Happy Friday friends,
And a very happy feast of St. Teresa of Calcutta.
Just before anyone heads to the comments asking about the propriety of using “Calcutta” instead of the now official and standard spelling of “Kolkata,” this point was actually raised from the floor at a USCCB meeting last year.
The answer given was that, in referencing and titling saints of place, it is customary and correct to use the name of the place as-was at the time of the saint living there. Thus, the world knew her as Mother Teresa of Calcutta, which was the official spelling at the time, and modernizing it to Kolkata would be an anachronism of a species with styling St. Theodosia “of Istanbul.”
Mother Teresa is one of those historical figures who is so iconic you (I) struggled to think of her as a real person, even while she was alive.
Her life of service to the poorest, simply and totally given, was the kind of visible sanctity that seems to simultaneously inspire and condemn anyone who sees it. Holiness, she seemed to say, really is this uncomplicated.
What I love, too, about Mother Teresa was her ability to speak with simplicity, charity, and humor, too.
Pretty much everyone has heard — though I can find no direct witnesses to — the apocryphal story of Hilary Clinton supposedly asking her why she thought there had yet to be a woman president and the unsourced retort that “she had probably been aborted.”
But what even Hilary Clinton has attested to was that, while Mother Teresa was relentless in their correspondence over the years pressing for the dignity and protection of the unborn, she never scolded or lectured Hilary but addressed her always with gentleness and encouragement.
That absence of self-righteousness strikes me as especially saintly, as much as her physical labors. It requires that a person truly adopt the mentality urged by St. Paul, that a Christian consider all others superior to themselves.
I think it reasonable to assume Mother Teresa never thought herself a better person than Hilary Clinton, and who among us can say that, truly? But one cannot truly serve, or love, while condescending, that is the ultimate lesson of the Incarnation, surely?
Speaking as an accomplished condescender, that is the lesson I’m trying to bear in mind today.
Here’s the news.
Irish-born missionary Gena Heraty was safely released in Haiti this week, nearly a month after she was kidnapped alongside seven other people.
Heraty was kidnapped Aug. 3 from the orphanage she oversees, together with several other people including a three-year-old child with special needs.
She was released August 29 and is currently in the hospital being treated for malnutrition, but is otherwise healthy. The exact circumstances of her release remain unclear, though it seems likely she was ransomed from the gang which took her, though the Irish government officially denied any payment.
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Church vandalism feels like a daily occurrence across Europe right now. In the last week alone attacks have been made on church property in England, Italy, France, Germany, and Spain.
But what should we make of these reports? While each one is a striking and disturbing instance all its own, do they form a pattern? Are they part of a continent-wide trend of anti ecclesiastical violence?
And if church attacks are becoming more common in Europe, what is driving them? Luke Coppen looked at these questions this week in one of his Look Closer analyses and came up with some interesting food for thought.
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Cardinal Stephen Chow of Hong Kong met Pope Leo XIV September 2 for their first in-depth conversation since the pope’s election earlier this year.
The cardinal said after the meeting that it was a chance for the pope to “gain a fuller picture and a better understanding of the current state of China-Vatican relations.”
In an analysis this week I looked at the state of those relations, the problems on Leo’s desk, and the complicated diplomatic field Leo will need to navigate to set them right.
My conclusion is that the future of Vatican-China relations is much more likely to be made or broken by personal relationships with local bishops — both those considered “underground” and “pro Beijing” — and not via formal diplomatic talks.
You can read the whole analysis here.
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A Bolivian court has sentenced two Jesuit priests to one year in prison for covering up the abuse of disgraced Fr. Alfonso Pedrajas, SJ.
Pedrajas was accused of abusing at least 85 boys during his time in Bolivia and left a diary attesting to his crimes and the extent to which his ecclesiastical superiors were aware of his serial predations.
Fr. Marcos Recolons SJ and Fr. Ramón Alaix SJ, served as provincials of the Society of Jesus in Bolivia from 1993-1999 and 1999-2007, respectively and were convicted of covering up and failing to report abuse by a local court this week.
However, although both men were formally handed custodial sentences, neither is likely to actually spend time in prison, since the Bolivian justice system nearly always commutes short prison sentences.
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This weekend will see the formal canonizations of Carlo Acutis and Pier Giorgio Frassati, as just about everyone knows. But also this weekend, and rather less well known, the Baltic state of Estonia will gain its first Blessed.
Austria’s Cardinal Christoph Schönborn will preside on behalf of Pope Leo XIV at the Sept. 6 beatification of Archbishop Eduard Profittlich, S.J., in Freedom Square in the capital, Tallinn.
Tallinn’s Bishop Philippe Jourdan has described the event as “not only a major moment for Estonia’s Catholics, but for the entire nation.”
“For the first time, someone will be declared Blessed in Estonia who lived, served and suffered right here in our land — in the heart of Estonia,” he wrote in August.
So, who was Archbishop Profittlich? And what is his legacy?
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This last week, Pope Leo appointed Fr. Raffaele De Angelis as Eparch of Piana degli Albanesi of the Italo-Albanian Catholic Church, located in Sicily.
The appointment comes after a five-year vacancy in the see. In February 2020, the last eparch, Bishop Giorgio Demetrio Gallaro, was appointed as secretary of the then-Congregation for Eastern Churches.
But you might be wondering what exactly the Eparchy of Piana degli Albanesi is — and what the Italo-Albanian Catholic Church is, for that matter. And those are reasonable questions.
You can read the answers right here.
In addition to meeting Cardinal Chow, Pope Leo made time this week to receive Fr. James Martin, the New York Jesuit and prominent advocate for “LGBTQ” Catholics.
I received a surprising number of phone calls from people, most of whom were rather more animated than I would have expected about the audience. Others, I saw online, seemed convinced that for (good or ill) Martin meeting Leo is the single most significant moment his pontificate so far.
It’s not clear to me how the audience came to happen — if the pope summoned him, or Fr. Martin made a request — but I honestly think this is one of those things that is being taken to mean a lot more than it does or should.
For one thing, Martin’s own account of the event hardly reads like a preview of big things to come. And for another, they aren’t strangers — they spent several weeks on the same table during one of the sessions of the synod on synodality, so it doesn’t seem outlandish to me that Leo might make time to see him, if asked.
More generally, while I would say I certainly disagree with Fr. Martin on many things, I find his status as a totemic figure of doctrinal progressive revolution a little overblown. The College of Cardinals isn’t shy of members who, unlike Martin, actually, publicly, and in-terms dissent from the same teachings Martin is often accused of cleverly and carefully subverting, so I tend to focus my attention in that direction.
For what it’s worth, I met Fr. Martin once — only once, mind you — and found him very interesting company.