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UKRAINE


Catholics protest at Odessa church decision


LEADERS OF Ukraine’s Greek Catholic Church have urged the Government to do more to uphold religious freedom, after an Orthodox archbishop intervened to block the construction of a church for Greek Catholics in Odessa, writes Jonathan Luxmoore. “This is a country in which several trad - itional Churches have a similar number of members, so it’s illogical and undemocratic to give one denomination preference over others,” said Fr Igor Shaban, chairman of the Church’s ecumenical commission. His Church’s governing synod has asked


President Viktor Yanukovich in an open letter to help resolve the church dispute in Odessa. He said the Greek Catholic Exarch, or Bishop, of Odessa-Crimea, Vasyl Ivasiuk, had recently obtained land, after a decade-long campaign, to build the church in the Black Sea port. But he said Odessa Council had been per- suaded not to give final approval by the city’s Orthodox Metropolitan, Ahafanhel Savvin. “Odessa is home to 10,000 Greek Catholics.


But Metropolitan Ahafanhel insists there are no Greek Catholics in the city,” Fr Shaban said, adding: “What he did was totally un - ecumenical. Greek Catholics are left with just a single chapel on the first floor of a building.”


IN BRIEF


Pope to visit Croatia in 2011 Cardinal Josip Bozani of Zagreb announced that Pope Benedict XVI is to visit Croatia “most probably in the first half of the next year”. The Pope is expected to spend a weekend in Zagreb and pray before the tomb of Blessed Cardinal Alojzije Stepinac (1898-1960).


Christians vote Communists out The Communist Government in the Catholic heartland of Kerala, in India, blamed Christians for their overwhelming defeat in last week’s local elections. The Church has issued pastoral letters criticising the Government’s interfer- ence in Catholic institutions and their use of school textbooks to ridicule religious faith.


New seminary for Cuba Vatican officials and bishops from overseas arrived in Havana, Cuba, for the opening on Wednesday of the first new Catholic seminary on the Communist island in 50 years.


Condom hand-outs defended A spokesman for the Swiss Diocese of Basle has defended the distribution of condoms by laity in Lucerne railway station, saying it was time for a discussion about condom use.


■ For daily news updates visit www.thetablet.co.uk


34 | THE TABLET | 6 November 2010


Letter from Rome O


nce again the Fireman of the Year Award goes to Fr Federico Lombardi SJ. Since becoming


director of the Holy See press office in the summer of 2006, the 68-year-old Italian Jesuit has spent much of his time trying to put out media fires that are constantly being ignited by his Vatican bosses. He most recently came to the rescue last


Sunday after news outlets were reporting that the Vatican had blocked victims of sexual abuse by priests from gathering in St Peter’s Square (see Church in the World, page 33). The most extraordinary thing was that Fr Lombardi’s effort to reach out to the spurned victims was a non-official initiative, though most media failed to report this. The victims received no official message, welcome nor even an acknowledgement from Pope Benedict XVI or anyone in the Secretariat of State. They were simply ignored. Italian police even seized passports from several of those who slipped into the square. “The message was ‘you are not supposed to be here’,” said Margaret Kennedy, founder of Minister and Clergy Abuse Survivors. “We were treated … like criminals,” she added. What a contrast to the day before when more than 90,000 Italian children involved in Catholic Action were given a special papal audience in St Peter’s Square. And what about Benedict XVI’s message at the Sunday Angelus? “God does not exclude anyone,” he insisted. Reflecting on what he called the “scandal” that Jesus caused when he visited the house of Zaccheus, a tax collector, the Pope said: “The Lord, however, knew quite well what he was doing. We could say he wanted to take a risk and he won the gamble.” So why so much caution with abuse victims?


he so-called “Reform of the Reform” of the liturgy just got a shot in the arm. This week, Pope Benedict named a number of proponents of this restorationist programme to be consulters at the Congregation for Divine Worship and Discipline of the Sacraments. Being a consulter is not a top-ranking Roman Curia job by any means. But it does give some influence in helping to shape the direction that a particular Vatican office is pursuing. It is an “advisory” or technical assistance position that requires one periodically to provide research papers on certain topics or help prepare documents. Not surprisingly, among the 14 men who were named consulters on Wednesday are a number of priests (they are all priests, by the way) who promote the pre-Vatican II Mass, such as Fr Cassian Folsom OSB (an American liturgist who founded a monastery in Norcia) and Fr Joseph Carola SJ (an American patristics


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professor at the Gregorian University). Another American promoter of the old rite, Abbot-emeritus Michael John Zielinski (of the Olivetan Benedictines) has been vice president of the Pontifical Commission for the Cultural Heritage of the Church since 2008. He was abbot from 2003 to 2008 in Pecos, New Mexico. Fr Mauro Gagliardi, 35, is one of the young Italian enthusiasts of the Reform of the Reform and a professor at the Legion of Christ’s university in Rome. And then there is Fr Nicola Bux of Bari (Italy), who in the words of a teacher at the Pontifical Liturgical Institute (Sant’Anselmo) was “not invited back” to teach at the institute after publishing a book in 1996 that made use of other scholars’ work. The highly respected Fr Robert Taft SJ pointed out in a prestigious liturgical journal that Fr Bux had used some material “verbatim and without direct attribution”.


traditionalists by printing an article that criticised the followers of the late Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre. Areader sent this question: “Is participation at Masses celebrated by the Society of St Pius X (SSPX) prohibited or is this just a movement like many others in the Church?” Fr Severino Dianich, a 76-year-old priest and theologian from Pisa, responded by quoting Pope Benedict’s 2009 document that lifted the SSPX bishops’ excommunications. The Pope said the group “does not have a canonical status in the Church and its ministers cannot legitimately exercise any ministry”. Fr Dianich then said that people who go to SSPX Masses just because they like the Tridentine liturgy should think again. “If then one were to judge negatively the Vatican II rite, he should remember that it was a council together with the Pope – an assembly of 2,500 Catholic bishops from around the world – that wanted the reform, not a group of bizarre theologians,” he wrote. These are the kind of articles that make


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Famiglia Cristiana the bane of conservatives. And the more conciliar positions on church matters are not the only articles that draw attention. The paper is about the only Catholic publication in Italy that has been consistently critical of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, especially his questionable Don Juan-like behaviour. Several days ago, after the latest “scandal” over his relationship with a young Moroccanwoman, the paper used the stinging words of the 74-year-old billionaire’s ex-wife, saying he suffered from “a state of illness”. It said it was “something uncontrollable because it is tolerated, even encouraged, by power and the enormous availability of cash”.


Robert Mickens


peaking of liturgy, the Italian Catholic weekly Famiglia Cristiana appears to have raised the ire of self-styled


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