Inside The Vatican

Cardinal Angelo Becciu resigned suddenly from his position as head of the Vatican’s Congregation for the Causes of Saints on Thursday night, Sept. 24. In a one-sentence press release, the Vatican announced that the cardinal also gave up the “rights connected to the Cardinalate,” including his titular church and participation in conclaves.

This week on “Inside the Vatican,” hosts Colleen Dulle and Gerard O’Connell discuss the accusations of embezzlement and nepotism that Cardinal Becciu said Pope Francis brought against him when asking him to resign.

Gerry and Colleen also discuss U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s visit to the Vatican this week. Mr. Pompeo has been critical of the Vatican’s provisional deal with China, which is up for renewal this year. He intends to urge Vatican officials not to renew the deal, arguing that continued dialogue with China despite the nation’s human rights abuses will weaken the Vatican’s moral standing.

Links from the show:

Powerful Vatican Cardinal Becciu resigns amid financial scandal

Cardinal Becciu denies wrongdoing, says Pope Francis asking for his resignation was ‘surreal’

The Vatican is ready to renew its deal with China. Privately, officials admit they’re walking a tightrope.

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On September 17, two Vatican stories broke that illustrate the difference in style between Pope Francis and the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Pope Francis met a group of parents with L.G.B.T. children, telling them “God loves your children as they are” and “the church loves your children as they are because they are children of God.”

The same day, news broke that the Irish priest Tony Flannery, who had been suspended from ministry in 2012 after speaking out in favor of women’s ordination to the priesthood, had been told by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith that he could be restored to ministry if he signed an affirmation of church teaching on four hot-button issues including women’s ordination, homosexuality and gender theory.

The Vatican has stated that it has been in dialogue with Father Flannery; however, Father Flannery says he has never been contacted directly by anyone from the C.D.F. As in past cases of the C.D.F. disciplining theologians, all communication has come through the priest’s superiors in what veteran Vatican reporter Gerard O’Connell calls an “impersonal” and “dehumanizing” process which seems at odds with Pope Francis’ hallmark strategy of personal accompaniment and dialogue.

This week on “Inside the Vatican,” Gerry and producer Colleen Dulle discuss why the C.D.F. appears out of step with the pope. After senior Vatican sources told Gerry that Pope Francis should intervene to change the culture in the C.D.F., the hosts discuss how that might be done.

Links from the show:

Pope Francis to parents of L.G.B.T. children: ‘God loves your children as they are.’

Suspended Irish priest Tony Flannery calls Vatican inquiry ‘unjust’

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This weekend, Pope Francis called on government leaders and those with “public responsibilities” to meet the just demands of protestors. With protests rising around the world, which demonstrators was Francis referring to?

Veteran Vatican correspondent Gerard O’Connell joins host Colleen Dulle to unpack the protests Pope Francis has his eye on, from Greece to Belarus to Hong Kong and the United States.

Earlier in the show, Gerry gives an update on the coronavirus in the Vatican. The hosts discuss Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle’s Covid-19 diagnosis and why Pope Francis is often photographed without a face mask.

Links from the show:

Cardinal Tagle has tested positive for Covid-19 in Manila, and is in isolation.

Pope Francis urges government leaders to listen to protestors

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The Vatican announced this weekend that Pope Francis will sign his new encyclical in Assisi on Oct. 3, just in time for the feast day on the following day of St. Francis, after whom the Pope took his name. The new document is called “Fratelli Tutti” or “Brothers and sisters, all” in Italian, and if Francis’ previous encyclical, “Laudato Si’,” is any indication, this will be a significant document.

“Fratelli Tutti” will likely cover many of the themes that Pope Francis has addressed since the beginning of the pandemic, like solidarity, ecology and the growing wealth gap. Francis is concerned that as wealthy nations gradually control the virus’s spread and reopen, the poor may be left to deal both with continuing infections and the economic fallout of the pandemic.

In addition to creating a Vatican coronavirus task force and donating money to pandemic relief efforts, Francis devoted his last five Wednesday general audiences to catechesis on human solidarity in the time of coronavirus.

This week on “Inside the Vatican,” we devote the whole episode to that “Covid catechesis,” unpacking Francis’ central ideas of community, the universal destination of goods and care for the environment, which are likely to appear in the forthcoming encyclical “Fratelli Tutti.”

Read more:

Series: Pope Francis’ coronavirus catechesis

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Just before Covid-19 paused public life in Italy, the entire “secret archives” of Pope Pius XII (1939-58) opened to researchers for the first time. The opening, which had long been asked for by historians and was announced under Pope Benedict XVI, would make available a treasure trove of documents from Pius’ pontificate, spanning the Second World War and into the Cold War.

Some documents from the archive had been released from the 1960s to the 1980s to counter the popular narrative that Pius had been complicit or even cooperated with the Nazi regime. While historians agree the new documents will not likely reveal a “smoking gun” that indicts or exonerates Pius, they expect the archives to shed light on the rationale behind Pius’ decision not to publicly condemn Hitler and the Nazis, instead operating through private channels to stop the deportations of Jews from Italy.

In this special edition of Inside the Vatican, host Colleen Dulle interviews historians Robert Ventresca and Massimo Faggioli about the opening of the archives, what we know about Pius’ wartime decisions, and what researchers expect to find. The three discuss, too, the impact these findings may have on Jewish-Catholic relations and on Pius’ ongoing canonization cause.

Links from the show:

• Robert Ventresca
• Massimo Faggioli: La Croix International | Commonweal | Twitter

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Today the Vatican released its long-awaited handbook, or “vademecum,” on how bishops and superiors of religious orders should handle allegations of sexual abuse against minors by clergy.

This is the first time that all of the Vatican’s guidelines for handling abuse, from reporting to investigating and taking juridical action have been put together in one step-by-step format. In this special update episode of “Inside the Vatican,” host Colleen Dulle unpacks what’s new in the handbook and why it took a year and a half for the Vatican to develop this document.

Links from the show:

Vatican publishes handbook for bishops and religious superiors to guide response to abuse allegations

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In April of this year, the Vatican announced the creation of a new commission to study the female diaconate, following up on Pope Francis’ promise to reopen the question at the behest of the Amazonian bishops.

Pope Francis had set up a previous commission to study the roles of female deacons in the early church in 2016. Though that commission’s final report had not been published, the pope described its findings as inconclusive and the members as “toads from different wells.”

This week, on our last episode of “Inside the Vatican” before our summer hiatus, producer Colleen Dulle speaks with one of that commission’s members, Hofstra University Professor Phyllis Zagano. We discuss the church’s history not only of ordaining women deacons, but also the recent history of the conversation around ordaining them again.

When the new commission was named in April, some who favor reinstituting the female diaconate expressed concern that the many of the new commission’s members opposed ordaining women deacons. On this week’s show, Ms. Zagano, who favors ordaining women deacons, gives her take on the new commission: “Looking at the membership, they are, interestingly enough, qualified to answer a single question that I think still needs to be determined on behalf of the Holy Father, which is, what is the ministry of the diaconate today? … And if you describe that, then what about that can a woman not do?”

Links from the show:

Pope Francis has set up a new commission to study women deacons

Women: Icons of Christ by Phyllis Zagano, via Paulist Press

Review: Phyllis Zagano makes the case for women deacons

Video: Women Deacons: Past, Present, Future with Phyllis Zagano and Bernard Pottier, S.J.

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Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI left Italy for the first time in seven years last week, traveling to Germany to visit his ill brother, Georg. This week on “Inside the Vatican,” Gerry explains the challenges travel poses for the emeritus pope and why Benedict returned to the Vatican after only a few days.

Since it is Colleen and Gerry’s last episode together before the summer break, the two also look ahead to the next few months. Gerry explains how the Pope spends his summers, and Colleen and Gerry discuss what’s next for the Vatican’s ongoing coronavirus response and the long-awaited Vatican report on former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick.

Inside the Vatican will release a few special episodes this summer, beginning with an interview next week with researcher Phyllis Zagano about the two papal commissions to study women deacons.

Finally, don’t forget to take our Inside the Vatican listener survey!

Links from the show:

• Benedict XVI makes surprise visit to gravely ill brother in Germany
• Benedict XVI returns to Vatican after visiting his brother in Germany
• Podcast: What does the pope do on vacation?
• Inside the Vatican Listener Survey

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Last week, Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò was back in the spotlight after President Donald Trump tweeted promoting an open letter that Viganò had written to him. The letter praised Mr. Trump for “defending the right to life” and expressed Archbishop Viganò’s belief in a number of conspiracy theories, including the idea of a “deep state” group undermining the American government and a parallel group within the Catholic church.

Archbishop Viganò has published many such letters since his original 11-page “testimony,” published in 2018, accusing a number of top church officials of knowing about abuse by former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, blaming a “homosexual network” in the Vatican for the abuse crisis, and calling on Pope Francis to resign. 

The Vatican has been relatively tight-lipped in response to the archbishop: When journalists asked Pope Francis about the “testimony,” the pope refused to comment beyond saying, “Read that statement attentively and make your own judgment,” adding, “I think the statement speaks for itself, and you have a sufficient journalistic ability to make a conclusion.” Many of the archbishop’s claims have since been called into question, and the Vatican is conducting its own investigation into Mr. McCarrick.

On this episode of “Inside the Vatican,” veteran Vatican reporter Gerard O’Connell and producer Colleen Dulle discuss why the Vatican has remained quiet in response to Archbishop Viganò and whether that is likely to change following President Trump’s endorsement.

The hosts also discuss Pope Francis’ message for the World Day of the Poor, along with the new fund he established with the mayor of Rome and the governor of Lazio to aid workers who had not previously been eligible for government assistance.

Links from the show:

• President Trump tweeted about Archbishop Viganò. So, who is he?
• Archbishop Viganò is aligning with Trump to stay in the spotlight. Pay him no attention.
• From 2018: Cardinal Marc Ouellet responds to Viganò charges, accuses him of blasphemy

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It’s been five years since the release of “Laudato Si’,” and Pope Francis has called for a year of prayer and study on the encyclical’s themes of integral human ecology—that is, the importance of protecting the environment and the poor, who are most directly affected by climate change and the destruction of nature.

But five years out, as the church works with new resolve to implement “Laudato Si’,” it is worth asking: Did the document make a difference the first time around?

On this episode of Inside the Vatican, I speak with Sam Winter-Levy and Bryan Schonfeld, two Princeton University doctoral candidates in sociology, who recently released a paper studying the impact of “Laudato Si’.” The two examined data sets from a survey of Americans’ opinions on climate change from before and after the encyclical’s release, and they found that among churchgoing Catholics, there was a significant shift towards belief that climate change is real and caused by humans, and that there is a moral imperative to take action on it.

We discuss their findings, and what the results reveal about the role religious leaders like Pope Francis can have in shaping public opinion.

Read more:

• Who can convince Americans to follow the science on coronavirus? Religious leaders. | The Washington Post
• Full Paper: Factual or Moral Persuasion in the United States? Evidence from the Papal Encyclical on Climate Change

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