(La Croix International. Dorian Malovic).
In China, 12 million Chinese Catholics remain a prime target of the Communist Party. Six years after the agreement between the Vatican and Beijing, Catholics, both official and underground, feel abandoned as the situation has “deteriorated” under President Xi Jinping.
(La Croix. Robert Mickens, Editor at La Croix International)
It has now been eight years since the pope appointed Christophe Pierre as apostolic nuncio to the United States. It was April 12, 2016 when Francis chose the lifelong Holy See diplomat, then serving as his ambassador to Mexico, to take up the post in Washington. The French archbishop was already 70 years old and most observers surmised that he’d be in the US capital for no more than the five years it would take him to reach the normal retirement age for bishops (even if papal diplomats have the option of stepping down at 70).
Heading the Holy See’s nunciature to the United States has long been seen as a plum post. Though there have been a couple of notable exceptions, the pope’s man in Washington usually returns to the Vatican after several years of service, where he is given another prestigious position and made a cardinal. But in Pierre’s case, the red hat arrived last September when he was still the Holy See’s ambassador to the United States. And to this day, the cardinal-nuncio, already 78 years of age, remains on the job.
(La Croix Internacional. Robert Mickens).
Bishop Thomas Gumbleton was living among, and advocating for, some of the most marginalized people in society and the Church long before Pope Francis made “going to the peripheries” Catholicism’s preeminent leitmotiv. In fact, Jorge Mario Bergoglio (the pope’s Christian name) was not even a priest yet when Gumbleton was ordained to the episcopacy back in 1968. Tom, who would have marked his 56th anniversary as a bishop on May 1st, died on Easter Thursday at the age of 94. At the time of his death, he was the most senior member of the US Catholic hierarchy. Only ten other men in the entire world had been a Catholic bishop longer. Tom was just 38 when Paul VI named him an auxiliary bishop for the Archdiocese of Detroit, making him the youngest member of the US episcopate at the time. And he would remain an “assistant” bishop in his native Michigan city for the rest of his life. That had not been Cardinal John Dearden’s plan when he asked the pope to make Gumbleton his auxiliary. Dearden, who did not get the red hat until April 1969, relied heavily on the young bishop in his efforts to implement the reforms of the recently concluded Second Vatican Council (1962-65).
(La Croix. Justin Stanwix).
“Without liturgical reform, there is no reform of the Church,” Pope Francis said emphatically last February during an address to the plenary assembly of the Dicastery for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments. His remarks came around the 60th anniversary of Sacrosanctum Concilium, the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy that was issued during the Second Vatican Council (1962-65). “‘Go and prepare the Passover for us’ (Lk 22:8): these words of Jesus,'” the pope said in his February address, “express the Lord’s desire to have us around the table of his Body and Blood.”
(Isabelle de Gaulmyn. La Croix International).
The Holy See has issued a formal protest against the civil court of Lorient, France after it convicted French Canadian Cardinal Marc Ouellet, a former top Vatican official, and the Dominican Sisters of the Holy Spirit for unlawfully expelling a nun from their community.
The court also convicted two apostolic visitors representing the Vatican in the case, which centered on Mother Marie Ferréol, the religious community’s former superior who alleged she was unjustly dismissed from her position.
(By Robert Mickens. La Croix International).
It has now been eight years since the pope appointed Christophe Pierre as apostolic nuncio to the United States. It was April 12, 2016 when Francis chose the lifelong Holy See diplomat, then serving as his ambassador to Mexico, to take up the post in Washington. The French archbishop was already 70 years old and most observers surmised that he’d be in the US capital for no more than the five years it would take him to reach the normal retirement age for bishops (even if papal diplomats have the option of stepping down at 70).