On Dec. 21 evening, Pope Francis visited the Pope emeritus in order to exchange Christmas greetings. As he has done every year since his election, Pope Francis on December 21 made the short journey to the Mater Ecclesiae Monastery, for a Christmas visit with his predecessor, Pope emeritus Benedict XVI. Pope Francis has visited the Monastery several times over the course of the past year. Most recently, in October, he called on the Pope emeritus on the eve of the canonization of Paul VI. Before that, the Holy Father made a surprise visit with the fourteen new Cardinals he had created in the Consistory of June this year.

One of the proposals made at last month’s meeting of U.S. Catholic bishops for investigating future allegations of misconduct by prelates appears likely to receive Vatican approval, according to several eminent canon lawyers and theologians. Celebration, NCR’s sister publication, will publish a new reflection each day during Advent.

The suggestion to empower the nation’s metropolitan archbishops to examine accusations made against bishops in their regions of the country corresponds both with the way the church handled such issues in earlier centuries and the current Code of Canon Law, they say.

Nicholas Cafardi, a respected civil and canon lawyer, noted that the current version of the code already says the Vatican can give archbishops “special functions and power” in their regions “where circumstances demand it.” “This function could be to receive and investigate accusations of sexual impropriety … and then to report to the Holy See on the results,” said Cafardi, who has advised bishops and dioceses on canonical issues for decades.

Richard Gaillardetz, a theologian who has written several books on the practice of authority in Catholicism, said simply: “It’s just good ecclesiology.” “It wouldn’t be too hard to envision the Holy See granting metropolitans special functions, and I could imagine that being done,” he said.

In the Catholic Church, metropolitan archbishops are those who are tasked with both leading an archdiocese and presiding over the bishops in their wider ecclesiastical province. While their role in their provinces has been largely honorific in recent centuries, it was much more expanded in the earlier church.

“It would be an interesting move,” Jesuit Fr Steven Schoenig, a historian who has focused his research on the role of archbishops in the Middle Ages, said of the proposal. “It would kind of restore things to an earlier stage in the church’s history.”

The possibility of empowering arch-bishops to investigate allegations made in their provinces was raised at the annual meeting of the bishops’ conference in November, when the prelates were considering a number of proposals to respond to this year’s spate of revelations of clergy sexual abuse.

Pope Francis has wanted the creation of a single service dedicated to the Catholic Charismatic Renewal organizations since 2015 — a vision that is now becoming a reality thanks to the creation of CHARIS (Catholic Charismatic Renewal International Service), which will be officially instituted on Dec. 8.

This new body within the Dicastery for Laity, Family and Life will replace the two existing services known as the International Catholic Charismatic Renewal Service and the Catholic Fraternity.

For the 50th anniversary of the Catholic Charismatic Movement in June 2017, Pope Francis already asked the two bodies to join together to organize the celebration at the Circus Maximus in Rome. On this occasion, the Pope quoted the late Belgian Cardinal Leo Suenens, the strong-est episcopal promoter of the movement in its early days, who called it “a current of grace, a renewing breath of the Spirit for all the members of the Church.”

The international service will be made of 18 members, as well as a moderator and an ecclesiastical assistant — Capuchin Father Raniero Cantalamessa, preacher to the Papal Household and a long-time supporter of the charismatic movement. The service’s officials will fully assume their functions from June 9, 2019, the Solemnity of Pentecost.

The International Organisation for Migration (IOM), the UN-backed inter-governmental agency, has said that some 2,133 people seeking asylum have been killed or gone missing this year while trying to reach Europe by sea. The organisation said that in the period to 28 November, some 107,583 migrants and refugees had entered Europe by sea this year – the fifth successive year in which the arrival of irregular migrants and refugees had topped 100,000; but down on the figures by the same date in both 2017 and 2016 for the same period.

The Mediterranean Sea crossings from North Africa and the Middle East to Europe account for two thirds of the total number of migrants and asylum seekers killed or missing across the road this year – some 3,341 people. But the IOM warn that comparisons are hindered by incomplete data gathering in some regions. This year’s figure for the number killed or missing in the Mediterranean is considerably less than last year’s total of 3,113.