In a statement released on February 19, the Vatican said Pope Francis signed off on the Holy See’s 2021 budget, which was proposed by the secretariat and approved by the Council for the Economy, the Vatican board charged with overseeing the financial operations of all offices and entities.

“With total revenues of 260.4 million euros (US$316 million) and expenses of 310.1 million euros ($376.3 million), the Holy See expects a deficit of 49.7 million euros ($60.3 million) in 2021, heavily impacted by the economic crisis generated by the Covid-19 pandemic,” the secretariat said.

In an effort to provide “more visibility and transparency to the economic transactions of the Holy See,” the Secretariat for the Economy also said the 2021 budget will consolidate incomes and grants from the Peter’s Pence collection and “all dedicated funds”, which are expected to bring in a net balance of 30.3 million euros (US$36.7 million).

“Excluding Peter’s Pence and the dedicated funds, the deficit of the Holy See would be 80 million euros ($97 million) in 2021,” the dicastery said.

The statement did not mention the budget of Vatican City State, which usually operates at a profit, and helps offset the deficit in the Holy See budget. However, like many countries, restrictions in place due to the pandemic forced the Vatican to close the city-state’s main income generators – the Vatican Museums, the necropolis tours and the museum at the pontifical villas in Castel Gandolfo during 2020 – resulting in substantial financial losses.

The Secretariat for the Economy explained that the 2021 budget includes a 21 per cent reduction in income because of a “reduction in commercial, services and real estate activities, as well as in donations and contributions”.

At the same time, it said, operating expenses – except for personnel costs – also decreased by 14 per cent, which reflects serious cost-saving efforts, even while “employment security continues to be a priority for the Holy Father in these difficult times”.

The Vatican also said 68 per cent of the year’s budget expenses are designated to sustaining “apostolic activities”, while 17 per cent will be used to manage property and assets and 15 per cent for administration and service activities.

“If the level of donations remains as expected, the deficit will be settled with part of the reserves of the Holy See,” it said.

(CNS Photo)

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The series, which will be released in late February, feature photographs of some of the Pope’s meetings over the past six years with leaders of other world religions.

At the end of his weekly general audience on February 3, Pope Francis praised the decision of the United Nations to mark an International Day of Human Fraternity on February 4.

“I am very pleased that the nations of the entire world are joining in this celebration aimed at promoting interreligious and intercultural dialogue,” the Pope said. The UN resolution establishing the day “recognises ‘the contribution that dialogue among all religious groups can make toward an improved awareness and understanding of the common values shared by all humankind.’ May this be our prayer today and our commitment every day of the year.”

The Vatican Philatelic Office said the stamp series illustrates Pope Francis’ teaching in his encyclical “Fratelli Tutti” that, as the encyclical said, “the different religions, based on their respect for each human person as a creature called to be a child of God, contribute significantly to building fraternity and defending justice in society”.

“Dialogue between the followers of different religions does not take place simply for the sake of diplomacy, consideration or tolerance. In the words of the bishops of India, ‘the goal of dialogue is to establish friendship, peace and harmony, and to share spiritual and moral values and experiences in a spirit of truth and love,'” the Pope wrote in the encyclical.

The stamp series marks the beginning of the ninth year of Pope Francis’ pontificate, which begins March 13.

The four designs in the series show: The Pope’s January, 2016, meeting with Rabbi Riccardo Di Segni, chief rabbi of Rome; his February, 2019, meeting with Sheikh Ahmad el-Tayeb, grand imam of Egypt’s al-Azhar mosque and university; Pope Francis’ November, 2019, meeting with Somdej Phra Maha Muneewong, supreme patriarch of Thailand’s Buddhist community; and his January, 2015, meeting with Ndu-Kurukkal SivaSri T. Mahadeva, a Hindu leader, in Sri Lanka.

Photo: A Vatican stamp commemorates Pope Francis’ meeting with Somdej Phra Maha Muneewong, supreme patriarch of Thailand’s Buddhist community, in Bangkok in 2019 (CNS photo)

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As Archbishop Mark Coleridge of Brisbane, president of the Australian bishops’ conference tweeted: “I didn’t realise just how much the integrity of and respect for the democratic institutions of the US matter to the rest of the world until this pandemonium erupted in D.C. From the other side of the world, I find myself shaken and disbelieving.”

“Washington: Democracy wounded” read the large headline on the front page of the Vatican newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano, Jan. 7. In smaller type, it explained that Congress reconvened to certify the presidential election of Joe Biden “after the violent assault committed by supporters of Trump and during which four people died”.

Under the headline, “A fragile good”, the newspaper’s assistant director, Giuseppe Fiorentino, wrote that the assault on the Capitol shows that “politics cannot ignore individual responsibility, especially on the part of the person who is in power and is able – through a polarizing narrative – to mobilise thousands of people. ‘He who sows the wind reaps the storm’ and at this point it is easy to tie the events in Washington to the accusations of fraud launched by Trump after the voting Nov. 3, accusations that never found objective confirmation.”

But the key lesson, Fiorentino wrote, is what Joe Biden said when he addressed the nation during the siege: “Democracy is a fragile commodity that must always be defended, even in countries, just like the United States, where democracy itself seems a largely acquired commodity.”

“The first step in defending democracy lies in accepting its rules,” he wrote, especially the rule of a peaceful transfer of power.

“Democracy under siege” read the banner headline on the front page of Avvenire, the daily newspaper owned by the Italian bishops’ conference.

In a video commentary, Andrea Lavazza, the paper’s editor-in-chief, said that whether outgoing President Donald Trump stays in office until the Jan. 20 inauguration of Joe Biden or is subjected to a “lightning impeachment,” the United States will have to grapple with “the heavy, negative heritage Donald Trump will leave behind. He has poisoned the wells of democracy, calling into doubt the results of an election that absolutely does not appear to have been compromised by fraud or conspiracies.”

Vatican News described what occurred as an “assault on Congress.”

Carlos Herrera, a famous morning show host on COPE, the radio network owned by the Spanish bishops’ conference, told his listeners Jan. 7 that he had “to chronicle the unheard of.”

“Who would have thought that one would speak of a violent assault on the U.S. Capitol to try to prevent the ratification of the winner of the presidential election in that country?” he said, calling the breach of the building and the deaths and injuries there “a grotesque end to the era of Donald Trump.”

At the World Council of Churches in Geneva, Romanian Orthodox Father Ioan Sauca, interim general secretary, issued a statement Jan. 6 saying, “The divisive populist politics of recent years have unleashed forces that threaten the foundations of democracy in the United States and – to the extent that it represents an example to other countries – in the wider world.”

“These developments have implications far beyond domestic American politics and are of serious international concern,” he said.

Father Sauca prayed that “the churches of America be empowered with wisdom and strength to provide leadership through this crisis, and on the path of peace, reconciliation and justice.”

Archbishop José Gomez of Los Angeles, president of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, issued a statement the evening of Jan. 6 saying he joined “people of goodwill in condemning the violence today at the United States Capitol.”

“This is not who we are as Americans,” he said, adding that he is praying for members of Congress, Capitol Hill staff members, police officers “and all those working to restore order and public safety.”

The archbishop called the peaceful transition of power “one of the hallmarks of this great nation” and stressed that in this “troubling moment, we must recommit ourselves to the values and principles of our democracy and come together as one nation under God.”

In a video posted to his Twitter account on January 7, Trump said he was “outraged by the violence, lawlessness and mayhem” in the “heinous attack”.

The president acknowledged the election victory by Joe Biden and promised an orderly, seamless and smooth transition of power.

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However, “the licit use of such vaccines does not and should not in any way imply that there is a moral endorsement of the use of cell lines proceeding from aborted foetuses,” said the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

“Both pharmaceutical companies and governmental health agencies are therefore encouraged to produce, approve, distribute and offer ethically acceptable vaccines that do not create problems of conscience for either health care providers or the people to be vaccinated,” it added in a note published Dec. 21.

The note “on the morality of using some anti-COVID-19 vaccines” had been reviewed by Pope Francis Dec. 17 and he ordered its publication, the doctrinal office said.

As vaccines against the novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19 are being distributed in some parts of the world, the doctrinal office said it has been receiving requests for guidance regarding the use of vaccines which, “in the course of research and production, employed cell lines drawn from tissue obtained from two abortions that occurred in the last century.”

The “diverse and sometimes conflicting pronouncements in the mass media by bishops, Catholic associations, and experts have raised questions about the morality of the use of these vaccines,” the congregation said.

Even though there are already some notes and instructions by the doctrinal office and the Pontifical Academy for Life regarding vaccines prepared from such cell lines, it said, “this congregation desires to offer some indications for clarification of this matter.”

The Catholic Church teaches that there are differing degrees of responsibility of cooperation with evil. That means that the responsibility of those who make the decision to use cell lines of illicit origin is not the same as those “who have no voice in such a decision,” the doctrinal office said, quoting from its 2008 instruction, “Dignitas Personae.”

“When ethically irreproachable COVID-19 vaccines are not available — e.g. in countries where vaccines without ethical problems are not made available to physicians and patients or where their distribution is more difficult due to special storage and transport conditions or when various types of vaccines are distributed in the same country but health authorities do not allow citizens to choose the vaccine with which to be inoculated — it is morally acceptable to receive COVID-19 vaccines that have used cell lines from aborted foetuses in their research and production process,” the doctrinal congregation wrote in the new note.

Using these vaccines is morally licit when the “passive material cooperation” with the evil of an abortion “from which these cell lines originate is, on the part of those making use of the resulting vaccines, remote.”

“The moral duty to avoid such passive material cooperation is not obligatory if there is a grave danger, such as the otherwise uncontainable spread of a serious pathological agent — in this case, the pandemic spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19,” it said.

Therefore, in such a case, “all vaccinations recognized as clinically safe and effective can be used in good conscience with the certain knowledge that the use of such vaccines does not constitute formal cooperation with the abortion,” it said.

However, the doctrinal congregation emphasized that “the morally licit use of these types of vaccines, in the particular conditions that make it so, does not in itself constitute a legitimation, even indirect, of the practice of abortion, and necessarily assumes the opposition to this practice by those who make use of these vaccines.”

The congregation repeated the Vatican’s call on pharmaceutical companies and governmental agencies to produce, approve and distribute ethically acceptable vaccines, that is, without using morally compromised cell lines at all.

The doctrinal office also said that “vaccination is not, as a rule, a moral obligation and that, therefore, it must be voluntary.”

From an ethical point of view, “the morality of vaccination depends not only on the duty to protect one’s own health, but also on the duty to pursue the common good,” it added.

If there are no other means to stop or prevent an epidemic, the congregation said, “the common good may recommend vaccination, especially to protect the weakest and most exposed.”

Those who wish, for “reasons of conscience,” to refuse vaccines produced with cell lines from aborted foetuses, “must do their utmost to avoid, by other prophylactic means and appropriate behaviour, becoming vehicles for the transmission” of the virus.

They must avoid putting at risk the health of those who cannot be vaccinated for medical or other reasons and who are the most vulnerable, it said.

Lastly, the congregation said it is “a moral imperative for the pharmaceutical industry, governments and international organizations to ensure that vaccines, which are effective and safe from a medical point of view, as well as ethically acceptable, are also accessible to the poorest countries in a manner that is not costly for them.”

Otherwise, this lack of access would become yet another sign of discrimination and injustice “that condemns poor countries to continue living in health, economic and social poverty.”

Photo: A health care worker vaccinates an elderly man against COVID-19 in Jerusalem Dec. 21, 2020. (CNS Photo)

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“The time has come for a change in direction. Let us not rob the new generations of their hope in a better future,” he said in a video message for a global summit.

Pope Francis was one of about 75 leaders who contributed to the Climate Ambition Summit, which was held online on Deccember 12. Co-hosted by the United Nations, the United Kingdom and France, and in partnership with Chile and Italy, the meeting marked the fifth anniversary of the Paris Agreement on climate change.

During the meeting, the leaders renewed or strengthened investment pledges and commitments to cut greenhouse gas emissions and achieve carbon neutrality.

Some 24 leaders announced at the summit their commitment for net-zero emissions, which would be achieving a balance between greenhouse gas emissions produced and greenhouse gas emissions taken out of the atmosphere, for example by switching to “green” energy and sustainable agriculture, increasing energy efficiency and reforestation.

In his message, Pope Francis said everyone has a responsibility “to promote, with a collective commitment and solidarity, a culture of care, which places human dignity and the common good at the centre”.

That means there are some measures that can no longer be postponed, he said, including implementing strategies to reduce net emissions to zero.

The Holy See is committed to this objective, he said.

Vatican City State will work to reduce net emissions to zero by 2050, he said, and it will continue to strengthen and expand its efforts toward greater energy efficiency, improved resource management, sustainable transportation and waste management, and reforestation.

The Holy See also is committed to promoting a greater understanding of integral ecology, he said.

“Politics and technology must unite behind an educational process which favours a cultural model of development and sustainability, focused on fraternity and an alliance between human beings and the environment,” he said.

In a written message for the summit, Cardinal Peter Turkson, prefect of the Vatican Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development, said more must be done to help the poor and the planet.

“God has entrusted us with this planet and its wonderful resources,” he wrote, appealing to world leaders to look at earth’s assets as a common good for all people and to focus much more on those who are the poorest and most vulnerable.

Governments should also stop investing in fossil fuels and help poor communities who need sustainable and “green” energy.

“We are one human family and we can only count on each other for taking care of our common home,” he added.

Photo: Solar panels are seen on the roof of the Paul VI audience hall at the Vatican (CNS)

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Photo: Then-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick of Washington faces the press in the shadow of St Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican in 2002 (CNS photo)

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“In order to receive absolution in the sacrament of penance, as well as with the anointing of the sick and the viaticum,” he said, the patients must demonstrate their intention to reverse their decision to end their life and to cancel their registration with any group appointed to grant their desire for euthanasia or assisted suicide.
In the letter’s section on “Pastoral discernment toward those who request euthanasia or assisted suicide,” it said a “priest could administer the sacraments to an unconscious person ‘sub condicione’ if, on the basis of some signal given by the patient beforehand, he can presume his or her repentance”.
The Church’s ministers can still accompany patients who have made these end-of-life directives, it added, by showing “a willingness to listen and to help, together with a deeper explanation of the nature of the sacrament, in order to provide the opportunity to desire and choose the sacrament up to the last moment”.
It is important to carefully look for “adequate signs of conversion, so that the faithful can reasonably ask for the reception of the sacraments. To delay absolution is a medicinal act of the Church, intended not to condemn, but to lead the sinner to conversion,” it said.
However, it added, “those who spiritually assist these persons should avoid any gesture, such as remaining until the euthanasia is performed, that could be interpreted as approval of this action”.
Chaplains, too, must show care “in the health care systems where euthanasia is practised, for they must not give scandal by behaving in a manner that makes them complicit in the termination of human life”, the letter said.
Another warning in the letter regarded medical end-of-life protocols, such as “do not resuscitate orders” or “physician orders for life-sustaining treatment” and any of their variations.
These protocols “were initially thought of as instruments to avoid aggressive medical treatment in the terminal phases of life. Today, these protocols cause serious problems regarding the duty to protect the life of patients in the most critical stages of sickness”, it said.

On the one hand, it said, “medical staff feel increasingly bound by the self-determination expressed in patient declarations that deprive physicians of their freedom and duty to safeguard life even where they could do so”.
“On the other hand, in some health care settings, concerns have recently arisen about the widely reported abuse of such protocols viewed in a euthanistic perspective with the result that neither patients nor families are consulted in final decisions about care,” it said.
“This happens above all in the countries where, with the legalisation of euthanasia, wide margins of ambiguity are left open in end-of-life law regarding the meaning of obligations to provide care.”
The Church, however, “is obliged to intervene in order to exclude once again all ambiguity in the teaching of the magisterium concerning euthanasia and assisted suicide, even where these practices have been legalised,” it said.
Euthanasia involves “an action or an omission which of itself or by intention causes death, in order that all pain may in this way be eliminated.”
Its definition depends on “the intention of the will and in the methods used”, it added.
The letter reaffirmed that “any formal or immediate material cooperation in such an act is a grave sin against human life,” making euthanasia “an act of homicide that no end can justify and that does not tolerate any form of complicity or active or passive collaboration.”
For that reason, “those who approve laws of euthanasia and assisted suicide, therefore, become accomplices of a grave sin that others will execute. They are also guilty of scandal because by such laws they contribute to the distortion of conscience, even among the faithful.”
The letter also underlined a patient’s right to decline aggressive medical treatment and “die with the greatest possible serenity and with one’s proper human and Christian dignity intact” when approaching the natural end of life.
“The renunciation of treatments that would only provide a precarious and painful prolongation of life can also mean respect for the will of the dying person as expressed in advanced directives for treatment, excluding however every act of a euthanistic or suicidal nature,” it said.
However, it also underlined the rights of physicians as never being “a mere executor of the will of patients or their legal representatives, but retains the right and obligation to withdraw at will from any course of action contrary to the moral good discerned by conscience.”
Other aspects of end-of-life care the letter detailed included: the obligation to provide basic care of nutrition and hydration; the need for holistic palliative care; support for families and hospice care; the required accompaniment and care for unborn and newly-born children diagnosed with a terminal disease; the use of “deep palliative sedation”; obligation of care for patients in a “vegetative state” or with minimal consciousness; and conscientious objection by health care workers.

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(Photo): Retired Pope Benedict XVI speaks to his private secretary, Archbishop Georg Ganswein, at Germany’s Munich Airport before his departure to Rome on June 22. (CNS Photo)

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Titled “Strong in the Face of Tribulation”, the book also contains suggestions for Catholics who are unable to receive the sacraments due to restrictive measures to prevent the spread of Covid-19.

The book, which was released on April 21, is available in English, Italian, Spanish and French, and will be updated several times a week “with new homilies and other interventions made by the Pope”, said Andrea Tornielli, editorial director of the Vatican Dicastery for Communication.

“This book is intended to be a little help offered to all, so as to know how to discern and experience God’s closeness and tenderness in pain, in suffering, in solitude and in fear,” Tornielli wrote in the book’s introduction.

Due to the rapid spread of the coronavirus, he said, the world is “facing a state of affairs that, until just a few weeks ago, would have seemed unimaginable, like the premise of a science fiction film”.

“Thousands of people are gravely ill, thousands have died,” he wrote. “Many families mourn their loved ones, to whom they were unable to stay close, to whom they were unable to say farewell, and who were cremated without the possibility of a funeral.”

Another sad reality in the time of the coronavirus is the solitude faced by thousands who, in their final moments, are unable to receive the sacraments or be surrounded by loved ones, but instead are accompanied by doctors and nurses who are “pushed to their limits”.

“We all owe a debt of gratitude to them, as they fight on the front line for people’s lives every day,” he wrote.

Tornielli said that civil servants, volunteers helping the poor and the elderly, as well as priests and religious men and women “who share the sufferings of their people” also must be remembered.

For Catholics, he added, not participating in the liturgy or the sacraments, “aggravates this condition of uncertainty, discomfort and confusion”.

Nevertheless, Tornielli said the Church’s invitation to “renew our faith in the risen Christ” has sparked creativity, especially among priests who, through the use of technology, “make themselves present in the life of their communities and families confined to their homes in semi-deserted cities”.

The editorial director said that, when lived “in its essential elements”, Christian faith can offer an outlook on reality that offers the possibility of seeing God’s love and experiencing the unity of the Church, even amid solitude and isolation.

“Of course, faith does not eliminate pain; ecclesial communion does not eliminate anguish,” he wrote. “Rather, it does illuminate reality, and reveals that it is pervaded by the love and hope based, not on our abilities, but on the one who is faithful and never abandons us.”

The book in English can be downloaded at https://www.vaticannews.va/content/dam/lev/forti-nella-tribolazione/pdf/eng/strong-in-tribulation.-20042020.pdf

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In a March 28 note, Bruni confirmed that a monsignor, who works in the Vatican Secretariat of State and lives in the Domus Sanctae Marthae, where Pope Francis lives, did test positive for the coronavirus and, “as a precaution”, was hospitalised.

The Italian newspaper Il Messaggero and the Jesuit-run America magazine published reports on March 25 about the monsignor testing positive.

Bruni said that, as of March 28, the Vatican health service had conducted more than 170 tests for the virus. No one else who lives at the Domus Sanctae Marthae tested positive, Bruni said.

As soon as the monsignor tested positive, he said, his room and office were sanitised and all the people he had come into contact with over the preceding days were contacted.

“The health authorities carried out tests on the people in closest contact with the positive individual,” Bruni said. “The results confirmed the absence of other positive cases” among the residents of the Vatican guesthouse, but another employee of the Holy See who was in “close contact with the official” did test positive.

That brings to six the number of people in the Vatican who have tested positive, he said.

The Vatican press office had confirmed the first four cases on March 24. The first, already confirmed by the Vatican on March 6, was a priest from Bergamo who had a routine pre-employment exam at the Vatican health clinic. After he was discovered with symptoms, the clinic was closed temporarily for special cleaning, and the five people with whom the priest had come into contact were put under a preventive quarantine.

There were reports at the same time that the offices of the Secretariat of State were closed temporarily for a thorough cleaning.

The Vatican did not say when the next three people tested positive, but it said one worked in the Vatican warehouse and two worked at the Vatican Museums.

All four, the Vatican said March 24, “were placed in precautionary isolation” before their test results came back. “The isolation has already lasted more than 14 days; currently they are receiving care in Italian hospitals or in their own homes.”

Both America magazine and Il Messaggero said Pope Francis was unlikely to have had contact with the monsignor from the Secretariat of State who tested positive. Both reported that Pope Francis has been eating his meals in his room rather than the dining room since coming down with a bad cold after Ash Wednesday, February 26.

While the Vatican has cancelled all group meetings, Pope Francis continues to meet with individuals each day.

News reports said the Pope and his guests use hand sanitiser before and after the meetings.

Photo: Pope Francis raises the monstrance during eucharistic adoration at the end of Mass March 26, 2020, in the chapel of his Vatican residence, the Domus Sanctae Marthae. (CNS Photo/Vatican media)

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