Jesuit Father Antonio Spadaro,  the editor of the influential Jesuit journal Civilta Cattolica, U.S. Cardinal Donald W. Wuerl of Washington, a Portuguese poet, a Spanish architect, two astrophysicists, a Belgian journalist and a curator at the Vatican Museums were named by Pope Benedict XVI to help advise the Pontifical Council for Culture.

For the first time since 1993, religious and laymen — not just cardinals and bishops — were named full members of the council.

The new lay members are French philosopher and writer Jean-Luc Marion and Estonian classical composer Arvo Part. Eleven new consultors or advisers were named to the council, including Bruno Coppi, a professor of plasma physics and astrophysics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Others include: Father Jose Tolentino De Mendonca, a Portuguese theologian and poet; Santiago Calatrava, a Spanish architect; Piero Benvenuti, an Italian astrophysicist; Wolf Joachim Singer, a professor of neurology and head of the Max Planck Institute for Brain Research in Germany; Marguerite Peeters, a Belgian journalist; and Micol Forti, the curator of the Vatican Museums’ collection of contemporary art.

Blessed John Paul II created the Pontifical Council for Culture in 1982 with the aim of helping the world’s cultures encounter the message of the Gospel. In 1993, the late pope united the council with the council for dialogue with nonbelievers thus paving the way for using culture as a bridge for dialogue between people of faith and those who profess no religious beliefs.

In 1742,  Boskovic was consulted, with other men of science, by Pope Benedict XIV, as to the best means of securing the stability of the dome of St. Peter’s in which a crack had been discovered. His suggestion of placing five concentric iron bands was adopted.

The dome, for which his lasting solution saved Michelangelo’s work from destruction, is featured in the stamp’s background.

The presentation was hosted on September 13th by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and European Integration of the Republic of Croatia, who in addition to the stamp, decided to mark the third centenary of Boskovic‟s birth also by publishing the book “Rudjer Boskovic in the Diplomatic Service of the Dubrovnik Republic” in two bilingual editions: Croatian – French and Croatian – English

“This was really an exciting event. This was the first time that Galileo showed off his telescope in public to the educated people of Rome, which was the center of culture in Italy at that time,” said Jesuit Brother Guy Consolmagno, Vatican astronomer, as he stood on the same knoll.

Today, the grassy hill is part of the American Academy in Rome, which celebrated its connection to Galileo earlier this year with a number of events that included a discussion of faith and science with Brother Consolmagno.

The Renaissance men gathered on the Janiculum hill included Jesuit scholars, such as Jesuit Father Christopher Clavius, who helped devise the Gregorian calendar 40 years earlier.

Brother Consolmagno told CNS that the unveiling of the telescope was so significant because “this is the first time that science is done with an instrument. It’s not something that just any philosopher could look at. You had to have the right tool to be able to be able to see it,” because one’s own eyes were no longer enough.

“People then wanted to look for themselves and see if they were seeing the same things Galileo was seeing,” he said.

People often don’t realize that Galileo was in very good standing with the church and with many church leaders for decades before his trial in 1633, he said. Just a few weeks after he demonstrated his telescope on the Roman hillside, Galileo was “feted at the Roman College by the Jesuits, who were really impressed with the work he had done. At this point, he had burst onto the scene as one of the great intellectual lights of the 17th century,” Brother Consolmagno said.

“Even at his biggest point of trouble, Galileo was always a faithful son of the church — his two daughters were nuns — and he was friends with many of the people of Rome, including future popes,” he said.

Brother Consolmagno said the real reason that Galileo was eventually brought before the Inquisition and found guilty of suspected heresy is still a mystery. Numerous authors have proposed different findings and the trial is still “a great puzzle for historians,” he said.

Thanks to having many friends in high places, Galileo for years managed to evade any problems for maintaining that the earth revolves around the sun, the Jesuit said.
Galileo received permission, including from the pope’s personal censor, to publish his book, “Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems,” he said.

“He’s done everything right, he’s followed all the rules and suddenly out of nowhere he’s called to trial,” he said.

Galileo was willing and eager to make any corrections to the text, he said, but the inquisitors would not allow it. They were unable to find him guilty of heresy, however, “so they changed the verdict at the last minute to found guilty of vehement suspicion of heresy,” Brother Consolmagno said.

Whatever the political reasons were behind the trial and its verdict, he said the “terrible mistake” was that the church had used its religious authority for political ends.

Galileo’s reputation was restored in 1992 by a special Vatican commission established by Pope John Paul II.

[Catholic News Service]

In an exclusive to National Jesuit News, Rogers shares his experience of the late pontiff’s beatification…

In the past few days it has always been crowded around the simplest tomb in St. Peter’s Basilica. This is not the tomb of St. Peter, with its grand Bernini Baldacchino, nor is it the one of the tombs of a pope surrounded by grand sculptures. This is a simple marble slab with the name of the pope buried there, engraved in red. The word around Rome is that the waiting list to offer a Mass at the altar of this tomb is already weeks long. Michelangelo’s Pietà, usually the main attraction in this section of the basilica, garners only a few visitors now. The crush of people has made it difficult to keep the Blessed Sacrament Chapel open lately, and so the tabernacle has shifted to the front of the church from where it usually resides. There, wedged between the chapels of the Pietà and the Blessed Sacrament, the resting place of Blessed John Paul II is simple, and yet there is a profound sense of the importance of this space to so many people.

When word broke back in January that John Paul II would be beatified last Sunday, I was among the first in my Jesuit community to say that I would be leaving Rome. Citing my desire to flee ahead of the crowds, I had planned to go south into the mountains of Calabria, or north to Tuscany. One thing, however, was sure. I was going to get out. Over the course of a couple of months my thoughts on this changed, though. The truth is that as the beatification day approached I wanted to be here more and more. When the invitation to distribute communion for the beatification arrived, all of my ideas about fleeing the city were cancelled, and I responded that I would be there.

It was 5:30am on the morning of May 1, 2011 and although tired, I headed off to a church event here in Rome. Wearing an old borrowed cassock, I crossed the Tiber not far from the General Curia of the Society and waited for the police escort to take us to where we would be distributing communion. In the crowd of over a million people, all around us you could hear languages from all over the world. There were groups of people singing and dancing. There was a sense of joy, and even among the many police who were clearly working overtime, there seemed to be a sense of relief that, for once, there was a gathering of people here in Rome that wasn’t a protest. The moment of this celebration was a moment to celebrate that one of us, someone whom we knew, had almost assuredly gone before us into the place where we all hope to go.

I have been wondering over the past few days just what it is that changed in me over the course of those months. Why did I want to stay here in Rome? Pictures of John Paul II have gone up all over the city; calendars with his face were on sale in nearly every gift shop. The number of Polish pilgrims to Rome increased exponentially; we had to add a Polish translation of the guidebook to the rooms of St. Ignatius. Churches put up little displays about John Paul II’s visit to their parishes. Even some of my Italian friends who are a little jaded about religion in general expressed excitement. It’s hard not to get swept up in that sort of energy, but the answer to why I found myself finally wanting to be here came one evening when I was out for a walk around the Quirinale with my friend Fiore, who works for one of the Church’s many social service agencies here in Rome.

In talking about John Paul II, Fiore told me about how much this Polish pope was loved by so many of the people here in Rome. It wasn’t because they always agreed with him, which they didn’t. It certainly wasn’t for his immediate mastery of Italian, which he asked them to excuse him for within minutes of being named pope. Rather, it was for one simple reason: they felt like they knew him. Over the course of his papacy, Blessed John Paul II, like any good diocesan bishop, visited the parishes of the diocese of Rome and got to know the people. He welcomed the young people of the Rome inside of the imposing walls of the Vatican, and did his best, despite coming from what he himself called “a far off land,” to do as the Romans did, and be as Roman as he could.

In that moment it struck me why I was getting more and more excited about John Paul’s beatification. The truth is that what made this pope special for Fiore, and for myself as well, was the sense that he was among us. We saw that he had a sense of humor; that he could laugh and be joyful. We knew that he hadn’t always handled everything perfectly as pope, but we still could see something that was genuinely admirable in this man as a human being. We were the JPII generation of the Church, and for the better part of our lives, he has been the only pope we have ever known.

His simple tomb makes sense. For all of the reasons why we admire Bl. John Paul II, something more ornate would betray the memory of a man whom we admire because of his common touch. My generation heard him offer to us the opportunity to open the doors to Christ, and to not be afraid to enter into that life. Somehow in the paradox of this simple, yet most visited tomb in the basilica, the reality of the weekend comes into focus. The tomb reminds us, and perhaps especially those of us just starting out in a life of service to the Church and the people of God, that the truth is that we don’t need to be perfect, or universally loved, or able to speak languages well. It does this in one word, etched in red on white marble, describing a man that we knew all too well. “Beato,” “Blessed.”

In an exclusive to National Jesuit News, Rogers shares his experience of the late pontiff’s beatification…

In the past few days it has always been crowded around the simplest tomb in St. Peter’s Basilica. This is not the tomb of St. Peter, with its grand Bernini Baldacchino, nor is it the one of the tombs of a pope surrounded by grand sculptures. This is a simple marble slab with the name of the pope buried there, engraved in red. The word around Rome is that the waiting list to offer a Mass at the altar of this tomb is already weeks long. Michelangelo’s Pietà, usually the main attraction in this section of the basilica, garners only a few visitors now. The crush of people has made it difficult to keep the Blessed Sacrament Chapel open lately, and so the tabernacle has shifted to the front of the church from where it usually resides. There, wedged between the chapels of the Pietà and the Blessed Sacrament, the resting place of Blessed John Paul II is simple, and yet there is a profound sense of the importance of this space to so many people.

When word broke back in January that John Paul II would be beatified last Sunday, I was among the first in my Jesuit community to say that I would be leaving Rome. Citing my desire to flee ahead of the crowds, I had planned to go south into the mountains of Calabria, or north to Tuscany. One thing, however, was sure. I was going to get out. Over the course of a couple of months my thoughts on this changed, though. The truth is that as the beatification day approached I wanted to be here more and more. When the invitation to distribute communion for the beatification arrived, all of my ideas about fleeing the city were cancelled, and I responded that I would be there.

It was 5:30am on the morning of May 1, 2011 and although tired, I headed off to a church event here in Rome. Wearing an old borrowed cassock, I crossed the Tiber not far from the General Curia of the Society and waited for the police escort to take us to where we would be distributing communion. In the crowd of over a million people, all around us you could hear languages from all over the world. There were groups of people singing and dancing. There was a sense of joy, and even among the many police who were clearly working overtime, there seemed to be a sense of relief that, for once, there was a gathering of people here in Rome that wasn’t a protest. The moment of this celebration was a moment to celebrate that one of us, someone whom we knew, had almost assuredly gone before us into the place where we all hope to go.

I have been wondering over the past few days just what it is that changed in me over the course of those months. Why did I want to stay here in Rome? Pictures of John Paul II have gone up all over the city; calendars with his face were on sale in nearly every gift shop. The number of Polish pilgrims to Rome increased exponentially; we had to add a Polish translation of the guidebook to the rooms of St. Ignatius. Churches put up little displays about John Paul II’s visit to their parishes. Even some of my Italian friends who are a little jaded about religion in general expressed excitement. It’s hard not to get swept up in that sort of energy, but the answer to why I found myself finally wanting to be here came one evening when I was out for a walk around the Quirinale with my friend Fiore, who works for one of the Church’s many social service agencies here in Rome.

In talking about John Paul II, Fiore told me about how much this Polish pope was loved by so many of the people here in Rome. It wasn’t because they always agreed with him, which they didn’t. It certainly wasn’t for his immediate mastery of Italian, which he asked them to excuse him for within minutes of being named pope. Rather, it was for one simple reason: they felt like they knew him. Over the course of his papacy, Blessed John Paul II, like any good diocesan bishop, visited the parishes of the diocese of Rome and got to know the people. He welcomed the young people of the Rome inside of the imposing walls of the Vatican, and did his best, despite coming from what he himself called “a far off land,” to do as the Romans did, and be as Roman as he could.

In that moment it struck me why I was getting more and more excited about John Paul’s beatification. The truth is that what made this pope special for Fiore, and for myself as well, was the sense that he was among us. We saw that he had a sense of humor; that he could laugh and be joyful. We knew that he hadn’t always handled everything perfectly as pope, but we still could see something that was genuinely admirable in this man as a human being. We were the JPII generation of the Church, and for the better part of our lives, he has been the only pope we have ever known.

His simple tomb makes sense. For all of the reasons why we admire Bl. John Paul II, something more ornate would betray the memory of a man whom we admire because of his common touch. My generation heard him offer to us the opportunity to open the doors to Christ, and to not be afraid to enter into that life. Somehow in the paradox of this simple, yet most visited tomb in the basilica, the reality of the weekend comes into focus. The tomb reminds us, and perhaps especially those of us just starting out in a life of service to the Church and the people of God, that the truth is that we don’t need to be perfect, or universally loved, or able to speak languages well. It does this in one word, etched in red on white marble, describing a man that we knew all too well. “Beato,” “Blessed.”

The meeting was sponsored by the pontifical councils for culture and for social communications. The councils accepted requests to attend, then drew the names of the 150 participants once the requests were divided according to geography, language and whether the blog was personal or institutional.

The Vatican meeting was not designed as a how-to seminar, and it was not aimed at developing a code of conduct, but rather to acknowledge the role of blogs in modern communications and to start a dialogue between the bloggers and the Vatican.

Archbishop Claudio Celli, president of Pontifical Council for Social Communications, welcomed the bloggers to the Vatican and told them the Vatican wanted to begin “a dialogue between faith and the emerging culture” that is the blogosphere.

Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi, Vatican spokesman, told the bloggers that while Pope Benedict XVI “is a person who does not Tweet or have a personal blog, he is very attentive and knows well what is happening in the world” and supports Catholic media efforts, as seen by his Good Friday television interview and by his book-length interview with the German writer Peter Seewald.

“Bloggers are important” for forming and informing church members, Father Lombardi said, but anyone who influences what Catholics think must recognize the responsibility that brings with it.

Father Lombardi said he had to thank bloggers for the times they acted to explain and spread church teaching and the thought of Pope Benedict.

But he also said that the whole question of bloggers’ self-centeredness and “ego” is “one of the problems which is worth reflecting on,” because while it is a danger for all communicators, a communicator who calls him- or herself Catholic must focus first on serving others.

[Catholic News Service]

A new Vatican exhibit highlights the life of a Jesuit missionary whose extraordinary intelligence, culture and open-mindedness helped him bring Christianity to imperial China four centuries ago.

The exhibit is part of a series of events marking the 400th anniversary of the death of Jesuit Father Matteo Ricci, an Italian Jesuit who spent 28 years evangelizing, absorbing Chinese culture and bringing Western science to the faraway Asian continent.
The show, which was to open Oct. 30 in the Braccio di Carlo Magno hall in St. Peter’s Square, is titled “On the Crest of History, Father Matteo Ricci (1552-1610): Between Rome and Peking” (the name formerly used for the Chinese capital Beijing).

It was Father Ricci’s scientific acumen and enthusiasm for cultural exchange that won the trust and admiration of the Ming Dynasty Emperor Wanli. The relationship ensured that he and his Jesuit brothers would have the freedom to evangelize, the show’s organizers explained in a news conference at the Vatican Oct. 28.

A proficient cartographer, Father Ricci was perhaps most appreciated for the maps of the world he made for the Chinese, who at the time had little knowledge of the other continents, said Antonio Paolucci, director of the Vatican Museums and head curator of the exhibit.

The maps Father Ricci drew, as well as many of the European scientific instruments he brought to amaze and share with his Chinese hosts, are among the many items on view in the show.

“Matteo Ricci went to China and seduced the Chinese, offering himself as a man of science: a cartographer, an astronomer, a mathematician,” and by bringing instruments like astrolabes and mechanized clocks, Paolucci said.

“He was honored and admired,” immersing himself so much in Chinese culture that “he became more Chinese than the Chinese,” Paolucci said.

Father Ricci also translated many works, including a Catholic catechism into Chinese and the teachings of Confucius into Portuguese, which Paolucci explained was the lingua franca of the time.

Born in 1552 in Macerata, in central Italy, Matteo Ricci entered the Jesuit order in 1571. After years of study, he sailed to India, where he was ordained in 1580.

After first traveling to Macao, in 1582 he and another priest established a Jesuit residence in Zhaoqing, a city in the Guangdong province. The order encountered difficulties and hostility over the next few years, but Father Ricci was instrumental in eventually opening more residences for Jesuit missionaries.

In 1601, after overcoming many obstacles, he arrived in Beijing, where he was admired and befriended by the elite of the city. There he stayed until his death at 58. The emperor made an unheard-of concession, allowing Father Ricci, a foreigner, to be buried in Beijing.

Bishop Claudio Giuliodori of Macerata said that Father Ricci’s “extraordinary missionary adventure brought him to build, for the first time in history, a true bridge of dialogue and exchange between Europe and China.”

In a message to the Diocese of Macerata inaugurating the anniversary celebrations, Pope Benedict XVI wrote that it was Father Ricci’s great respect for Chinese traditions that “distinguished his mission to search for harmony between the noble and millenary Chinese civilization with the Christian novelty.”

The exhibit is divided into two parts. The first section highlights the Jesuit order and scientific knowledge of the time; it includes an immense painting from 1619 of St. Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Jesuits, by Peter Paul Rubens and scientific instruments from the 16th and 17th centuries, including astrolabes, telescopes, early mechanical clocks, and Ptolemaic and Copernican models of the earth.

The second part of the exhibit is dedicated to Father Ricci’s stay in China; it includes displays of his translations and examples of documents he wrote in Chinese, Portuguese and Italian; Chinese tapestries; 17th- and 18th-century Chinese statuary; and a colorful early-20th-century altar honoring Confucius that belongs to the Vatican Museums.

The show is scheduled to remain open until Jan. 24.