Next October 31 (a Sunday, of course) should be a rather interesting day indeed in Vatican City. According to articles in both Gazet van Antwerpen and De Tijd (the latter is actually Flanders’ main business/financial paper, but nevermind) two American victims of past sexual abuse at the hands of Roman Catholic priests will be organizing a march then on St. Peter’s Square.

They don’t intend to be alone there. Rather, the two (Bernie McDaid and Olan Home, who also challenged Pope Benedict XVI on priest sexual abuse during the latter’s visit to the US in 2008) have been busy recruiting other Catholic lay organizations to join them. Between those worshippers, other sexual-abuse victims, and reform-minded individuals showing up (including, hopefully, current priests), they expect to be leading a 50,000-strong demonstration seeking to show “that their Church is in terrible trouble.” McDaid and Home will also be pushing their own four-point reform plan:

1. Establish an independent commission to supervise how the Vatican deals with priest sexual abuse;
   
2. Screen seminarians, priests, and bishops effectively against this sort of behavior;

3. Involve lay influence in the selection of bishops;
4. Include mandatory instruction about sexual abuse at every seminary’s program of study.

You might be asking: “I know that these guys need some time to get the word out, but why are they waiting all the way until next October 31?” No, it has nothing to do with Halloween; October 31 is also historically famous as the day when, back in 1517, Martin Luther nailed his famous 95 Theses to the door of the church in Wittenberg, Germany, and so effectively kicked off the Protestant Reformation.

Two recent reports in German (on-line) publications suggest that Pope Benedict XVI is due shortly to find life there at the Vatican to be a bit more difficult.

The first comes from Der Spiegel: Ratzinger authorized text for a right-extremist book. “Ratzinger” is of course the surname the present Pope was born with; this report concerns an article published back in 1997, when he was merely Cardinal Ratzinger. That piece appeared in an edition of the monthly magazine Aula called “1848 – Heritage and Mandate,” published by an Austrian right-extremist organization that a few years earlier had ignited controversy there by publishing a denial of the Holocaust. His secretary at the time, a Vatican official named Clemens, did provide permission in writing to Aula to publish the Cardinal’s article, even though a spokesperson for the Vienna archdiocese tried to deny this. Aula had previously been the house-organ publication for Austria’s Freedom Party, the one headed by the notorious (and late) Jörg Haider, but had been cut loose by that party at the time of the Holocaust controversy.

We’ll see if this story gains any further traction – after all, it was only this Clemens guy, rather than Cardinal Ratzinger himself, who can be shown as committing the mistake of dealing with these right-wingers. Still, this controversy comes at a bad time, considering the recent fuss over Benedict XVI revoking the excommunication of the English bishop, and Holocaust-denier, Richard Williamson.

And then there is the coming blow to the Pope’s holy pocketbook, reported by Matthias Oden in the Financial Times Deutschland (Thou shalt not run riot). (more…)

Did you miss the commemoration on Saturday, the 22nd? No, I don’t want to refer here to the 45th anniversary of the Kennedy assassination, but rather to something rather more happy and refreshing: the 40th anniversary of the release of the double-album “The Beatles” by the Beatles, known to one and all simply as the White Album. It seems also to be known to Pope Benedict XVI and his minions in the Vatican (either as the “White Album” or at least whatever that translates to in Latin), as the Holy See’s house-organ (not the musical kind) L’Osservatore Romano used the occasion as an opportunity publicly to forgive John Lennon for his remarks back in the 1960s that the Beatles were “bigger than Jesus.” Unfortunately, I’m not able to find anything to that effect at that link for L’Osservatore Romano, which gives the English version, nor at any of the other editions, so we have to rely for this piece of news on an article in the Belgian daily Gazet van Antwerpen: Vatican forgives the Beatles for “bigger than Jesus” utterance. (Also unfortunately: John Lennon happens to be deceased.)

Yes, in that article the Vatican authorities are said to conclude that, in the final analysis, the “bigger than Jesus” remark was simply “a joke from a young man who was overcome by unexpected success.” So they’re willing to let bygones be bygones. Oh, and for that matter, the Gazet reports, Elvis was OK, too: the description of him from L’Osservatore Romano was of a “dear, sensitive young man.”