The Second Vatican Council was “not only meaningful, but necessary,” retired Pope Benedict XVI said in a letter to a conference about his theological work at the Franciscan University of Steubenville.
A theological understanding of the world’s different religions, the relationship between faith and reason and, especially, the nature and mission of the church in the modern world were challenges the Catholic Church needed to face, the retired pope wrote in the message read Oct. 20.
The Vatican-based Joseph Ratzinger-Benedict XVI Foundation sponsored the conference Oct. 20-21 on “Joseph Ratzinger’s Vision of the Church and Its Relevance for Contemporary Challenges.”
In his letter to conference participants, the retired pope said he hoped their discussions and an understanding of his theological work before, during and after Vatican II would “be helpful in the struggle for a right understanding of the church and the world in our time.”
As a priest and theologian, Father Ratzinger attended all four sessions of the council as a theological adviser — a “peritus” — to the archbishop of Cologne, Germany.
St. John XXIII’s decision to call the council, he said in the letter, was a surprise to everyone and many people initially thought it would “unsettle and shake the church more than to give her a new clarity for her mission.”
But “the need to reformulate the question of the nature and mission of the church has gradually become apparent. In this way, the positive power of the council is also slowly emerging,” he wrote.

Cardinal Angelo Becciu off-ered to personally reimburse the Holy See for funds paid to Cecelia Marogna, the Vatican City court heard on  October 13.
In testimony from the card-inal, and from a senior Vatican police officer, judges in the Va-tican’s sprawling financial crimes trial heard that Becciu made the offer after he was informed Inter-pol had flagged payments to Mar-gona, the self-styled international security consultant and private spy, which had been authorized by the cardinal.
According to Stefano De Santis, a senior officer in the Va-tican City’s corps of gendarmes, he and Vatican police chief Gian-luca Broccoletti visited Becciu at his Vatican apartments in early October of 2020, at the cardinal’s request, to update him on their findings regarding Marogna.
De Santis told the court that he and Broccoletti informed the cardinal that Interpol had flagged a series of payments totalling some 575,000 euros to Marog-na’s Slovenian-registered comp-any, which had been spent prima-rily on luxury goods and hotels.
According to the police inve-stigator, Becciu offered to repay the funds from his personal account at the IOR, a Vatican bank, and asked them to keep the matter confidential because it would cause “serious harm” to the cardinal and his family.
Marogna, who is charged with embezzlement during the current Vatican trial, has not presented herself in court and successfully fought against extra-dition to the Vatican in 2021.

Cardinal George Pell is warning of catastrophic consequences for the Catholic Church if Pope Francis does not correct “serious heresies” being promoted by the German Synodal Way.
“The synodal process has begun disastrously in Germany,” the Australian prelate laments, “and matters will become worse unless we soon have effective papal corrections on, for instance, Christian sexual morality, women priests, etc.”
The former archbishop of Melbourne and Sydney, who was imprisoned on trumped-up charges of sexual abuse and later acquitted, underscores the words of “some faithful German Catholics [who] are already talking, not of the synodal way but the suicidal way.”
Referring to Pope Francis’ invitation to lapsed Catholics, Protestants and even atheists to participate in the Synod on Synodality, Pell insists that “every synod has to be a Catholic synod, bound by the apostolic Tradition, just as Councils are so bound.”
“There can be no pluralism of important doctrines of faith or morals,” Pell categorically states. “Our unity is not like that of a loose Anglican federation or that of the many national Orthodox Churches.”
“Serious heresies” in the synodal process are “undermining and damaging the unity of the One, True Church,” in a manner contrary to “Gaudium et Spes’ call for engagement with the modern world in ‘the light of the Gospel,’” he observes.

Priests and bishops in the United States report overwhelmingly that they are “flou-rishing” in ministry, despite pressures caused by two decades of clerical abuse scandals and Church responses.
But while U.S. priests report high levels of personal well-being, they also have a widespread lack of confidence and trust in their bishops, according to a study releas-ed Wednesday by The Catholic University of America in Washington, DC.
Priests reported that they are less likely to seek personal support from their bishop than they are from any other source, and said they believe bishops regard priests as “liabilities” and “expendable.”
Bishops have had mixed initial reactions to the survey’s findings.
One bishop told The Pillar he is grateful for the report, and praised the work of priests in American dioceses.
Another called the survey results an “examination of conscience” for bishops.
The survey report, “Well-being, Trust, and Policy in a Time of Crisis: Highlights from the National Study of Catholic Priests,” was published October 19 by The Catholic University of America’s department of so-ciology, in conjunction with The Catholic Project, a university institute founded to facilitate collaboration between the Church’s hierarchy and laity, in the wake of the McCarrick sexual abuse scandal.
The survey compiled data from 3,500 priests across 191 U.S. dioceses, and survey-ed bishops, achieving a 67 percent response rate among the American episcopate.
Despite declining numbers of practicing Catholics, diocesan plans to consolidate parishes, and fewer numbers of priests in active ministry, the survey found that the vast majority of American priests say they are “flourishing.”
Participants were asked a series of questions aimed at assessing their personal well-being according to the Harvard Flou-rishing Index, which measures life satis-faction, mental and physical health, sense of purpose, and quality of relationships.
Across the survey results, more than three-quarters of respondents reported themselves to be flourishing.

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.