The resignation of Mgr Dario Viganò, the head of the Secretariat for Communications, has revealed tensions within the Vatican over Pope Francis’s reforms.
In a controversy that was quickly dubbed “Lettergate”, Mgr Viganò had selectively quoted a letter from Benedict XVI. The Pope Emeritus wrote a response after Mgr Viganò asked for an endorsement of a new series of books on Pope Francis’s theology.
Benedict’s letter was marked “confidential”, according to the journalist Andrea Tornielli of La Stampa. It is not known whether Mgr Viganò sought Benedict’s permission before publishing parts of the letter.
But his decision to release an edited text – and of his staff to blur a photograph of the letter – led to him losing his position. It emerged that Benedict had refused to write an endorsement, and had criticised the choice of authors. The refusal, though mentioned at the press conference, was omitted from the material given to journalists; the criticism wasn’t mentioned at all.
In his resignation letter, the official, who was appointed to lead the Secretariat for Communications in 2015, said his work had caused “much controversy” which “beyond my intentions, destabilises the complex and great work of reform that you have entrusted to me and which now, thanks to the contribution of many people starting from the staff, is to its final stretch”.
Mgr Viganò will still play a part in the reform process: Pope Francis has asked him to remain within the department as an “assessor”, an undefined role which will involve making a “human and professional contribution” to the media reform.
Mr Tornielli pointed out that Mgr Viganò had come into conflict with the Secretariat of State, which has its own media operation in the form of the Holy See press office. But it appears that the Secretariat of State has lost one significant battle: over the future of the Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano. The Secretariat for Communications plans to absorb the paper into the rest of the Vatican communications structure.
The move has been resisted by the newspaper’s editor, Gian Maria Vian, with the support of the Secretariat of State, according to Mr Tornielli. But Pope Francis’s letter accepting Mgr Viganò’s resignation said that the reform has “now reached its concluding stretch with the imminent merger of L’Osservatore Romano within the sole communicative system of the Holy See”.
Pope urges revival of Five Wounds of Christ devotion
Pope Francis has recommended that Catholics follow a centuries-old devotion focused on the wounds of Christ.
The devotion involves contemplating one of the five wounds of Christ and reciting an Our Father before moving to the next wound.
“When we pray that Our Father, let’s try to enter through Jesus’s wounds and arrive deeper and deeper, to His heart,” the Pope said in an Angelus address. “Enter into His wounds and contemplate the love in His heart for you, and you, and you, and me, for everyone,” the Pope told thousands of people in St Peter’s Square. At morning Mass this month he shared the advice of a spiritual director: “Look. Look at the wounds.
Enter into the wounds. By those wounds we were healed. Do you feel bitter, feel sad, feel life just isn’t going the right way and you’re also ill? Look there. In silence.”
Cindy Wooden, writing for the Catholic News Service, said that Francis had offered meditations on Jesus’s pierced hands, feet and side throughout his pontificate, but that since January his references had been so frequent that it “seems to be a major focus of his own prayer life”.
Society ‘has fallen for sex idolatry’
Society has “fallen back into full-blown paganism and full-blown idolatry of sex”, the papal preacher has said.
Fr Raniero Cantalamessa told Pope Francis and members of the Curia that modern morality emphasises how we treat others, but ignores how we treat our bodies: purity is seen as less important than justice.
“Abuses and scandals in this field, including among members of the clergy and Religious, are there to remind us of this bitter reality,” he said.
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