The most influential member of a Vatican commission on tackling clerical sex abuse said Wednesday he has quit over “structural and practical issues” which made it “impossible” for him to continue.

Hans Zollner, the public face of Pope Francis’s efforts to tackle the global paedophilia scandal, said he had “grown increasingly concerned” over how the papal advisory body works, “particularly in the areas of responsibility, compliance, accountability and transparency”.

His resignation from the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors is the latest blow to a working group dogged by controversy.

US Cardinal Sean O’Malley, the body’s head, said early Wednesday that Zollner had resigned due to a heavy workload.

But German Jesuit priest and renowned academic Zollner, one of the leading experts in the fight against child abuse in the Catholic Church, said he had “noticed issues that need to be urgently addressed and which have made it impossible for me to continue further”.

In a statement, he slammed “a lack of clarity” regarding the selection process of members and staff, and “inadequate” financial accountability.

“Furthermore, there should be transparency on how decisions are taken in the commission. Too often, there was insufficient information and vague communication”, he said in a statement.

“It is due to these structural and practical issues that led me to disassociate myself from the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors”.

‘Making him pay’

Zollner was the last remaining founding member of the group, which was set up by Pope Francis in 2014 as he strove to rid the Catholic Church of the scourge of sex abuse by clerics.

Problems emerged as early as 2017, when abuse survivor Marie Collins resigned as a member of the commission, saying the body was under-resourced and faced fierce resistance within high echelons of the church.

Fellow commission member and survivor Peter Saunders also quit later that year.

The pope accepted Zollner’s request to step down “with the deepest of thanks for his many years of service”, O’Malley said.

Francis has vowed a zero-tolerance stance on abuse and has changed the law so that suspected cases must be reported, but victims’ associations say he still has not gone far enough.

Francesco Zanardi, founder of Italian survivors group Rete L’Abuso (The Abuse Network), told AFP Wednesday that Zollner had been “very honest” about the paedophile priest problem within the church “and the Vatican is making him pay”.

Zollner had been increasingly sidelined over the last few years, Zanardi said.

The pope has recently tried to strengthen the commission, which was originally limited in its mandate, by making it part of the Vatican office that processes clergy sex abuse cases.

He has also tasked it with helping local churches set up survivor centres, where those who have been abused can seek help and justice.

But Zanardi said that while Zollner had been a rare contradictory voice, the commission itself was “absolutely useless”.

Source: AFP

Pope Francis will visit Hungary in April and meet far-right Prime Minister Viktor Orban, the Vatican said Monday, with the Ukraine war and migrants expected to dominate talks.

Francis, who regularly champions the rights of refugees, will sit down in Budapest with Orban, who portrays himself as the defender of a Christian Europe against migrants.

During his April 28 to 30 trip, the pope will also meet with poor people as well as youths and refugees, according to a programme released by the Vatican.

It will be the 86-year-old pope’s second visit to the predominantly Catholic country in two years.

Francis made a one-day visit to the country in September 2021, spending just seven hours in the country to preside over a mass and meet privately with Orban.

The pope then received Orban for the first time at the Vatican a few months later, in April 2022.

During the private audience, he thanked the Hungarian leader for the protection his country had offered to refugees fleeing the war in neighbouring Ukraine, the Vatican later said.

Some 34,248 Ukrainians have so far been granted refugee status in Hungary.

‘Strategic’

The two men have conflicting views on a range of issues. Francis is a defender of European integration and the protection of minorities, while Orban champions nationalism and a deeply conservative Catholicism.

Orban has also come under fire in the past for his policies against non-European refugees, while pro-Orban media outlets in Hungary have slammed the pope’s views on immigration as “cretinous” and “senile”.

But Vatican watchers say Francis may be hoping that Orban, who nurtured close ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin before the war in Ukraine, could help the pope in his quest to play peace broker in the year-long conflict.

Hungary has trod an ambiguous path on the war, with Orban condemning Russian aggression while refusing to criticise Russian President Vladimir Putin by name.

Francis has vowed to do “everything possible” to try to end the war, but his attempts to position the Vatican as a possible mediator appear so far to have fallen flat.

April’s visit “has a strategic purpose in relation to Russia’s war in Ukraine, given Hungarian PM Victor Orban’s long standing relationship with the Kremlin,” British religion reporter Christopher Lamb tweeted.

During his visit — the pope’s 41st trip abroad since his election in 2013 — he will visit children and address diplomatic corps.

He will also meet with bishops, priests and pastoral works. More than half of Hungarians are Christian, and at least 37 percent of the population identifies as Catholic.

Source: AFP

Hanah Zachariah is so determined to see Pope Francis in South Sudan that she walked nine days in sandals to reach the capital where he makes his long-awaited visit.

On Thursday, the 20-year-old reached the outskirts of Juba after walking most of the way from the central town of Rumbek — a journey of around 400 kilometres (250 miles).

She was not alone.

Sixty other young pilgrims and spiritual leaders trod the distance, waving flags, singing hymns and preaching unity in a country scarred by years of civil war.

“We are walking for peace. When we reach Juba, we are going to welcome the pope. I am very excited to see him,” Zachariah told AFP, as passing cars honked their horns and cheered at the colourful convoy.

Francis arrives on Friday for a three-day visit to South Sudan, the first by any pope since the predominantly Christian nation split from Muslim-majority Sudan in 2011.

Its history since independence has been marred by five years of ethnic bloodshed that left 380,000 people dead and much of the young country in ruins.

‘Blisters’

Many hope Francis can restore a spirit of unity and brotherhood, and South Sudanese are flocking to Juba to hear his message of reconciliation.

Among them is John Sebit, a pastoral worker who covered the distance from Rumbek along dirt roads in flip flops.

“When we started the journey, it was challenging. Some people had blisters on their feet… But with motivation, we kept going,” the 26-year-old told AFP.

Father Christian Carlassare, the bishop of Rumbek, confessed to having “sore feet” after setting off on January 25 but said walking was a powerful act of solidarity.

“You do not walk alone,” said Carlassare, an Italian who has lived in South Sudan for more than 15 years, and was shot multiple times at his home in 2021 after being named bishop.

“At every community we had the entire village –- really, hundreds of people — who were coming to welcome us on the way.”

To avoid the oppressive heat of the dry season, the pilgrims would start walking before dawn each day. They would set up camp each evening in classrooms along the way.

‘First time’ on tarmac

When the distance between stops was too great, support vehicles would assist with covering the outstanding distance, while a doctor onboard tended to cramps and bruises.

For some, the journey to the capital has proved eye opening.

“This is my first visit to Juba, and actually my first time stepping on a tarmac road,” said 23-year-old John Mareng as he walked along the highway just outside Juba.

“Now, I have seen how this is reality.”

Hailing from a broad cross-section of South Sudan’s myriad ethnic groups, the pilgrims would perform skits for their hosts about the importance of kinship.

“We are walking as a group, as one people,” said 20-year-old Tafisa Chol, a student in Rumbek.

“The message that we are hoping to give to the people, is that we should be one, and make peace among ourselves.”

Source: AFP

Pope Francis on Wednesday urged people in Democratic Republic of Congo, where decades of armed conflicts have killed millions, to grant each other a “great amnesty of the heart” and called on Christians engaged in battle to lay down their arms.

On the first full day of his trip, his third to sub-Saharan Africa as pope, Francis presided at an open-air mass for a crowd local authorities estimated at more than a million people on the grounds of a secondary airport in the capital Kinshasa.

The Congolese have given the pope one of the most vibrant welcomes of his foreign trips. On his arrival on Tuesday, tens of thousands lined his motorcade route.

At the sprawling site on Wednesday his popemobile moved slowly on the runway, with hundreds of thousands of people singing and dancing on either side before he began a mass from a large altar platform.

Many women wore dresses with his picture emblazoned on them, as is customary in many African countries to honour dignitaries, while children climbed on a disused plane for a better view.

The country’s people, the pope said in his homily, were suffering from “wounds that ache, continually infected by hatred and violence, while the medicine of justice and the balm of hope never seem to arrive”.

Armed conflict has left 5.7 million people internally displaced and 26 million facing severe hunger, according to the United Nations.

Francis said God wanted the people to find “the courage to grant others a great amnesty of the heart”.

“What great good it does us to cleanse our hearts of anger and remorse, of every trace of resentment and hostility!” he said.

Eastern Congo has been plagued by violence connected to the long and complex fallout from the 1994 genocide in neighbouring Rwanda. Congo accuses Rwanda of backing the M23 rebel group fighting government troops in the east. Rwanda denies this.

“We left because of the war,” said Lea Serundoru, 21, a high school student who fled fighting in Rutshuru territory near the border with Uganda, an area that was hit by fighting between the army and M23 last year.

‘Lay down your arms’

A papal stop in the eastern city of Goma, foreseen when the trip was originally scheduled for last July, was later scrapped because of the flare-up in violence last year.

Serundoru said she hoped “the armed groups would listen to the pope and put down their arms because he is a strong and powerful man, and we have faith that everything will return to normal”.

About half of Congo’s population of 90 million are Roman Catholics and in his homily, Francis addressed them as well as other Christians involved in the fighting.

“May it be a good time for all of you in this country who call yourselves Christians but engage in violence. The Lord is telling you: ‘Lay down your arms, embrace mercy,'” the pope said.

Thousands of people had spent the night praying at the airport in the build-up to the service.

“The country is not well. There are divisions, hatred, lots of massacres, especially in the east. After the pope’s homily, I hope peace will return,” said Patrick Mukaba, a 35-year-old lawyer, who was there with his wife Laetitia.

Congo has some of the world’s richest deposits of diamonds, gold and other precious metals, but its wealth has stoked conflict between government troops, militias and foreign invaders, as well as driving exploitation and abuses.

The pope will meet victims of violence from the eastern part of Congo later on Wednesday.

Thursday will be his last full day in Congo, before he departs on Friday for neighbouring South Sudan, another country grappling with conflict and hunger, on Friday morning.

For the South Sudan visit, he will be with the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Church of Scotland Moderator, an unprecedented joint foreign trip by the three Christian leaders.

Source: Reuters

Pope Francis on Tuesday is expected to land in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Africa’s largest predominantly Catholic country, for a landmark three-day visit.

Here are five things to know about this vast nation:

Mineral wealth, dire poverty

The DRC is awash with minerals and precious stones, from gold, diamonds and coltan to tin, copper and cobalt.

Harbouring the Congo River — the second-largest in Africa after the Nile — the DRC also has huge hydroelectric potential, as well as 80 million hectares (197 million acres) of arable land.

But decades of war and chronic mismanagement means that little of the country’s enormous wealth trickles down to the population of some 100 million people.

About two-thirds of the Congolese population survive on under $2.15 a day, according to the World Bank.

Ethnic mosaic

Occupying a vast area the size of continental western Europe, the DRC is about 80 times larger than its former colonial power, Belgium.

It is the second-largest state in Africa after Algeria.

Some 250 different ethnic groups live in the DRC, speaking hundreds of different languages.

French is the country’s official language, and local tongues Kikongo, Lingala, Tshiluba and Swahili are also officially recognised.

Despite its size and diversity — the former province of Katanga tried to secede in the 1960s — there is a fierce sense of national unity.

Troubled east

The DRC has been ravaged by brutal conflicts in recent decades. The first Congo war, between 1996-1997, resulted in the overthrow of dictator Mobutu Sese Seko.

The second Congo war, between 1998-2003, sucked in nine different countries, involved about 30 armed groups and caused millions of deaths according to some estimates. It also bankrupted the country.

Most of the DRC is now at peace, but its mineral-rich eastern provinces remain plagued by dozens of armed groups and civilian massacres are common.

Secular, religious

Secularism has been enshrined in the Congolese Constitution since 1974, which also recognises freedom of worship.

According to estimates, about 40 percent of the country is Catholic, 35 percent Protestants of various denominations, nine percent Muslims and 10 percent Kimbanguists — a Christian movement born in the Belgian Congo.

Official Vatican statistics put the proportion of Catholics in the DRC at 49 percent of the population.

Atheists are exceedingly rare in Congolese society, which remains deeply religious and influenced by the church. During the colonial period, education was entrusted to Catholic missionaries.

Rumba, survival

Congolese people are renowned for their sense of humour and resourcefulness in the face of trying conditions.

Many jokingly refer to “Article 15” of the constitution, which purports to instruct citizens to sort things out themselves.

Music also plays an outsize role in the country’s culture. UNESCO listed Congolese rumba as intangible cultural heritage of humanity in December 2021.

Congo is also famed for its so-called sapeurs — dandies known for their ultra-elegant clothing and sense of style.

Source: AFP

Pope Francis led the funeral of his predecessor Benedict XVI on Thursday in front of tens of thousands of mourners in St Peter’s Square, an event unprecedented in modern times.

Red-clad cardinals, dignitaries and thousands of priests and nuns from around the world gathered to say goodbye to the German theologian, who stunned the Catholic Church in 2013 by becoming the first pontiff in six centuries to resign.

For the first time in modern history, the proceedings were led by a sitting pope, Francis, who delivered the homily in Italian as part of a multi-lingual service with a Latin mass.

“Benedict… may your joy be complete as you hear his (God’s) voice, now and forever!” the pontiff said in tribute to his predecessor, who died last Saturday aged 95.

At the end of the service, Francis made the sign of the cross over Benedict’s simple cypress wood coffin and bowed his head, before 12 besuited pallbearers carried it into St Peter’s Basilica.

Benedict will be interred in a tomb in the crypt beneath the basilica, where John Paul II’s body lay in state before it was moved for his beatification in 2011. He was made a saint in 2014.

Born Joseph Ratzinger, the ex-pope had not been a head of state for a decade, but world leaders including German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni were among those in attendance.

An estimated 50,000 people were in the square for the funeral, according to police, many of them having queued up since dawn to bid farewell.

“Benedict is a bit like my father, so I had to pay homage to him,” said Cristina Grisanti, a 59-year-old from Milan, who hailed the former pope’s “purity, his candour, his mildness”.

An estimated 195,000 people had already paid their respects earlier when the body lay in state.

Benedict was the first German pope in 1,000 years and church bells rang out across Germany as the funeral finished on Thursday, while many Germans were also at the Vatican.

“We owe him so much. We want to show that we stand behind him,” said Benedikt Rothweiler, 34, who came from Aachen with his family.

“We actually know too little about Benedict. He always accepted everything the way God wants it. This is a good example for us humans.”

Two popes

Benedict was a brilliant theologian but a divisive figure who alienated many Catholics with his staunch defence of conservative doctrine on issues such as abortion.

His eight years as head of the worldwide Catholic Church was also marked by crises, from in-fighting within the Vatican to the global scandal of clerical sex abuse and its cover-up.

When he quit, Benedict said he no longer had the “strength of mind and body” necessary for the task, retiring to a quiet life in a monastery in the Vatican gardens.

His death brought an end to an unprecedented situation of having two “men in white” — he and Francis — living in the tiny city state.

He and Francis, an Argentine Jesuit, were said to get on well, but Benedict’s later interventions meant he stayed a standard-bearer for conservative Catholics who did not like his successor’s more liberal stance.

The last time a pope presided over the funeral of his predecessor was in 1802, when Pius VII led the ceremony for Pius VI — but the circumstances were very different.

Pius VI died in 1799 in exile, a prisoner of France, and was buried in Valence. His successor had his remains exhumed and brought back to Italy, before he was treated to a papal funeral at St Peter’s.

European royals

Beyond St Peter’s, many of the world’s 1.3 billion Catholics had been expected to follow the funeral proceedings on television and the radio.

In the majority Catholic Philippines, churches held requiem masses for the former pontiff, including at Malolos Cathedral near the capital Manila.

“This is an unexplainable feeling to witness this,” said Cherry Castro, 67, who was among around 500 gathered for the special ceremony.

Portugal declared a national day of mourning on Thursday, while in Italy, flags were flown at half-mast on public buildings.

The only official delegations were from Germany and Italy.

But other dignitaries, including Belgian and Spanish royals, the presidents of Lithuania, Poland, Portugal, Hungary, Slovenia and Togo, and the premiers of the Czech Republic, Gabon and Slovakia among others attended in a personal capacity.

The service followed traditional papal funerals, with a few changes to prayers and readings to reflect Benedict’s status as emeritus pope.

Before being laid in the crypt, his cypress coffin was due to be placed first inside a zinc coffin, then a wooden case.

As is traditional, coins and medals minted during his papacy and a written text describing his pontificate, sealed in a metal cylinder, will be placed alongside his body.

Source: AFP  

Thousands of Catholics began paying their respects Monday to former pope Benedict XVI at St Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican, at the start of three days of lying-in-state before his funeral.

The queue began to form before dawn in the square in front of the basilica, where Benedict’s body was transferred earlier from the monastery in the Vatican grounds where he died Saturday aged 95.

“I arrived at 6:00 am, it seemed normal to come and pay homage to him after all he did for the church,” said an Italian nun, sister Anna-Maria, who was in the early morning queue.

Benedict led the Catholic Church for eight years before becoming the first pope in six centuries to step down in 2013, citing his declining and physical health.

His successor Pope Francis will lead the funeral on Thursday in St Peter’s Square before his remains are laid to rest in the tombs beneath the Basilica. Benedict, a German theologian, died at the Mater Ecclesiae monastery, which had been his home for the past decade.

The Vatican on Sunday released photos of his corpse, dressed in red papal mourning robes and wearing a gold-edged mitre on his head, on a catafalque in the monastery chapel.

Members of the public will be able to pay their respects at St Peter’s Basilica from 9:00 am (0800 GMT) on Monday and then on Tuesday and Wednesday. Benedict’s shock resignation created the extraordinary situation of having two “men in white” — him and Francis — at the Vatican. His funeral will also break new ground.

Papal deaths usually trigger the calling of a conclave of cardinals to elect a successor, but this time Francis remains in post, and will lead proceedings. Benedict’s funeral will be “solemn but simple”, the Vatican has said, after which he will be buried in the papal tombs under St Peter’s Basilica.

The Vatican has yet to release details of the guest list, beyond saying that it will include delegations from Italy and Benedict’s native Germany.

‘Faithful servant’

The last papal funeral, of John Paul II in 2005, drew a million faithful and heads of state from around the world, although Benedict was a more divisive figure.

A brilliant theologian, he alienated many Catholics with his staunch defence of traditional values and as pope struggled to impose his authority on the church as it battled a string of crises, including over clerical sex abuse.

His successor cuts a very different figure, an Argentine Jesuit who is most at home among his flock and has sought to forge a more compassionate church.

Pope Francis paid tribute to Benedict in three New Year’s events at the Vatican over the weekend, “thanking God for the gift of this faithful servant of the Gospel and of the Church”.

Francis, 86, has raised the prospect that he might follow Benedict’s example and step down if he became unable to carry out his duties.

In July, suffering knee problems that have forced him to rely on a wheelchair, he admitted he needed to slow down or think about stepping aside.

Last month, Francis revealed he had signed a resignation letter when he took office should poor health prevent him from carrying out his duties.

Source: AFP

Former pope Benedict XVI has died at the age of 95, the Vatican announced Saturday, almost a decade after he became the first pontiff to resign in six centuries.

“With sorrow I inform you that the Pope Emeritus, Benedict XVI, passed away today at 9:34 in the Mater Ecclesiae Monastery in the Vatican,” Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni said in a statement.

The German pope emeritus, whose birth name was Joseph Ratzinger, had been living a quiet life in a former convent inside the Vatican grounds since his shock decision to step down in February 2013.

His health had been declining for a long time, but the Vatican revealed on Wednesday that his situation had worsened, while his successor Pope Francis called for Catholics worldwide to pray for him.

His death brings to an end an unprecedented situation in which two “men in white” –Benedict and Francis – had co-existed within the walls of the tiny city state.

Benedict’s funeral will be held in St. Peter’s Square on Thursday, January 5 and will be presided over by Pope Francis, Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni said on Saturday.

In 2005 the body of John Paul II, the last pope to die, lay in state before a funeral mass in St Peter’s Square attended by one million people, including heads of state.

Scandal and in-fighting

Benedict had almost entirely withdrawn from public view, his health reported to be shaky and the few photographs that emerged of him exposing his frailty.

Back in 2013, he had cited his declining physical and mental health in his decision to become the first pope since 1415 to give up the job as head of the worldwide Catholic church.

Benedict was a brilliant theologian but his papacy was beset by Vatican in-fighting and a scandal over clerical sexual abuse of children that rocked the Catholic Church the world over, in which he was criticised for a lack of leadership.

The abuse scandal overshadowed his final months after a damning report for the German church in January 2022 accused him of personally failing to stop four predatory priests in the 1980s while archbishop of Munich.

He denied wrongdoing and the Vatican strongly defended his record in being the first pope to apologise for the scandals, who expressed his own “deep remorse” and met with victims.

Born on April 16, 1927, in Marktl am Inn, in Bavaria, Benedict was 78 when he succeeded the long-reigning and popular John Paul II in April 2005, the first German pope of the modern era.

He later said his election felt “like the guillotine”.

Unlike his successor Pope Francis, a Jesuit who delights in being among his flock, Benedict was a conservative intellectual dubbed “God’s Rottweiler” in a previous post as chief doctrinal enforcer.

His papacy was dogged by controversy, from comments that angered the Muslim world to a money-laundering scandal at the Vatican bank and a personal humiliation when, in 2012, his butler leaked secret papers to the media.

Despite saying he would live “hidden from the world” after his resignation, he repeatedly intervened on key issues facing the Church through books, interviews and articles.

In January 2020, he expressed his opposition to allowing priests to marry. A year earlier, he blamed clerical abuse scandals on the 1960s sexual revolution and a collapse in faith in the West.

In an interview in March 2021, he said “there is only one pope”, but acknowledged “fanatical” supporters who refused to accept his resignation.

(FRANCE 24 with AFP)