Tony Flannery

Thanks, Brendan, for this, and for your consistent support since the beginning.

Before Angelo Roncalli was elected as Pope John XXIII in 1958, he served in the Vatican diplomatic corps, first as nuncio to Bulgaria, an unpromising appointment during which he was often lonely and discouraged. After Bulgaria, to his greatdisappointment he was moved sideways to Turkey and he often wondered why.

Later, as pope he called into the offices of the Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) and found written on his file the words: ‘Roncalli, suspected of modernism’.

This morning, Sunday, I attended an anniversary Mass of a person I had known. Yesterday evening I had been reading an article about the Synodal Process, and had been, as always with me, attracted by the theme of the Warsaw gathering, that lovely phrase from Isaiah, “Enlarge the space of your tent’, and I have been encouraged by the efforts of Francis to do that.

The priest who celebrated the Mass had a different tune.

Commenting on the practices of the CDF:

‘The proceedings of the CDF were frequently criticised, not least by the subjects of its investigation, for having failed to observe the norms of natural justice. These require that hearings must be fair and impartial, that an accused must be heard, that an accuser should not also be a judge, there should be a right of appeal to a higher tribunal, and justice must not only be done but seen to be done.