Cardinal Pell, 79, was cleared of sex abuse charges in his native Australia in April. His book “Prison Journal,” published this month, recounts his 13 months in solitary confinement in tiny cells following one of the most divisive trials in the country’s history.
In a 90-minute interview with Reuters in his Rome apartment across the street from a Vatican gate, Cardinal Pell discussed his darkest moments, how his faith kept him from falling into despair, the harm the worldwide sexual abuse scandal had done to the Church and the current state of affairs in the Vatican. “Look, it was bad, it wasn’t like a holiday, but I don’t want to exaggerate how difficult that was. But there were many dark moments,” he said, wearing a black clergyman suit with a silver cross around his neck.
Pope Francis appointed Cardinal Pell, the former archbishop of Sydney, in 2014 to head the newly-created Secretariat for the Economy and mandated him with cleaning up the Vatican’s murky finances.
Cardinal Pell ran into resistance from some Vatican officials, particularly Italian Cardinal Angelo Becciu, then deputy secretary of state who wanted Vatican departments to continue controlling their own funds.
Cardinal Becciu forced out external auditors brought in by Cardinal Pell as well as the Vatican’s first auditor general.
In September, Pope Francis fired Cardinal Becciu, accusing him of nepotism and embezzlement. Cardinal Becciu, who also has been caught up in a scandal involving the Vatican’s purchase of a luxury property in London, denies all wrongdoing. “I think we are much, much better placed than we were,” Cardinal Pell said of the state of reform of Vatican finances, including new accounting and controls.
“The great challenge that lies before the Vatican is that it’s slowly going broke. Now that’s a bit of an exaggeration (but) it’s slowly happening,” he said, adding that he was basing his comments on public information.

A mob of Muslim villagers in Egypt attacked a church and assaulted Coptic Christians in retaliation for a Facebook post published by a young Coptic man, which Muslim locals considered insulting to the Prophet Muhammad. Egyptian authorities made a number of arrests in the village of al Barsha, located in the Minya governorate, after the mob began hurling stones and Molotov cocktails at the homes of Copts while others stormed the Abu Siffin Church during a church service, the Middle East Monitor reported on November 27.
The rioters also ransacked a number of shops owned by Christians and an elderly Coptic woman was hospitalized for burns suffered in a fire after her home was torched.
Christian persecution around the globe reached an unprecedented level at the end of 2019, with over 260 million Christians facing “high levels of persecution.”
Initial reports said that police had arrested eight people but later reports said they had arrested a hundred people, including 35 Copts.
One video recording circulating on social media showed a group of people chanting: “There is no God but Allah, and Muhammad is his messenger,” as they pelted a crowd of Christians with stones.
General Osama Al Qadi, Governor of the Minya Province, called a meeting at which he said that measures will be taken against “anyone who offends others,” reiterating that “no one will be allowed to sow discord between people who belong to the same nation,” while inviting local imams to focus their sermons in mosques on the themes of peaceful coexistence and tolerance.
Jihadists with ties to the al-Qaeda terror network executed a Christian missionary after four years in captivity in the African nation of Mali, Swiss authorities reported.
International Christian Concern (ICC) reported that free speech is suffering in Egypt as a number of human rights activists associated with the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR) have been arrested and blasphemy charges against Christians are on the increase. On November 11, Egyptian police arrested a young Christian teacher named Youssef Hany in northeastern Egypt on charges of insulting Islam in a Facebook post. Mr Hany posted comments responding to a Muslim who had expressed her opposition to criticisms of Islam by the president of France and other French citizens.

“The Zairean rite suggests a promising way also for the possible elaboration of an Amazonian rite,” writes Francis in his preface for a new book titled Pope Francis and the Roman Missal of the Dioceses of Zaire: A Promising Rite for Other Cultures.
The Zairean Mass, sometimes called the “Congolese Mass,” is “until now the only inculturated rite of the Latin Church approved after the Second Vatican Council,” claims Vatican News — although the Vatican also approved “Twelve Points of Adaptation” for a Hinduized “Indian rite Mass” in 1969.
Commending the Zairean rite for its cultural vibrancy and spirituality, Pope Francis says that the liturgical inculturation in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) is an invitation for enhancing the different gifts of the Holy Spirit, thus enriching humanity.
“Animated by religious songs with an African rhythm, the sound of drums and other musical instruments constitute real progress in the rooting of the Christian message in the Congolese soul. It is a joyful celebration. It is a true place of encounter with Jesus,” observes Francis. This is not the moment to include half-baked theological speculations in the liturgy.
The pontiff insists that liturgical inculturation in Africa and the Amazon is possible “without upsetting the nature of the Roman Missal, to guarantee continuity with the ancient and universal tradition of the Church.” Francis’ commendation of the Zairean Mass comes a year after the pontiff celebrated a special Mass for Rome-based Congolese Catholics in St Peter’s Basilica using the Zairean rite.
Liturgists, however, are disturbed by pagan elements in the Zaire Mass, especially the rite of the “Invocation of the Ancestors of Upright Heart (invocation ancetres au coeur droi),” together with the saints in the opening rites of the Holy Mass — particularly as the congregation may even invoke their pagan ancestors.

Nearly 1500 academics in Poland have written an appeal against “slandering and rejecting St John Paul II” after the publication of the McCarrick report by the Vatican on November 10.
The report documented the rise of dis-graced former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, who was laicized by Pope Francis in 2019 after he was credibly accused of abusing minors, after rumours had for decades swirled around both the United States and the Vatican about his sexual misconduct with seminarians.
St John Paul played a significant role in McCarrick’s rise, appointing him a Bishop of Metuchen, Archbishop of Newark, and Archbishop of Washington before creating him a cardinal in 2001.
“We appeal to all people of goodwill for reflection. St John Paul II, as every other person, deserves to be discussed with honesty,” said the letter by the group of academics. “By slandering and rejecting St John Paul II we not only do harm to himself, but also to ourselves.”
Among the signatories were Krzysztof Zanussi, and award-winning director and teacher to a generation of filmmakers; Adam Daniel Rotfeld, former Minister of Foreign Affairs; and Hanna Suchocka, who served as Polish ambassador to the Holy See from 2001-2013.
“Unsupported attacks on the memory of St John Paul II are motivated by a preconceived thesis, which we view with sadness and deep disturbance,” the appeal reads.

Pope Francis’ Council of Cardinals met online on December 1 to continue work on the new apostolic constitution to govern the Roman Curia, according to a Vatican statement.
The seven cardinals and an archbishop secretary are studying “observations, amendments, and proposals received from the dicasteries consulted in recent months” regarding the draft of the new constitution, known as Praedicate evangelium, a brief press release said.
Pope Francis also participated in the Dec. 1 meeting, connecting virtually from the Vatican guest-house where he lives.
The group of cardinal advisers, referred to as the C9 for its original nine members, was established by Pope Francis in 2013, with the aim of revising the text of the 1988 apostolic constitution Pastor bonus. At one of the council’s first meetings, it was decided that projected revisions to Pastor bonus would be substantial enough to warrant an entirely new constitution.

The 31-year-old Palestinian, who dismembered the statue of the Virgin late  on December 1 in the Piazzale Giovannacci, is being held in the Gradisca D’Isonzo repatriation centre in Gorizia, northeastern Italy, waiting for deportation procedures to be completed.
The Islamic iconoclast intentionally stoned the head and hands of the statue to sever them from the body of the historic sculpture following the Koranic injunction to cast “terror into the hearts of the unbelievers; so strike the necks and strike every finger of them!” (8:12)
Police launched a search and arrested the migrant in the early hours of the morning after residents who spotted the vandalism called for help and gave the police a description of the vandal.

Pope Francis led Mass November 29 Sunday. In his homily he noted that it “is the season for remembering” God’s closeness, a time to “be watchful” so that we can escape the “slumber of mediocrity” and the “slumber of indifference.”
The Holy Father concelebrat-ed the service with the new cardinals he created Consistory, marking the start of Advent. Last evening, the Pope and the cardi-nals visited Benedict XVI.
In the area of St Peter’s Basilica overlooking the Altar of the Chair, in addition to the cardinals, new and old, there were about a hundred faithful, linked in some way to the new cardinals. All those present wore medical masks and kept the distance required by regulations related to the pandemic.
In his homily the Pope also stressed the importance of Advent, the start of the liturgical year, in which “we need to recognize God’s closeness and to say to him: ‘Come close to us once more!’ […] Let us make our own the traditional Advent prayer: ‘Come, Lord Jesus’ (Rev 22:20).
“Why should we waste time complaining about the night, when the light of day awaits us?” Why should we look for ‘patrons’ to help advance our career? All these things pass away. Be watchful, the Lord tells us.” –AsianNews

The Vatican is stepping up its alliance with a pan-Islamic organization alleged to have provided “material support” to al-Qaeda’s 9/11 terrorist operation as well as to have funded terrorism and the global propagation of hardline Wahhabi Islam.
As part of recent efforts at re-branding its image through “religious diplomacy,” the Saudi-sponsored Muslim World League (MWL) hosted the Vatican’s envoy to the United Nations (U.N.) for a book presentation on interreligious dialogue.
Archbishop Ivan Jurkoviè, the Holy See’s permanent observer to the U.N. in Geneva, delivered a keynote address in Jeddah on the book The Promotion of Intercultural and Interreligious Dialogue as an Instrument for Peace and Fraternity, stressing the Vatican’s developing relationship that began under Pope Francis in 2017.
Making no mention of Christ or the gospel, Jurkoviè instead extolled the “polychromatic light of religions” that illuminates this world and “does not contrast the individual colours by putting them in antithesis to one another; rather, it combines them in a non-conflictual vision.”

Bishops in Switzerland lamented a record exodus of Catholics from the Church in 2019. The new figures, released on Nov. 19, revealed that the Catholic Church lost 31,772 members in 2019 – equivalent to 1.1% of the total membership of the Catholic Church in Switzerland. This marked a 25% increase on the previous year, when 25,366 people left.