Pope Francis’s preparatory work in the past few months to reform the Vatican has started bearing fruit. The first important reform to be implemented is the new Secretariat for the Economy and the appointment of its first head, Cardinal George Pell of Sydney, Australia.
The new Secretariat for the Economy will supervise the financial affairs of all Vatican departments and will also be responsible for financial planning, budgeting, and purchasing. The secretariat will be supervised by a 15-member council, of which eight members will be bishops and the other seven will be lay experts, drawn from different parts of the world.
As a result of these changes, the involvement of senior and experienced experts in the Vatican’s financial administration is expected to increase. There will also be more planning and reporting to ensure better use of resources, improving the support available for various programmes, particularly our works with the poor and marginalised.
‘First church to be set up in Saudi Arabia’
MidEast Christian News, a news agency specialising in news about Christians in the Middle East, reported an agreement between the Coptic Pope, Tawadros II, and the Saudi ambassador in Cairo, Ahmed Kattan, whereby the Saudi kingdom give permission for the building of the first Christian church in Saudi Arabia since the arrival of Islam. It will be a Coptic Orthodox church.
MidEast Christian News quoted “a reliable source” for its story, although it has not been confirmed by Saudi sources. The news is considered to be remarkable as Saudi Arabia does not permit Christian manifestations in public. It also forbids the public use of Bibles, crucifixes and other religious symbols.
About a million Catholics live in the kingdom, mainly Filipinos, and Christians of other denominations, including Egyptian Copts.
Poles trust Church less
Surveys among Poles has shown a significant increase in their numbers of those who think there is no direct link between religion and morality – a jump from 33 per cent in 2009 to 41 cent today. At the same time, there were fewer people who believe religion is the only source of morality. The number fell to 16 per cent, compared to 24 per cent in 2009.
Prof. Tadeusz Bartos attributed this decline in trust to the opinion that “the moral teaching of the Catholic Church seems to be paralysing the individual’s choices”.
On the other hand, the bishops of Poland claim that negative media reports about the Church are to blame for this lack of trust.
‘Not cannon fodder’
In a pastoral letter, the bishops of Katanga in the Democratic Republic of Congo denounced the serious situation of their province caused by the violence of the Bakata-Katanga armed group. “Let us say it loud and clear that our populations are not cannon fodder,” they said. The letter was issued at the end of the episcopal assembly of bishops of the province of Lubumbashi.
They lamented that the young are “continually subjected to magical practices” to the point that they “ransack, rape, kill, torture and burn”. Thousands of refugees in the country are deprived of humanitarian assistance, and mortality is high.
The bishops said: “The dramatic situation in Katanga has multiple causes: weakness of State authority, poor distribution of wealth, economic imbalance between urban and rural, frustration, impunity ...”.
They expressed the hope that “those responsible at all levels are working to find effective solutions”.
(Compiled by Fr Joe Borg)