A top cardinal raised concerns about how his fellow prelates understand the nature of the Church and treat papal authority.
“The theory of the Pope as autocrat, borrowed from 19th century Jesuit theology, not only contradicts the Second Vatican Council, but undermines the credibility of the Church with this caricature of the Petrine ministry,” Cdl. Gerhard Müller told Spanish Catholic website InfoVaticana in September.
The German cardinal complained about views on papal authority expressed by his brother bishops during the September consistory in Rome.
“There was no opportunity to discuss the burning issues, for example, about the frontal attack on the Christian image of man by the ideologies of posthumanism and gender madness or about the crisis of the Church in Europe,” Müller lamented.
Among those neglected issues, Müller also identified shortages of priestly vocations and Mass attendees. Instead, bishops “referred to the theory of the papacy as an unlimited power of divine right over the entire Church, as if the Pope were a Deus in terris [Latin: ‘God on land’],” Müller said.
Cardinal Gianfranco Ghirlanda, the Pope’s top adviser on curial reform, represents an additional concern. Müller noted that Ghirlanda “holds the view that everything Popes have said or done in the course of Church history is either dogma or law, de jure divine [Latin: ‘of divine law’]. This contradicts the entire Catholic tradition, and especially Vatican II.”
Müller acknowledged that today’s focus in the Church is on the ecology and concerns for the planet, rather than on Jesus Christ and concern for salvation. The cardinal attributed this earthly focus to the lure of worldly power, prestige, money and pleasure dominant in today’s world. These lures have enticed many within the Church, leading them to attempt to create “a new world order with out God,” Müller said.

Cardinal Virgilio do Carmo da Silva of Dili, Timor-Leste’s first archbishop who was named a cardinal in August, is set for a baptism of fire that will test his every fibre and that of his countrymen.
A credible allegation of sexually abusing minors has been made against one of Cardinal da Silva’s predecessors — the form-er Apostolic Administrator of Dili Carlos Filipe Ximenes Belo, who has already had travel and other restrictions placed on him, and it does not surprise many in the tiny country that is only 20 years old.
Dutch news magazine De Groene Amsterdammer publish-ed on Sept. 28 an investigative report, accusing the 74-year Salesian bishop of sexually abusing underage boys in Timor Leste over a 20-year period and buying their silence.
On the following day, the Vatican responded, admitting it had known about the allegations since 2019 and placed restrictions on Bishop Belo in 2020. Yet, the Vatican did not make these allegations public and is yet to make any comment about victims. Hopefully, that will come.

Pope Francis accepted the resignation of a 59-year-old Swiss bishop on October 9 who said “inner fatigue” had made his office “unbearable” to him.
Bishop Valerio Lazzeri was in charge of the Diocese of Lugano in Switzerland since 2013.
During a press conference Monday afternoon, he said: “Sincerity and complete transparency compel me to tell you that, especially in the last two years, an inner fatigue has grown in me that has gradually deprived me of the momentum and serenity needed to lead the Church of Lugano.”
Lazzeri added: “The public aspects, the representation, the financial and administrative management, have become unbearable for me, despite the valuable presence of collaborators to whom my gratitude is due.”
Lazzeri was born July 22, 1963, and ordained a priest in 1989. Pope Francis appointed him bishop of Lugano, in the Swiss Canton of Ticino, in late 2013.
In a brief statement Monday, the Holy See press office did not elaborate on possible reasons for the resignation, which is not mandatory for bishops until their 75th birthday.

On 1st December next, Pope Francis will award the Ratzinger Prize 2022 to Professor Michel Fédou, SJ, and to Professor Joseph Halevi Horowitz Weiler during a ceremony in the Apostolic Palace’s Clementine Hall. It was launched in 2011 to recognize scholars whose work demonstrated authentic and meaningful contributions to theology, much like Pope Benedict XVI had throughout his life. In the past few years, the prize has also been given to academics, composers, artists, and writers who have made notable contributions to the world of arts related to Christianity.

Less than a month after meeting briefly with Pope Francis in Kazakhstan, one of the Russian Orthodox Church’s most senior prelates has said that relations between the two churches are more or less at a standstill.
In an interview with the “Church and Peace” program on Russian television station Russia 24, Metropolitan Anthony Sevryuk of Volokolamsk, the Russian Orthodox Church’s “foreign minister,” said that “currently relations between the Russian Orthodox Church and the Roman Catholic one, are practically fro-zen.”
“At this stage I must say that some comments we read and hear not only from the lips of the Pope, but also the great part of his aides, absolutely do not contribute to the preparation of a new meeting and our further cooperation,” he said, referring to efforts being made to organize a second meeting between Pope Francis and Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill.

The Catholic Church — which spans the divide between Francophone and Anglophone Cameroon — has suffered amid the complex crisis. Just last month, gunmen seized five priests, a nun, and three lay people at a church in Nchang, a village in Cameroon’s Southwest Region.
Pope Francis appealed for their release, but at the time of writing, they remain in captivity.
The Pillar spoke to Archbishop Nkea on Oct. 4, the feast of St. Francis of Assisi. He was visiting the English Diocese of Portsmouth, which is twinned with the Archdiocese of Bamenda.
He discussed the Church’s continued growth, his approach to kidnappers’ demands, and Cameroonian Catholicism’s distinctive features. “Christianity is being like Christ. The name “Christianity” comes from Christ, and to be Christian is to be like Christ. And therefore Christianity is this movement of people who want to become like Christ, that in every day of their lives, they make an effort to be like Jesus Christ.”
“ Our pastoral plan is for the whole ecclesiastical province of Bamenda, comprising five dioceses of what we call the Anglophone extraction of Cameroon. In this pastoral plan, we have tried to see, number one, how to consolidate our Christians in the faith and, secondly, how to guarantee a transition of the faith from one generation to another.

The Vatican auditor general said he was surprised by the lack of ethical standards demonstrated by officials considering in-vestment opportunities, including a failed London property development deal.
During the Vatican trial of 10 defendants accused of various charges related to financial malfeasance, Alessandro Cassinis Righini, auditor general of the Holy See and Vatican City State, criticized the mismanagement of funds as well as the Vatican’s association with people “with clear conflicts of interest,” which resulted in the loss of millions of euros.
“That was not the way to manage funds from Peter’s Pence,” Cassinis told the court Sept. 30, referring to the papal fund used for charity and to support the running of the Roman Curia and Vatican embassies around the world.

A new NBC News/Telemundo poll focusing on the Latino electorate found that 41% of Latinos who do not currently claim Catholicism as their religion said they had previously been Catholic.
Jonathan Calvillo, an assistant professor of Latinx studies at Emory’s Candler School of Theology, said the flip side of that statistic is just as important: the growing number of non-Catholic Latinos who were never Catholic to begin with (58%).
Some were raised Protestant, of course, but increasingly, he said, many are raised non religious.
While Calvillo said there are some who go from being Protestant to being Catholic, it’s a smaller percentage than the larger number of those who leave the Catholic Church. “But it does exist,” he said.
The poll, which consisted of interviews with 1,000 Latino registered voters, found that 48% identified as Catholic, 25% as Protestant, 1% as Muslim, 1% as Jewish and 18% said they didn’t identify with a religion.
The nationwide survey, conducted Sept. 17–26 in English and Spanish, queried respondents on a number of political issues in the run-up to the 2022 midterm elections. Overall, the survey found that while Democrats lead Republicans by more than 20 points among Latino voters, that number is down from past NBC/Telemundo over-samples of Latino voters. The lead, for example, was by 26 points in October 2020 and by 42 points eight years prior to that in October 2012, according to NBC News.
Those who stand outside of the Catholic Church, by birth on one hand or by choice on the other, likely move toward opposite poles on the political spectrum, said Calvillo, whose research has focused on how religious affiliation influences ethnic identities among Latinos.

Knights across the world are considering leaving the Catholic Church because of Pope Francis’ reforms, the former grand chancellor of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta revealed.
In a confidential letter obtained by Church Militant, Albrecht von Boeselager lamented that many confreres had expressed to him “their great dis-appointment in the Holy Father – they could no longer regard him as the father he promised to be for the order.”
Boeselager sent the letter to an elite group of knights after Pope Francis issued a September 3 decree that makes sweeping changes to the Order of Malta and undermines the ancient order’s sovereignty. The Associated Press described the papal action as tantamount to “one sovereign country annexing another, if on a very small scale.”
In his decree, the Pope order-ed the dismissal of the order’s four highest-ranking officers, including Boeselager. Invoking papal authority, Francis also dissolved the order’s Sovereign Council and established a provisional council to oversee governance.
Francis also approved a new constitutional charter and code, while appointing his own men to the highest offices and the provisional council. These actions triggered questions about the sovereignty of the institution, founded in 1048.

A Vatican cardinal cancelled a weekend visit to Germany after reportedly receiving threats re-lated to his recent remarks about the country’s “synodal way.”
Cardinal Kurt Koch was due to celebrate Mass and give a lecture on Oct. 2 in the southern German city of Schwäbisch Gmünd. He was also expected to celebrate Mass in the nearby town of Ellwangen on Oct. 3.
But local media reported that the president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity pulled out of the trip for “security reasons.”
The 72-year-old cardinal pro-voked anger in Germany when he invoked the Nazi era while criticizing the synodal way, a controversial initiative bringing together bishops and lay people to discuss hot-button issues.
Bishop Georg Bätzing, chair-man of the German bishops’ con-ference, called on Koch to apolo-gize publicly after the cardinal referred to the virulently anti-Semitic “German Christian” movement in a Sept. 29 interview with the newspaper Die Tage-spost.
He said that if the cardinal did not withdraw his remarks, he would make an “official com-plaint” to Pope Francis.
In the interview, Koch argued that the synodal way was seeking to establish “new sources” for Catholic teaching, “in addition to the sources of revelation of Scripture and Tradition.”
He added that it frightened him “that this is happening again in Germany.”