Posts Tagged universal church
Pope Francis has asked his international Council of Cardinals to study the way the church vets, identifies and appoints bishops around the world, looking particularly at the qualities needed in a bishop today.
“Near the end of the council’s meetings with the pope Sept. 14-16, Jesuit Fr. Federico Lombardi, Vatican spokesman, briefed reporters on its work.
“While one of the main tasks of the nine-member council is to assist Pope Francis with the ongoing reorganization of the Roman Curia, Lombardi said that from the beginning Pope Francis said he wanted the group to advise him on matters of church governance in general. With more than 150 new bishops being named each year in the Latin-rite church, identifying suitable candidates is a normal part of the governance of the universal church, the spokesman said.”
By Cindy Wooden, Catholic News Service, in National Catholic Reporter — Click here to read the rest of this story.
Voice of the Faithful has long advocated for greater lay input into selection of local bishops. VOTF has promulgated a proposal to achieve this, “Furthering the New Evangelization: Consulting the Laity on Candidates for the Episcopacy.” The proposal seeks to restore to the selection process many of the lay-involvement practices followed throughout the first millenium and well into the second, and, at the same time, it would recognize the authority of the pope (as affirmed in Canon Law and Vatican II) to make the final appointment of a bishop, generally from the recommendations submitted for each diocese.
VOTF presently maintains a first-of-its-kind web portal enabling Catholics in a diocese with an announced or impending vacancy to offer confidentially their thoughts on the needs of the diocese, the desired qualities of the next bishop, and the names of potential nominees directly to the Apostolic Nuncio.
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The C9 has finalized the proposal it will present to the Pope, who may decide to establish the congregation even before the whole reform plan is complete.
“The work of the C9 group, the council of nine cardinals tasked with studying the reform of the Roman Curia and helping the Pope in the government of the universal Church, concludes today (Sept. 16). After the establishment of the Secretariat for the Economy and the Secretariat for Communications, the next step will be the creation of a new congregation dedicated to the laity, the family and life issues …
“It was suggested on a number of occasions that lay people should be placed at the helm of the new congregation but in February this year, Fr. Lombardi said the top person in charge could not be a lay person. However, the possibility of lay people acting as secretaries or assistant secretaries of the congregation has not been excluded.”
By Andrea Tornielli, Vatican Insider, La Stampa — Click here to read the rest of this story.
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Francis and eight cardinals from around the world are holding three days of closed-door meetings to discuss the Vatican’s troubled administration and to map out possible changes in the worldwide church.
“As the talks begin with the cardinals, Italian newspaper ‘La Repubblica’ published a long interview conducted by its atheist editor last week in which the Argentine pope spoke frankly about the problems facing the Vatican administration, known as the Curia.
“He reportedly said too many previous popes in the church’s long history had been “narcissists” who let themselves be flattered by “courtier” aides in the Curia instead of concentrating on the wider mission of the universal church.
“‘The (papal) court is the leprosy of the papacy,’ Francis is reported to have said.'” By Thomas C. Fox, National Catholic Reporter
Read the rest of the story by clicking here.
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A lay movement for governance reform in the Roman Catholic Church, responding to the clergy sexual abuse scandal and supporting survivors.
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