Month: July 2021

 

VATICAN CITY (CNS) – Although still hospitalized, Pope Francis has resumed working and celebrated Mass for his caregivers in the small chapel that is part of the suite of rooms reserved for the popes at Rome’s Gemelli hospital, the Vatican press office said July 9.

“He walked in the corridor and resumed his work, alternating it with moments of reading texts,” said the statement issued on the fifth morning of his hospitalization for colon surgery.

Matteo Bruni, director of the press office, also announced that Pope Francis will lead the midday recitation of the Angelus prayer July 11 from his room on the 10th floor of Gemelli hospital.

“Following the brief episode with a slight temperature (July 7), the Holy Father is without fever,” he added.

The morning after the running a temperature, the pope’s doctors performed a CT scan of his abdomen and chest as well as routine exams to ensure that he was not suffering from an infection, a common complication of intestinal surgery.

The results of the scan and exams were negative, the Vatican press office had said July 8.

Pope Francis had sent a message of “paternal closeness” to the “young patients in the nearby pediatric oncology and children’s neurosurgery wards,” Bruni said.

Early July 9, the Gemelli hospital released photos of a card one of the young oncology patients had made for the pope. The cover features a simply drawing of Pope Francis and the inside has the message: “Dear Pope Francis, we heard you are not so well and that you are in our hospital now. Even if we cannot see each other, we send you a big hug and hope you will heal quickly.”

“The Holy Father gives thanks for the many messages of affection and closeness that he receives daily and asks that we continue to pray for him,” Bruni said.

The Vatican’s July 7 midday bulletin, issued before the pope’s temporary temperature, said the doctors had removed his intravenous drip, and that “the post-operative progress of His Holiness Pope Francis continues to be regular and satisfactory.”

“The Holy Father has continued to eat regularly, and infusion therapy has been suspended,” it added.

Announcing that the pope had arrived at the Rome hospital July 4, the Vatican had said he was to undergo “a scheduled surgical intervention for a symptomatic diverticular stenosis of the colon.”

The next morning, the Vatican said the surgery lasted three hours and included “a left hemicolectomy,” the removal of the descending part of the colon, which can be recommended to treat diverticulitis, when bulging pouches in the lining of the intestine or colon become inflamed or infected.

Three days after surgery, the Vatican said, “the final histological examination has confirmed a severe diverticular stenosis with signs of sclerosing diverticulitis,” a hardening of the tissue. The statement seemed to indicate that the biopsy showed no cancerous cells.

Pope Francis is expected to remain in the hospital at least until July 12. Since St. John Paul II was shot in 1981, the Gemelli hospital, part of the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart, has maintained a suite of rooms for use by the pope.

Hospitalized there on several occasions, St. John Paul would lead the Sunday Angelus from his room when able and even would go to the window to greet people gathered in the square in front of the hospital’s entrance.

 

 

VATICAN CITY (CNS) – Before going to the hospital for colon surgery July 4, Pope Francis told a crowd in St. Peter’s Square that he would be visiting Hungary and Slovakia Sept. 12-15.

With pilgrims from Slovakia holding their country’s flag aloft in St. Peter’s Square, the pope told the crowd, “I am happy to announce that from Sept. 12 to 15, God willing, I will travel to Slovakia to make a pastoral visit.”

But, first, he said, the morning of Sept. 12 “I will celebrate the concluding Mass of the International Eucharistic Congress in Budapest,” Hungary.

“From the bottom of my heart, I thank those who are preparing this journey, and I am praying for them,” he said. “Let us all pray for this journey and for the people who are working to organize it.”

The Vatican press office said the Slovakia trip would include stops in the cities of Bratislava, Presov, Kosice and Sastin, but did not immediately provide details of the pope’s program.

Eduard Habsburg, the Hungarian ambassador to the Holy See, replied on Twitter to people who asked why the pope was going to Hungary only for a Mass, but then would make a full pastoral visit to Slovakia.

“Hungary, a few hours, Slovakia, a few days. Why?” he tweeted. The pope “is doing exactly what he has been invited for — in Budapest, the final Mass of the @iec2021Budapest (the eucharistic congress), in Slovakia, an extended visit to the country.”

In a statement shared by the Vatican-based secretariat of the International Eucharist Congress, Cardinal Peter Erdo of Esztergom-Budapest said, “The Catholic community is waiting for the arrival of the Holy Father with great joy and love. We are praying for his visit to be the sign of hope and a new beginning after the abatement of the pandemic.”

While the visit was scheduled to be brief, the cardinal said the pope’s visit was significant since, for the past two decades, popes had sent representatives to the congress rather than participating themselves.

“The last time a pope participated in the international congress was 21 years ago in Rome, where Pope John Paul II was present,” the statement said.

The International Eucharistic Congress generally is held every four years and includes workshops, catechesis, adoration, a solemn procession with the Blessed Sacrament and a closing Mass. The Budapest gathering originally was scheduled for 2020 but was postponed a year because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

 

VATICAN CITY (CNS) – The alleged mishandling of millions of dollars of church funds will bring several high-profile individuals to a makeshift Vatican courtroom set up in a multifunction room of the Vatican Museums.

The surprise announcement July 3 that Vatican prosecutors indicted 10 individuals and entities, including Cardinal Angelo Becciu, former prefect of the Congregation for Saints’ Causes, on a slew of charges related to financial mismanagement and malfeasance was the latest twist in the seemingly unending saga of the Vatican’s controversial investment in a property in London’s Chelsea district.

The indictments, especially of former Vatican officials, also may prove to be a litmus test for Pope Francis’ efforts to reform the Vatican’s finances, which have been marred by scandals over decades.

This also is the first time in modern history that a cardinal is among those facing a Vatican criminal trial.

Most of the accused, including Cardinal Becciu, have declared their innocence and say they are peacefully awaiting their day in court.

“Finally, the moment of clarification is coming, and the court will be able to find the absolute falsity of the accusations against me and the dark plots that have evidently sustained and fed them,” Cardinal Becciu said in a statement released by his lawyers July 3.

René Brülhart, former president of the Vatican’s financial watchdog agency, said he “always carried out my functions and duties with correctness, loyalty and in the exclusive interest of the Holy See and its organs.”

“I face this matter with serenity in the conviction that the accusations against me will fully disappear,” he said shortly after the indictment was announced.

“I am serene and confident that the truth of the facts and my innocence will emerge and will be clarified soon by the Vatican judicial authorities,” said Tommaso di Ruzza, who worked with Brülhart as former director of the Vatican’s Financial Information Authority, now known as the Supervisory and Financial Information Authority.

But the indictment document detailing the Vatican’s extensive two-year investigation into how the Vatican Secretariat of State used over $200 million to finance a property development project in London paints a serious and complex picture.

For years, Cardinal Becciu defended the London property deal and insisted there was nothing wrong with the purchase. He consistently denied that funds from the Peter’s Pence collection were used; the money, he said, came from a fund within the Secretariat of State.

“I want to deny this because we did not use that money,” the cardinal said during a book presentation in February 2020. “Peter’s Pence was not affected; an investment was made on a building. It was a good and opportune occasion, which many people envy us for today.”

However, according to the 488-page indictment seen by Catholic News Service, funds worth an estimated $200.5 million held in Credit Suisse bank accounts owned by the Secretariat of State were transferred to Athena Capital Global Opportunities, a Luxembourg-based investment fund owned by Raffaele Mincione, who also was indicted.

The investment, the indictment stated, “was made with funds from Peter’s Pence.”

Mincione, a London-based Italian financier who owned the London property, is accused by the Vatican of embezzlement, fraud, abuse of office, misappropriation of funds and money laundering.

According to the Vatican’s investigation, the money was originally intended “to subsidize an operation in the petrol sector in Angola sponsored by a local entrepreneur, Antonio Mosquito, who was introduced to the Vatican environment” by then-Archbishop Becciu. The two met when the Italian prelate served as apostolic nuncio to Angola from 2001-2009.

However, when that deal fell through, the money was used to invest in Mincione’s London property with Gianluigi Torzi, an Italian broker, serving as the middleman in the development deal. Torzi faces several charges, including the extortion of $17 million from the Vatican as payment for his role in brokering the deal.

The indictment also stated that Msgr. Alberto Perlasca, the former head of the Vatican Secretariat of State’s administrative office, provided prosecutors with a reconstruction of the events that led to the London property investment.

Msgr. Perlasca initially was seen as a possible suspect after Vatican police seized documents, computers and even floppy disks from his home and office in 2020. However, the report stated that he requested to speak to investigators.

In August 2020, the report said, Msgr. Perlasca gave his testimony and provided investigators “with a precious contribution for the reconstruction of some central moments relating to the case of the London property.”

Furthermore, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, Vatican secretary of state, and Archbishop Edgar Peña Parra, who serves as “sostituto,” the No. 3 position in the Secretariat of State, are not named as defendants in the lawsuit despite the fact that both, as well as Msgr. Perlasca, had approved several key steps in the failed deal.

According to a summary of the case by Vatican News published July 3, “neither Msgr. Perlasca, who signed the Share Purchase Agreement, nor his superiors, the substitute (Archbishop) Edgar Peña Parra, and above all Cardinal Pietro Parolin, had been effectively informed to be fully aware of the juridical effects that the different categories of actions would cause.”

Speaking with journalists in Strasbourg, France, July 4, Cardinal Parolin said that, in this case, the Secretariat of State “is the victim,” and he expressed his willingness to testify at the trial if asked.

“As an institution, we believe that we have been damaged by everything that has happened,” the cardinal told the journalists. “We have to defend our position and our morality,” but also “get back possession of the money.”

“If they say, ‘You are responsible for everything that happened,’ I will undoubtedly have things to say, answers to give,” he said, according to La Croix, the French Catholic daily newspaper.

 

 

VATICAN CITY (CNS) – Recovering from colon surgery, Pope Francis briefly ran a fever late July 7, leading his doctors to perform a CT scan of his abdomen and chest the next morning to check for signs of infection.

The results of the scan were negative, as were the results of “routine and microbiological examinations,” the Vatican press office said July 8.

“His Holiness Pope Francis spent a quiet day, eating and moving unassisted,” the press office said in its daily update on how the pope is recovering after undergoing a three-hour surgery July 4 at Rome’s Gemelli hospital.

As with any operation, but especially intestinal surgery, infection is a major post-op concern.

Before the passing fever, the press office said, Pope Francis had sent a message of “paternal closeness” to the “young patients in the nearby pediatric oncology and children’s neurosurgery wards.”

“At this particular moment, he looks toward all those who suffer, expressing his closeness to the sick, especially those most in need of care,” the press office said.

The Vatican’s July 7 midday bulletin, issued before the pope’s temporary temperature, said the doctors had removed his intravenous drip, and that “the post-operative progress of His Holiness Pope Francis continues to be regular and satisfactory.”

“The Holy Father has continued to eat regularly, and infusion therapy has been suspended,” it added.

Announcing that the pope had arrived at the Rome hospital July 4, the Vatican had said he was to undergo “a scheduled surgical intervention for a symptomatic diverticular stenosis of the colon.”

The next morning, the Vatican said the surgery lasted three hours and included “a left hemicolectomy,” the removal of the descending part of the colon, which can be recommended to treat diverticulitis, when bulging pouches in the lining of the intestine or colon become inflamed or infected.

Three days after surgery, the Vatican said, “the final histological examination has confirmed a severe diverticular stenosis with signs of sclerosing diverticulitis,” a hardening of the tissue. The statement seemed to indicate that the biopsy showed no cancerous cells.

“Pope Francis is touched by the many messages and the affection received in these days, and expresses his gratitude for the closeness and prayer,” the Vatican message said.

Pope Francis is expected to remain in the hospital at least until July 11. Since the pontificate of St. John Paul II, the Gemelli hospital, part of the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart, has maintained a suite of rooms on the 10th floor for use by the pope.