Pope expected to create new dicastery to re-evangelize Europe, US

Rome, Italy, Apr 26, 2010 / 10:31 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Pope Benedict XVI is about to release a letter announcing the creation of a new Vatican dicastery called the Pontifical Council for the New Evangelization. The new dicastery will be aimed at bringing the Gospel back to Western societies that have lost their Christian identity.

Andrea Tornielli, the Vatican correspondent for the daily Il Giornale who is usually well-informed on new appointments at the Vatican, wrote today that “Benedict does not cease to surprise: in the upcoming week the creation of a new dicastery of the Roman Curia dedicated to the evangelization of the West will be announced, and be presided over by Archbishop Rino Fisichella.”

The new dicastery is aimed at evangelizing “countries where the Gospel has been announced centuries ago, but where its presence in their peoples' daily life seems to be lost. Europe, the United States and Latin America would be the areas of influence of the new structure,” Il Giornale says.

According to Tornielli, the new dicastery would be “the most important novelty of Pope Benedict’s pontificate, a Pope that, according to the expectations, was supposed to slim down the Roman Curia.”

Tornielli says that the idea of such a dicastery was first proposed to Pope John Paul II by Msgr. Luigi Giussani, the late founder of the Italian-born movement Comunione e Liberazione (Community and Liberation), but the idea did not move ahead.

In response to the question of how the idea resurfaced, Tornielli says, according to “authoritative sources,” the proposal of the dicastery comes from the Patriarch of Venice, Italy Cardinal Angelo Scola.

During his tenure as Rector of the Pontifical Lateran University, Cardinal Scola promoted intense reflection on the loss of Christian identity in Europe. The Patriarch of Venice was also a member of Communion and Liberation, and in his current position has shown significant concern for the de-Christianization of Europe and the Western world.

Fisichella, the currently embattled head of the Pontifical Academy for Life, succeeded Angelo Scola as Rector of the Lateran University and as such, shared the same concerns of his predecessor.

More from LifeSite News

ROME, April 26, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A rumor is flying in Rome that the controversial current head of the Pontifical Academy for Life (PAV), Archbishop Salvatore “Rino” Fisichella, will be rewarded with an appointment to a soon-to-be formed dicastery, The Pontifical Council for the New Evangelization.

Archbishop Fisichella has been the centre of a storm of controversy since he published an article in L’Osservatore Romano in March last year in which he appeared to condone the abortion of the twin children of a nine year-old rape victim.

Italian journalist and specialist on the Vatican, Andrea Tornielli, wrote in Italian daily Il Giornale this weekend that it will soon be announced that the pope will create a new department dedicated to re-evangelization of the West, which will be chaired by Archbishop Fisichella.

Pope Benedict, Tornielli said, is preparing an apostolic letter about the institution of the Pontifical Council for the New Evangelization, dedicated to re-spreading the Catholic religion in countries where the Gospel has already been known for centuries, “but today where its effectiveness in people's lives seems to have lost.”

John Allen, the American reporter on Vatican affairs for National Catholic Reporter, wrote that should it turn out to be true, the appointment would be a “vindication” for Fisichella, who has refused to recant or correct his article, despite strong protests from senior members of the PAV and pro-life advocates around the world.

Sources close to the Vatican have informed LifeSiteNews.com (LSN) that the rumor is likely to be true and that it would clearly be a promotion for Fisichella, possibly even resulting in his being made a cardinal. Fisichella is already known to have turned down the appointment to the see of Siena, a diocese that does not traditionally include a promotion to the College of Cardinals.

That possibility has already come under fire from Spanish journalist and commentator Francisco José Fernández de la Cigoña, who has been strongly critical of Fisichella’s role as head of the PAV. He wrote on his blog, “His tenure at the head of the Pontifical Academy for Life was a mockery.”

“It seems another case of ‘removal by promotion’. I myself, until he recognises that he made a mistake with the infamous article, which I think his pride will not allow, will continue to believe that he is a moderate abortion-promoter, only in exceptional cases. Which means he should not preside over anything in the Church.”

In his article, Fisichella attacked the then-archbishop of the girl’s diocese, Olinda and Recife, for having told the media that the planned abortion would result in the automatic excommunication of the girls’ mother and the doctors who arranged the abortion. Fisichela wrote, addressing the girl, that, “Other people deserve excommunication and our forgiveness: not those who have allowed you to live.”

Read LSN’s extensive coverage of the Fisichella scandal here.

As we say in this country "good luck with that." Most European cultures pride themselves on secularist pluralism, and view the Church as a part of their past. This is especially true in France, Austria, Belgium, the Netherlands, and much of Italy and Spain. In the United States, the "Quiet Revolution" has effectively done the same in the portions of the US that are most heavily Catholic (see New England and the mid-Atlantic), where the number of children enrolled in Catholic schools has dwindled and where the Church itself has lost the tremendous political and social influence it held here for nearly a century.

A proactive campaign for evangelization is needed, as you cannot simply count on either high Catholic birthrates (the pill and the Quiet Revolution took care of that) or, in the case of the United States, immigration (many Hispanic immigrants are far from devout) to grow the church in Europe and the United States.

Hopefully this isn’t too late. In Europe the mosques are packed and miniarets dot the skylines of major cities. Meanwhile the great cathedrals are mostly empty except for the tourists.

Many native Europeans are militanty secular and regard marriage and children as burdensome. While the Islamic population is booming in Europe, the native population is ageing and in sharp decline. It is not unusual for most European families to have more grandparents than grandchildren these days.

This is what socialism and secularism do to a civilization. With BHO at the helm and the Democrats with overwhelming majorities in Congress, the US isn’t far behind. This appears to be our fate as well unless we can reverse course ASAP.

In Europe the mosques are packed and miniarets dot the skylines of major cities. Meanwhile the great cathedrals are mostly empty except for the tourists.

That could describe parts of the US, as well. Growing up in Queens NY, our Catholic Church was packed to capacity (no a/c in summer, no microphone for the priest) and local police directed traffic after Mass. I have moved upstate NY. In the RC Diocese of Albany, the "progressive" bishop is shutting down churches and schools. Meanwhile, just up the road, a 4 minaret mosque is under construction and a local non-denominational evangelical church has taken over an entire strip mall. Many of the members of his congregation are former Catholics, angry with the bishop for closing their churches.

Funny thing about great change for the good - it happens very slowly, somewhat behind the scenes and from a multitude of fronts depending heavily on the few people who believe in it. Expect this to be the same as the rebuilding of cities, regions, baseball farm systems, NFL franchises, [insert massive rebuilding effort of choice here]. The naysayers and impatient ones will abandon the effort and ridicule the movement while walking away. There's a lot out there that is working to build the Church in the right direction. It hasn't caught on everywhere, but it's there. Reversing course takes years, decades even. The strength of numbers wasn't built overnight and it won't be this time either. Just the fact that the Jesuit provinces have vocations, period, after basically a 30 year drought is cause for quiet sighs of relief, but not rest. There's new cloistered orders popping up all over. Seminaries where the bishops are orthodox (more and more, it's becoming less an oddity) are full. In many parishes, including my former one, parishoners are going nose to nose with pastors and telling them off for supporting pro-choice politicians. Now, is not the time to despair. Now's the time to join in and thank Heaven that the Holy Spirit moved the consistory to elect Benedict XVI who is doing the Church equivalent of moving mountains.

I'm in on this movement. Wouldn't miss it.

Well I’m frustrated. The article should have said up front what a dicastery is. Maybe I missed it in there.

One of the official Vatican congregations through which the Pope conducts the regular administration of the Catholic Church. Some examples are:

Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith

Congregation for the Oriental Churches

Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments

Congregation for the Causes of Saints

Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples

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