From today’s GA. The signs read: “”If Benedict doesn’t come to La Sapienza, La Sapienza goes to Benedict” and “Students with the Pope” Image source.
The Italian press is reporting that that Cardinal Ruini, the Pope’s vicar for the Diocese of Rome, is encouraging the faithful to give a large show of support for the Pope by attending the Papal Angelus at noon on Sunday. Needless to say, there’s no way I’m missing that.Mainstream political opinion in Italy is almost entirely in support of the Pope with reference to the whole Sapienza debacle. Even those who do not agree with him see this as a defeat for the principle of free speech. Amongst ordinary Italians there tends to be an attitude of great embarrassment that the Pope seems to be more welcome in Turkey than he is in the country’s largest university.
Teresa Benedetta translates the catechesis, still on St. Augustine, of course:
Dear brothers and sisters!
Today, as last Wednesday, I wish to speak of the great Bishop of Hippo, St. Augustine.
Four years before he died, he wanted to name his successor. So on Sept. 26, 426, he assembled the faithful in the Basilica of Peace in Hippo, to present his choice to the faithful.
He said: “In this life we are all mortal, but the last day of life for anyone is always uncertain. Nevertheless, in our childhood, we expect to reach adolescence; in adolescence, young age; in young age, adulthood; in adulthood, maturity; in maturity, old age. We are not sure of reaching all these stages, but we hope. Old age, on the other hand, has nothing more to look forward to, and its own length is uncertain… By the will of God, I came to this city in the vigor of my life, but now my youth has passed, and I am an old man” (Ep 213,1).
At this point, Augustine gave the name of his designated successor, the priest Heraclius. The assembly erupted in approving applause, repeating twenty times, “Thanks be to God! Praise be to Christ!”
With other acclamations, the faithful greeted what Augustine said about his intentions for his future: he wanted to dedicate the years left to him to a more intense study of Sacred Scriptures (cfr Ep 213, 6).
In fact, there followed four years of extraordinary intellectual activity. He was able to finish important works, he undertook some more which were less demanding, and he held public debates with heretics – he always sought dialog – and intervened to promote peace in the African provinces besieged by barbarian tribes from the south.
This is the context in which he wrote to the Count Darius, who had come to Africa to repair a dispute between Count Boniface and the imperial court, which the Mauritanian tribes were taking advantage of to make their incursions.
“The greatest title of glory,” he wrote, “is to kill war itself with words, instead of killing men by the sword, and to obtain and maintain peace with peace, and not through war. Certainly. even those who fight wars, if they are good men, want peace, but at the cost of spilling blood. You, on the contrary, have been sent here precisely to prevent that anyone should seek to shed the blood of others” (Ep 229,2).
Unfortunately, the hope for a pacification of the African territories was destined to be disappointed: in May 429, the Vandals, invited to Africa by Boniface himself out of spite, went beyond the Strait of Gibraltar and poured into Mauritania. The invasion quickly spread through the other rich provinces of Africa.
In May and June 430, “the destroyers of the Roman Empire” as Possidius described the barbarians (Vita, 30, 1), had surrounded Hippo, which they besieged.
Boniface had sought refuge in Hippo, having reconciled too late with the court, and now he tried in vain to keep the barbarians at bay. Possidius describes the sorrow of Augustine: “More than usual, tears became his bread day and night, and having now reached the end of his days, bitterness and mourning marked his old age” (Vita 28,6).
He explained: “In fact, he saw, this man of God, the massacres and destruction in the city; the houses in the countryside levelled and their inhabitants killed by the enemy, or forced to flee in confusion; the churches deprived of priests and ministers; the sacred virgins and the religious dispersed all over – some of them placed under torture, others killed with the sword, others made prisoner, losing the integrity of body and soul and even their faith, reduced to a long and sorrowful slavery at the hands of the enemy” (ibid., 28,8).
Even if he was old and tired, Augustine nevertheless stayed on the job, comforting himself and others with prayer and meditation on the mysterious designs of Providence. He spoke at this time about the “aging of the world’ – and the Roman world at that time was old – he spoke of this aging, as he did years earlier to comfort the refugees who had come from Italy, when the Goths under Alaric invaded Rome in 410.
In old age, he said, ailments abound: coughing, colds, blindness, anxiety, exhaustion. But if the world grows old, Christ is perpetually young. Thus, his invitation: “Do not refuse to be rejuvenated in union with Christ, even in an old world. He tells you, Do not be afraid, your youth will be renewed as that of the eagle” (cfr Serm. 81,8).
I sent La Sapienza an email of protest.