Cardinals of the Roman Catholic church will enter the Sistine chapel on 12 March to begin the conclave that will elect the 266th pope, theVatican has announced.
Cardinals of the Roman Catholic church will enter the Sistine chapel on 12 March to begin the conclave that will elect the 266th pope, theVatican has announced.
From Christian Weisner in Rome
Yesterday SNAP (Survivers Network Abused by Priest) published a blacklist of 12 Cardinals. This is different to our purpose which is to bring positive suggestions from the People of God to Rome: a way of bringing about a new system of decisionmaking which is badly needed in our church.
Today was THE day that we had our first presentation about the history and the future of the future of the papacy with five perfect speakers: Martha Heizer(AT), Michael Walsh (UK), Paul Collins (AU), Anthony Padovano (US) and Marylin Hatton (AU). Basilio Buffoni and Vittorio Bellavite, together with some very good helping hands, had organised everything very well. You will find the statement in various languages below on this website.
What I said yesterday still holds true. We don't know the date of the beginning of the Conclave yet. It might start even later than March 10 or 11. The Cardinals are still discussing the general situation in the church.
Anthony Padovano and Michael Walsh are leaving tomorrow. Martha Heizer is going home but will come back for our next press conference that hopefully will take place shortly before the beginning of the Conclave. I will stay Rome and will wait.
Despite the rain some of the We Are Church team in Rome find time for a photo call in St Peter's Square.
Christian Weisner reports on activity in Rome
This morning our team had a short briefing again. Our "document" seems to find very positive response from IMWAC member groups. Now the translations will be done by our voluntary translators. Valerie is working on the website. The speakers, Basilio and his team are preparing the presentation that we'll have Thursday evening at the Monastry. Thank you all very much!
Martha found out that this afternoon the Cardinals had a prayer in St. Peter's Basilica at 5 p.m. Surely, we wanted to take part and passed the control at the entrance of St. Peter. But only nuns and priest and those lay men and women who went to confession were allowed to go to the Rosary of the Cardinals. "The church" didn't want us to help with prayers for the next pope. So we decided to go back to the hotel and to solve the technical problems of internet and so on...
We don't know the date of the beginning of the Conclave yet. It might start even later than March 10 or 11. The Cardinals are still discussing the general cause of the church. The Cardinals from the US don't want to go into the Conclave I read somewhere. German Cardinal Kasper, former Prefect of Ecomenism, wants to have much more transparency inside the Roman Curia, "Centre" should not automatically mean "Centralism". So we will have to wait and wait and wait - together with 5000 media workers in a rainy and a little bit depressing Rome.