Filum Romanum - A Thread for the Catholic Church

Saint days seem to be chosen arbitrarily as well.

The re-opening of diplomatic relations between the US and Cuba is the biggest success for the Vatican’s ultra-discreet diplomacy for at least 30 years.

As the leaders of both countries acknowledged in their statements, Pope Francis and his envoys had played key roles in healing the breach.

The only comparable success for papal mediation was in 1984 when Vatican diplomats helped to end a potentially explosive border dispute between Chile and Argentina over the possession of three strategically located islands in the Beagle channel at the southern tip of South America.

Whether by coincidence or design, news of the historic reconciliation emerged on the day Francis celebrated his 78th birthday.

All sides agreed that the contact between the two sides gained vital extra momentum from letters the pope sent to Presidents Obama and Castro last summer. The Vatican said the letters called on the two countries “to resolve humanitarian questions of common interest, including the situation of certain prisoners, in order to initiate a new phase in relations”.

The Vatican also hosted delegations from the two countries at what were said to have been the talks at which the breakthrough was made. Kenneth Hackett, the US ambassador to the Holy See, said a senior Vatican official had “played an important part in this historic moment by meeting with US and Cuban delegations in October to help bring the negotiations to a successful conclusion”.

The re-establishment of normal relations between the two countries has been a cause dear to the hearts of successive popes, but the issue took on greater importance after the election last year of the first Latin American leader of the Catholic church.

President Obama discussed Cuba with the pope during his visit to the Vatican in March and continued to work with the Holy See thereafter.

Sources in Rome and Washington said that the archbishop of Havana, Cardinal Jaime Ortega, had played a key role in brokering a deal. He too was in Rome in October and held a meeting with the pope on October 3. But it was not clear whether he was the official referred to by Hackett.

John Kerry, the US Secretary of State, met with his Vatican counterpart on Monday. But the official version of the talks, issued by the Vatican, said they had concentrated on efforts to close the US detention camp at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba.

Diplomats in Rome were told that the issue of bilateral relations between Cuba had arisen, but that it was a minor part of Kerry’s discussions with Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican’s secretary of state. Kerry came to Rome on a European tour that was mainly about reviving peace talks between Israel and the Palestinian authority.

The pope is said by sources close to the Vatican to hold Ortega in high regard. Francis has had two meetings this year with the Cuban cardinal, the first being on 5 April.

But most intriguing is a special appointment he conferred on the archbishop last summer. According to both Obama and Castro, Canada hosted talks between envoys of their two countries which led up to Wednesday’s announcement. On 12 July, Ortega was named as the pope’s special envoy to the celebrations of the 350th anniversary of the foundation of the first Roman Catholic parish in the Americas north of Mexico – that of Notre-Dame de Québec.

Pope Francis Pursues Sinner Across Vatican City Rooftops

VATICAN CITY—Numerous onlookers confirmed that His Holiness Pope Francis could be seen Thursday sprinting along the Holy See’s rooftops, darting between the chimneys and marble sculptures of the apostles atop St. Peter’s Basilica and the Sistine Chapel as he attempted to chase down a suspected sinner. After deftly scaling an exterior fire escape on the Apostolic Library, the pontiff is said to have raced across the pitched roof of the Vatican Museums while closely trailing the fleeing commandment violator, who according to eyewitnesses looked back over his shoulder multiple times during the pursuit to find the white-clad Vicar of Christ just a dozen paces behind him. Reports indicate that the pope lost track of the transgressor against God on top of the Palace of the Canonicate, causing him to pause for several seconds and frantically scan the horizon in all directions before suddenly spying the man on the adjacent roof of the Church of Santa Maria della Pietà, at which point the Bishop of Rome is said to have dashed at full speed to the building’s ledge and leapt the 30-foot gap separating the two structures. Sources confirmed that after a tumbling landing, the pope quickly picked himself up, returned his mitre to his head, and immediately resumed the chase. At press time, Pope Francis had reportedly taken a shortcut around the Tower of Nicholas V and tackled the unnamed blasphemer from behind, sending them both crashing through a 15th-century stained glass window and directly into a confessional booth below.

Francis issued a blistering indictment of the Vatican bureaucracy Monday, accusing the cardinals, bishops and priests who serve him of using their Vatican careers to grab power and wealth, of living "hypocritical" double lives and forgetting that they're supposed to be joyful men of God.

Francis turned the traditional, genteel exchange of Christmas greetings into a public dressing down of the Curia, the central administration of the Holy See which governs the 1.2-billion strong Catholic Church. He made clear that his plans for a radical reform of the structures of church power must be accompanied by an even more radical spiritual reform of the men involved.

Ticking off 15 "ailments of the Curia" one by one, Francis urged the prelates sitting stone-faced before him in the marbled Sala Clementina to use the Christmas season to repent and atone and make the church a healthier, holier place in 2015.

Vatican watchers said they had never heard such a powerful, violent speech from a pope and suggested that it was informed by the results of a secret investigation ordered up by Emeritus Pope Benedict XVI in the aftermath of the 2012 leaks of his papers.

Benedict tasked three trusted cardinals to probe deep into the Vatican's back-stabbing culture to root out what would have prompted a papal butler to steal incriminating documents and leak them to a journalist. Their report is known only to the two popes.

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But a year into his reform agenda, Francis seemed even more emboldened to make clear to the prelates themselves that superficial displays of change aren't what he is looking for.

"This is a speech without historic precedent," church historian Alberto Melloni, a contributor to Italian daily Corriere della Sera, said in a telephone interview. "If the pope uses this tone, it's because he knows it's necessary."

Melloni noted that until Francis was elected, the Vatican bureaucracy largely answered to no one, saying "an entire generation of the Curia ran it as if they were pope." St. John Paul II was too busy travelling the world, and later too sick, to pay attention to administrative details, and Benedict left the minutiae of running a government to his deputy, later determined to have been part of the problem.

The Rev. Robert Wister, a church historian at Seton Hall University, said Francis was essentially asking the Curia to undergo an examination of conscience, asking them to reflect on how they had sinned before God before going to confession. "Perhaps he believes that only a severe rebuke can help turn things around," he said.

The cardinals were not amused. Few smiled as Francis spoke, and at the end they offered only tepid applause to a speech that was so carefully prepared it had footnotes and Bibilical references. Francis greeted each one, but there was little Christmas cheer in the room.

The cardinals were not amused. Few smiled as Francis spoke, and at the end they offered only tepid applause to a speech that was so carefully prepared it had footnotes and Bibilical references. Francis greeted each one, but there was little Christmas cheer in the room.