✣ Highlights from the week online
Who supports Francis? There is, said John Allen of cruxnow.com, a classic parlour game of deciding who in the Vatican supports the Pope and who doesn’t. Apparently most believe that Cardinal Gerhard Müller, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, is against. But Allen drew attention to the cardinal’s comments during a Q&A at the Francisco de Vitoria University in Madrid, in which he defended the Pope’s style. “At the beginning of his pontificate, we spoke with Pope Francis, observing that during the previous pontificates the press accused the Church of talking only about sexuality, of abortion and these problems,” said Cardinal Müller. “For this reason, we decided, with Francis, to always, always, always speak in a positive way. If you look at the complete texts of Pope Francis, there’s gender ideology, abortion ... yes, these problems are still there, but we concentrate on the positive.” He added: “That’s not a matter of ‘revolution’.” A Latin-talking bishop Fr Sergio Ticozzi described his “deep pain” in asianews.it when he heard of the death of Bishop Thomas Zhang Huaixin last week (see News, p15), saying that the last letter he received from the bishop urged him not to forget to pray for his diocese. Fr Ticozzi said he used to speak to the bishop in Latin to avoid “prying ears”. He described Bishop Huaixin’s tenacity in trying to ensure his successor was approved by the Vatican. He wrote: “He ... proposed his plan even to the Holy See. He was pleased when his candidate was approved by the Holy Father. But the problem of approval of the Chinese authorities remained. With patient tactics he succeeded in obtaining even the ‘democratic’ vote of approval.” The authorities tried to send “illegitimate bishops” to the ordination: “this Bishop Zhang could not allow! With his usual patience, but without expectations, he passively stood by for about five years. On August 4, 2015, finally he managed, after patient negotiations, to ordain Mgr Zhang Yinlin his coadjutor bishop, in a completely legitimate ceremony.” The priest added: “I think he spent his last months of life happy with having succeeded.” Pius’s Wikipedia record Wikipedia is sometimes a good resource for Church history. One of its 10 longest articles – alongside pieces about Michael Jackson and Elvis Presley – is a profile of Pope Pius XII, according to Jeff Miller. At his Curt Jester blog, Miller praised the article, saying that while it addressed “various controversies ... this was done in a balanced way and the counter-view to the critics was aptly presented.” The book Hitler’s Pope is “not given much credence in the larger context.”
