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Episodes
Friday Jul 19, 2024
Friday Jul 19, 2024
LINKS
Vatican bio of Cardinal Kambanda
https://press.vatican.va/content/salastampa/en/documentation/cardinali_biografie/cardinali_bio_kambanda_a.html
Aontoine Kambanda on FIU's Cardinals Database (by Salvadore Miranda):
https://cardinals.fiu.edu/bios2020.htm#Kambanda
Cardinal Kambanda on Gcatholic.org:
http://www.gcatholic.org/p/52193
Cardinal Kambanda on Catholic-Hierarchy.org:
https://www.catholic-hierarchy.org/bishop/bkamb.html
Archdiocese of Kigali on Gcatholic.org:
http://www.gcatholic.org/dioceses/diocese/kiga0.htm?tab=info
Archdiocese of Kigali on Catholic-Hierarchy.org:
https://www.catholic-hierarchy.org/diocese/dkiga.html
Official Vatican summary of JPII's 1990 visit to Rwanda (and other African nations):
https://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/travels/1990/travels/documents/trav_est-africa.html
2004 BBC timeline of the Rwandan Genocide:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/3580247.stm
Caritas Internationalis official website:
https://www.caritas.org/
Athanase Seromba, genocidal priest:
https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna16189347
Seromba upsate: https://alchetron.com/Athanase-Seromba
2001 Washington Post reporting on Rwandan nuns jailed for role in genocide:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/2001/06/09/rwandan-nuns-jailed-in-genocide/fce3308b-3e6e-4784-8490-0887f69c7a39/
VOA News coverage of 2016 Rwandan Bishops’ Conference statement acknowledging and apologizing for complicity in the genocide:
https://www.voanews.com/a/rwanda-genocide-catholic-bishops/3605319.html
Reaction to 2019 Rwandan Bishops’ Conference statement:
https://cisanewsafrica.com/rwanda-bishops-apologize-for-calling-for-release-of-convicts-of-genocide/
2022 English-language video interview with Cardinal Kambanda (via The New Times/Pacis TV):
https://youtu.be/yadR0vD1EW4?si=J5nJHxHCLjFMd0z7
Thank you for listening, and thank my family and friends for putting up with the time investment and for helping me out as needed.
As always, feel free to email the show at Popeularhistory@gmail.com
If you would like to financially support Popeular history, go to www.patreon.com/Popeular. If you don't have any money to spare but still want to give back, pray and tell others– prayers and listeners are worth more than gold!
IMAGE CRED: By David Neuvere - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=126027927
TRANSCRIPT
Welcome to Popeular History, a library of Catholic knowledge and insights.
Check out the show notes for sources, further reading, and a transcript.
Today we're discussing another current Cardinal of the Catholic Church, one of the 120 or so people who will choose the next Pope when the time comes.
Antoine KAMBANDA was born on November 10, 1958 in Nyamata, Rwanda, which is today part of the country's Eastern Province. Rwanda has somewhat famously had ethnic tensions between two out of three of their main tribes, the Hutu and the Tutsi. Antoine and his family were Tutsi, and, well, content warning, because today's episode includes a genocide.
Antoine studied internationally right from the start, doing primary schooling in neighboring Burundi and Uganda, followed by secondary school in somewhat more distant Kenya. His seminary training took place back in Rwanda, and in 1990 he was ordained a priest for the Archdiocese of Kigali, Kigali being Rwanda's Capital. He was actually personally ordained by Pope Saint John Paul II during his 1990 visit to Rwanda.
Fortunately for him Father Kambanda decided to pursue further studies and so left for the Alphonsian Academy in Rome in 1993, I say fortunately because while he was studying abroad his parents and five of his six siblings were killed during the 1994 Rwandan Genocide during which half a million people were butchered and hundreds of thousands more were raped, predominately Tutsi but also a fair number of Hutu and Twa who were less than enthusiastic about joining the murderous Hutu militias. And those are the more conservative estimates, the 2003 Constitution of Rwanda lists the death toll at over a million.
Let's just take a moment to pray, you can do reverent silence if that's your thing but my wife and I are going to say a quick Hail Mary.
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, amen.
***Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.
Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Amen.***
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, amen.
For what it's worth I didn't plan for this to be a rough stretch, as a reminder I'm doing these cardinals in age order. Tomorrow's episode doesn't have a death toll.
As weird as it feels to get back to a normal narrative after that, get back we should, and Father Kambanda got back to things as well, obtaining a doctorate in moral theology in 1999 and taking on teaching at a minor seminary while also serving as the director of Caritas for the diocese. Caritas, a Latin term most often translated as “charity” but more strongly conveying the sense of selfless love, is an international confederation of organizations that effectively serves as the Catholic Church's in-house clearinghouse for charity initiatives, if I'm allowed to put it that way. Catholic Relief Services, for example, is one of the founding members of Caritas Internationalis, with 0 points going to anyone who can correctly guess what internationalis means.
In 2005, Father Kambanda began the first of two seminary rectorships, and we'll jump ahead to 2013, that's when he was elected bishop of Kibunga.
As a bishop, he joined his brothers in a difficult admission: The Catholic Church had been part of the genocide. Sure, the one Catholic Bishop who was formally charged with war crimes had been cleared, but he had also refused to shelter those who had sought refuge, and indeed many of the massacre sites were the churches themselves, including in the case of Father Athanase Seromba–and I mean seriously, fast forward 15 seconds if you need to–the hutu priest who ordered his church bulldozed when it was housing thousands of refugees, personally showing the driver the weakest points of the church, and by some accounts helping massacre remaining survivors found in the rubble.
In case you're speed listening or tuned out for a minute, just as a reminder I am not currently talking about our cardinal of the day, a Tutsi who was studying in Rome at the time of the genocide and whose family was by and large slaughtered. But I don't want to gloss over the Church's involvement in the genocide–an involvement which our Cardinal acknowledges as we will see. So we're looking at the tough cases, because I hope to God none of them are ever made Cardinals or we'd talk about them then.
Father Seromba was found guilty of genocide and originally sentenced to 15 years. He appealed to the tribunal, which found that oh yes, they had indeed failed to carry out justice in his case, upgrading his sentence to life imprisonment upon further review.
There's more to say about the Seromba case, especially how he was hidden by church authorities after fleeing, and I'll say more about it if Cardinal Kambanda makes it to the next round, but for today I want to get back to Kambanda, because he isn't even a Cardinal yet in our narrative.
In 2016, Bishop Kambanda cosigned a major statement from the Rwandan Bishop's Conference apologizing for the complicity of the Rwandan Catholic Church as an institution in the genocide, stating, quote:
“Forgive us for the crime of hate in the country to the extent of also hating our colleagues because of their ethnicity. We didn't show that we are one family but instead killed each other.” End quote
The statement, which was read in parishes across the country, was generally well received, though of course there are wounds that words cannot heal and there were understandable questions about why it took 22 years for such a statement to be made. A later statement asking for some clemency for elderly and infirm convicted perpetrators was less well received, though honestly pretty on-brand for the Catholic Church in terms of mercy. By that time, Bishop Kambanda was Archbishop Kambanda, having been transferred to Rwanda's principle see of Kigali.
In 2020, Pope Francis made Archbishop Kambanda Rwanda's first Cardinal, also naming him a member of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples later that year. The next year, Pope Francis also added him to the Congregation for Catholic Education, and the year after that, 2022, he became head of the Rwandan Bishops’ Conference for a three-year term. More recently, in February of 2023, he was added to the Dicastery for Culture and Education. So, he's definitely not sitting around.
Antoine Kambanda is eligible to participate in future conclaves until he turns 80 in 2038.
Today's episode is part of Cardinal Numbers,
and there will be more Cardinal Numbers next week. Thank you for listening; God bless you all!
Friday Jul 26, 2024
Friday Jul 26, 2024
IMAGE CREDIT: Photo : Guy Wolff / Église catholique à Luxembourg
LINKS
Vatican bio of Cardinal Höllerich
https://press.vatican.va/content/salastampa/en/documentation/cardinali_biografie/cardinali_bio_hollerich_jc.html
Jean Claude Höllerich on FIU's Cardinals Database (by Salvadore Miranda):
https://cardinals.fiu.edu/bios2019.htm#Hollerich
Cardinal Höllerich on Gcatholic.org:
http://www.gcatholic.org/p/47061
Cardinal Höllerich on Catholic-Hierarchy.org:
https://www.catholic-hierarchy.org/bishop/bholleri.html
Archdiocese of Luxembourg on Gcatholic.org:
http://www.gcatholic.org/dioceses/diocese/luxe0.htm?focus=47061&tab=info
Archdiocese of Luxembourg on Catholic-Hierarchy.org:
https://www.catholic-hierarchy.org/diocese/dluxe.html
National Catholic Register coverage of Cardinal Höllerich on church teaching on Homosexuality:
https://www.ncronline.org/news/quick-reads/top-eu-cardinal-calls-change-church-teaching-gay-relationships
2022 National Catholic Register coverage of Cardinal Pell calling for Cardinal Höllerich's censure:
https://www.ncregister.com/blog/cardinal-pell-calls-on-vatican-to-correct-2-senior-european-bishops-for-rejecting-church-s-sexual-ethics
Crux Now reporting on Cardinal Höllerich's appointment as Relator General for the Synod on Synodality:
https://cruxnow.com/vatican/2021/07/pope-names-relator-general-for-2023-synod
Thank you for listening, and thank my family and friends for putting up with the time investment and for helping me out as needed.
As always, feel free to email the show at Popeularhistory@gmail.com
If you would like to financially support Popeular history, go to www.patreon.com/Popeular. If you don't have any money to spare but still want to give back, pray and tell others– prayers and listeners are worth more than gold!
TRANSCRIPT
Welcome to Popeular History, a library of Catholic knowledge and insights.
Check out the show notes for sources, further reading, and a transcript.
Today we're discussing another current Cardinal of the Catholic Church, one of the 120 or so people who will choose the next Pope when the time comes.
Jean Claude Höllerich was born on August 9, 1958 in Differdange, Luxembourg. Sandwiched at the intersection of Belgium, France, and Germany, Luxembourg isn't exactly large but for what, it's worth, Differdange is on the southwestern corner of things. He actually grew up in Vianden, which is clear on the opposite northeast end of the country, a full hour's drive away.
Anyways, Jean Claude went to Rome relatively early on in his journey, once he decided to pursue the priesthood he began studying at the Pontifical Gregorian University. He formally joined the Jesuit Order in 1981, doing his novitiate in Namur, Belgium, followed by a couple years of pastoral training back home in Luxembourg, then actually on to Japan and I'll bet you didn't see that one coming. But yes from 1985 to 1989 he studied Japanese, not only the language but the culture as well, accompanied of course by theological studies, which he capped off back closer to home in Germany. By the time of his 1990 ordination Father Höllerich was deep into studying German language and literature, winding up with his second licentiate, by which point he was already a decade into his teaching career. His early teaching had been focused on forming seminarians, but by 1994 he was settled in at Sophia University in Tokyo, where his focus was European studies. He gradually built his portfolio at that university, becoming student chaplain in 1999, then rector of the school's Jesuit community as well as vice-rector for general affairs and students at the school as of 2008. I should also note that he took his final vows as a Jesuit during all that, in 2002.
In 2011, the Archbishop of Luxembourg–aka the *only* Roman Catholic bishop of Luxembourg–retired. There has never been a non-Luxembourger Archbishop and there are only so many Luxembourger priests of the right age with the right qualifications-don't get me wrong I do think Father Höllerich was surprised but maybe just a bit less surprised than others we've talked about when he was named as the next Archbishop.
In a nice touch given Höllerich's history, the Archbishop of Tokyo joined the Archbishop of Cologne and the Archbishop Emeritus of Luxembourg in consecrating him on October 16, 2011. In his role as Archbishop–and even before– he was frequently involved in side projects like bringing the Catholic Scouts of Europe to Luxembourg and serving as President of the Catholic Bishops Conferences of Europe's Commission for youth. In 2018, he was elected president of the Commission of the Bishops' Conferences of the European Union (COMECE).
In 2019, Pope Francis named him as a Cardinal-Priest, assigning him the titular church of San Giovanni Crisostomo a Monte Sacro Alto and making him the first Luxembourger Cardinal.
Cardinal Höllerich has gained a reputation for being progressive–by Catholic standards–calling for lay empowerment and women deacons and being relatively LGBT+ affirming. On the latter topic, here's an eyebrow-raising quote:
"I believe that the sociological-scientific foundation of this teaching is no longer correct,"
End quote.
In this he found himself at odds with the late Cardinal Pell, who publicly called for Pope Francis to condemn Höllerich's quote “wholesale and explicit” end quote rejection of Church teaching on sexuality. He's also the highest ranking Church official I've ever seen to openly express a willingness to consider full on women's ordination, not just the more common willingness to restore an unordained diaconate for women but openness to full-on women priests.
Given his progressive streak, it's not terribly surprising that Cardinal Höllerich's appointment as Relator General for the Synod on Synodality got a lot of attention generally and concern from more conservative commentators specifically.
The Synod on Synodality–officially the 16th Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops but Synod on Synodality is what's caught on so that's what we're rolling with–the Synod on Synodality is a rolling conversation that was originally supposed to wrap up in 2022 but it got pushed back to 2023 and then extended to a two-year program that started about a year ago and will conclude this October. A synod is a gathering of bishops, and therefore a synod on synodality is something of a meeting on meetings, but it's had a large amount of interest especially when someone like Höllerich was setting up the discussion topics, including increasing the participation of women and the laity in the life of the Church and being more pastoral slash welcoming to LGBT+ individuals. Right now I can tell you that I expect more movement on including women and laity in Church governance- it's already happened with the Synod itself, with laity including women having a voting role in the Synod on Synodality itself, a noteworthy departure from the Church's administrative tradition. But don't get too riled up about women deacons, much less women priests, or significant changes on the LGBT+ front, because by all accounts major shifts on those higher profile fronts are, simply put, not likely.
In 2020, Pope Francis named Cardinal Hollerich as a member of the Pontifical Council for Culture and then added him to the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialog a few months later. In September 2021 he was named as one of the two vice presidents of the Council of the European Bishops’ Conferences (CCEE), and last but certainly not least in earlier this year Pope Francis added Cardinal Höllerich to his special kitchen cabinet “Council of Cardinals”, the same body where his erstwhile critic Cardinal Pell had served until his passing.
Jean Claude Höllerich is eligible to participate in future conclaves until he turns 80 in 2038.
Today's episode is part of Cardinal Numbers, and there will be more Cardinal Numbers next week. Thank you for listening; God bless you all!
Thursday Aug 01, 2024
Thursday Aug 01, 2024
IMAGE DESCRIPTION: Saint Luke the Evangelist. Russian Eastern Orthodox icon from Russia. 18th century. Wood, tempera. Via Wikimedia Commons.
https://www.foxnews.com/lifestyle/ultraviolet-light-reveals-scientists-hidden-bible-passage-1500-years-later (for Luke)
Unique passages:
https://www.julianspriggs.co.uk/pages/UniquePassages
Thanks Biblehub.com's parallel chapters tool.
Words of Jesus ("All the Red Letter Scriptures")
https://www.jesusbelieverjd.com/all-the-red-letter-scriptures-of-jesus-in-the-bible-kjv/
Parallel Passages in the Gospels
https://www.bible-researcher.com/parallels.html#sect1
The Eye of the Needle (crossword/sudoku feedback):
https://www.theguardian.com/notesandqueries/query/0,5753,-25583,00.html#:~:text=The%20%22Eye%20of%20the%20Needle,in%20order%20to%20enter%20heaven
Camel needle w/Aquinas citation (of Anselm of Canterbury)-- Anselm of Canterbury as cited in Catena Aurea, Thomas Aquinas, CCEL Edition.
https://classictheology.org/2021/10/12/through-the-eye-of-an-actual-needle-the-fake-gate-theory/
The Widow's Mite:
https://numismatics.org/pocketchange/the-poor-widows-mite/
Miracles of Jesus reference list:
https://sunnyhillschurch.com/3301/the-37-miracles-of-jesus-in-chronological-order/
TRANSCRIPT
Welcome to the Popeular History Podcast: History through Pope Colored Glasses. My name is Gregg and this is episode 0.21g: Sayings of the Savior Part VII: A Look at Luke.
All of these aught episodes are made to let us build our Pope-colored glasses so we can use the same lenses when we look at history together. If you're lost, start at the beginning!
Today we continue our Sayings of the Savior series with a look at Luke, covering everything Jesus said in that Gospel that we haven't yet discussed–so leaving off things like the miracles we did in 0.20 and the parables and other sayings we did in earlier Sayings of the Savior installments- so we’ll be leaving you in suspense right before the concluding few chapters discussing Jesus’ death and His (spoiler alert) resurrection, which we'll cover as we finish the remaining mysteries of the rosary in future Catholic worldbuilding episodes.
We already covered the first three chapters of Luke gradually from Episode 0.14 to Episode 0.19, and we'll cover the last three chapters as we talk through the Passion and the Resurrection (oops, spoilers). Which leaves Luke chapters 4 through 21 as our focus for today.
Luke 4 starts with the Temptation in the Desert. As you know by now, it's not unusual to find parallel scenes in the Gospels, especially in the so-called synoptic Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, and fitting with that pattern, we saw a version of this scene in Matthew, and it actually made an appearance in Mark as well, though the Mark version was so abbreviated it didn't actually assign any dialog to Jesus or Satan so I didn't zoom in on it–after all, this is Sayings of the Savior.
Anyways, let’s see Luke's temptation scene and note what differences we see from Matthew's version.
In the first temptation, Matthew has Satan referring to multiple stones Jesus could turn into bread after his 40 day fast, while Luke has just one stone. I'm sure there's commentary that discusses this difference--it’s the Bible, there’s commentary for everything– but unlike the Mark episode, I'm not going to go into quite that level of detail with Luke. It’s worth noting that when Christ responds with
LUKE
"It is written: 'Man shall not live on bread alone.'”
GREGG
he leaves off the second half of the quote from Deuteronomy 8:3
“but on every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD.”
which Matthew had included.
Then, the second and third temptation we saw in Matthew are reversed. In Luke, Satan first tells Jesus he can give him all sorts of power if He worships him, which, I mean, I guess things would have been pretty different if Jesus had taken him up on that. Like, serious plot twist. But nah. He says
LUKE
“It is written: 'Worship the Lord your God and serve him only”
GREGG
and then the third temptation in Luke's ordering is the testing of God's protection of Jesus. Rather than seeing if God will save Him, Jesus says:
LUKE:
It is said: 'Do not put the Lord your God to the test.'”
GREGG
After seeing the devil off, Jesus begins his traveling and preaching ministry and soon enough winds up in his hometown. This is a scene that showed up in Matthew and Mark as well, the one where Jesus notes that no prophet is welcome in his hometown. In Luke it’s more thorough and frankly dramatic. Long quote ahead, let's get into it:
LUKE 4
16He went to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, and on the Sabbath day he went into the synagogue, as was his custom. He stood up to read,
17and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him. Unrolling it, he found the place where it is written:
18"The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free,
19to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.”
20Then he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant and sat down. The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fastened on him.
21He began by saying to them, "Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.”
22All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his lips. "Isn't this Joseph's son?" they asked.
23Jesus said to them, "Surely you will quote this proverb to me: 'Physician, heal yourself!' And you will tell me, 'Do here in your hometown what we have heard that you did in Capernaum.'"
24"Truly I tell you," he continued, "no prophet is accepted in his hometown.
25I assure you that there were many widows in Israel in Elijah's time, when the sky was shut for three and a half years and there was a severe famine throughout the land.
26Yet Elijah was not sent to any of them, but to a widow in Zarephath in the region of Sidon.
27And there were many in Israel with leprosy in the time of Elisha the prophet, yet not one of them was cleansed--only Naaman the Syrian.”
28All the people in the synagogue were furious when they heard this.
29They got up, drove him out of the town, and took him to the brow of the hill on which the town was built, in order to throw him off the cliff.
30But he walked right through the crowd and went on his way.
GREGG
So, just to recap, we have Jesus preaching a bit of a softball passage from Isaiah, promising good news to the poor. That was a long quote, so let's hear just that passage as a refresher:
“The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor”
The good news part is clear enough In terms of freedom and healing, but what is the year of the Lord's favor mentioned?
By all accounts it's the Jubilee year described in Leviticus 25. You know how the seventh day is the Sabbath, a day of rest for the people? Well the seventh year was a “day”of rest for the fields, where they were to lie fallow, that is, go untilled and unworked, letting nature take its course for a year. Crops could not be harvested in an organized way, though what grows could be casually consumed by the owners, or by the needy, or really by anyone, or by animals. Going further, personal debts among the people of Israel were cancelled in a levelling move. This custom is still in force in much of Israel, where it is called the Shmita. Of course, following the quasi-precept of “two Jews, three opinions”, application slash abrogation of this practice varies.
Anyways, the Jubilee year was not the seventh year, the Smhita I mentioned, but rather the fiftieth year, being the year after the seventh set of seven years, because symbolism. In the Jubilee year, things were even more intense, for instance going beyond personal debt forgiveness to returning sold land to the tribe of origin and to freeing Israelites who had sold themselves into slavery, basically a factory reset for society.
But note, this was only enslaved Israelites who were to be freed in the Jubilee year, the “year of the Lord's favor”. And this is where we turn back to Luke 4, because Jesus pivots the conversation away from the people of Israel to the fringes and even beyond the borders of Jewish society, to Sidon and Syria. But sending the good news to the gentiles is quite a bridge too far for his audience, who prepare to kill him in their rage. Like I said, quite the scene, and it's easy to understand why skeptics might place it as having been written after Christianity had already begun to spread among the gentiles and catch flack for doing so on the home front. My main narrative episodes haven't gotten far, but we've already started to see some of that tension, and it will only grow.
Of course, I've committed to getting my Catholic Worldbuilding stuff done before I dive back into the main narrative stuff, and to do that we need to get through the rest of Luke, and to do *that* we at least need to get through the rest of Luke 4.
After escaping the assembled mob, apparently by miraculous means of some kind because it simply says He walked right through the crowd, Jesus proceeds to do other miracles in towns around the region. The people who lived near Peter's mother-in-law must have really appreciated the assist, because in stark contrast to his hometown reception they tried to keep him from leaving. He responded:
LUKE 4
“I must proclaim the good news of the kingdom of God to the other towns also, because that is why I was sent.”
GREGG
Luke 5 opens with Jesus calling his disciples to follow Him. We covered the miraculous catch of fish that got Peter on board when we did our roundup of miracles, and other assorted miracles carry us through to Verse 27, when we have the Call of Matthew, known to Luke as Levi.
Matthew vs. Levi Is worth a minute. Matthew is the more common name for this disciple, and may have been his Christian name. But Levi is the name preferred here in Luke and also in Mark. One explanation I saw in multiple places is that Matthew is a Greek name while Levi is Hebrew, an explanation that suffers from being wrong, as Matthew is Hebrew for “gift of God”. A perhaps more successful explanation is that Matthew was a Levite, you know, someone from the Tribe of Levi, and things got a bit garbled. Or there was a name change that just didn't get recorded in Scripture or in any other tradition for that matter..
Matthew and Levi being separate individuals seems to be the least popular theory, so regardless of the particulars, your takeaway from this should be the same as it was when we talked about this last episode: they're the same person.
Either way, here's the call of Matthew *cough* Levi:
LUKE 5
27Jesus went out and saw a tax collector by the name of Levi sitting at his tax booth. "Follow me," Jesus said to him,
28and Levi got up, left everything and followed him.
GREGG
OK, maybe I didn't need to go into all that detail for two words of Jesus, but hey, what's done is done, so “follow me” across a few more verses, where Jesus gets questioned about the company He's chosen to keep:
LUKE 5
Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?”
31Jesus answered them, "It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick.
32I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.”
GREGG
That's good news for us sinners, I can tell you that much.
Luke 5 finishes with some parables, which we covered in the Parables roundup earlier in this series, so on to Luke 6, which opens with the grain-picking scene we've seen a couple of times already. SYNOPTIC ROUNDUP, you know the drill [airhorn], except I'm skipping rehashing the other two accounts, just, you know, general reminder that synoptic parallels are a thing.
Anyways, let's get another dose of that “Lord of the Sabbath” action:
LUKE 6
1One Sabbath Jesus was going through the grainfields, and his disciples began to pick some heads of grain, rub them in their hands and eat the kernels.
2Some of the Pharisees asked, "Why are you doing what is unlawful on the Sabbath?”
3Jesus answered them, "Have you never read what David did when he and his companions were hungry?
4He entered the house of God, and taking the consecrated bread, he ate what is lawful only for priests to eat. And he also gave some to his companions.”
5Then Jesus said to them, "The Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath.”
GREGG
Oh yeah, good stuff. Check my Matthew and Mark episodes if you want more commentary on it, I want to buckle down and get to John. Of course by that I mean John the Baptist, whose inquiry gives us of the next section we need to cover. Of course, as is so often the case with these synoptic Gospels, this isn't actually a whole new section. This next chunk closely matches a parallel passage in Matthew 11. If you want to follow along, in Matthew it's the start of that Chapter, while in Luke we're at chapter 7 verse 18:
LUKE 7
18John's disciples told him about all these things. Calling two of them,
19he sent them to the Lord to ask, "Are you the one who is to come, or should we expect someone else?
20When the men came to Jesus, they said, "John the Baptist sent us to you to ask, 'Are you the one who is to come, or should we expect someone else?'”
21At that very time Jesus cured many who had diseases, sicknesses and evil spirits, and gave sight to many who were blind.
GREGG
Oh look there's a batch of miracles that didn't make it into my miracles roundup, at least not directly. It's pretty vague, and it's unique to Luke. This small difference is exactly the sort of thing that gets analyzed to try to understand the relationship between Matthew and Luke, and like every other bit of Scriptural analysis you can find someone taking pretty much any conceivable stance. In any case, the reference to those timely miracles helps set the stage for the next verse, which is back to closely paralleling Matthew:
LUKE 7
22So he replied to the messengers, "Go back and report to John what you have seen and heard: The blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is proclaimed to the poor.
23Blessed is anyone who does not stumble on account of me.”
24After John's messengers left, Jesus began to speak to the crowd about John: "What did you go out into the wilderness to see? A reed swayed by the wind?
25If not, what did you go out to see? A man dressed in fine clothes? No, those who wear expensive clothes and indulge in luxury are in palaces.
26But what did you go out to see? A prophet? Yes, I tell you, and more than a prophet.
27This is the one about whom it is written: "'I will send my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way before you.’
28I tell you, among those born of women there is no one greater than John; yet the one who is least in the kingdom of God is greater than he.”
GREGG
Now, I went back and checked my commentary on Matthew's version of this scene, and it was basically nothing. Which is fair, I was pretty deadline-crunched at the time and knew I'd be revisiting it here. But it's definitely worth noting that both passages have John the Baptist, who Jesus proclaims as a great, or even the greatest, prophet, both passages have this spiritual giant publicly uncertain about whether Jesus is the Messiah.
You could perhaps argue this was a ruse, but John seems to have been a straight shooter- that's why he's sending delegates from prison after all rather than asking himself. So it seems to be a genuine question. Which means if you're under the impression that having faith or even being the greatest prophet ever automatically means you have no remaining questions and can see all of God's plan perfectly, apparently not. After all, John had been the one ministering at Jesus’ baptism, where Heaven had opened and the Spirit had come down as a dove and God's own voice had told Jesus: “You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased.”
And yet now John is asking, publicly: “Are you the one who is to come, or should we expect someone else?"
There's a lesson in there on vulnerability and openness to God's plan. Or perhaps a lesson in how everyone can encounter uncertainty, no matter how certain their role seems. We'll see Jesus go even further in questioning during the Passion narrative when the time comes.
Skipping a few verses of parenthetical commentary that can only be found in Luke, let's pick back up at Luke 7 verse 31:
LUKE 7
31Jesus went on to say, "To what, then, can I compare the people of this generation? What are they like?
32They are like children sitting in the marketplace and calling out to each other: "'We played the pipe for you, and you did not dance; we sang a dirge, and you did not cry.'
33For John the Baptist came neither eating bread nor drinking wine, and you say, 'He has a demon.’
34The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and you say, 'Here is a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners.’
35But wisdom is proved right by all her children.”
GREGG
If you aren't willing to listen, you'll find any excuse to dismiss the message. But the wise will be shown by making the right choice.
After wrapping that up, Jesus goes on a bit of a parable tour until he winds up with a bit more family awkwardness In Luke 8:19:
LUKE 8
19 Now Jesus’ mother and brothers came to see him, but they were not able to get near him because of the crowd. 20 Someone told him, “Your mother and brothers are standing outside, wanting CORRECT to see you.”
21 He replied, “My mother and brothers are those who hear God’s word and put it into practice.”
GREGG
Ouch, but also yay, Jesus doesn't put His earthly family above others. Which is good news If you didn't start out as His family, though it might sting a little if you did.
The rest of Luke 8 is a bunch of previously-discussed miracles, so we're on to Luke 9:
LUKE 9
9 When Jesus had called the Twelve together, he gave them power and authority to drive out all demons and to cure diseases, 2 and he sent them out to proclaim the kingdom of God and to heal the sick. 3 He told them: “Take nothing for the journey—no staff, no bag, no bread, no money, no extra shirt. 4 Whatever house you enter, stay there until you leave that town. 5 If people do not welcome you, leave their town and shake the dust off your feet as a testimony against them.” 6 So they set out and went from village to village, proclaiming the good news and healing people everywhere.
GREGG
This Isn't the first or even the second time we've seen these basic marching orders, but it actually is the last as John is, well, a very different Gospel, as we'll see in our next worldbuilding episode.
Anyways, after feeding the 5,000 we get to verse 18, where Luke's version of Peter's confession begins. As with Mark, don't get too excited:
LUKE 9
18 Once when Jesus was praying in private and his disciples were with him, he asked them, “Who do the crowds say I am?”
19 They replied, “Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others, that one of the prophets of long ago has come back to life.”
20 “But what about you?” he asked. “Who do you say I am?”
Peter answered, “God’s Messiah.”
21 Jesus strictly warned them not to tell this to anyone.”
GREGG
So that's three for three on synoptic Gospels having Peter describe Jesus as the Messiah. Only Matthew did the keys thing, though. Also note the messianic secret trope popping up again- Jesus will apparently reverse his gag order after the Passion, because the Book of Acts- which was also written by Luke, or at least by whoever wrote Luke, will be all about telling everyone Jesus is the Messiah.
Immediately after that exchange, Jesus starts talking about his future, and it's not rosy:
LUKE 9
22 And he said, “The Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life.”
23 Then he said to them all: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me. 24 For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will save it. 25 What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, and yet lose or forfeit their very self? 26 Whoever is ashamed of me and my words, the Son of Man will be ashamed of them when he comes in his glory and in the glory of the Father and of the holy angels.
27 “Truly I tell you, some who are standing here will not taste death before they see the kingdom of God.”
GREGG
This is all closely paralleling Matthew, and Mark as well, though as usual Mark was a bit shorter, skipping the last verse about some standing there not tasting death before they see the Kingdom. Again, you can see why early Christians were basically a doomsday cult expecting the end sooner rather than later. Certainly *your* end will come, so, you know, keep that in mind.
We're going to skip the transfiguration since that's its own mystery of the rosary with its own episode, and there's another miracle account after that. So skipping along, come with me to Luke 9:43:
LUKE 9
While everyone was marveling at all that Jesus did, he said to his disciples, 44 “Listen carefully to what I am about to tell you: The Son of Man is going to be delivered into the hands of men.” 45 But they did not understand what this meant. It was hidden from them, so that they did not grasp it, and they were afraid to ask him about it.
GREGG
If my episode on Mark is still fresh in your mind, you may already predict where this is going, as this particular section is a close Mark and Luke parallel. Matthew split things up in different ways but for both Mark and Luke the conversation with a child and being the greatest in the kingdom follows immediately after Jesus states what will become of him, leaving the disciples too afraid to ask.
Let's carry on with the next verse:
LUKE 9
46 An argument started among the disciples as to which of them would be the greatest. 47 Jesus, knowing their thoughts, took a little child and had him stand beside him. 48 Then he said to them, “Whoever welcomes this little child in my name welcomes me; and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me. For it is the one who is least among you all who is the greatest.”
GREGG
The next verse is a bit of a random aside, but an important one as I mentioned before when it came up in Mark:
LUKE 9
49 “Master,” said John, “we saw someone driving out demons in your name and we tried to stop him, because he is not one of us.”
50 “Do not stop him,” Jesus said, “for whoever is not against you is for you.”
GREGG
Skipping ahead to verse 57, we have some stray sayings that underline the urgency of following Christ:
LUKE 9
57 As they were walking along the road, a man said to him, “I will follow you wherever you go.”
58 Jesus replied, “Foxes have dens and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.”
59 He said to another man, “Follow me.”
But he replied, “Lord, first let me go and bury my father.”
60 Jesus said to him, “Let the dead bury their own dead, but you go and proclaim the kingdom of God.”
61 Still another said, “I will follow you, Lord; but first let me go back and say goodbye to my family.”
62 Jesus replied, “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for service in the kingdom of God.”
GREGG
A bit harsh, but Jesus is like that sometimes.
Luke 10 opens with an long section on Jesus’ next project, sending out seventy-two disciples, or seventy according to some manuscripts. Some may recall a previous seventy vs seventy-two discussion when we talked about the Septuagint, and I expect there's a reason for that parallel, but either way that's not the particular rabbit hole I want to go down here today. Instead, I want to note that we can have some fun with this Luke-only passage, and that we wouldn't be the first to do so.
You see, seventy is a long but not completely impractical number of folks to list off, and while Luke doesn't give names, there are plenty of extrabiblical sources assigning names and biographical details to some or all of the seventy. This passage discussing Jesus sending out seventy disciples was especially useful for ancient or wannabe ancient dioceses that couldn't trace back to a specific Apostle. Instead, lo and behold, turns out their founder was one of the unnamed seventy. Boom presto, a biblical founder!
Of course that's the skeptical read, it could well be that some such stories are true. But there are enough names assigned to the 70 that they certainly aren't *all* true, kind of like how there are at least four heads of John the Baptist floating around. In the end, as a reminder, Catholics are generally free to believe or disbelieve in the authenticity and or efficacy of any particular relic or tradition as long as they accept the fundamental teachings and authority of the Catholic Church.
In terms of the promised fun we can have, I'd like to announce a little side project, a game where I share a story of someone spreading Christianity and the next episode we'll discuss whether it's real or made up and what the sources are.
We'll start that at the end of this episode. For now, let's hear about the seventy slash seventy-two:
LUKE 10
After this the Lord appointed seventy-two others and sent them two by two ahead of him to every town and place where he was about to go. 2 He told them, “The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field. 3 Go! I am sending you out like lambs among wolves. 4 Do not take a purse or bag or sandals; and do not greet anyone on the road.
5 “When you enter a house, first say, ‘Peace to this house.’ 6 If someone who promotes peace is there, your peace will rest on them; if not, it will return to you. 7 Stay there, eating and drinking whatever they give you, for the worker deserves his wages. Do not move around from house to house.
GREGG
Someone tell the Jehovah’s Witnesses…
LUKE 10
8 “When you enter a town and are welcomed, eat what is offered to you. 9 Heal the sick who are there and tell them, ‘The kingdom of God has come near to you.’ 10 But when you enter a town and are not welcomed, go into its streets and say, 11 ‘Even the dust of your town we wipe from our feet as a warning to you. Yet be sure of this: The kingdom of God has come near.’ 12 I tell you, it will be more bearable on that day for Sodom than for that town.
13 “Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the miracles that were performed in you had been performed in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago, sitting in sackcloth and ashes. 14 But it will be more bearable for Tyre and Sidon at the judgment than for you. 15 And you, Capernaum, will you be lifted to the heavens? No, you will go down to Hades.
16 “Whoever listens to you listens to me; whoever rejects you rejects me; but whoever rejects me rejects him who sent me.”
17 The seventy-two returned with joy and said, “Lord, even the demons submit to us in your name.”
18 He replied, “I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven. 19 I have given you authority to trample on snakes and scorpions and to overcome all the power of the enemy; nothing will harm you.
GREGG
That verse is the root of some of the quirky snake-handling churches in Appalachia by the way…
LUKE 10
20 However, do not rejoice that the spirits submit to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.”
21 At that time Jesus, full of joy through the Holy Spirit, said, “I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children. Yes, Father, for this is what you were pleased to do.
22 “All things have been committed to me by my Father. No one knows who the Son is except the Father, and no one knows who the Father is except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.”
23 Then he turned to his disciples and said privately, “Blessed are the eyes that see what you see. 24 For I tell you that many prophets and kings wanted to see what you see but did not see it, and to hear what you hear but did not hear it.”
GREGG
Those last two verses touch on an interesting discussion throughout Church history, namely the fate of those who lived before the time of Christ.
Could they be saved? Observant Jews of the time, yes, certainly. But those who never encountered Christianity or Judaism because of when or where they lived historically has proven a bit of an awkward question for the Church. The “well you better go tell them” impulse has long served to recruit missionaries, but on the other end many did and do argue that it hardly seems fair to expect folks to follow what through no fault of their own they've never been exposed to. Granted it's less of an issue nowadays when very few folks worldwide haven't at least heard of Christ, but the question remains. Certainly the Catholic Church insists that all humans who are saved are saved through Christ, there's no other way. And yet the Church also affirms that God is not bound by time, as evidenced by the defined belief required of all Catholics in the Immaculate Conception, where the Blessed Virgin Mary was preserved from all stain of sin from the moment of her conception. Obviously that took place before the Incarnation, so it's not like the years going from BC to AD is a firm barrier for the saving action of Christ in the eyes of the Catholic Church. Indeed, by implication, the previously mentioned Jews who awaited the grand opening of heaven were able to do so by the work of Christ according to the Church, though given how many horrible things have been done to Jews in the name of Christ through the years that isn't something that tends to be emphasized.
In the end, I think you probably know me well enough by now to correctly guess that I land on the hopeful end of this discussion. By one means or another, all through Christ, I hope for all. But to be very clear, that's my hope, and for what it's worth. Pope Francis’ hope as well according to a recent interview, but it's not established Church teaching.
Skipping past the parable of the Good Samaritan, let's go to verse 38 for Martha and Mary, an exchange that's my go-to analogy for the two basic types of service to the Church, with Martha being the “active” type and Mary the “contemplative”.
LUKE
38 As Jesus and his disciples were on their way, he came to a village where a woman named Martha opened her home to him. 39 She had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet listening to what he said. 40 But Martha was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made. She came to him and asked, “Lord, don’t you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself? Tell her to help me!”
41 “Martha, Martha,” the Lord answered, “you are worried and upset about many things, 42 but few things are needed—or indeed only one. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.”
GREGG
The first part of Luke 11 covers Luke's take on the Our Father-covered in 0.21b- and the Friend at Midnight covered in our parables roundup. So skip along to Verse 9, which parallels Matthew's Sermon on the Mount, so it will sound familiar:
LUKE 11
9 “So I say to you: Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. 10 For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.
11 “Which of you fathers, if your son asks for a fish, will give him a snake instead? 12 Or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? 13 If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!”
GREGG
Skip ahead again, this time to verse 24, because verses 14-23 were covered under miracles:
LUKE
24 “When an impure spirit comes out of a person, it goes through arid places seeking rest and does not find it. Then it says, ‘I will return to the house I left.’ 25 When it arrives, it finds the house swept clean and put in order. 26 Then it goes and takes seven other spirits more wicked than itself, and they go in and live there. And the final condition of that person is worse than the first.”
27 As Jesus was saying these things, a woman in the crowd called out, “Blessed is the mother who gave you birth and nursed you.”
28 He replied, “Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and obey it.”
GREGG
There's a reminder that relapsing can be worse than the initial lapse, and a nice compliment session preserved only in Luke. But then the tone shifts, and the rest of the chapter has parallels in Matthew:
LUKE 11
29 As the crowds increased, Jesus said, “This is a wicked generation. It asks for a sign, but none will be given it except the sign of Jonah. 30 For as Jonah was a sign to the Ninevites, so also will the Son of Man be to this generation. 31 The Queen of the South will rise at the judgment with the people of this generation and condemn them, for she came from the ends of the earth to listen to Solomon’s wisdom; and now something greater than Solomon is here. 32 The men of Nineveh will stand up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it, for they repented at the preaching of Jonah; and now something greater than Jonah is here
GREGG
Then there's a comparatively light lamp analogy, which I kind of covered during the Sermon on the Mount commentary, but not in its entirety, so I’m giving it all to you here:
LUKE 11
33 “No one lights a lamp and puts it in a place where it will be hidden, or under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, so that those who come in may see the light. 34 Your eye is the lamp of your body. When your eyes are healthy, your whole body also is full of light. But when they are unhealthy, your body also is full of darkness. 35 See to it, then, that the light within you is not darkness. 36 Therefore, if your whole body is full of light, and no part of it dark, it will be just as full of light as when a lamp shines its light on you.”
GREGG
And now as we get back to a more challenging tone, and as Jesus targets the Pharisees and the teachers of the Law specifically, I want to give the same general note that I gave for the parallel verses in Matthew: do not take these verses out of context to justify antisemitism, which has no place in the Catholic Church, or really in the world. For one thing, keep in mind Jesus is a Jew speaking to fellow Jews here.
Anyways, let's continue:LUKE
37 When Jesus had finished speaking, a Pharisee invited him to eat with him; so he went in and reclined at the table. 38 But the Pharisee was surprised when he noticed that Jesus did not first wash before the meal.
39 Then the Lord said to him, “Now then, you Pharisees clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside you are full of greed and wickedness. 40 You foolish people! Did not the one who made the outside make the inside also? 41 But now as for what is inside you—be generous to the poor, and everything will be clean for you.
42 “Woe to you Pharisees, because you give God a tenth of your mint, rue and all other kinds of garden herbs, but you neglect justice and the love of God. You should have practiced the latter without leaving the former undone.
43 “Woe to you Pharisees, because you love the most important seats in the synagogues and respectful greetings in the marketplaces.
44 “Woe to you, because you are like unmarked graves, which people walk over without knowing it.”
45 One of the experts in the law answered him, “Teacher, when you say these things, you insult us also.”
46 Jesus replied, “And you experts in the law, woe to you, because you load people down with burdens they can hardly carry, and you yourselves will not lift one finger to help them.
47 “Woe to you, because you build tombs for the prophets, and it was your ancestors who killed them. 48 So you testify that you approve of what your ancestors did; they killed the prophets, and you build their tombs. 49 Because of this, God in his wisdom said, ‘I will send them prophets and apostles, some of whom they will kill and others they will persecute.’ 50 Therefore this generation will be held responsible for the blood of all the prophets that has been shed since the beginning of the world, 51 from the blood of Abel to the blood of Zechariah, who was killed between the altar and the sanctuary. Yes, I tell you, this generation will be held responsible for it all.”
GREGG
Let’s take a moment to reflect on that last line: “this generation will be held responsible for it all”. It's surprisingly harsh, even for a surprisingly harsh Jesus, for Him to hold the generation he was talking to responsible for all the blood of all the prophets that has been shed from the beginning of the world. But there it is. I can see a case being made for these verses as part of a theological justification for original sin, though really the key verse for that is Romans 5:12, which we’ll talk about later. Either way, given the emphasis on “this generation”, I don't think that's what's going on here, as original sin doesn't like, target specific generations.
So, what's up? Why is Jesus focusing in on the present generation, at least the present generation as of His lifetime?
Well, there's the key. It's His generation. Jesus is there, and all of the sin of history, past, present, and future, will be brought to account through Him.
Jesus, as always, is the answer. It's not that the world was especially sinful in the first century AD. But the answer to all sin was walking the earth then. *That* is why it's a generation that deserves a particular singling out.
Of course, that reflection- my own theological musing I should say, which is a dangerous thing to do and I defer to any correction that may come my way– anyways that reflection should not detract from the straightforward fact that Jesus is really taking the Pharisees and Teachers of the law to task here
LUKE 11
52 “Woe to you experts in the law, because you have taken away the key to knowledge. You yourselves have not entered, and you have hindered those who were entering.”
53 When Jesus went outside, the Pharisees and the teachers of the law began to oppose him fiercely and to besiege him with questions, 54 waiting to catch him in something he might say.
1Meanwhile, when a crowd of many thousands had gathered, so that they were trampling on one another, Jesus began to speak first to his disciples, saying: "Be on your guard against the yeast of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy
2There is nothing concealed that will not be disclosed, or hidden that will not be made known.
3What you have said in the dark will be heard in the daylight, and what you have whispered in the ear in the inner rooms will be proclaimed from the roofs
GREGG
Fortunately no one in our day falls into religious hypocrisy anymore, right? …right?
Anyways, the next few verses, once again paralleled with Matthew, put things into context, while weaving in hints of future persecution:
LUKE 12
4 “I tell you, my friends, do not be afraid of those who kill the body and after that can do no more. 5 But I will show you whom you should fear: Fear him who, after your body has been killed, has authority to throw you into hell. Yes, I tell you, fear him. 6 Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies? Yet not one of them is forgotten by God. 7 Indeed, the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Don’t be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows.
8 “I tell you, whoever publicly acknowledges me before others, the Son of Man will also acknowledge before the angels of God. 9 But whoever disowns me before others will be disowned before the angels of God. 10 And everyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but anyone who blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven.
11 “When you are brought before synagogues, rulers and authorities, do not worry about how you will defend yourselves or what you will say, 12 for the Holy Spirit will teach you at that time what you should say.”
GREGG
After a break for a parable, the overall theme resumes in verse 22:
LUKE 12
22 Then Jesus said to his disciples: “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat; or about your body, what you will wear. 23 For life is more than food, and the body more than clothes. 24 Consider the ravens: They do not sow or reap, they have no storeroom or barn; yet God feeds them. And how much more valuable you are than birds! 25 Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to your life? 26 Since you cannot do this very little thing, why do you worry about the rest?
27 “Consider how the wild flowers grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you, not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. 28 If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today, and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, how much more will he clothe you—you of little faith! 29 And do not set your heart on what you will eat or drink; do not worry about it. 30 For the pagan world runs after all such things, and your Father knows that you need them. 31 But seek his kingdom, and these things will be given to you as well.
32 “Do not be afraid, little flock, for your Father has been pleased to give you the kingdom. 33 Sell your possessions and give to the poor. Provide purses for yourselves that will not wear out, a treasure in heaven that will never fail, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys. 34 For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
GREGG
Did you catch one of the most challenging things Jesus says?
“Sell your possessions and give to the poor”
This isn't the only place Jesus says that, but it hits a little harder when he's giving it as general counsel rather than as specific advice to a rich young man looking for specific advice on how to live well. If you have more than you need, your excess needs to go to those who lack. You will ultimately have to account not only for what you did, but what you didn't do. If you've seen Schindler's List, think of his regret after all he's done, that he didn't sell the car to do more. When your life is done, what regrets will You have?
I know I need to do more, part of this project is to remind myself of that and to embarrass myself publicly for my shortcomings. Listen to Jesus’ message, don’t get hung up on the messenger.
A few parables take us forward to verse 49, a source of top notch dad jokes about our matchless king. But Jesus goes beyond that, preaching division. His message is hard, it will not be universally popular.
LUKE 12
49 “I have come to bring fire on the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled! 50 But I have a baptism to undergo, and what constraint I am under until it is completed! 51 Do you think I came to bring peace on earth? No, I tell you, but division. 52 From now on there will be five in one family divided against each other, three against two and two against three. 53 They will be divided, father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law.”
54 He said to the crowd: “When you see a cloud rising in the west, immediately you say, ‘It’s going to rain,’ and it does. 55 And when the south wind blows, you say, ‘It’s going to be hot,’ and it is. 56 Hypocrites! You know how to interpret the appearance of the earth and the sky. How is it that you don’t know how to interpret this present time?
57 “Why don’t you judge for yourselves what is right? 58 As you are going with your adversary to the magistrate, try hard to be reconciled on the way, or your adversary may drag you off to the judge, and the judge turn you over to the officer, and the officer throw you into prison. 59 I tell you, you will not get out until you have paid the last penny.”
LUKE 13
13 Now there were some present at that time who told Jesus about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mixed with their sacrifices. 2 Jesus answered, “Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans because they suffered this way? 3 I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish. 4 Or those eighteen who died when the tower in Siloam fell on them—do you think they were more guilty than all the others living in Jerusalem? 5 I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish.”
GREGG
That excerpt took us into Luke 13, which continues with parables and a miracle until verse 23, which is, frankly, basically the start of another parable, but not one I covered in the parables roundup so we'll do it here.
LUKE 13
23 Someone asked him, “Lord, are only a few people going to be saved?”
He said to them, 24 “Make every effort to enter through the narrow door, because many, I tell you, will try to enter and will not be able to. 25 Once the owner of the house gets up and closes the door, you will stand outside knocking and pleading, ‘Sir, open the door for us.’
“But he will answer, ‘I don’t know you or where you come from.’
26 “Then you will say, ‘We ate and drank with you, and you taught in our streets.’
27 “But he will reply, ‘I don’t know you or where you come from. Away from me, all you evildoers!’
28 “There will be weeping there, and gnashing of teeth, when you see Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and all the prophets in the kingdom of God, but you yourselves thrown out. 29 People will come from east and west and north and south, and will take their places at the feast in the kingdom of God. 30 Indeed there are those who are last who will be first, and first who will be last.”
GREGG
I recently saw one of the first verses in that passage cited as pointing towards the idea of Hell being full. After all,
“many I tell you, will try to enter and will not be able to.”
Is fairly clear, and even accounting for Jesus’ action as the owner of the house, in this and elsewhere ultimately those who are out on the cold are truly out in the cold. As much as I freely admit I don't get the logic of hell being populated, I also freely admit that the idea of it being empty is an exegetical stretch given passages like this. In the end, God reigns and I do not. I know what God asks of me, and I do it. As much as I like to know and to talk, I accept that I don't have and cannot have all knowledge.
Anyways, Jesus continues with a lament over Jerusalem we saw in Matthew, which Luke supplies with a little more context:
LUKE 13
31 At that time some Pharisees came to Jesus and said to him, “Leave this place and go somewhere else. Herod wants to kill you.”
32 He replied, “Go tell that fox, ‘I will keep on driving out demons and healing people today and tomorrow, and on the third day I will reach my goal.’ 33 In any case, I must press on today and tomorrow and the next day—for surely no prophet can die outside Jerusalem!
34 “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were not willing. 35 Look, your house is left to you desolate. I tell you, you will not see me again until you say, ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.’”
GREGG
And now with that note looking to Jesus’ future- something he definitely keeps doing throughout the Gospels- we have something of an intermission, because Luke 14, 15, and 16 are all so full of parables that we've already covered along with all of Jesus’ words from those chapters. Luke 17 opens with yet another parable, and then a miracle, so we're actually regrouping at Luke 17:20, where Jesus talks about the upcoming kingdom and talks about the end times, always fuel for a discussion, though I am skeptical about how productive such discussions are, given how Jesus opens the discussion by noting that the coming of the kingdom cannot be observed. And really, if there's something you'd be doing differently if you knew the world was ending--honestly that’s probably something you should be doing *now*, because your life will end very soon in the grand scheme of things, and you can't rule out today.
Anyways, let's resume:
LUKE 17
20 Once, on being asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come, Jesus replied, “The coming of the kingdom of God is not something that can be observed, 21 nor will people say, ‘Here it is,’ or ‘There it is,’ because the kingdom of God is in your midst.”
22 Then he said to his disciples, “The time is coming when you will long to see one of the days of the Son of Man, but you will not see it. 23 People will tell you, ‘There he is!’ or ‘Here he is!’ Do not go running off after them. 24 For the Son of Man in his day will be like the lightning, which flashes and lights up the sky from one end to the other. 25 But first he must suffer many things and be rejected by this generation.
26 “Just as it was in the days of Noah, so also will it be in the days of the Son of Man. 27 People were eating, drinking, marrying and being given in marriage up to the day Noah entered the ark. Then the flood came and destroyed them all.
28 “It was the same in the days of Lot. People were eating and drinking, buying and selling, planting and building. 29 But the day Lot left Sodom, fire and sulfur rained down from heaven and destroyed them all.
30 “It will be just like this on the day the Son of Man is revealed. 31 On that day no one who is on the housetop, with possessions inside, should go down to get them. Likewise, no one in the field should go back for anything. 32 Remember Lot’s wife! 33 Whoever tries to keep their life will lose it, and whoever loses their life will preserve it. 34 I tell you, on that night two people will be in one bed; one will be taken and the other left. 35 Two women will be grinding grain together; one will be taken and the other left.” [36]
[KJV]
36Two men shall be in the field; the one shall be taken, and the other left.
37 “Where, Lord?” they asked.
He replied, “Where there is a dead body, there the vultures will gather.”
GREGG
Oh, hope you don't mind me throwing in a little bit more KJV there. I would have announced it in advance but I was kind of on a roll with that transition and didn't want to kill the vibe. I'm no scripture scholar but my guess is the reason the KJV keep having verses the NIV is skipping is because back in the day folks were more reluctant to identify a passage as an addition due to manuscript evidence, you know, just in case. Better safe than sorry. But again, I'm no expert. Now, if I ever do get a budget for this beyond basic hosting fees I do have an expert in mind, so periodic reminder I do have a Popeular Patreon kicking around somewhere.
In any event, that's it for Luke 17, and we can basically skip the first half of Luke 18, since that’s a couple parables and related stuff we've already addressed.
In Luke 18 verse 18, we've got a familiar question, not only familiar because it already came up in both Matthew and Mark, but it's actually already come up in Luke as well, as part of the runup to the parable of the Good Samaritan. That parable was split off from the other synoptics, being present only in Luke despite being extremely famous. But this time around, the passage is a close parallel to both Matthew and Mark. Let's go!
LUKE 18
18 A certain ruler asked him, “Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?”
19 “Why do you call me good?” Jesus answered. “No one is good—except God alone. 20 You know the commandments: ‘You shall not commit adultery, you shall not murder, you shall not steal, you shall not give false testimony, honor your father and mother.’”
21 “All these I have kept since I was a boy,” he said.
22 When Jesus heard this, he said to him, “You still lack one thing. Sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.”
23 When he heard this, he became very sad, because he was very wealthy. 24 Jesus looked at him and said, “How hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of God! 25 Indeed, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.”
26 Those who heard this asked, “Who then can be saved?”
27 Jesus replied, “What is impossible with man is possible with God.”
28 Peter said to him, “We have left all we had to follow you!”
29 “Truly I tell you,” Jesus said to them, “no one who has left home or wife or brothers or sisters or parents or children for the sake of the kingdom of God 30 will fail to receive many times as much in this age, and in the age to come eternal life.”
GREGG
We treated the “eye of the needle” thing almost embarrassingly thoroughly last episode, so refer back to my Mark commentary for detail on that. The ending simply promising a much greater reward for giving things up to follow Jesus is a mild tweak of the “first shall be last” thing we saw concluding this passage in Matthew and Mark, for what it's worth.
Next up, Jesus gives the third prediction of his death he's given in Luke:
LUKE 18
31 Jesus took the Twelve aside and told them, “We are going up to Jerusalem, and everything that is written by the prophets about the Son of Man will be fulfilled. 32 He will be delivered over to the Gentiles. They will mock him, insult him and spit on him; 33 they will flog him and kill him. On the third day he will rise again.”
34 The disciples did not understand any of this. Its meaning was hidden from them, and they did not know what he was talking about.
GREGG
Jesus predicts his death three times in each of the synoptic Gospels, so that being the third and final prediction is a sign we're getting close.
Chapter 18 finishes with a miracle, so we're on to Chapter 19, which opens with the second account of Jesus calling a tax collector to follow him present in Luke. And unlike the call of Matthew slash Levi, this call of Zaccheus is *only* present in Luke.
LUKE 19
19 Jesus entered Jericho and was passing through. 2 A man was there by the name of Zacchaeus; he was a chief tax collector and was wealthy. 3 He wanted to see who Jesus was, but because he was short he could not see over the crowd. 4 So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore-fig tree to see him, since Jesus was coming that way.
5 When Jesus reached the spot, he looked up and said to him, “Zacchaeus, come down immediately. I must stay at your house today.” 6 So he came down at once and welcomed him gladly.
7 All the people saw this and began to mutter, “He has gone to be the guest of a sinner.”
8 But Zacchaeus stood up and said to the Lord, “Look, Lord! Here and now I give half of my possessions to the poor, and if I have cheated anybody out of anything, I will pay back four times the amount.”
9 Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this house, because this man, too, is a son of Abraham. 10 For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.”
GREGG
I mentioned a bit ago we were getting close to the end of things for today, and another sign that we're getting close is that the next thing we get to cover, after skipping another parable, is Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem, which is liturgically covered in the Palm Sunday observances that kick off Holy Week, aka the week leading up to Easter Sunday. Let's hear what Luke has to say, starting at verse 28:
LUKE 19
28 After Jesus had said this, he went on ahead, going up to Jerusalem. 29 As he approached Bethphage and Bethany at the hill called the Mount of Olives, he sent two of his disciples, saying to them, 30 “Go to the village ahead of you, and as you enter it, you will find a colt tied there, which no one has ever ridden. Untie it and bring it here. 31 If anyone asks you, ‘Why are you untying it?’ say, ‘The Lord needs it.’”
32 Those who were sent ahead went and found it just as he had told them. 33 As they were untying the colt, its owners asked them, “Why are you untying the colt?”
34 They replied, “The Lord needs it.”
35 They brought it to Jesus, threw their cloaks on the colt and put Jesus on it. 36 As he went along, people spread their cloaks on the road.
37 When he came near the place where the road goes down the Mount of Olives, the whole crowd of disciples began joyfully to praise God in loud voices for all the miracles they had seen:
38 “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!”
“Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!”
39 Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to Jesus, “Teacher, rebuke your disciples!”
40 “I tell you,” he replied, “if they keep quiet, the stones will cry out.”
41 As he approached Jerusalem and saw the city, he wept over it 42 and said, “If you, even you, had only known on this day what would bring you peace—but now it is hidden from your eyes. 43 The days will come upon you when your enemies will build an embankment against you and encircle you and hem you in on every side. 44 They will dash you to the ground, you and the children within your walls. They will not leave one stone on another, because you did not recognize the time of God’s coming to you.”
45 When Jesus entered the temple courts, he began to drive out those who were selling. 46 “It is written,” he said to them, “‘My house will be a house of prayer’; but you have made it ‘a den of robbers.’”
47 Every day he was teaching at the temple. But the chief priests, the teachers of the law and the leaders among the people were trying to kill him. 48 Yet they could not find any way to do it, because all the people hung on his words.
GREGG
From the classic handwaive of “the master has need of it” to the admittedly brief account of Jesus driving the moneychangers out of the Temple, there's a lot of good stuff in there, but nothing especially new, all things we basically saw in Matthew and Mark.
Similarly, the opening verses of Luke 20 are also close parallels of the other synoptic gospels. But hey, you know the drill, let's hear Luke tell it:
LUKE 20
One day as Jesus was teaching the people in the temple courts and proclaiming the good news, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, together with the elders, came up to him. 2 “Tell us by what authority you are doing these things,” they said. “Who gave you this authority?”
3 He replied, “I will also ask you a question. Tell me: 4 John’s baptism—was it from heaven, or of human origin?”
5 They discussed it among themselves and said, “If we say, ‘From heaven,’ he will ask, ‘Why didn’t you believe him?’ 6 But if we say, ‘Of human origin,’ all the people will stone us, because they are persuaded that John was a prophet.”
7 So they answered, “We don’t know where it was from.”
8 Jesus said, “Neither will I tell you by what authority I am doing these things.”
GREGG
The next few verses are taken up by the Parable of the Talents, so we'll skip that and go on to more close synoptic parallel passages starting in Verse 20. If you're wondering, we're parallelling Matthew 22 and Mark 12 here:
LUKE 20
20 Keeping a close watch on him, they sent spies, who pretended to be sincere. They hoped to catch Jesus in something he said, so that they might hand him over to the power and authority of the governor. 21 So the spies questioned him: “Teacher, we know that you speak and teach what is right, and that you do not show partiality but teach the way of God in accordance with the truth. 22 Is it right for us to pay taxes to Caesar or not?”
23 He saw through their duplicity and said to them, 24 “Show me a denarius. Whose image and inscription are on it?”
“Caesar’s,” they replied.
25 He said to them, “Then give back to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s.”
26 They were unable to trap him in what he had said there in public. And astonished by his answer, they became silent.
GREGG
Yes, as you'll recall, giving God what is God's means giving God everything, but at the same time, like, pay your taxes.
The parallels continue with the next section
LUKE 20
Some of the Sadducees, who say there is no resurrection, came to Jesus with a question. 28 “Teacher,” they said, “Moses wrote for us that if a man’s brother dies and leaves a wife but no children, the man must marry the widow and raise up offspring for his brother. 29 Now there were seven brothers. The first one married a woman and died childless. 30 The second 31 and then the third married her, and in the same way the seven died, leaving no children. 32 Finally, the woman died too. 33 Now then, at the resurrection whose wife will she be, since the seven were married to her?”
34 Jesus replied, “The people of this age marry and are given in marriage. 35 But those who are considered worthy of taking part in the age to come and in the resurrection from the dead will neither marry nor be given in marriage, 36 and they can no longer die; for they are like the angels. They are God’s children, since they are children of the resurrection. 37 But in the account of the burning bush, even Moses showed that the dead rise, for he calls the Lord ‘the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.’ 38 He is not the God of the dead, but of the living, for to him all are alive.”
39 Some of the teachers of the law responded, “Well said, teacher!” 40 And no one dared to ask him any more questions.
41 Then Jesus said to them, “Why is it said that the Messiah is the son of David? 42 David himself declares in the Book of Psalms:
“‘The Lord said to my Lord: “Sit at my right hand
43 until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet.”’
44 David calls him ‘Lord.’ How then can he be his son?”
GREGG
Yes, all closely paralleling Matthew 22 and Mark 12 still, both of which we've discussed. For what it's worth, John is going to be something quite different.
In any event, the last bit of Luke 20 is absent from Matthew, only parallelled in Mark 12:
LUKE 20
45 While all the people were listening, Jesus said to his disciples, 46 “Beware of the teachers of the law. They like to walk around in flowing robes and love to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces and have the most important seats in the synagogues and the places of honor at banquets. 47 They devour widows’ houses and for a show make lengthy prayers. These men will be punished most severely.”
GREGG
Luke 21 opens with another section we that we didn't see in Matthew but covered in Mark, namely the Widow's Offering:
LUKE 21
As Jesus looked up, he saw the rich putting their gifts into the temple treasury. 2 He also saw a poor widow put in two very small copper coins. 3 “Truly I tell you,” he said, “this poor widow has put in more than all the others. 4 All these people gave their gifts out of their wealth; but she out of her poverty put in all she had to live on.”
GREGG
I do love the message there, namely that God sees and accounts for effort when it comes to our actions, including our giving. Like I said, the Widow's Offering was in Mark too so I went into some more detail last episode.
As the chapter continues, the parallels with Matthew resume, now in Matthew Chapter 24, and Mark 14. Overall the theme is the end times, fairly appropriate given the transition to the Passion that will come in the next chapter
LUKE 21
Some of his disciples were remarking about how the temple was adorned with beautiful stones and with gifts dedicated to God. But Jesus said, 6 “As for what you see here, the time will come when not one stone will be left on another; every one of them will be thrown down.”
7 “Teacher,” they asked, “when will these things happen? And what will be the sign that they are about to take place?”
8 He replied: “Watch out that you are not deceived. For many will come in my name, claiming, ‘I am he,’ and, ‘The time is near.’ Do not follow them. 9 When you hear of wars and uprisings, do not be frightened. These things must happen first, but the end will not come right away.”
10 Then he said to them: “Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. 11 There will be great earthquakes, famines and pestilences in various places, and fearful events and great signs from heaven.
12 “But before all this, they will seize you and persecute you. They will hand you over to synagogues and put you in prison, and you will be brought before kings and governors, and all on account of my name. 13 And so you will bear testimony to me. 14 But make up your mind not to worry beforehand how you will defend yourselves. 15 For I will give you words and wisdom that none of your adversaries will be able to resist or contradict. 16 You will be betrayed even by parents, brothers and sisters, relatives and friends, and they will put some of you to death. 17 Everyone will hate you because of me. 18 But not a hair of your head will perish. 19 Stand firm, and you will win life.
20 “When you see Jerusalem being surrounded by armies, you will know that its desolation is near. 21 Then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains, let those in the city get out, and let those in the country not enter the city. 22 For this is the time of punishment in fulfillment of all that has been written. 23 How dreadful it will be in those days for pregnant women and nursing mothers! There will be great distress in the land and wrath against this people. 24 They will fall by the sword and will be taken as prisoners to all the nations. Jerusalem will be trampled on by the Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled.
25 “There will be signs in the sun, moon and stars. On the earth, nations will be in anguish and perplexity at the roaring and tossing of the sea. 26 People will faint from terror, apprehensive of what is coming on the world, for the heavenly bodies will be shaken. 27 At that time they will see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory. 28 When these things begin to take place, stand up and lift up your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.”
GREGG
Now, I hate to say it, but you need to prepare yourself. The next section is the last proper showcasing of a fig tree in the Gospels. Our favorite angiosperm has a much reduced role in the Gospel of John, really only getting a quick nod in the first chapter.
Of course we're combining the fig tree with the synoptic parallels and the end times theme, so you can refer back to Matthew and Mark on this as well if you like:
LUKE 21
He told them this parable: “Look at the fig tree and all the trees. 30 When they sprout leaves, you can see for yourselves and know that summer is near. 31 Even so, when you see these things happening, you know that the kingdom of God is near.
32 “Truly I tell you, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened. 33 Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away.
GREGG
The final section of Luke, at least for our purposes today, is actually a few Luke only verses about staying vigilant:
LUKE 21
34 “Be careful, or your hearts will be weighed down with carousing, drunkenness and the anxieties of life, and that day will close on you suddenly like a trap. 35 For it will come on all those who live on the face of the whole earth. 36 Be always on the watch, and pray that you may be able to escape all that is about to happen, and that you may be able to stand before the Son of Man.”
37 Each day Jesus was teaching at the temple, and each evening he went out to spend the night on the hill called the Mount of Olives, 38 and all the people came early in the morning to hear him at the temple.
GREGG
And there we have it. Synoptic Gospels accomplished, though as you probably already know we've got one more Gospel to go and we're actually not done with Luke either, since he is generally agreed, even by curmudgeonly scholars who like to spoil fun, to be the same guy who wrote Acts. I mean, they may not think it was necessarily Luke per se, but they do tend to agree the Gospel of Luke and the Book of Acts have the same author.
In any event, as evidenced by the fact that the Book of Acts has been my main source for the actual main series so far, we won't really be done with Saint Luke's works for some time yet, and honestly even after Acts there's the fact that tradition credits him with a vast collection of icons- holy images, especially images of the Blessed Virgin. So we're really going to have Saint Luke with us for the long haul.
Before we wrap up for the day, I did want to launch that little segment I teased when we were talking about The Seventy. So without further ado, it's time for Saint or Aint, where I give you a brief bio that's either from centuries of tradition or something someone made up very recently.
Today’s entry is St Garius Stephanus.
Originally born in Greece, Stephanus wound up in the household of the Roman Garii clan. As often happened, upon emancipation, he took on the name of his former masters in gratitude, hence Garius Stephanus. Garius is actually credited with some of the most wide-ranging missionary work, being traditionally credited with bringing knowledge of the Gospels to the furthest islands of the southern ocean.
I'd like to thank all of you lovely listeners and all those who support the show in various ways. Especially Joe, our new Patreon subscriber. I hereby solemnly grant you the title Cardinal-Bishop of Ostia, as our principle Cardinal for the show until, you know, someone else comes along. Joe hosts an awesome podcast called Prime Factors with his son, by the way. You should check them out, they rank Prime Ministers! [Check it out here: https://open.spotify.com/episode/2Yk91r75zwnP036vPm0wgI?si=jdPB80FPRJO7g-rd1LnjcA] I look forward to seeing you all soon when it’s time for our next cardinal, followed by our next worldbuilding episode next month on the Gospel of John.
Saturday Aug 03, 2024
Saturday Aug 03, 2024
LINKS
Vatican bio of Cardinal Lacroix
https://press.vatican.va/content/salastampa/en/documentation/cardinali_biografie/cardinali_bio_lacroix_gc.html
Gérald Cyprien Lacroix on FIU's Cardinals Database (by Salvadore Miranda):
https://cardinals.fiu.edu/bios2014.htm#Lacroix
Cardinal Lacroix on Gcatholic.org:
http://www.gcatholic.org/p/24599
Cardinal Lacroix on Catholic-Hierarchy.org:
https://www.catholic-hierarchy.org/bishop/blacrgc.html
Archdiocese of Québec on Gcatholic.org:
http://www.gcatholic.org/dioceses/diocese/queb0.htm?focus=24599&tab=info
Archdiocese of Québec on Catholic-Hierarchy.org:
https://www.catholic-hierarchy.org/diocese/dqueb.html
ISPX website:
https://ispx.org/en-assemblee-pour-sengager-totalement/
National Catholic Register abuse allegation coverage:
https://www.ncregister.com/cna/canadian-cardinal-lacroix-named-in-sexual-abuse-lawsuit
Reuters abuse allegation coverage:
https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/canadian-cardinal-temporarily-steps-down-after-lawsuit-alleging-abuse-2024-01-26/
America Magazine coverage of abuse investigation and Cardinal Lacroix’s return to ministry:
https://www.americamagazine.org/faith/2024/07/23/quebec-cardinal-vatican-abuse-248430
2020 Salt and Light interview with Cardinal Lacroix (English):
https://youtu.be/SvPhxY34AuA?feature=shared
IMAGE CREDIT: CNS photo/Philippe Vaillancourt, Presence, via America Magazine. Imaged cropped.IMAGE SOURCE AND DESCRIPTION:Cardinal Gerald C. Lacroix of Quebec walks with his crosier following a Dec. 12 Mass for the opening of the Holy Door in Notre-Dame Cathedral.https://www.americamagazine.org/faith/2017/06/21/canadian-cardinal-spent-9-years-colombian-war-zone-now-he-serves-new-periphery
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TRANSCRIPT
Welcome to Popeular History, a library of Catholic knowledge and insights.
Check out the show notes for sources, further reading, and a transcript.
Today we're discussing another current Cardinal of the Catholic Church, one of the 120 or so people who will choose the next Pope when the time comes.
Before we do, I have a note from last week’s episode, courtesy of attentive listener Christine de Pizan, who asked about the fifteenth century Cardinal Louis de Luxembourg when I described Cardinal Höllerich as Luxembourg’s first Cardinal. After getting over my elation that someone as cool as Christine listens to my podcast, and apparently listens closely, I dug into the matter and quickly found not one not two but three and nearly four such “de Luxembourg” Cardinals, all listed as French by my sources. The question is fair, where did they get the de Luxembourg thing? Well, if you go back through the generations, according to Christine who was kind enough to help answer her own question, they’re all descendants of Henry V, Count of Luxembourg, who looms fairly large in Luxembourger history, and who I reckon could fairly be called Luxembourgish himself. The de Luxembourg Cardinals are certainly worth mentioning when talking about the history of Catholic Cardinals in connection to Luxembourg, and I look forward to diving into their stories eventually. But by their day, well, I am comfortable continuing to count them as French for now, given their strong connections and daily life in France. The question of national equivalency gets fuzzier and fuzzier the further back you go, enough that I’ve considered dropping it as a focal point, but in the end people do pay close attention to the national makeup of the College of Cardinals, so it’s worth discussing, even if it gets murky. So thank you again Christine for drawing the de Luxembourg Cardinals to my attention, you inspired me to spend a fair amount of time working on my Cardinals database this week, which is always a pleasure, so thank you for that and for listening as well.I also should note that an accusation of abuse of a minor was made against today's Cardinal, Cardinal Lacroix, after I wrote my original summary of his life..Cardinal Lacroix, who categorically denies the allegations, temporarily stepped aside from his duties as a result in January of this year, returning to duty just last month, in July of 2024, after an investigation by a retired judge concluded with no evidence being found to support a canonical trial. The judge did note that the investigation should be considered incomplete, given that Cardinal Lacroix’s accuser refused to participate, I’m guessing there’s a trust issue, though the investigating judge also described Cardinal Lacroix;s record as “impeccable”.
Anyways, without further ado, let's get into it.
Gérald Cyprien Lacroix was born on July 27th, 1957 in Saint-Hilaire de Dorset, a community in the far south of Canada's Québec Province. His parents were farmers who moved the family to New Hampshire when he was 8 years old, and he finished his childhood in New England. In 1975, presumably after turning 18 though possibly a bit before, he joined the Secular institute Pius X, or ISPX. Presumably he heard about it in part because it was founded in Manchester, New Hampshire, where he went to high school. The ISPX should not be confused with the SSPX, which we'll talk about sometime in the future. As for the Secular Institute part, we're basically talking following the evangelical counsels–you know, poverty, chastity, and obedience–that you normally see in a monastic setting without the monastery part, so there’s a focus on living in the world rather than in community.
The ISPX is headquartered in Québec, the land of Gérald's birth, and he went back that way about this time. He didn't jump immediately into seminary though, taking the “secular” part of “secular institute” to heart and working for a restaurant, then as a graphic designer at a publishing house. In 1980 he took a year to do missionary work at a clinic for the poor in Columbia–service to the poor being a special focus of the ISPX. On his return he began studying at the Université Laval, a public university rather than the seminaries you may have come to expect.
The ISPX must have liked what he was doing, because in 1982 they made Gérald their Secretary-General when he was a 25 year old college student who made his perpetual vows that same year. It's not clear what his duties were as Secretary-General, normally as we've seen when it comes to Church stuff secretary is actually a fairly high posting, but I don't get the sense that this was like being Secretary-General at, say, the UN. It definitely wasn't the top post, I can say that much.
He held other posts in the Institute, becoming counselor of the General Counsel in 1985. Presumably that was an advancement, and soon he was Director General of one of their centers for spiritual formation.
In 1988, he was ordained a deacon in New Hampshire, then a few months later a priest in Québec, so very much a two-worlds scenario. Or rather, three worlds, because from 1990 to 2000 he was back serving in Columbia, carrying out tasks from assisting at a local parish to acting as a radio host, presumably in Spanish, though Gérald was also comfortable in English and French because of his background. While in Columia he also established nine houses for the ISPX, and yeah I know I said what made the ISPX a secular institute was a focus on living in the world rather than in community but, well, it's complicated. You still want to have a stable situation and base of operations, so even secular institutes still have religious houses. It goes back to that constant Martha and Mary discussion, as it always does.
Nine houses sounds like good growth for the order, and it seems they agreed, because in 2001 Father Lacroix became the top man for sure, the Director General, and that's how I know Secretary General was apparently not the top job.
Usually I can have more confidence about the inner workings of the religious orders we're discussing because, frankly, they're older and bigger. In the case of the ISPX, I mean, the Church has only formally recognized the concept of a Secular Institute since 1947-which is an odd thing to read on the website of a Secular Institute founded eight years before that in 1939, but hey, these things usually do start at the local level and then bubble up.
In 2008, deep into his second four-year term running the ISPX, Father Lacroix was established as a member of the Executive Council of the World Conference for the Secular Institutes. The following year, 2009, he was made an Auxiliary Bishop of Québec, becoming Titular Bishop of Ilta because as you may recall auxiliary bishops tend to become titular bishops of defunct diocesesA as a way of emphasizing the one-diocese one-bishop model while still allowing for additional admin help in larger sees.
At the time, the Archbishop of Québec was Cardinal Marc Ouellet, though not for much longer as Cardinal Ouellet was made Prefect of the Congregation for Bishops, a Curial post of sufficient intensity that he left the Archdiocese for Rome full time. You won't be surprised to learn that the conveniently placed Auxiliary Bishop Lacroix was chosen to succeed him in the post, nor will you be surprised that Pope Francis made him a Cardinal in 2014, during his first consistory. That same year, he was made a member of the Congregation for the Institutes of Consecrated Life and the Societies of Apostolic Life, which makes sense given his background, as well as the Pontifical Councils for Interreligious Dialogue and for Culture. Later, in 2020, he was added to the Council for the Economy, and finally, just last year,, Pope Francis added him to both the Dicastery for Culture and Education and his elite Council of Cardinals. Considering Cardinal Hollerich also made his way onto the Council of Cardinals at the end of our last episode, you'd be forgiven for thinking everyone and their brother is a member, but no, there are only nine members, all Cardinals. Considering there are currently 236 Cardinals, it's an exclusive club within an exclusive club, though I'm sure Pope Francis wouldn't call it that. An advisory body within an advisory body, is that better?
Anyways, unless he resigns early or something, which I am not predicting, Cardinal Lacroix is eligible to participate in future conclaves until he turns 80 in 2037.
Today's episode is part of Cardinal Numbers, and there will be more Cardinal Numbers next week. Thank you for listening; God bless you all! Thanks, Joe! [NOTE: Joe is our first Patreon subscriber, and hosts Prime Factors. Check it out here: https://open.spotify.com/episode/2Yk91r75zwnP036vPm0wgI?si=jdPB80FPRJO7g-rd1LnjcA]
Saturday Aug 10, 2024
Saturday Aug 10, 2024
IMAGE
Archcomms, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia CommonsLINKS
Vatican bio of Cardinal Goh
https://press.vatican.va/content/salastampa/en/documentation/cardinali_biografie/cardinali_bio_goh_w.html
William Goh Seng Chye on FIU's Cardinals Database (by Salvadore Miranda):
https://cardinals.fiu.edu/bios2022.htm#Goh
Cardinal Goh on Gcatholic.org:
http://www.gcatholic.org/p/51831
Cardinal Goh on Catholic-Hierarchy.org:
https://www.catholic-hierarchy.org/bishop/bgoh.html
Archdiocese of Singapore on Gcatholic.org:
http://www.gcatholic.org/dioceses/diocese/sing0.htm?tab=info
Archdiocese of Singapore on Catholic-Hierarchy.org:
https://www.catholic-hierarchy.org/diocese/dsngp.html
2013 Singapore News interview with the new bishop (archived via Archive.org):
https://web.archive.org/web/20130224030700/http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/singaporelocalnews/view/1255881/1/.html
2022 Vatican News interview with Cardinal-Elect Goh:
https://www.vaticannews.va/en/pope/news/2022-07/interview-meet-the-first-future-cardinal-of-singapore.html
2022 Catholic News Singapore coverage of World Day of Migrants and Refugees w/Archbishop Goh
https://catholicnews.sg/2022/10/16/building-the-future-with-migrants/
Website of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Malaysia, Singapore, and Brunei:
https://cbcmsb.org/about/
2016 english-Language reminiscing from then-Archbishop Goh:
https://youtu.be/XigJFfXDg3Y?si=xZsFrWbyzaij-kFA
Thank you for listening, and thank my family and friends for putting up with the time investment and for helping me out as needed.
As always, feel free to email the show at Popeularhistory@gmail.com
If you would like to financially support Popeular history, go to www.patreon.com/Popeular. If you don't have any money to spare but still want to give back, pray and tell others– prayers and listeners are worth more than gold!
TRANSCRIPT
Welcome to Popeular History, a library of Catholic knowledge and insights.
Check out the show notes for sources, further reading, and a transcript.
Today we're discussing another current Cardinal of the Catholic Church, one of the 120 or so people who will choose the next Pope when the time comes.
William GOH SENG CHYE was born on June 25, 1957 in Singapore, an island city-state in southeast Asia just off the Malay Peninsula, which was at the time still a British crown colony, but which would soon begin self-rule. I mentioned Singapore when discussing Cardinal Francis, who was born just across the strait in neighboring Malaysia. In fact, I even referenced today's Cardinal, saying I would be covering him in November, but of course things changed a bit since then and I expect you'll forgive me if I don't wait until this November to avoid being wrong about that.
Anyways, as if to underscore how close all of Singapore is to its larger neighbor, William did the philosophy half of his seminary training in Malaysia and the theology half in Singapore. Shortly before his 28th birthday, he was ordained as a priest for the Archdiocese of Singapore, and yes, if you guessed that the Archdiocese of Singapore is actually the only diocese in Singapore, you'd be correct. We looked at the somewhat similar case of tiny Luxembourg a couple episodes ago, but there are differences here, most notably in terms of population density- Singapore is less than a third the size of Luxembourg, but has over eight times the population. The island is basically one big city, home to nearly six million souls. Also, unlike Luxembourg, most of those souls aren't Catholic, with the Church claiming 170,000 adherents, or a little over 3% of the population.
The first five years of William's priesthood were spent as a pastor in one of Singapore's 32 Catholic churches. As a colonial legacy, Masses in Singapore are typically said in English, and yes Cardinal Goh's English is fine. Oops, sorry, I'm supposed be calling him Father Goh for this part so you can pretend to be surprised. My bad. Anyways, his Mandarin is also fine, for what it's worth.
Father Goh made his way to Rome and studied at the Pontifical Gregorian University for the next couple years, winding up with a licentiate in theology. Upon his return to Singapore it was back to pastoral work as well as a professorship at the local seminary. By 2005, he was serving as rector.
On December 29th, 2012, Father Goh was selected as the Coadjutor Archbishop of Singapore, which would normally mean he would become the new Archbishop within the next few months, and in this case meant yes, he became the new Archbishop about five months later.
When he became coadjutor, he had the following to say, quote:
"I would like to pay particular attention to the young people because this is the important lot of people in the church. They are vibrant, they are creative, they are full of energy, so the church needs to reach out to these young people, so I would like to meet them too, and to understand their aspirations and how they can contribute to the growth of the church.”
End quote. Unusually, Archbishop Goh also had a role in the secular government of Singapore, serving on the Presidential Council for Minority Rights from 2015 to 2018.
Speaking of minority rights, when it comes to migrants Archbishop Goh has been supportive, hosting special masses and saying things like, quote:
“Be inclusive and always be available and generous with your time and talents to help others grow and flourish, especially the migrants. Only then will we be able to build God’s Kingdom where fraternity may flourish.”
End quote. Anyone vaguely familiar with Pope Francis knows he's got a soft spot for migrants, and sharing that sense is a good way to get on his good books. One way or another, Pope Francis made Archbishop Goh Singapore's first Cardinal in 2022. Later that year, he appointed him to the Dicastery for Laity, Family and Life.
William Cardinal GOH is eligible to participate in future conclaves until he turns 80 in 2037.
Today's episode is part of Cardinal Numbers,
and there will be more Cardinal Numbers soon. Thank you for listening; God bless you all! Thanks Joe! [NOTE: Joe is our first Patreon subscriber, and hosts Prime Factors. Check it out here: https://open.spotify.com/episode/2Yk91r75zwnP036vPm0wgI?si=jdPB80FPRJO7g-rd1LnjcA]
Saturday Aug 17, 2024
Saturday Aug 17, 2024
IMAGE CREDIT AND DESCRIPTION:Perrant, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia CommonsCardinal Luis Antonio Tagle, Archbishop of Manila, during the display of St. Caesarius's relics at Manila Cathedral. Image digitally brightened (and cropped, but all the images I use are cropped, so take that for granted).
LINKS
Vatican bio of Cardinal Tagle:
https://press.vatican.va/content/salastampa/en/documentation/cardinali_biografie/cardinali_bio_tagle_la.html
Luis Antionio Gokim Tagle on FIU's Cardinals Database (by Salvadore Miranda):
https://cardinals.fiu.edu/bios2012-ii.htm#Tagle
Cardinal Tagle on Gcatholic.org:
http://www.gcatholic.org/p/3166
Cardinal Tagle on Catholic-Hierarchy.org:
https://www.catholic-hierarchy.org/bishop/btaglelag.html
Archdiocese of Manila on Gcatholic.org:
http://www.gcatholic.org/dioceses/diocese/mani0.htm?tab=info
Archdiocese of Manila on Catholic-Hierarchy.org:
https://www.catholic-hierarchy.org/diocese/dmanp.htmlPope_Predictor on X:
https://x.com/pope_predictor?lang=en
500 YOC (Years of Christianity) video with Cardinal Tagle (English):
https://youtu.be/Qre_7cf05VQ?si=_oCde2TKTAQuBJXY
Thank you for listening, and thank my family and friends for putting up with the time investment and for helping me out as needed.
As always, feel free to email the show at Popeularhistory@gmail.com
If you would like to financially support Popeular history, go to www.patreon.com/Popeular. If you don't have any money to spare but still want to give back, pray and tell others– prayers and listeners are worth more than gold!
TRANSCRIPT
Welcome to Popeular History, a library of Catholic knowledge and insights.
Check out the show notes for sources, further reading, and a transcript.
Today we're discussing another current Cardinal of the Catholic Church, one of the 120 or so people who will choose the next Pope when the time comes.
Luis Antonio Gokim Tagle was born on June 21, 1957 in Manila, the capital and second largest city of the Philippines, located on Luzon, the large island that makes up most of the north of the country.
When you're born in a city comparable to New York, there's no need to go far to get your education. Of course, some do, but Luis kept things local through ordination, while still maintaining the norm of getting your philosophy and theology pieces of seminary training at separate institutions.
By 25, Father Tagle was a priest for the Archdiocese of Manila, serving as a pastor in a parish south of Manila proper and as a spiritual director at a nearby seminary. By the venerable age of 26, he was serving as rector of the seminary- the San Carlos Diocesan Seminary of Imus.
Father Tagle, who prefers to go by his nickname Chito, did go further afield in 1985, studying in Rome and the Catholic University of America, where he got a doctorate in theology in 1991. Having a doctorate didn't make him too big for his britches, he resumed pastoral work, carrying on into the new millennium doing that and various special roles within the Diocese–and some work on the global scale as well, serving on the International Theological Commission from 1997 to 2002.
In 2002, he was elected Bishop of Imus, that “south of Manila proper” area where his first pastoral assignment had taken place. His principal consecrator was Cardinal Sin, who, thankfully, spoke English and knew darn well he had a funny name for a Cardinal, taking to calling his lodgings “the house of Sin”. But enough about that, I need to stay focused on Tagle's rising star, because obviously, he's not done yet.
In 2011, Chito was made Archbishop of Manila. It's hard to think of a posting more likely to get you a red hat in the globalized Church than Manila. And it may be kind of weird to hear me talk about the globalized church given catholic has always meant universal and the Catholic Church has always been a big broad thing, but the reality is that for a good long while thanks to colonialism and other factors the college of Cardinals was primarily a European affair, with conclaves as recently as the 1922 election of Pius XI having only European participants. But the focus of the Church has shifted, the lens has widened, and it's hard to ignore the fact that over 92 million Catholics live in the Philippines. Actually, I suppose it's not *that* hard to ignore that fact, since it used to be something pretty well ignored, but since 1960 Manila has always had a Cardinal, or at least if the Cardinal of Manila had just died, their successor would get a red hat in the next consistory. So naturally, as Archbishop of Manila, Chito was made a Cardinal when Pope Benedict created new Cardinals in February 2012, right?
Well, yes, but actually no, because his predecessor–not the wonderfully named Cardinal Sin but the guy between them, Cardinal Rosales--was still a Cardinal under the age of 80 and therefore even though he had retired from active service as the bishop he was still eligible to participate in any future conclaves, and it wouldn't do to have two Cardinals representing Manila in one conclave. Of course that's all conjecture but I'm far from the first to propose that logic and the pattern of being reluctant to make someone a Cardinal as long as their predecessor is still around as a voting Cardinal does seem to check out when you look at the data.
In any event, Cardinal Rosales turned 80 later in 2012 and Archbishop Tagle was on Pope Benedict's surprise supplemental November consistory towards the end of that year. I won't go too far down the rabbit hole of interpreting that supplemental consistory as an early warning sign of Pope Benedicts’ shocking [retirement] announcement a few months later, but, well, that *is* a thing that happened, and so, like Baselios Cardinal Cleemis we talked about right before I went on hiatus, Chito found himself participating in the 2013 conclave that elected Pope Francis.
Now, I know we're going to have lots more opportunities to talk about papal conclaves as we go. So ideally I'd ease you into this conversation. But the reality is Cardinal Tagle is currently the odds-on favorite to become Pope after the next conclave, and while that's far from a guarantee–conclaves are famously unpredictable--its not something I'd feel right, you know, not mentioning. So with that out of the way, keep that in mind as we go. By the way, feel free to follow @pope_predictor on the platform formerly known as Twitter, or wherever else you and/or they might be using by the time you listen to this. Their papability index isn't the only thing out there projecting Tagle as the favorite, but they're one of the more engaging and they said I could call them a friend of the show so there you have it.
Anyways, Cardinal Tagle is fluent in speaking his native Tagalog language, as well as English and Italian. He can also read Spanish, French, Korean and Latin.
Staying in 2013, he was made a member of the Pontifical Council for the Family and of the Pontifical Council for the Pastoral Care of Migrants and Itinerants, as well as the Congregation for Education. But why stop there? In 2014, he was named member of the Pontifical Council for the Laity and also the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples.
In 2015, the good folks at Caritas must have seen him looking bored, because they went and made him their president, and he was also added to the Pontifical Council Cor Unum. I'm not going to spell out every post he's held but I did want to give you an idea. By 2020 his curial responsibilities had reached the point where he resigned the Archbishopric of Manila and became a full time curial Cardinal. The pivotal appointment there was his appointment as the Prefect of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples. 2020 was also the year where he reached a height not yet obtained by any other cardinal we've discussed so far: he was elevated to the status of Cardinal-Bishop, which yes, historically had something to do with one being both a Cardinal and a Bishop, but nowadays Cardinal Priests and even Cardinal Deacons are typically bishops too so the distinction is a bit more nuanced. In the end, it's the highest tier within the college of Cardinals. There are currently a dozen Cardinal Bishops, which, it should be noted, is more than there used to be.
I'm well past word count at this point. I'll simply note that in terms of his current titles, Chito is a member of seven Dicasteries–nearly half of them, there are sixteen by my count—and two of the Vatican's financial oversight groups with unwieldy names. And, of course, more besides.
Luis Antonio Gokim Cardinal Tagle is eligible to participate in future conclaves until he turns 80 in 2037.
Today's episode is part of Cardinal Numbers, and there will be more Cardinal Numbers next week. Thank you for listening; God bless you all! Thanks, Joe!
Saturday Aug 24, 2024
Saturday Aug 24, 2024
IMAGE CREDIT: Diocese of Gozo, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
LINKS
Vatican bio of Cardinal Grech:
https://press.vatican.va/content/salastampa/en/documentation/cardinali_biografie/cardinali_bio_grech_m.html
Mario Grech on FIU's Cardinals Database (by Salvadore Miranda):
https://cardinals.fiu.edu/bios2020.htm#Grech
Cardinal Grech on Gcatholic.org:
http://www.gcatholic.org/p/3529
Cardinal Grech on Catholic-Hierarchy.org:
https://www.catholic-hierarchy.org/bishop/bgrechm.html
Diocese of Gozo on Gcatholic.org:
http://www.gcatholic.org/dioceses/diocese/gozo0.htm?tab=info
Diocese of Gozo on Catholic-Hierarchy.org:
https://www.catholic-hierarchy.org/diocese/dgozo.html
2023 English-language interview with Cardinal Mario Grech (via EWTN):
https://youtu.be/5RCy0fNOyUE?si=6ZuVOX4XY_8D507q
Thank you for listening, and thank my family and friends for putting up with the time investment and for helping me out as needed.
As always, feel free to email the show at Popeularhistory@gmail.com
If you would like to financially support Popeular history, go to www.patreon.com/Popeular. If you don't have any money to spare but still want to give back, pray and tell others– prayers and listeners are worth more than gold!
TRANSCRIPT
Welcome to Popeular History, a library of Catholic knowledge and insights.
Check out the show notes for sources, further reading, and a transcript.
Today we're discussing another current Cardinal of the Catholic Church, one of the 120 or so people who will choose the next Pope when the time comes.
Mario Grech was born on February 20, 1957, in Qala, Malta, Qala being a small community on the eastern edge of the island of Gozo, Gozo being the *second* largest island in Malta after, well, the Island of Malta, with Malta itself being a small island nation a bit south of Sicily. At a young age, the family moved to Ta' Kerċem, another small community on the same island.
Malta is an outsize name in the history of the Catholic Church, thanks to its hosting of the military order of Saint John of Jerusalem, aka the Hospitallers or more simply the Knights of Malta in the early modern period. Their holding out against Suleiman the Magnificent's Ottoman Empire–who, in fairness, had *successfully* kicked the Hospitallers out of the Greek Island of Rhodes earlier in his career–that success at the Great Siege of Malta was so famous that noted enemy of the Church Voltaire once said “Nothing is better known than the siege of Malta” (Annals of the Empire, 1753)
Also, to get this out of the way, there was recently a Maltese Cardinal by the name of Prosper Grech. I haven't seen it explicitly confirmed that the two Cardinals *aren't* related, but I haven't seen anyone suggest that they are either. So… maybe, but probably not? Grech *is* a common Maltese surname, to the extent that a random third party commenting on the passing of the older Cardinal also had the last name of Grech.
Anyways, let's actually talk about today's cardinal some, shall we? The island of Gozo has fewer than 40,000 people altogether, but in heavily Catholic Malta, that's enough to support a local seminary, which is where Mario went when he decided to start his priestly studies. Unusually, he did both his philosophy and theology studies at that same institution. It wasn't until after his 1984 ordination that he went further afield, being sent to Rome to study both canon and civil law at the Pontifical Lateran University. Following the pattern of some of our more bookish Cardinals, Father Grech then obtained a doctorate in canon law from the Angelicum.
While studying his doctorate and for a span after, Father Grech ministered at the cathedral, at the National Shrine of Tá-Pinu, and also served as a parish priest at the parish of Kercem. You're not going to be too surprised that he also taught canon law at the local seminary and held a number of roles within the Diocese of Gozo during this period as well.
In 2005 his white phone rang and Pope Benedict made him Bishop of Gozo. He was consecrated on January 22nd 2006, with his predecessor, Bishop Cauchi, serving as his principal consecrator. I got curious because by longstanding custom–and, well, canon law–new bishops are consecrated by three existing bishops to ensure apostolic succession, and there's only two dioceses in Malta. It turns out the retiring bishop Cauchi- who had ordained Mario Grech as a priest too, by the way– it turns out he was joined not only by the Archbishop of Malta but also by Malta's Apostolic Nuncio, which makes sense and eventually I'll come to expect that.
Bishop Grech has traveled a fair bit during his tenure, visiting emigrants from Malta living in the USA twice, and Australia once, along with a couple trips to South America.
From 2013 to 2016, Bishop Grech was President of the Episcopal Conference of Malta, which l, I mean, part of me says with just the two dioceses they would have had a hard time getting a euchre game going at their meetings, another part of me says there's probably a few more folks than I'm imagining if you count retired bishops and auxiliaries, and I don't know if they invite senior priests to take notes or what. Someone's got to bring the snacks, is all I'm saying.
Anyways, in 2016, Pope Francis published Amoris Laetitia, a post-synodal apostolic exhortation, in other words a Papal follow-up letter recapping the goings on of a synod, a gathering of bishops. In this case, the synod in question was the Synod on Family and the reason we're talking about Amoris Laetitia is because it seemed to open the door to communion for Catholics who had been divorced and then gotten civilly remarried, at least in certain cases and with careful discernment. That's getting into a theological issue, the finer points of which you could definitely spend a lot more time going into than I will here, but in short most Catholic bishops were and I think it's fair to say still are wary of allowing such an accommodation. I mean, I'm here for it, but I make no secret of being a big old softy when it comes to accommodations in general–and honestly I think it's fair to say Pope Francis has a similar mindset. But again, most bishops are of a more conservative bent. Except for our friend Bishop Grech, who was instrumental in helping implement exactly that sort of accommodation for divorced and civilly remarried Catholics–in certain cases, as specified– in Malta–though it's worth noting he's also on the record as being against divorce generally, which is pretty well expected of Catholic bishops. Just, you know, to be clear.
Anyways, Bishop Grech's time in Malta's surprisingly existent Bishops’ Conference did not go to waste, because he also served on the Conference of European Churches (CEC) and the Commission of Bishops’ Conferences of the European Union (COMECE). In 2019, he made the big time, being named the Pro-Secretary General of the Synod of Bishops–not for the Malta, not for the EU, but for the whole Catholic Church: a sufficiently big enough job that he stepped down as Bishop of Gozo in order to take it on.
The next year, he was named member of the Pontifical Council for the Promotion of Christian Unity and in that same year–2020, if you lost count– he was named full on Secretary General of the Synod of Bishops, so the top dog post. A couple months later, Pope Francis gave him his red hat, making him a Cardinal deacon with Santi Cosma e Damiano as his deaconry.
The next year, Mario was also added to the The Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura, the highest judicial authority in the Catholic Church apart from the Pope himself, should he choose to intervene, which he usually doesn't, but, you know, he could.
As a dedicated Curial Cardinal, Cardinal Grech also serves on the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, as well as the Dicastery for Bishops.
Mario Cardinal Grech is eligible to participate in future conclaves until he turns 80 in 2037.
Today's episode is part of Cardinal Numbers,
and there will be more Cardinal Numbers tomorrow. Thank you for listening; God bless you all! Thanks, Joe!
Saturday Aug 31, 2024
Saturday Aug 31, 2024
IMAGE DESCRIPTIONJeromeenriquez, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
LINKS
Vatican bio of Cardinal Ribat:
https://press.vatican.va/content/salastampa/en/documentation/cardinali_biografie/cardinali_bio_ribat_j.html
John Ribat on FIU's Cardinals Database (by Salvadore Miranda):
https://cardinals.fiu.edu/bios2016.htm#Ribat
Cardinal Ribat on Gcatholic.org:
http://www.gcatholic.org/p/2634
Cardinal Ribat on Catholic-Hierarchy.org:
https://www.catholic-hierarchy.org/bishop/bribat.html
Archdiocese of Port Moresby on Gcatholic.org:
http://www.gcatholic.org/dioceses/diocese/pmor0.htm?tab=info
Archdiocese of Port Moresby on Catholic-Hierarchy.org:
https://www.catholic-hierarchy.org/diocese/dpomo.html
2020 Shalom World interview with Cardinal Ribat (English):
https://youtu.be/WVx49GdMB0M?si=qIm5ptARu0aEJfKv
Thank you for listening, and thank my family and friends for putting up with the time investment and for helping me out as needed.
As always, feel free to email the show at Popeularhistory@gmail.com
If you would like to financially support Popeular history, go to www.patreon.com/Popeular. If you don't have any money to spare but still want to give back, pray and tell others– prayers and listeners are worth more than gold!
TRANSCRIPT
Welcome to Popeular History, a library of Catholic knowledge and insights.
Check out the show notes for sources, further reading, and a transcript.
Today we're discussing another current Cardinal of the Catholic Church, one of the 120 or so people who will choose the next Pope when the time comes.
John RIBAT was born on February 9, 1957, in Volavolo, archdiocese of Rabaul, Papua New Guinea. As you may know, Papua New Guinea is an island nation, making John our fourth island-born Cardinal in a row, though Volavolo isn't actually on the island of New Guinea, instead, it’s on the northern end of New Britain, the nation's second largest island.
Ecologically, New Britain is that classic Oceanic mix of tropical rainforest and volcanos, to the extent that Rabaul, the provincial capital where John went to high school, now by and large sits under several meters of volcanic ash after a 1994 eruption. Don't worry, John was class of 70-something.
After a bit of minor seminary preparation, John signed up with the Congregation of the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart (M.S.C.)., a religious order founded in 1854 by a French priest. Of course, France is on the other side of the world from New Guinea, but “Missionaries” is right there in the name, and Rabaul and its volcano destroyed high school was actually their first oversees mission in 1882.
John did his first vows in 1979, and was ordained a priest for the Sacred Heart Missionaries in 1985. He did pastoral work for the next six years, then started serving as a master of novices after some supplemental training. He alternated those roles through the 90s, and in the year 2000 he was called up from his work- now in Fiji- to serve as the Auxiliary Bishop of Bereina on the main island in Papua New Guinea. In 2002 he dropped the Auxiliary part and became the full-on bishop of Bereina.
Spiritually, a strong majority of Papua New Guineans identify as Christian, with the Roman Catholics representing between a quarter and a third of the total population, depending on who you ask. Various forms of Protestantism make up a larger group when viewed collectively, though Catholicism is the largest single group. Though Christianity is dominant, traditional animist customs and ancestor worship are also common in the country operating under or sometimes on the surface.
In the case of the Bereina diocese, church records suggest a higher percentage of the local population is Catholic than the national average, over ⅔. In 2006 John Ribat was transferred to the capital see, running the Archdiocese of Port Moresby. According to my 2013 data, the first readily available during his tenure, the Archdiocese had 204,186 Catholics and, drumroll please, *six* diocesan priests. But old hands looking for a catch here have probably already called it, the keyword there is *diocesan* priests, as the Archdiocese also had a healthier total of 82 priests belonging to religious orders. Considering Archbishop Ribat is from a religious order himself, it's not too surprising, but it does draw attention to New Guinea's history as a significant focal point of the sort of missionary activity that missionary religious orders specialize in in recent years.
Things are shifting in a logical pattern–in 1990 religious priests outnumbered diocesan in New Guinea four to one. Twenty-seven years later, they reached parity, and since then diocesan clergy have been gradually outpacing religious clergy in a trend that I expect to continue, though of course predicting the future is hard and honestly I don't have deep enough data at the moment to be especially confident, a statistical breakdown of clergy by religious order is on my to-do list here.
Getting back to Archbishop Ribat, he was president of the Episcopal Conference of Papua New Guinea and Salomon Island from 2011 to 2014, and from 2014 to 2018 he was president of the Federation of the Conferences of the Catholic Bishops of Oceania (FCBCO).
In 2016, Archbishop Ribat was made a Knight of the British Empire, which took me by surprise since I had it in my head that the Papuans had rejected the British monarchy at independence, but nope, turns out they're a commonwealth country with Charles III as their Head of State and God Save the King as their Royal Anthem.
2016 was also the year when Archbishop Ribat became eligible for this episode, with Pope Francis elevating him to the College as a Cardinal-Priest with the title of San Giovanni Battista de’ Rossi–and yes that's a name church archeology fans will recognize but it's actually a 18th century priest and not the 19th century archeologist. I do seem to recall there is a connection between the two this time but I admit I've forgotten exactly what it was if so, either way I'm going to do a deeper dive on the titular churches and deaconries eventually so I'll get into that in more detail when we get there.
Cardinal Ribat is the first Cardinal from the Sacred Heart Missionaries and also the first Cardinal from Papua New Guinea.
In 2017, Pope Francis also added now-Cardinal Ribat to the Dicastery for the Service of the Integral Human Development, a role he has filled while continuing his service as the Archbishop of Port Moresby.
John Cardinal RIBAT is eligible to participate in future conclaves until he turns 80 in 2037.
Today's episode is part of Cardinal Numbers, and there will be more Cardinal Numbers next week. Thank you for listening; God bless you all! Thanks Joe!Hey quick supplemental note from Gregg in case anyone's wondering, uh, yes, this was certainly recorded before we had the announcement of Pope Francis' upcoming trip to not only Papua New Guinea but also Indonesia, Timor Leste, that's East Timor, and Singapore. So he'll be on the road from September 2nd to September 13th of this year, which I believe is going to be his longest trip of his papacy. And then he's actually also going to be doing a quick European swingover to Luxembourg and Belgium from September 26th to the 29th so keep him in prayers for safe travels if you would be so kind, or, you know, thoughts if that's your thing, he's got a busy month ahead.
Saturday Sep 07, 2024
Saturday Sep 07, 2024
IMAGE DESCRIPTIONBy Reiner Diart - https://bilder.erzbistum-koeln.de/Erzbischof-Rainer-Maria-Kardinal-Woelki/Kardinal_Woelki_RGB_14 , CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=83254136
LINKS
Vatican bio of Cardinal Woelki:
https://press.vatican.va/content/salastampa/en/documentation/cardinali_biografie/cardinali_bio_woelki_rm.html
Ranier Maria Woelki on FIU's Cardinals Database (by Salvadore Miranda):
https://cardinals.fiu.edu/bios2012.htm#Woelki
Cardinal Woelki on Gcatholic.org:
http://www.gcatholic.org/p/4248
Cardinal Woelki on Catholic-Hierarchy.org:
https://www.catholic-hierarchy.org/bishop/bwoel.html
Archdiocese of Cologne on Gcatholic.org:
http://www.gcatholic.org/dioceses/diocese/koln0.htm?tab=info
Archdiocese of Cologne on Catholic-Hierarchy.org:
https://www.catholic-hierarchy.org/diocese/dkoln.html
The History of Cologne podcast by Willem Fromm:
https://podcastaddict.com/podcast/the-history-of-cologne/2535948
Catholic Education Resource Center's record of 2009 comments on abuse statistics by Archbishop Tomasi:
https://www.catholiceducation.org/en/controversy/common-misconceptions/vatican-sets-record-straight-on-sexual-abuse.html
Tages Spiegel reporting on 2020 criticism of Cardinal Woelki from abuse commissioner: https://www.tagesspiegel.de/gesellschaft/panorama/missbrauchsbeauftragter-kritisiert-kolner-kardinal-woelki-scharf-4211776.html
2022 Catholic News Agency reporting on Cardinal Woelki submitting resignation:
https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/250542/german-catholic-cardinal-woelki-submits-resignation-to-pope-francis-after-period-of-leave
2021 Gercke Report:
https://acrobat.adobe.com/id/urn:aaid:sc:VA6C2:b48dfbcd-81c1-41d7-9ca2-62e01a4e5a11
2022 Union of Catholic Asia News reporting on Cologne abuse situation:
https://www.ucanews.com/news/head-of-cologne-abuse-investigation-commission-resigns/99638
2023 National Catholic Register reporting on recent search of Cardinal Woelki's records by German law enforcement:
https://www.ncregister.com/cna/german-cardinal-woelki-under-investigation-allegations-of-perjury-prompt-search-of-archdiocese
2014 profile of Cardinal Woelki (via Faith Matters- German):
https://youtu.be/dudVMptuvZk?si=U3TLKelV_Q_yRdPh
Thank you for listening, and thank my family and friends for putting up with the time investment and for helping me out as needed.
As always, feel free to email the show at Popeularhistory@gmail.com
If you would like to financially support Popeular history, go to www.patreon.com/Popeular. If you don't have any money to spare but still want to give back, pray and tell others– prayers and listeners are worth more than gold!
TRANSCRIPT
Welcome to Cardinal Numbers, a rexypod ranking all the Cardinals of the Catholic Church we can get our hands on, from the Catacombs to Kingdom Come.
Check out the show notes for sources, further reading, and a transcript.
Today we're discussing another current Cardinal of the Catholic Church, one of the 120 or so people who will choose the next Pope when the time comes.
Please note that this episode includes a general discussion of the sexual abuse crisis in the Catholic Church. I don't get graphic, but it's there.
Rainer Maria Woelki was born on August 18, 1956 in Cologne, Germany, which is in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia on the western end of things. With well over a million residents, Cologne is Germany's fourth largest city and is on the short list of cities with their own dedicated longrunning history pod, The History of Cologne by Willem Fromm. Link in the show notes. (https://podcastaddict.com/podcast/the-history-of-cologne/2535948)
In his early 20s, Rainer did some obligatory military service as part of a unit called the Panzerartillerielehrbataillon. I *probably* would have mentioned his service even if it hadn't given me the opportunity to point out that Panzerartillerielehrbataillon is one word, but I guess we'll never know for sure because that was definitely a factor in my editing decisions for this episode.
Anyways, he was ordained a priest in 1985, at the age of 28, pretty much right on pace when you account for that military stint. As a priest of the Archdiocese of Cologne, he not only served in various chaplaincies, but also as private secretary of Cardinal Joachim Meisner, the then-Archbishop of Cologne.
From 1997 to 2003, Woelki served as director of a boarding school for seminarians. During this time he continued his studies, obtaining a Doctorate in Theology from the Pontificia Università della Santa Croce–that is, the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross–a school in Rome run by Opus Dei.
Presumably he stopped directing the boarding school in 2003 because his white phone rang- ring ring it's Pope John Paul II, here to make him titular bishop of Scampa and auxiliary bishop of Cologne. He was named a canon of Cologne's metropolitan Cathedral chapter later that year. He got involved in affairs for the German Bishops’ Conference, serving on the Commission for vocations and ecclesiastical ministries; and on the Commission for science and culture. As you can see, or at least hear, the titles of offices in bishop's conferences start to read like Roman curial titles, which I suppose isn't too surprising.
Anyways in 2011 that white phone rang again and this time it was Pope Benedict XVI making Bishop Woelki the Archbishop of Berlin, which, given how much we've been going on about the Archdiocese of Cologne in this episode, might be a bit of a surprise but it can't have been completely out of the blue because Woelki was chosen by the Archdioceses’ high metropolitan Cathedral Chapter, which, I admit, isn't something I'm super familiar with specifically but generally speaking Cathedral chapters have historically had a dominant influence in choosing who the bishop would be and that seems to be a custom that still has some staying power in some areas, particularly those with long traditions of doing things through Cathedral Chapters rather than in areas where things were set up air quotes “only” in in recent times–you know, in the last thousand years or so. So, you know, Europe. And in Eastern Catholic churches, whose traditions do not center Vatican appointments.
Anyways, yes, Berlin's Cathedral Chapter wanted Woelki, and they got him, for a span.
In 2012, Archbishop Woelki became Cardinal Woelki, with Pope Benedict making him a Cardinal-Priest with the title of S. Giovanni Maria Vianney. At that point, he was the youngest member of the College of Cardinals, though by the end of the year that spot would be taken by Mar Cleemis, not to mention the also younger Cardinal Tagle.
Also in 2012, Cardinal Woelki was made a member of both the Congregation for Catholic Education and of the Pontifical Council for the Promotion of Christian Unity. The next year, like the other Benedict appointees we've mentioned, Cardinal Woelki participated in the March 2013 conclave that elected Pope Francis.
In 2014, Cardinal Woelki was named member of the Congregation for the Clergy, and after three years as Archbishop of Berlin, he was transferred to his old home of the Cologne Archdiocese as its new Archbishop. The next year, because you can't keep a good Roman Curia down, he was named member of the Administration of the Patrimony of the Apostolic See, effectively helping manage the Vatican's pocketbooks and keep things running financially.
More recently, the Archdiocese of Cologne generally and Cardinal Woelki specifically have been focal points in some of the more recent chapters of the ongoing sexual abuse crisis in the Catholic Church.
On the slight chance that some of my listeners are not aware of that topic in general, there have been thousands and thousands of cases of sexual abuse of minors by Catholic priests in the last century. One Vatican official put the total number of abusers among priests at between 1.5 and 5 percent, noting that the number was generally in line with other organizations, which is certainly an argument that can be made, but given that Jesus literally told His followers to “be perfect” (Mt 5:48), I don't think it's unreasonable to hold the shepherds of the Church He founded to a higher standard than society at large, and yeah, society at large should also be doing better when it comes to not sexually abusing minors.
I've talked about this before, and I'll talk about it again, not only because it's important to talk about it so efforts to sweep it under the rug fail–and there are such efforts, to be sure– but also because my intention is to talk about everything and this uncomfortable topic is part of “everything”. Plus you'd kind of have to go out of your way to avoid talking about it when talking about Cardinal Woelki. Not because anyone is suggesting he's an abuser himself, but because in 2020 he picked up the stink of a common and decidedly difficult to shake reputation especially particular to higher level clergy: a reputation of seeking to bury such stories when possible.
Right or wrong, the main catalyst for that reputation was a series of comments made by the Independent Commissioner for Issues of Child Sexual Abuse, one Johannes-Wilhelm Rörig. Among other things, Rörig said, quote “There are many indications that Cardinal Woelki may have made a massive mistake with regard to the participation of those affected, transparency and independence from processing”, end quote.
In particular, Rörig accused Cardinal Woelki of promising transparency and then not following through with it, referring in particular to an independent report on the abuse situation within the Archdiocese that Cardinal Woelki had commissioned but which he had prevented from going public, citing unspecified methodological issues and violations of personal rights.
To his credit, Cardinal Woelki did follow up and commission another report, the results of which he did make public in March 2021 in the 800-page Gercke report, linked, like everything else, in the show notes. That certainly was not the end of the matter though, and in September 2021, after an apostolic visitation–basically a Vatican audit– and what the Holy See described as “a long conversation” with the Pope, Cardinal Woelki went on sabbatical for several months, leaving the Archdiocese in the hands of an Apostolic Administrator.
Upon his return to active service in March 2022, Cardinal Woelki submitted his resignation to Pope Francis, who has not yet acted on the offer, though a 2021 Vatican statement did acknowledge Woelki had made quote “major mistakes”, end quote, especially when it comes to communication, and described a quote “crisis of confidence in the archdiocese”, end quote.
In addition to continuing his service in what's now the Dicastery for Promoting Christian Unity and the Administration of the Patrimony of the Apostolic See, Cardinal Woelki is also currently serving as a member of the Dicastery for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments.
*Barring any changes to his status*, which is something I could always say but don't always say but am saying today *because reasons*, Rainer Maria Cardinal Woelki is eligible to participate in future conclaves until he turns 80 in 2036.
Today's episode is part of Cardinal Numbers,
and there will be more Cardinal Numbers next week.. Thank you for listening; God bless you all! Thanks, Joe!
Saturday Sep 14, 2024
Saturday Sep 14, 2024
IMAGE CREDIT: Quirinale.it, Attribution, via Wikimedia CommonsLINKSSt Peter’s Colonnade Statues:https://stpetersbasilica.info/Exterior/Colonnades/Saints-List-Colonnades.htm
Vatican bio of Cardinal Zuppi:
https://press.vatican.va/content/salastampa/en/documentation/cardinali_biografie/cardinali_bio_zuppi_mm.html
Matteo Maria Zuppi on FIU's Cardinals Database (by Salvadore Miranda):
https://cardinals.fiu.edu/bios2019.htm#Zuppi
Cardinal Zuppi on Gcatholic.org:
http://www.gcatholic.org/p/47959
Cardinal Zuppi on Catholic-Hierarchy.org:
https://www.catholic-hierarchy.org/bishop/bzuppi.html
Archdiocese of Bologna on Gcatholic.org:
http://www.gcatholic.org/dioceses/diocese/bolo0.htm?tab=info
Archdiocese of Bologna on Catholic-Hierarchy.org:
https://www.catholic-hierarchy.org/diocese/dbolo.html
St Leonard (Colonnade Statue):
https://stpetersbasilica.info/Exterior/Colonnades/Saints/St%20Leonard-2/St%20Leonard.htm
St Gallicanus (Colonnade Statue):
https://stpetersbasilica.info/Exterior/Colonnades/Saints/St%20Gallicanus-1/St%20Gallicanus.htm
Community of Sant’Egidio website:
https://www.santegidio.org/pageID/30704/langID/en/PROJECTS.html
Sant'Egidio reporting of conflict mediation and honorary Mozambique citizenship:
https://archive.santegidio.org/pageID/3/langID/en/itemID/9207/The-honorary-citizenship-of-Mozambique-to-Andrea-Riccardi-and-Matteo-Zuppi.html
Avvenire.it edition of Archbishop Zuppi's forward to the Italian edition of “Building A Bridge” (Italian):
https://www.avvenire.it/chiesa/pagine/chiesa-e-persone-lgbt-sul-ponte-dellincontro
Advocate.com reporting on reactions to elevation of Cardinal Zuppi:
https://www.advocate.com/religion/2019/9/06/lgbtq-friendly-cleric-named-cardinal-far-right-catholics-appalled#toggle-gdpr
Thank you for listening, and thank my family and friends for putting up with the time investment and for helping me out as needed.
As always, feel free to email the show at Popeularhistory@gmail.com
If you would like to financially support Popeular history, go to www.patreon.com/Popeular. If you don't have any money to spare but still want to give back, pray and tell others– prayers and listeners are worth more than gold!
TRANSCRIPTHello! Quick note before we get started, first off, sorry that my voice is going to sound a little bit off for these next few cardinals, when I started the recording session, I was fine, now I am DEFINITELY feeling it, and am congested as all get out. But! The show does go on. Also, for those of you wondering what happened to the September edition of our worldbuilding episodes, well, it’s still September, cool your jets! In the end, what happened is my episode on the Gospel of John got to mammoth proportions and is basically going to be a double episode. I took to Patreon to see whether I should split it up in two to keep it released on time, or keep it as, you know, one Gospel, one episode, and the vote was one Gospel, one episode. So, mega, you know, two-hour long episode on the Gospel of John will be coming later this month. With that, let’s go!*THEME*Welcome to Cardinal Numbers, a rexypod ranking all the Cardinals of the Catholic Church we can get our hands on, from the Catacombs to Kingdom Come.
Check out the show notes for sources, further reading, and a transcript.
Today we're discussing another current Cardinal of the Catholic Church, one of the 120 or so people who will choose the next Pope when the time comes.
Matteo Maria Zuppi was born on October 11, 1955 in Rome, Italy. I don't yet know whether for sure whether Rome is the most popular birthplace for Cardinals as one might suspect--, but I’ve got a growing certainty and it at least has to be up there. Accordingly, I want to start doing something a little different when we have cardinals born in Rome: let's assign them one of the 140 statues that top the collonades that frame Saint Peter's Square. Now, it's entirely possible that there might be more than 140 Rome-born Cardinals in history, and actually I can now update that to say I *know* that there are more than 140. And given that, we'll just simply find other statues in Rome after that, they're not exactly hard to come by.
Matteo's statue is Saint Leonard of Noblac, a 6th century founding abbot and hermit whose 10 foot 4 statue is probably a bit beyond lifesize and whose expression amused me enough that I immediately reached out to Pontifacts for comment.
But wait, Gregg, you say, because you are very observant, yes, good job, Matteo actually isn't our first Rome-born Cardinal, because, well first off he's not a Cardinal yet in our narrative he was literally just born but apart from that one of the very first Cardinals we talked about, Cardinal Lojudice, was also born in Rome. Which is why I assigned Matteo the *second* statue on the big list from stpetersbasilica.info, which, like every other link you might desire, can be found in the show notes. St Gallicanus was an early 4th century Roman senator, and possibly the first Christian Consul. His relics are at Rome in the church of Sant'Andrea della Valle.
Anyways, Matteo is the fifth of six children, and is the Great-grand nephew of Cardinal Carlo Confalonieri, who was elevated to the Cardinalate by Pope John XXIII a few months after his election in 1958. Though this is the first time we've had someone who we can confirm is a relative of another cardinal, it certainly won't be the last–the Roman Curia basically invented nepotism, after all.
That's not to say, by any means, that Matteo himself is lacking in credentials, as we'll see. While he was a high school student, he came across fellow Roman male Andrea Riccardi, who, at the venerable age of eighteen, founded a lay association dedicated to community service. In 1973 when Matteo came in contact with them the community had just moved into the Church of Sant'Egidio in Rome, which would give them their name: the Community of Sant’Egidio. From homeless children to AIDS patients to the elderly, from immigrants to addicts to prisoners, the Community of Sant’Egidio serves the poor and marginalized, and it's fair to say Matteo fell in with the right crowd in his youth.
After his first batch of higher education at La Sapienza University in Rome, where he specialized in Literature and Philosophy, Matteo entered into seminary studies with the Suburbicarian Diocese of Palestrina. I don't know that I've really gone into what a Suburbicarian Diocese is yet but the “suburb” part is a big hint, it's a diocese centered on one of the communities on the outskirts of Rome, in this case, Palestrina, and yes, that's the hometown of a famous composer if that rings a bell.
His se minary studies also included work at the Pontifical Lateran University in Rome, and then after his 1981 ordination he did yet further study at yet *another* institution of higher education in the Eternal City, this time obtaining a doctorate in letters and philosophy from the University of Rome with a thesis on the History of Christianity–a man after my own heart.
As a priest, Matteo–now Fr. Zuppi–served as vice-pastor of Santa Maria in Trastevere for nearly two decades until he became that parish's full-on pastor in 2000, a role he held until 2010. Of course this is the story of a future Cardinal who I've already told you is plenty qualified, so it won't surprise you to know that that's not all he was doing, not by a long shot. He simultaneously served as Rector of the church of Santa Croce alla Lungara from 1983 to 2012, and continued his association with the Community of Sant’Egidio, which had added the related fields of peacemaking end ecumenism to their portfolio–not as an afterthought either, but as a strong emphasis, as in Fr. Zuppi and the Community were instrumental in negotiations that ended a long civil war in Mozambique in 1992. As in, he was made an honorary citizen of that country by way of thanks, alongside Sant’Egidio founder Andrea Riccardi, popping up again.
While he was originally a priest of the Suburbicarian Diocese of Palestrina, astute listeners may have already noted that, much like the universities, all the parishes I've mentioned, including Sant'Egidio, are in Rome. It's fine, it's fine, he was incardinated into the Diocese of Rome back in ‘88, a sentence which gives me the opportunity to go on both a tangent about how the word inCARDinate is tied to the word CARDinal, both having a fundamental sense of a stationary position around which other things move, and also allows me to note that yeah, it's weird to call Rome a Diocese but in the end yup, officially Rome is a Diocese, rather than an archdiocese or Patriarchate or whatever you might expect. Of course it still acts as a metropolitan and as the principal see, but I expect it's tied to the whole first shall be last humility themed angle, servant of the servants of God sort of thing. And that’s not to say that bishops of Rome aren’t jealous of their status as the principle See of the entire world.
Anyways, Fr. Zuppi might be a good person to ask more about how all of that works, if you can get ahold of him with all else he has going on, because in 2012 his white phone rang and Pope Benedict made him an Auxiliary Bishop of Rome and titular bishop of Villanova. Rome has a bunch of auxiliaries, currently 7 by that specific title, presumably because the Church loves her numerology, and a few more bishops that help run things at something of a higher level with titles like Vicar General and Viceregent. Bishop Zuppi would not stay in the Diocese of Rome for much longer though, because in 2015 he was made the new Archbishop of Bologna, in the Emilia-Romagna region of what I think it's fair to call central north Italy.
As a pastor, Father–scratch that–Bishop–scratch that–Archbishop Zuppi has continued along the lines of emphasis he honed working with the Community of Sant’Egidio, focusing on real Pope Francis style stuff like the poor and marginalized. He authored books published in 2010, 2013, and 2019 on what I am told are “pastoral themes”, so stuff like that, but he's best known because of his personal involvement in one of the most hot-button of hot-button issues in the modern Church: LGBT issues. In 2017 American Jesuit priest Father James Martin wrote a book called Building a Bridge: How the Catholic Church and the LGBT Community Can Enter Into a Relationship of Respect, Compassion, and Sensitivity, which is pretty much what it sounds like. The next year, it was none other than Archbishop Zuppi who wrote a forward to the Italian edition, saying it was, quote “useful for encouraging dialogue, as well as reciprocal knowledge and understanding, in view of a new pastoral attitude that we must seek together with our L.G.B.T. brothers and sisters". He also noted that it would quote "help L.G.B.T. Catholics feel more at home in [I accidentally said “with”, my bad] what is, after all, their church", end quote, and it's worth noting that that second quotation was actually Archbishop Zuppi quoting Cardinal Kevin Farrell, the Prefect of the Dicastery for the Laity, Family and Life, so it's not like he was a lone voice in praising Father Martin's work.
Of course, I called this a hot-button issue, so praise was not universal. Many see Fr. Martin's work as an attempt to undermine Catholic teaching on gender and sexuality, despite Fr Martin's assurances that it is no such thing, and I admit Father Martin is even more comfortable pushing boundaries than I am, which is saying something. We'll see more conservative takes on this topic as we go, don't worry, this is not the last time we'll talk LGBT+ issues in the Church, but I've accidentally made this the longest episode of Cardinal Numbers to date so we should move on.
In 2019, Pope Francis made Archbishop Zuppi a Cardinal-Priest, assigning him a very special newly minted titular church, Sant’Egidio.
Since his elevation to the cardinalate, Cardinal Zuppi has gained more hats! In 2020 he was made a member of the Administration of the Patrimony of the Apostolic See, and i n 2022, Pope Francis selected him as head of the Italian Bishop's Conference. In 2023 he was appointed as a justice of the Vatican City State Supreme Court, which took effect earlier this year, that’s 2024 for archive listeners. And that's before we get to the Dicasteries, which we're just going to have to save for another day.
Cardinal Matteo Maria Zuppi is eligible to participate in future conclaves until he turns 80 in 2035.
Today's episode is part of Cardinal Numbers,
and there will be more Cardinal Numbers next week. Thank you for listening; God bless you all! Thanks, Joe!