From Germany with love

Among the more than 100,000 people who filled St. Peter’s Square to say goodbye to Pope Benedict today were pilgrims from Germany, including these two women who flew down to Rome for the day with a homemade banner reading: “Holy Father, we love you.”

Birgit Marschall, a 49-year-old Catholic, said she made the banner as a token of appreciation.

“I just want to say goodbye and thank him, and assure him of our prayers. I’m thankful for every word he gave us,” she said. She arrived in the square early and unfurled her banner right below the pope’s window.

Speaking in German at his noon blessing, the pope seemed to be on the same wavelength. “I thank you all for the signs of closeness and affection, and especially for your prayers,” he said.

Appearing at his final Sunday blessing, Pope Benedict referred indirectly to his retirement Feb. 28 and said he felt God was summoning him to a different kind of service in the church.

“God is calling me to `climb the mountain’ and dedicate myself even more to prayer and meditation. But this doesn’t mean abandoning the church. On the contrary, if God is asking this of me it’s precisely because I can continue to serve the church with the same dedication and love as always, but in a way more fitting to my age and my energy,” he said.

The Vatican fires back at journalists

In the wake of Italian press reports about Roman Curia score-settling, financial feuds and a “gay lobby” inside the Vatican, the Vatican opened fire on the media today.

A statement from the Vatican Secretariat of State, read to reporters by spokesman Father Federico Lombardi, said much of the pre-conclave coverage was “completely false” and appeared designed to influence the outcome of the papal election.

“If in the past, the so-called powers, that is states, exerted pressures on the election of the pope, today there is an attempt to do this in the public opinion, often based on judgments that do not typically capture the spiritual aspect of the moment the church is living,” the statement said.

“It is deplorable that as we draw nearer to the beginning of the conclave, and the cardinal electors will he held, in conscience and before God, to express their choice, that there be a widespread distribution of often unverified, or unverifiable, or completely false news stories, that cause serious damage to persons and institutions.”

Italian reporting since Pope Benedict announced his resignation has been marked by a rash of conspiracy theories and speculation about “hidden” motives for the pope’s decision, almost all of it unsourced.

This week, the Rome newspaper La Repubblica ran a series of articles alleging that a secret report by three elderly cardinals, commissioned by the pope last year, included revelations of sexual impropriety among Vatican officials and the existence of a “gay lobby” that wields undue influence inside the Vatican. The newspaper suggested the cardinals’ report was a key reason the pope decided to resign.

Vatican officials I have spoken with dismissed the La Repubblica articles and said the cardinals’ report focused on leaks and alleged mismanagement and corruption, not sexual sins. But since the report is confidential, not even Vatican officials can categorically rule out that such matters were mentioned.

Father Lombardi voiced his own displeasure with pre-conclave coverage in an editorial earlier in the day, lamenting that some reporters were trying “to sow confusion and to discredit the church and its governance, making recourse to old tools, such as gossip, misinformation and sometimes slander.”

“In the majority of cases, those who present themselves as judges, making heavy moral judgments, do not, in truth, have any authority to do so. Those who consider money, sex and power before all else and are used to reading diverse realities from these perspectives, are unable to see anything else, even in the church, because they are unable to gaze toward the heights or descend to the depths in order to grasp the spiritual dimensions and reasons of existence. This results in a description of the church and of many of its members that is profoundly unjust,” the spokesman said.

Pope Benedict himself spoke recently about the divisions that have “disfigured” the church, words that many felt were aimed at the Roman Curia. Yesterday, in his last Lenten meditation delivered to the pope and top Curia officials, Italian Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi said they should all reflect on the “divisions, dissent, careerism and jealousies” that mark human experience.

Cardinal O'Brien's salvo on celibacy

Scottish Cardinal Keith O’Brien has raised the possibility of a change in the priestly celibacy rule, saying many priests struggle because they are unable to marry and unable to have children.

In an interview with the BBC, O’Brien said that while he had never considered marriage, “I would be very happy if others had the opportunity of considering whether or not they could or should get married.” He noted that some branches of the Catholic Church already allowed married clergy.

“It is a free world and I realise that many priests have found it very difficult to cope with celibacy as they lived out their priesthood and felt the need of a companion, of a woman, to whom they could get married and raise a family of their own,” he said.

The cardinal’s statement could make the cardinals’ “general congregation” discussions very interesting come March 1.