While I was looking around for information about blogging bishops, I came across this gem on YouTube. Justin Cardinal Rigali, Archbishop of Philadelphia, who lived in the Vatican with Pope Paul VI, John Paul I and John Paul II, tells what it was like to work with them. He has a great story about John Paul I at 3:18 (I already knew this story from a print interview with the cardinal, but never knew it was on tape). Rather fitting to put this up, for it was just a year ago today, the feast of St. Peter and Paul, if I remember right, that I began putting up my posts about John Paul I.
Not mine, unfortunately, but the one for the five recently-appointed U.S. Archbishops who received the pallium from the Holy Father at St. Peter’s Basilica today. They are: Archbishops Timothy Dolan of New York, Allen Vigneron of Detroit, Gregory Aymond of New Orleans, George Lucas of Omaha, and Robert Carlson of St. Louis.
Here is the video from Catholic TV (I finally learned how to keep it from starting automatically as soon as the page loads, which was really annoying)
Part I:
Part II
There was a kind of contest to see which group could cheer their Archbishop loudest (I believe Dolan won, but then he apparently had the largest group — around 250 New Yorkers made it to Rome with him). He receives his pallium at 17:30 minutes into Part II.
Don’t forget that the word holiday originally meant “holy day.” And that it certainly was. On the celebratory side, though, everyone involved seems to have had a good time.
Check out what Archbishop Vigneron, and his friends and family (especially his two young nephews) wrote on the archdiocesan blog about their experiences in Rome.
Rocco, as usual, has great photos, and a description of Archbishop Dolan’s impromptu sightseeing tour with the members of his diocese. He seems to have taken Rome by storm much as he has New York. But then it’s already his home turf in a way; he spent some time as rector of the North American College there.
And well, how about a little quiz? I’ll post the answers tomorrow.
1) why did the Pope and the cardinals, bishops and archbishops celebrating Mass in St. Peter’s today all wear those beautiful red vestments?
2) Who was the only bishop/archbishop of New York so far who hasn’t been Irish?
3) How many of U.S. Archbishops receiving the pallium today have blogs? (this one I won’t know myself until I look it up).
I’ve been pretty much absent from blogging lately, but that’s because I’ve been hard at work video editing. I expect I won’t be doing that much blogging for a while either, but will keep my readers in my thoughts.
Obviously the Holy See and L’Osservatore Romano have been, are and will be fully at the side of the U.S. bishops in their commitment in favor of the inviolability of human life in whatever stage of its existence.
Other interpretations have no foundation, especially those that have wanted to use the newspaper’s articles to make it appear that the teachings of the U.S. episcopate on the inherent evil of abortion were an exercise in partisan politics, supposedly in contrast with a different strategy of the Holy See.
This is welcome, but rather belated news. I’ll let the American Papist do the talking as he issues a challenge to certain Catholics who were claiming that the Vatican disagreed with the policy of the U.S. bishops of abortion.
The Catholic News Service has also noted that, although it was widely believed that Obama would meed with Benedict XVI this July, while the President is visiting Rome, no meeting with the Pope has yet been scheduled.
Some news I have to report with very deep sadness. Antonia (Nina) Luciani Petri, sister of Pope John Paul I, died on June 5, at the age of 89 in her home at San Giuliano di Levico in the province of Trento, Italy. She was the last survivor of Albino Luciani’s brothers and sisters. Her funeral was today, June 8. The condolences expressed by Fr. Federico Lombardi of the Press Room of the Holy See read:
“The last living sister of Pope John Paul I, has been reunited in her heavenly homeland with the brother to whom she was united on earth by the depth of a faith lived in an exemplary way with wisdom, simplicity and a smile.”
Antonia’s daughter Lina, who works in the Vatican Press office, asked for prayer for her mother.
I never met Signora Petri as I did her brother Edoardo, who died last year at the age of 91. But I have had a chance to read her reminiscences about her brother who became Pope – Mio fratello Albino, published by 30 Giorni, based on interviews done with that periodical over the years. Those are very vivid memories, and just reading them made me feel close to her and the family. They are also going to be very useful to me in writing my biography of John Paul I.
Antonia was the youngest child of the family. In particular, she recalled not only her brother’s fidelity to the Church and his pastoral duties as a bishop, but most particularly his sense of humor — and how, when she was a young child, and Albino a seminarian, he used to get her ready for school, and carried her on his shoulders to a nearby Marian shrine. She also recalled the days of the resistance against the Fascists and the Germans, who occupied Northern Italy during World War II, a work in which she and both her brothers were involved. I hope one day to make all this better known to English-speaking readers.
A fond farewell to a simple person who was a very important witness to history.
Here it is - it’s taken a lot of work. This one was based largely on the interviews done in our last round of celebrations in Hungary, but covers a bit of every place we shot in. This time, the interviews were almost all in English, so I made this an English-language only trailer.
This is really a rough, unfinished version; there are still a lot of problems. One of the biggest is due to the fact that Michael was unable to use his light package in Hungary — his high-powered lights blew out the fuses in the place where we were staying. So we couldn’t move around for interviews, and had to gather as many of the lamps and other lights the Manreza Center could find for us all in one place — Michael’s room. So every interview was shot in the same spot, and from almost the same angle. It can be very tiring to look at. I hope there will eventually be some way to fix all this in editing, or at least not to have so many of the interviews with the same background one after another.
On the other hand, this one uses a greater variety of images, and is faster-moving and more visually exciting than the first trailer.
There will be more edited footage as time goes on. So keep checking back.
Pausing to look at all the sights on our way to Jerusalem. . . Mainly about faith, the Church, film, writing, famous Christian authors, and anything else I'm interested in at the moment.
The photo above was taken at St. Peter's Basilica in Rome in March 2007.
Quote of the Month
"The conviction that there is a Creator God is what gave rise to the idea of human rights, the idea of the equality of all people before the law, the recognition of the inviolability of human dignity in every single person and the awareness of people’s responsibility for their actions. Our cultural memory is shaped by these rational insights. To ignore it or dismiss it as a thing of the past would be to dismember our culture totally and to rob it of its completeness. The culture of Europe arose from the encounter between Jerusalem, Athens and Rome – from the encounter between Israel’s monotheism, the philosophical reason of the Greeks and Roman law. This three-way encounter has shaped the inner identity of Europe. In the awareness of man’s responsibility before God and in the acknowledgment of the inviolable dignity of every single human person, it has established criteria of law: it is these criteria that we are called to defend at this moment in our history."
Pope Benedict XVI to the German Parliament, Sept 22, 2011.
