Vatican: 'Our Fathers', on the New Pontificate's Enigmas

The Ansa
June 21, 2013

http://www.ansamed.info/ansamed/en/news/nations/italy/2013/06/21/Vatican-Our-Fathers-the-new-pontificate-enigmas_8907095.html

(ANSAmed) - VATICAN CITY, JUNE 21 - Pope Francis ''doesn't have much time to set Peter's boat afloat once more'', for it has been ''somewhat battered by the pedophile priest storm and the Curia divisions which Ratzinger's pontificate ran aground on''. And if on the one hand it is ''necessary to repair the sails and the rudder'' and ''to throw overboard certain foul-smelling excess baggage'', it is also true that ''time presses'': it can play in favor, as in the case of John XXIII whose Council ''opened the Church up to a new era''; or it could on the other hand turn into an insurmountable obstacle. The many challenges of Bergoglio's pontificate, their roots firmly sunk into the knots left untangled by his predecessors John Paul II and Benedict XVI, are the central theme of ''Our Fathers'' (Manni publishers, 206 pages, 14 euros), in which Vatican expert Elisa Pinna offers an attentive and in-depth view of the historic passage the Church has recently experienced: the one that began with Ratzinger's shocking resignation and ended with the election of the pope ''that came from the end of the world''. A pope whose ''Franciscan simplicity'', ''attention to the poor'', and ''personal frugality''', are ''extraordinarily in tune with the sentiment shared by a majority of the faithful (and not only the faithful) in a Europe crushed by an economic crisis that has now transformed into a social crisis''.