The latest on the death of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI:
BERLIN — German Chancellor Olaf Scholz is paying tribute to the German-born Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI as a “formative figure of the Catholic Church.”
Benedict, the former Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, became the first German pope in centuries when he was elected in 2005.
Scholz said on Twitter Saturday that “as the ‘German’ pope, Benedict XVI was a special church leader for many, not just in this country.”
He said that “the world is losing a formative figure of the Catholic Church, a combative personality and a wise theologian.”
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KEY DEVELOPMENTS:
Benedict XVI, first pope to resign in 600 years, dies at 95
Highlights from the life of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI
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BERLIN — The governor of Benedict XVI’s native German region says that “we are mourning our Bavarian pope.”
Bavarian governor Markus Soeder said on Twitter Saturday that “with him, society is losing a persuasive representative of the Catholic Church and one of the most influential theologians of the 20th century.”
Soeder wrote that “many people in his homeland will remember him not just as pope, but also as a humble pastor.”
He noted that “at the same time, he also had to face responsibility for difficult phases in his work.”
The governor said that “he always carried his homeland in his heart.”
The head of the German Bishops’ Conference, Limburg Bishop Georg Baetzing, said that “an impressive theologian and experienced shepherd is leaving us with the death of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI.”
“We are mourning a personality who imparted hope and direction to the church even in difficult times,” Baetzing said in a statement. He voiced “great respect” for Benedict’s “courageous decision” to resign a decade ago.
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VATICAN CITY — The Vatican says Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI has died. He was 95.
Benedict was the first pope in 600 years to resign. Benedict had become increasingly frail during his almost 10 years of retirement.
Benedict’s dramatic decision in 2013 to resign paved the way for the conclave that elected Pope Francis. The two popes then lived side-by-side in the Vatican gardens in an unprecedented arrangement that set the stage for future “popes emeritus” to do the same.
The former Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger never wanted to be pope. But he was forced to follow in St. John Paul II’s footsteps, running the church during a period of scandal and indifference.
Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni, in a statement on Saturday morning, wrote: “With pain I inform that Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI died today at 9:34 in the Mater Ecclesia Monastery in the Vatican. Further information will be released as soon as possible.”
Benedict’s remains are set to be on display beginning Monday at St. Peter’s Basilica.
Born Joseph Aloisius Ratzinger in the small town of Marktl am Inn, Bavaria, on April 16, 1927, he became interested in becoming a priest when he met the archbishop of Munich at age 5. He began studying for the priesthood when he was 12 years old.
A photo taken during the summer of 1952 near Ruhpolding shows Joseph Ratzinger (center) praying during an open-air mass.
Ratzinger grew up as the Nazis came to power in the 1930s. He joined the Hitler Youth group after his 14th birthday because it was mandatory, but he refused to attend meetings, his older brother, Georg, told The Associated Press in 2005.
In 1943, he was drafted into the anti-aircraft corps as a Luftwaffenhelfer, or child soldier, but deserted the army and returned home in April 1945 without firing a shot. The U.S. Army set up local headquarters in his parents’ farmhouse near Traunstein soon after.
In November 1945, he entered the seminary in Freising, where he and Georg were ordained as priests in 1951.
Benedict XVI’s childhood home in Marktl was turned into a museum featuring images from his early years in the Hitler Youth (left) and the seminary. It attracts thousands of visitors annually.
JOHN MACDOUGALL via AFP/ Getty Images
He gained his first doctorate at the University of Munich in 1953 and earned his teaching license in 1957. One year later, Freising College appointed him as a professor to teach dogma and fundamental theology. By 1963, he was teaching at the University of Muenster.
In 1966, he was appointed to a chair in dogmatic theology at Germany’s leading theological faculty, the University of Tübingen.
Benedict, then known as Joseph Ratzinger, in 1959, when he was a professor of dogmatic theology at Freising College.
The year 1968 marked a turning point forthe future pope, who transformed into a conservative dogmatist after radicalized students organized sit-ins against teachers ― like himself ― who did not endorse Marxism. The German news magazine Der Spiegel reported that some booed him during lectures, while members of the Protestant Students’ Union distributed fliers calling Jesus’ cross “a sadomasochistic glorification of pain” and the New Testament a “document of inhumanity, a large-scale deception of the masses.” Ratzinger later described the protests as a “traumatic memory.”
Ratzinger returned to Bavaria in 1969 to serve as a professor at the more conservative University of Regensburg, where he remained until 1977, when he was he was made archbishop of Munich and Freising. Later that year, Pope Paul VI made him a cardinal.
Ratzinger’s legacy was tainted in 2002 when The Boston Globe revealed how the church had covered up scores of child sexual assaults and moved abusive priests to other parishes, rather than defrocking them and reporting them to authorities.
The Observer newspaper reported that he had issued a 2001 order ensuring the church’s investigations into sexually abusive priests remained secret for up to 10 years after the victims reached adulthood.
Sex abuse claims plagued Benedict’s papacy, with victims around the world accusing him of failing to do enough to act against those trying to cover up thousands of cases that emerged during his reign.
Benedict at the window of St Peter’s Basilica main balcony after being elected the 265th pope of the Roman Catholic Church on April 19, 2005.
THOMAS COEX via Getty Images
In 2008, Pope Benedict traveled to the United States following reports that the U.S. church had paid out $2 billion in settlements related to abuse cases dating back to 1950. “I am deeply ashamed, and we will do what is possible so this cannot happen again in the future,” he said at the time.
In 2011, the U.S.-based nonprofit group Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests alleged in a lawsuit that Ratzinger “either knew and/or some cases consciously disregarded information that showed subordinates were committing or about to commit such crimes.”
Aside from the sex abuse controversy, the conservative leader caused outrage in 2005 when the Instruction, his first major ruling as pope, banned gay priests and repeated the church’s view that “deep-seated homosexual tendencies … are objectively disordered.” In 2012, he sparked outrage in the gay community again, when he labeled same-sex marriage a threat to “human dignity and the future of humanity itself.”
Benedict earned the nickname of “the green pope” for speaking often about the need to protect and conserve the environment. During a World Day of Peace message in 2010, he insisted that those who seek peace can’t disregard realities such as climate change, pollution and the growing phenomenon of “environmental refugees.”
“The Church has a responsibility towards creation,” Benedict wrote, “and she considers it her duty to exercise that responsibility in public life, in order to protect earth, water and air as gifts of God the Creator meant for everyone, and above all to save mankind from the danger of self-destruction.”
Pope Benedict became frail toward the end of his papacy, and cited his failing health as his reason for stepping down as leader of the world’s 1.2 billion Roman Catholics in February 2013 at the age of 85. He kept his papal title instead of reverting to his birth name ― though he preferred to be known as Father Benedict.
Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI (right) — pictured here with Pope Francis at the Vatican in December 2015 — was the first pontiff to resign since Gregory XII in 1415.
ALBERTO PIZZOLI via Getty Images
In November 2013, the pope emeritus broke his silence on attacks questioning his leadership during the sex abuse scandals when he responded to a critique from the Italian atheist author Piergiorgio Odifreddi.
“I never tried to cover these things up,” he wrote in the letter, which appeared in the Italian newspaper La Repubblica. “That the power of evil penetrated so far into the interior world of the faith is a suffering that we must bear, but at the same time, we must do everything to prevent it from repeating.”
The following year, the AP reported that Benedict had defrocked nearly 400 priests between 2011 and 2012, after in-house trials had determined they had sexually molested children.
In February 2014, the pope emeritus made his first public appearance after his resignation, to attend his successor Pope Francis’ first formal meeting of cardinals at St. Peter’s Basilica. The pair met on several occasions after that. His other rare public appearances included the canonization mass of Popes John XXIII and John Paul II, with whom Benedict had worked closely.
Benedict pledged to live “hidden from the world” after retirement, but he chimed in to voice his own opinions during his successor’s papacy. His presence has also served as a rallying point for clerics in the church’s conservative wing who are wary of Francis’ openness to change.
Benedict poses for a picture at an airport in Munich in June 2020, after a trip to visit his sick brother.
SVEN HOPPE via Getty Images
In 2019, Benedict published an essay partly blaming the church’s sex abuse crisis on the sexual revolution of the 1960s, undercutting Francis’ own efforts to lead the church through the scandal. And in January 2020, while Francis was deliberating whether to allow married men to be ordained in far-flung regions of the Amazon, Benedict contributed to a book defending the tradition of priestly celibacy. The book stirred considerable controversy, as it gave the impression that a retired pope was weighing in on matters before the current pope.
Benedict spent the last years of his life living at the Mater Ecclesiae Monastery in the Vatican Gardens, near St. Peter’s in the Vatican, where he would read, write letters, receive guests and occasionally play the piano.
Benedict made a four-day visit in June 2020 to Germany to see his ailing brother, Georg. During the trip, he spoke with old neighbors, prayed at the graves of his parents and sister, and celebrated Mass at his brother’s residence.
Decades after the brothers were ordained together, Georg died on July 1, 2020, at the age of 96.
Benedict visits the grave of his parents and sister at the Ziegetsdorf cemetery near Regensburg, in June 2020.
ROME — Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI has died at his home in the Vatican at 95, Vatican officials announced.
“With sorrow I inform you that the Pope Emeritus, Benedict XVI, passed away today at 9:34 in the Ecclesiae Monastery in the Vatican.Further information will be provided as soon as possible,” said the Director of the Holy See press office Matteo Bruni’s statement.
The Vatican press office has said that Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI’s body will lie in state in St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican for the faithful to pay their respects.
No further details have been announced.
After his surprise resignation in February 2013 at the age of 85, he was only known to have left the tiny sovereign state briefly and was rarely seen in public.
Pope Benedict XVI, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger of Germany, appears on the balcony of St Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican after being elected by the conclave of cardinals, April 19, 2005, Vatican City, Vatican.
Arturo Mari/Getty Images
Election and papacy
Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was named the 265th pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church on April 19, 2005, at the age of 78, and chose the name of Benedict XVI. He was the first German pope in several centuries, the second consecutive non-Italian pope and the oldest pope elected since Clement XII in 1730, according to church records.
He was elected in four ballots, which is considered relatively quick for the Church.
During his nearly eight years as pope, the Catholic Church was the subject of several major scandals. A growing number of sexual abuse cases involving the clergy was perhaps the most damaging and revealed a repeat-pattern of how the church had dealt with these cases in the past; leaving the abusers and their superiors, who covered up for them, to go unpunished by law enforcement.
Some Vatican watchers considered the revelations to be the greatest crisis the church has faced since the Reformation. First as cardinal in his doctrinal post in the Vatican and later as Pope, Benedict acted to develop a unified church response to stop this increasingly public clerical sex abuse crisis.
Benedict reiterated the Church’s traditional conservative positions on important doctrinal issues like abortion, contraception, homosexuality, euthanasia and the priesthood.
He angered some Muslims with his 2006 speech in Regensberg, Germany, which was interpreted by some as anti-Islam. Afterwards, he worked to build more bridges between the two faiths.
Pope Benedict XVI listens to a speech during his welcome ceremony at the airport in Silao, Mexico, March 23, 2012.
Gregorio Borgia/AP, FILE
Many Catholics loved and respected him until his death. His successor, Pope Francis, frequently spoke fondly of him and during his trip to Malta in April 2022 described him as a “prophet” for predicting that the Catholic church of the future would become “smaller” but more “spiritual, poorer and less political.”
Benedict’s snow-white hair, soft-spoken manner and love for cats and classical music — especially piano — helped endear him to many.
Although his papacy was relatively brief, Pope Benedict XVI made 24 foreign trips visiting every habitable continent. His first visit was in August 2005 to Cologne, in his native Germany, for the Church’s 20th World Youth Day. He made a trip to the U.S. in 2008, during which he delivered a speech to the U.N. General Assembly.
A prolific writer throughout his life, he penned speeches, encyclicals, exhortations and a three-book biography, “Jesus of Nazareth,” while pope.
He beatified 322 people and canonized 45, including two Americans: Kateri Tekakwitha, the first Native American saint, and Marianne Cope, who spent the last 30 years of her life ministering to the sick on the Hawaiian island of Molokai.
Bavarian boyhood and WWII
Joseph Ratzinger was born in Marktl am Inn, part of Germany’s southern region, on April 16, 1927. His father was a policeman and his mother was a former cook. He had a brother and sister.
He followed his older brother, Georg, into the seminary in 1939 at the age of 12, per his autobiography. When he was 14, Ratzinger was enrolled in Hitler’s Nazi youth movement; at the time, membership was compulsory. In 1943 he was drafted into a Nazi anti-aircraft unit, but his unit never saw combat.
At the end of WWII, in April 1945, he deserted and returned home. He was sent to a U.S. prisoner of war camp in May 1945, as a former soldier, but was released after a few months.
Following the war, which ended when he was 18, the two brothers returned to the seminary. Joseph and Georg were ordained priests and celebrated their first mass on June 29, 1951.
Pope Benedict XVI greets the crowd from the central balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican, April 19, 2005, soon after his election.
Domenico Stinellis/AP, FILE
Before becoming pope
After being ordained, Ratzinger pursued a successful university career teaching a dogmatic and fundamental theology at a number of German universities. In 1977, Ratzinger was appointed archbishop of Munich and Freising. Three months later, he was elevated to cardinal by Pope Paul VI.
Three years after his election, Pope John Paul II called Cardinal Ratzinger to Rome to head the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith at the Vatican, in charge of all the Church’s doctrinal matters.
As John Paul II’s health declined, Ratzinger took on a more important role at the Vatican and in 2002, he became dean of the College of Cardinals. As dean, he had an important role in the period between the death of John Paul II and the election of the new pope, which included summoning the conclave to elect the new pope.
His long service to Pope John Paul II in the Vatican meant he was known and respected by most of the cardinals who elected him. His stature grew after he presided over John Paul’s funeral Mass in St. Peter’s Square.
Electing Benedict, the cardinals hoped he would clean up the church — which was still in the throes of the clerical sex abuse scandals — because of his deep knowledge of its workings after twenty-four years at his job at the Vatican, alongside his predecessor.
Retirement
Pope Benedict’s surprise retirement announcement was delivered in Latin to a roomful of cardinals in the Vatican on Feb. 11, 2013. With his retirement, many Vatican watchers suddenly saw him in a modern and revolutionary light, no longer a “conservative,” which is how he had been mostly labelled throughout his pontificate.
He was succeeded by Pope Francis, from Argentina, who was elected on March 13, 2013.
Only six other popes are believed to have resigned in 2,000 years of church history; the more recent was Gregory XII in 1415. Some speculated that scandals had led Benedict to resign, but he said in a 2016 interview it was his “duty” because his health was declining and he couldn’t keep up with the travel demanded in the job.
Although frail in his later years, Benedict continued to write, read, pray and take walks in the Vatican gardens, according to Vatican officials. He also had occasional visits from Pope Francis, cardinals, his brother and friends.
In 2020, at the age of 93, when already frail, Benedict returned to Bavaria, Germany for four days to visit Georg, who was seriously ill, and with whom he had been very close throughout his life. It was the first time since his resignation, more than seven years earlier, that Benedict was known to have left his residence at the Vatican — and Italy.
In 2022, the infirm, retired pope asked forgiveness in a written statement for any “grievous faults” in his past handling of sex abuse cases in the church but denied any personal or specific wrongdoing. He was responding to a German independent report on clerical sex abuse, issued in January of the same year, which had criticized how Benedict had dealt with four cases while he was archbishop of Munich, Germany from 1977 to 1982.
Victim groups and some experts said the report’s findings had tarnished the former pope’s legacy as one of the most renown Catholic theologians, while other conservative supporters, critical of the present pope’s style, defended his actions.
Giovanna Chirri, the Vatican reporter, who scored a worldwide scoop as she immediately understood the Latin of Benedict’s surprise announcement, told ABC News “he was not very understood as pope and was a victim of rather radicalized prejudices which made him disliked by many.”
However, she added, “people’s perception of him changed with his resignation and his symbolic and dramatic temporary departure by helicopter from the Vatican on Feb. 28, 2013, the day of his resignation.”
The scene was broadcast live to millions around the world.
ABC News’ Bianca Seidman and Alexandra Svokos contributed to this report.
ROME — Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI was in stable condition Friday after suffering a decline in his health and participated in a private Mass in his room, the Vatican said, as the faithful in Rome honored “this last stretch of his pilgrimage.”
The Vatican provided a new medical bulletin Friday afternoon saying Benedict had been able to rest well for a second night.
“He also participated in the celebration of Holy Mass in his room yesterday afternoon,” Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni said in a statement. “At present his condition is stationary.”
On Wednesday, Pope Francis revealed that his 95-year-old predecessor was “very ill” and he went to see him in his home in the Vatican Gardens. Francis called for prayers for Benedict, resulting in an outpouring of messages of solidarity from rank-and-file Catholics and cardinals alike.
In 2013, Benedict became the first pope in 600 years to resign, saying he no longer had the strength of body or mind to lead the then 1.2-billion-member Catholic Church. His resignation paved the way for Francis’ election.
Benedict, who for decades as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger served the Vatican as its doctrinal guardian, chose to live out his retirement in seclusion in a converted monastery on Vatican City grounds. The German-born churchman was being tended to by a team of doctors and his longtime papal family: his secretary, Monsignor Georg Gaenswein, and a few consecrated women who help run the household.
On Friday evening, the cardinal vicar of Rome, Cardinal Angelo De Donatis, celebrated a special Mass for Benedict in St. John in Lateran Basilica. The monumental basilica was Benedict’s cathedral in his capacity as bishop of Rome when serving as pontiff.
The cardinal hailed Benedict’s qualities, saying he “always demonstrated a great trust in Providence.”
“As priest, theologian, bishop, pope, he expressed, at the same time, the strength and the sweetness of the faith, the essentialness and the simplicity of he who knows that, when you dream with God, dreams become reality,’” De Donatis said in his homily.
Referring to Benedict’s nearly 10 years in retirement from the papacy, De Donatis said that the pope emeritus “even in old age, and in illness, continues to sustain humanity totally offering oneself.”
The pope emeritus was “in profound communion with Pope Francis,” the cardinal said.
Some critics of Francis or of his predecessor have sought to depict the relationship between the retired and reigning pontiffs as a kind of rivalry, but De Donatis’ words seemed aimed at dispelling such a perception.
The homily’s final words resounded almost like a funeral ode.
“When He wants, God will approach this brother of ours in the slumber of death and will say to him, ‘Joseph, get up, Joseph, rise.’
“And it will be Christ and his mother to take him with them and lead him into paradise, where the dream of a life will because the reality of eternity,” the cardinal concluded.
During the Mass, one of the faithful read aloud a prayer asking God to “support and console him with his presence in this last stretch of his pilgrimage.”
Benedict has indicated that when he dies, he would like to be buried in the crypt in the grotto underneath St. Peter’s Basilica once occupied by the tomb of St. John Paul II, which was moved upstairs into the main basilica in recent years.
At the end of Mass, De Donatis said the faithful were entrusting “our Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI to the maternal care” of Jesus’ mother, “because she has promised to be near to her children in the moment of trial.”
The Vatican says Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI is lucid and stable, but his condition remains grave. Pope Francis said earlier this week that the retired pope was “very sick” and asked for prayers.
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Pope Francis used his Christmas message to lament what he called the “icy winds of war.” Speaking to the faithful in St. Peter’s square, the pontiff pleaded for an immediate end to the fighting in Ukraine.
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VATICAN CITY — Recalling Jesus’ birth in a stable, Pope Francis rebuked those “ravenous” for wealth and power at the expense of the vulnerable, including children, in a Christmas Eve homily decrying war, poverty and greedy consumerism.
In the splendor of St. Peter’s Basilica, Francis presided over the evening Mass attended by about 7,000 faithful, including tourists and pilgrims, who flocked to the church on a warm evening and took their place behind rows of white-robed pontiffs.
Francis drew lessons from the humility of Jesus’ first hours of life in a manger.
“While animals feed in their stalls, men and women in our world, in their hunger for wealth and power, consume even their neighbors, their brothers and sisters,” the pontiff lamented. “How many wars have we seen! And in how many places, even today, are human dignity and freedom treated with contempt!”
“As always, the principal victims of this human greed are the weak and the vulnerable,’’ said Francis, who didn’t cite any specific conflict or situation.
“This Christmas, too, as in the case of Jesus, a world ravenous for money, power and pleasure does not make room for the little ones, for the so many unborn, poor and forgotten children,’’ the pope said, reading his homily with a voice that sounded tired and almost hoarse. “I think above all of the children devoured by war, poverty and injustice.”
Still, the pontiff exhorted people to take heart.
“Do not allow yourself to be overcome by fear, resignation or discouragement.” Jesus’ lying in a manger shows where “the true riches in life are to be found: not in money and power, but in relationships and persons.”
Remarking on the “so much consumerism that has packaged the mystery” of Christmas, Francis said there was a danger the day’s meaning could be forgotten.
But, he said, Christmas focuses attention on “the problem of our humanity — the indifference produced by the greedy rush to possess and consume.”
“Jesus was born poor, lived poor and died poor,” Francis said. “He did not so much talk about poverty as live it, to the very end, for our sake.”
Francis urged people to “not let this Christmas pass without doing something good.”
When the Mass ended, the pope, pushed in a wheelchair by an aide, moved down the basilica with a life-sized statue of Baby Jesus on his lap and flanked by several children carrying bouquets. The statue then was placed in a manger in a creche scene in the basilica.
Francis, 86, has been using a wheelchair to navigate long distances due to a painful knee ligament and a cane for shorter distances.
Traditionally, Catholics mark Christmas Eve by attending Mass at midnight. But over the years, the starting time at the Vatican has crept earlier, reflecting the health or stamina of popes and then the pandemic.
Two years ago, the start of Christmas Eve Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica was moved up to 7:30 p.m. to allow faithful to get home before for a nighttime curfew imposed by the Italian government as a measure to combat the COVID-19 pandemic. Although virtually all pandemic-triggered restrictions have long been lifted in Italy, the Vatican kept to the early start time.
During Saturday evening’s service, a choir sang hymns. Clusters of potted red poinsettia plants near the altar contrasted with the cream-colored vestments of the pontiff.
On Sunday, tens of thousands of Romans, tourists and pilgrims were expected to crowd into St. Peter’s Square to hear Pope Francis deliver an address on world issues and give his blessing. The speech, known in Latin as “Urbi et Orbi” (to the city and to the world), generally is an occasion to review crises including war, persecution and hunger, in many parts of the globe.
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Associated Press journalist Luigi Navarra contributed.
VATICAN CITY — Pope Francis’ Jesuit order on Sunday asked any more victims to come forward with complaints against a famous Jesuit artist who was essentially let off the hook by the Vatican twice despite devastating testimony by women who said he sexually and spiritually abused them.
The Jesuits asked for new evidence against the Rev. Marko Ivan Rupnik, and offered a timeline about his case in an effort to tamp down the scandal.
The Slovenian priest is relatively unknown among rank-and-file Catholics but is well known in the hierarchy because he is one of the church’s most sought-after artists. His mosaics decorate chapels, churches and basilicas around the globe.
The scandal exploded this past week after the Jesuits admitted he had been excommunicated for having committed one of the gravest crimes in the Catholic Church — using the confessional to absolve a woman with whom he had engaged in sexual activity.
He was declared excommunicated in May 2020, but the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith lifted the excommunication later that month after he repented, an unusually quick turnaround for such a serious violation.
A year later, the same Congregation decided not to prosecute him for another allegation of spiritual and sexual abuse of a former nun, declaring the statute of limitations had expired. The Congregation, which routinely waives the statute of limitations, is headed by a Jesuit prefect, has a Jesuit sex crimes prosecutor and a former No. 2 who lived in Rupnik’s Jesuit community.
The Congregation has not responded to requests for information about the case, which has exposed the Vatican’s general refusal to consider spiritual and sexual abuse of adult women as a crime that must be punished. Rather, the Vatican has long considered such abuse a mere lapse of priestly chastity that can be forgiven, without considering the trauma it causes victims.
The Jesuit appeal came on the same day the Italian newspaper Domani published the most explosive testimony yet by the former nun who made the complaint in 2021. She detailed years of sexual abuse and spiritual manipulation by Rupnik and said she made repeated efforts to turn him in only to face Jesuit and other superiors who routinely protected Rupnik at her expense.
“It was truly an abuse of conscience,” said the nun, who was not identified but whose account was confirmed to The Associated Press by someone familiar with the case.
“His sexual obsession was not impromptu but was profoundly connected to his concept of art and his theological thinking. Father Marko started slowly and sweetly infiltrating my psychological and spiritual world, leveraging my uncertainties and fragility and using my relationship with God to push me into sexual experiences with him.”
She said that her first complaint about his behavior dated from 1994 in Slovenia but that it was ignored as Rupnik’s community — first in Slovenia, then in Rome — grew and gained an international following.
In the meantime, other sisters were similarly harmed, she said, describing the use of pornography, humiliation and multiple partners “in the image of the Trinity” in Rupnik’s spiritual and sexual abuse.
The scandal has been accentuated by conflicting accounts given by the Jesuits.
After the first allegations of the 2021 complaint were aired in Italian blogs and websites this month, the Jesuits issued a statement only referring to the 2021 case. But under questioning by AP at a Christmas reception, the Jesuit superior, the Rev. Arturo Sosa, admited Rupnik had previously been excommunicated for the confession-related crime.
Sosa said that Rupnik’s ministry had been restricted and that he was forbidden from hearing confessions, giving spiritual direction or leading spiritual exercises. However, Rupnik is listed as scheduled to deliver spiritual exercises Feb. 13-17 at the Loreto Marian shrine on Italy’s Adriatic coast, according to the Loreto website.
On Sunday, Rupnik’s immediate superior, the Rev. Johan Verschueren, said he wanted to try to clarify some of the questions that have erupted about the case. In a statement, he appealed for anyone with old or new allegations to come forward. He provided an email address: teamreferente.dir@gmail.com.
“My main concern in all of this is for those who have suffered, and I invite anyone who wishes to make a new complaint or who wants to discuss complaints already made to contact me,” he said.
He said complaints would be accepted in English, French, Italian, Spanish, Dutch and German.
Pope Francis has revealed in a new interview that he has already signed his resignation letter to be used in the event of him becoming “impaired.”
Francis made the comment in an interview with Spanish news outlet ABC, published Sunday, when asked what would happen if a pope is suddenly rendered unable to perform his duties due to health issues or an accident.
Francis said he wrote the letter several years ago and gave it to then-Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, who resigned in 2013.
“I have already signed my renunciation. The Secretary of State at the time was Tarcisio Bertone. I signed it and said: ‘If I should become impaired for medical reasons or whatever, here is my renunciation,’” Francis was quoted as saying.
“I don’t know who Cardinal Bertone has given that letter to, but I handed it to him when he was the Secretary of State,” Francis said, adding that this was the first time he had spoken publicly about the letter’s existence.
Francis said past pontiffs Paul VI and Pious XII had also drafted their letters of renunciation in the event of a permanent impairment.
Francis, 86, appears to be in good health apart from knee problems. He has often been seen with a walking stick and sometimes uses a wheelchair due to pain in his right knee.
Earlier this year, he canceled a trip to Democratic Republic of Congo and South Sudan after doctors said he might also have to miss a later trip to Canada unless he agreed to have 20 more days of therapy and rest for his right knee.
In 2013, Francis’ immediate predecessor, Pope Benedict, made the almost unprecedented decision to resign from his position, citing the reason as “advanced age” and startling the Catholic world.
It marked the first time a pope had stepped down in nearly 600 years. The last pope to step down before his death was Gregory XII, who in 1415 quit to end a civil war within the church in which more than one man claimed to be pope.
VATICAN CITY — Pope Francis has decided to send back to Greece the three fragments of Parthenon Sculptures that the Vatican Museums have held for centuries, the Vatican announced Friday.
The Vatican termed the gesture a “donation” from the pope to His Beatitude Ieronymos II, the Orthodox Christian archbishop of Athens and all Greece, “as a concrete sign of his sincere desire to follow in the ecumenical path of truth.”
The Vatican thus becomes the latest Western state to return its fragments of the Parthenon marbles, leaving the British Museum among the holdouts.
But the Vatican statement suggested the Holy See wanted to make clear that it was not a bilateral decision to return the marbles from the Vatican state to Greece, but rather a religiously inspired donation. The statement may have been worded in order not to create a precedent that could affect other priceless holdings in the Vatican Museums.
The sculptures are remnants of a 160-meter-long (520-foot) frieze that ran around the outer walls of the Parthenon Temple on the Acropolis, dedicated to Athena, goddess of wisdom. Much was lost in a 17th-century bombardment, and about half the remaining works were removed in the early 19th century by a British diplomat, Lord Elgin.
The British Museum recently pledged not to dismantle its collection, following a report that the institution’s chairman had held secret talks with Greece’s prime minister over the return of the sculptures, also known as the Elgin Marbles.
The Parthenon was built between 447-432 B.C. and is considered the crowning work of classical architecture. The frieze depicted a procession in honor of Athena. Some small bits of it — and other Parthenon sculptures — are in other European museums.
Pope Francis called Wednesday for a “humble” Christmas this year, with savings from reduced spending on gifts donated to help the “suffering people of Ukraine.”
Francis called for “concrete gestures” of charity for Ukrainians this holiday season during his weekly general audience.
“It’s nice to celebrate Christmas and have parties, but let’s lower the level of Christmas spending a bit,” he said. “Let’s make a more humble Christmas, with more humble gifts, and let’s send what we save to the people of Ukraine who need it.”
Francis has spoken out frequently about the “martyred” people of Ukraine ever since Russia invaded on Feb. 24. The Vatican has organized humanitarian deliveries over recent months, including a clothing drive this month to bring thermal wear to Ukrainians suffering the winter cold with reduced heating and electricity.
“They are hungry, they are cold, so many die for lack of doctors and nurses,” Francis said. “Let’s not forget them. Christmas yes, in peace and with the Lord, yes. But with Ukrainians in the heart.”
Francis recently sparked a new diplomatic row with Moscow when he blamed most of the “cruelty” in Russia’s war on Chechen and other minority fighters, who he said were not of “the Russian tradition.” Russia’s ambassador to the Holy See lodged a formal protest with the Holy See after the remarks, and Russian officials said this week the Vatican hadn’t yet apologized.
In another Christmas gesture, the Vatican said this week that Francis had sent letters to heads of state around the globe asking them to undertake a “gesture of clemency” for eligible prisoners. Francis reasoned that doing so could show “an opening to the grace of the Lord in a time marked by tensions, injustices and conflicts.”
VATICAN CITY — The text message to the Vatican monsignor offered forgiveness along with a threat: “I know everything about you … and I keep it all in my archives,” it read. “I pardon you, Perlasca, but remember, you owe me a favor.”
The message was one of more than 100 newly revealed WhatsApp texts and other correspondence entered into evidence at the Vatican courthouse last week that have jolted a financial crimes trial involving the Holy See’s money-losing investment in a London property.
The texts have cast doubt on the credibility of a key suspect-turned-prosecution witness and raised questions about the integrity of the investigation into the London deal and other transactions.
Together with evidence that a cardinal secretly recorded Pope Francis, they confirmed that a trial originally aimed at highlighting Francis’ financial reforms has become a Pandora’s Box of unintended revelations about Vatican vendettas and scheming.
The trial in the city-state’s criminal tribunal originated in the Holy See’s 350 million-euro investment to develop a former warehouse for department store Harrods into luxury apartments.
Prosecutors have accused 10 people in the case, alleging Vatican monsignors and brokers fleeced the Holy See of tens of millions of euros in fees and commissions, and then extorted the Holy See of 15 million euros to get full control of the property.
Monsignor Alberto Perlasca initially was among the prime suspects. As the Vatican official who managed the secretariat of state’s 600 million-euro asset portfolio, he was intimately involved in the property deal.
But Perlasca changed his story in August 2020 and started cooperating with prosecutors, blaming his deputy and his superior, Cardinal Angelo Becciu, then the No. 2 in the secretariat of state, for the London investment and other questionable expenditures.
Both the deputy and Becciu are on trial. Perlasca is not, and his statements to prosecutors became a source of leads that formed the basis of several charges in the indictment.
When Perlasca testified for the prosecution last week, some of his claims collapsed under defense questioning. Judge Giuseppe Pignatone gave Perlasca until midweek to remember who helped him write his first tell-all memo on Aug. 31, 2020.
And then came a bombshell, courtesy of the text messages that the prosecutor was compelled to introduce into evidence after he received them. They suggested Perlasca wrote the memo implicating his boss after he had received threats and advice from a woman who had an ax to grind against Becciu.
Public relations specialist Francesca Chaouqui previously served on a papal commission tasked with investigating the Vatican’s vast and murky financials. She is known in Vatican circles for her role in the “Vatileaks” scandal of 2015-2016, when she was convicted of conspiring to leak confidential Vatican documents to journalists and received a 10-month suspended sentence.
According to the texts, Chaouqui nurtured a grudge against Becciu, whom she blamed for allegedly supporting her prosecution. She apparently saw the investigation into the London real estate venture as a chance to settle scores and implicate Becciu in alleged wrongdoing she had uncovered during her commission days.
“I knew that sooner or later the moment would come and I would send you this message,” Chaouqui wrote Perlasca on May 12, 2020. “Because the Lord doesn’t allow the good to be humiliated without repair. I pardon you Perlasca, but remember, you owe me a favor.”
Chaouqui didn’t say what she wanted. But other messages unveiled in court indicate she persuaded a Perlasca family friend and confidante, Genoveffa Ciferri, that she could help Perlasca avoid prosecution if he followed Chaouqui’s advice.
According to Ciferri’s texts, the elaborate scheme allegedly unfolded as follows: Ciferri believed Chaouqui when she bragged that she was working hand-in-hand with Vatican prosecutors, gendarmes and the pope in the criminal investigation. Ciferri wanted to help Perlasca, and so fed him Chaouqui’s advice anonymously.
Chaouqui subsequently organized a dinner at a Rome restaurant during which Perlasca tried to extract incriminating information from Becciu. Perlasca was led to believe the Vatican prosecutors had bugged the table and were recording their conversation, though no recording has materialized. He provided them with a detailed memo after the Sept. 6, 2020 meal.
The dinner took place 18 days before Francis fired Becciu and stripped him of his rights as a cardinal based on information he said he had received about Becciu’s alleged financial misconduct.
Ciferri confessed the whole saga to prosecutor Alessandro Diddi in a Nov. 26 text in which she said she had schemed with Chaouqui in hopes of sparing Perlasca from becoming a criminal defendant. Ciferri forwarded Diddi 126 text messages she exchanged with Chaouqui and said Chaouqui had helped craft the August 2020 memo in which Perlasca turned on the cardinal.
The implications of Chaouqui’s alleged interference were clear to those in the courtroom: Perlasca, a key prosecution witness, may have been persuaded to provide possibly false testimony about Becciu and others by someone with a not-so-hidden agenda. In addition, Chaouqui bragged about working closely with investigators on the case.
Becciu’s lawyer, Fabio Viglione, denounced the “surreal” machinations that helped lead to his client’s indictment, saying Perlasca had been manipulated “to the detriment of the truth, the authenticity of the investigation and the honorability of His Eminence.”
Cataldo Intrieri, the lawyer representing Perlasca’s deputy Fabrizio Tirabassi, said the revelations warrant the trial’s suspension and the opening of a new criminal investigation for suspected fraud, threats and obstruction. “Regardless, there are implications for the facts that are the subject of this trial,” Intrieri said.
Judge Pignatone rejected defense calls to suspend the trial, saying the proceedings were based more on documentation about the London deal than Perlasca’s testimony. But he scheduled in-court interrogations for Ciferri and Chaouqui.
Chaouqui, when reached by The Associated Press, declined to comment before her court testimony.
Diddi defended the investigation, strongly denied having any dealings with Chaouqui before she was questioned in July and announced he had opened a new investigation into possible false testimony and other potential crimes based on the texts he received from Ciferri. He offered to turn over his cell phone to show he had no dealings with Chaouqui.
“If someone brags about having knowledge (of the investigation) I have to investigate,” he said.
Some defense lawyers also privately complained that Diddi had evidence in February 2021 of Chaouqui’s alleged involvement with Perlasca but didn’t inform the defense, part of broader defense complaints about the peculiarities of the Vatican’s legal system. Diddi acknowledged last week that Ciferri phone him on Feb. 4, 2021 and mentioned Chaouqui’s name.
Diddi also heard from Perlasca on March 1, 2022, when the monsignor filed a formal complaint alleging Chaouqui had threatened him and claimed to be working with prosecutors. The written complaint was only entered into evidence last week. Defense lawyers said it was their first inkling that Perlasca might be a compromised prosecution witness.
“She sent me threatening messages via telephone, saying I was in her hands and that only she could save me from certain prison, making clear she could influence the investigators,” Perlasca wrote in his complaint.
Chaouqui was in touch with Perlasca as recently as Nov. 26. She texted him after his first court appearances and suggested they meet before he went back on the stand.
“My interest, and I think yours, is that my support not emerge at trial because it would be difficult to explain above all the consequences that it had,” she wrote.
BEIJING — Beijing and the Vatican are once again tangling over the prickly issue of appointing Chinese bishops.
After complaints from the Vatican that Beijing was violating a 2018 interim accord, China’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian on Monday said the country is willing to expand the “friendly consensus” achieved with the Vatican over bishop nominations.
The Vatican issued an unusually harsh statement Saturday complaining that Beijing on Nov. 24 had installed Bishop John Peng Weizhao as an auxiliary bishop in the province of Jiangxi, which the Vatican doesn’t recognize as a diocese.
China and the Vatican haven’t had diplomatic relations since 1951, following the Communists’ rise to power and the expulsion of foreign priests. The Vatican has sought in recent years to open contacts and reduce frictions, particularly over the appointment of bishops.
At a daily briefing Monday, Zhao said he was unaware of the specific situation involving Bishop Peng, but said that relations between China and the Vatican had improved over recent years for the benefit and “harmonious development” of Chinese Catholicism.
“China is willing to continuously expand the friendly consensus with the Vatican side and jointly maintain the spirit of our interim agreement,” he told reporters.
In its statement, the Vatican said Peng’s installation ceremony took place after “long and heavy pressure from the local authorities.”
“In fact, this event did not take place in accordance with the spirit of dialogue,” or what is called for by the 2018 accord, the Vatican statement said.
Since the break in ties, Catholics in China since have been divided between those who belong to an official, state-sanctioned church and an underground church loyal to the pontiff. Estimates of the total number of Chinese Catholics run between 6 million and 12 million worshiping in both the recognized Patriotic Catholic Association and the underground church.
The Vatican efforts toward reconciliation led to its willingness to sign what it admits is a far-from-ideal accord in 2018, which regularized the status of several bishops and paved the way for future nominations. Full details of the agreement never have been made public but Pope Francis has claimed he has final say in the process.
The agreement was seen as a step toward warmer ties that would help fill dozens of empty seats, but it was hotly criticized by many, including by Hong Kong’s influential bishop emeritus Cardinal Joseph Zen.
AsiaNews, which follows the Catholic Church closely in China, said Francis had ordained Peng clandestinely as bishop of Yujiang in 2014, four years before the 2018 accord, explaining the Holy See’s lament that he had been named by Beijing to another diocese that it doesn’t recognize.
It was the first time the Vatican had explicitly accused Beijing of violating the 2018 accord and came just a month after the agreement was renewed for another two years.
The Holy See said it hoped that “similar episodes will not be repeated.”
Under nationalist leader Xi Jinping, the officially atheist Communist Party has pressured all religions to “sinosize,” meaning they must closely adhere to its rulings on all matters and reject foreign involvement.
Strict anti-COVID-19 social distancing and quarantine rules have also seen religious services disrupted for the better part of four years since the virus was first detected in the central Chinese city of Wuhan in late 2019.
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Associated Press writer Nicole Winfield in Rome contributed to this report.
ROME — Pope Francis on Tuesday ousted the management of the Vatican’s international charitable organization Caritas Internationalis and appointed temporary leadership after an external review found management and morale problems at its head office.
A Vatican statement said the review found no evidence of financial mismanagement or sexual impropriety. But it said other issues did emerge, with “real deficiencies” found in management, “seriously prejudicing team spirit and staff morale.”
Ousted was the secretary general of Caritas Internationalis, Aloysius John, who was elected in a contested vote in 2019, as well as the leadership and governance team. The changes do not affect the leadership of any of the 162 national development and relief organizations that make up the Caritas global confederation.
Caritas Internationalis is one of the Holy See’s main charity organizations and acts as the global umbrella for national and regional federations that operate in more than 200 countries. The Rome-based secretariat reported income of some 5.1 million euros ($5.2 million) in 2020 and expenditures of 4.4 million euros, according to the annual statement.
John, an Indian native, had been brought into the Caritas Internationalis’ management structure as head of development in 2013 by its previous secretary general, Michele Roy, from the French Caritas federation, known as Secours Catholique. When Roy’s term ended, John ran for the position of secretary general and won after other initial candidates dropped out, and after initially failing to win a majority of votes.
A former Caritas employee who cooperated with the external reviewers said he recounted instances of bullying and incompetence under John, especially in the handling of the fallout of a sex abuse scandal in the Caritas’ operations in Central African Republic. The former employee spoke on condition of anonymity, citing a fear of retaliation.
In late 2019, in response to a CNN investigation, Roy admitted he had learned in 2017 of pedophilia concerns about the director of the Bangui Caritas operations, but left it to the priest’s immediate superiors to investigate. They did not, and CNN identified at least two child victims while the priest was in the country.
John didn’t respond to an email seeking comment.
Francis named as temporary administrator of Caritas Internationalis Pier Francesco Pinelli, an organizational consultant who had participated in the external review and will lead the organization until new elections for a secretary general are held in 2023. The current head of advocacy, Maria Amparo Alonso Escobar, stays on and Francis appointed a Jesuit priest to help with the “personal and spiritual accompaniment of the staff.”
Caritas’ current president, Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle, who heads the Vatican’s evangelization department, will remain on to work under the new temporary administrators, the statement said.
Pinelli had taken part in a 2021 evaluation of the Vatican’s development office, which resulted in a shakeup of the leadership team there and the appointment of Cardinal Michael Czerny, a top Francis ally, as prefect. Caritas Internationalis is part of the development office.
In a statement Tuesday, the development office said the review of Caritas was undertaken to asses the secretariat office’s “alignment with Catholic values of human dignity and respect for each person.”
Czerny said the changes should enable Caritas to meet the challenges of serving the “least and the suffering” but also to make sure that it does so making sure the organization “proves equal to its mission.”
PORTACOMARO, Itatly — Pope Francis returned to his father’s birthplace in northern Italy on Saturday for the first time since ascending the papacy to celebrate the 90th birthday of a second cousin who long knew him as simply “Giorgio.”
The two-day visit to Francis’ ancestral homeland to renew family ties touched on keystones of his papacy, including the importance of honoring the elderly and the human toll of migration. Francis’ private visit Saturday will be followed by public one Sunday to celebrate Mass for the local faithful, where he could well reflect on his family’s experience migrating to Argentina.
The pope’s father, Mario Jose Francisco Bergoglio, and his paternal grandparents arrived in Buenos Aires on Jan. 25, 1929 to reach other relatives at the tail end of a mass decades-long emigration from Italy that the pope has honored with two recent saints: St. Giovanni Batista Scalabrini and St. Artedime Zatti.
The future pope, Jorge Mario Bergoglio, was born nearly eight years later in Buenos Aires, after the elder Bergoglio met and married Regina Maria Sivori, whose family was also of Italian immigrant stock, hailing from the Liguria region. Francis grew up speaking the Piedmont dialect of his paternal grandmother Rosa, who cared for him most days.
The elder Bergoglio was born in the town of Portacomaro, 10 kilometers (6 miles) east of Asti, an agricultural town that lost population not only to emigration abroad but also to nearby Turin as it became an industrial center.
Today, the town has 2,000 residents, but it numbered more than 2,700 a century ago, and dropped as low as 1,680 in the 1980s.
The pope’s family emigrated after the peak, which saw 14 million Italians leave from 1876 to 1915 — a movement that made Italy the biggest voluntary diaspora in the world, according to Lauren Braun-Strumfels, an associate professor of history at Cedar Crest College in Allentown, Pennsylvania.
Often citing his own family story, Francis, now 85, has made the welcoming and integration of migrants a hallmark of his papacy, often facing criticism as Europe in general, and Italy in particular, are consumed with the debate over how to manage mass migration.
The pope has recognized the historic significance of the emigrant experience with the recent canonizations of St. Giovanni Battista Scalabrini, an Italian bishop who founded an order to help Italian emigrants at the end of the 19th century, and Artemide Zatti, an Italian who emigrated to Argentina in the same period and dedicated his work to helping the sick.
He used the occasion to again denounce Europe’s indifference toward migrants risking their lives to cross the Mediterranean Sea and what they hope will be better futures.
Francis began his visit to Portacomaro on Saturday with lunch at the home of a cousin, Carla Rabezzana. Photographs released by the Vatican showed Francis clearly enjoying himself, hugging Rabezzana and sitting at the head of the table.
“We have known each other forever,’’ Rabezzana told the Corriere della Sera newspaper in the runup to the visit. “When I lived in Turin, Giorgio — I always called him that — came to stay because I had an extra room. That is how we maintained our relationship.
“We always would joke. When he told me he would come to celebrate my 90th birthday, I said it made my heart race. And in response I was told: ‘Try not to die.’ We burst out laughing.’’
The pope has many more third and fourth cousins still in the area.
“It was a large family, and in the area there are still many distant cousins,’’ said Carlo Cerrato a former mayor of Portacomoro. He said it was a “big surprise” for everyone in the town when Francis was elected pope nearly a decade ago.
“Everyone knew there was a prelate who had become the cardinal of Buenos Aires, but it was something that the relatives knew, not everyone in town,’’ Cerrato said.
After nearly 10 years as pope, Francis has yet to return to his own birthplace in Argentina . He hasn’t really explained his reasons for staying away. He recently confirmed that if he were to resign as pope, he wouldn’t go back to Buenos Aires to live but would remain in Rome.
ABOARD THE PAPAL PLANE — Pope Francis called female genital mutilation a “crime” on Sunday and said the fight for women’s rights, equality and opportunity must continue for the good of society.
“How is it that today in the world we cannot stop the tragedy of infibulation of young girls?” he asked, referring to the ritual cutting of a girls’ external genitalia. “This is terrible that today there is a practice that humanity isn’t able to stop. It’s a crime. It’s a criminal act!”
Francis was responding to a question about women’s right en route home from Bahrain. He was asked whether he supported the protests in Iran sparked by the death in custody of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, who was detained by morality police after allegedly violating the country’s strict dress code for women.
Francis didn’t directly respond, but gave a lengthy denunciation of how women in many cultures around the world are treated as second-class citizens or worse and said: “We have to continue to fight this because women are a gift.”
“God … created two equals: man and woman,” the pope said.
Francis has done more than any pope to give more decision-making roles to women in the church. He has appointed several women to key governing positions, including the No. 2 in the Vatican City State administration as well as several other high-ranking management roles. He has also named women — laywomen and religious sisters — as consultors to Vatican offices dominated by male clergy, including the one that chooses bishops.
“I have seen in the Vatican, that whenever a woman enters to work, things improve,” he said.
He said society would do well to follow suit, noting that his native Argentina remains a “macho” culture, but that such attitudes “kill” humanity.
“A society that cancels women from public life is a society that grows poor,” he said.
Francis was also asked about new cases of clergy sex abuse and cover-up that have emerged in the French church, with evidence that a bishop was allowed to quietly retire in 2021 despite having been found guilty by a church investigation of having spiritually abused two young men by making them strip during confession. More victims have reportedly come forward since the scandal was first reported.
Francis didn’t reply when asked if such church sanctions should be made public going forward. But he insisted that the church was on the right path, even reviewing bad past canonical investigations and redoing them. He said the church was committed to not hiding abuse even if there are still some in the church “who still don’t see clearly, who don’t share” the need for justice.
“It’s a process we’re doing with courage, and not all of us have courage,” he said. “Sometimes there’s the temptation of making compromises — we are enslaved by our sins.”
But he said the goal was toward further clarity, noting that he had recently received two reports from victims lamenting their abuse and how their cases had been “covered up and then not adjudicated well by the church,”
“I immediately said ‘Study this again, do a new judgment.’ So we’re now revising old judgments that weren’t well done,” he said. “We do what we can. We’re all sinners.”
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Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.
ABOARD THE PAPAL PLANE — Pope Francis appealed Sunday for Lebanon’s politicians to put their personal interests aside and agree on a path to help the country emerge from years of economic meltdown and a new political vacuum.
“Lebanon now is suffering,” Francis said when asked en route home from Bahrain if he might visit the country, which he had been considering earlier this year but had to postpone.
Francis didn’t respond directly but said he was greatly “pained” by the country’s descent into chaos and begged for prayers and for the international community to help Lebanon.
“I take this opportunity to appeal to Lebanese politicians to put your personal interests aside and speak about the country and come to an agreement,” he said. “First God, then country, then personal interests.”
Lebanese President Michel Aoun’s term ended at the end of October without a replacement, leaving Lebanon in a political vacuum that is likely to worsen its historic economic crisis.
Many fear that an extended delay in choosing a successor could further delay attempts to finalize a deal with the International Monetary Fund that would provide Lebanon with $3 billion in assistance, widely seen as a key step to help the country climb out of a three-year financial crisis that has left three quarters of the population in poverty.
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Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.
MANAMA, Bahrain — Thousands of Christians from around the Gulf packed Bahrain’s sports stadium on Saturday for Pope Francis’ big Mass, as he shifted the attention of his four-day visit to ministering to the Catholic community in the overwhelmingly Muslim region.
Pilgrims wearing identical white caps to shade them from the morning sun waved the yellow and white flags of the Holy See as Francis looped around the Bahrain National Stadium in his popemobile before Mass. A big cheer erupted when he kissed a young girl in a bubble-gum pink dress who was brought to the vehicle.
According to the Vatican, local organizers estimated some 30,000 people attended the service. Organizers had said that passes to the event were snapped up within two days of them becoming available, with pilgrims coming from Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries.
“This is actually a very huge honor,” said Bijoy Joseph, an Indian living in Saudi Arabia who attended. “This is like a blessing for us to be part of our Holy Father’s papal Mass in Bahrain.”
Francis is on the first-ever papal visit to the island kingdom the size of New York City that lies off the coast of Saudi Arabia. The primary aim was to participate in a government-sponsored interfaith conference to promote Catholic-Muslim dialogue. But for the final two days, he is focusing on ministering to the Catholic community, a minority in the country of around 1.5 million.
Most are workers from South Asia, many of whom have left behind their families to work in Bahrain’s construction, oil extraction and domestic service industries.
Sebastian Fernandez, an Indian living in Bahrain, said he was blessed to be able to attend. “It will be a fruitful Mass and we are happy to see our pope,” he said.
After the Mass, Francis was meeting with young people at the Sacred Heart school, which dates from the 1940s and is affiliated with the church of the same name that was the first Catholic Church built in the Gulf. Francis wraps up his visit Sunday meeting with priests and nuns at the church.
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Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.
Russian President Vladimir Putin will hold a meeting of his national security council on Monday, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told Russian state-owned news agency TASS on Sunday, following a fiery explosion on a strategic Crimean bridge on Saturday.
Although Peskov declined to say whether they would discuss the explosion on the Kerch Bridge connecting Russian-occupied Crimea to Russia, the blast that partially destroyed Putin’s pet infrastructure project — which is key to supply Russia’s military fighting in Ukraine — is bound to be on the security council’s agenda.
Over the past weeks, the Kremlin has been making thinly veiled threats to use its nuclear arsenal against Ukraine as Kyiv regains territory Russia has occupied in its invasion of the country.
The latest Russian official to sabre-rattle was Col. Gen. Andrey Kartapolov, who heads the defense committee of the State Duma.
“There will be an answer” that “all [Ukrainians] will feel” from the Russian side if Ukraine is found to be responsible for the blast that blew damaged the Kerch Bridge, Kartapolov told Russian news outlet Vedomosti on Sunday. “What the answer will be, we will find out. Our President and Supreme Commander-in-Chief never does what ‘partners’ expect from him. He does what is not expected of him,” Kartapolov said.
The Ukrainian government so far hasn’t been commenting about the origins of the apparent bombing. The country’s security service posted a cryptic message on Telegram Saturday after the blast, which reads: “Dawn, The bridge is well ablaze; Nightingale in Crimea, The SBU [Ukrainian security service] meets,” with a picture of the damaged bridge.
Russia opened an investigation into the explosion, and Russia’s Foreign Ministry is pointing the finger at Ukraine. “The reaction of the Kyiv regime to the destruction of civilian infrastructure testifies to its terrorist nature,” ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said, according to Russian news outlet Kommersant.
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov declined to say whether they would discuss the explosion on the Kerch Bridge connecting Russian-occupied Crimea to Russia | AFP via Getty Images
Fear is mounting that Russia might resort to a nuclear response. Pope Francis on Sunday said that “we should not forget the danger of nuclear war,” asking “Why don’t we learn from history?”
Meanwhile, Ukraine’s Defense Ministry said the Russian army killed some 17 civilians in the Ukrainian area of Zaporizhzhia on Sunday.
“A missile attack on the civilian population of Zaporizhzhia destroyed residential houses, where people slept at night, lived, didn’t attack anyone,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said.
VATICAN CITY — Pope Francis on Sunday denounced Europe’s indifference toward migrants risking their lives to cross the Mediterranean Sea as he elevated to sainthood an Italian bishop and Italian-born missionary whose work and life paths illustrated the difficulties faced by 19th Century Italian emigrants.
Francis departed from prepared remarks to slam Europe’s treatment of migrants as “disgusting, sinful and criminal.” He noted that people from outside the continent are often left to die during perilous sea crossings or pushed back to Libya, where they wind up in camps he referred to as “lager,” the German word referring to Nazi concentration camps.
He also recalled the plight of Ukrainians fleeing war, which he said “causes us great suffering.”
“ The exclusion of migrants is scandalous,’’ Francis said, generating applause from the faithful gathered in St. Peter’s Square for the canonizations of Don Giovanni Battista Scalabrini, an Italian bishop who founded an order to help Italian emigrants in 1887, and Artedime Zatti, an Italian who emigrated in 1897 to Argentina and dedicated his life as a lay-worker there to helping the sick.
“Indeed, the situation of migrants is criminal. They are left to die in front of us, making the Mediterranean the largest cemetery in the world. The situation of migrants is disgusting, sinful, criminal. Not to open the doors to those who are in need. No, we exclude them, we send them away to lager, where they are exploited and sold as slaves.”
He urged the faithful to consider the treatment of migrants, asking: ‘’Do we welcome them as brothers, or do we exploit them?”
The pontiff said the two new saints “remind us of the importance or walking together.”
Francis said Scalabrani showed “great vision,’’ by looking forward “to a world and a Church without barriers, where no one was a foreigner.” And the pontiff called Zatti “a living example of gratitude” who devoted his life to serving others after being cured of tuberculosis.
Scalabrini founded the Missionaries of Saint Charles Borromeo, known as the Scalabrian Fathers, and the Missionary Sisters of Saint Charles Borromeo Scalabrians, to minister to the many Italians who left their homeland due to what he wrote were the combined effects of an agricultural crisis, social change, a poorly managed economy, exorbitant taxation and “the natural desire to improve one’s condition.”
Disturbed by statistics on Italian emigration that swelled to 84,000 in 1884 alone, Scalabrini wrote that the mass emigration and separation of families would “help strew white the lands of America with their bones.”
He died in 1905 in Piacenza, where he was bishop, and was beatified in 1997 by St. John Paul II. Pope Francis dispensed with the canonization requirement of Scalabrini having a miracle attributed to him after his beatification.
The order he founded currently operates 176 missions around the world, including 27 migrant shelters and 20 schools and centers for children.
Francis, himself the son of Italian immigrants to Argentina, has recalled being inspired by Zatti’s life while he was Jesuit provincial superior in Argentina, saying the number of men entering the Catholic order increased after he prayed for the late bishop’s intercession.
Zatti was one of eight children born to a farming couple in northern Italy that emigrated to Argentina in 1897 when he was a teenager.
After entering the Salesian order at age 20, Zatti fell ill with tuberculosis and was sent to a Salesian-run hospital in northern Patagonia to be treated. He made a vow to serve the sick and poor for the rest of his life, if he recovered. Zatti went on to work in the same hospital for 40 years, working as a nurse, in the pharmacy, and later as an administrator.
His fame for treating the ill attracted the sick from all over Patagonia. Zatti was known to travel the city of Viedma with his bicycle with a medical case to help the sick. The pontiff on Sunday also recalled an occasion when Zatti was seen removing a dead patient on his own shoulders from the hospital, to prevent the sick from seeing the body.
Zatti died in 1951, and was beatified in 2002. Paving the way for canonization, Francis signed the decree recognizing Zatti’s intercession in the healing of a man in the Philippines who had suffered a brain bleed.
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Barry reported from Milan. Francesco Sportelli in Rome and Gianfranco Stara in Vatican City contributed.
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Follow AP’s coverage of global migration at https://apnews.com/hub/migration
