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Catholic World News January 09, 2023 Oh, to have been a fly on the wall this morning, January 9, when Pope Francis met privately with Archbishop Georg Gänswein. Veteran Vatican-watchers immediately recognized the potential drama in the meeting. Archbishop Gänswein, the longtime personal secretary to Pope Benedict XVI, is now a man without a job. More important, he is the author of a forthcoming book, in which he promises to reveal (among other things) what the Pope-emeritus really thought about teachings and policies of Pope Francis. Advance copies of the book—Nothing But the Truth: My Life Beside Pope Benedict XVI—are already circulating in Rome, raising eyebrows with revelations about private correspondence and conversations between the past and present Pontiffs. During his retirement, t...

First, I will make a prediction. One day—within the next century—Benedict XVI will be declared a saint. Precisely how soon this will happen is uncertain, and it depends on whether the normal five-year waiting period is retained before his cause can be introduced. But it will happen. This is a safe bet partly because it is the way of popes today. In prior centuries, popes may have shown their greatness much the way kings did—by building monuments and winning battles—but these days saintly popes are the fashion. The shift is notable. Of the six nineteenth-century popes, one is a servant of God (Pius VII), and one is a blessed (Pius IX). None is a saint. Of the eight twentieth-century popes, four are saints (Pius X, John XXIII, Paul VI, John Paul II), and one is venerable (Pius XII). Even Joh...

Shortly before he died on Tuesday, Cardinal George Pell wrote the following article for The Spectator in which he denounced the Vatican’s plans for its forthcoming ‘Synod on Synodality’ as a ‘toxic nightmare’. The booklet produced by the Synod, to be held in two sessions this year and next year, is ‘one of the most incoherent documents ever sent out from Rome’, says Pell. Not only is it ‘couched in neo-Marxist jargon’, but it is ‘hostile to the apostolic tradition’ and ignores such fundamental Christian tenets as belief in divine judgment, heaven and hell. The Australian-born cardinal, who endured the terrible ordeal of imprisonment in his home country on fake charges of sex abuse before being acquitted, was nothing if not courageous. He did not know that he was about t...

COMMENTARY: In his last years of life, the Australian prelate became one of the universal Church’s most prominent champions for doctrinal orthodoxy, a mantle others will need to carry forward following his departure. Immediate reflections following the shocking death of Cardinal George Pell have focused on the Australian prelate’s heroic endurance of false accusations of sexual abuse. And rightfully so.  Cardinal Pell’s fortitude in the face of such ideologically motivated injustices, which included 404 days of solitary confinement in a Melbourne prison cell before the charges were quashed by the Australian High Court in April 2020, were an inspiration to Catholics across the world, a compelling example of faithfully enduring the kind of persecution that Christ foretold those who foll...

In April 2020, a Vatican judge officially closed the case, which had been reopened the previous year after members of Orlandi’s family received a tip that the girl’s remains could be in a Vatican cemetery. That investigation ultimately authorized the opening of two tombs in the cemetery of the Teutonic College, which sits on Vatican-owned property adjacent to the city-state; those graves were found to be completely empty, and in an unexpected twist, Vatican officials discovered “thousands” of human bones — not Orlandi’s — in a previously unknown ossuary nearby.  Scientific tests carried out in July 2019 on bone fragments found in connection to the investigation revealed the bones to be too old to be Orlandi’s remains, according to Vatican statements at the time. The Vat...