THE CONCHO PADRE POST

Tonight we celebrate the Sacrament of Penance/Reconciliation/Confession for the first time for our second-graders who are preparing for First Holy Communion. This is always a special time in the life and heart of a priest.

We will also be celebrating the sacrament with some older children who are preparing to complete their sacraments of initiation at the Easter Vigil.

Many thanks to Father Tom and Father Rodney for agreeing to help me out at this very special event in the lives of these children.

The Concho Padre

Pope Benedict XVI’s older brother explained that the pontiff’s decision to resign is good for the Body of Christ because he had become too weak to carry out his ministry.

“It is a beneficial decision for the Church,” said 89-year-old Msgr. Georg Ratzinger in an interview with the Spanish daily ABC, published on Feb. 17.

“He no longer has strength,” Msgr. Ratzinger observed. “He is going through the natural process of aging, like I am as well.”

He said that the Holy Father had cited his advanced age in informing him that he planned to resign.

“My brother wants more peace for his old age,” he explained. “As you get older, your strength begins to fade.”

“In addition, he has had to confront difficult tasks, which he has done as much as he can,” the Pope’s brother said. “It was simply a decision that was made. It’s the natural course of life and nobody escapes from it.”

Asked how he thinks the Holy Father will be remembered, Msgr. Ratzinger said he hopes his brother will be seen “as a Pope who strove to deepen and spread the faith of the Church with all of his strength,” as well as someone who provided “an example of a life of belief guided by the Faith.”

He added that Catholics should “thank God for having entrusted the last few years to a good Pope and pray that he will send us another good leader of the Church.”

In an impromptu press conference shortly after the Pope announced his resignation on Feb. 11, Msgr. Ratzinger said that his brother “is not to be a full-time retiree.”

Even once he steps down at the end of the month and moves into a former monastery on the Vatican grounds, Pope Benedict is “not going to sit around waiting for the day to end,” he explained.

He added that he hopes to have more one-on-one time with his brother in the future, hopefully at Benedict XVI’s new residence.

“They’ll probably have a room there for me,” he said, discounting any possibility of the Pope returning to Germany in the near future.

From EWTN News

Gospel LK 11:29-32

While still more people gathered in the crowd, Jesus said to them,
“This generation is an evil generation;
it seeks a sign, but no sign will be given it,
except the sign of Jonah.
Just as Jonah became a sign to the Ninevites,
so will the Son of Man be to this generation.
At the judgment
the queen of the south will rise with the men of this generation
and she will condemn them,
because she came from the ends of the earth
to hear the wisdom of Solomon,
and there is something greater than Solomon here.
At the judgment the men of Nineveh will arise with this generation
and condemn it,
because at the preaching of Jonah they repented,
and there is something greater than Jonah here.”

The Roman Lectionary

It has been announced that the Pope is entitled to a pension after he retires. It’s about $3,500 per month US.

The Concho Padre

By Alessandro Speciale
Religion News Service

VATICAN CITY — As of 8 p.m. on Feb. 28, Pope Benedict XVI will no longer be pope and the Vatican will go into “sede vacante” mode — a Latin expression that means that the seat of St. Peter is vacant.

So who’s in charge until a new pope is chosen? The “interregnum” between two popes is governed by ancient rituals and by institutions half forgotten even within the Vatican.

But it is also the only time that the Catholic Church comes close to vaguely resembling a democracy, with the College of Cardinals acting somewhat like a Parliament with limited powers as it prepares to choose the new pontiff in a closed-doors conclave.

According to Universi Dominici Gregis — a 1996 document by John Paul II that regulates what happens between the death or resignation of a pope and the election of his successor — during the “sede vacante” period all the heads of Vatican departments “cease to exercise their office,” with few exceptions.

The only officials to remain in their posts are the vicar of Rome, who continues to provide for the pastoral needs of Romans, and the major penitentiary, the official who grants absolutions and dispensations.

This means that as of 8:01 p.m. on Feb. 28, the Vatican’s secretary of state, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, will also lose the post that’s the rough equivalent of a prime minister.

But Bertone holds another post that plays a key role during the the interregnum: camerlengo of the Holy Roman Church.

The camerlengo, together with the Apostolic Chamber (an office dating back to the Middle Ages that once acted as the papacy’s treasury), runs the Vatican state and is in charge of the church’s property and money in the absence of the pope.

In preparation for his resignation, Benedict on Feb. 13 appointed Archbishop Giuseppe Sciacca, the deputy governor of the Vatican City State, as auditor general of the Apostolic Chamber, a position that had been vacant since 2010.

Sciacca will act as a sort of legal adviser to the camerlengo and to the vice camerlengo, retired Italian Archbishop Pier Luigi Celata.

During the period between popes, the dean of the College of Cardinals (currently Cardinal Angelo Sodano, a former secretary of state under Pope John Paul II) presides at the daily meetings, or congregations, of the cardinals that effectively run the church on an interim basis. But as Sodano is over 80, and so won’t have the right to vote in the conclave, his place will be taken by the most senior member of the College of Cardinals, Giovanni Battista Re, a former head of the Vatican’s department for bishops.

Bertone, the camerlengo, presides at smaller meetings of a select group of cardinals, chosen by lot every three days, that deal with lesser issues.

The power of the assembly of cardinals is limited. According to John Paul’s 1996 instructions, it “has no power or jurisdiction in matters which pertain to the Supreme Pontiff during his lifetime or in the exercise of his office.”

Its sole task, in fact, is to “dispatch of ordinary business and of matters which cannot be postponed” and to prepare the conclave that will elect the next pope.

In the daily congregations, which must be attended by all cardinals of voting age (under 80) who have already arrived in Rome, cardinals decide by majority vote.

Once the conclave elects the new pope and he accepts, governance of the Vatican returns to the pope’s hand

From Religion News Service