was born in Moscow".

Describing the KGB practice of "framing", he said it was a highly classified disinformation operation in which "mosaics made up of hundreds or even thousands of tiny pieces fitted together".

"Only a handful of master designers know how the final image will turn out," he said. "I was peripherally involved in changing the past of Pius XII, but at that time, even I did not know what the final image would look like."

Pacepa said the campaign against Pius XII actually began in 1945, when Stalin tried to portray him as a Nazi collaborator. That effort was rejected by the contemporary generation "that had lived through the real history and knew who Pope Pius XII really was".

"The Kremlin tried again in the 1960s, with the next generation, which had not lived through that history and did not know better. This time it worked," Pacepa said.

Source:

Zenit

Image: Cotidianul.ro