Bishops of dioceses around the world have an obligation to work to prevent clerical sexual abuse and to ensure that priests in their dioceses do not commit acts of abuse, said Cardinal Gerhard Müller, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
You have to admit that Cardinal João Bráz de Aviz had a difficult task today. He reported on the visitation of U.S. communities of nuns that began in 2008.
Now, this "visitation" was not his idea or initiative. It was launched by order of archconservative Cardinal Franc Rodé, then in charge of the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life. Rodé is still around and may have a few opinions about the result.
Complementarity is a word and concept long rejected by those who care about the equality of women and men in our world.
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In a U.S. visit, Cardinal Gerhard Müller, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, told officials at the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops not to lose sight "that the voice of the Catholic church must be heard in the public square."
"Otherwise we risk that our democracies are reduced to a vocabulary of truth, which is exclusively pragmatic and positivist," he said Tuesday at the USCCB headquarters in Washington.
Pope Francis has worked to keep in the public discourse the issue of poverty understood in its widest possible sense, said the prefect of the Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
"Going well beyond a merely economic conception of poverty, Pope Francis has tried to indicate to the world the true poverty of the human condition in our times: the poverty of body and soul, pointing out all the forces at work in the world further impoverishing mankind," said Cardinal Gerhard Müller.
A Roman Observer: Debate has begun in the Vatican. But there is a problem: A lot of bishops do not seem too pleased about this. Not one bit.
Questions over the tone presented by the synod toward gay people dominated conversations Thursday, after the Vatican seemingly tried to water down its message of openness.
A Roman Observer: Pope Francis has succeeded in cracking open a frank and lively debate among bishops on issues many of them were told were not up for discussion.
Bishops meeting at the Vatican to discuss issues of family life have to relearn how to do theology in order to address contemporary concerns, one archbishop said.
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