Cardinals petitioned for JP2 fast track
Italian Cardinal Camillio Ruini has told journalists that he was given a signed petition at the conclave that elected Pope Benedict to push for fast-track sainthood for the recently deceasedPope John Paul II.
Vatican City
April 27, 2011
Italian Cardinal Camillio Ruini has told journalists that he was given a signed petition at the conclave that elected Pope Benedict to push for fast-track sainthood for the recently deceasedPope John Paul II.
“The beatification was asked for inside the conclave.†The scoop arrives from an Italian news agency just four days before the solemn ceremony in which Benedict XVI will become the first Pope in 11 centuries to proclaim “blessed†his immediate predecessor.
Cardinal Ruini told AGI news wire how a large group of Cardinals had signed a petition calling on the next pope, still not yet elected, to waive the standing five-year minimum wait for the process of beatification to begin in the case of John Paul.
“Entering the conclave, a letter was given to me signed by many Cardinals who joined in the popular request (heard after John Paul’s death) to begin the process for sainthood right away,†said Ruini, who also served at the time as Vicar of Rome. “The letter was given to me because the Cardinals didn’t know who would be elected in the conclave.â€
SOURCE
Revelation: Cardinals Petitioned For John Paul II Sainthood Inside Conclave (World Crunch)
PHOTO
Giuseppe Ruggirello (Wikipedia/CC 3.0)
“He is not here… He is risen!†These are the words the angels will use this morning to announce the Resurrection to the women. “He is not here… He is risen!†But what will these few words allow the women to believe? How will this short sentence allow them to pass from sorrow into hope? How will these words of the angels “He is not here… He is risen!†make it possible for them to hope again in life after the immense sorrow they had just passed through?
Indeed, these women’s sorrow was immense and, crushed by this sorrow, they came to the tomb on that early dawn, which would be Easter. They were crushed, indeed, for they had seen the Master, the Lord, Jesus. They had followed him. They had listened to him speak of the goodness of the Father. They had heard him speak to all people, starting from the little ones. They had seen him raise the little ones, and then speak to the learned, to the powerful and tell them that they were wrong to think that, because they thought that they knew God, they could exercise power over the little ones, and tell them what they should know about God and somehow impose on them a way of life. The learned, the powerful had believed that they possessed God. They thus dispossessed the little ones of God. And when the powerful and the learned heard the Son of man, the One who spoke of the Father challenge their words, they arrested him, and then they silenced Him. And then they killed Him!
And the women had seen all this and it is in this sorrow that, on that morning, they came to the tomb in silence, crushed. They wanted to render a last homage to the body of him whom they had followed, the one they loved. And in that silence, suddenly, the angels speak: “He is not here, He is risen. Remember… He told you, He promised you!†All of a sudden the silence is no longer one of absence, an oppressive silence, the sort of silence in which one can say that one is all alone and from which there is no way out. All of a sudden, silence is the lace of the Word. The Word the authorities had wanted to silence resounded anew. This Word is the promise of life above all, of life for all starting from the little ones, starting from those whom people wanted to silence, starting from those that are marginalized. This Word was given to them. From then on, silence was the place where the women listened to the Word of God. Then they looked at the tomb, and the tomb was empty! This empty tomb is a curious sign that speaks of Resurrection. Often, indeed, we do not like emptiness, it frightens us, and it offers no future. Sometimes it makes us believe that nothingness, death, and anguish can take man and enclose him once and for all. We do not like emptiness.
The women looked and the tomb was empty… “He is not here†… From the empty tomb the women understood that it was not an absence that they had to witness, on the contrary, it was the rising of the One who had been crushed by death. It is a new presence that will spring from the empty tomb. The women, then, understood that, contrary to the emptiness that comes from nothingness and death, there was an absence that attracted them to life, a presence that would walk with them for all their life. Silence was inhabited by the Word. Emptiness was filled by the dense presence of The One they loved and that they can love again. But this tomb, like all tombs, was somber, and so, beside the tomb they saw the clothes of the angels, and the Gospel tells us that their vestments were shining with light.
This is Resurrection! We often believe that death, darkness, impasses will have the upper hand on our plans, our projects, and sometimes even on our hope. We often think that everything that darkens the horizon, darkens the world … we will never get out of this! We often think that our destiny is darkness, rather than light. The angels’ clothes are there, and they speak to us, as in the novel by Yasmina Cadra, “What the Day owes the Nightâ€. Night is the crushing of Jesus in death, a crushing from which He rose again. The day is the light of this rising. The angels’ clothes signify that it was necessary for him to pass through death to be crushed and then to live again: He is risen!
When we sometimes think about our resurrection, we imagine that it is for the future, for later on. That resurrection is the future we are promised is true. But today, together with the women by the tomb, we have to believe strongly, otherwise… or better! Resurrection is not something for later on.
Resurrection is first of all that of Christ, and our life begins with the resurrection of Christ.
This is the message of the empty tomb: our life begins with the Resurrection of Christ. The silences that prevent us from telling our story and from believing in ourselves, the silences that enclose us in ourselves, these silences are now inhabited by the life of Christ, arisen from the dead. Emptiness, anguish, the loss of hope which mark our life, because life is difficult … this emptiness, is suddenly filled by a presence, the presence of the living One, He who is our life. The obscurities, those things that sometimes make us stammer and stumble in life … the deaths, the ordeals we face, what makes us think that death is the end of everything, all of this, today on this Easter morning is illumined by the light of Christ. Yes, He is risen, He is no longer here.
He is risen! And where is He? He is in your life, in the life of each one of us; in the midst of our silences and of our words, in the midst of our words and of our obscurities, in the midst of our relations and of our loneliness. He is life!
Saint Paul said, “For me to live is Christâ€. For us, on this Easter morning, life is the life of the Risen Christ.
Happy Easter !!!
Fr. Bruno Cadore, OP
Master of the Order of Preachers
April 23, 2011
From the Gospel of St. Luke proclaimed during Easter, Bruno Cadoré, Master of the Order of Preachers meditates on the words of the angels: “He is not here, He is risenâ€. Beside the empty tomb the women who received this message were able to hope again, and we with them for life begins with the Resurrection of Christ.
A BLESSED AND HAPPY EASTER TO ALL!
The fact that each year the spring brings Easter tidings may be a coincidence; but no coincidence is the reverse: that Easter brings spring-time news.
Easter is an explosion of joy that speaks of life, of light, of freedom, of victory, of resurrection. This is what we celebrated at the Easter Vigil: the passage from death to life; from darkness to light; from slavery to freedom.
The resurrection of Jesus proves that He was right after all. Things happened in the way He declared they would happen: Resurrexit sicut dixit. The Scriptures spoke of him and in him they found fulfillment, as the risen Lord explained to the disciples along the way to Emmaus. Jesus was not disappointed in what he believed, said and did.
Neither can we be disappointed for having made the God of Jesus the object of our faith, the path in which we walk and the recipient of our obedience. What great liberation is the Easter news for us, as Christians and as religious! True, our daily lives have to prove, as in Jesus’ case, that our faith is not a vain illusion, that our words do not hide deception and that our actions are not mere appearances.
“I know very well whom I trusted,†St Paul said at the end of his life. What about us, can we say the same at the present stage of our journey? I am sure we can. But that being the case, should it not be at least a bit surprising that at times some of our options lack the religious, community-oriented quality which should characterize them?
“Do not seek among the dead the one who is alive!” When will the joyful proclamation of Jesus’ resurrection eventually convince us that sin is not human (on the contrary, it dehumanizes us) and that the living Lord may not be found among the dead and selfish?
“Go to Galilee, there you will see me!” Our going to Galilee in search of Jesus means to start walking… But often we are prey to a sluggishness that we never envisioned when we made our profession; to a comfort that rejects anything that draws us from our plans; to the fear of recovering the missionary spirit that lies atrophied in us; to lack of interest in new vocations which make us feel uncomfortable because of the change they demand; to the conviction that what we are doing is more important than what we are asked to do; to an unavailability we hurry to justify with a lot of empty excuses… No wonder then, to cite some examples, that superiors can hardly find available brethren; that the internet is becoming for some a real alienation; or that apostolic zeal is truly absent from many lives.
I wish to thank and to encourage all the brethren with this message. May the Easter celebration of this year 2011 bring a new springtime to our lives; that the Alleluia be also our song; and that it produce copious fruits of conversion in every one of us.
We have a God that is a blessing, said St Augustine: Where He enters, death leaves and life in abundance springs.
To all the brethren, A BLESSED AND HAPPY EASTER!
Fr. Javier Gonzalez Izquierdo, OP
Holy Rosary Province Provincial
Hong Kong April 23, 2011
CHRIST IS RISEN. Â ALLELUIA!
The story of Easter combines two events: a cruel death, followed by incredible hope for a new life. The story of the suffering and death of Jesus on Good Friday is the story of the very worst that life can throw to an innocent and helpless person: misunderstanding, lies, desertion, Â betrayal, false accusations, humiliation, violence, hunger and thirst, pain, darkness and death. It is the story of triumph of falsity over truth, of injustice over justice, of evil over goodness.
Imagine the disciples wondering what to believe as they walk along the road to Emmaus. This end was not what they expected, what they looked for. Sadly to say these are also some of the emotions for many of us at the moment in our daily living; feelings of fear and uncertainty. Worries and concerns within us also arise when we look to the unfolding events in Egypt, Libya, Afghanistan and other places around the world. The same feelings of desolation, emptiness and hopelessness that the women and the disciples had when they went to the tomb on that Easter morning are the feelings that many of us are experiencing now. We are desperately looking for hope as people struggle to cope with the continuing natural disasters around the world, with the loss of a loved one, concern over finances or employment…a deep sense of loss, of emptiness overshadow us.
So what has Easter to say to the world, to our society, to our family to our community? What is the good news we are called to offer? My message for this Easter is this: “Easter does not work magic,” and the human journey will still be marked by grief and anguish, However the Easter proclamation CHRIST IS RISEN is a call to hope in our lives now as well as joy and hope for the future. Our meeting with the RISEN CHRIST tells us that our destiny is not founded in the success of our institutions, or the preservation of our traditions, or the survival of our communities, but in our ability to see hope even from the artificial tombs in which we often put ourselves. The RISEN CHRIST is telling us that we need to realize that there is more than the fear of the recession, the fear of terrorism, or the fear of losing somebody very dear to us. The RISEN CHRIST is telling us that this life is just the preparation for the life to come.
‘Do not be afraid’ or ‘Peace be with you’ were Jesus’ first words as He meets and greets people that first Easter. These words changed the disciples, not just in their willingness to go and preach the Gospel, but it changed them as people. The stories in the gospels also tell us that those who encountered the living Christ could not keep it to themselves and could not wait to tell others. Likewise, Easter is a time for us to renew our faith and trust in the unseen power and love of God and a call to hope in the challenge to accommodate ourselves to imperfect reality, changing things we can change, accepting things we cannot change, and discovering that the things we cannot change are things which we can live with because the RISEN CHRIST dwells among us. The celebration of Easter is not only an ending but a beginning. Our task, as risen people who have met the risen Christ, is to help people jump from their endings into new beginnings; it is a call to transform this world into a kingdom of justice, peace and love.
As we rejoice in the Resurrection of Christ this Easter, let us not merely say Christ is risen, but “I shall rise.
May the hope of Jesus Resurrection brings you peace and happiness during this Easter season and everyday of your life
Fr. Alejandro Salcedo, OP
Prior, St Dominic’s Priory
Macau April 23, 2011
