Amid the welter of commentary, spin and shock at the few paragraphs Pope Benedict XVI spoke about condoms in his book-length interview, Light of the World: The Pope, the Church, and the Signs of the Times, one very telling paragraph in the Vatican's follow-up clarification has received little notice. But it says a great deal.
VATICAN CITY -- Pope Benedict XVI's statement on condoms -- that in some circumstances using a condom to prevent the spread of HIV-AIDS could be a step toward moral responsibility -- is not likely to have a huge impact on Catholic programs for the prevention and treatment of AIDS, two experts said.
Msgr. Robert Vitillo, special representative on HIV-AIDS for Caritas Internationalis, said the pope's statement is likely to have a greater impact in pastoral counseling than on the hundreds of prevention and treatment programs offered by the Catholic Church and Catholic agencies throughout the world.
In the book, "Light of the World: The Pope, the Church and the Signs of the Times," which the Vatican newspaper excerpted Nov. 20, Pope Benedict repeated what he said during a trip to Africa last year, that "we cannot solve the problem (of AIDS) by distributing condoms."
Spain is famously a land of great and contradictory passions, and certainly that’s true of its love/hate relationship with Catholicism in the early 21st century.
Under Socialist Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, Spain has become the mother ship of European secularism, embracing fast-track divorce, legalized abortion, and gay marriage. The country is officially 94 percent Catholic, yet only 76 percent of Spaniards identify as such, and only 15 percent attend Mass regularly.
ROME -- The color was red, the occasion was festive and political issues were momentarily set aside.
Miguel Diaz, the U.S. ambassador to the Vatican, hosted two new U.S. cardinals and other leading Americans at a reception at his residence in Rome. The crowded event Nov. 19 came on the eve of the consistory when Pope Benedict handed red hats to Cardinal Raymond L. Burke, Cardinal Donald W. Wuerl and 22 others from around the world.
VATICAN CITY -- The Catholic archbishops of New York and Boston will meet personally with victims of abusive priests as part of a Vatican investigation of the Catholic Church in Ireland, the Vatican announced Nov. 12.
Pope Benedict XVI called for the investigation, called an Apostolic Visitation, last March in an open letter to Irish Catholics that addressed a growing scandal over clerical sex abuse of children.
Since 2003, four government-sponsored investigations have revealed widespread child abuse over a period of decades by Irish Catholic clergy. The revelations have led to the resignations of three bishops.
The five-month visitation aims to assess the church’s effectiveness in responding to abuse cases, assisting victims and protecting children under the church’s care, the Vatican said. It will not investigate or make judgments on particular cases of abuse.
The Vatican statement noted the responsibility of Irish church authorities to investigate abuse charges, and to “inform the competent civil and ecclesiastical authorities, in conformity with the current civil and ecclesiastical laws.”
VATICAN CITY -- Pope Benedict XVI denounced abortion, same-sex marriage and the absence of religion in public life during a Nov. 6-7 visit to Spain, a country he called the “focal point” of tensions between faith and secularism in Europe.
“The generous and indissoluble love of a man and a woman is the effective context and foundation of human life in its gestation, birth, growth and natural end,” Benedict said on Nov. 7, in a sermon at the Sagrada Familia (Holy Family) Basilica in Barcelona.
On his way to consecrate the 128-year-old (and still unfinished) church—the iconic masterpiece of modernist architect Antoni Gaudi—Benedict passed an estimated 200 demonstrators staging a same-sex “kiss-in” to protest Catholic Church teaching on homosexuality.
Church leaders have clashed with the Socialist government of Spain’s Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero over its legalization of same-sex marriage and support for liberal laws on abortion and divorce.
Later on Sunday, Benedict visited a home for disabled children and youth in Barcelona run by Franciscan nuns.
VATICAN CITY -- Five Anglican bishops have decided to join the Catholic Church and step down from their current positions with the Church of England, a Vatican spokesman said.
Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi, director of the Vatican press office, confirmed to reporters a statement issued Nov. 8 by the Catholic Bishops' Conference of England and Wales welcoming the five bishops.
Father Lombardi said that a "constitution" that would govern the entry of former bishops of the Anglican Communion was being studied.
VATICAN CITY -- Gary Bergeron and Paola Leerschool, who had hoped to observe a moment of silence in St. Peter's Square with a large group of sex abuse survivors and their supporters, ended up walking to the Vatican alone, leaving letters for Pope Benedict XVI and leaving a small pile of stones to show survivors they had been there.
"The journey of a survivor is one step at a time. This is one step," said Bergeron, a native of Massachusetts and one of the numerous youngsters abused in the 1960s and 1970s by then-Father Joseph Birmingham, who once served as a priest in the Boston Archdiocese and since has been laicized.
Even though Italian military police prevented the whole group of about 100 people -- sex abuse survivors and their supporters -- from walking together to St. Peter's Square Oct. 31, Bergeron said the event "was very powerful for many of the survivors and, to me, that's a success."
Bernie McDaid, who also was abused by Birmingham, told the survivors, "My anger, your anger, our anger is justified."
VATICAN CITY -- Bishops must guide their faithful to use their vote to oppose efforts to legalize abortion and euthanasia, Pope Benedict XVI told bishops from Brazil.
"Dear brother bishops, to defend life we must not fear hostility or unpopularity, and we must refuse any compromise or ambiguity which might conform us to the world's way of thinking," the pope said Oct. 28 during a meeting with bishops from northeast Brazil.
The bishops were making their "ad limina" visits to report on the status of their dioceses.
Pope Benedict did not mention the fact that Brazilians were to vote Oct. 31 in a presidential election, but said he wanted to discuss with the bishops their obligation to give their faithful the information and moral guidance they need to ensure their political decisions contribute to the true good of humanity.
Both of Brazil's presidential candidates, Dilma Rousseff and Jose Serra, have said they oppose lifting restrictions on abortion, but Brazil's anti-abortion laws still have been a recurrent theme in the campaign.
VATICAN CITY -- The Vatican hopes the death penalty will not be carried out against former Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz, 74, said the Vatican spokesman.
"The position of the Catholic Church on the death penalty is known," the spokesman, Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi, said Oct. 26, the day the Iraqi high court sentenced Aziz to death by hanging.
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