Cardinal-designate Mario Zenari, apostolic nuncio to Syria, has said the Pope’s decision to make him a cardinal was a “gesture of love” for Syrian martyrs.
He said that by choosing to give him a red hat Pope Francis was honouring the people and the steadfast presence of a papal representative in the war-torn nation.
“It’s a gesture of love for the martyred Syrian population and it is also a gesture of supporting diplomacy,” Cardinal-designate Zenari told SIR, the news agency of the Italian bishops’ conference.
Since 2008, Cardinal-designate Zenari has served as the Pope’s representative in Syria, where armed conflict emerged following the 2011 Arab Spring.
The conflict involving government forces, jihadist rebel factions and ISIS has left nearly half a million people dead, according to the Syrian Centre for Policy Research and, according to the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, at least 7.6 million people have been displaced internally and more than four million have fled the country.
“It’s well noted that the Holy See has always maintained diplomatic relations during this period”, and now, by elevating “his ambassador to the dignity of cardinal, is giving additional value to this presence and to the diplomatic efforts aimed at resolving the crisis,” he said.
“Even if I am Italian, as the nuncio, my homeland is Syria. A son cannot tear himself away from his mother’s bedside when she is sick or dying – that is why I stay,” he told Vatican Insider. He also said that in Damascus, “everything is polluted, the air, the water, the land. And the people who escape the bombings or the chemical weapon attacks live under another kind of bombing – poverty, which hits 80 per cent of the people. Half of all the factories and hospitals have been destroyed.”
When Pope Francis announced the creation of 17 new cardinals in October, the nuncio’s name was first on the list. The Pope also made a point of adding that the prelate would “remain apostolic nuncio to the beloved and martyred Syria”.
The diplomat told AsiaNews that, with other countries closing so many diplomatic missions over the past few years, the Pope’s gesture underlined that “staying on, on site, is important”.
The 70-year-old prelate said the lack of willingness to negotiate a peaceful settlement means it is not just an “uphill struggle” but like “climbing a wall”.
Exorcist director: doctors can’t dismiss demonic possession
The director of The Exorcist, William Friedkin, has said that psychiatrists are more accepting of the possibility of demonic possession than when he made the film.In an article for Vanity Fair, Mr Friedkin profiled the late exorcist Fr Gabriele Amorth, who died earlier this year. Fr Amorth permitted Friedkin to film an exorcism, which was then shown to experts in neuroscience and psychiatry.
Mr Friedkin writes: “I went to these doctors to try to get a rational, scientific explanation for what I had experienced. I thought they’d say: ‘This is some sort of psychosomatic disorder having nothing to do with possession.’ That’s not what I came away with.
“Forty-five years after I directed The Exorcist, there’s more acceptance of the possibility of possession than there was when I made the film.”
Mr Friedkin assembled a panel of “some of the leading psychiatrists in the country”. One of them, Dr Jeffrey Lieberman, recalled a case he had experienced which left him “completely freaked out” in which “somehow, like in The Exorcist, we were the enemy”. He added: “There was no way I could explain what happened.”
Crisis-hit Guam gains bishop
Pope Francis has appointed a new coadjutor bishop for Guam, the US island territory in the Western Pacific, as its suspended archbishop awaits a trial at the Vatican for allegedly sexually abusing altar boys.Auxiliary Bishop Michael Jude Byrnes of Detroit will have “complete right and responsibility” over the diocese, the Vatican said.
Archbishop Anthony Apuron of Guam was relieved of his duties in June after several accusations of child abuse.
.jpg)
