We had a first poll HERE. I took the top 15 results and offer them again for your opinion as the conclave begins today!
The combox is open for your explanations. Anyone can vote, but you have to have an approved registration to comment.
Again… what name WILL the Pope take, NOT what name do you WANT the Pope to take. You can add that in your comment!
PS: I added Leo XIV… ’cause I simply had to, didn’t I?
Sometimes shops or businesses or other places have to close up at times outside their usual schedule.
Yesterday, after my hit with EWTN, I stopped in at the library of my school, the Augustinianum, to do some work in the wonderful library. The Augustinianum is literally across the street from St. Peter’s Square.
Posted in the library was this sign, the likes of which you are unlikely to find anywhere else in the world
NOTICE
In the event of the election of the Supreme Pontiff, the library could be subject to a sudden and special closure .
At the end of Pope Benedict’s pontificate Rome was blessed with unseasonably beautiful weather for his last appearances.
Right now the weather is Rome is horrid and forecasts are grim. I was out the other evening and actually saw Noah and the Ark float by.
Please, friends, in your charity, stop and say a prayer for good weather for Rome now? And in the coming days?
Many people, myself included, will want to be outside in St. Peter’s Square on “SMOKE WATCH”, and then also for the announcement of a new Pope.
Please, O God, let us not have rain and lightning! I don’t ask for crystal clear skies – though that would be great – but, please, not rain.
Would you, dear readers, with your hearts united with us in Rome please say this prayer?
From the Procession for Imploring Fair Weather in the older Rituale Romanum:
P: Lord, heed my prayer.
All: And let my cry be heard by you.
P: The Lord be with you.
All: And with your spirit.Let us pray.
God, who are offended by our sins but appeased by our penances, may it please you to hear the entreaties of your people and to turn away the stripes that our transgressions rightly deserve.Graciously hear us, O Lord, as we cry out to you, and grant fair weather to us, your suppliants; and although we are justly afflicted for our sins, may we nonetheless know your mercy and so appreciate your clemency.
Almighty God, we appeal to your kindness, asking that you hold back the inundation of rainfall, and be pleased to show us the cheerfulness of your countenance; through Christ our Lord.
All: Amen.
And so the rites as found in the Ordo Rituum Conclavis… the Order of Rites for the Conclave begin. The first thing the Cardinals do today is celebrate Mass in St. Peter’s saying special prayers for help in their task. The Cardinal Dean is celebrant, as Joseph Card. Ratzinger was in 2005.
The Mass is in Latin. For some commentary on the prayers for the Mass check out my piece in the UK’s best Catholic weekly, The Catholic Herald.
With not a little melancholy, … the arms of Benedict XVI on the chasubles.
The Church is not just the Roman Church.
Below… The Confiteor. The Cardinals pray to be forgiven for what they have done and what they have failed to do.
Not all the Cardinals concelebrate.
Alas, I just missed this. I’ll try to go back and get the shot later. This is a seminarian from the North American College in their College cassock. Nice to see. He did the first reading in English. This was followed by the usual saccharine sweet singing by an Italian of the responsorial psalm.
Again, not all Cardinals are selected from the Roman Church.
Tu es Petrus….
The Cardinal Dean’s sermon. Who can forget the stunning sermon given by Joseph Card. Ratzinger in 2005?
The Dean adopted a standard format… in the first reading… in the second reading… etc. Then he spoke a bit about the role of the Successor of Peter. Here is some of the working translation. The Dean went off text a little in the original Italian, but in no way changing the substance of the text. My emphases:
3. The Mission of the Pope
Brothers and sisters in Christ today’s Gospel takes us back to the Last Supper, when the Lord said to his Apostles: “This is my commandment: that you love one another as I have loved you” (John 15:12). The text is linked to the first reading from the Messiah’s actions in the first reading from the prophet Isaiah, reminding us that the fundamental attitude of the Pastors of the Church is love. It is this love that urges us to offer our own lives for our brothers and sisters. Jesus himself tells us: “There is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends” (John 15:12). [And is surely what a man does when he accepts the election in the Sistine Chapel.]
The basic attitude of every Shepherd is therefore to lay down one’s life for his sheep (John 10:15). This also applies to the Successor of Peter, Pastor of the Universal Church. As high and universal the pastoral office, so much greater must be the charity of the Shepherd. In the heart of every Successor of Peter, the words spoken one day by the Divine Master to the humble fisherman of Galilee have resounded: “Diligis me plus his? Pasce agnos meos… pasce oves meas”; “Do you love me more than these? Feed my lambs… feed my sheep!” (John 21:15-17)
[This next part seems to me to be what the Dean, Card Sodano, is suggesting as a major point for the Cardinal Electors as they go into the Conclave. Remember, Sodano is over 80 and cannot vote even though he is the Dean of the College.] In the wake of this service of love toward the Church and towards all of humanity, the last popes have been builders of so many good initiatives for people and for the international community, tirelessly promoting justice and peace. Let us pray that the future Pope may continue this unceasing work on the world level. [Look. Yes, Pope’s do these things. But is that their principle role? Is that the principle role of the Church in the world? To promote initiatives of justice and peace in the international community? I noted with interest that the Dean quoted Paul VI’s Populorum progressio, which was not a little controversial in its day. At the time, there were concerns that to smacked of Marxism. It also spoke to the North/South divide. Perhaps I am reading this wrong, but I have the sense that this is a call for Paul VII. It is without question that Benedict XVI wrote eloquently of initiatives of justice and peace in Deus caritas est, etc. But to stress this, during the Year of Faith, when Benedict XVI tried to launch the Church on a project of NEW EVANGELIZATION, that is, the recovery of Catholic identity in those places where it has been dying and a new direction even in places where the Church is emerging, the Dean flips back the calendar to the 1970’s. This is my first reaction. I may add and revise later. To be fair, the Dean quoted Benedict XVI in a way that opens what Paul VI said in a more expansive way than I have suggested. Here is what he said earlier in the sermon when he quoted Paul: “This is what Benedict XVI wrote in his Lenten Message for this year (n.3). “Sometimes we tend, in fact, to reduce the term “charity” to solidarity or simply humanitarian aid. It is important, however, to remember that the greatest work of charity is evangelization, which is the “ministry of the word”. There is no action more beneficial – and therefore more charitable – towards one’s neighbour than to break the bread of the word of God, to share with him the Good News of the Gospel, to introduce him to a relationship with God: evangelization is the highest and the most integral promotion of the human person. As the Servant of God Pope Paul VI wrote in the Encyclical Populorum Progressio, the proclamation of Christ is the first and principal contributor to development (cf. n. 16).” BUT… let’s continue to be fair. This sounds like Sodano contra Sodano. Quoting Populorum progressio is a signal.]
Moreover, this service of charity is part of the intimate nature of the Church. Pope Benedict XVI reminded us of this fact when he said: “The service of charity is also a constitutive element of the Church’s mission and an indispensable expression of her very being; (Apostolic Letter in the form of a Motu Proprio Intima Ecclesiae natura, November 11, 2012, introduction; cf. Deus caritas est, n. 25).
It is a mission of charity that is proper to the Church, and in a particular way is proper to the Church of Rome, that in the beautiful expression of St. Ignatius of Antioch, is the Church that “presides in charity” “praesidet caritati” (cf. Ad Romanos (preface).; Lumen Gentium, n. 13).
My brothers, let us pray that the Lord will grant us a Pontiff who will embrace this noble mission with a generous heart. [The mission of promoting initiatives of justice and peace in the international community?] We ask this of the Lord, through the intercession of Mary most holy, Queen of the Apostles and of all the Martyrs and Saints, who through the course of history, made this Church of Rome glorious through the ages. Amen.
Mass continued with congregational singing of the Creed and the Eucharistic Prayer, the Roman Canon, former Secretary of State Card. Bertone, now the Camerlengo, and the senior Cardinal who will guide the Conclave, Card. Re are the principle celebrants.
Some of the A-Team on the bench.
No one changed this. Let us hope that it doesn’t change. No, rather, let us hope that it continues and is taken up everywhere. Thus, my call to “Re-Elect Ratzinger”. We need his vision of liturgial worship to be more widely embraced. We won’t get another Ratzinger in that sphere, for there isn’t one. But we can pray for a Pope who will embrace that vision and continue it. No initiative we undertake as a Church can succeed unless we revitalize our liturgical worship, exactly along the lines that Benedict XVI pointed to.
Some final shots, including a few images to show off the spectacular views and great camera work of CTV.
And to show that we are having vile weather. I do NOT look forward to standing in the rain for an announcement.
Please, in your charity, pray also for good weather along with a good Pope!
A friend sent me a note with the statement:
I wonder how much THIS site cost to build!
http://www.iscatholicismtrue.
This afternoon I did a short segment with EWTN about Benedict XVI and liturgy. These segments are really too short. You don’t have time to get into any details. But it was good.
The location for EWTN is on the roof of the building across from both the Holy Office building, where I used to work, and the colonnade of St. Peter’s Square, at the entrance to my school the Augustinianum. Let’s just say that when I heard where they were, I didn’t need directions.
Some quick shots.
There are locations for different networks all over the place on the tops of the higher buildings.
This gives a sense of the proximity to the Basilica.
From a reader:
I have searched high and low. When is it permissible for priests to celebrate the Novus Ordo (Editio Typica) in Latin in the U.S.? Is the permission of the local bishop needed?
I am always surprised when this comes up. I am always not surprised when this comes up. In the name of the Council so many falsehoods were perpetrated.
Priests of the Latin Church don’t need permission to say Mass in Latin. Latin is the official language of the Latin Rite.
The 1983 Code of Canon Law says, first, that Mass is to be celebrated in Latin, and then, or in other approved languages.
The Council’s document on liturgy, Sacrosanctum Concilium, says that the Latin language is to be preserved.
Contrary to the LIE that Latin was forbidden or that special permission is required, Sacrosanctum Concilium 54 requires that pastors of souls teach their flocks to sing and respond in Latin and their mother tongue.
Something that will slowly but surely become – again- an annual exspectation, is the traditional “Prayer over the people” at the end of Mass during Lent.
They were restored to the Ordinary Form with the Latin 3rd edition of the Missale Romanum in 2002. With the implementation of the corrected ICEL translation, people will have now experienced this Lent and last. In the older form of the Roman Rite, they are used every day of the week but Sunday. In the newer form of the Roman Rite they are included on Sunday.
The priest says this prayer after the Post communio. It is introduced by the phrase, Humiliate capita vestra Deo… Humbly bow your heads to God.
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The origin of the Oratio super populum is complex and hard to pin down. Turning to Fr. Joseph A. Jungmann’s monumental two volume The Mass of the Roman Rite: Its Origins and Development we find a history of this prayer at the beginning of the section concerning the close of the Mass (II, pp. 427ff). Something Jungmann emphasizes that caught my attention is the fact that we are at a “frontier” moment, the threshold of the sacred precinct of the church and the world. When properly formed we want the influence of our intimate contact with the divine to carry over into the outside world. The use of this prayer is very ancient, found in both the Eastern liturgies of Syria and Egypt and in the West.
By the time of Pope Gregory the Great (+604) this was only in the Lenten season, probably because this is perceived to be a time of greater spiritual combat requiring more blessings. Indeed it was extremely important for those who were not receiving Holy Communion, as was the case of those doing public penance before the Church, the ordo poenitentium.
How important was this prayer to the Romans? In 545, when Pope Vigilius (537-55) was conducting the station Mass at St. Cecilia in Trastevere, troops of the pro-Monophysite Byzantine Emperor Justinian arrived after Communion to take the Pope into custody and conduct him to exile in Constantinople. The people followed them to the ship and demanded “ut orationem ab eo acciperent… that they should receive the blessing prayer from him”. The Pope recited it, the people said “Amen” and off went Vigilius who returned to Rome only after his death.
Unlike the Postcommunio, the object of the prayer is usually not “us”. With exceptions, of course, the priest usually prays for and over the people, usually not including himself as he does in the prayer after Communion.
Here is today’s prayer.
ORATIO SUPER POPULUM (2002MR):
Tuere, Domine, supplices tuos, sustenta fragiles,
et inter tenebras mortalium ambulantes
tua semper luce vivifica,
atque a malis omnibus clementer ereptos,
ad summa bona pervenire concede.
(Cf. 2 Cor 4 – “The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light” and Isaiah 9:2, a text usually associated with Christmas).
This is an ancient prayer, found in the Veronese Sacramentary in the month of April, though a chunk was cut out for the 2002MR: “sustenta fragiles, purga terrenos et, inter mortalium tenebras mortales ambulantes,“
MY LITERAL RENDERING:
Defend, O Lord, your humble ones, sustain the fragile,
and by your light always breathe life into
those walking amidst the shadows of mortal things,
and grant them, having been mercifully snatched away from all evils,
to attain to the highest of all goods.
CURRENT ICEL VERSION (2011):
Look upon those who call to you, O Lord,
and sustain the weak;
give life by your unfailing light
to those who walk in the shadow of death,
and bring those rescued by your mercy from every evil
to reach the highest good.
Through Christ our Lord.
I have in mind especially those who are in harm’s way.
Military personnel, first responders, people in very hazardous jobs which serve the common good. They serve in the shadow of death. May God send His holy angels to protect them from spiritual and temporal harm.
We are all – every one of us – walking everyday “amidst the shadows of mortal things“.
If we are not very careful, we will become entangled in those mortal, passing things to the point where they become mortally deadly for the soul.
I have a real problem, dear readers.
On my first full day my laptop is dead.
I mean dead.
Hard drive dead.
I have my phone. I hope I can borrow a laptop from someone.
And if course the blog was down. For how long I don’t know.
It’s only a papal conclave going on.
Do me a favor and keep me in your prayers. I need some serious patience and guardian angels to help with solutions.
It’s Zuhlsdorf’s Law in full fury.
Coat of Arms by D Burkart
A Daily Prayer for Priests
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