(English text after the Italian / Spanish text after English)

 

THE CHURCH OF THE PATCHES PASSES THE HOLY DOOR OF IRREVERSIBLE DECAY ON A WHEELCHAIR

This Jubilee will be a failure on the spiritual and economic front, because a Holy Door has been opened, not so much about what we are no longer, worse! We have opened the Holy Door on what we have become through a paradigm shift: the Church of twenty-five years ago, even though she was already seriously ill, he tried to force himself to open, to open the doors to Christ; today's, patient in the department for terminally ill cancer patients, he tried to open, to open the doors to the world.

—Ecclesiastical current affairs—

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In the experience of man and in the life of the Church nothing happens by chance, if anything, we are increasingly incapable of reading the signs. And so, twenty-five years apart, two Supreme Pontiffs have opened the Door of the Holy Year, arriving before it with the weight of old age and their disabling illnesses.

At Christmas 1999, the visible Church led by John Paul II arrived seriously ill before the Holy Door. This Pontiff debilitated by Parkinson's disease was a plastic paradigm of this, who was aided by a master of ceremonies dressed in a dignified ecclesiastical robe, he wanted to kneel anyway, albeit with obvious difficulty and great physical suffering. Never did he agree to waive the genuflections, especially before the Most Holy Eucharist. For the solemn occasion the Holy Father was dressed with a blanket which precedes the birth of the by centuries Christianitas. A wallpaper known in ancient times religion Roman pagan as downpipe, used by Pontifex Maximus to shelter from the rain, when from the top of Sublicio Bridge, located between the current Trastevere and Testaccio districts, at Porta Portese, he studied the movements of the waters and the flight of birds to interpret the will of the gods.

For the solemn jubilee event of 2000 the Holy Father wore a cope on which much criticism was leveled. That save, packaged in Prato, it had been woven in very bright colors: rosso, blue and gold, symbols present in nature and in the human spiritual dimension. Red tends to symbolize life and strength; blue is the union between sky and earth; yellow the divinity.

Reflecting on it in hindsight, that play of colors was like the last explosion of light before the arrival of the dark gray that envelops us today and which cannot be attributed either to him or to the Supreme Pontiffs who have succeeded him since 2005 following, because the crisis of the Church begins from afar. A minimal knowledge of history would be enough - in this world that with memories only reaches yesterday, given that it doesn't even reach the day before yesterday - to understand that the seeds of the crisis giving rise to ecclesiastical and ecclesiastical decadence, boldly visible today, they were already present between the pontificates of Leo XIII and Pius, between the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century.

If with John Paul II the disease was pressing at the door, with the Supreme Pontiff Francis the visible Church has gone beyond it, entering a point of no return, pushed onto a wheelchair by the shadow of a gaunt priest clad in a pair of trousers, rather than with a dignified ecclesiastical dress. That of John Paul II, despite being a Church that has already been in crisis for decades, he always knelt before the Body and Blood of Christ, fighting against the unavoidable worsening of the disease. Francis's does not kneel before the Body and Blood of Christ, because she was now seriously ill and irreversibly ill. But he kneels down to wash and kiss the feet of convicts and prostitutes Mass of the Lord's Supper, despising the richness of our glorious places of worship, which are not the fruit of princely splendor, as some uneducated people might think, but of the faith of believers and the work of the greatest artists who with them wanted to honor God, offering the best and paying the maximum that could be paid to the Divine Creator of heaven and earth, of all things visible and invisible. This is why the abbreviation D.O.M is carved on many ecclesiastical buildings., what does it mean: God is the Greatest. However, on the one hand there is contempt for what is not known, on the other hand there is no hesitation in glorifying prisons, in which one ends up having committed crimes, except in cases of innocent people unjustly convicted of judicial errors, or in the cases of the prisons of anti-democratic dictatorial regimes. Although some don't remember it, or they are not really aware of this incontrovertible reality, it is worth reminding them that criminals end up in prison.

How many are inside the prisons can be recovered from the company, after a re-education process, not exalted as if they were faithful devotees of modern cathedrals, or unspecified victims of bad society, guilty of not having fully understood them. If I'm in there someone, out, often more than one, sometimes even entire families, because of them they cried. It would therefore be good to remember that forgiveness is such if it goes hand in hand with the punishment inflicted by justice, which on the spiritual level acts as a purification of the condemned, transforming prison into an action of that divine grace which first forms and then transforms man through the expiation of what the laws of the State indicate as crimes, Catholic doctrine as sins. In both cases, both as regards crimes and as regards sins, secular states with a liberal-democratic imprint, like the Church itself, they offer differently, but substantially similar, the possibility of atonement, which in itself implies that recovery which erases the guilt deriving from the crime or sin committed. This is the apostolate in prisons, the rest is just surreal and harmful ideology, between foot rinses and "prisoner jubilees" of a Supreme Pontiff who arrives in front of the Holy Door in the Papal Archbasilica of St. Peter being pushed in a wheelchair by an emaciated priest in trousers, because in that case he is unable to get up and walk. But he gets up and walks to pass the open Holy Door in the Rebibbia prison, comparing it to a basilica (cf.. video WHO). Someone wants to remind the Holy Father that in Rome we have basilicas built on the blood of Christian martyrs killed in hatred of faith and that the title basilica is not particularly suitable for a prison chapel? And right here the words of the Psalmist come to mind:

Until, man, you will continue to forget me?
Until you hide your face from me?
As long as I feel trouble in my soul,
sadness in my heart every moment?
Until the enemy triumphs over me?

Guard, answer me, Lord my God,
keep the light in my eyes,
so that the sleep of death does not surprise me,
so that my enemy does not say: «I won it!»
and let not my adversaries rejoice when I falter (Salmo 13, 2-5).

The Jubilee, also called Holy Year, it has a great spiritual significance that affects the life of the entire universal Church. The heart of this event is the Sacrament of Penance for the remission of sins and punishments for sins. Its institution is lost in the mists of time and is linked to the experience of the ancient People of Israel. The official website of the Holy See provides a excursus history that I recommend reading (cf.. What is the Jubilee). It is so precise and well done that further explanation is unnecessary, because for my part I could only repeat what is contained and explained in it.

Now I would like to move from the spiritual sphere to the financial one, starting from the premise that I hope to be wrong in some of my personal beliefs and to have to make public amends for them in the following months. In fact, I fear that this Jubilee will be a failure on the spiritual and economic front, because a Holy Door has been opened, not so much about what we are no longer, worse! We have opened the Holy Door on what we have become through a paradigm shift: the Church of twenty-five years ago, even though she was already seriously ill, he tried to force himself to open, to open the doors to Christ (cf.. WHO); today's, patient in the department for terminally ill cancer patients, he tried to open, to open the doors to the world. And as I have often had the opportunity to remember in recent years, the task that Christ God has entrusted to us by divine mission is not to please the world, but to counter it:

"If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own; because you are not of the world, but I have chosen you from the world, that's why the world hates you " (GV 15, 19).

Often images can summarize an entire state of affairs without resorting to words. For instance: what about the episcopessa Protestant sitting in the places of honor with the exponents of the various religions? But we are inclusive! Because of this, just to exclude everything that is Catholic, of necessity we must include everything that is not Catholic... of course, all expressed with due human respect for that Lady present in the grandstand as "bishop" in the Papal Archbasilica of St. Peter, without any of the clerical leaders realizing that in this way we run the risk of letting a message of normalization and approval pass through, given that a woman cannot define herself as a "bishop" and that no one, on the Catholic side, can somehow recognize it as such, even if belonging to a non-Catholic Christian religion born from the heresy and schism of Martin Luther, who we remember was a heretic, not a reformer.

Luther did not produce any reforms at all, that was done by the Fathers at the Council of Trent, he tore the Church of Christ apart with a terrible schism, which remains so today, with all due respect to bishop in the grandstand at the opening of the Holy Year above the tomb of the Apostle Peter in the total indifference of inclusive clericalism.

We were talking about the economic discussion... for the Jubilee of 2000 the law decree of 23 October 1996, n. 551, containing «Urgent measures for the Great Jubilee of 2000», then converted into the law of 23 December 1996, n. 651. Work began on that event years before, subject to the passing of specific laws, but above all an astronomical sum of money was allocated: 3.500 billions of old lire, corresponding in today's money to one billion eight hundred million euros. Also in this case I refer to the official website of the Ministry of Infrastructure and Transport, where everything is documented and detailed (cf.. WHO). Having said this, it should be remembered that the president of the Italian bishops of the time was Cardinal Camillo Ruini, endowed with rare political skills, with an army of bishops following him who were not yet today's caricatures who compete with each other to see who wears the humblest and poorest wooden cross around their neck, possibly made with the material of a boat sunk off the coast of Lampedusa on which human traffickers transported poor desperate illegal immigrants, often including women and children.

That of the years preceding the Jubilee of 2000 it was another Church, another episcopate, another pontificate... but above all another society and another national and international geopolitical structure. But here is an exhaustive example that can clarify everything: at the time, in Italy, if before the administrative elections some diocesan bishop expressed discontent towards one or some particularly polemical or aggressive candidates, these took care of correcting the aim and lowering the tone during the electoral campaign. But there's more: when in June of 2005 there was a referendum in Italy on assisted procreation, Cardinal Camillo Ruini expressly invited Italians not to go to vote. Outcome: three out of four Italians did not go to the polls and the referendum was a fiasco (cf.. WHO). The fact that you personally appreciate and recognize certain evident and undoubted qualities of Cardinal Camillo Ruini, regretting that today, figures of his high stature, unfortunately we no longer have any, nothing takes away from the fact that I would never have hoped to have him as my diocesan bishop. In fact, I still continue to consider it today, on a human and spiritual level, like "a cold dry bone covered in velvet", I had to define it as such, much to his little joy, a few years ago, oblivious on my part to how notoriously touchy he is, as well as having no sense of humor.

With completely different men and a completely different kind of Church, on the occasion of the great jubilee event of 2000, Rome was made new again. This is in the interest of the State, who recovered what was invested with high income and both economic and image interests, but also of the Church, which, thanks to the huge funds allocated for that extraordinary event, was able to take advantage of it to renovate most of its structures, many of which had already been in terrible conditions for years. And here it should be remembered that Rome, even then, it was teeming with religious institutes, most of which were built after the Concordat stipulated in February 1929 between the Kingdom of Italy and the Holy See. Works mostly erected in the 1930s, in a real competition between the historical Orders and the various religious Congregations, male and female, to those who built the largest institutes. At the gates of the Third Millennium, with a drastic drop in birth rate that began at the end of the 1960s, certain Catholic schools, nursery schools and various care institutions, they no longer had any reason to exist, being mostly pharaonic structures. It should then be considered that in 1978 that great social achievement of the law on abortion was approved, thanks to which even the orphanages disappeared, which was no longer needed, given that children could be killed before they were born. Not to mention the numerous curiae and general houses of the various male and female Orders and Congregations, almost always with novitiates or theological student houses within them, that led them to have, between the fifties and sixties, communities that numbered one hundred or two hundred religious, between those who had professed solemn vows and the young simply professed people in training.

In Rome at the beginning of the seventies it was impossible not to meet everywhere, along the courses of urban streets, priests and nuns, friars and nuns. Then there were the young seminarians and theology students from the various national and international Roman seminaries and colleges, who when they went for a walk formed lines of dozens and dozens of young clerics. Soon said: the decline in birth rates and the inexorable crisis in vocations had reduced in the following decades, most of these large structures, to be inhabited no longer by one hundred or two hundred, but by six or seven elderly religious men or women, with the buildings now in a state of semi-dilapidation, with obsolete systems and outside of all safety regulations. Thus it was that on the occasion of the Jubilee of 2000, not only were most of these institutions renovated, because it was decided to make them an income in some way, reserving a small wing for religious men and women now numerically reduced to a minimum and changing the bulk of the buildings into shelters, in fact in hotels, because that is what most of these institutes are today. It was a farsighted operation, thanks to which the buildings of many institutes were saved and put in a position to produce the necessary money to support themselves.

Unfortunately priests, brothers and sisters, they are capable - and truly are like few others - of throwing money away on useless expenses, sometimes even in harmful works from which great losses then arise, without having the ability to realize that certain structures require great care and careful maintenance. And so, twenty-five years ago, after being taken out of very serious trouble, faced with problems related to their large buildings which they were unable to restore, nor to store it adequately, nor to comply with legal regulations regarding safety, they found nothing better to do than to let them return to a state of semi-dilapidation over the next twenty-five years, not everybody, but most of it yes. Questa è quella che sono solito chiamare “psicologia della toppa clericale”. The meaning of this definition will soon be revealed: a structure requires routine maintenance? Why ever spend money, just let it go, if anything saying, with all the typical and at times unique cynicism of priests, brothers and sisters: «It's not worth getting bitter blood unnecessarily, those who come after will then take care of it". A quel point, all ordinary maintenance operations omitted over the years, will end up turning into serious extraordinary maintenance needs, but it costs a lot. A quel point, la nota lungimiranza pretesca-fratesca-suoresca incomincia ad attaccare delle toppe a destra e a sinistra, if anything, spending exorbitant amounts in the belief of saving money, because there are few like priests, friars and nuns are such idiots to get cheated out of money, if they have not been adequately trained in concrete practical life with their feet firmly planted on the ground. Said and done: the walls were last whitewashed twenty years ago? Internal and external fixtures, air conditioners and radiators, the sanitary fixtures installed at the end of the 1990s and so on, on which the necessary ordinary maintenance interventions have never been carried out, today they are falling apart? No worries, ci si attacca una toppa, if anything - needless to say! — having the work done by people who, to change simple filters on air conditioners, they make the inexperience of priests, friars and nuns pay more than what the latest generation low consumption and high energy saving systems would cost.

Since there would be many examples I'll limit myself to just one: last year I had the opportunity to find myself in a nuns' institute while some painters were painting the rooms of their house-hotel. Seeing them mixing anonymous paints in buckets with plenty of water and smelling a rather unpleasant odor that smelled entirely of toxic chemical substances, I asked: «What brand of eco-friendly paint are you using?». After that, walking around the corridors, I noticed a riot of smudges not only on the walls, but also on the fixtures, on skirting boards and even on fire extinguishers dirtied with paint flows. I took the foreman and told him: «If law, in my house, had done something like that, I didn't let her out the door but out the window, I'm careful not to give her a single penny". the sera, the mother superior, she confronted me irritably and told me not to disturb their workers anymore. I answered her: «Of the people who placed the water drains of the air conditioners inside the shower cubicles of the guest bedrooms and who, not satisfied, even eliminated the earthing from the electrical system, they don't deserve to be called workers but criminals, while you demonstrate that you are only poor people incapable of managing the considerable patrimony from which your congregation has the grace of being able to benefit".

A wheelchair pushed by an emaciated priest in trousers ha inaugurato quello che ragionevolmente potremmo definire “Il Giubileo della toppa” messa sulla nostra irreversibile decadenza spirituale e finanziaria, of which our increasingly empty squares and churches are a paradigm. Or perhaps someone forgets that the 24 December 1999 St. Peter's Square wasn't just packed, because the crowd of people reached Castel Sant'Angelo and the Lungotevere? Someone wants to deal with the fact as evident as it is sad that the 24 December 2024, as shown in the photo accompanying this article, the square itself was completely empty in the center and in the four squares of chairs placed under the steps of the churchyard, many empty seats are visible?

The final question is of rigor: a devout Catholic, why he should leave from Australia or Peru to travel to Rome? Perhaps to hear an elderly Pontiff who, when he opens his mouth, talks about the poor and migrants, of migrants and the poor, of the poor and migrants...? As if the Word of God had come into this world only to speak and care for the poor of slums and those of Villas miseries (Villages of poverty)? And those who do not have the great privilege of being poor, they are also children of God, oppure no? And what would the jubilant pilgrim find in Rome? He would find the homeless camped under Bernini's colonnade; would find Borgo Santo Spirito and Borgo Pio, to the left and right of the Vatican and St. Peter's Square respectively, where early in the morning traders are forced to throw buckets of bleach to try to remove the acidic smell of urine that penetrates the nostrils in a nauseating way. And where should the jubilant pilgrim stay? Perhaps by the nuns or friars who after the Jubilee of 2000, once they had their structures rebuilt for free by the "Uncle Scrooge" of the Italian Republic, they have never asked themselves the problem of renewing beds and mattresses or redoing the bathroom fixtures; to repaint the plaster and paint the walls; who for breakfast offer you freeze-dried milk and substitute powders that rival the products put on the market during the period in which the old fascist regime proclaimed autarky, following which it was no longer possible to use foreign imported products, starting with coffee? Let's overlook the terrible quality of the food, in these houses which also offer meal service. Above all, we ignore the Indian and Filipino nuns taken from their countries and taken to the religious houses of Rome and placed under the direction of an eighty-year-old Italian nun as laborers equal to service women., which must be addressed in English, because despite living in Italy for ten years I am unable to understand and speak Italian. Let's fly over and draw a compassionate veil over all this and everything even worse that is circulating in certain houses...

At the end, how can we not mention the exotic characters who increasingly happen to be found working in shelters, especially the nuns, ranging from girls with bare bellies to boys sporting three bells in their ears, the piercing and the tattoos in plain sight? Of the series: we want to host pilgrims in religious reception homes, or in unsuccessful branches of the famous Muccassassina gay club in Rome? How come to the Holy See, sometimes even attentive to futilities, it hasn't yet occurred to us to send inspectors around to check whether certain houses are run by religious men and women, or by their lay representatives, they truly have all the necessary requirements to provide so-called religious hospitality in a dignified way?

Having opened the Holy Door in Rebibbia prison it was timely and far-sighted in its own way, being the most suitable place where many of us should be, and even for a long time, after having made an attack on the mystical body of Christ which is the Church (cf.. With the 1,18), sul quale oggi si attaccano sopra toppe di giorno in giorno, which, however, cannot stop, let alone cure, the malignant metastases that have been circulating in his body for decades and decades, without this pontificate being blamed for them, who is not responsible for it, despite having done his, without backing down to the damage that has already largely existed for several decades, he decided to add others, as original as they are serious.

"But the Son of Man, when will, find faith on earth?» (LC 18, 8)

 

the Island of Patmos, 31 December 2024

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THE CHURCH OF THE PATCHES PASSES THE HOLY DOOR OF IRREVERSIBLE DECADENCE ON A WHEELCHAIR

This Jubilee will be a failure on the spiritual and economic front, because a Holy Door opened, not so much on what we are not longer, worse! On what we have become through a paradigm inversion: the Church of twenty-five years ago, despite al-ready being seriously ill, tried to open, to throw open the doors to Christ; the Church’s today, a patient in the ward for terminal-ly patients, has tried to open, to throw open the doors to the world.

 

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In the experience of man and in the life of the Church nothing happens by chance, if anything we are increasingly incapable of reading the signs. And so, twenty-five years apart from each other, two Supreme Pontiffs opened the Door of the Holy Year, both with the weight of their seniority and their disabling illnesses.

At Christmas 1999, the visible Church led by John Paul II appeared seriously ill in front of the Holy Door. This Pontiff, debilitated by Parkinson’s disease, was a clear example of this: aided by a master of ceremonies, dressed in a dignified ecclesiastical robe, he still wanted to kneel, albeit with obvious difficulty and great physical suffering. The Holy Father never agreed to give up genuflections, especially before the Holy Eucharist. For the solemn occasion the Holy Father was dressed in a cloak that precedes the birth of Christianity by centuries. A cloak known in the ancient Roman pagan religion as a “pluvial”, used by the Pontifex Maximus, starting from the 6th century BC, to protect himself from the rain, when from the top of the Sublicio Bridge, located between the current Roman districts of Trastevere and Testaccio, to the height of Porta Portese, he studied the movements of water and the flight of birds to interpret the will of the gods.

For the solemn jubilee event of 2000 the Holy Father wore a cope which received much criticism. That liturgical vestment, made in the italian city of Prato, was woven with very bright colors: red, blue and gold, symbols present in nature and in the human spiritual dimension. The red tends to symbolize life and strength; the blue the union between sky and earth; the yellow the divinity.

If we reflect on it in the present, that play of colors was like the last explosion of light before the arrival of the dark-gray that envelops us today and which cannot be attributed either to him or to the Supreme Pontiffs who succeeded him from 2005 onwards, because the crisis of the Church begins from afar. A minimal knowledge of history would be enough — in this world which with memories barely reaches yesterday, given that it doesn’t even reach the day before yesterday — to understand that the seeds of the crisis ecclesiasial and ecclesiastical decadence, visible today, were already present between the pontificates of Leo XIII and Pius X, between the end nineteenth century and the beginning twentieth century.

If with John Paul II the disease pressed in front of the door, with the Supreme Pontiff Francis the visible Church has gone beyond it, entering a point of no return, pushed on a wheelchair by the shadow of a gaunt priest dressed in a pair of trousers, rather than with a dignified ecclesiastical robe. That of John Paul II, despite being a Church in crisis for decades, always tried to kneel before the Body and Blood of Christ, trying not to become irreversibly ill. Francis’s does not kneel before the Body and Blood of Christ, because she is now seriously and irreversibly ill. However, he kneels down to wash and kiss the feet of convicts and prostitutes at the Mass of the Lord's Supper (Mass of the Lord’s Supper), despising the richness of our glorious places of worship, which are not the fruit of princely splendor, as some uneducated people might think, but of faith of believers and of the work of the greatest artists who with wanted to honor God offering the best and the maximum that could be paid to the Divine Creator of heaven and earth, of all visible and invisible things. This is why the abbreviation D.O.M, which means: God is the Greatest (to God we always offer the best and the maximum), carved on many ecclesiastical buildings. However, if on the one hand there is contempt for what is not known, on the other there is no hesitation in glorifying prisons, in which one ends up having committed crimes, except in cases of innocent people unjustly convicted due to judicial errors, or in the cases of the prisons of anti-democratic dictatorial regimes. Although some do not remember it, or are not aware of this incontrovertible reality, it is worth reminding them that criminals end up in prison.

Those inside prisons must be recovered, not exalted as if they were devoted builders of modern cathedrals, or unspecified victims of the bad society guilty of not having fully understood them. If one is in there, you need to remember that outside, someone, often more than one, sometimes even entire families, have cried of cause him. It would therefore be good to remember that forgiveness is such if it goes hand in hand with the punishment inflicted by justice, which on a spiritual level acts as a purification of the condemned, transforming prison into an action of that divine grace which first forms and then transforms the man through the expiation of those that human law indicates as crimes, Catholic doctrine as sins. In both cases, both as regards crimes and as regards sins, secular states with a liberal-democratic imprint, like the Church for its part, offer the possibility of atoning in a different but essentially similar way, which it implies that healing which erases the guilt deriving from the crime or sin committed. This is the apostolate in prisons, the rest is just surreal and harmful ideology, between eccentric foot-washing to prisoners and prostitutes in the Mass of the Lord's Supper, and the ‘prison jubilees’ of a Supreme Pontiff who arrives before the Holy Door of the Papal Archbasilica of St Peter’s in a wheelchair pushed by an emaciated priest in trousers, because he cannot get up and walk; yet he gets up and walks two days later to cross the Holy Door opened in Rome’s Rebibbia prison, where he compares the prison chapel to a basilica (see video HERE). Does anyone want to remind the Holy Father that in Rome we have basilicas built on the blood of Christian martyrs killed in hatred of the faith (hatred of faith) and that, for this reason, the title of basilica is not appropriate for a prison chapel? And right here the words of the Psalmist come to mind:

How long must I take counsel in my soul and have sorrow in my heart all the day?
How long shall my enemy be exalted over me?

Consider and answer me, O Lord my God; light up my eyes,
lest I sleep the sleep of death,
lest my enemy say, “I have prevailed over him,”
lest my foes rejoice because I am shaken.

But I have trusted in your steadfast love;
my heart shall rejoice in your salvation (Psalm 13, 2-5).

The Jubilee, also called the Holy Year, has a great spiritual significance that affects the life of the entire universal Church. Heart of this event is the Sacrament of Penance for the remission of sins and cancellation of the sentence. Its institution is lost in the mists of time and is linked to the experience of the ancient People of Israel. The official website of the Holy See provides a historical excursus that I recommend reading (see: What is the Jubilee). It is so precise and well done that further explanations are superfluous, because for my part I could only repeat what is contained and explained in it.

Now I would like to move from the spiritual to the financial sphere, starting from the assumption that I hope to be wrong in some of my personal beliefs, and to publicly ask for forgiveness for them in the following months. I fear that this Jubilee will be a failure on the spiritual and economic front, because a Holy Door has been opened, not so much on what we are no longer, worse! We have opened the Holy Door on what we have become through a paradigm inversion: the Church of twenty-five years ago, despite already being seriously ill, tried to force itself to open, to throw open the doors to Christ (see HERE); the Church of today is in the ward for terminally ill cancer patients, because has tried to open, to throw open the doors to the world. And as I have often had the opportunity to remember in recent years, the task that Christ God has entrusted to us by divine mission is not to please the world, but to oppose it:

«If you were of the world, you would be loved by the world: but because you are not of the world, but I have taken you out of the world, you are hated by the world» (John 15:19).

Often images can summarize an entire state of affairs without resorting to words. For example: the Protestant woman bishop in places of honor among the exponents of the various religions. But let’s be inclusive! In fact, to exclude everything that is Catholic, it is necessary to necessarily include everything that is not Catholic… All expressed with due human respect for that Lady present as “bishop” in the Pontifical Archbasilica of St. Peter. The leaders ecclesiastics don’t realize that in this way they risk transmitting a message of normalization and approval, given that a woman cannot define herself as a “bishop” and that no one on the Catholic side can in any way recognize her as such. It should not be forgotten that this Lady belongs to a non-Catholic Christian religion born in the 16th century from the heresy and schism of Martin Luther, who we remember was a heretic, not a reformer.

Luther did not produce any reforms. The true and only reform was made by the Fathers of the Council of Trent. Luther tore apart the Church of Christ with a terrible schism, which remains so even today, with all due respect to the Protestant women-bishops welcomed into places of honor for the opening of the Holy Year on the tomb of the apostle Peter. All this in total indifference of inclusive clericalism.

But let’s get to the economic question. For the Jubilee of 2000, work in Rome had begun years earlier. Specific laws have also been approved: Legislative Decree 23 October 1996, n. 551, containing «Urgent measures for the Great Jubilee of 2000», later converted into law 23 December 1996, n. 651. Above all, an astronomical sum of money was allocated: 3,500 billion of the old lire, corresponding in today’s money to one billion and eight hundred million euros (approximately 1,878,000,000.00 USD). Also in this case I refer you to the official website of the Ministry of Infrastructure and Transport of the Italian Republic, where everything is documented and detailed (see HERE). Having said this, it should be remembered that the president of the Italian bishops of the time was His Eminence the Cardinal Camillo Ruini, endowed with rare political skills, with an army of bishops following him who were not caricatures like today’s bishops, who compete between of them to those who carry on their chest the humblest and poorest wooden cross, made with the material of a sunken boat off the sicilian coast of Lampedusa isla on which human traffickers transported poor desperate illegal immigrants, including women and innocents children.

That of the years preceding the Jubilee of 2000 was another Church, another episcopate, another pontificate… but above all another society and another national and international geopolitical structure. But here is an exhaustive example capable of clarifying everything: at the time, in Italy, if before the administrative elections some diocesan bishop expressed discontent towards a particularly polemical or aggressive candidate, immediately the candidate corrected his tone during the electoral campaign. But there’s more: when the referendum on assisted procreation was held in Italy in June 2005, Cardinal Camillo Ruini expressly invited Italians not to go and vote. Result: three out of four Italians did not go to the polls and the referendum was a flop (see HERE). The fact that I appreciate and recognize certain undoubted qualities of Cardinal Camillo Ruini, stating that today, unfortunately, we no longer have figures of his high level, does not take anything away from the fact that I would never have hoped to have him as my diocesan bishop. Even today, on a human and spiritual level, I continue to consider it “a cold and dry bone covered in velvet”. This is how I defined him, to his scant joy, a few years ago, without caring how notoriously touchy and humorless the Cardinal is.

With completely different men and a completely different kind of Church, on the occasion of the great Jubilee event of 2000, Rome was remade new. This was in the interest of the State, which recovered what it had invested with high revenues and both economic and image interests, but also of the Church, which thanks to the huge funds allocated for that extraordinary event was able to take advantage of renovate most of its structures, many of which had already been in terrible conditions for years. And here it should be remembered that Rome, already at the time, was teeming with religious institutes, most of which were built after the Concordat stipulated in February 1929 between the Kingdom of Italy and the Holy See (in 1929, after the fall of the Papal State and the conquest of Rome in September 1870, the Kingdom of Italy recognized the Vatican City as an independent sovereign state governed by the Roman Pontiff). Works mostly erected in the 1930s, in a real competition between the historical Orders and the various religious Congregations, male and female, to see who built the largest institutes. At the gates of the Third Millennium, with a drastic decline in the birth rate that began at the end of the 1960s, certain Catholic schools, nursery schools and various care institutions no longer had any reason to exist, as they were mostly pharaonic structures. It should also be considered that in 1978, in Italy, the “great social conquest” of the law on abortion was approved, thanks to which orphanages also disappeared, for which no longer any need, given that children could be killed before they were born. Not to mention the numerous general houses of the various male and female Orders and Congregations, with novitiates or theological school within them, which led them to have, between the fifties and sixties, communities that numbered one hundred or two hundred religious, among those who had professed solemn vows and the young simply professed people in training.

In Rome, at the beginning of the seventies, it was impossible not to encounter priests, friars and nuns everywhere along the urban streets. Then there were the young seminarians and theology students from the various national and international Roman seminaries and colleges, who when they went for a walk formed lines of dozens and dozens of young clerics. In simple words: the decline in the birth rate and the inexorable crisis of vocations had reduced the majority of these large structures in the following decades to being inhabited no longer by one hundred or two hundred, but by six or seven elderly men and women religious, residing in buildings which were now in semi-degraded state, with obsolete systems and outside of any legal regulations regarding safety. So it was that on the occasion of the Jubilee of 2000, not only were a large part of these institutes renovated, but it was decided to make them profitable in some way, reserving a small wing for men and women religious, now reduced to a few members, and all the rest used for holiday home, in fact in hotels, because this is what most of these institutions are today: low-cost hotels. It was a far-sighted operation, thanks to which the buildings of many institutions were saved and made capable of producing the money necessary for their maintenance.

Unfortunately, priests, friars and nuns are capable — and they really are like few others — of wasting money on useless expenses, sometimes even on harmful works which then lead to great losses, without having the ability to realize that certain structures require a lot of care and maintenance. And so, the well-known sapience of priests, friars and nuns begins to attach patches left and right, spending exorbitant amounts in the belief of saving money, because few like priests, friars and nuns are so idiotic as to let themselves be robbed, if they have not been adequately trained in concrete practical life with their feet firmly planted on the ground. All said and done: were the walls, last painted twenty years ago? The internal and external fixtures, the air conditioners and radiators, the sanitar elements dilapidated and broken today fixtures, on which the necessary routine maintenance, has never been carried out they were installed in the late 90s? No problem, just apply a patch, entrusting the repairs to people who, to change banal filters on air conditioners, make the inexperience of priests, friars and nuns pay more than what the new latest generation air conditioners with low consumption and high energy savings would cost.

Since there are many examples, I will limit myself to just one: last year I had the opportunity to find myself in a nuns institute while some painters were painting the rooms of their house-hotel. Seeing them mixing anonymous paints in buckets with plenty of water, and smelling a rather unpleasant odor that smelled entirely of toxic chemical substances, I asked: “What brand of ecological paint are you using?”. Then, walking around the corridors, I noticed a riot of smudges not only on the walls, but also on the fixtures, on the skirting boards and even on the fire extinguishers dirtied with paint flows. I took the foreman and told him: “If you had done something like this in my house, I wouldn’t have let you out through the door but through the window, being careful not to give you a single penny.” In the evening, the mother superior confronted me irritably and told me not to disturb their workers anymore. I replied to her: «The people who placed the water drains from the air conditioners inside the shower cubicles of the guest bedrooms and who, not satisfied, even eliminated the earthing from the electrical system, do not deserve to be called workers but criminals, while you nuns demonstrate that you are womens incapable of managing the considerable patrimony from which your congregation has the grace of being able to benefit”.

A wheelchair pushed by an emaciated priest in trousers inaugurates what we might reasonably call “The Jubilee of patch” focused on our irreversible spiritual and economic decadence, of which our increasingly empty squares and churches are a paradigm. On 24 December 1999, the square of St. Peter’s, was not only packed, because the crowd of people reached as far as Castel Sant’Angelo. Same way, it is equally evident that on December 24, 2024 (as shown in the photo accompanying this article), the same square was completely empty in the central part, and in the four squares of chairs placed under the churchyard, several empty seats are visible.

The last question is obligatory: why should a devout Catholic leave Australia or Peru to go to Rome? Perhaps for hear an elderly Pontiff who, when he opens his mouth, speaks only of poor and migrants, of migrants and poor, of poor and migrants…? As if the Verb of God had come into this world only to speak and care for the poor of the “slums” and “Villas miseries” (Villages of misery)? And those who do not have the great privilege of being poor, are they also sons of God, or not? And what would the jubilant pilgrim find in Rome? The clochards under Bernini’s colonnade; Borgo Santo Spirito and Borgo Pio, respectively to the left and right of the Vatican and St. Peter’s Square, where early in the morning traders are forced to throw buckets of bleach to try to remove the acidic smell of urine that penetrates the nostrils nauseatingly? And where should the jubilant pilgrim lodge? Perhaps by the nuns or friars who after the Jubilee of 2000, once they had their religiouse homes renovated free of charge by the “Uncle Scrooge” of the Italian Republic, never asked themselves the problem of renewing beds and mattresses or redoing the bathroom fixtures; restore the plaster and paint the walls; that they offer freeze-dried milk and substitute powders for breakfast that rival the products put on the market during the period in which the old fascist regime proclaimed autarky, following which it was no longer possible to use products imported, starting with coffee? Better not even to mention the very poor quality of the food they offer in these houses where they also serve meals. Better to ignore, for Christian charity’s sake, the problem of the Indian and Filipino nuns taken from their countries and brought to the religious houses in Rome, placed under the direction of an eighty-year-old Italian nun and used as serving women, who, despite living in Italy for ten years, are unable to understand and speak Italian. Let us overlook and draw a veil over all this and all the worst that circulates in certain homes…

Finally, how can we not mention the exotic characters that we working in this religious houses, especially in those of nuns, who vary from girls with bare bellies to boys who show off three earrings in their ears, piercings and tattoos view? But do we want to host pilgrims in religious homes, or in failed branches of a gay village? Why has it not yet occurred to the Holy See to send around inspectors to verify whether certain houses managed by men and women religious, or by their lay preposed, really have all the necessary requirements to do so-called religious reception in a dignified way?

Having opened the Holy Door in the Roman prison of Rebibbia was appropriate and in its own way farsighted, being the most suitable place where many of us should be, and also for a long time, after having launched an attack on the mystical body of Christ which is the Church (Colossians 1,18), on which attached day after day patches that cannot stop, much less cure, the malignant metastases that have been circulating in his body for decades and decades. A state of affairs for which this pontificate is certainly not responsible, despite having done its part, without holding back when, to the damage that has already largely existed for several decades, it decided to add others, as original as they are serious.

«But when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?» (Luke 18, 8)

 

From the Island of Patmos, 28 December 2024

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THE CHURCH OF THE PATCHES PASSES THE HOLY GATE OF IRREVERSIBLE DECADENCE IN A WHEELCHAIR

This Jubilee will be a failure spiritually and economically, because a Holy Door has been opened, not so much about what we are no longer, worse! We have opened the Holy Door on what we have become through a paradigm inversion: the Church of twenty-five years ago, despite being seriously ill, tried to force himself to open, to open wide the doors to Christ; the Church of today, Lying like a patient in the oncology hospice, she has tried to open wide the doors to the world..

 

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In the experience of man and in the life of the Church nothing happens by chance, If perhaps we are increasingly incapable of reading certain signs. And so, twenty-five years apart, two Supreme Pontiffs opened the Door of the Holy Year, appearing before her with the weight of old age and her disabling illnesses.

At Christmas 1999, The visible Church led by His Holiness John Paul II arrived seriously ill before the Holy Door. This Pontiff, weakened by Parkinson's disease, It was a plastic example of this.: assisted by a master of ceremonies dressed in a dignified ecclesiastical vestment, who wanted, in any case, kneel although with obvious difficulties and great physical suffering. He never agreed to make exceptions with genuflections, especially before the Holy Eucharist. For the solemn occasion, The Holy Father wore a mantum that precedes the birth of Christianitas by centuries. A cloak known in ancient Roman pagan religion as a “pluvial”, used by him Pontifex Maximus to shelter from the rain, when from the top of the Sublicio Bridge, located between the current neighborhoods of Trastevere and Testaccio, at the height of Porta Portese, He studied the movements of water and the flight of birds to interpret the will of the gods.

For the solemn jubilee event of the year 2000, The Holy Father wore a cape about which much criticism was made. That garment, made in Prato, It had been woven in very bright colors: rojo, blue and gold, symbols present in nature and in the human spiritual dimension. Red usually symbolizes life and strength.; the blue, the union of heaven and earth; the gold, divinity.

If we reflect on it in retrospect, That play of colors was like the last explosion of light before the arrival of the gloomy grayness that surrounds us today.; and that it is not attributable to him, nor to the Supreme Pontiffs who succeeded him from 2005; because the crisis of the Church began a long time ago. A minimal knowledge of history would be enough — in this world with memories that barely reach back to yesterday, since we do not even reach the day before yesterday - to understand that the germs of the crisis that caused the ecclesiastical and ecclesiastical decline, blatantly visible today, They were already present between the pontificates of Leo XIII and Pius, at the end of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th century.

If with John Paul II the illness pressed at the door, With the Supreme Pontiff Francis the visible Church crossed a point of no return, pushed onto a wheelchair by the shadow of an emaciated priest dressed in a pair of pants, instead of a dignified ecclesiastical vestment. That of John Paul II, despite being a Church in crisis for decades, always tried to kneel before the Body and Blood of Christ, trying not to get irreversibly sick. The Church of Francis does not kneel before the Body and Blood of Christ, because now she is seriously and irreversibly ill. However, He kneels to wash and kiss the feet of prisoners and prostitutes in the Mass of the Lord's Supper, despising the wealth of our glorious places of worship, that they are not the fruit of princely splendor — as some uncultured people might think — but of the faith of believers and the work of the greatest artists who wanted to honor God, offering the best, paying the highest homage that could be offered to the Divine Creator of heaven and earth, of all visible and invisible things. That's why the abbreviation D.O.M, what does it mean: God is the Greatest, It is sculpted on many ecclesiastical buildings. If, on the one hand, what is not known is despised, on the other hand, there is no hesitation in exalting prisons, among those that end up having committed crimes, except the case of innocent people unjustly convicted due to judicial errors. Although some don't remember it, or are not really aware of this incontrovertible reality, It is worth reminding them that criminals end up in jail.

Those who are inside prisons must be recovered, not exalted as if they were faithful devotees of modern cathedrals, or unspecified victims of a bad society, guilty of not having fully understood them. If someone is in there, outside, often more than one, and sometimes even entire families, They have cried because of him. So, It would be good to remember that forgiveness is such if it goes hand in hand with the punishment inflicted by justice, which on the spiritual level acts as a purification of the condemned, transforming prison into an action of that divine grace that first forms and then transforms man through the atonement of those whom human law designates as crimes, and Catholic doctrine as sins. In both cases, both in regard to crimes and sins, secular states with a liberal-democratic imprint, like the Church for its part, They offer differently, but substantially similar, the possibility of atonement, which implies in itself that recovery that erases the guilt derived from the crime or sin committed. This is the apostolate in prisons, the rest is surreal and harmful ideology, between foot washing and “prisoners' jubilees” of a Supreme Pontiff arriving before the Holy Door of the Papal Archbasilica of Saint Peter pushed in a wheelchair by an emaciated priest in trousers, because in that case it is impossible to get up and walk. But he gets up and walks until he opens the Holy Door in the Roman prison of Rebibbia, comparing it to a basilica (cf.. video WHO).

Does anyone want to remind the Holy Father that in Rome we have basilicas built on the blood of Christian martyrs cruelly murdered in hatred of faith (in hatred of the catholic faith) and that the title basilica is not particularly appropriate for a prison chapel? And this is where the words of the psalmist come to mind:

How long will I feel anguish in my soul and sadness in my heart, day after day? How long will my enemy triumph at my expense??
Señor, My God, look at me and answer me! Enlighten my eyes so that I don't sleep with the dead,
and let my enemy not say that he finished me, Nor will my adversaries rejoice to see me hesitate..
As for me, I trust in your goodness; I will know the joy of your salvation and I will sing to the Lord who has treated me well (Salmo 13, 2-5).

The Jubilee, also called Holy Year, It has great spiritual significance that affects the life of the entire universal Church. The heart of this event is the Sacrament of Penance for the remission of sins and the penalties for sins.. Its institution is lost in the mists of time and is linked to the experience of the ancient People of Israel.. The official website of the Holy See offers a historical tour that I recommend reading (watch: What is the Jubilee?). It is a text so precise and well done that there are no more explanations, For my part I could only repeat what was contained and explained in it..

Now I would like to move from the spiritual sphere to the financial one., starting from the premise that I hope to be wrong in certain personal convictions and have to publicly correct them in the coming months. I fear that this Jubilee will be a failure spiritually and economically., because a Holy Door has been opened, not so much about what we are no longer, worse! We have opened the Holy Door on what we have become through a paradigm reversal: the Church of twenty-five years ago, despite being seriously ill, tried to force himself to open, to open wide the doors to Christ (watch HERE); the Church of today, lying as a patient in the oncological hospice ward, has tried to open, to open wide the doors to the world. And as I have often had the opportunity to remember in recent years, The task that Christ God has entrusted to us by divine mission is not to please the world, but to oppose him:

«If you were of the world, the world would love them as their own. But since they are not of the world, but I chose them and took them out of him, "the world hates them" (Juan 15,19).

Images can often summarize an entire state of affairs without resorting to words. For example: What to say about the Protestant episcopese sitting in the seats of honor along with representatives of different religions? But we are inclusive!! Therefore, to exclude everything that is Catholic, we must necessarily include everything that is not Catholic… of course, all obviously expressed with due human respect towards the Lady present on the podium as “obispo” in the Papal Archbishopric of St. Peter, without any of the clerical solons realizing that in this way we run the risk of letting through a message of normalization and approval, because a woman cannot define herself as “bishop” and nobody, on the catholic side, in no way can you recognize it as such, not even if it belongs to a non-Catholic Christian religion born from the heresy and schism of Martin Luther, what we remember: He was a heretic and he was not a reformer.

Luther did not produce, in fact, some reform; the only true reform was carried out by the Fathers at the Council of Trent. Luther tore apart the Church of Christ with a terrible schism, which remains as is to this day, with due respect to the bishops on the platform of honor at the inauguration of the Holy Year, over the tomb of the apostle Peter, with the total indifference of inclusive clericalism.

We were talking about the economic discourse… for the Jubilee of 2000, The Decree Law of the 23 October 1996, n. 551, containing "Urgent measures for the Great Jubilee of 2000", later converted into law 23 December 1996, n. 651. Work for this event began years ago., after the approval of specific laws, but above all with the attribution of the astronomical sum of money: 3.500 billion of the old liras, which in current currency is equivalent to one thousand eight hundred million euros. Also in this case I refer to the official website of the Ministry of Infrastructure and Transport, where everything is documented and detailed (watch HERE). That being said, It must be remembered that the president of the Italian bishops at that time was His Eminence Cardinal Camillo Ruini, endowed with rare political skills, followed by an army of bishops who were not yet like the current caricatures, who compete with each other to see who carries the most humble and poor wooden cross on their chest, possibly made from material from a sunken ship off the coast of the Sicilian island Lampedusa; boats on which human traffickers transport poor illegal and desperate immigrants, among whom there are often women and children.

That of the years preceding the Jubilee of the 2000 It was another Church, another episcopate, another pontificate… but above all, another society and another national and international geopolitical structure. Here is an exhaustive example capable of clarifying everything: in that period in Italy, if before the administrative elections any diocesan bishop expressed his dissatisfaction with one or more particularly controversial or aggressive candidates, They took measures to correct the objective and lower the tone during the course of their electoral campaigns.; but there is more: when in June 2005 There was a referendum in Italy on assisted procreation, Cardinal Camillo Ruini expressly invited Italians not to go to vote. Result: three out of four Italians did not go to the polls and the referendum was a fiasco (watch HERE). The fact of personally appreciating and recognizing certain evident and undoubted qualities of Cardinal Camillo Ruini, regretting that today figures of his high stature, unfortunately we no longer have, It takes nothing away from the fact that I would never have wanted to have him as a diocesan bishop.. In fact, I still consider it today., on a human and spiritual level, as “a cold, dry bone covered in velvet”, how I defined it, for your little joy, for a few years without repair, for my part, of anything he is notoriously susceptible to outside of lacking a sense of humor.

With all other types of men and all other types of Church completely different, on the occasion of the great jubilee event of the year 2000, Rome was made new. It was also the interest of the State, that he recovered everything he had invested with high income and interest, both economic and image, as the Church did, which thanks to the enormous funds allocated to that extraordinary event it was able to take advantage of to renovate most of its structures., many of which had already been in terrible conditions for years. And here we must remember that Rome, Even then it was full of religious institutes, most of which were built after the Concordat stipulated in February 1929 between the Kingdom of Italy and the Holy See (in it 1929, after the fall of the Papal State and the taking of Rome in September 1870; The Kingdom of Italy recognized Vatican City as an independent sovereign state governed by the Roman Pontiff). Works erected for the most part in the years 1930, in a true competition between the historical Orders and the different religious Congregations, male and female, to see who built the biggest institutes. At the gates of the Third Millennium, with a drastic decrease in the birth rate that began at the end of the years 1960, certain catholic schools, day care centers and various assistance institutions no longer had a reason to exist, since they were mostly pharaonic structures. It must also be considered that in the 1978 was approved in Italy “great social achievement” of the abortion law, thanks to which orphanages disappeared, no longer necessary, since children could be killed before they were born. Not to mention the numerous curias and general houses of the different male and female Orders and Congregations., almost always with novitiates or theology students inside, what led to having, between the fifties and sixties, communities that numbered one or two hundred religious, between those who had professed solemn vows and the young simple professed in formation.

In Rome in the early seventies, it was impossible not to find priests, friars and nuns everywhere along the urban roads. There were also young seminarians and theology students from the different national and international seminaries and Roman schools., that when they went out for a walk they formed lines of dozens and dozens of young clerics. In a nutshell: The decline in birth rates and the inexorable crisis of vocations had reduced, in the following decades, most of these large structures to being inhabited no longer by one hundred or two hundred., but by six or seven elderly men and women religious, with buildings that were now in a semi-ruinous state, with obsolete systems and outside of all legal regulations regarding security. So, on the occasion of the Jubilee of the year 2000, Not only were a large part of these institutes renovated, but it was decided to make them profitable in some way: reserving a small wing for religious men and women, now numerically reduced to a minimum and transforming the bulk of the buildings into hostels, actually in hotels, because that is what most of these institutions are today. It was a forward-thinking operation., Thanks to which the buildings of many institutes were saved and they were allowed to produce the money necessary to sustain themselves..

Unfortunately, priests, friars and nuns They are capable - and they really are like few others - of wasting money on useless expenses., sometimes even in harmful works that later cause great losses, without realizing that certain structures require a lot of care and careful maintenance. And so, twenty-five years ago after having been saved from very serious problems, related to their great buildings that they had not been able to restore, nor properly preserve, nor to adapt to legal standards regarding safety; They found nothing better to do than let them return to their semi-ruined state for the next twenty-five years., not all, but a good part of them do. This is what I usually call “clerical patch psychology.”. And it is easy to reveal the meaning of this definition: Does a structure require routine maintenance? Why spend money, just leave it like this, and just in case, say with all the cynicism typical and sometimes unique to priests, friars and nuns: “It's not worth the useless bitter blood, Those who will come later will take care of it”. At this point, all the ordinary maintenance interventions omitted over the years end up becoming serious needs for extraordinary maintenance, which however cost a lot. No problem, we will put a patch on it, entrusting the work to people who, to change the banal air conditioner filters, they will do that due to the inexperience of priests, friars and nuns are paid more than what they are paid in the latest generation systems, low consumption and high energy saving.

As there are many examples I will limit myself to just one: Last year I had the opportunity to find myself in an institute of nuns while painters were painting the rooms of their house-hotel. Seeing them mixing anonymous paints in buckets with plenty of water and smelling a rather unpleasant odor that smelled like toxic chemicals, I asked: “What brand of eco-friendly paint are you using??”. Then, as I walked through the hallways, I noticed an avalanche of stains not only on the walls, but also in furniture, on baseboards and even on fire extinguishers dirty with paint drips. I grabbed the foreman and told him: «If you had done something like that in my house, I wouldn't have let you out through the door but through the window., "taking care not to give you a cent". At night, The irritated Mother Superior told me not to bother the workers anymore.. I replied: «People who have placed water drains from air conditioners inside guest room showers and are not satisfied with that, They have even removed the outlets from the electrical system, They do not deserve to be called workers but criminals. While you nuns demonstrate that you are incapable of managing the considerable patrimony from which your congregation has the grace to benefit.".

A wheelchair pushed by an emaciated, pants-clad priest inaugurated what we could reasonably define as “Jubilee patch” focused on our irreversible spiritual and financial decline, of which our increasingly empty squares and churches are a paradigm. Or maybe someone forgets that the 24 December 1999 St. Peter's Square was so full of people that the crowd of faithful reached the Castel Sant'Angelo and the Lungotevere? Someone wants to address the obvious and sad fact that the 24 December 2024, as shown in the photo accompanying this article, the same square was completely empty in the center and in the four squares of chairs placed under the steps of the basilica you can see so many empty seats.

One last question is essential.: Why would a devout Catholic leave Australia or Peru to travel to Rome?? To listen to an old Pontiff who, when he opens his mouth, talks about poor and immigrants, of immigrants and poor, of poor and immigrants…? As if the Word of God had come to this world only to speak and care for the poor in the favelas and the Villas of misery?? And those who do not have the great privilege of being poor, They are also children of God, or not? And what would the jubilant pilgrim find in Rome? I would find the vagabonds camped under Bernini's colonnade; would find Borgo Santo Spirito and Borgo Pio, respectively to the left and right of the Vatican and St. Peter's Square, where early in the morning merchants are forced to throw buckets of bleach to try to eliminate the sour smell of urine that penetrates the nostrils. in a nauseating way. And where should the jubilant pilgrim stay?? Perhaps where the nuns or friars who, after the Jubilee of the 2000, once he Uncle McDuck O Scrooge McDuck of the Italian Republic renewed its structures free of charge, They never considered the problem of renewing beds and mattresses or redoing the toilets.; restore the plaster and paint the walls; that offer freeze-dried milk and powdered substitutes for breakfast that rival the products marketed during the period in which the former fascist regime proclaimed autarky, after which it was no longer possible to use products imported from abroad, starting with coffee? Let's ignore the poor quality of the food that these houses offer as catering services.. Above all, Let us ignore the sad reality of the Indian and Filipino nuns taken from their countries, taken to the religious houses of Rome and placed under the direction of an eighty-year-old Italian nun as domestic servants, who should be addressed in English, because even if they have lived in Italy for ten years, they do not understand or speak Italian. Let us overlook and draw a compassionate veil over all this and all the worst that circulates in certain houses.…

And finally, How can we not mention the exotic characters that we increasingly find working in these religious reception houses?, especially in the nuns' houses, ranging from girls with bare bellies to boys who wear three earrings in their ears, piercings and tattoos in sight? From the series: Do we want to welcome pilgrims in religious houses of hospitality, Or do we want to transform religious houses into failed branches of a gay village?? How is it possible that the Holy See, sometimes even attentive to trivialities, It has not occurred to them to send inspectors to verify whether certain houses run by religious men and women, or by their lay supervisors, really meet all the necessary requirements for religious reception in a dignified manner?

Having opened the opening of the Holy Door in the Roman prison of Rebibbia It was timely and farsighted in its own way., being the most appropriate place where many of us should be and even for a long time, after having attacked the mystical Body of Christ which is the Church (Colossians 1,18). A Holy Body on which today they are placed, day after day, patches that can't stop, much less cure, the malignant metastases that have been attacking him for decades. The metastases were not caused by this pontificate, who is not responsible for them, despite having done their part without stopping the damage that had already existed for several decades, decided instead to add others, so original, as equally serious.

"But, when the Son of man comes, Will you find faith on earth?» (Lucas 18,8)

 

From the Island of Patmos, 31 December 2024

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WE CAN HAVE A CHRISTMAS WITHOUT THE CELEBRATOR?

Christ Jesus our Lord, that on this day we remember embodied in our humanity and history, manifests the fundamental mystery of all the Christian mysteries that are related to our salvation.

 

 

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Il Natale è fra le festività più amate e celebrate nel mondo, perché universalmente considerata come un momento di gioia, di riunione familiare e di condivisione.

Le città in ogni parte del globo si illuminano di decorazioni scintillanti, i mercatini di Natale pullulano dei prodotti tipici di questo periodo e le case si riempiono del profumo dei piatti tradizionali. Ma si può celebrare questa Solennità, specificatamente cristiana, senza far accenno al motivo della festa? E’ vero che il Natale crea un’atmosfera magica, ma possiamo accontentarci solo di questa o di far prevalere la componente commerciale, senza ricordare il perché di questa occasione, ovvero senza invitare alla festa Colui che ne è la ragione e il motivo di tanta gioia e pace desiderata ed invocata?

Possiamo far Natale senza il Festeggiato, Christ Jesus our Lord, che proprio in questo giorno ricordiamo incarnato nella nostra umanità e storia, manifestando così il mistero fontale di tutti i misteri cristiani che sono in ordine alla nostra salvezza? È proprio questo il messaggio angelico recato ai pastori nella notte santa di Natale:

"Fear not:: there, you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people: today, the City of David, is born for you a Savior, che è Cristo Signore» (LC 2,10-11).

Non può bastare e soddisfarci un Natale solo «consumato» nella festa o nei piatti, ancorché questo si faccia in famiglia o con gli amici. Anzi proprio la preparazione di questi ultimi, delle leccornie di ogni genere che riempiono le nostre tavole natalizie, del panettone o del pandoro, tradizionali dolci italiani del periodo, che dividono gli schieramenti degli amanti vuoi dell’uno o dell’altro, ci rimandano alla lentezza, a quella cura che richiede tempo e dedizione, rispetto della tradizione e della pazienza.

Così anche la nostra fede ha bisogno di altrettanta passione e cura, soprattutto quando si pone davanti al mistero tutto da adorare del Natale di Gesù. Esso non può essere adombrato dall’aspetto commerciale, dalla frenesia dello shopping natalizio alla ricerca del regalo perfetto per le persone che ci sono care. Nulla può oscurare il messaggio di amore, speranza e redenzione che il Natale porta con sé. Eppure anche le preparazioni, se fatte con amore, con la dovuta attenzione al loro significato, possono aiutarci a mantenere vivo questo aspetto importante della fede cristiana che corrisponde all’Incarnazione del Verbo divino.

Riscoprire lo spirito autentico del Natale anche attraverso le cose che si fanno in questo periodo, in famiglia o nella comunità cristiana, accantonando lo spirito solo mondano della festa per vivere ogni occasione con profonda fede e sincero amore fra noi e verso il Signore che nasce a Betlemme. Fare cose semplici insieme, come preparare i cibi che andranno sulla tavola, avere cura dei particolari per far si che tutti si sentano accolti e amati. Non dimenticando la condivisione con chi è più povero o sfortunato, perché proprio in questa circostanza possiamo rivalutare e dare pregnanza alla virtù della carità, poiché proprio per amore Cristo è nato per noi. E poi leggere storie di Natale, fra tutte i Vangeli della natività, che ci fanno comprendere il fine ed il significato di questo mistero; e partecipare alla Messa di Natale per comprendere attraverso l’azione liturgica e la preghiera quanto il Signore ci abbia amato venendo fra noi.

Quanto è prezioso, to this end, la presenza in casa e ovviamente in Chiesa, di un presepe. Diffuso in tutto il mondo, proprio da noi è nato, grazie al genio religioso di San Francesco che nel 1223 realizzò il primo presepe vivente a Greccio. Ogni figura del presepio ed i simboli in esso nascosto hanno un significato profondo di fede e di cultura: contribuiscono a raccontare la storia della nascita del Bambino Gesù.

Bello sarebbe, come avviene per esempio nelle famiglie religiose ebraiche in occasione di Passover, che anche nelle famiglie cristiane, di fronte al Presepe si raccontasse ai più piccoli il perché di quelle figure, di quelle pose e di come il dono dell’eterno Padre fatto all’umanità, Gesù Bambino luce che porta al mondo la salvezza, sia passato attraverso la disponibilità di alcune persone, in particolare Giuseppe e la Vergine Maria.

Maria è la Madre che cogliamo nell’atteggiamento di amore e dedizione: richiamano la sua fede che si abbandonò al volere divino. St. Joseph, col suo bastone, è il giusto silenzioso e pieno di forza, posto a protezione della famiglia di Nazareth, figura di una Chiesa di la da venire. Subito dopo i pastori, che si trovano nelle vicinanze di Betlemme, simbolo di umiltà e semplicità. Primi a ricevere l’annuncio della nascita di Gesù e primi ad accostarsi al mistero: anticipano la futura chiamata delle genti, fra le quali spiccheranno i gli umili e semplici.

E come non menzionare i Magi, che arrivano da lontano guidati dalla stella. Portano doni preziosi: air, incenso e mirra, che ci aiutano a meditare in anticipo sulla regalità, sulla divinità e perfino sulla futura sofferenza di Gesù. Anche la presenza dei Magi nel presepio sottolinea l’universalità del messaggio cristiano, che abbraccia ogni popolo e cultura. Gli angeli poi, che sovrastano la scena della Natività, annunciano la buona novella della nascita del Signore. Essi cantano: «Gloria a Dio nell’alto dei cieli e pace in terra agli uomini amati dal Signore», portando un messaggio di gioia e speranza. La stella infine, che guida i Magi fino alla mangiatoia, simbolo della luce divina e della grazia che illumina il cammino dell’umanità verso la salvezza. Perfino gli animali presenti nel presepio hanno una loro rilevanza spirituale. Il bue e l’asinello, spesso raffigurati accanto alla mangiatoia, rappresentano la pazienza e la laboriosità. Secondo la tradizione riscaldarono con il loro fiato il Bambino Gesù, indicando così la semplicità e la generosità della natura.

Il presepe e ogni aspetto legato al santo Natale, per banale che sia, ha un suo senso a cui possiamo dare il giusto valore col fine di aiutarci a comprendere il Natale oggi, nonostante siano passati circa 2024 anni da quell’Evento. Anche le cose della tradizione possono sposarsi con le innovazioni della modernità e ciò che è apparentemente antico in verità ha una validità che non tramonta. Così il Natale non appare come una festa di solo consumo o di luci, ma veicola un messaggio profondo e bello, carico di speranza per gli uomini e per il creato intero, che non tramonta mai e che non scade col passare del tempo. Dio ci ama e rimane con noi, per questo ha mandato il Suo Figlio Gesù, nato per noi.

 

Santa Maria Novella in Florence, 25 December 2024

Dies Natalis Domini

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PERHAPS NOT EVEN THE VIRGIN MARY DID MOURN THE DEATH OF HER SON, CARLO ACUTIS' MOTHER MAY HAVE SUCCEEDED?

Carlo Acutis' mother goes around giving lectures on her holy son who died in 15 years in 2006 for fulminant leukemia. We are at tragicomedy? Of course not, we are only at the understandable tragedy of a mother who has chosen an unusual way to try to process her son's mourning.

—Ecclesiastical current affairs—

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I owe eternal gratitude to my two main trainers: Peter Gumpel S.J. (Hannover 1923 – †Roma, 2022) e Paolo Molinari, S.J (Torino 1924 – †Roma 2014) who for half a century directed the general postulation of the Society of Jesus and who also instructed me in the postulation of the causes of the Saints. We are not talking about remote times, but from an era in which the so-called "vamp postulators" with degrees were not yet in fashion of both rights at the Pontifical Lateran University, who change companions in the same way they change clothes designer labels and which together with the “manager postulators", also lay people, they are capable of extracting mind-boggling sums from the nuns of some congregation in agony, but endowed with considerable assets, who are unaware that they are now at the entrance door of the cremation centre, which will soon entrust their ashes to history, at all costs they want the founder to be blessed or saintly.

I was on the unforgettable third floor of the general curia of the Society of Jesus, at the civic 4 of Borgo Santo Spirito, where I believe I made some of the most fundamental decisions of my life, starting from the most important: become a priest. It was the month of September of the year 2011, I was helping Father Peter Gumpel in some work related to certain documents of the cause of beatification of Pius XII, when during a break he told me that various experts had great reservations regarding the beatification, then to follow for the canonization of Maria Goretti, because direct family members were always alive: brothers and sisters, but above all his mother Assunta. Father Peter told me this way:

«Although the matter is not known, before proceeding with the beatification, occurred 45 years after the death of the martyr - not six years later as is done today with the Roman Pontiffs -, was asked of the mother, to the brothers and sisters the promise that they would lead a private life and would never tell stories or make public testimonies about their daughter and sister, because the Church had taken care to say what there was to say and if anything had been necessary to add or integrate, the Church itself would always have provided".

Mother Assunta, with the brothers and sisters of the Goretti family, they complied with what was requested by the Ecclesiastical Authority and none: journalist, writer, scholar or simply curious has never gleaned a word from them beyond what the Church has told about the story of the teenage martyr.

The mother of Carlo Acutis he goes around giving lectures on the dead holy son a 15 years in 2006 for fulminant leukemia, without any Ecclesiastical Authority having invited her to exercise maximum discretion, quite the opposite, they stimulate her in this sense! We are at tragicomedy? Of course not, we are only at the understandable tragedy of a mother who has chosen an unusual way to try to process her son's mourning; a mourning that can never be processed, especially from a mother, so unnatural is the loss of a child for parents.

Proof of what has just been stated it is imprinted in the vocabulary: a child who loses his parents is an orphan, a wife who loses a husband is a widow, a husband who loses his wife is a widower. A parent who instead loses a child, what is it, with what term is it defined? There isn't even a term in the dictionary to define a parent who loses a child, with all due respect to the currents of certain wild psychology that speak of the mourning process for the death of a child.

Maybe, perhaps not even the Blessed Virgin Mary mourned the death of his son. Including divine plans, she acquired the awareness - we do not know when and through what gradual process over time - that the son she brought into the world was the incarnate Word of God "begotten not created of the same substance as the Father", who offered himself as a sacrificed lamb to wash away the sins of the world.

However, processing the mourning of the child is something else, even for the Blessed Virgin Mary, who despite being the mother of the incarnate God who died and rose again, even though she was born without original sin and assumed into heaven after having fallen asleep, he was still a created creature, was human, not divine. Just as a created creature she is the mother of San Carlo Acutis, which is not the Immaculate Conception.

 

the Island of Patmos, 7 December 2024

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The Fathers of the Island of Patmos

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