Monday, March 31, 2014

With the General Chapter of the Salesians

At 12:00noon today, in the Sala Clementina at the Vatican Apostolic Palace, the Holy Father, Pope Francis received in Audience those who were participating in the General Chapter of the Salesian Society of Saint John Bosco (Salesians).


Address of the Holy Father, Pope Francis
for the meeting with participants in the
General Chapter of the Salesian Society of Saint John Bosco

Dear Brothers,

Welcome! I thank Father Angelo for his words. I wish for him and the new General Council the ability to serve by guiding, accompanying and sustaining the Salesian Congregation in its journey. May the Holy Spirit help you to respond to the expectations and challenges of our time, especially of young people, and to interpret them in the light of the Gospel and of your charism.

I imagine that during the Chapter -- which had the theme Witnesses of Evangelical Radicalism - you always had Don Bosco and young people before you; and Don Bosco with his motto: Da mihi animas, cetera tolle. He reinforced this program with two other elements: work and temperance. I remember that in school it was forbidden to have a siesta! … Temperance! To the Salesians and to us! Work and temperance – he said – make the Congregation flourish. When one thinks of working for the good of souls, one overcomes the temptation of spiritual worldliness; one does not look for other things, but God alone and his Kingdom. Temperance, then, is the sense of measure, to be content, to be simple. May the poverty of Don Bosco and of Mother Margherita inspire every Salesian and every community of yours to an essential and austere life, closeness to the poor, transparency and responsibility in the management of goods.

The evangelization of young people is the mission that the Holy Spirit has entrusted to you in the Church. It is closely connected with their education: the journey of faith is inserted in that of growth and the Gospel also enriches human maturation. Young people must be prepared to work in society according to the spirit of the Gospel, as agents of justice and peace, and to live as protagonists in the Church. Therefore, you avail yourselves of the necessary further pedagogic and cultural reflections and updating to respond to the present educational emergency. May Don Bosco’s experience and his preventive system sustain you always in your commitment to live with young people. May your presence in their midst be distinguished by that tenderness that Don Bosco called affection, experiencing also new languages, but knowing well that the language of the heart is the fundamental one to get close to them and to become their friends.

Essential here is the vocational dimension. Sometimes the vocation to the consecrated life is confused with a choice of voluntary service, and this distorted vision does no good to the Institutes. The coming year 2015, dedicated to consecrated life, will be a favourable occasion to present its beauty to young people. In every case it is necessary to avoid partial visions, in order not to arouse fragile and propped up vocations from weak motivations. Apostolic vocations ordinarily are the fruit of a good youth ministry. The care of vocations requires specific attention, first of all to prayer, then proper activities, personalized courses, the courage of the proposal, support and involvement of the families. The vocational geography has changed and is changing, and this means new demands for formation, support and discernment.

In working with young people, you come across the world of youth exclusion. And this is tremendous! Today, it is tremendous to think that there are 75 million young people without work, here, in the West. We think of the vast reality of unemployment, with so many negative consequences. We think of dependencies, which unfortunately are multiple, which derive from the common roots of a lack of true love. To go against the marginalization of young people requires courage, maturity and much prayer. And the best must be sent to this work! The best! The risk can exist of being carried away by enthusiasm, sending to such frontiers persons of good will, but who are not adequate. Therefore, careful discernment and constant support are necessary.

This is the criterion: the best must go there. I need him to make him superior of that, or to study theology … However, if you have this mission, send him there! The best!

Thank God you do not live or work as isolated individuals, but as a community: and thank God for this! The community sustains the whole apostolate. Sometimes Religious Communities are riddled with tensions, with the risk of individualism and of dispersion, whereas there is need of profound communication and authentic relationships. The humanizing force of the Gospel is witnessed by the fraternity lived in community, made of hospitality, respect, reciprocal help, understanding, courtesy, forgiveness and joy. The spirit of family that Don Bosco left you helps a lot in this sense, it fosters perseverance and creates attraction for the consecrated life.

Dear Brothers, the bicentenary of Don Bosco’s birth is now upon us. It will be a propitious moment to propose again your Founder’s charism. Mary Help of Christians has never failed to give her help in the life of the Congregation, and she certainly will not fail to do so in the future. May her maternal intercession obtain for you from God the expected and awaited fruits. I bless you and pray for you and, please, pray also for me. Thank you!

Be reconciled

At 5:00pm Friday afternoon (March 28), in Saint Peter's Basilica, the Holy Father, Pope Francis presided over the Rite of Reconciliation of several penitents, followed by individual confessions and the conferral of absolution.

The celebration began with a special penitential moment, called Twenty-four hours for the Lord, which was organized by the Pontifical Council for the Promotion of the New Evangelization.  This moment of prayer was also observed concurrently in numerous dioceses throughout the world on the vigil of the Fourth Sunday of Lent - Laetare Sunday.


Homily of the Holy Father, Pope Francis
for the Rite of Reconciliation during the observance of
Twenty-four hours for the Lord

During the Lenten Season, in the name of God, the Church renews her appeal to conversion. It is a call to change one’s life. To be converted is not a question of a moment or of a period of the year; it is a commitment that lasts one’s whole life. Who among us can presume that he is not a sinner? No one. We are all sinners. The Apostle John writes: If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just, and will forgive our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness (1 John 1:8-9). This is also what is happening in this celebration and in this whole penitential day. The Word of God which we heard introduces us into two essential elements of Christian life.

The first: To be clothed in the new man. The new man, created after the likeness of God (Ephesians 4:24), is born in Baptism, where God’s very life is received, which renders us His children and incorporates us with Christ and with his Church. This new life enables one to look at reality with different eyes, without being distracted any longer by things that do not count and cannot last long, by things that end with time. Therefore, we are called to abandon sinful behaviours and to fix our gaze on the essential. Man is worth more by what he is than by that which he has (Gaudium et spes, 35). See the difference between the deformed life of sin and that illumined by grace. From the heart renewed according to God comes good behaviour: to always speak the truth and to avoid every lie; not steal but rather to share what one has with others, especially with those in need; not to give in to anger, rancour or revenge, but to be meek, magnanimous and quick to forgive; to not fall into slander which ruins persons’ good reputation, but to look in the main on the positive side of everyone. It is to clothe oneself in the new man, with these new attitudes.

The second element: To remain in love. Jesus Christ’s love lasts forever; it will never end, because it is the very life of God. This love overcomes sin and gives the strength to rise and begin again, because with forgiveness the heart is renewed and rejuvenated. We all know it: our Father never tires of loving us and his eyes do not grow heavy in looking at the road home, to see if his son who went away and was lost has returned. We can speak of God’s hope: our Father awaits us always, not only does He leave the door open for us, but He awaits us. He is involved in this awaiting of His children. And this Father does not even grow tired of loving the other son who, though always staying at home with him, is still not a participant in his mercy, in His compassion. Not only is God at the origin of love, but in Jesus Christ he calls us to imitate his very way of loving: as I have loved you, you also love one another (John 13:34). In the measure in which Christians live this love, they become in the world credible disciples of Christ. Love cannot endure being shut-in on itself. By its very nature it is open, it spreads and is fruitful, it always generates new love.

Dear brothers and sisters, after this celebration, many of you will become missionaries to propose to others the experience of reconciliation with God. 24 Hours for the Lord is the initiative in which so many dioceses in the world have joined. To all those you meet you will be able to communicate the joy of receiving the Father’s forgiveness and to rediscover full friendship with Him. And you will say to them that our Father awaits us, our Father forgives us; moreover, He celebrates. If you go to Him with your whole life, also with many sins, instead of reproving you He celebrates: this is our Father. You must say this; you must say it to many people today. He who experiences divine mercy is driven to make himself an architect of mercy among the least and the poor. Jesus waits for us in these littlest brothers (cf. Matthew 25:40); we receive mercy and we give mercy! Let us go to meet them and let us celebrate Easter in the joy of God!


After the homily was complete, the Holy Father celebrated the Sacrament of Reconciliation himself before taking his place in one of the confessionals

Sunday, March 30, 2014

What's new in the Bible, Law and Ethics?

Keeping up with current scholarly presentations, here is a video recording of the inaugural lecture given by Rabbi Lord Johnathan Sacks at Kings College London (England) on March 18, 2014 on the subject of The relevance of the Bible for law and ethics in society today.

Angelus on the miracle of blindness and sight

At noon today, the Holy Father, Pope Francis appeared at the window of the study in the Vatican Apostolic Palace to recite the Angelus with the faithful and with pilgrims who had come to Saint Peter's Square.


Address of His Holiness, Pope Francis
prior to the recitation of the Angelus

Dear brothers and sisters, good morning!

The Gospel of the day presents the episode of the man born blind, to whom Jesus gives the gift of sight.  This lengthy story begins with a blind man who is granted the gift of sight and closes - and this is curious - with others present who are able to see but who are blind in their souls.  The miracle is narrated by John in just two verses, because the evangelist wants to attract our attention not to the miracle itself, but to that which happens afterward, to the discussions that take place, and to the gossip; so many times, good works, works of charity end in gossip and discussion, because there are always some who don't want to see the truth.  The evangelist John wants to draw our attention to this fact which happens still today when something good is accomplished.  The man who was blind is first questioned by the disbelieving crowd - who had seen the miracle take place and who question him about it - then by doctors of the law: and these also question his parents. In the end, the man who had been healed is drawn to the faith, and this is the greatest grace given by Jesus, not only the ability to see, but to know Him, to see Him as the light of the world (Jn 9:5).

While the blind man comes gradually closer to the light, the doctors of the law on the contrary sink ever further into their interior blindness. Shut up in their presumptions, they think they have the light; because of this they do not open their hearts to Jesus’ truth. They do everything they can to deny the evidence. They question the reliability of the man who is healed; then they deny the action of God in the healing, saying that God does not heal on the Sabbath; then, finally, they doubt that the man was even born blind. Their closed nature toward the light becomes aggressive and leads to the expulsion of the man who is healed from the Temple.

The path of the blind man instead is a gradual process that begins with knowing Jesus’ name. He does not know anything else about him. In fact, he says: The man called Jesus made clay and anointed my eyes (9:11). In response to the pressing questions of the doctors of the law he first says that Jesus is a prophet (9:17) and then a man close to God (9:31). After he is thrown out of the Temple, excluded from society, Jesus finds him again and opens his eyes a second time, revealing to him his true identity: I am the Messiah, he tells him. At this point, the man who was blind exclaims: I believe, Lord! (9:38), and prostrates himself before Jesus. This is a passage of the Gospel that gives us a glimpse at the drama of the interior blindness of many people. And we glimpse our own interior blindness too because we sometimes have moments of such blindness.

Our life is sometimes similar to that of the blind man who is open to the light, who is open to God, who is open to his grace. Sometimes, unfortunately, our life is a little like that of the doctors of the law: from the height of our pride we judge others, and, in the end, we judge the Lord too! Today we are invited to open ourselves up to the light of Christ to bear fruit in our life, to eliminate non-Christian ways of acting; we are all Christians, but all of us, all of us, at times act in ways that are not Christian, we act in ways that are sinful. We must repent, we must stop acting in these ways so we can set out decisively on the road of sanctity. This road has its beginning in Baptism. We too are enlightened by Christ in Baptism, so that, as Saint Paul notes, we can walk as children of light (Ephesians 5:8), with humility, patience and mercy. These doctors of the law did not have humility, patience or mercy!

I would like to suggest to you today, when you return home, to open the Gospel of John and read this passage in chapter 9. It will do you well, because in this way you will see this road from blindness to light and the other wicked road toward deeper blindness. Let us ask ourselves about the state of our heart. Do I have an open heart or a closed one? Open or closed to God? Open or closed to my neighbour? We always have some closure in us born of sin, of mistakes, of errors. We must not be afraid! Let us open ourselves up to the Lord. He awaits us always and wants to help us see better, to give us light, to forgive us. Let us not forget this! To the Virgin Mary we entrust the Lenten journey, so that we too, like the blind man who was healed, can with the grace of Christ come to the light, make progress toward the light and be reborn to a new life.

Following the recitation of the Angelus, the Holy Father again addressed those gathered in Saint Peter’s Square:

I cordially greet the families, parish groups, associations and individual faithful from Italy and from many other countries, in particular those from Ponferrada and Valladolid; the students and professors from the Murcia, Castelfranco de Cordoba and Langanés; the students of the colleges of Paris and the Portuguese émigrés of London.

I greet the Lasallian Youth Movement, the Youth, art and faith of Saint Paola Frassinetti group and the university group from Venice.

I offer a special greeting to the members of the Italian military who have made a pilgrimage on foot from Loreto to Rome, praying for the peaceful and just resolution of conflicts. This is very beautiful: in the Beatitudes Jesus says blessed are they who work for peace.

A thought goes out to the faithful from Potenza, Atella, Sulmona, Lomagna, Conegliano, Locara, Naples, Afragola, Ercolano and Torre del Greco; to the young confirmandi from Gardone Valtrompia, Ostia, Reggio Emilia, Fane, Serramazzoni and Parma; and to the students from Massa Carrara and Genova-Pegli.

Finally, I greet the choir from Brembo, the Polisportiva Laurentino of Rome, the motorcyclists from Terni-Narni; the representatives of the World Wildlife Fund of Italy, encouraging them in their efforts on behalf of the environment.

Don’t forget today – when you get home, open the Gospel of John, chapter 9, and read this story of the blind man who was given sight and of the people who were thought to have sight who sank deeper into their blindness.

I wish everyone a good Sunday and a good lunch. Goodbye!

So that you might see

Here is the text of the reflection I shared with the people gathered in prayer this weekend, a reflection on the faith lessons learned from a man who was born blind, but whose sight was restored.


From blindness to sight

As we continue our pilgrimage through Lent, the gospel we have heard today places us with Jesus who was walking along the road.  As he walked along, he saw a man who was blind from birth.  Whenever the scriptures speak of Jesus seeing someone, we need to understand that this is a reference to an encounter, much more than merely glancing around.  Like the encounter Jesus had with the Samaritan woman at the well, this man who had been blind from birth was about to receive a precious gift.  The popular belief of the time was that human frailty was inflicted because either the person in question or someone close to him had committed some kind of serious sin, but when Jesus was questioned about this, he pointed out that this man’s blindness was not inflicted upon him, but rather given as a preparation for something wonderful: so that God’s works might be revealed in him.

Each one of us here has some kind of limitation, some reminder of our human frailty.  Sometimes our limitations can even be perceived as burdens, and we might find ourselves wishing and hoping that they would be taken away from us, dreaming about the day when we will once again be made whole, strong, returned to full health.  How often we see illness as a limitation rather than as an opportunity for us to perceive God’s work in progress!  Jesus is always with us, walking beside us as we make our pilgrimage through life.  He pays particular attention to us when we ourselves are weakened by challenges of all sorts.  Just as he made a point of looking at the man who was born blind, he also makes a point of noticing us in our frailty, and he comes quickly to our help.

Jesus spread mud on the eyes of the man who was blind, and asked him to go, and wash in the pool of Siloam.  Everyone knew the pool of Siloam, located just outside the ancient city of Jerusalem.  It was perhaps used for ritual bathing, for purifying oneself in preparation for entering the Temple in order to offer sacrifice.  Jesus would have known this custom, so perhaps this is the reason why he asked the man to wash himself there.  As the man performed this simple but deeply ritualistic act, his sight was restored.  What significance does this ritual have for us today?  We believe that the Sacrament of Baptism allows us all to be washed clean of our sins, to be made ritually clean again.  The act of pouring water over the head of a child or an adult is not a complicated affair, yet by doing so, the gift of faith is planted in the heart of the one who is baptized.

In the case of the man born blind, this simple act restored his physical sight, but the miracle that was performed was also meant as a sign for those who witnessed it: an invitation for them to come to believe that there is another kind of sight.  The book of Samuel reminds us today that the Lord looks on the heart.  Jesus knows the deepest longings of our hearts and yearns for the opportunity to satisfy our desires.

There’s another significance to the fact that Jesus asks the man to wash in the pool of Siloam.  The word Siloam means sent.  Once his sight had been restored, the man was sent to his neighbours and to those who had known him before so that he could bear witness to the good that he had experienced.  The same is true for us: if we have been privileged enough to have encountered Jesus, or to have discovered the joy of the gospel, Jesus sends us out to those in our world too, asking us to share the good news we have experienced with those we meet.  It isn’t always easy to be a disciple, to convince others about the truth of our faith encounters.  Even the man in today’s gospel was tested, questioned by his friends, brought before the Pharisees and put to the test there too.  When he was questioned about Jesus, the man courageously witnessed to what he had come to know: He is a prophet!

As he began to tell others about his encounter with the man who had restored his sight, Jesus’ newest disciple was also tested.  Even the Pharisees refused to believe him, challenging his presumption to teach the teachers.  They even drove him out of the Temple.  Are we willing to face the possibility of being challenged, even driven out of certain circles or groups of people merely because we dare to share the joy of the gospel, or do we allow our fear of abandonment to silence us when we know that we should speak?

The gospel tells us that Jesus heard about the man’s plight, and came looking for him.  The same is true for us.  In the moments when we are afraid or cast out or persecuted, Jesus comes looking for us, and when he finds us, he asks us the same question he asked of the man whose sight had been restored: Do you believe in the Son of Man?  This is the test that Jesus repeats with us every time we are cast out, every time we sin, every time we turn back to him: Do you believe in the Son of Man?  The true miracle revealed for all of us in this story is the fact that even though we once were in darkness, even though we are still tempted to sin, the Lord enlightens our path and guides us back to himself.  He calls us all to live as children of the light so that every day of our lives, we might recognize in him all that is good and right and true.  Jesus walks the pilgrimage of life with us, right alongside us.  He willingly removes from our path all the obstacles that might blind us to his presence, he speaks with us in prayer and calls us to believe in him.  All he asks in return is that we respond with three simple words: Lord, I believe.

Saturday, March 29, 2014

Meeting with the blind, the deaf and the mute

At 12:15pm today, Pope Francis received in Audience, in the Paul VI Hall, members of the Apostolic Movement for the Blind (MAC) and members of the Little Mission for the Deaf and Mute.  During this morning's gathering, which was also attended by members of the Italian Union of the Blind and the Visually Impaired, the Pope addressed the following words to those who were in attendance.


Address of His Holiness, Pope Francis
for the gathering with members of the Apostolic Movement for the Blind
and members of the Little Mission for the Deaf and Mute

Dear brothers and sisters, welcome!

I greet the Apostolic Movement for the Blind, which has organized this gathering on the occasion of its Day of Sharing, and I greet the Little Mission for the Deaf and Mute, which coordinates many activities for the deaf in Italy.  I am grateful for the words offered by your two coordinators, and I extend my greetings also to the members of the Italian Union of the Blind and the Visually Impaired who are taking part in this encounter.

I want to reflect briefly with you on the theme: The Witness of the Gospel for a culture of encounter.

The first thing I notice is that this expression ends with the word encounter, but it begins with the presupposition of another encounter, the one with Jesus Christ.  In effect, in order to be witnesses of the Gospel, we must have encountered Him, Jesus.  Those who really know him become his witnesses.  Like the Samaritan woman - we read about her last Sunday - that woman met Jesus, spoke with Him, and her life was changed; she returned to her friends and relatives and said: Come and see, one who has told me everything that I have done, he must be the Messiah (see Jn 4:29).

A witness of the Gospel is one who has encountered Jesus Christ, who has known him, or better, who has been known by Him, re-known, respected, loved, forgiven, and this encounter has touched him deeply, it has filled him with a new joy, a new appreciation for life.  And when this happens, you tell others about it, you transmit it to others.

I remembered the Samaritan woman because she is a clear example of the kind of person Jesus loved to meet, in order to make them witnesses: the marginalized, the excluded, those who were despised. The Samaritan woman embodied all of these: she was both a woman and a Samaritan.  The Samaritans were despised by the Jews.  But we should remember all those who Jesus wanted to meet, especially those who were marked by sickness and disabilities, to heal them and to restore them to their full dignity.  It is very important that especially these persons became witnesses of a new attitude that we might refer to as a culture of encounter.  Another perfect example of this is the figure of the man born blind, who we will see tomorrow in the Gospel at Mass (Jn 9:1-41).

That man was blind from birth and had been marginalized in the name of a false conception which held him responsible for divine punishment.  Jesus radically rejects this way of thinking - which was truly blasphemous! - and accomplishes the work of God for the blind man, restoring his sight.  But the most noteworthy thing is that this man, because of what happened to him, became a witness of Jesus and of his work, which is the work of God, of life, of love, of mercy.  While the leaders of the Pharisees, from the safety of their established positions looked upon both him and Jesus as sinners, the blind man who had been healed, with disarming simplicity, defended Jesus and in the end, professed his faith in Him, and eventually shared his fate: Jesus would be excluded, and this man too was excluded.  But in reality, that man had entered into a new community, based on faith in Jesus and on fraternal love.

Here we are presented with two opposing cultures: the culture of encounter and the culture of exclusion, the culture of prejudice, because it pre-judges and excludes.  A person who is sick or disabled, because of his or her fragility, of his or her limits, can become a witness of encounter: the encounter with Jesus which opens us up to life and to faith is the encounter with others, with the community.  In effect, only those who recognize their own fragility, their own limits can build relationships of fraternity and solidarity, in the Church and in society.

Dear friends, thank you for coming to visit today.  I encourage you to continue along the road that you are already walking.  You who belong to the Apostolic Movement for the Deaf, are continuing the work begun by Maria Motta, a woman who was filled with faith and with apostolic spirit.  And you, members of the Little Mission for the Deaf and the Mute, are walking in the footsteps of venerable Father Giuseppe Gualandi.  And all of you, here present, let us together encounter Jesus: only He really knows the heart of mankind, only He can free us from our tendency to be closed in on ourselves, from sterile pessimism, and open us up to life and to hope.

Before imparting the Apostolic Blessing on those who were present, the Holy Father said to them:

And now, let us look to the Madonna.  In her we see the first great encounter: the encounter between God and humanity.  Let us ask the Madonna to help us to continue along the road in this culture of encounter.  And let us pray together: Hail Mary ....

Friday, March 28, 2014

Third meditation for Lent

At 9:00am today in the Redemptoris Mater Chapel, in presence of the Holy Father, Pope Francis, the Preacher of the Papal Household, Father Raniero Cantalamessa, OFM Cap held the third meditation for Lent.

The theme of the Lenten meditations is On the shoulders of giants - the great truths of our faith contemplated by the Fathers of the Latin Church.  The next two meditations will be held on Friday, April 4 and Friday, April 11.


Third Lenten meditation prepared by the Preacher of the Papal Household
Father Raniero Cantalamessa, OFM Cap

Reflection on the Sacraments
Along with the topic of the Church, another topic in which we note progress when we move from the Greek Fathers to the Latin Fathers is the sacraments. What was missing in the Greek Fathers was a reflection on the sacraments themselves, that is, on the concept of a sacrament, although they treated individual mysteries like Baptism, Anointing, and the Eucharist very well (See J. N. D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, rev. ed. (New York: HarperCollins, 1978), 422ff).

The initiator of sacramental theology—what will be the tract De sacramentis from the twelfth century on—is once again Augustine. Saint Ambrose, in his two series of discourses, De sacramentis (On the Sacraments) and De misteriis (On the Mysteries), anticipates the name of the tract but not its content. He also treats individual sacraments but not the principles that are common to all sacraments: the minister, the matter, the form, the grace it effects, etc.

Why choose Ambrose, then, as the teacher of faith on a sacramental subject like the Eucharist that we want to meditate on today? The reason is that Ambrose is the one who more than any other contributed to the affirmation of faith in the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist and laid the foundations for the future doctrine of transubstantiation. In De sacramentis he writes,
That bread is bread before the words of the sacrament; when consecration has been added, from bread it becomes the flesh of Christ. . . . By what words, then, is the consecration and by whose expressions? . . . When it comes to performing a venerable sacrament, then the priest uses not his own expressions, but he uses the expressions of Christ. Thus the expression of Christ performs this sacrament (Ambrose, The Sacraments, IV, 14, in St. Ambrose: Theological and Dogmatic Works, vol. 44, The Fathers of the Church (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1963), 302).
In his other work, De misteriis, faith in the real presence of Jesus in the Eucharist is made even more explicit:
Cannot the words of Christ, which were able to make what was not out of nothing, change those things that are into the things that were not? For it is not of less importance to give things new natures than to change natures. . . . This body that we make present on the altar is the body born of the Virgin. . . . Surely it is the true flesh of Christ, which was crucified, which was buried; therefore it is truly the sacrament of that flesh. . . . The Lord Jesus himself declares, 'This is my body.' Before the benediction of the heavenly words another species is mentioned; after the consecration the body is signified (Ambrose, The Mysteries, 52-54, vol. 44, 25-26).
In the successive development of eucharistic doctrine, the authority of Ambrose on this point prevailed over that of Augustine. Augustine, of course, believed in the reality of Christ’s presence in the Eucharist, but as we saw in the preceding meditation, he still puts more emphasis on its symbolic and ecclesial significance. Some of his disciples will reach the point of affirming not only that the Eucharist makes the church but also that the Eucharist is the church: “Eating the body of Christ means nothing less than becoming the body of Christ (William of Saint-Thierry (PL 184, 403)). The reaction to the heresy of Berengar of Tours, who reduced Jesus’ presence in the Eucharist to a merely dynamic and symbolic presence, provoked a unanimous reaction in which the words of Ambrose played an important role. Ambrose is the first authority that Saint Thomas Aquinas invokes in his Summa theologiae in favour of the thesis of the Real Presence (See Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, III, q. 75, a. 1ff).

The phrase mystical body of Christ, which up until that time was used to designate the Eucharist, began little by little to refer to the Church, while the phrase true body comes to be reserved by that time only for the Eucharist (This is the process reconstructed by Henri de Lubac, in Corpus Mysticum: The Eucharist and the Church in the Middle Ages (1949; Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame, 2007)).  This unusual inversion, in a certain sense, marks the triumph of Ambrose’s legacy over Augustine’s. Phrases like those in the hymn Ave verum corpus (Hail True Body), in which the eucharistic body of Christ is addressed, seem almost directly derived from Ambrose’s words quoted above: “. . . true body, born of the Virgin Mary, that was sacrificed on the cross and from whose pierced side water and blood flowed.

We can summarize the difference between Augustine’s and Ambrose’s perspectives this way. Concerning the three bodies of Christ—the true or historical body born of Mary, the eucharistic body, and the ecclesial body—Augustine closely unites the second and third, the eucharistic body and that of the Church, distinguishing them from the real, historical body of Jesus. On the other hand, Ambrose unites the first and second, the historical body of Christ and his eucharistic body, and even considers them identical, distinguishing them from the ecclesial body.

One could go too far in this direction, falling into an exaggerated realism, almost saying—as the formula that opposed Berengar’s heresy does—that the body and blood of Christ present on the altar are sensibly . . . touched and broken by the hands of the priests or ground by the teeth of the faithful (Heinrich Denziger, ed., Enchiridion symbolorum definitionum et declarationum de rebus fidei et morum, #690, 43rd ed., English ed., eds. Robert Fastiggi and Anne Englund Nash (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2012), 234).  The remedy to avoid this kind of exaggeration was in the concept itself of a sacrament that was clear in theology by that time: The Real Presence in the Eucharist is not physical but sacramental and is mediated through signs, namely, the bread and wine.

The Eucharist and the Hebrew Berakah (Blessing Prayer)
If there is a limitation in Ambrose’s vision it is in the absence of any reference to the Holy Spirit in bringing forth the body of Christ on the altar. For him, all the efficacy lies in the words of consecration; those words are creative words, that is, words that are not limited to affirming an existing reality but words that actually produce the reality that they signify, like the fiat lux (Let there be light) of creation. This influenced the lesser prominence that the epiclesis of the Holy Spirit had in the Latin liturgy, whereas, as we know, in the Eastern liturgy the epiclesis of the Spirit comes to have a role that is as essential as that of the words of consecration. The new Eucharistic prayers, with the solemn invocation of the Holy Spirit preceding the consecration, have tried to fill this gap.

But there is a greater lacuna than this one that we begin to notice that applies not only to Ambrose and the Latin Fathers but also to the explanation of the eucharistic mystery as a whole. One sees here more than ever how studying the Fathers helps us not only to recover ancient riches but also to open us up to new things that emerge in history and to imitate the Fathers not just in their content but also in their methodology of putting all the resources and knowledge available within their cultural context at the service of the Word of God.

The new resource we can use today to understand the Eucharist is the rapprochement between Christians and Jews. From the earliest days of the Church, a variety of historical factors led to accentuating the difference between Christianity and Judaism to the point of opposing them to one another, just as Ignatius of Antioch does (See Ignatius of Antioch, Letter to the Magnesians, 10, 3, in The Epistles of Saint Clement of Rome and Saint Ignatius of Antioch, ed. James Aloysius Kleist (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1946), 72).

Distinguishing themselves from the Jews—in the dating of Passover, the days of fasting, and many other matters—becomes a kind of requirement. An accusation often leveled at one’s adversaries and at heretics was that of being Judaizers.

In terms of the Eucharist, the new climate of dialogue with Judaism has made possible a better understanding of its Jewish background. Just as one cannot understand Christian Easter if one does not consider it as the fulfillment of what the Jewish Passover was prefiguring, so too one cannot understand the Eucharist in depth if it is not seen as a fulfillment of what Jews were doing and saying during the course of their ritual meal. The term Eucharist itself is merely a translation of berakah, the prayer of blessing and thanksgiving said during such a meal. One initial important result of this development has been that no serious scholar today any longer puts forth the hypothesis that the Christian Eucharist can be explained in the light of the sacred meals in some Hellenistic mystery cults, as some tried to do for over a century.

The Church Fathers retained the Scriptures of the Jewish people but not their liturgy, to which they no longer had access after the separation of the Church from the synagogue. Thus, for the Eucharist they used figures from the Scriptures—the Passover lamb, the sacrifice of Isaac, that of Melchizedek, manna—but not the concrete liturgical context in which the Jewish people celebrated all these memories, i.e., the ritual meal that they celebrated once a year in the Passover supper (the Seder) and weekly in the synagogue worship. The first term that designated the Eucharist in the New Testament, which comes from Paul, is the Lord’s supper (kuriakon deipnon) (1 Cor 11:20), which is an obvious reference to the Jewish meal from which it was differentiated at that point by faith in Jesus.

This is the perspective that Benedict XVI also takes in the chapter on the institution of the Eucharist in his second book on Jesus of Nazareth. Following the prevailing opinion of scholars today, he accepts the Johannine chronology according to which Jesus’ Last Supper was not a Passover meal but a solemn farewell meal. With Louis Bouyer, he holds in addition that one can “trace the development of the Christian eucharistic liturgy (that is, of the canon) from the Jewish berakah (Joseph Ratzinger (Benedict XVI), Jesus of Nazareth, Part II:  Holy Week: From the Entrance to Jerusalem to the Resurrection (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2011), 311, and see all of ch. 5, pp. 103-144. See also Louis Bouyer, Eucharist: Theology and Spirituality of the Eucharistic Prayer (1966; Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1989)).

For various cultural and historical reasons, from the time of scholasticism onwards, people attempted to explain the Eucharist in the light of philosophy, in particular using the Aristotelian notions of substance and accidents. This too placed the new understanding of their time at the service of faith and thus imitated the methodology of the Fathers. In our day, we need to do the same with our new knowledge—in our case, historical and liturgical knowledge rather than philosophical knowledge. In the context of some research already begun in this direction, especially by Louis Bouyer (In addition to the book by Bouyer already cited, see Anton Baumstark, Comparative Liturgy, rev. ed., ed. Bernard Botte, trans. F. L. Cross (1939; London: A. R. Mowbray, 1958); Luis Alonso Schoekel, Celebrating the Eucharist: Biblical Meditations (1986; Chestnut Ridge, NY: Crossroad, 1989); Seung Ai Yang, “Les repas sacrés dans le Judaisme de l’époque hellénistique” [“Sacred Meals in Judaism during the Hellentistic Age”] in Encyclopédie de l’Eucharistie, ed. Maurice Brouard (Paris: Editions du Cerf, 2000), 55-59).  I would like to try to show the bright light that is falling on the Christian Eucharist when we consider the Gospel accounts of its institution against the background of what we know about the Jewish ritual meal. The innovation of Jesus’ action will not be diminished but will be highly enhanced.

What Happened That Night
The text that shows the strict link between the Jewish liturgy and the Christian supper is the Didache. That text includes a collection of prayers used in the synagogue, with the addition here and there of the words through Jesus, thy Servant (Didache, 9-10, vol. 6, in Ancient Christian Writers, ed. Johannes Quasten and Joseph Plumpe (New York: Paulist Press, 1946), 20-21).  The rest is identical to the liturgy of the synagogue. The synagogue rite was composed of a series of prayers called berakah that, as we noted, is translated as Eucharist in Greek. The berakah summarizes the spirituality of the Old Covenant and is the response of blessing and thanksgiving that Israel makes to the words of love addressed to them by their God.

The ritual that Jesus followed when he instituted the Eucharist accompanied all the meals of the Jews, but it took on particular importance in family or community meals on the Sabbath and on feast days. A quick look at the ritual is adequate to see the Last Supper in that context. At the beginning of the meal, everyone in turn would hold a cup of wine and, before drinking from it, would repeat a blessing that our current liturgy has us repeat almost to the letter at the time of the Offertory: Blessed are you, Lord God of all creation, for through your goodness we have received the wine we offer you: fruit of the vine. This blessing is for the first cup of wine.

However, the meal officially began only when the father of the family or the head of the community had broken the bread that was to be distributed among those at table. And in fact, Jesus, immediately after the blessing of the first cup, takes the bread, recites the blessing for it, breaks it, and distributes it, saying, This is my body. . . . Here the rite that was only a preparation now becomes the reality. Following the blessing of the bread, which was considered a general blessing for the whole meal, the customary dishes were served.

If the antecedents of the Eucharist are found in the ritual meal of the Jews, then there is no special significance in knowing if the feast of Passover coincided with Holy Thursday or with Good Friday. Jesus did not connect the Eucharist to any particular detail of the Passover meal; besides the irreconcilability of the date, there is no reference to the eating of the lamb and of the bitter herbs. He links the Eucharist to only those elements that are part of the daily meal ritual, that is, the breaking of the bread at the beginning and the great prayer of thanksgiving at the end. The paschal character of the Last Supper is undeniable, but it is not due to these particular details; its paschal character is made clear through the link that Jesus makes between the Eucharist (my blood shed for you) and his death on the cross. This is the point at which the figure of the Passover lamb is fulfilled: Not a bone of his shall be broken (Jn 19:36).

Let us return to the Jewish ritual. When the meal is about to end and the food has been eaten, those at table are ready for the great ritual act that concludes the celebration and gives it its most profound meaning. All the people wash their hands, as they had done at the beginning. It was prescribed that the person who is presiding receives water from the youngest person present, and perhaps it is John who gives the water to Jesus. But the Master, instead of letting himself be served, teaches a lesson in humility by washing their feet. After that, with a cup of wine mixed with water before him, he invites them to recite the three prayers of thanksgiving: the first praising God as the Creator of all things, the second for the deliverance from Egypt, and the third that God might continue his work in the present. When the prayer is concluded, the cup passes from person to person as each one drinks from it. This is the ancient ritual that Jesus performed many times during his life.

Luke says that Jesus, after having eaten, takes up the chalice and says, This chalice which is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood (Lk 22:20). Something decisive occurs at the moment when Jesus adds these words to the formula of the prayer of thanksgiving, that is, to the Jewish berakah. That ritual was a sacred feast in which people celebrated and thanked God as their Saviour for having redeemed his people in order to form a covenant of love with them that was sealed by the blood of a lamb. The daily meal always blessed God for that covenant, but now, at the very moment in which Jesus, as the true lamb of God, decides to give his life for his own, he declares that the Old Covenant that they were all celebrating liturgically has been concluded.

At that moment, with a few simple words, he initiates, offers, and establishes the new and everlasting covenant in his blood with his disciples. When Jesus passes around that chalice, it is as if he were saying, Up until now every time you celebrated this ritual meal, you have commemorated the love of God your Saviour who rescued you from Egypt. From now on, every time you repeat what we have done today, you will no longer do it in commemoration of a salvation from physical slavery with the blood of an animal. You will do it in remembrance of me, the Son of God, who gave his blood to redeem you from your sins. Until now, you have eaten normal food to celebrate a physical deliverance. Now you will eat me, divine food sacrificed for you, to make you one with me. And you will eat me and will drink my blood in the very act in which I sacrifice myself for you. This is the new and everlasting covenant of my love.

In adding the words Do this in remembrance of me, Jesus confers enduring significance on this gift. From looking to the past, it now looks to the future. All that he has done in the supper up to this point is put into our hands. Repeating what he did renews this central act of human history, his death for the world. The figure of the paschal lamb, which on the cross becomes an event; is given to us in the supper as sacrament, that is, as a perennial memorial of the event. The event happens once for all time (semel) (Heb 10:12), while the sacrament can be repeated as often as we wish (quotiescunque) (see 1 Cor 11:26).

The idea of a memorial, which Jesus derives from the Jewish ritual for the Sabbath and the feast days referred to in Exodus 12:14, encapsulates the very essence of the Mass, its theology and its inner meaning for salvation. The biblical memorial is far more than a simple commemoration or a simple subjective memory of the past. Because of it, something comes into being—beyond the mind of the person praying—a reality that has its own existence, a reality that does not belong to the past but exists and operates in the present and will continue to operate in the future. The memorial that until now was the guarantee of God’s faithfulness to Israel is now the broken body and shed blood of the Son of God, the sacrifice of Calvary re-presented (that is, made present once again) in the Church’s Eucharist.

Here we discover the meaning and the invaluable insistence of Ambrose—and after him, in evolved form, of the scholastic theologians and of the Council of Trent—that Christ is truly, really, and substantially contained in the Eucharist (Council of Trent, Decree on the Most Holy Eucharist, 1, in Josef Neuner and Jacques Dupuis, The Christian Faith in the Doctrinal Documents of the Catholic Church, 7th ed., ed. Jacques Dupuis (New York: Alba House, 2001), 617. See also Denziger, Enchiridion symbolorum, #1636, 393).  This is the only way that the memorial instituted by Jesus can maintain its character of an absolute, unconditional gift that is independent of everything, even independent of the faith of the one who receives it.

Our Signatures on the Gift
What is our place in this human-divine drama that we have just recalled? Our reflection on the Eucharist should lead us to discover exactly that. And it is, in fact, to involve us in his action that Jesus made a sacrament of his gift.

In the Eucharist two miracles happen: one makes the bread and wine the body and blood of Christ; the other makes us a living sacrifice acceptable to God that unites us to Christ’s sacrifice as participants and not merely as spectators. During the Offertory we offered bread and wine that obviously have no value or significance for God in and of themselves. In the consecration it is Christ who imparts the value that I am not able to put into my offering. At that moment, the bread and wine become the body and blood of Christ who hands himself over to death in a supreme act of love to the Father.

Look at the result of this: My poor, worthless gift has become the perfect gift for the Father. Jesus not only gives himself in the bread and wine, but he also takes us and changes us into himself (mystically, not physically); he also gives us the value that his gift of love to the Father has. We too are in that bread and wine: The Church . . . herself is offered in the offering which she presents to God, writes Augustine (Augustine, De civitate Dei, X, 6 (CCL 47, 279): In ea re quam offert, ipsa offertur. The City of God against the Pagans, X, 6, trans. Henry Bettenson, rev. ed. (New York: Penguin Classics, 2003), 380).

I would like to summarize what happens in the eucharistic celebration with the help of an example from normal life. Think of a large family in which there is a first-born son who admires and loves his father without measure and wants to give him a valuable gift for his birthday. Before giving it to him, however, he secretly asks all his brothers and sisters to affix their signatures on the gift. This gift comes into the father’s hands as a sign of love from all his children indiscriminately, even though only one of the children has actually paid the price for it.

This is what happens in the eucharistic sacrifice. Jesus admires and loves his heavenly Father without measure. Every day until the end of the world, he wants to give him the most precious gift he can think of, that of his own life. At Mass he invites all his brothers and sisters to affix their signatures on the gift in such a way that the gift reaches God the Father as a gift coming from all of his children together, even though only one has paid the price for the gift. And what a price!

Our signature is represented by the little drops of water that are mixed into the wine in the chalice. Our signature, Augustine explains, is above all the Amen that the faithful say at the time of receiving communion: It is to what you are that you reply Amen, and by so replying you express your assent. What . . . you see is the body of Christ, and you answer Amen. So be a member of the body of Christ, in order to make your Amen truthful. . . . Be what you can see, and receive what you are (Augustine, “Sermon 272” (PL 38, 1247-1248), in Sermons on the Liturgical Seasons 230-272-B , part 3, vol. 7, The Works of Saint Augustine, ed. John E. Rotelle(Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 1993), 297-298).
All of Augustine’s eucharistic ecclesiology that we recalled in the last meditation finds its application here. If one cannot say that the Eucharist is the church (as some of his disciples ended up asserting), we can and should say that the Eucharist makes the Church.

We know that whoever has signed an agreement then has the duty to honour that signature. This means that when leaving Mass we too need to make of our lives a gift of love to the Father and to our brothers and sisters. We too need to say, within ourselves, to our brothers and sisters, Take and eat; this is my body. Take my time, my abilities, my attention. Take my blood too, that is, my suffering, all that humbles me, mortifies me, and limits my strength, my physical death itself. I want all of my life, like Christ’s, to be bread broken and wine poured out for others. I want to make my whole life a Eucharist.

I mentioned earlier the Didaché as the document which marks the passage from the Jewish to the Christian liturgy. Let us conclude with one of its prayers which has inspired so many Eucharistic prayers in the Church:

Even as this broken bread was scattered over the hills, and was gathered together and became one, so let your Church be gathered together from the ends of the earth into your kingdom. To you is the glory and the power through Jesus Christ forever. Amen. (Didache, IX, 4).

Speaking with new confessors

At 12:15pm today in the Hall of Blessings at the Vatican Apostolic Palace, the Holy Father, Pope Francis received in Audience those who are participating in the annual Course on the internal forum sponsored by the Apostolic Penitentiary.


Address of the Holy Father, Pope Francis
to participants in the annual Course on the internal forum
sponsored by the Apostolic Penitentiary

Dear Brothers,

I welcome you on the occasion of the annual Course on the internal forum. I thank Cardinal Mauro Piacenza for the words with which he introduced our meeting.

For a quarter of a century the Apostolic Penitentiary has offered, especially to new priests and deacons, the opportunity of this course, to contribute to the formation of good confessors, aware of the importance of this ministry. I thank you for such a precious service and I encourage you to carry it forward with renewed commitment, making a treasure of the experience acquired and with wise creativity, to help the Church and confessors ever better to carry out the ministry of mercy, which is so important!

In this connection, I wish to offer you some reflections.

First of all, the protagonist of the ministry of Reconciliation is the Holy Spirit. The forgiveness that the Sacrament confers is the new life transmitted by the Risen Lord through his Spirit: Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained (John 20:22-23). Therefore, you are called to be always men of the Holy Spirit, witnesses and heralds, happy and strong, of the Lord’s Resurrection. This witness is read on the face, it is heard in the voice of the priest who administers with faith and with unction the Sacrament of Reconciliation. He receives the penitents not with the attitude of judge and even less so with that of a simple friend, but with the charity of God, with the love of a father who sees his son return and goes out to meet him, of the shepherd who has found the lost sheep. The priest’s heart is a heart that is able to be moved, not out of sentimentalism or mere emotiveness, but by the Lord’s bowels of mercy! If it is true that the tradition indicates to us the twofold role of doctor and judger for confessors, we must never forget that like a doctor he is called to heal and like judge to absolve.

A second aspect: if Reconciliation transmits the new life of the Risen One and renews baptismal grace, then your task is to give it generously to brothers -- to give this grace. A priest who does not take care of this part of his ministry, be it in the quantity of time dedicated, be it in the spiritual quality, is like a shepherd who does not take care of the sheep that are lost; he is like a father who forgets his lost son and neglects to help him. But mercy is the heart of the Gospel! Do not forget this: mercy is the heart of the Gospel! It is the Good News that God loves us, that He always loves sinful man, and with this love He attracts him to Himself and invites him to conversion. Let us not forget that for the faithful it is often an effort to approach the Sacrament, be it for practical reasons, be it because of the natural difficulty to confess to another man their sins. For this reason, it is necessary to constantly work on ourselves, on our humanity, so that we are never an obstacle but always foster the approach to mercy and forgiveness. However, it often happens that a person comes and says: I haven’t been to confession for many years, I have had this problem, I left going to Confession because I met a priest and he said this to me, and we see the imprudence, the lack of pastoral love, in what the person says. And they go away, because of a bad experience in their Confession. If there is a father’s attitude, which comes from God’s goodness, this will never happen.

And it is necessary to guard against two opposite extremes: rigor and laxity. Neither one is good because in reality they do not take charge of the person, of the penitent. Instead, mercy listens truly with the heart of God, and wishes to support the soul on the path of reconciliation. Confession is not a court of condemnation, but the experience of forgiveness and mercy!

Finally, we all know the difficulty that Confession often finds. There are so many reasons, be they historical or spiritual. However, we know that the Lord wished to give this immense gift to the Church, offering the baptized the certainty of the Father’s forgiveness. It is this: it is the certainty of the Father’s forgiveness. Therefore, it is very important that, in all the dioceses and in the parish communities, the celebration of this Sacrament of forgiveness and salvation is particularly taken care of.  It is good that in every parish the faithful know when they can find available priests: when there is fidelity, the fruits are seen. This is true in a particular way for the churches entrusted to Religious Communities, which can assure the constant presence of confessors.

We entrust to the Virgin, Mother of Mercy, the ministry of priests and all Christian communities, so that they understand increasingly the value of the Sacrament of Penance. I entrust all of you to our Mother and bless you with all my heart.

Former President of the IOR not guilty

The Criminal Court of Rome, in reception of the request put forward by the Public Prosecutor’s office of Rome, with the decree of storage issued on February 19, 2014, has shared the full and exact arguments given by the P.M. and has excluded Doctor Ettore Gotti Tedeschi from every responsibility in the operation that in 2010 led the magistrate to seize 23 million euros of the IOR for violation of the anti-money laundering normative.

Highlighted in the measures are the following points:

  • The investigation of the Public Prosecutor’s office was not motivated by the merely formal violation of the anti-money laundering normative, but stemmed from the conviction that the lack of respect on the part of those in charge of the Institute, might make it possible for the IOR to become easily a channel for the carrying out of illicit operations of money laundering of sums of money from malfeasance, through the action of obliging IOR current account holders;
  • That the violation of the normative on the part of operational managers of the IOR was not episodic, and they were aware of the problems that such a misapplication could entail (money laundering risk);
  • That Ettore Gotti Tedeschi not only was totally outside of the modus operandi put in place by the operational management of the Institute, but that he clearly worked to achieve a juridical regime marked by criteria and rules that would avoid the repetition of conduct of managers of the IOR of omissions and impediments to the fulfillment of appropriate, verified and reinforced obligations;
  • That only thanks to the legislative and institutional initiatives that intervened in the six months after the seizure, the Public Prosecutor’s office decided in May of 2011 to unblock the 23 million euros, confident, in fact, of the reforming action undertaken by the then President Ettore Gotti Tedeschi;
  • That the developments on the normative at the interpretative and organizational level, subsequent to the introduction of the new normative of 2012, which were the object, as is known, of conflicting readings also at the headquarters of international organizations, do not seem to lead back to Professor Gotti Tedeschi.
  • That what has emerged from the investigation of the magistrate is incompatible with the notifications of the charges against President Gotti Tedeschi by the Advisers of the Administration of the IOR, such accusations appearing to be unfounded and instrumental manifestations for the purpose of removing him from his responsibilities, carried out by him with professionalism and efficiency, so much so as to obtain prestigious results at the level of recognition on the part of national and international organizations, so true is this that thanks to his work and the credibility that he conferred on the Institute, the Public Prosecutor’s office of Rome restored to the IOR the 23 million euros previously seized.
  • That in particular the accusation levelled by the Advisers against Ettore Gotti Tedeschi of his not being able to interact with the Management seems to have been, today with manifest evidence, fruit of a serious error of evaluation on the part of those who did not understand the good reasons why the President did not trust the behaviour adopted by the Management of the Institute, which persons today no longer fulfill their role because of the known events.

The motivations are read in the request for storage (the parts reported in cursive in the present document are extracted directly from the request for storage and signed by the P.M. Nello Rossi, Stefano Fava and Stefano Pesci) on the basis of which on July 4, 2013 the Public Prosecutor of Rome requested the filing of the accusations against the former President of the IOR, while he intended to go ahead with the accusations against the other subjects, held to be the effective authors of the incriminating conduct, for which he acquired the documentation.
It is particularly illuminating to understand the subjective aspect of the conduct of the effective authors of the offence, the 'operating' managers of the IOR, their degree of awareness of the problems – still unresolved – connected to the application of the anti-money laundering normative and the altogether episodic character of the lack of observance of this normative on the part of the Vatican Institute, that made the seizure in question only an example of a much greater reality.
In synthesis the said decree of storage in agreement with several facts which will be addressed below, explains and sanctions unequivocally that Doctor Gotti Tedeschi , in his capacity of President of IOR, worked properly for the good of the Church and in keeping with the mandate received from Benedict XVI, but was impeded in pursuing such action by the Management of the Institute, of which in fact the involvement is confirmed by the investigation.

What the decree of storage confirms

Thanks to the investigations of the Italian magistrate carried out for a long period of time, given the complexity of the affair it has emerged clearly that the President of the Institute Ettore Gotti Tedeschi  was not part of the incriminating operations, resulting, in fact, from the inquiries often made to carry out the mandate received to support the Vatican Institute on the White List. Important results were obtained thanks to the significant changes made on the normative and institutional plane, between December 30, 2010 and the end of May of 2011. With the confirmation of the investigators on the operation of Doctor Ettore Gotti Tedeschi, the Public Prosecutor of Rome ordered the unblocking of the sum of 23 million euros, making them available again to the IOR.

Highlighted in particular, in the motivations of the measures issued by the Court of Rome and by the Public Prosecutor’s office of Rome, are:

  • that Professor Ettore Gotti Tedeschi was inscribed in the register of those being investigated, only because, in the abstract, he qualified to operate as a legal representative on the IOR account, while the investigations ascertained that the person that in this aspect had 'operated' concretely for the IOR account was Paolo Cipriani, director general of the Vatican Institute;
  • that the investigations carried out made it possible to confirm the non-involvement of the IOR President, Ettore Gotti Tedeschi, in the incriminating conduct and the modus operandi of the Institute’s operating managers;
  • that the investigations of the magistrate, however, were not limited to evidence of Doctor Gotti Tedeschi’s non-involvement in the single incriminating operation. But they undertook to verify – excluding him – if there were general acts of tendency or directives of the President that could link him with responsibility for the conduct held concretely by two signatory subjects of the transfer order (the director of the IOR Paolo Cipriani and, as resulting from the investigations, the vice-director of the Massimo Tulli Institute);
  • That, vice versa, it is an objective fact – resulting from more sources and of the comprehensive analysis of the developments of the recent affairs of the IOR – that the activity of Professor Gotti Tedeschi as President of the IOR was essentially  orientated to give life to a new policy of the Institute in the framework of the adoption of an ensemble of measures geared to aligning Vatican City State, on the side of opposition to money laundering, to the best international standards, through the adoption of an anti-money laundering normatives and the creation of the AIF (Authority of Financial Information|) in order to be able to engage in profitable relations with similar organisms operating in other countries (and in Italy with our Unita di information finanziaria - Financial Information Unit);
  • Finally, the P.M. clarify definitively how the developments do not seem to lead back to Professor Gotti Tedeschi on the normative, interpretative and organizational plane following the introduction of the new normatives which were the object, as is known, of conflicting readings, also at the headquarters of international organizations.

What does the said decree explain unanimously to other events that occurred

  • What was ascertained by the Public Prosecutor’s office of Rome is added to a series of facts that happened in the meantime in the last twenty months, the whole concurring to demonstrate definitively the instrumental inconsistency of the most relevant points of the decided distrust of the board in the confrontations of President Gotti Tedeschi on May 24, 2012.
  • In regard to the first point, the interview of the Secretary of Pope Benedict as well as Prefect of the Papal Household, Monsignor Georg Ganswein, given to the daily newspaper Il Messaggero on October 22, 2013, confirms in a clear and indisputable way the correctness of the conduct of the IOR President, esteemed and appreciated by the Pontiff, being held in the darkness of mistrust;
  • In regard to the fifth point, the closing of the Vatileaks trial with the related convictions explains without a shadow of a doubt the absolute non-involvement of President Gotti Tedeschi in the issue of any document in his possession or of others;
  • In regard to the eighth point, the decree confirms that the mistrust of President Gotti Tedeschi was well justified in the accusations of the operation of the Management of the Institute and its responsibility for the risk that derives from the Institute and that, unfortunately, were pointedly confirmed by the events that justified the carrying out of the investigation against Doctor Cipriani and his Assistant, Doctor Tulli;

How and why the said decree puts in new light the deliberate 'mistrust' of the IOR advisers

In light of the measures issued by the Judiciary Authority, and in addition to the success of the investigations and events that intervened in the last 20 months, Professor Ettore Gotti Tedeschi evidences how now it emerges clearly how unfounded and instrumental were the accusations that were imputed to him by the Advisers of the IOR’s Administration at the moment of his ouster from the IOR Presidency and well justified the reasons of the mistrust of the then President in the accusations against the conduct adopted by the Management of the Institute, which persons today are no longer at their posts because of the known events.

Hence the decree of storage creates the premises for ascertaining the real motives for the mistrust, in particular of the solicitations and conditioning that motivated the conduct of the members of the IOR Council that, mistrusting them, in fact created the situation to verify the grave errors and therefore grave damages to the Holy See.

The Administrative Council agreed, in fact, that if they maintained the changes, criticized by Moneyval, of the anti-money laundering law, they are also consenting indirectly to the modification and re-dimensioning of the role of the AIF, from an independent to a dependent position of organs of the Holy See.

Conclusions

It is for this reason that Doctor Ettore Gotti Tedeschi, after a long period of silence and awaiting, has instructed his lawyers, now that the affair has been clarified of an unacceptable investigation by the Italian magistrate, to take a series of initiatives in the judiciary headquarters to react to the numerous media attacks intended to denigrate his human and professional figure, being decided to demonstrate also through judicial avenues the ungrounded accusations put forward against him by the Advisers at the moment of his ouster.

Milan-Torino, March 27, 2014

Lawyer Fabio Marzio Palazzo
Lawyer Stefano Maria Commodo

Greece at the Vatican

This morning in the Vatican Apostolic Palace, the Holy Father, Pope Francis received in Audience the President of the Hellenic Republic, His Excellency Mister Karolos Papoulias, who subsequently went on to meet with His Eminence, Pietro Cardinal Parolin, Secretary of State, and with His Excellency, Dominique Mamberti, Secretary for Relations with States.

The cordial discussions, an expression of the existing good relations between the Holy See and Greece, focused on issues of common interest, such as, the legal status of religious communities, the role of religion in society, and ecumenical collaboration.

Attention then turned to the social consequences of the worldwide economic crisis, as well as the contribution of Greece within the European Union. Finally, concern was expressed regarding the future presence of Christians in the Middle East, in relation to political instability and the situations of conflict that affect various regions of the world.

God's word goes out

At 11:30 this morning in the John Paul II Hall at the Vatican Press Office, there was a press conference held to present the texts and rare biblical manuscripts which are part of a current exhibition entitled Verbum Domini II - God's Word goes out to the Nations.  The exhibition is sponsored by the Museum of the Bible and is being staged at the Bracciodi Carlo Magno in the Vatican from April 2 to June 22, 2014.

Presentations at this morning's press conference were made by Mister Cary Summers, Chief Operating Officer of the Museum of the Bible; Reverend José María Abrego de Lacy, SJ, Rector of the Pontifical Biblical Institute; Monsignor Melchor Sánchez de Toca y Alameda, Under Secretary of the Pontifical Council for Culture; and Doctor Ambrogio M. Piazzoni, Vice Prefect of the Vatican Apostolic Library.


Intervention spoken by Mister Cary Summers
Chief Operating Officer of the Museum of the Bible

Throughout history, no one book has had a broader influence than the Bible. Jews and Christians from every corner of the globe have worked to preserve their scriptures and share its message with the people they encountered. World leaders throughout history, from Constantine to Charlemagne, have championed the transmission of the Bible. Along the way, the Bible has been made accessible to different cultures while still remaining true to the original Greek and Hebrew text.

Over the last two millennia, this transmission, translation, and dissemination of the Bible has shaped and reshaped the history of the world. In this exhibit you'll travel around the globe and throughout time as you see how God's Word has gone to the nations.

Through the power of immersive environments combined with one of the most detailed collections of ancient manuscripts and printed materials ever assembled, Verbum Domini II takes the visitor to the Greek world, Northeast Africa, China, the Latin West, the British Isles, Central and Eastern Europe, North America, Ecuador, to all nations and even the moon and into the digital world. There has never been such a diverse and important collection, involving over 15 private and public institutions, showcasing some of the rarest and most important documents of the Biblical text ever to be presented to the public.


Intervention spoken by Doctor Ambrogio M. Piazzoni
Prefect of the Vatican Apostolic Library

In the very rich panorama of the pieces that are featured in the display Verbum Domini II some manuscripts of the Vatican Library stand out, about which, I think, is worth spending a few words.

Above all, an absolute first, the display of a sheet of the Bodmer Papyrus XIV-XV. It is a manuscript dating back around the year 200 that transmits almost entirely the Gospel texts according to Luke and John. It is the oldest physical finding in which we can read, for example, the Prologue of John, or the text of the Our Father of Luke, and this fact already arouses particular emotions; but above all, it is the precious testimony of the existence, already at the end of the second century, of the sequence of the four gospels of Matthew and Mark and Luke and John indeed, attested in those years by Irenaeus of Lyons; Luke and John, in fact, are found in succession in the papyrus and, on the same page, one ends and the other begins. This manuscript was part of a collection assembled by Martin Bodmer in Egypt in the 1950s; it arrived at the Vatican Library in November 2006 after being purchased at an auction by a generous benefactor, the American Frank J. Hanna III, who donated it to Pope Benedict XVI. This is the first time that an original sheet is exposed to the public, and the chosen sheet is precisely the one where the two gospels meet.

Another document exhibited exceptionally is a double page of the famous codex Vaticanus, or Codex B, of the Bible (Vat gr. 1209). This manuscript, realized on parchment in the first half of the fourth century and containing the Old and New Testament in Greek, is, along with the codex Sinaiticus (the main part preserved at the British Library in London), the first complete manuscript of the bible. It is a privileged witness of the canon of Scriptures at such an ancient time. According to a very accredited hypothesis (of Theodore Skeat), it is part of a group of 50 bibles that the Emperor Constantine ordered Eusebius of Caesarea to copy to give as a gift to the churches of Constantinople (a project that was not subsequently implemented). In order to make the visitor understand how this enormous book (there are more than 1500 pages) originally presented itself, the codex facsimile is also exposed, since the original is hanging in sheets arranged in folders, for conservation reasons.

Other manuscripts from the Vatican Library, though not so extraordinary, are of great interest. For example, the codex Claromontanus is very ancient, dating back to the V and VII century, an early witness of the Gospels translated into Latin in the Vulgate by Saint Jerome, except the text of Matthew that is still present in the Vetus latina version (Vat lat. 7223). Also very beautiful, even in aesthetic terms, is the so called Barberini Gospels, a splendid witness to the insular miniature of the eighth century realized in the British Isles (Barb. lat. 570).

Also noteworthy is a palimpsest, a book written several times, deleting the previous writing, which can however be read with the help of particular techniques: under a work of Strabo is in fact found a writing dated back to the ninth century with texts of Matthew, Mark and Luke (Vat gr. 2061 A). Rather unique is a Greek octateuch (which includes the five books of the Pentateuch plus Joshua, Judges and Ruth) from the eleventh century (Vat gr. 747), which also contains the so called Letter of Aristea, an official of Ptolemy II Philadelphus, who tells of the Greek translation of the ancient Hebrew Scriptures entrusted to the Septuagint in the third century B.C.

Finally, a manuscript not specifically biblical is also exposed, which is a tribute to the Venerable Bede, scholar and commentator of many books of the Bible, in which a copy of the Ecclesiastical History of the twelfth-thirteenth century is presented (Reg. lat. 122). Moreover, it is a tribute to Pope Francis, whose motto (miserando atque eligendo) is taken right from a text of Bede commenting the Gospel’s episode of the call of Saint Matthew.


Intervention spoken by Monsignor Melchor Sánchez de Toca y Alameda
Under Secretary of the Pontifical Council for Culture

It is a pleasure for me to be here today and to convey to you all the warmest greetings of Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi, the President of the Pontifical Council for Culture. My presence here today is an expression of the support of the Pontifical Council for Culture for this endeavour and to underline the importance of the links between Bible and Culture.

The Bible is, among many other things, a cultural product. We know that in composing the Bible and transmitting the Word of God, the human authors draw extensively upon literary and cultural traditions of Israel’s neighbours. The first chapters of the book of Genesis resemble very much the Gilgamesh epic poem and other Babylonian myths and sagas making it difficult to deny a direct link between them. Proverbs and poetry reflect the influence of similar motifs and styles in Egyptian or Sumerian literature. And yet, while using symbols, themes styles and motifs from foreign cultures, the human authors of the Bible, divinely inspired have thoroughly transformed them to put them at the service of God’s eternal Word. They have filtered, purified and elevated those literary motifs and adapted them to Israel’s faith in the only One God. God’s Word, is sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit (Heb 4:12). It judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart, and this applies not only to every individual but also to every culture. This process of cultural transformation and transfiguration, to which the Bible bears testimony, must continue also in our time: with the power of God’s Word, every culture has to be purified and elevated to the best of itself.

But the Bible is a cultural product also in another way. It is the cultural codex of the Western culture, as Verbum Domini affirms and as Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi often says, Our culture, the world we live in, would be simply incomprehensible without taking into account the influence of the Bible on it. It has shaped our art, the architecture, the landscape of our countries, and even the cornerstones of our philosophical thought as well as modern science, which was only possible in a Christian context. The very concept of person, of human dignity, of history and time as an indication towards an end, the very principles of freedom, equality and brotherhood, the inner rationality of the cosmos, the presence of the Logos in the created world, all these have their roots in the Bible.

It is one of the drawbacks of our time that there is a general ignorance of the Bible. Considered as a religious book, a sacred text, it is often confined to Sunday schools or to the religion hour in the schools. It should be instead be the object of study in the school at the same level as Dante, Shakespeare or Cervantes, as the key to understanding our very world, our art, our history and literature: who we are.

That is why the Council for Culture greets this initiative and has supported it by granting its patronage. It is our desire that many can visit the exhibition and get to know and love the Bible as the book of God’s Word. And in that way make true what the prophet Amos had predicted:

'Behold, the days are coming,' says the Lord God, 
'That I will send a famine on the land,
Not a famine of bread,
Nor a thirst for water,
But of hearing the words of the Lord.'

Thursday, March 27, 2014

The USA at the Vatican

This morning, March 27, 2014, the Honorable Barack H. Obama, President of the United States of America, was received in audience by His Holiness, Pope Francis  Mister Obama subsequently met with His Eminence, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, Secretary of State, and with Archbishop Dominique Mamberti, Secretary for Relations with States.

During the cordial meetings, views were exchanged on some current international themes and it was hoped that, in areas of conflict, there would be respect for humanitarian and international law and a negotiated solution between the parties involved.

In the context of bilateral relations and cooperation between Church and State, there was a discussion on questions of particular relevance for the Church in that country, such as the exercise of the rights to religious freedom, life and conscientious objection, as well as the issue of immigration reform. Finally, the common commitment to the eradication of trafficking of human persons in the world was stated.

A pilgrim in the Holy Land

Today, the Vatican Press Office published the itinerary for the Holy Father's upcoming pilgrimage to the Holy Land on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the meeting between Pope Paul VI and Patriarch Athenagoras which took place in January 1964.


Pilgrimage of the Holy Father, Pope Francis
in the Holy Land

Saturday, May 24, 2014
At 8:15am, the Holy Father is scheduled to depart from Rome's Fumicino airport.  The flight will travel to Amman, Jordan, where it is scheduled to arrive at 1:00pm local time at the Queen Alia International Airport.

At 1:45pm, there will be an official welcoming ceremony at the Reale Al-Husseini Palace in Amman.  The Holy Father will pay a courtesy visit to Their Majesties, the King and Queen of Jordan.

At 2:20pm, the Holy Father will meet with leaders from the Kingdom of Jordan.

At 4:00pm, the Holy Father will preside at the celebration of a Mass which will be celebrated in the International Stadium of Amman.

At 7:00pm, the Holy Father will visit the Baptismal Site, where it is believed that Jesus was baptized, at Bethany beyond the Jordan.

At 7:15pm, the Holy Father will meet with refugees and with disabled youth in the Latin church at Bethany beyond the Jordan.

Sunday, May 25, 2014
At 8:15am, there will be a departure ceremony conducted at the Queen Alia International Airport in Amman; at 8:30am, the Holy Father will depart by helicopter and fly to Bethlehem where he is scheduled to arrive at 9:20am.

 At 9:30am, an official welcoming ceremony will take place at the Presidential Palace in Bethlehem, and the Holy Father will pay a courtesy visit to the President of the State of Palestine.

At 10:00am, the Pope will meet with the Palestinian authorities.

At 11:00am, Pope Francis will preside at the celebration of a Mass which will take place in Manger Square in Bethlehem.  At the conclusion of the Mass, the Holy Father will lead the recitation of the Regina Coeli and address a few words to those who are present.

At 1:30pm, the Holy Father will share lunch with some Palestine families at the Casa Nova Franciscan Convent in Bethlehem.

At 3:00pm, His Holiness will make a private visit to the Grotto of the Nativity in Bethlehem, and at 3:20pm, he will meet with children from the Dheisheh, Aida and Beit Jibrin refugee camps.  This meeting will take place at the Phoenix Centre located in the Dheisheh refugee camp.

At 3:45pm, there will be a departure ceremony conducted at the heliport of Bethlehem and at 4:00pm, the Holy Father will leave Bethlehem and travel by helicopter to Ben Gurion International Airport in Tel Aviv.

At 4:30pm, there will be a welcoming ceremony conducted at Ben Gurion International Airport and the Holy Father will then travel by helicopter to Jerusalem.  Arrival on Mount Scopus is scheduled for 5:45pm local time.

At 6:15pm, the Holy Father will meet privately with the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople in the Apostolic Delegation in Jerusalem.  During their meeting, they will sign a joint declaration.

At 7:00pm, Pope Francis will participate in an Ecumenical Gathering commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of the meeting in Jerusalem between Pope Paul VI and Patriarch Athenagoras.  This meeting will take place in the Basilica of the Holy Sepulchre.

Pope Paul VI met Patriarch Athenagoras in Jerusalem in January 1964

At 8:15pm, the Holy Father will dine with the Patriarchs, Bishops and members of the Papal party at the Latin Patriarcate in Jersualem.

 Monday, May 26, 2014
At 8:15am, the Holy Father will visit with the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem in the Great Council building on the Temple Mount.

At 9:10am, the Pope will visit the Western Wall.

At 9:45am, His Holiness will place a wreath of flowers on Mount Herzl and at 10:00am he will visit Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem.

At 10:45am, Pope Francis will pay a courtesy visit to the two chief Rabbis of Israel at the Heichal Shlomo Centre, near the Jerusalem Great Synagogue.

At 11:45am, the Roman Pontiff will pay a courtesy visit to the President of the State of Israel in the Presidential Palace

At 1:00pm, the Pope will meet in private audience with the Prime Minister of Israel at the Notre Dame Jerusalem Centre, and at 1:30pm he will lunch with the members of the Papal party at that same Centre.

At 3:30pm, His Holiness will visit privately with the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople in a building facing the Orthodox Church of Viri Galileai on the Mount of Olives, and at 4:00pm, the Holy Father will meet with priests, religious and seminarians in the church of Gethsemane, near the Garden of Olives.

At 5:20pm, the Holy Father will celebrate Mass with the Ordinaries of the Holy Land and with the members of the Papal party in the Upper Room.

At 7:30pm, Pope Francis will be transferred by helicopter from Mount Scopus to Ben Gurion International Airport in Tel Aviv.  There, an official departure ceremony will begin at 8:00pm and the Pope will depart for Rome at 8:15pm.  Arrival at Rome's Campino Airport is scheduled for 11:00pm that night.