Bread and circuses during the Year of Mercy? No, grazie!
Robert Mickens
The man Pope Francis put in charge of coordinating events for the Extraordinary Holy Year of Mercy — Archbishop Rino Fisichella — has announced that the fledgling Jubilee of Mercy is already off to a roaring success.
The archbishop, whose day job is heading the Pontifical Council for the New Evangelization, told journalists at a press conference on Jan.
‘Pope Benedict was a teaching Pope, a theologian and intellectual’ a Vatican insider told BBC’s Mark Dowd. ‘His misfortune was to accede to the papacy at a time that there was a power vacuum, in which a number of middle-ranking members of the Roman Curia had turned into “little Borgias” as another clerical official put it’, reported Dowd. Pope Francis would himself refer to the Curia as the “leprosy of the papacy”, filled with clerics who were both narcissistic and self-referential.
A delegation from the Association of Catholics in Ireland (ACI) on 26 November 2015 met with Archbishop Eamon Martin in Armagh. They asked him if he could give some support to the Irish priests who have been silenced. Archbishop Eamon Martin replied it was a matter for the Heads of the relevant Religious Orders and the Vatican CDF. The ACI delegation also asked if the bishops were meeting with the ACP and Archbishop Eamon replied that he meets with ACP members very regularly.
