(We liked Pope Francis even when he was Jorge Bergoglio. This is the only story that ever brought down the whole website. People flocked to it after Cardinal Bergoglio was elected. - Ed. 2024)

Almost apologising for the actions of some priests, Bergoglio recalled the story of a young unmarried mother who had the courage to bring her child into the world and who then "found herself on a pilgrimage, going from parish to parish, trying to find someone who would baptise her child."

Vatican Insider reports that in his homily at the end of a Buenos Aires convention on urban pastoral care, Bergoglio called for an end to "sacramental blackmail" saying that "hijacking" of the sacraments is an expression of rigorous and hypocritical neo-clericalism.

"Sacraments are not a way for priests to affirm their own supremacy", said the Cardinal.

Rubbing the fragility and wounds of the faithful in their faces, or dampening the hopes and expectations of those who supposedly do not fulfil the 'requirements' in terms of doctrinal preparation, or moral status, is a pastorally misleading model which rejects the dynamics of Christ's incarnation.

"Jesus did not preach his own politics: he accompanied others", said Bergoglio.

Priests who deny the sacraments to people because of their life circumstances are the "hypocrites of today", and the "followers of the Pharisees", the ones Jesus turned his back on.

Emphasising that the Church is not an NGO or a proselyte of some multinational company", Bergoglio said denying baptism to children born out of wedlock is a form of "pharisaic Gnosticism" that "drives people away from salvation".

Sources

• Vatican Insider
• The Tablet
• Image: m24digital

During a brief Advent placement at St Catherine's in 2022, Daniel's dedication to the church was evident. Returning for his long-term placement seven months ago, Daniel, an enthusiastic woodworker, built the frame and internal structures of a confessional in the parish carpark, a testament to his commitment to the parishioners.

The now completed structure has soft lighting, timber and felt furnishings, and controlled green and red light indicators above the confessor's door. Daniel described it as the result of a "real labour of love."

Having seen several confessionals around Sydney, Daniel noticed that they often felt daunting, like a 'torture chamber' where one's shame and guilt are amplified. This observation inspired him to create a confessional at St Catherine's that would be the antithesis of this. His goal was to create a beautiful and welcoming space, where beauty would lead and draw people in. Even in the artwork and the soft panels, every detail was intentional. Read more

Throughout the competition, Fr Marcos García showed up in his Dominican habit, with his rosary, offering blessings.

In the past, the Church built institutions, he says.

Now we have to go to people, to have a Church "going out".

We priests must leave our comfort zone and preach where God is unknown, García says.

"And we do not do it on our own merit, but because He asks us to."

In Spain, where Catholicism rarely is discussed in the media — unless because of a scandal, García's presence was highly visible.

Contestants complained. Social media was fascinated. Garcia just kept cooking delicious food.

We can find God in so many things, García says. He's in our memories of the smell of our mothers, their cooking, the family, of home. Sharing bread brings God to the table, he says.

He sees God when he cooks "because he is a God who gives himself, and in the kitchen, the cook is really giving something of himself, not simply preparing a dish."

God was definitely present on MasterChef, García says.

By ignoring other people's prejudices and barbed comments and continuing with a smile, García found he could "keep being a witness of Jesus, so that many others can see and feel God there."

"All religions seek God but, in ours, it is God who insists on seeking us.

He says he thinks the Lord allowed him to be vilified on the show sometimes "so that I could remain silent, and in that silence learn to listen to souls — and then people began to come closer."

García changed attitudes during MasterChef.

People sought confession. Marriages and baptisms were booked, and confirmation preparation began.

"It became for me the vineyard of the Lord, really," he says.

"There were participants with a vision of the Church that made them reject everything ... but then by talking with them and answering their questions, their perspective changed.

"Sometimes it is not necessary to speak, sometimes what God wants is for us to listen to people — and in that listening, God carves a little hole in their hearts."

García also found prayer and support where he least expected it.

"With the show, I realised under my habit and under someone else's piercings or tattoos, there are two children of God who each deserve respect and love."

Sometimes it is unnecessary to do so much programmatic vocational promotion — simple witness goes a long way, he says.

"What happens is that God's way is how it hurts the most. But when you do what God wants, an inexplicable peace enters you.

"I would prefer to go unnoticed, but I want people to know the message, not the messenger. I want them to know Christ and know the Gospel, not me."

Source

• The Pillar

Sadly, one of the things Catholics fight over is the Eucharist. In his June 29 apostolic letter to the Catholic people, Pope Francis decries this division while describing the Eucharist as the sacrament of unity.

The letter, "Desiderio Desideravi" ("I have earnestly desired"), gives full-throated support to the liturgical reforms of the Second Vatican Council, which called for full, conscious and active participation of the laity in the Eucharist. Francis is clearly saddened by those who reject the reforms that the council found absolutely necessary.

The pope does not see the pre-Vatican II liturgy as equal to the reformed liturgy, which was meant to be the liturgy of the entire church. "I intend that this unity be re-established in the whole Church," he writes. "We cannot go back to that ritual form which the Council fathers, cum Petro et sub Petro, felt the need to reform."

The Eucharist is essential to the life of the church, according to Francis' letter. In the Eucharist, "we are guaranteed the possibility of encountering the Lord Jesus and of having the power of his Paschal Mystery reach us," he wrote. But this is done not as individuals but as a community: "The liturgy does not say ‘I' but ‘we.'"

He connects the Eucharist to Pentecost, when, according to the Book of Acts, the Christian community received the Spirit after Jesus ascended to heaven.

"It is the community of Pentecost that is able to break the Bread in the certain knowledge that the Lord is alive, risen from the dead, present with his word, with his gestures, with the offering of His Body and His Blood," he wrote.

"Only the Church of Pentecost can conceive of the human being as a person, open to a full relationship with God, with creation, and with one's brothers and sisters."

"Liturgy is about praise," requiring docility to the Holy Spirit, who appeared on Pentecost in the form of tongues of fire on the apostles' heads.

The pope said, "It does not have to do with an abstract mental process, but with becoming Him." He cites Pope Leo the Great, who wrote, "Our participation in the Body and Blood of Christ has no other end than to make us become that which we eat."

Francis does not want the Eucharist to "be spoiled by a superficial and foreshortened understanding of its value or, worse yet, by its being exploited in service of some ideological vision, no matter what the hue."

The art of celebrating the Eucharist "cannot be reduced to only a rubrical mechanism, much less should it be thought of as imaginative — sometimes wild — creativity without rules."

Both types of celebrants tend to make themselves, rather than Christ, the centre of the liturgy.

Francis speaks extensively of the paschal mystery but distinguishes this from "the vague expression ‘sense of mystery,'" which conservative critics say was removed from the liturgy by the reforms.

"The astonishment or wonder of which I speak is not some sort of being overcome in the face of an obscure reality or a mysterious rite. It is, on the contrary, marvelling at the fact that the salvific plan of God has been revealed in the paschal deed of Jesus (cf. Eph 1:3-14), and the power of this paschal deed continues to reach us in the celebration of the ‘mysteries,' of the sacraments," the pope wrote, referring to the Letter of Paul to the Ephesians.

Francis' letter contains numerous quotable lines, like those cited above, that can inspire and educate Catholics in their participation in the Eucharist, but despite Francis' intentions, this letter will be more helpful to seminary professors than the faithful at large. It is filled with exhortations on the necessity of liturgical formation, but it is not itself a catechetical work.

The letter is a heartfelt cry to end the liturgical wars and enter into the mystery of Christ's death and resurrection. Francis explicitly notes this in his first line by linking it to his 2021 motu proprio "Traditionis custodes," which put limits on the celebration of the old rite.

"The non-acceptance of the liturgical reform," he writes, "distracts us from the obligation of finding responses to the question that I come back to repeating: how can we grow in our capacity to live in full the liturgical action?

"How do we continue to let ourselves be amazed at what happens in the celebration under our very eyes? We are in need of a serious and dynamic liturgical formation."

In truth, this is why I do not find the letter all that helpful because he never fully answers these questions.

The pope has allowed himself to be distracted by dissenters, focusing on the concerns of a small but vocal minority opposed to the reforms of the council.

This makes the letter of little interest to the vast majority of Catholics who do not oppose the reforms but need to be drawn deeper into the mystery of the Eucharist.

Sadly, there is much ignorance among Catholics (including bishops and priests) about the Eucharist.

Too many Catholics still think that the purpose of the Eucharist is to make Christ present on the altar so that we can adore him.

That is fine for Benediction, but the Eucharist is where the Christian community remembers the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, gives praise and thanks to the Father, unites itself with the sacrifice of Christ and asks that the Spirit transform us into the body of Christ so that we can continue his mission on earth.

This is the heart of the Eucharist as seen in the Eucharistic prayer proclaimed at Mass.

Francis, we need another letter, one that helps the average Catholic understand and participate in the Eucharist.

• Thomas Reese SJ is a senior analyst at Religion News Service, and a former columnist at National Catholic Reporter, and a former editor-in-chief of the weekly Catholic magazine America. First published in RNS. Republished with permission.

But in September 2019 he decided the time had come to leave the church behind. He filled out a form that he had found online, accompanying it with a long letter explaining his reasons, and sent everything to the parish in his hometown.

Two weeks later, a note was put next to his name in the parish baptism register, formalizing his abandonment of the Catholic Church, and Nanetti became one of an increasing, though hard to quantify, number of Italians who have been "de-baptized."

Every year in Italy, more and more people choose to go through the simple process, which became available two decades ago at the behest of the Union of Rationalist Atheists and Agnostics, abbreviated in Italian as UAAR.

A lack of data makes it difficult to establish how common the phenomenon is, but some dioceses are keeping track. The Diocese of Brescia, east of Milan, said in its diocesan newspaper in August that 75 people asked to be de-baptized in 2021, as opposed 27 in 2020.

Combining this partial data with activity on a website UAAR recently launched where people can register their de-baptisms, Roberto Grendene, national secretary of the UAAR, said the organization estimates that more than 100,000 people have been de-baptized in Italy.

De-baptism not possible. But...

The church quibbles with the word "de-baptism" — sbattezzo in Italian. Legally and theologically, experts say, this isn't an accurate term.

The Rev. Daniele Mombelli, vice-chancellor of the Diocese of Brescia and professor of religious sciences at the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart in Milan, said it's not possible to "erase the baptism because it's a fact that historically happened, and was therefore registered."

"What the procedure does is formalize the person's abandonment of the church," said Mombelli.

While agreeing that it is impossible to cancel a baptism, Italy's Personal Data Protection Authority now states that everyone has the right to abandon the church.

The de-baptism is finalized once an applicant declares the intention to abandon the church and the decision is registered by the church authorities, normally the local bishop.

But according to canon law, anyone who goes through the procedure is committing the crime of apostasy, which, Mombelli said, comes with "severe consequences."

An apostate immediately faces ex-communication from the church, without the need for a trial. This means that the person is excluded from the sacraments, may not become a godparent and will be deprived of a Catholic funeral.

"There's a substantial difference between the sin of apostasy and the crime of apostasy," Mombelli said. "An atheist commits the sin because it's an internal decision, and they can be forgiven if they repent. An apostate, instead, manifests their will to formally abandon the church externally, so they face legal consequences for their decision."

De-baptism is not exclusive to Italy, Grendene said, and the UAAR website includes a section monitoring how the procedure is being carried out abroad, but only very few countries regulate it. In the rest of the world, humanist and atheist organizations, such as Humanists International, pay more attention to apostasy than governments do.

The reasons behind de-baptism vary from person to person. But many of the de-baptized described their choice as a matter of "coherence."

Pietro Groppi, a 23-year-old from Piacenza who got de-baptized in May 2021, said that the first question he asked himself before sending his form was "Do I believe or not?" and the answer was simply, "No."

But for many, abandoning the church is a statement against its positions on LGBTQ rights, euthanasia and abortion.

Nanetti said that being de-baptized helped him affirm his own identity as bisexual. "I had to get distance from some of the church's positions on civil rights matters," he said.

The church's stance on sexuality helped push Groppi to seek out de-baptism as well, though he's not affected personally. He finds the Vatican's position on these matters "absurd," and he's unhappy with how the church meddles with Italian politics.

Francesco Faillace, 22, now going through the de-baptism procedure, said: "I've been an atheist since basically forever. For the church, being baptized means that you're a Catholic, but that's not the case. I've personally been baptized for cultural reasons more than religious because that's how it goes in Italy."

Faillace believes that if all the people who don't truly identify as Catholics were to be de-baptized, official percentages of Italian Catholics would be significantly lower.

The latest data seems to back him up.

In 2020, sociologist Francesco Garelli conducted a large study financed by the Italian Catholic Bishops Conference that concluded that 30% of the Italian population is atheist — around 18 million people.

The Rev. Alfredo Scaroni, pastor in a town of 9,000 in northern Italy, has noticed an increasing number of people distancing themselves from the church. If more than 15% of the population appear at Sunday Mass, he said, it is an achievement.

"The church is having a large conversation on atheism, and, from our side, we need to practice more acceptance and attention," Scaroni said.

Grendene, of the UAAR, said many Italians are still unaware of de-baptism as an option.

In the past, the association would organize "de-baptism days" to advertise it, he said, but it turns out that the church itself is de-baptism's best promoter.

"Whenever the Vatican is at the centre of a controversy, we see the access to our website grows dramatically," said Grendene, pointing out that on two days in June, traffic on the UAAR website went from a daily average of 120 visitors to more than 6,000.

Not coincidentally, perhaps, a few days earlier the Vatican sent a note to the Italian government, asking to change some of the language in a proposed law aimed at criminalizing discrimination based on sex, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity and disability.

• Sara Badilini is an author at Religion News Service.

Father Illo, of the Stars of the Sea Parish, made the remarks on July 26 in a now-deleted post on the church's online bulletin board. Read more

On June 25 The Pontifical Council for Promoting the New Evangelisation released a new Directory for Catechesis.

Previously catechesis was the responsibility of the Congregation for the Clergy.

The new directory underlines that every baptised person is a missionary called to find new ways of communicating the faith with commitment and responsibility.

It proposes three major principles of action: Witnessing, Mercy and Dialogue.

The new directory also adds new content on contemporary issues like sex, gender, the digital age and medical advancements.

"The need for a new directory was born of the process of inculturation which characterises catechesis in a particular way and which, especially today, demands a special focus," said the president of the Pontifical Council for the Promotion of the New Evangelisation Archbishop Rino Fisichella.

He says the guiding criterion for the new edition is to deepen the Church's understanding of the role of catechesis in evangelisation.

Fisichella says he hopes the Directory will promote "a pastoral conversion in order to free catechesis from some choke-holds that prevent its effectiveness."

He says the first choke-hold is treating catechesis as if it were a school subject with information a teacher imparts to students according to a fixed calendar and with a fixed text.

Rather, the Directory's focus is on the process of leading a person to a personal relationship with Jesus in the church community and to a life lived visibly with Christian values, particularly through works of mercy and charity.

Timing of Confirmation

According to Fisichella the second choke-hold "is the mentality by which catechesis becomes the condition for receiving a particular sacrament of initiation, with a consequent void opening up once initiation has ended."

He said sacraments, particularly the Sacrament of Confirmation can be exploited in the name of pastoral strategy.

Too often the sacrament is delayed to "blackmail" young people into continuing to come to church, said Fisichella.

He said he would never "go to war" over the proper age to administer the sacrament of confirmation.

Evangelising is not primarily about transmitting doctrine ... it is about making Jesus Christ present and proclaiming Him," the Directory points out.

Digital age

Another issue the Directory covers involves the changes brought by the digital age and warns that if teachers of faith fail "to evaluate these technologies correctly the catechesis "runs the risk of it being insignificant for many people.

"The real question is not about knowing how to use the new technologies for evangelisation, but how to become an evangelising presence on the digital continent," it explains.

The new Directory looks "realistically at the heterogeneous family realities, with their lights and shadows, in order to accompany them adequately" as well as migrants' pastoral care, the environment, capital punishment and any type of abuse.

It includes the great contribution of women to catechesis, the formation of catechists and affirms "it is important that through catechesis each person discovers that it is worth believing".

Source

• La Croix
• The Tablet
• Catholic News Agency
• Image: Catholics & Cultures

His concern is that detached from the church, God's people and the Sacraments, the COVID-19 lockdown may cause people to live the faith only for themselves.

After dedicating Sunday's Mass to expectant mothers, whose needs are in his prayers during the pandemic, Francis focused his homily on faith and the Church during this time of isolation.

Online Masses and spiritual communion are available, the Church is "in a difficult situation that the Lord is allowing," he noted.

"But the ideal of the church is always with the people and with the sacraments — always."

Although a number of faith-based initiatives, Masses and prayers are available online, and the faithful have been encouraged to make an act of spiritual Communion, "this is not the church," Francis said.

One's relationship with Jesus "is intimate, it is personal, but it is in a community," he stressed.

As the Gospels show, Jesus' disciples always lived their relationship with the Lord as a community.

They gathered "at the table, a sign of community. It was always with the sacrament, with bread."

"I am saying this because someone made me reflect on the danger of this moment we are living, this pandemic that has made all of us communicate, even in a religious sense, through the media."

As an example, he said even though when he broadcasts his morning Mass people are in communio, they are not "together".

Spiritual Communion at Mass "is not the church".

Francis said a bishop had "scolded him" and made him think more deeply about the danger of celebrating Mass without the presence and participation of the general public.

Rather than celebrate Easter Mass at an "empty" St. Peter's Basilica, the bishop asked Francis why.

When "St. Peter's is so big, why not put 30 people at least so people can be seen" in the congregation, he wondered?

Francis said at first he didn't understand what the bishop was saying.

He and the bishop spoke together and the bishop explained to Francis he should be careful not make the church, the sacraments and the people of God something that is only experienced or distributed online.

"The church, the sacraments and the people of God are concrete," Francis realised.

Our relationship with God must also stay concrete, as the apostles lived it.

We need to experience that relationship as a community and with the people of God, not lived in a selfish way as individuals. Nor should we live it in a "viral" way that is spread only online.

"May the Lord teach us this intimacy with him, this familiarity with him, but in the church, with the sacraments, with the holy faithful people of God," Francis concluded.

Source

• Catholic News Service
• Image: YouTube

The decision, I'll admit, had something to do with the way that life has changed here in New York, indoors, where life consists almost entirely of writing and Zooming with family and friends — my mother, halfway across the world, in the morning; college friends in the U.K. in the afternoon; friends who live a block or two away in the evening.

Things move at once quickly and profoundly slowly.

But it was less impulsive or lockdown-driven than it may sound.

We had already planned for a quiet elopement at some point later this year, and, had we been married in our church, we would have been restricted to just two witnesses and our priest present anyway.

The lockdown only made us so much more aware of our dependence upon, and our fellowship with, people we might once have thought of as strangers.

Marrying in the park in the middle of quarantine, we inadvertently found ourselves something of an attraction for all of New York City, as spectacle-starved people, taking a moment outdoors to walk their dogs or jog or stroll stopped — at a safe social distance — to watch the ceremony.

• Old women cried out "mazel tov."
• Someone clapped while jogging without once breaking her stride.
• Golden retrievers off leashes bounded onto the lawn where we held our impromptu.
• Someone played Mendelssohn's Wedding March for us on their phone.
• When the priest asked our witnesses, as is custom, whether they would help and support us in our marriage vows, what seemed like half the city responded with "we will."

It is possible, of course, to read such an event as merely an aesthetic phenomenon — a bunch of bored, lonely New Yorkers looking for a good story to put on their Instagrams in the middle of a global pandemic.

But, dazed and delirious, trying not to stammer through my vows, I found in these strangers' presence something else: a sense that community — a localism born of our sense of bonds to one another — was at the heart of our collective sense of survival.

It is a strange thing to be married in the midst of a pandemic — stranger, too, to be married unexpectedly.

The ontological change that I believe takes place in marriage is an uncanny mirror of how, as I wrote a few weeks ago, we are more broadly dependent upon one another.

The sacrament of marriage, at least in the Christian tradition, is about the blurring of the boundaries of the self.

In becoming one flesh, as we are called to do, we abandon any pretence that we are fully autonomous individuals, at least in the sense that modern liberalism understands it.

Among the most affecting prayers that our priest read over us — part of the Book of Common Prayer's marriage rite — is that God "grant that their wills may be so knit together in your will."

The idea that we not only accept, but long for, pray for, wills that are not our own, is at the heart of my understanding of both Christianity and marriage.

We joyfully enter into an encounter with another human being — someone other, someone who is emphatically not simply an extension of our own selves, but rather an irreducible subject in their own right — and allow that encounter to transform us, to help us learn to love better. To do so demands, by definition, that we knit our will to the will of another human being, and of God.

Central Park was, for us that day, a fantastically liminal space.

The physical space in which I married my husband was, too, the space in which we entered into a moral community — those few passersby, at social distance, making a commitment to us; us, in our consciousness of this new world order, making a commitment to them and to their safety.

It was a kind of presence that was both akin to and separate from the digital space we reentered after the ceremony was over and we had gone back to our apartment when we got back on Zoom to tell our friends and family of our marriage.

We were, in both spaces, contingent upon both one another and the world around us: no less socially bonded to the people we loved for announcing the news over a webcam.

But the awareness, in Central Park, of what presence meant — the care with which we opened a cab door, with which we avoided strangers, with which we waved from a distance, with which we provided our witnesses with their own pens to sign the marriage license or with which my now-husband caught the bouquet thrown by one of our witnesses, who had brought it as a surprise gift for me and who could not hand it to us directly — was distinct to physical space.

Just being there, together, made us vulnerable: to one another and to the world around us.

It is true, I think, in every marriage rite. But ours made that particularly clear.

• Tara Isabella Burton received a doctorate in theology from Oxford University and is at work on a book about the rise of the religiously unaffiliated in America. First published in RNS and reproduced with permission.

Baptisms, confirmations, ordinations and anointing of the sick have been suspended until further notice in the country's northwestern regions hardest hit by the outbreak.

So far, at least 25 people have died since the outbreak was confirmed in early May. Read more

Another is the fact that my wife and I were never made to attend a Catholic marriage preparation course.

If we had been members of a parish where the mind-numbingly dull half-year of expensive weekend retreats had been required, we would have gone through with it, obviously.

Offering up suffering is a gift of the Holy Ghost denied even to the glorious angels in heaven.

I say this because it is only as a kind of purgative trial justly demanded of the pious faithful by Mother Church in the exercise of her disciplinary infallibility that it is possible to make sense of the six-month-long exercise in mandatory tedium known in the US as "Pre-Cana" (the mawkish reference to Our Lord's first miracle is worthy of Hallmark).

The spiritually edifying qualities of these rectory chats on subjects such as "Conflict Resolution Skills" and "Finances" are best summed up by secular interpolators at a website called BridalGuide.com:

You may be wondering, what exactly is Pre-Cana? Don't worry … you won't be hearing lectures about going to church every week and going to Confession.

It's more like pre-marital counselling, to help prepare you for marriage.

In our case, marriage counselling meant two 20-minute conversations with our pastor.

This is as it should be.

When it comes to marriage, Shakespeare's Friar Lawrence is a model shepherd of souls.

A good student of St Paul, he knows what marriage is for, which is why his first priority is the avoidance of sin, not the maintenance of community standards.

Indeed, I have always found modern-day adaptations of the play implausible, because today's Romeo and Juliet would have had to spend a considerable portion of their young lives taking quizzes on "Spirituality/Faith" and "Careers" in order to get the go-ahead from their diocese.

The way the post-conciliar Church cordons off the sacraments is a perfect example of how she has become insufferably middle-class.

Working-class people and bohemian misfits like me are not community-minded.

We loathe the notion of therapy, especially if it involves making small talk with people we don't know about things that are very dear to our hearts.

People with real jobs often work on Saturdays; they haven't got time or money for couples' weekend retreats to horse farms with Fr Dialogue.

Meanwhile, middle-class people enjoy being treated like (rather stupid) children.

They like play-time and share-time and snack-time and loathe the idea of privacy; they enjoy shaking hands and holding hands, which is why their favourite parts of the new Mass are the Sign of Peace and the standing-up Paternoster.

They take positive delight in these things for the same mysterious reasons that they enjoy working for those companies that require semi-annual "team-building exercises" - scavenger hunts and other pre-teen activities between mandatory presentations on LGBTQ sensitivity.

The only thing worse than current Church practice regarding marriage is the preposterous bureaucracy that prevents children from being baptised in a timely fashion. Continue reading

• Image: Portsmith Cathedral

This is one of a number of the Pope's initiatives that aim to bring SSPX into full communion with the Church.

A letter from the Vatican to Catholic bishops said they will be allowed to appoint priests to assist at SSPX marriages.

These priests will formally receive the couples' consent. The nuptial Mass then would be celebrated by the SSPX priest.

Francis has also allowed bishops to enable an SSPX priest to officiate validly over the marriage rite.

However, this would only be "if there are no priests in the diocese" available to do so.

The letter also mentions Pope Francis's decision last December to grant all SSPX priests the faculty to validly administer the Sacrament of Penance to the faithful.

This was "to ensure the validity and liceity [i.e. lawfulness or legitimacy] of the Sacrament and allay any concerns on the part of the faithful."

Cardinal Gerhard Müller, who wrote the letter on Francis's behalf, closes it by saying:

"In this way any uneasiness of conscience on the part of the faithful who adhere to [SSPX] as well as any uncertainty regarding the validity of the sacrament of marriage may be alleviated ...

" ...and at the same time that the process towards full institutional regularization may be facilitated"

Source

• Catholic Herald
• Vatican Radio
• Image: Catholicism without Compromise

While the legalization of assisted suicide and euthanasia in Canada does not alter the truth that these acts are "gravely immoral," it is "foreseeable" that priests will receive requests for the sacraments from Catholics contemplating these actions, the Alberta and NWT bishops stated in a document released Wednesday.

As well as requests for confession and anointing of the sick from Catholics who might have arranged for or are considering assisted suicide or euthanasia, or from their families, priests can also expect requests for Catholic funerals "for persons who have been killed by these practices," noted the 34-page "Vademecum for Priests and Parishes.

" How are we to respond with a pastoral care that at once expresses the Church's deep concern for the salvation of souls and safeguards the dignity of the sacraments and the nature of her funeral rites?" wrote the six bishops, who are responsible for more than one million Catholics in five dioceses." Read more

Francis was asked during a meeting with leaders of female religious congregations about women deacons and their role in the early church.

The Pope responded that he had spoken about the matter some years ago with a "good, wise professor" who had studied the use of female deacons in the early centuries of the Church.

Francis said last Thursday that the professor had told him that female deacons had helped the early Church, particularly in baptising women.

This was when the practice of Baptism at the time called for full immersion of the person's naked body in water.

But Francis said it remained unclear to him what role such deacons had, so he agreed with the sisters that it would be a good idea to set up a commission to look at the issue.

Vatican spokesman Fr Federico Lombardi, SJ, later said Pope Francis did not say in his remarks that he intends to introduce the ordination of women deacons and even less the ordination of women as priests.

Many historians have said that there is abundant evidence that women served as deacons in the early centuries of the Church.

According to a report in UK Catholic Herald, Francis told the congregational leaders he would get the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith to tell him if there had been studies on the matter.

In 2001, the International Theological Commission, which advises the CDF, issued a document which concluded that female deacons in history were not "purely and simply" equivalent to permanent deacons.

The commission spoke of the unity of the Sacrament of Holy Orders.

But it also mentioned a clear distinction between the ministries of the bishop and the priests on the one hand and the diaconal ministry on the other.

At the meeting with congregational leaders, Pope Francis said women could not preach at Mass because the priest is serving "in persona Christi" and should therefore give the homily.

He promised that the Congregation for Divine Worship would send the congregational leaders a full explanation of this.

Sources

• The Tablet
• National Catholic Reporter
• Catholic Herald
• Vatican Radio
• Image: Catholic Sun

Erwin Mena, 59, is alleged to have sold fake tickets for a bogus pilgrimage to see Pope Francis when he visited the United States.

Mena allegedly pocketed more than US$15,000 for the con.

Despite acting as a priest in several places, he would move on before Church authorities could act, court papers indicated.

He convinced pastors at different parishes they did not need to check his official "faculties" before letting him perform services.

These included Masses, confessions and weddings.

He allegedly made money by borrowing from people, selling faith-based videos for US$25 and producing several eBooks, including one about his "irreverent confessions", where he discussed celibacy.

He also accepted a US$16,000 to make a video about Pope Francis (that turned out to be pirated) and one person loaned him US$6000.

All in all, he is alleged to have swindled more than US$50,000.

He is facing 30 charges, including perjury, grand theft and practicing medicine without a licence.

If convicted on all these charges, he could face 21 years behind bars.

His name has been on a list of dozens of unauthorised priests and deacons, which is kept by the Archdiocese of Los Angeles.

Some victims have been reimbursed for the bogus Pope pilgrimage.

Those who received the sacraments from Mena can receive them again, a spokeswoman for the Los Angeles archdiocese said.

The archdiocese stated: "We are grateful to the Los Angeles Police Department for working to ensure that Erwin Mena was brought to justice."

"Our prayers go out to all the victims of his scam," the archdiocese added.

Sources

• Daily Mail
• WTKR
• Image: Philly.com

Veteran journalist Eugenio Scalfari wrote in La Repubblica that the Pope made the comment during a phone interview.

According to a translation by traditionalist blog Rorate Caeli, Pope Francis said: "The diverse opinion of the bishops is part of this modernity of the Church and of the diverse societies in which she operated, but the goal is the same, and for that which regards the admission of the divorced to the sacraments, [it] confirms that this principle has been accepted by the synod."

He added: "This is bottom line result, the de facto appraisals are entrusted to the confessors, but at the end of faster or slower paths, all the divorced who ask will be admitted."

However, Vatican spokesman Fr Federico Lombardi, SJ, told the National Catholic Register : "As has already occurred in the past, Scalfari refers in quotes [to]what the Pope supposedly told him, but many times it does not correspond to reality, since he does not record nor transcribe the exact words of the Pope, as he himself has said many times."

"So it is clear that what is being reported by him in the latest article about the divorced and remarried is in no way reliable and cannot be considered as the Pope's thinking."

Fr Lombardi added that those who have "followed the preceding events and work in Italy know the way Scalfari writes and knows these things well".

Since his election in 2013 Pope Francis has given a series of interviews to Scalfari, the 91-year-old who co-founded La Repubblica and was its editor from 1976 to 1996.

Previously Scalfari is said to have not used a tape recorder during his interviews with the Pope.

In 2014, Scalfari wrote that Pope Francis indicated that some cardinals have been guilty of sexually abusing children and that the Pope made a vow to "find solutions" to the "problem" of priestly celibacy.

Sources

• Catholic Herald
• Rorate Caeli
• National Catholic Register
• Image: Il Giornale

In 93 interventions at the synod on Wednesday and Thursday, widely different views were expressed.

A key issue is whether there could be any possibility for divorced and remarried people to take on some sort of "penitential path" that would eventually allow them to receive the Eucharist.

A Vatican spokesperson told a media briefing that this issue crystallises the differences in the two approaches.

Some bishops want the Church to "accompany people in spite of their failures without watering down [church] teaching".

Others warned against "quick fixes or quick solutions" to pastoral problems.

Those in favour of some sort of "penitential path" did not want to allow "indiscriminate access to the Eucharist, but a customised approach for each diocese", the spokesperson said.

Bishops had said that divorce "is a sort of tragedy for the family" but asked: "How can the Church punish something that is part and parcel of the human experience?"

One bishop had spoken of a need to "profess the faith with clarity, to know what the creed means and also to know not only such expressions as doors wide open but the importance of the narrow path sometimes, which is difficult to follow".

One bishop had reportedly told the synod of a particularly moving story about a child of a remarried couple who had received the Eucharist and then shared it with their parents.

That bishop, another Vatican spokesman said, wanted to show "the suffering of the children of these divorced and remarried couples".

German Cardinal Reinhard Marx asked the synod how could the Church refuse people the sacramental experience of God's mercy, even if they really and honestly repented their share in the breakdown of their first marriages?

Cardinal Marx pleaded that divorced and civilly remarried Catholics, who played an active role in their parishes, be allowed to receive the sacraments under certain conditions and only after considering each individual case.

Sources

• National Catholic Reporter
• National Catholic Reporter
• Image: The Catholic Thing

The cards will be issued in Tlalnepantla and Mexico ecclesiastical provinces.

The phenomenon of "false priests" is on the rise across the nation.

The scammers go to hospitals, cemeteries and churches outside city centres, and they try to celebrate the sacraments in return for large payments.

Examples include weddings and baptisms celebrated in private homes.

Continue reading

According to the Archdiocese of Mexico City's News Service, some 30 priests spent 12 hours in shifts hearing confessions at the Cathedral of Mexico City November 29.

Cathedral officials said many people also attended an Advent talk given by Father Julian Lopez Amozurrutia entitled, "Coming Home."

Although the lines generally kept moving, the number of penitents was so large that some stood in line for up to four hours to go to confession. Continue reading

Despite protests from the boy's family, Cardinal Paolo Romeo, the Archbishop of Palermo, banned the confirmation of the 17-year-old son of jailed killer Giuseppe Graviano in the city's famous Norman cathedral at the weekend.

The 17-year-old was due to be confirmed along with 49 other students of a private Jesuit school in Palermo cathedral on Saturday. But the Archbishop ruled that the mobster's son would have to receive the sacrament in a private ceremony, elsewhere. Continue reading