Major Vatican conference on priesthood slated for 2022
Increasing vocations to the priesthood, improving the way laypeople and priests work together and ensuring that service, not power, motivates the request for ordination are all possible outcomes of a major symposium being planned by the Vatican in February 2022.
“A theological symposium does not claim to offer practical solutions to all the pastoral and missionary problems of the Church, but it can help us deepen the foundation of the Church’s mission,” said Cardinal Marc Ouellet, prefect of the Congregation for Bishops and the chief organiser of the symposium planned for February 17-19, 2022.
The symposium, “Toward a Fundamental Theology of the Priesthood”, seeks to encourage an understanding of ministerial priesthood that is rooted in the priesthood of all believers conferred at baptism, getting away from the idea of ordained ministry as belonging to “ecclesiastical power”, the cardinal said at a news conference April 12.
The three-day gathering, the cardinal said, is aimed specifically at bishops and delegations of theologians and vocations personnel from every country, although it will be open to other theologians and people interested in the topic.
Vatican’s saints office says it didn’t ask for money for beatification
The Vatican’s Congregation for the Causes of the Saints has denied an accusation that an official asked for money to advance the beatification cause of an Italian statesman.
“What was said is not true,” Fr Bogusław Turek, undersecretary of the saints congregation, wrote in an April 9 letter to the journalists of an Italian investigative news program which aired April 12.
In the episode, a postulator, whose work is to guide a diocese through the canonisation process in Rome, accused the undersecretary of asking him for a bribe in June 2018 to advance the beatification cause of former Italian Prime Minister Aldo Moro.
“I have never been concerned with, nor dealt with, Aldo Moro’s cause because it has not yet been presented in the Dicastery,” Fr Turek said in the letter shared by the Vatican’s press office April 13.
The Congregation said it had received notice in April 2018 that the promoters of Moro’s cause had revoked the mandate of postulator Nicola Giampaolo.
“The alleged financial request could not have been made to Mr Giampaolo in June 2018… as he was no longer a postulator,” the saints office stated.
Faith is bolstered by prayer, not power, Pope says
Without prayer, everything crumbles and any initiatives for Church reform will just be proposals by some group and not the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, Pope Francis said.
“Everything in the Church originates in prayer and everything grows thanks to prayer,” the Pope said April 14 during his weekly general audience.
If there is no prayer, the Church becomes “like an empty shell” that has lost its bearings and “no longer possesses its source of warmth and love”, he said, and it ends up being made up of groups of “entrepreneurs of faith” that are well organised and busy with charitable activities but lack faith.
Continuing his series of talks on prayer, the Pope reflected on the role of the Church as a school of faith and prayer.
“The breath of faith is prayer,” the Pope said. “We grow in faith inasmuch as we learn to pray,” and over time, especially after crises or difficult periods in life, “we become aware that without faith, we could not have made it through and that our strength was prayer”.