The time for the diplomacy of truth came into play when the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue released a strongly worded statement last Aug. 12. For the first time, a Vatican dicastery listed all the horrible acts of the Caliphate, subtly reminding the secular world that it was the secularist [...]
The guidelines for the management of the religious institutes have been outlined in a circular letter signed Aug. 2 by Cardinal Joao Braz de Aviz, Prefect of the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life. The letter did not grab media headlines, since the focus was rightly on [...]
The “nota verbale” (verbal note) sent by the Vatican’s Secretariat of State to all the ambassadors accredited to the Holy See represents Pope Francis’ most recent initiative to promote peace. It is through persuasion, dialogue and prayer that Pope Francis hopes to influence current armed conflicts, to bring them to an end. In [...]
The visit Pope Francis wanted to privately pay to the Evangelical Pastor Giovanni Traettino in Caserta (Southern Italy) is not simply a visit the Pope is paying to a friend. Pope Francis wanted this visit to be private and unique and – as the news of his arrival in Caserta spread – he [...]
That Pope Francis is very attentive to the dialogue with non-believers is clear from his most recent conversation with Eugenio Scalfari, the founder of the Italian leftist newspaper “La Repubblica”. Scalfari, a self-proclaimed atheist, who even wrote a book entitled “Me and God”, on his being a non-believer. The conversation published by [...]
It is rumored that the Peter’s Pence funds increased this year, and this news will certainly relieve Pope Francis. Peter Pence’s will give a breath of support to the Vatican operating funds,which are facing the always higher expenses of an elephantine curial machinery that needs to be streamlined. Not because of a theological-pastoral [...]
Decisions are yet to be announced, and they will be this week. But the amount of gossips, rumors, even the leaks anticipating the data of the balance sheet of the Institute for Religious Works (the so called “Vatican bank”) show that there had been a war behind these decisions. The roots of this war [...]
Communicating the faith. This is the number one priority, as it is outlined in the “Instrumentum Laboris” of the next extraordinary synod on the family. Amid strong points of view, some of which can be discarded at a political level (the ones the secular media have been writing about), the Instrumentum Laboris is [...]
As the establishing of a Secretariat for Communication among the offices of the Roman Curia seems imminent, the closing of a missionary magazine has again led to questions about the very communication of faith to the peripheries of the world, Pope Francis’ favorite theme. While communications are ever more professionalized (a needed [...]
On July 1-4, another meeting of the Council of Cardinals appointed by Pope Francis to counsel him on the Curia reform and on the government of the universal Church will take place. It is an important meeting, since it would reportedly set for the first time the new ‘blueprint’ of the Roma [...]