John Allen skriver om de mange tingene som har skjedd i vatikanet den siste uka.
Slik skriver han:
* A spectacular series of police raids against the Catholic church in Belgium as part of a sex abuse probe, including drilling into the tombs of deceased archbishops in search of hidden documents, which set off a barbed diplomatic war of words between Brussels and Rome.
* An almost surreal kiss-and-make-up session between two cardinals, Christoph Schönborn of Vienna, Austria, and Angelo Sodano, dean of the College of Cardinals and the former Secretary of State under Pope John Paul II. The meeting came after Schönborn had accused Sodano in April of blocking action on an especially explosive Austrian chapter of the sex abuse crisis.
* A decision by the Supreme Court in the United States to allow a sex abuse lawsuit against the Vatican in Oregon to proceed, and the filing of a new lawsuit against the Vatican (as well as the Salesian order) in Los Angeles just two days later.
* Important personnel moves in the Vatican, including the appointments of Cardinal Marc Ouellet of Quebec to head the ultra-powerful Congregation for Bishops, and Bishop Kurt Koch of Basel, Switzerland, to replace Cardinal Walter Kasper as the Vatican’s top ecumenical official. In general, the appointments signal the triumph of theologians over diplomats in the Vatican, ensuring that men who share Benedict XVI’s spiritual and theological outlook are now firmly in charge.
* The creation of a brand new Vatican department, the “Pontifical Council for the New Evangelization,” whose mission is to try to reawaken the faith in the West, above all in Europe, with Italian Archbishop Rino Fisichella named as the council’s first president.
* Struggles to contain the fallout from a financial scandal swirling around the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples, formerly known as “Propaganda Fidei,” with the Vatican first admitting “errors of judgment” and then twenty-four hours later insisting that wasn’t supposed to be taken as a reference to Sepe personally.
* A hearing of the European Court of Human Rights to determine whether the display of crucifixes in Italian public school classrooms violates European protections of human rights and freedom of conscience. … …