Pope Francis to stay in Vatican guest house

Word comes from the Vatican today that, as speculated here last week, Pope Francis is opting to stay in the Vatican guest house rather than moving into the papal apartment in the Apostolic Palace — at least for now.

The reasons seem clear: Francis likes simplicity, and his quarters at the Domus Sanctae Marthae are much more simple than the 10-room apartment on the other side of St. Peter’s Square. He also likes being with people, and at the Domus he’s been much less cut off than in the Apostolic Palace. He celebrates Mass with groups every morning, shares meals with other guests in the dining room and sometimes goes outside to walk.

This means the new pope will be “commuting” through the Vatican Gardens to his office area in the Apostolic Palace, where he generally meets with aides and visiting guests. But that’s the way he wants it, and it’s his decision — after all, he is pope.

A prominent convert leaves the church

A prominent Muslim-born journalist baptized by Pope Benedict XVI, Magdi Allam, has announced he’s leaving the church because it is too “weak with Islam.”

Allam, writing on his Web site, said the “euphoria over Pope Francis” and the rapid way Pope Benedict was set aside was “the straw that broke the camel’s back” and convinced him to abandon his conversion to Christianity.

Benedict baptized Allam in 2008 during an Easter vigil service at the Vatican, saying he wanted to inspire other former Muslims to practice Christianity openly. At the time, some of the Vatican’s Muslim dialogue partners said the high profile given to the conversion was a deliberate provocation.

Allam said that what drove him away from the church most of all was “religious relativism, in particular the legitimization of Islam as a true religion, of Allah as the true God, of Mohammed as a true prophet, of the Koran as a sacred text and of mosques as places of worship.”

He said it was “true folly” that Benedict had prayed in a mosque in Istanbul, and that Pope Francis, in one of his first speeches, said that Muslims “worship the one, living and merciful God.”

Allam said he considers Islam an “intrinsically violent ideology.”

His very public departure from the church must be an embarrassment to Archbishop Rino Fisichella, who personally accompanied Allam on his path to Christianity. Fisichella was later named head of the Vatican’s new Pontifical Council for New Evangelization – presumably the council is using a more productive model of evangelizing than highly politicized “conversions” from other religions.

What was in the box?

One unanswered question from yesterday’s meeting between Pope Francis and retired Pope Benedict: What was in the box?

The Vatican video showed the two men sitting down for their 45-minute private conversation, facing a table on which a white box was placed. On top of the box were two large envelopes.

As soon as the image was shown in the Vatican press office, reporters joked that the box must have held the famous Vatileaks dossier, the confidential report prepared for Benedict by three cardinals and left by the ex-pope to Francis.

If the dossier needed a box that big, things were worse than anyone thought.

More likely, sources said, was that the box contained correspondence for Benedict – letters, emails and other communication – that arrived after the German pope left office Feb. 28. The Vatican had said that goodbye messages were pouring in for the pope from world leaders and average people.

Officially, there was no explanation for the cardboard container or the envelopes, which explained why today’s newspaper headlines spoke of the “mystery” box. Some hypothesized that Benedict was handing over all the important documents regarding unfinished projects of his pontificate, including Curia reform, negotiations with the Lefebvrists and his unfinished encyclical on the Year of Faith.