THE CHURCH IN THE WORLD


Vatican blocks re-election of Caritas Internationalis chief


Robert Mickens In Rome


THE GLOBALCatholic development agency Caritas Internationalis (CI) is reeling after the Vatican took the highly unusual step of officially blocking Lesley-Anne Knight from running for a second four-year term as CI secretary general. The Tablet has learned that three weeks ago the Vatican’s Secretariat of State refused to grant Dr Knight the necessary nihil obstat required for all candidates for the key position. The CI bureau – which includes the inter - national president, secretary general, treasurer and seven regional presidents – has asked the Vatican to “reconsider the decision”. Elections for the 2011-2015 posts of secretary general and international president – currently held respectively by Dr Knight and Cardinal Oscar Rodríguez Maradiaga SDB of Honduras – are to take place during the CI general assembly in late May in Rome. Cardinal Rodríguez wrote to all directors of the 165-member international confedera- tion on 5 February to inform them of the Vatican’s decision. The letter, which was seen


■When Lesley-Anne Knight was appointed secretary general of Caritas Internationalis (CI) during the 2007 General Assembly, she became the first woman ever to have been elected to this position and one of the most powerful women in Rome, writes Abigail Frymann.


A British citizen born in


by The Tablet, notes that Secretariat of State officials met a CI delegation on that same day and gave only a verbal account of why the Vatican refused to approve Dr Knight’s can- didacy. The cardinal does not mention those reasons in his letter, but does say that the CI bureau, in an extraordinary meeting, “expressed their incomprehension at the rea- sons provided” and “reaffirmed their positive view of Lesley-Anne Knight’s work for Caritas and the Church”. An official at a national Caritas member


agency who spoke on condition of anonymity opined that Dr Knight may have been rejected because she been “critical of the Vatican machine, has made no secret of it and has failed to be discreet”. But the official praised her for “professionalising” the Rome head- quarters, tackling debt and reforming financial operations. Another Caritas source said there is a sense among some Vatican officials that Dr Knight has not done enough to instil a specifically Catholic identity and sense of evangelisation into the confederation’s mission and activities.


“It is true that she is yet to receive the nihil obstat,” Caritas Internationalis said in an


Zimbabwe, Dr Knight was international director of the British member of CI, Cafod, and before that, Cafod’s programme manager for Latin America and the Caribbean and head of Programme and Partner Support. During the 1980s, she worked in Guatemala and Mexico for the United Nations High


Lesley-Anne


Knight: re-election blocked


official statement given to The Tablet on Wednesday. The statement confirmed that Lesley-Anne Knight submitted her candidacy for secretary general last year. Caritas Internationalis has had periodic


difficulties with some Vatican officials, espe- cially at the pontifical human development council Cor Unum, during the past several decades. But last year tensions came to a head after Cor Unum’s president, Cardinal Paul Cordes, designated a CI confederation mem- ber to coordinate the Catholic Church’s relief efforts in Haiti (see The Tablet, 30 January 2010). He never consulted with Dr Knight or her office over the move and the CI secretary general made no secret of her displeasure. Cardinal Cordes, a German close to Pope Benedict, retired as Cor Unum president last October. But before doing so he gave Vatican backing to a new organisation called “Caritas in Veritatis Internationalis”, which looks uncannily like a group specifically designed to replicate the Caritas confederation.


Commissioner for Refugees. After her appointment to lead CI in 2007, she asked for a “clear mandate” to make personnel and structural changes to respond to “the rapidly changing operating environment of the twenty-first century”. She said she also wanted a greater emphasis on climate change.


Divisions over celibacy deepen in German Church


CARDINAL WALTER KASPER, the former president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, has vehemently criticised the German-speaking theologians who recently called publicly for liberal reforms in the Church, writes Christa Pongratz-Lippitt. But a theologian close to the Pope has insisted that the question of priestly celibacy must remain open for discussion. Last week, Cardinals Karl Lehmann and


Walter Brandmüller clashed over the theo - logians’ call for the relaxation of the mandatory celibacy rule for priests. This has now been followed by an 11 February article in the German broadsheet Frankfurter Allgemeine


Zeitung in which Cardinal Kasper voices his “serious reservations” regarding the demands made by German, Swiss and Austrian the- ologians in their 3 February memorandum. The cardinal particularly warned against the “perpetual and crippling discussion” of priestly celibacy and demands for viri probati (proven married men) to be ordained on account of the drastic shortage of priests. Those discussions had long since taken place, he said. As for women’s ordination and the recognition of same-sex partnerships, the Churches which had adopted such reforms were “for that very reason experiencing a far deeper crisis” than the Catholic Church. What


really needs to be discussed is the quality of theological study, the cardinal said. The following day, Professor Wolfgang


Beinert, a member of the Ratzinger Schülerkreis [scholars’ circle] who is close to the Pope, told the German daily Die Welt that he was convinced that the Pope was not ignor- ing the demands to ordain married men. “It is not a case of abandoning priestly


celibacy but of finding a solution for the cat- astrophic pastoral situation. I am sure the Pope is thinking hard about how the Church in Central Europe and [elsewhere] can con- tinue to fulfil its mandate in view of the shortage of priests,” Professor Beinert said.


19 February 2011 | THE TABLET | 29 Dr Knight also called for reform


after the Haitian earthquake last year, openly criticising the aid response. She told The Tablet that NGOs


had “got to do better” in responding to major disasters and said rescue workers needed to cooperate rather than “trying to score points off one another”.


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