"The possibility envisioned by the Apostolic Constitution for some married clergy within the Personal Ordinariates (the structure for ex Anglicans) does not signify any change in the Church's discipline of clerical celibacy," it said.

(Photo: Pope Benedict, 4 Nov 2009/Alessia Pierdomenico)

The Vatican announced last month an initiative to make it easier for conservative Anglicans who feel their church has become too liberal to convert to Catholicism. This stirred widespread speculation on what it could eventually mean for the celibacy rule in the Roman Catholic church. There was also speculation about whether men who had left the Catholic priesthood to marry and later became Anglicans could return to the Catholic priesthood and remain married.

Read our full story here.

Follow FaithWorld on Twitter at RTRFaithWorld

(Photo: A crucifix in a Rome classroom, 3 Nov 2009/Tony Gentile)

Here's an update from Phil Pullella in Rome:

The European Court of Human Rights ruled on Tuesday that crucifixes should be removed from Italian classrooms, prompting Vatican anger and sparking uproar in Italy, where such icons are embedded in the national psyche.

"The ruling of the European court was received in the Vatican with shock and sadness," said Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi, adding that it was "wrong and myopic" to try to exclude a symbol of charity from education.

The ruling by the court in Strasbourg, which Italy said it would appeal, said crucifixes on school walls -- a common sight that is part of every Italian's life -- could disturb children who were not Christians.

"This is an abhorrent ruling," said Rocco Buttiglione, a former culture minister who helped write papal encyclicals. "It must be rejected with firmness. Italy has its culture, its traditions and its history. Those who come among us must understand and accept this culture and this history."

The Vatican spokesman said it was sad that the crucifix could be considered a symbol of division and said religion offered a vital contribution to the moral formation of people. Members of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's government bristled, weighing in with words such as "shameful," "offensive," "absurd," "unacceptable," and "pagan."

Read the full story here.

Here is our earlier item from Strasbourg on the ruling:
The European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg ruled on Tuesday that Italian schools should remove crucifixes from classroom walls, saying their presence could disturb children who were not Christians. The decision is likely to provoke a controversy in Italy, which is deeply attached to its Roman Catholic roots.

(Photo: Parents in Ofena campaign to keep crucifix in Italian schools, 29 Oct 2003/Alessandro Bianchi)

The case was brought by an Italian national, Soile Lautsi, who complained that her children had to attend a public school in northern Italy which had crucifixes in every room. Lautsi said this ran counter to her right to give her children a secular education and the Strasbourg-based court ruled in her favour.

"The presence of the crucifix ... could be encouraging for religious pupils, but also disturbing for pupils who practised other religions or were atheists, particularly if they belonged to religious minorities," the court said in a written ruling.

Read the whole story here. Click here for the full ruling (in French).

Follow FaithWorld on Twitter at RTRFaithWorld

(Photo: Swiss guards at St. Peter's Basilica, 25 Oct 2009/Tony Gentile)

The traditionalists reject many of the reforms of the 1962-1965 Second Vatican Council, which modernised many aspects of the 1.1 billion member Church, including its liturgy, its relations with other Christians and its view of Jews.

The group, numbering several hundred thousand members, insists that it represents the true faith, and opposes the way the Church has evolved over the past 40 years. The SSPX says the Vatican and the vast majority of the Church went off the rails at the Council.

Read the full story here.

Follow FaithWorld on Twitter at RTRFaithWorld

(Photo: Anglican Bishop of London Richard Chartres with wife and children, 5 Sept 1995/Russell Boyce. Under the Vatican offer, bishops could not be married and Anglican bishops who join the Catholic Church must give up their episcopal rank.)

Pope Benedict's decision to fling open Catholicism's doors to disaffected Anglicans could challenge centuries of Catholic opposition to married priests and may bring the Church closer to married priesthood.

The opening announced last week could lead to as many as half a million Anglican faithful, some 50 of their bishops and thousands of married Anglican priests converting to Catholicism.

The conservative Anglicans, who oppose female priesthood and gay bishops, now have an exit strategy. They will have their own niche within the Catholic Church and will be allowed to convert as individuals, parishes or even as whole dioceses.

They will not have to jettison their Anglican traditions and many will find their new parishes headed by formerly Anglican married priests who will become de facto married Catholic priests after they convert.

Cardinal William Levada, head of the Vatican's doctrinal office, the pope's job until he was elected in 2005, acknowledged that the Vatican will have some serious explaining to do to groups that have been pushing for a married priesthood: "I think for some people it seems to be a problem because as you know there have been many Catholic priests who have left the priesthood to get married, and the question arises, 'well, if these former Anglicans can be married priests, what about us?'"

Read the whole analysis here.

Follow FaithWorld on Twitter at RTRFaithWorld

(Photo: Pope Benedict XVI with African bishops in St. Peter's Basilica at the Vatican, 4  Oct 2009/Alessandro Bianchi)

Roman Catholic bishops called on corrupt Catholic leaders in Africa on Friday to repent or resign for giving the continent and the Church a bad name. Around 200 African bishops, along with dozens of other bishops and Africa experts, also accused multinational companies in Africa of "crimes against humanity" and urged Africans to beware of "surreptitious" attempts by international organizations to destroy traditional African values.

Their three-week synod, which ends formally on Sunday with a Mass by Pope Benedict, covered a range of Africa's problems, such as AIDS, corruption, poverty, development aspirations and crime. But it had a very direct message for corrupt African leaders who were raised Catholics.

"Many Catholics in high office have fallen woefully short in their performance in office. The synod calls on such people to repent, or quit the public arena and stop causing havoc to the people and giving the Catholic Church a bad name."

The message did not name any leaders. The international community has for years called on Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, who was raised a Catholic and educated by Jesuits, to step down, saying he had brought his once-prosperous country to its knees.

Another African leader who was raised a Catholic and has been accused of corruption is Angola's President Eduardo dos Santos. Both men deny any wrongdoing.

In a section on AIDS, the bishops' message repeated the Church position that the spread of the disease could not be stopped by the use of condoms alone. Last March, on his way to his first trip to Africa, the pope caused an international storm by saying that the use of condoms could actually worsen the spread of AIDS.

Read the whole story here.

Follow FaithWorld on Twitter at RTRFaithWorld

Diaz, a very amiable man, is the first Hispanic and the first theologian to fill the post of U.S. ambassador. He took questions in English and Italian on a range of topics but most of the comments were centered on what he wanted to make out of the post. Here are some excerpts. The questions have been synthesized to reflect the conversation:

(Photos: Ambassador Diaz and Pope Benedict, October 2, 2009. REUTERS/Osservatore Romano)

How did you get the news that President Obama had chosen you as new envoy and how did you feel?

"When the call came in from the White House I was, like anybody would be, pleasantly surprised and honored and humbled to have this opportunity to serve my country, to serve under this president. I had been part of an advisory team of Catholic theologians and activists during the campaign.

"One of my desires for this president was that this kind of engagement between religious ideas, public service, people of faith and service to one's country could continue beyond the campaign. I was of the opinion that of religious thinkers could continue to participate in some kind of ongoing advisory group. When I first received the call i thought  that the president was going to ask me to do ...  instead I was very honored that the president had selected me to become the next ambassador to the Holy See"

What do you think led President Obama to choose you?

"The president, in his (book) Audacity of Hope, argued in a persuasive way that religious principles, that people of faith have an active role to play in society and that within a democratic and pluralistic society what one needs to have is a persuasive translation of those principles than can be placed at the service of society for the benefit of the common good. So in many ways the professor in Obama spoke to the professor in Diaz. His style and appeal to a reasoned approach to arguments was very much persuasive..."

Won't you miss being a theologian and an academic?

"Maybe after my appointment as U.S. ambassador I will have time to pursue those kinds of conversation but, again, this is going to be a sacrifice, this is going to hard for me to abandon the classroom and do abandon the pursuit of theological ideas so I can embrace diplomacy ...

"it is clear that no other ambassador in the past has been asked to totally shed their past so what I hope is that the theological and philosophical background that I have can somehow be useful in the service of bringing people together, so if I can learn to translate in an effective way -- both in terms of communication and in terms of what I do -- some of the those basic principles that I believe in, then I think I might be able to become an effective communicators and engage in the kind of things that I like to engage in -- inter-religious dialogue, inter-cultural dialogue, inter-racial dialogue for the sake of building peace and the common good for humanity. So if I could somehow tap into that past without offending anyone and certainly by creating bridges then maybe I can succeed as an ambassador."

Wouldn't you love to have a one-on-one theological conversation with Pope Benedict, even if it had to be kept secret?

"I guess you'll never find out if  I have one. But I don't like to work in secrecy because hardly ever does the press not find out about it. I think that we're about transparency in this administration so, if I were to have a theological conversation with the pope, I would not like to hide it from the world. I don't want to operate behind closed doors. But there is no doubt that this is part of who I am but I am also very conscious that as part of who I am know, as ambassador of the United States I am not here primarily to have theological conversations with the Holy Father, but I am here to represent my president, my people, my country..."

How will you build on past relations between the Vatican and Washington?

"We all stand on the shoulders of giants in some ways. We don't start from scratch. we build on the positive things that others have done. We are celebrating 25 years of formal diplomatic relations between the Holy See and the United States and over those 25 years we have done wonderful work. We have together rejected religion as a means for violence, we have rejected terrorism, we have worked together on issues related to food security and I suspect this will continue to be part of our work. We have worked on trafficking in person and this will be part of out ongoing engagements and in a few days we will have a conference with Caritas Internationalis on the prevention of  transferring HIV/AIDS from mother to child. These are some of the things that have preceded me. Because of my background, because of my educational background, I will invite my co-workers to engage themes such as inter-religious and inter-cultural relations and (seek) ways that we can cooperate with the Vatican and various Catholic organisations to promote these areas for the sake of human peace. Another big issue on the horizon will be climate change. This particular pope has increasingly drawn attention to the issues of distortion of the earth, global warming and so those are also issues that are dear to me .... that will also be on my radar screen.

"Given my educational background and my work with youth I would like to extend a bridge out to young people. the presidency of Barack Obama is a huge magnet of attraction for youth and I would also like to engage in conversations that engage them. As a leader I think one has to listen and one has to judge things as they come up and respond to things as they come up."

This is only the second Democratic U.S. administration since relations between the Vatican and the United States were established 25 years ago. The last last time there was a democrat in the White House, Bill Clinton, relations were quite tense, particularly over abortion, which came to a head at the U.N. Conference on Population in Cairo in 1994. Do you think there is a danger of this happening again and what do you think your relationship with the U.S. Catholic Bishops Conference will be?

(Photo: Pope Benedict and President Obama at the Vatican, 10 July 2009/Osservatore Romano)

"I think I am going to follow the example of my president here. I'm not going to look to the past but to look to the present and the future. I will certainly do everything that I can to keep the lines of communications open between our two countries. I cannot and will not get entangled in the domestic issues because I represent the United States at this international level, from one sovereign entity to another. So that while I think that this is a good conversation that my country is having at the domestic level but that conversation is being held there and I will do the job that the president would like me to do here. There is a differnce between what the U.S.  ambassador should do and what the Holy Father should do as the pastor of the Church which also has responsibility for and a relationship with the local Church. I am not representing the U.S. Church. I don't have a relationship to the local Church nor to the (U.S.) Conference of Catholic Bishops. Of  course, wherever the dignity of the human person is involved the Holy See is going to have something to say. But I think its important to make that distinction, who is speaking for whom and under what circumstances."

What other person attributes to you bring to the job?

"I am the child of an exile. I have immigration in my story. I know what it is to live and negotiate between cultures and peoples and speak different languages ... I had to mediate with my parents, who still to this day do not speak the English language completely or perfectly ... in some ways this was engrained in my very being while growing up."

Follow FaithWorld on Twitter at RTRFaithWorld

(Photo: An archive negative image of the Shroud of Turin (L) next to one created by Luigi Garlaschelli and released in Pavia, Italy, on 5 Oct 2009/Turin Diocese (L) and Luigi Garlaschelli (R)/Turin Diocese (L) and Luigi Garlaschelli)

Italian scientist Luigi Garlaschelli tells me he has been getting lots of hate mail as well as emails of support since our Oct 5 story that he had reproduced the Shroud of Turin with material available in the Middle Ages, a feat that he says proves definitively that the linen some Christians revere as Jesus Christ's burial cloth is a medieval fake.

Given the controversy that has surrounded the Shroud, particularly since the 1988 carbon dating tests, this was hardly a surprise. One of Christianity's most disputed relics, it is locked away at Turin Cathedral in Italy and rarely exhibited. It was last on display in 2000 and is due to be shown again next year. The Catholic Church does not claim the Shroud is authentic nor that it is a matter of faith, but says it should be a powerful reminder of Christ's passion.

Until now, scientists have been at a loss to explain how the eery image like a photographic negative of a crucified man was left on the cloth.  Garlaschelli, a professor of organic chemistry at the University of Pavia, will present his findings at a conference in northern Italy this weekend.

(Photo: An archive negative image of the Shroud of Turin (L) in full length next to one created by Luigi Garlaschelli and released in Pavia, Italy, on 5 Oct 2009/Turin Diocese (L) and Luigi Garlaschelli (R)

No one expects this to be the last we hear of the Shroud. As Garlaschelli told me in our telephone interview, those who fervently believe the Shroud is real will continue to do so. Our main news website, www.reuters.com, gave a rough gauge of international interest in the Shroud in its "Most Popular" rankings. Over 24 hours after we ran the news, it was still the third most popular story out there, ahead of a host of important economic stories and the latest twists in the David Letterman sex scandal. That says something about how the Shroud still arouses passions -- whether it is 2,000 years old or only 700.

What is your feeling on the Shroud and the controversy that has surrounded it. Does it make a difference to one's faith if it is real or not?

Follow FaithWorld on Twitter at RTRFaithWorld

And if any further proof  were needed that things are changing in Obama's America, consider this: The surnames of the previous ambassadors to the Vatican were: Wilson, Shakespeare, Melady, Glendon, Flynn, Boggs,  Nicholson, Rooney, and Glendon.

In my coverage of the Vatican, I knew most of them well, a few of them very well,  and at least three -- Melady, Flynn and Nicholson (two Republicans and a Democrat) -- became friends who still keep in touch. Their kindness then and now will always be appreciated.

Still, there is a certain buzz in the air in Rome over the arrival of Diaz, who presented his credentials to Pope Benedict on Friday. The first Latino to get the post, he is Cuban-American (born in Havanna and raised in Miami).  Apart from the last ambassador, Harvard Prof. Mary Ann Glendon, Diaz perhaps knows more about Roman Catholicism and the workings of the Church than any of his predecessors.

But perhaps most significantly, Diaz is a theologian. He was professor of theology at the College of St. Benedict and St. John's University, both in Collegeville, Minnesota. He is also  a former president of the Academy of Catholic Hispanic Theologians fo the United States and board member of the Catholic Theological Society of America.

President Obama, in sum, sent a theologian ambassador to a theologian pope.

As was to be expected, Diaz made his debut at the Vatican with the words of a diplomat. His address to the pope spoke of  mutual concerns such as food shortages, an ethical response to the economic crisis. He  praised the pope as any new envoy would and promised to be a bridge builder between Washington and the Holy See.

Also as was to be expected, the pope's address to Diaz touched on issues dear to the pope, such as "issues touching the protection of human dignity and respect for the inalienable right to life from the moment of conception to natural death as well as the right to conscientious objection on the part of health care workers, and indeed all citizens." The full version of the pope's remarks to Diaz are here.

But one could only imagine how they both might enjoy a private theological discussion. If it ever happens (and I for one would not be surprised if it did)  we will probably never find out about it. Popes are not supposed to do theological one-on-ones with ambassadors.

But then again few, if any, ambassadors to the Vatican have been theologians.

(Photos: Ambassador Diaz and Pope Benedict, 2 Oct 2009/Osservatore Romano)

Follow FaithWorld on Twitter at RTRFaithWorld

(Photo: Video grab of Bishop Anders Arborelius on Swedish TV, 23 Sept 2009)

There's nothing new about tit-for-tat and finger-pointing in diplomacy and politics but the Vatican is usually quite careful not to wash its dirty laundry in public. So it was surprising to see some of the principal characters in the the long-running saga of Richard Williamson, the traditionalist bishop who sparked a crisis in Catholic-Jewish relations when he denied the extent of the Holocaust on Swedish television, now spatting in public over it.

Just when the Vatican thought it had put the Williamson affair behind it, the story has came back to haunt the Holy See. On Wednesday evening, the Swedish television network SVT aired a follow-up to its January 2009 documentary about the Society of St Pius X (SSPX). That program sparked off a public controversy because the Vatican lifted excommunications on Williamson and three other SSPX bishops three days later, creating the impression the Church either didn't know or didn't care about his Holocaust statement. In the uproar that followed, Pope Benedict once again condemned Holocaust denial and said he hadn't known about the statements in advance. Usually discreet Vatican officials publicly blamed others for not informing him.

(Photo: Bishop Richard Williamson, 28 Feb 2007/Jens Falk)

The new report on the "Uppdrag granskning" (Assignment: Investigate) program said the Vatican knew about Williamson's views well before the bans on the SSPX bishops were lifted. To make matters worse, in conjunction with the new broadcast, the website of Stockholm's Roman Catholic diocese posted a note saying Bishop Anders Arborelius and the Vatican nuncio to Sweden told the Holy See in November 2008 about the not-yet-aired interview that Williamson had given to Swedish television in which he said "I believe there were no gas chambers". The interview was recorded in Germany in November 2008 and aired in Sweden on 21 January 2009. See our latest story on this here.

Now, in an interview with the Munich newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung (excertps in German here and English here), the Vatican official at the center of the controversy, Colombian Cardinal Dario Castrillon Hoyos, is fighting back. Castrillon Hoyos was until July the head of Ecclesia Dei, the department set up by Pope John Paul in 1988 to try to bring the traditionalists back into the fold. He said "None of us knew about Bishop Williamson's statements. None of us!" and then he adds this: "And no one had the duty to know it!"

In the full text of the interview published only in the print edition, Castrillon Hoyos fired away at Bishop Arborelius for saying he informed the Vatican last November. "I regret this dubious statement very much because it is wrong," he said. "Spreading this information is slander. We store digitally all documents that we get. So Bishop Arborelius should say how, to whom and when he communicated that, and whether this was done in writing or orally."

(Photo: Cardinal Castrillon Hoyos, 25 Dec 2005/Alessandro Bianchi)

Williamson's interview and the story and reactions to it made headlines in the Italian and international media for days afterwards. Radio Vatican's German service reported on it as early as January 23. While defending himself, the cardinal implied he was completely unaware of all that for two weeks: "I was only informed of his (Williamson's) statements on Feb 5. The nunciature had informed the Secretariat of State, which then gave me the information in sealed envelope that I have kept." In his defence, he added that no other bishops had ever told him about Williamson's views.

After being presented as the guilty party by others, Castrillon Hoyos took his turn to point the finger -- at Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, the head of the Congregation of Bishops: "If anyone should have known about Williamson's statements, he was the one. He was working for many years in the Secretariat of State. And now he runs the Congregation of Bishops, which has the task over watching over the bishops."

The question of who knew what and when in the Vatican has never been fully answered and the broadside from Castrillon Hoyos did not shed much light. The Vatican press office has several times asserted that Pope Benedict did not know anything about Williamson's denial of the Holocaust when the excommunications were lifted. "Affirming or even insinuating that the Pope was informed beforehand of Williamson's position is absolutely groundless," chief Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi said on Wednesday when before the follow-up program that Swedish television was about to air.

(Photo: Cardinal Battista Re, 13 April 2005/Max Rossi)

According to Vatican sources, Lombardi himself was involved in a spat with Castrillion Hoyos earlier this year. He told the French newspaper La Croix in February that if anyone in the Vatican should have known about Williamson's background, it was Castrillon Hoyos. The cardinal was reportedly infuriated and pulled rank and some sources say he demanded an apology from Lombardi, which he got.

The Vatican's communications disaster, both internal and external, over the Williamson affair was clear from the start. Cardinal Walter Kasper, head of the the Vatican office that oversees relations with Jews, was furious at the time of the lifting of the excommunications because he had not been informed ahead of time. Even the pope said that the Vatican had to learn how to use the internet. After the Williamson affair many journalists noted that his positions on the Holocaust and Jews were out there for all to see for some time.

What do you think the whole saga says about how the Vatican communicates internally and externally?

Follow FaithWorld on Twitter at RTRFaithWorld

The editorial came several weeks after relations between the government and the influential Church nose-dived when a newspaper owned by the Berlusconi family launched a personal attack against a top Catholic editor, forcing him to resign. Read our previous blogs on that episode here and here.

In the latest episode of a duel between the Church and the prime minister, the Famiglia Cristiana editorial made a number of clear references to Berlusconi and scandals or controversies that have surrounded him recently. In a laundry list of what it said were examples of the country's moral degradation, it spoke of "escorts" and "high-class prostitutes." Berlusconi has been at the centre of media attention in Italy and abroad over allegations that he spent a night with a call-girl in his Rome residence. The woman, Patrizia D'Addario, taped their private conversations and says she and other escorts were paid to attend his parties.

(Photo: Patrizia D'Addario in Otranto, 19 Aug, 2009/Fabio Serino)

Berlusconi has not denied sleeping with the woman but says he did not know she was an escort and says he has never paid for sex.

The Famiglia Cristiana editorial also spoke of women politicians and television personalities chosen "for their looks rather than intelligence."

One of Berlusconi's cabinet ministers is a former showgirl who has had a meteoric rise in politics. Berlusconi's wife Veronica, who is seeking a divorce over his womanising, last April said his party's selection of women candidates was a "shamelessly trashy" process aimed at keeping him "entertained."

After listing its complaints, the editorial added sarcastically: "But everything is fine. The important thing is to spread optimism in spades and celebrate the triumphs of the Prince at L'Aquila, hiding the problems of a tough autumn for workers and families, who see themselves becoming always poorer."

The reference to the "Prince at L'Aquila" was not lost on anyone. On Tuesday, critics accused Berlusconi of hogging the media spotlight during a programme on state television about the consignment of temporary homes to victims of the L'Aquila quake.

The opposition was furious after both state broadcaster RAI and Berlusconi's Mediaset network abruptly postponed rival talk shows to give him more exposure.

(Photo: Berlusconi on RAI television, 15 Sept 2009/Remo Casilli)

The government's relations with the influential Church have been icy in recent months in part because of Catholic media criticism of Berlusconi's private life.

Earlier this month Il Giornale, a newspaper owned by the Berlusconi family, launched front-page attacks on Dino Boffo, the editor of Avvenire newspaper of the Italian bishops conference, to retaliate for the editorials he wrote against Berlusconi. Il Giornale said the editor had a sexual scandal in his past. Boffo denied the charges but resigned after two weeks, saying he was innocent but was stepping down for the good of the Church.

Follow FaithWorld on Twitter at RTRFaithWorld