New Book Explains How John Paul II Battled Soviets

This article provides a small glimpse into the strategic encounter between the Vatican and Soviet Communism in 80s -- an encounter that few knew was going on at the time.  Just as John Paul II battled the Soviets in secret, so too does Benedict XVI battle the Chinese, Pakistan, and a host of other Vatican "enemies."  We don't see what's going on or know exactly how everything is taking place, but we can be sure that the battle is taking place nonetheless.


This article comes from the Catholic Herald (UK).
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New details emerge of John Paul II's "war" against Communism

By John Thavis

That Pope John Paul II was a pivotal figure in the fall of European Communism is accepted as a truism, but many details of that drama have remained hidden in archives.

A US biographer of the late pope has now provided particulars of what he describes as the full-scale war by Communism against the Catholic Church, and Pope John Paul’s astute and successful counter-strategy.

The Polish pope displayed political savvy and “a shrewdness that combined steadiness of strategic vision with tactical flexibility”, George Weigel told an audience of seminarians, diplomats and Vatican officials at the Pontifical North American College on Sunday.

One of Pope John Paul’s moves, Mr Weigel said, was to appoint as his own Secretary of State Cardinal Agostino Casaroli, the architect of the Vatican’s “Ostpolitik” efforts to reach workable compromises with communist regimes.

By doing so, he “created tactical advantages for the Church: as the pope preached moral revolution over the heads of Communist regimes, speaking directly to their people, [Cardinal] Casaroli continued his diplomacy, thus denying the Communists the opportunity to charge that the Church had reneged on its commitment to dialogue,” Mr Weigel said.

Mr Weigel said he based his conclusions on previously secret cables and memos that have emerged from behind the former Iron Curtain. He came across the information while researching his latest book on the life of Pope John Paul, The End and the Beginning, which looks at the pope’s final years and evaluates his legacy.

As a point of orientation, he quoted Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz, Pope John Paul’s longtime secretary, who once remarked about the Church’s battle with Poland’s Communist regime: “You must understand that it was always ‘them’ and ‘us’.” What he meant, Mr Weigel said, was that “the struggle between Communism and Catholicism could not be understood as a matter of episodic confrontations… It was all war, all the time.”

Certainly that was how Communist leaders from Moscow to Budapest saw it, Mr Weigel said. He catalogued efforts by Communist regimes to place spies in local Catholic hierarchies and the Vatican, to exploit the Church’s moves toward openness and dialogue, to create ecumenical confusion and to compromise Church leaders by planting false stories.

In 1983, Mr Weigel recounted, the Polish security police even decided to blackmail Pope John Paul. The instrument chosen was a fake diary said to have been written by a deceased female employee of the Archdiocese of Krakow, in which the diarist reported she had been the future pope’s lover. The plot fell apart when one of the conspirators, after successfully planting the diary in the home of a Krakow priest, got drunk, crashed his car and blabbed to police about what he’d just done.

Although the story has a Keystone Kops flavour, Mr Weigel noted that the same security police operative would surface a year and a half later – as one of the men who beat Solidarity activist Fr Jerzy Popieluszko to death and dumped his body in the Vistula River.

Mr Weigel said Soviet bloc intelligence services tried to manipulate the debates of the Second Vatican Council for political ends, a process that continued as the “Ostpolitik” policy of the Vatican developed and prevailed. He said the Hungarian regime used the Vatican’s diplomatic opening to take control of the Catholic Church in the country; most bishops nominated after 1964 were co-operators with internal security and foreign intelligence services, he said.

At the Pontifical Hungarian Institute in Rome, all the rectors and half the students in the late 1960s were trained agents of Hungarian secret intelligence, he said.

Mr Weigel said Communist moles were placed successfully at Vatican Radio, at the Vatican newspaper and in pontifical universities. When Pope John Paul II was elected, he took some counter-intelligence steps; for one thing, materials dealing with Poland were no longer archived in the Secretariat of State but were kept in the papal apartment “where there was no chance for mischief-makers to prowl around”, Mr Weigel said.

When Pope John Paul met leaders such as Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko, the pope decided not to keep a written record of their conversations, so that the notes would not fall into the wrong hands. Instead, Mr Weigel said, the pope and then-Mgr Dziwisz would discuss the encounters, and the secretary kept notes in diaries that remained under his control.

Mr Weigel said he thinks some lessons can be drawn by the Church’s experience with European Communism, as it looks to present challenges in the world’s remaining Communist states and in Islamic states. For one thing, he said, Vatican efforts to reach beneficial compromises with communist powers “rarely, if ever, paid significant dividends”.

He said a much more valuable witness was provided by church leaders who spoke courageously against the regimes, sometimes paying with their lives.

“Deeply committed and politically shrewd Christian pastors and laity eventually won out over communism. The blood of martyrs, however, was the seed of victory. Their sacrifice, and what we can learn from it about the cardinal virtue of fortitude – courage – must never be forgotten,” he said.

Church Power Struggle Continues in Japan

This article comes from the National Catholic Reporter.
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Bishop: Vatican-approved group has caused 'problems', 'chaos'
  
Japanese bishop's statement on Neocatechumenal Way comes after Vatican meeting

The president of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Japan (CBCJ) has called for the cooperation of priests and laypeople to confront “problems” with the Neocatechumenal Way, which he says has had a negative effect in the country.

“In those places touched by the Neocatechumenal Way, there has been rampant confusion, conflict, division, and chaos,” the Jesuit Archbishop of Osaka, Leo Jun Ikenaga, said in a statement published in Katorikku Shimbun, the Catholic Weekly of Japan, yesterday.

“In Japan, the net effect has been negative,” said Ikenaga in his statement. “We bishops, in light of our apostolic pastoral responsibility, could not ignore the damage.”

Pope Benedict XVI refused a request from four Japanese bishops, including Ikenaga, in Rome Dec. 13 to suspend the international organization’s activities in Japan for five years.

The Neocatechumenal Way is dedicated to the Christian formation of adults. It was given definitive approval by the Vatican in 2008 and has an estimated 1 million members worldwide, in around 40,000 small, parish-based communities.

A few weeks before the Rome meeting, the Japanese episcopal conference announced that it would suspend the activities of the movement in Japan.

Ikenaga’s statement suggests that the bishops are unwilling to let the matter rest there.

“Until now, the CBCJ has engaged with both the Holy See and the Neocatechumenal Way. But now the time has come to gain the participation of the laypeople of Japan,” he wrote in the statement dated Dec. 20.

Ikenaga said that the pope plans to send an envoy to Japan soon.

He said that the bishops hope that those who have come into personal contact with the actions of the Neocatechumenal Way will relate their experiences to the pope’s envoy.

“The fact is, it’s very difficult for the real state of affairs to be conveyed to a place as far away as Rome,” he wrote.

“We hope that they [the Neocatechumenal Way] will take a hard look at why things haven’t worked out here so far and, for the first time, help us root out the cause of the problems, so that we can find the path to a solution.”

The meeting in Rome was attended by the pope, the Vatican’s Secretary of State Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, five other cardinals and one archbishop.

The Japanese delegation included Bishops Osamu Mizobe of Takamatsu, Ryoji Miyahara of Fukuoka, and Isao Kikuchi of Niigata. The 86 year-old Bishop Takaaki Hirayama, who is retired in Rome, also attended.

The Neocatechumenal Way set up in Japan around 1970 in the Diocese of Hiroshima. In 1990, an affiliated Redemptoris Mater seminary was built in the Takamatsu diocese, which has the smallest number of resident Catholics of any Japanese diocese -- only 5,000 are registered there.

A "Fundamental Moral Consensus"?

The Pope had many things to say in his speech to the Roman Curia today.  The following is my brief analysis. 

Benedict began by citing a Latin prayer drawn from the Advent liturgy (translated as "Stir up your power, O Lord, and come").  He suggested that this prayer may have originated during the last days of the Roman Empire, when distressed Catholics looked out over the cultural darkness engulfing their world.  

The Pope explained that he has been repeating this prayer often throughout the past year, especially after the shocking revelations that arose in the sex abuse scandal.  He admitted that the Church is "stained with dust" and that her "garment is torn."  Using a mystical allusion to a vision of St. Hildegard, Benedict seemed to confess before the entire world that the Catholic Church had been found soiled and sinful.

Yet immediately afterward Benedict provided a way out.  "The real culprit," he seemed to say, "is this secular world."  While Catholics had faced an onslaught of darkness during the decline of the Roman Empire, this darkness was not due to any fault of the Church.  "The disintegration of the key principles of law and of the fundamental moral attitudes underpinning them burst open the dams which until that time had protected peaceful coexistence among peoples. The sun was setting over an entire world...There was no power in sight that could put a stop to this decline."   

Similarly, the darkness present in the Catholic Church today is not really attributable to the Church's own inherent corruption.  "We [cannot] remain silent regarding the context of these times in which these events have come to light," Benedict said.  Therefore, it is the context of world culture, he inferred, and not the Church itself that needs to be fixed.r "For all its new hopes and possibilities, our world['s] moral consensus is collapsing, consensus without which juridical and political structures cannot function...[and] the forces mobilized for the defence of such structures seem doomed to failure."   

And what is that context that gives rise to all our problems?  The secular and national world order, of course.

And what is the alternative?  

Quoting Alexis de Tocqueville, the Pope provided the answer: worldwide "fundamental moral consensus."   His vision is unclear, but it seems obvious that we are talking about a global system based on religious, cultural, and social unification.

And what would the consensus be based on?  

You guessed it -- the "Christian [i.e,. Catholic] heritage" available exclusively from the Roman Catholic Pontiff and his universal kingdom.

Benedict implores his curia to pray for strength so that together they may "order justly the affairs of the world."  Later, he explains the mission of the Vatican in today's world: "To resist this eclipse of reason [i.e., the influence of secularism] and to preserve its [reason's] capacity for seeing the essential, for seeing God and man, for seeing what is good and what is true, is the common interest that must unite all people of good will."  Benedict ends by assuring his audience that nothing less than "the very future of the world is at stake."

Some questions need to be asked here: What exactly is Benedict advocating for?  Is his speech simply a spiritual message, or is he trying to encourage the establishment of a revolutionary new global order? 

I leave it to the reader to decide.

This speech comes from the Vatican website.
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ADDRESS OF HIS HOLINESS BENEDICT XVI

ON THE OCCASION OF CHRISTMAS GREETINGS

TO THE ROMAN CURIA

Sala Regia

Monday, 20 December 2010

Dear Cardinals, Brother Bishops and Priests,

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

It gives me great pleasure to be here with you, dear Members of the College of Cardinals and Representatives of the Roman Curia and the Governatorato, for this traditional gathering. I extend a cordial greeting to each one of you, beginning with Cardinal Angelo Sodano, whom I thank for his sentiments of devotion and communion and for the warm good wishes that he expressed to me on behalf of all of you. Prope est jam Dominus, venite, adoremus! As one family let us contemplate the mystery of Emmanuel, God-with-us, as the Cardinal Dean has said. I gladly reciprocate his good wishes and I would like to thank all of you most sincerely, including the Papal Representatives all over the world, for the able and generous contribution that each of you makes to the Vicar of Christ and to the Church.


Excita, Domine, potentiam tuam, et veni. Repeatedly during the season of Advent the Church’s liturgy prays in these or similar words. They are invocations that were probably formulated as the Roman Empire was in decline. The disintegration of the key principles of law and of the fundamental moral attitudes underpinning them burst open the dams which until that time had protected peaceful coexistence among peoples. The sun was setting over an entire world. Frequent natural disasters further increased this sense of insecurity. There was no power in sight that could put a stop to this decline. All the more insistent, then, was the invocation of the power of God: the plea that he might come and protect his people from all these threats.


Excita, Domine, potentiam tuam, et veni. Today too, we have many reasons to associate ourselves with this Advent prayer of the Church. For all its new hopes and possibilities, our world is at the same time troubled by the sense that moral consensus is collapsing, consensus without which juridical and political structures cannot function. Consequently the forces mobilized for the defence of such structures seem doomed to failure.


Excita – the prayer recalls the cry addressed to the Lord who was sleeping in the disciples’ storm-tossed boat as it was close to sinking. When his powerful word had calmed the storm, he rebuked the disciples for their little faith (cf. Mt 8:26 et par.). He wanted to say: it was your faith that was sleeping. He will say the same thing to us. Our faith too is often asleep. Let us ask him, then, to wake us from the sleep of a faith grown tired, and to restore to that faith the power to move mountains – that is, to order justly the affairs of the world.


Excita, Domine, potentiam tuam, et veni: amid the great tribulations to which we have been exposed during the past year, this Advent prayer has frequently been in my mind and on my lips. We had begun the Year for Priests with great joy and, thank God, we were also able to conclude it with great gratitude, despite the fact that it unfolded so differently from the way we had expected. Among us priests and among the lay faithful, especially the young, there was a renewed awareness of what a great gift the Lord has entrusted to us in the priesthood of the Catholic Church. We realized afresh how beautiful it is that human beings are fully authorized to pronounce in God’s name the word of forgiveness, and are thus able to change the world, to change life; we realized how beautiful it is that human beings may utter the words of consecration, through which the Lord draws a part of the world into himself, and so transforms it at one point in its very substance; we realized how beautiful it is to be able, with the Lord’s strength, to be close to people in their joys and sufferings, in the important moments of their lives and in their dark times; how beautiful it is to have as one’s life task not this or that, but simply human life itself – helping people to open themselves to God and to live from God. We were all the more dismayed, then, when in this year of all years and to a degree we could not have imagined, we came to know of abuse of minors committed by priests who twist the sacrament into its antithesis, and under the mantle of the sacred profoundly wound human persons in their childhood, damaging them for a whole lifetime.

In this context, a vision of Saint Hildegard of Bingen came to my mind, a vision which describes in a shocking way what we have lived through this past year. “In the year of our Lord’s incarnation 1170, I had been lying on my sick-bed for a long time when, fully conscious in body and in mind, I had a vision of a woman of such beauty that the human mind is unable to comprehend. She stretched in height from earth to heaven. Her face shone with exceeding brightness and her gaze was fixed on heaven. She was dressed in a dazzling robe of white silk and draped in a cloak, adorned with stones of great price. On her feet she wore shoes of onyx. But her face was stained with dust, her robe was ripped down the right side, her cloak had lost its sheen of beauty and her shoes had been blackened. And she herself, in a voice loud with sorrow, was calling to the heights of heaven, saying, ‘Hear, heaven, how my face is sullied; mourn, earth, that my robe is torn; tremble, abyss, because my shoes are blackened!’


And she continued: ‘I lay hidden in the heart of the Father until the Son of Man, who was conceived and born in virginity, poured out his blood. With that same blood as his dowry, he made me his betrothed.


For my Bridegroom’s wounds remain fresh and open as long as the wounds of men’s sins continue to gape. And Christ’s wounds remain open because of the sins of priests. They tear my robe, since they are violators of the Law, the Gospel and their own priesthood; they darken my cloak by neglecting, in every way, the precepts which they are meant to uphold; my shoes too are blackened, since priests do not keep to the straight paths of justice, which are hard and rugged, or set good examples to those beneath them. Nevertheless, in some of them I find the splendour of truth.’


And I heard a voice from heaven which said: ‘This image represents the Church. For this reason, O you who see all this and who listen to the word of lament, proclaim it to the priests who are destined to offer guidance and instruction to God’s people and to whom, as to the apostles, it was said: go into all the world and preach the Gospel to the whole creation’ (Mk 16:15)” (Letter to Werner von Kirchheim and his Priestly Community: PL 197, 269ff.).


In the vision of Saint Hildegard, the face of the Church is stained with dust, and this is how we have seen it. Her garment is torn – by the sins of priests. The way she saw and expressed it is the way we have experienced it this year. We must accept this humiliation as an exhortation to truth and a call to renewal. Only the truth saves. We must ask ourselves what we can do to repair as much as possible the injustice that has occurred. We must ask ourselves what was wrong in our proclamation, in our whole way of living the Christian life, to allow such a thing to happen. We must discover a new resoluteness in faith and in doing good. We must be capable of doing penance. We must be determined to make every possible effort in priestly formation to prevent anything of the kind from happening again. This is also the moment to offer heartfelt thanks to all those who work to help victims and to restore their trust in the Church, their capacity to believe her message. In my meetings with victims of this sin, I have also always found people who, with great dedication, stand alongside those who suffer and have been damaged. This is also the occasion to thank the many good priests who act as channels of the Lord’s goodness in humility and fidelity and, amid the devastations, bear witness to the unforfeited beauty of the priesthood.

We are well aware of the particular gravity of this sin committed by priests and of our corresponding responsibility. But neither can we remain silent regarding the context of these times in which these events have come to light. There is a market in child pornography that seems in some way to be considered more and more normal by society. The psychological destruction of children, in which human persons are reduced to articles of merchandise, is a terrifying sign of the times. From Bishops of developing countries I hear again and again how sexual tourism threatens an entire generation and damages its freedom and its human dignity. The Book of Revelation includes among the great sins of Babylon – the symbol of the world’s great irreligious cities – the fact that it trades with bodies and souls and treats them as commodities (cf. Rev 18:13). In this context, the problem of drugs also rears its head, and with increasing force extends its octopus tentacles around the entire world – an eloquent expression of the tyranny of mammon which perverts mankind. No pleasure is ever enough, and the excess of deceiving intoxication becomes a violence that tears whole regions apart – and all this in the name of a fatal misunderstanding of freedom which actually undermines man’s freedom and ultimately destroys it.


In order to resist these forces, we must turn our attention to their ideological foundations. In the 1970s, paedophilia was theorized as something fully in conformity with man and even with children. This, however, was part of a fundamental perversion of the concept of ethos. It was maintained – even within the realm of Catholic theology – that there is no such thing as evil in itself or good in itself. There is only a “better than” and a “worse than”. Nothing is good or bad in itself. Everything depends on the circumstances and on the end in view. Anything can be good or also bad, depending upon purposes and circumstances. Morality is replaced by a calculus of consequences, and in the process it ceases to exist. The effects of such theories are evident today. Against them, Pope John Paul II, in his 1993 Encyclical Letter Veritatis Splendor, indicated with prophetic force in the great rational tradition of Christian ethos the essential and permanent foundations of moral action. Today, attention must be focused anew on this text as a path in the formation of conscience. It is our responsibility to make these criteria audible and intelligible once more for people today as paths of true humanity, in the context of our paramount concern for mankind.


As my second point, I should like to say a word about the Synod of the Churches of the Middle East. This began with my journey to Cyprus, where I was able to consign the Instrumentum Laboris of the Synod to the Bishops of those countries who were assembled there. The hospitality of the Orthodox Church was unforgettable, and we experienced it with great gratitude. Even if full communion is not yet granted to us, we have nevertheless established with joy that the basic form of the ancient Church unites us profoundly with one another: the sacramental office of Bishops as the bearer of apostolic tradition, the reading of Scripture according to the hermeneutic of the Regula fidei, the understanding of Scripture in its manifold unity centred on Christ, developed under divine inspiration, and finally, our faith in the central place of the Eucharist in the Church’s life. Thus we experienced a living encounter with the riches of the rites of the ancient Church that are also found within the Catholic Church. We celebrated the liturgy with Maronites and with Melchites, we celebrated in the Latin rite, we experienced moments of ecumenical prayer with the Orthodox, and we witnessed impressive manifestations of the rich Christian culture of the Christian East. But we also saw the problem of the divided country. The wrongs and the deep wounds of the past were all too evident, but so too was the desire for the peace and communion that had existed before. Everyone knows that violence does not bring progress – indeed, it gave rise to the present situation. Only in a spirit of compromise and mutual understanding can unity be re-established. To prepare the people for this attitude of peace is an essential task of pastoral ministry.


During the Synod itself, our gaze was extended over the whole of the Middle East, where the followers of different religions – as well as a variety of traditions and distinct rites – live together. As far as Christians are concerned, there are Pre-Chalcedonian as well as Chalcedonian churches; there are churches in communion with Rome and others that are outside that communion; in both cases, multiple rites exist alongside one another. In the turmoil of recent years, the tradition of peaceful coexistence has been shattered and tensions and divisions have grown, with the result that we witness with increasing alarm acts of violence in which there is no longer any respect for what the other holds sacred, in which on the contrary the most elementary rules of humanity collapse. In the present situation, Christians are the most oppressed and tormented minority. For centuries they lived peacefully together with their Jewish and Muslim neighbours. During the Synod we listened to wise words from the Counsellor of the Mufti of the Republic of Lebanon against acts of violence targeting Christians. He said: when Christians are wounded, we ourselves are wounded. Unfortunately, though, this and similar voices of reason, for which we are profoundly grateful, are too weak. Here too we come up against an unholy alliance between greed for profit and ideological blindness. On the basis of the spirit of faith and its rationality, the Synod developed a grand concept of dialogue, forgiveness and mutual acceptance, a concept that we now want to proclaim to the world. The human being is one, and humanity is one. Whatever damage is done to another in any one place, ends up by damaging everyone. Thus the words and ideas of the Synod must be a clarion call, addressed to all people with political or religious responsibility, to put a stop to Christianophobia; to rise up in defence of refugees and all who are suffering, and to revitalize the spirit of reconciliation. In the final analysis, healing can only come from deep faith in God’s reconciling love. Strengthening this faith, nourishing it and causing it to shine forth is the Church’s principal task at this hour.


I would willingly speak in some detail of my unforgettable journey to the United Kingdom, but I will limit myself to two points that are connected with the theme of the responsibility of Christians at this time and with the Church’s task to proclaim the Gospel. My thoughts go first of all to the encounter with the world of culture in Westminster Hall, an encounter in which awareness of shared responsibility at this moment in history created great attention which, in the final analysis, was directed to the question of truth and faith itself. It was evident to all that the Church has to make her own contribution to this debate. Alexis de Tocqueville, in his day, observed that democracy in America had become possible and had worked because there existed a fundamental moral consensus which, transcending individual denominations, united everyone. Only if there is such a consensus on the essentials can constitutions and law function. This fundamental consensus derived from the Christian heritage is at risk wherever its place, the place of moral reasoning, is taken by the purely instrumental rationality of which I spoke earlier. In reality, this makes reason blind to what is essential. To resist this eclipse of reason and to preserve its capacity for seeing the essential, for seeing God and man, for seeing what is good and what is true, is the common interest that must unite all people of good will. The very future of the world is at stake.


Finally I should like to recall once more the beatification of Cardinal John Henry Newman. Why was he beatified? What does he have to say to us? Many responses could be given to these questions, which were explored in the context of the beatification. I would like to highlight just two aspects which belong together and which, in the final analysis, express the same thing. The first is that we must learn from Newman’s three conversions, because they were steps along a spiritual path that concerns us all. Here I would like to emphasize just the first conversion: to faith in the living God. Until that moment, Newman thought like the average men of his time and indeed like the average men of today, who do not simply exclude the existence of God, but consider it as something uncertain, something with no essential role to play in their lives. What appeared genuinely real to him, as to the men of his and our day, is the empirical, matter that can be grasped. This is the “reality” according to which one finds one’s bearings. The “real” is what can be grasped, it is the things that can be calculated and taken in one’s hand. In his conversion, Newman recognized that it is exactly the other way round: that God and the soul, man’s spiritual identity, constitute what is genuinely real, what counts. These are much more real than objects that can be grasped. This conversion was a Copernican revolution. What had previously seemed unreal and secondary was now revealed to be the genuinely decisive element. Where such a conversion takes place, it is not just a person’s theory that changes: the fundamental shape of life changes. We are all in constant need of such conversion: then we are on the right path.

The driving force that impelled Newman along the path of conversion was conscience. But what does this mean? In modern thinking, the word “conscience” signifies that for moral and religious questions, it is the subjective dimension, the individual, that constitutes the final authority for decision. The world is divided into the realms of the objective and the subjective. To the objective realm belong things that can be calculated and verified by experiment. Religion and morals fall outside the scope of these methods and are therefore considered to lie within the subjective realm. Here, it is said, there are in the final analysis no objective criteria. The ultimate instance that can decide here is therefore the subject alone, and precisely this is what the word “conscience” expresses: in this realm only the individual, with his intuitions and experiences, can decide. Newman’s understanding of conscience is diametrically opposed to this. For him, “conscience” means man’s capacity for truth: the capacity to recognize precisely in the decision-making areas of his life – religion and morals – a truth, the truth. At the same time, conscience – man’s capacity to recognize truth – thereby imposes on him the obligation to set out along the path towards truth, to seek it and to submit to it wherever he finds it. Conscience is both capacity for truth and obedience to the truth which manifests itself to anyone who seeks it with an open heart. The path of Newman’s conversions is a path of conscience – not a path of self-asserting subjectivity but, on the contrary, a path of obedience to the truth that was gradually opening up to him. His third conversion, to Catholicism, required him to give up almost everything that was dear and precious to him: possessions, profession, academic rank, family ties and many friends. The sacrifice demanded of him by obedience to the truth, by his conscience, went further still. Newman had always been aware of having a mission for England. But in the Catholic theology of his time, his voice could hardly make itself heard. It was too foreign in the context of the prevailing form of theological thought and devotion. In January 1863 he wrote in his diary these distressing words: “As a Protestant, I felt my religion dreary, but not my life - but, as a Catholic, my life dreary, not my religion”. He had not yet arrived at the hour when he would be an influential figure. In the humility and darkness of obedience, he had to wait until his message was taken up and understood. In support of the claim that Newman’s concept of conscience matched the modern subjective understanding, people often quote a letter in which he said – should he have to propose a toast – that he would drink first to conscience and then to the Pope. But in this statement, “conscience” does not signify the ultimately binding quality of subjective intuition. It is an expression of the accessibility and the binding force of truth: on this its primacy is based. The second toast can be dedicated to the Pope because it is his task to demand obedience to the truth.

I must refrain from speaking of my remarkable journeys to Malta, Portugal and Spain. In these it once again became evident that the faith is not a thing of the past, but an encounter with the God who lives and acts now. He challenges us and he opposes our indolence, but precisely in this way he opens the path towards true joy.
Excita, Domine, potentiam tuam, et veni. We set out from this plea for the presence of God’s power in our time and from the experience of his apparent absence. If we keep our eyes open as we look back over the year that is coming to an end, we can see clearly that God’s power and goodness are also present today in many different ways. So we all have reason to thank him. Along with thanks to the Lord I renew my thanks to all my co-workers. May God grant to all of us a holy Christmas and may he accompany us with his blessings in the coming year.



I entrust these prayerful sentiments to the intercession of the Holy Virgin, Mother of the Redeemer, and I impart to all of you and to the great family of the Roman Curia a heartfelt Apostolic Blessing. Happy Christmas!



© Copyright 2010 - Libreria Editrice Vaticana

Irish Investigators: Vatican Protected Rapist

This article comes from the Irish Times.
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Scale of Walsh cover-up by church breathtaking

Mary Raftery


THE SCALE of the cover-up by the Catholic Church of the crimes of Fr Tony Walsh, as finally revealed in chapter 19 of the Murphy report, is breathtaking. It is more extensive than any other single case dealt with in the main body of the report.

Archbishops, bishops, chancellors, vicars general, parish priests – the list of senior clerics who knew of Walsh’s serial sexual abuse of children is virtually endless. From the very first complaints brought to the archdiocese, a bare two days after Walsh’s ordination in 1978, and for the succeeding 17 years, these pillars of the church sat on their detailed knowledge of Walsh’s abominable predations on children, shielding him from the law, deliberately deciding to keep his crimes hidden from the civil authorities. In the course of those 17 years, until the archdiocese finally decided in 1995 to co-operate with Garda investigations, Walsh abused well over 100 children according to the chapter published yesterday. Here we find out that archbishops Dermot Ryan, Kevin McNamara and Desmond Connell all had detailed knowledge of Walsh’s criminal activities.

Chapter 19 is full of references to discussions about Walsh at the monthly meetings of the Dublin bishops – during the years in question, they include auxiliary bishops Donal Murray, Dermot O’Mahony, James Kavanagh and Eamonn Walsh, together with Brendan Comiskey, Laurence Forristal, James Moriarty, Joseph Carroll, Patrick Dunne and Desmond Williams.
Of these, most are retired or deceased. bishops Murray and Moriarty resigned on foot of the publication of the substantive Murphy report last year. In fact, the only one still in office is Bishop Eamonn Walsh.

He and fellow auxiliary Ray Field famously tendered their resignations – with great reluctance – on Christmas Eve 2009. It emerged several months later the Vatican had refused to accept them and the two bishops remain in situ.

Bishop Walsh defended himself last December by claiming that “as far back as 1990, I wasn’t a month in the job as a bishop, and I stood up at a meeting and I said that not alone should the police, who were already informed about an individual, but we should say where he was living and the number of his car, because I felt he was a danger”.

That individual was Tony Walsh and this incident does indeed appear in chapter 19 of the Murphy report, where it is described as “the first time that the possibility of reporting to the gardaí was raised”. The suggestion was shot down by the archdiocese’s leading canon lawyer at the time, Msgr Gerard Sheehy, who described it as “an outrageous suggestion”. Also present at that meeting were archbishop Connell and bishops Kavanagh, O’Mahony and Murray.

Two key points emerge: first, that Bishop Eamonn Walsh (a trained barrister, incidentally) was sufficiently well-aware of the criminal nature of Walsh’s activities to know that he should be reported to the Garda; and second, that Bishop Walsh did not report him, and nor of course did any of his fellow bishops. It consequently shows an extraordinary detachment from reality for Bishop Walsh to have claimed last year that merely suggesting that gardaí be informed of crimes committed in some way excuses or exonerates him from responsibility for his part in the culture of cover-up in the Dublin archdiocese. The only other serving bishop involved in the Walsh case is John McAreavey of Dromore. While still a priest, he was one of the judges who sat on the internal tribunal in 1992 which decided to laicise Walsh.

Neither he nor his fellow judge, the now retired bishop of Killaloe Willie Walsh, saw fit to report to gardaí their knowledge of the crimes of Walsh.

Although Bishop McAreavey is not specifically named or criticised in chapter 19, it will be interesting to see if he can continue to maintain his stony silence on the matter.

And what are we to make of another senior cleric’s matter-of-fact reporting that he “evaded” questions from a garda? This was the chancellor or chief administrator of the archdiocese, Msgr Alex Stenson, recording his conversation with a garda about Walsh in 1991. A parent had contacted the garda, concerned about Walsh but with no hard evidence of a crime committed. Msgr Stenson had heard that the garda was asking around and rang him to find out how much he knew. In the course of the conversation, the garda asked Msgr Stenson if Walsh had a past record. “I evaded that,” recorded Msgr Stenson in his 1991 memo.

The chancellor’s evasion meant that the Garda Síochána remained in the dark about Walsh and his crimes. There is at the very least an argument to be made that this amounts to an obstruction of justice.

After all, who knows better than a cleric that a sin of omission is every bit as serious as one of commission? And lying (by omission) to the police should rank high on anyone’s scale of wrongdoing, even more so where the safety of children is concerned.

The gardaí themselves also stand condemned in chapter 19 for their failure to pursue investigations of Walsh in 1991 and 1992 on foot of concerns expressed by parents about contact between the priest and their children. In their defence, the Murphy report points out that there was no specific evidence of crime brought to their attention at this stage, and further that the archdiocese did not share any of its extensive information on Walsh.

Nonetheless, it is profoundly disturbing to read, for instance, that Msgr Stenson records in 1991 that a garda “assured me that there was ‘no question of prosecution’ ”. This same garda gave evidence at the internal church tribunal hearings on the laicisation of Walsh, and had dealings with the then Fr Willie Walsh (later of course bishop of Killaloe), when he arrived at Whitehall Garda station “stating that he had been appointed to carry out an internal investigation into the paedophile activities of Fr [Walsh]”.

It is clear that the Garda should now extend its own internal inquiries to include the Walsh case among the others unearthed by the Murphy commission where Garda investigations into clerical child abuse were inadequate. The results of these inquiries should be published in full.

It is vital for public confidence in the force that its past failures in this area be thoroughly exposed, and that rigorous procedures be in place to detect and guard against shielding either institutions or individuals from the full force of the law.

Vatican Security Sought US Training for Terrorist Threats

This article comes from the Catholic News Agency.
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Al-Qaida hatred for Pope caused US worries about Vatican security

Rome, Italy, Dec 14, 2010 / 04:55 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Speaking frankly about “the known al-Qaida antipathy to the Pope,” American embassy officials in 2008 asked the U.S. State Department to consider an effort to help Vatican security forces deal with terrorist threats.

The WikiLeaks website recently published a Dec. 19, 2008 State Department cable reputedly from the U.S. Embassy in Rome. The cable, classified as “secret,” documented a request from the U.S. Vatican Embassy to plan and fund a “crisis management tabletop exercise” with Vatican security services.

The stated purpose of this effort was to enhance the Vatican’s crisis response abilities and to “foster a dialogue with the Vatican on counter-terrorism.”

“Al-Qaida has publicly identified the Pope and the Catholic Church as an enemy (‘Crusaders’), and Vatican City attracts hundreds of thousands of American citizen visitors each year, both tourists and pilgrims,” the cable continued.

According to the cable, the head of the Vatican Gendarme Corps Domenico Giani had sought specific security training from the FBI, including explosives ordinance training for Vatican Gendarmerie members at the Quantico Marine Corps base in Virginia. However, the cable reported, Giani has been “reluctant to engage in a comprehensive dialogue with the United States about Vatican capabilities and preparedness to respond to a terrorist attack.”

While the famous Swiss Guard provides security for the Pope and visiting dignitaries, the Gendarme Corps is responsible for general security and law enforcement at the Vatican.

During a November 2008 conversation about al-Qaida’s threat to the Vatican, U.S. Vatican Embassy official Julieta Valls Noyes proposed to Giani a joint tabletop exercise on crisis management, to which he reportedly responded “positively.”

The Rome Embassy cable noted the Holy See’s sensitivity about appearing to be too close to any one state, which the embassy described as a challenge to fostering dialogue about security. Another challenge was “the Vatican’s conviction that its facilities must be easily accessible to all Catholics.”

According to the cable’s analysis, Giani’s interest in a crisis management exercise was an opportunity to better position the U.S. to help the Vatican prepare to respond to terrorist threats.
The cable appears to be WikiLeaks’ first release of a Vatican-related document that did not originate with the U.S. Embassy to the Holy See. The cable’s authorship is attributed to U.S. Ambassador to Italy Ronald Spogli.

More than 700 WikiLeaks cables originate at the U.S. Vatican Embassy, while about 100 others originate at other American embassies and consulates.

In a Dec. 3 response to CNA inquiries, the U.S. Vatican Embassy said it could not address the authenticity of any documents provided to the press. The embassy also condemned “in the strongest terms” the unauthorized disclosure of classified information.

For their part, Vatican officials have also advised “great prudence” in examining the WikiLeaks cables. Vatican spokesman Fr. Federico Lombardi said the reports reflect “the perceptions and opinions of those who wrote them” and cannot be considered as expressions of the Holy See or as exact quotations of its officials.

Vatican Bank Let Clergy Act as Front for Mafia

This article comes from The Independent.

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Vatican Bank 'allowed clergy to act as front for Mafia'

Victor Simpson

The Vatican Bank is under new scrutiny in a case involving money-laundering allegations that led police to seize €23m (£19.25m) in September.

The Vatican calls the seizure of assets a "misunderstanding" and expresses optimism it will be quickly cleared up. But fresh court documents show that prosecutors say the Vatican Bank deliberately flouted anti-laundering laws "with the aim of hiding the ownership, destination and origin of the capital". The documents also reveal investigators' suspicions that clergy may have acted as fronts for corrupt businessmen and Mafia.

The documents pinpoint two transactions that have not been reported: one in 2009 involving the use of a false name, and another in 2010 in which the Vatican Bank withdrew €650,000 from an Italian bank account but ignored bank requests to disclose where the money was headed.

The new allegations of financial impropriety could not come at a worse time for the Vatican, already hit by revelations that it sheltered paedophile priests. The corruption probe has given new hope to Holocaust survivors who tried unsuccessfully to sue in the United States, alleging that Nazi loot was stored in the Vatican Bank.

Yet the scandal is hardly the first for the bank, already distinguished from other banks by the fact that its cash machines are in Latin and priests use a private entrance.

In 1986, a Vatican financial adviser died after drinking cyanide-laced coffee in prison. Another, Roberto Calvi, was found dangling from a rope under London's Blackfriars Bridge in 1982, his pockets stuffed with money and stones. The incidents blackened the bank's reputation, raised suspicions of ties with the Mafia, and cost the Vatican hundreds of millions of dollars in legal clashes with Italian authorities.

On 21 September, financial police seized assets from a Vatican Bank account. Investigators said the Vatican had failed to furnish information on the origin or destination of the funds as required by Italian law.

The bulk of the money, €20 million, was destined for the American JP Morgan bank branch in Frankfurt, Germany, with the remainder going to Banca del Fucino, an Italian bank.

Prosecutors alleged the Vatican ignored regulations that foreign banks must communicate to Italian financial authorities where their money has come from. All banks have declined to comment.

Analyst Dissects Vatican WikiLeaks Fallout

This article comes from the National Catholic Reporter.

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Sex abuse crisis, Vatican PR woes figure in WikiLeaks scoops

By John L. Allen, Jr.

Secret diplomatic cables revealed this morning as part of the WikiLeaks releases confirm that while the Vatican was appalled by revelations of clerical sexual abuse in Ireland in 2009 and 2010, it was also offended by demands that the papal ambassador participate in a government-sponsored probe, seeing it as an insult to the Vatican’s sovereign immunity under international law.

 

That stance, according to the cable, came off in Ireland as “pettily procedural” while failing to confront the reality of clerical abuse, and thereby made the crisis worse.

The cables also contain critical diplomatic assessments of Pope Benedict XVI’s recent decision to create new structures to welcome disgruntled Anglicans, as well as the perceived technological illiteracy and communications ineptitude of some senior Vatican officials.

PR woes in the Vatican, according to one cable, have lowered the volume on the pope’s “moral megaphone.”

Newly disclosed cables also indicate that:

• The Vatican has expressed desire to resist the influence of Venezuelan Socialist strongman Hugo Chavez across Latin America;

• It agreed to quietly encourage countries to support the Copenhagen accord on climate change, even though the Holy See does not officially take positions on draft agreements;

• It hoped that Poland would act as a bulwark against radical secularism within the European Union, especially by “holding the line” on life and family issues;

• Then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger opposed Turkey’s entry into the European Union, but as pope, Benedict XVI has taken an official neutral stance, while continuing to emphasize the importance of Europe’s Christian roots.

While the cables unveiled this morning don’t really contain any surprises about the Vatican itself, they do lift the veil on how American diplomats and their colleagues have viewed various moves by Rome in recent years.

The revelations come mostly in cables from the U.S. Embassy to the Holy See back to the State Department in Washington, often expressing information gleaned from conversations either with church sources or with other diplomats in Rome.

The cables were unveiled in the Dec. 11 issue of the U.K.-based Guardian newspaper.

One 2009 cable, titled “Sex abuse scandal strains Irish-Vatican relations, shakes up Irish church, and poses challenges for the Holy See,” reports on a conversation between Julieta Valls Noyes, the number two official at the U.S. embassy to the Vatican, and her counterparts in the Irish embassy to the Holy See.

Noyes writes that while the Vatican’s first concern was for the victims of abuse, it also felt that requests for its ambassador in Ireland to cooperate with the “Murphy Commission” probe threatened its sovereignty under international law.

The cable reports that the Vatican’s Secretary of State, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, ultimately wrote to the Irish Embassy to the Holy See to insist that any requests for information should come through proper diplomatic channels.

That stance, Noyes wrote, produced backlash in Ireland: “Much of the Irish public views the Vatican protests as pettily procedural and failing to confront the real issue of horrific abuse and cover-up by Church officials,” she wrote.

As the Irish situation developed in late 2009 and early 2010, Noyes went on to say, “the normally cautious Vatican moved with uncharacteristic speed to address the internal church crisis,” pointing to a meeting between Pope Benedict and Irish bishops in February 2010, but she also says that contacts both in Ireland and the Vatican expect the crisis “to be protracted over several years.”

In another 2009 cable, Noyes describes a conversation with Francis Campbell, the ambassador of the United Kingdom to the Holy See, about the pope’s decision to create new structures, called “personal ordinariates,” to welcome traditionalist Anglicans upset with liberalizing moves such as the ordination of women and openly gay bishops, and the blessing of same-sex unions.

The move put the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, in an “impossible situation,” according to Campbell, and potentially constituted “the worst crisis in 150 years” in Anglican-Catholic relations.

According to Noyes’ description of the conversation, Campbell warned that the move could unleash latent anti-Catholicism in the United Kingdom, and even provoke acts of violence in isolated cases.

The cable from the U.S. diplomats expressed doubt about “whether the damage to inter-Christian relations was worth it,” especially, it said, “since the number of disaffected Anglicans that will convert is likely to be a trickle rather than a wave.”

Another cable from January 2009 from Noyes, written in the wake of a global controversy provoked by Pope Benedict’s decision to lift the excommunications of four traditionalist Catholic bishops, including one who is a Holocaust denier, said the case revealed a serious “communications gap” in the Vatican.

That gap, according to the cable, leads to “muddled, reactive messaging that reduces the volume of the moral megaphone the Vatican uses to advance its objectives.”

The Vatican spokesperson, Jesuit Fr. Federico Lombardi, is the only senior papal aide to use a Blackberry, according to the cable, and most senior Vatican officials don’t even use e-mail accounts.

Because senior Vatican officials typically do not understand the nature of modern communications, the cable asserted, they often speak in “coded” language impossible for the outside world to decipher. Noyes cited an example from the Israeli ambassador to the Holy See, who said he had been given a letter from the Vatican which supposedly contained a positive message for his country, but it was “so veiled he missed it, even when told it was there.”

Part of the communications problem, the cable asserted, is structural: Lombardi is not part of the pope’s inner circle, so he “is the deliverer, rather than a shaper, of the message,” and he is “terribly overworked.”

In the wider Catholic world, the cable added, there are communications success stories – pointing in particular to the way the Catholic group Opus Dei responded to the frenzy created by the novel and movie “The Da Vinci Code.”

In general, the cable reported there's ferment in the Vatican about the need for better communications strategies, but little concrete sense of what to do about it.

“Our Vatican contacts seem to be talking about nothing but the need for better internal coordination on decisions and planned public messages,” it said. “But if or when change will come remains an open question.”

For the moment, it doesn't seem that today's disclosures are likely to create a diplomatic crisis, especially given that the Vatican announced preemptively that it did not want the WikiLeaks revelations to disrupt U.S./Vatican ties.

For one thing, Vatican officials realize that at least some of the critical assessments expressed in the leaked cables, especially on the PR front, are widely shared inside the Vatican itself. In addition, the Obama White House has tried to send reassuring signals to Rome, including the recent appointment of a presidential delegation to attend the Nov. 20 consistory for the creation of 24 new cardinals. It was the first time a U.S. president sent an official delegation to a consistory, and it was seen in the Vatican as a diplomatic way of expressing respect.

At mid-morning, Lombardi, the Vatican spokesperson, released a statement in both Italian and English on the WikiLeaks disclosures.

"Without venturing to evaluate the extreme seriousness of publishing such a large amount of secret and confidential material, and its possible consequences" the statement read, "the Holy See Press Office observes that part of the documents published recently by Wikileaks concerns reports sent to the U.S. State Department by the U.S. Embassy to the Holy See."

"Naturally these reports reflect the perceptions and opinions of the people who wrote them," the statement said, "and cannot be considered as expressions of the Holy See itself, nor as exact quotations of the words of its officials. Their reliability must, then, be evaluated carefully and with great prudence, bearing this circumstance in mind."

U.S. Ambassador to the Holy See Miguel Diaz likewise issued a statement, condemning the leaks "in the strongest possible terms" while declining to comment on their authenticity.

The United States and the Holy See are working together on multiple fronts, Diaz said, from fixing the global economy to human rights, climate change and interfaith dialogue, and those partnerships "will withstand this challenge."

Vatican Does Damage Control After WikiLeaks Revelations

This article comes from Zenit.

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Vatican Urges Prudence to WikiLeaks Readers

Says Documents Don't Reflect Holy See Views

VATICAN CITY, DEC. 12, 2010 (Zenit.org).- In response to the Wikileaks publication of several confidential and secret communications of the U.S. State Department, the Vatican is urging prudence in the evaluation of these documents. 

The Wikileaks Web site obtained 251,287 confidential cables containing communications between 274 U.S. embassies throughout the world and the State Department over the years 1966-2010.

The site began publishing these documents on Nov. 28 and plans to post the rest over the next few months; some 1,340 have already been publicized, including at least 16 that are on topics related to the Vatican.

The Vatican press office released a statement Saturday, noting, "Without venturing to evaluate the extreme seriousness of publishing such a large amount of secret and confidential material, and its possible consequences, the Holy See Press Office observes that part of the documents published recently by Wikileaks concerns reports sent to the U.S. State Department by the U.S. Embassy to the Holy See."

It continued, "Naturally these reports reflect the perceptions and opinions of the people who wrote them and cannot be considered as expressions of the Holy See itself, nor as exact quotations of the words of its officials."

The statement concluded, "Their reliability must, then, be evaluated carefully and with great prudence, bearing this circumstance in mind."

The U.S. Embassy to the Holy See released a statement condemning the leak of confidential information in the "strongest terms."

WikiLeaks Docs Reveal American Surprise at Benedict XVI's Election

This article comes from the Catholic Herald.

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Pope's election took US diplomats by surprise

By Anna Arco

Pope Benedict’s election to the papacy took American diplomats by surprise, it emerged this week.

They predicted that Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger would get a flurry of votes from his fellow cardinals at the beginning of the conclave but that he would be unable to muster the support needed to become Pope.

An April 19 2005 telegram from Rome to Washington signed by Bernt Hardt, says diplomats were “shocked” and “speechless” about the election of Cardinal Ratzinger

According to sensitive State Department documents obtained by La Stampa, an Italian newspaper, American diplomats at the US Embassy to the Holy See listed sixteen papabile, or candidates for the papacy on April 18, 2005, the day the conclave following Pope John Paul II’s death began.

Diplomats had drawn up an earlier document for the then Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice only days after John Paul II died, in which they had outlined the likely characteristics of the Pope’s successor.

The document, which was classified as “sensitive”, described the next Pope as a man who was neither too old nor too young so as to avoid having a funeral and conclave too soon, but also to “avoid a papacy as long as John Paul II’s”. The future Pope, they believed, needed to speak Italian in order to control the Vatican’s bureaucracy but would not necessarily be Italian. They thought the candidate would unlikely be from Eastern Europe post-John Paul II, or America because of its status as the last remaining superpower. The future Pope, they wrote, would need to have pastoral experience in order to show his human side and be a good communicator with new media skills.

The Belgian Cardinal Godfried Danneels was among those considered to be the best candidates by American diplomats. They said Cardinal Danneels “knows how to use a computer” and represents the best compromise between Catholic doctrine and liberalism. 

Cardinal Dionigi Tettamanzi the Archbishop of Milan was also considered a likely choice because of his connection with young people, while Colombian Cardinal Dario Castrillon-Hoyos had “organized video conferences with thousands of priests” was considered “the perfect candidate for those who want a Hispanic who knows the Curia”.

In the dossier, American sources cited Cardinal Ratzinger’s brief stint in forced military service in the “last months of World War II”, saying that he would get votes in early ballots but would not be able to get the support. They predicted he would continue to be a “powerful cardinal” and a “guardian of theological orthodoxy”.

The files were released as part of a quarter of a million leaked United States embassy cables which were made public by the Wikileaks website last week.

Leaked Vatican Cables Give Insight to Vatican-U.S. Relations

This article comes from the Catholic News Service.

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WikiLeaks' Vatican cables involve national security, intelligence and religious freedom issues

Washington D.C., Dec 2, 2010 / 03:43 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- The ongoing Wikileaks “Cablegate” project could result in the release of more than 800 U.S. diplomatic cables involving the Vatican.

According to an exclusive analysis of preliminary data conducted by Catholic News Agency, many of the cables, which span a nine-year period from 2001-2010, concern human rights and religious freedom issues.

However, more than 50 of the cables reputedly originating from the U.S. Embassy to the Holy See concern intelligence issues, and another five involve national security issues.

Other cables deal with the Vatican’s internal government and its relations with other states.

CNA contacted the U.S. Embassy to the Vatican Dec. 2 but calls had not been returned before publication time.

The Vatican has not yet officially reacted to the leaks, but its daily newspaper L’Osservatore Romano stressed that the release of the cables does nothing to change diplomatic relations between the U.S. and the Holy See.

U.S. Army intelligence specialist Bradley Manning, among others, is suspected of leaking the State Department cables.

However, former U.S. National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski has voiced concern that amid the gossip about world leaders, some of the leaks appear to serve particular interests.

“It’s rather a question of whether Wikileaks are being manipulated by interested parties that want to either complicate our relationship with other governments or want to undermine some governments. Because some of these items that are being emphasized are very pointed,” he told PBS News Hour on Nov. 29.

Without doubting that many of the cables came from “relatively unimportant sources,” he wondered whether intelligence services are also feeding information to Wikileaks to exploit a “unique opportunity” to achieve “very specific objectives.”

While the Wikileaks website has published only several hundred cables, the London-based newspaper The Guardian has released the place of origin, date, time, and subject tags of all of the leaked cables, which total over 250,000.

Of the more than 800 Vatican-related cables, tagged “VT,” 715 apparently originated at the U.S. Embassy to the Holy See.

CNA’s study of the cable data found that among the cables from the U.S. Embassy to the Vatican more than 400 concern human rights and 245 involve religious freedom issues. These cables are respectively tagged as “PHUM” and “KIRF.”

More than 20 cables involve refugee issues and 16 are tagged “human trafficking.” Several dozen cables involve biotechnology and dozens others appear to be related to terrorism.

About 62 entries bear the “IZ” tag, signifying Iraq. Several of these cables were sent in the months before and after the U.S. invasion of the country in 2003.

A March 20, 2001 cable from the Vatican Embassy includes the subject tag “PROP.” According to a glossary provided by The Guardian, this abbreviation means “Propaganda and Psychological Operations.”

U.S. State Department cables from other countries are also tagged as Vatican-related. These cables are from embassies and consulates in countries including China, Israel, Iraq, Venezuela and Vietnam. They are frequently tagged as involving religious freedom and human rights topics.

Two such cables from the U.S. Consulate at Ho Chi Minh City were sent on Jan. 31 and Feb. 1, 2008. This was a time of major conflict between Catholics and Vietnam’s communist government over confiscated church lands. Another cable came from the U.S. Embassy in Hanoi in early October, 2007.

Other State Department cables involving the Vatican originated at the U.S. consulate in Hong Kong and the U.S. embassies to Germany, France, Italy, the Philippines, Lebanon and Colombia.

James Ball, a journalist working with the Wikileaks project, on Nov. 29 told the British newspaper The Telegraph that some of the Vatican-related cables would be released “in the next few weeks.”

Pope, Curia Discuss Catholicization of Europe/America

This article comes from Catholic Culture.

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Pope meets with leaders of the Roman Curia

Pope Benedict XVI met on November 12 with the heads of all the major offices of the Roman Curia. Although the Vatican did not announce the purpose of the meeting, informed sources said that the Vatican officials discussed plans for the new Pontifical Council for New Evangelization. 

On October 12, the Pope formally inaugurated the new Pontifical Council, with Archbishop Salvatore (Rino) Fisichella as its president. At that time, Archbishop Fisichella said that concrete plans for the work of the new dicastery were still in a formative stage. 

The creation of the new Pontifical Council, with a broad mandate to promote the faith in Europe and North America, would probably require shifting some lines of responsibility for other offices of the Roman Curia.

Priest Denies Synod's Political Tone

This article comes from the Catholic News Agency.

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Middle East synod participant explains factors behind its controversial conclusion

New York City, N.Y., Oct 31, 2010 / 07:55 am (CNA).- The Synod for the Middle East, a historic gathering of the region's bishops, concluded October 24, amid controversy over alleged bias in its concluding message. One expert on the region told CNA that the document reflected pastoral needs, not a political agenda. 

The bishops' concluding “Message to the People of God” criticized Israel in detail, but omitted most of the criticisms made against Islamic governments during the synod. Some observers took remarks about using religion to “justify injustices” as a blanket rebuke of Israel, a charge participants denied.

Shortly after his return from Rome, synod participant Monsignor Robert Stern, secretary general of the Catholic Near East Welfare Association. He spoke with CNA about some of the considerations that shaped the synod's concluding message. 

“The synod really didn't have a political focus at all,” Msgr. Stern said, recalling that its main purposes were to strengthen bonds between diverse groups of Catholics, and to ensure a continuing Middle Eastern Christian presence and witness. 

As such, he said, the synod's final message did not contain “the same degree of detail about every situation where Christians have difficulties in the Middle East.” Rather, he said, the message reflected “two major concerns” that took priority as “the more compelling matters,” Palestine and Iraq. Migration has greatly diminished both regions' Christian populations in recent years.

In this context, he said, the bishops' choices of emphasis and restraint --which could appear to focus on Israel's treatment of Palestine, while treading lightly with Islamic regimes-- should not be interpreted as political statements, but as expressions of their pastoral priorities, and suggestions toward peace. 

“They did list out several of the issues that are raised by (Muslim and Christian) Palestinians,” the monsignor said, noting that all of the specific criticisms of Israel were ongoing “issues of concern for the Christians who live in Palestine.” The synod fathers, he recalled, “also mentioned being conscious of the suffering and insecurity in which Israelis live” because of violence from some Palestinians.

Monsignor Stern also acknowledged that fear for the safety of Christians in some Muslim countries may have prompted the synod fathers to moderate their comments. This was, he said, a “prudential judgment,” since Christians throughout the region can suffer consequences of their leaders' remarks.

“Most of these bishops come from ... places where they're a very small minority, they're bishops of a very small community, and they feel a lot of social pressure living in an Islamic world,” he observed. “A lot of them are in politically very uncertain circumstances-- where they're at risk, and their people are at risk. So, they don't have quite so open and expansive of a way of talking about the situation.” 

“Just the experience for them to come to Rome, and talk to one another, and experience a kind of free ambiance where anything can be said ... was a very powerful experience for them-- to have solidarity, to be gathered around the Pope, and to be able to reflect.”

He said that the Middle Eastern bishops' “Message to the People of God,” whatever its possible limitations might be, was a historic and crucial statement-- giving guidance to communities whose decisions in the near future could make the difference between their survival or disappearance.

“The whole thrust of it is saying, 'What's our ... situation in the Middle East, and what do we want to say to our people here, or our people abroad? How do we stick together as Catholics? ... How do we deal with our brothers and fellow citizens, the Muslims and Jews?'”