Letter from Rome What impact it may have on the course of justice in a Vatican tribunal remains to be seen, but one point is becoming steadily clearer about the case of Italian Cardinal Angelo Becciu, who’s been indicted along with nine other defendants for various forms of financial crime and corruption and who’s set…
Letter from Rome Toward the end of this week, rumours made the rounds in the Vatican press corps that Friday would be a venerdi di fuoco, meaning a day of fire. Friday came and went without sparks, so we breathed a sigh of relief. It turned out to be short-lived, however, because Saturday brought a…
Letter from Rome In response to a burgeoning controversy last week over the Vatican’s novel protest of a draft anti-homophobia law in Italy, Italian Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Secretary of State, said June 24 the goal of the move wasn’t to interfere with Italy’s internal politics but rather to head off a potential problem. Instead…
Letter from Rome In a seemingly dramatic decision this week, three-quarters of America’s bishops voted to move ahead with a controversial document on the Eucharist despite objections that it could disrupt Church unity and set the stage for a fatal showdown with US President Joe Biden. The key word in that sentence, however, is “seemingly”,…
Letter from Rome Every kid knows that bringing a report card home to the parents is, to a large extent, a challenge in framing things your way. A disappointing C in English? “Everybody knows Mrs Smith is the toughest grader in school … that’s like an A from anybody else.” A surprising B+ in math?…
Letter from Rome Covering the Catholic Church is a tough gig for reporters, not least because we’re often forced to be killjoys. We’re forever put in the position of raining on a media parade, and such was the case again Friday with the sensational “resignation” of Cardinal Reinhard Marx of Munich. In reality, that was…
Letter from Rome Whenever there’s a vacancy in the papacy, a few old saws about the process of choosing a Pope shoot back into circulation. “He who enters a conclave a Pope, exits a cardinal,” is a perennial, as is, “Those who talk don’t know, and those who know don’t talk”. (Both are actually half…
Letter from Rome Let’s face it, labour complaining about management isn’t exactly new. Even the Gospel of Matthew records a scene of workers who’ve toiled all day in a vineyard grousing that Johnny-come-latelys who showed up just before quitting time were getting the same wage … and, in a template for such disputes throughout time,…
Letter from Rome Perhaps no one was as startled this week when a 46-year-old woman was placed under house arrest for aggravated theft from a small church in the far southern Italian province of Reggio Calabria as the woman herself. Her name hasn’t been released by Italy’s military police, who made the arrest, but they…
Letter from Rome Here’s a brief sampling of news stories that have moved across the Vatican wire in recent days. – The Pontifical Council for Culture, under the ever-idiosyncratic Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi, raised eyebrows anew with its announcement of a forthcoming May 6-8 conference on health care, cosponsored with the Cura Foundation, which, among other…