SUMMARY:
- RESULTS OF THE STRUGGLE AGAINST CHILD ABUSE IN THE U.S.A.
- FROM PARABLES TO TWITTER
- VATICAN APOSTOLIC LIBRARY TO DIGITISE A MILLION PAGES OF
MANUSCRIPTS AND INCUNABULA
______________________________________
THE
HOLY FATHER AND EUROPEAN VOLUNTARY WORKERS
Vatican
City, 13 April 2012 (VIS) - An Italian book entitled "Il Santo
Padre e i volontari europei" was presented this morning at the
headquarters of the Pontifical Council "Cor Unum" by
Cardinal Robert Sarah and Msgr. Giampietro Dal Toso, respectively
president and secretary of the council, and by Michel Roy, secretary
of Caritas Internationalis.
A
communique released by "Cor Unum" explains that the book
contains, "apart from an address by the Pope on the subject of
voluntary work, the most important contributions made during a
conference on that topic held in the Vatican last year. The
conference, which took place in the context of the European Year of
Volunteering, was attended by bishops with pastoral responsibility
for charitable work and representatives of European charity
organisations". The presentation "will also serve to focus
on future Church strategies in this field", the communique says.
Speaking
during last November's conference Kristalina Georgieva, European
Commissioner for International Cooperation, Humanitarian Aid and
Crisis Response, focused on the civic importance of voluntary work,
especially in view of the current economic and cultural crisis. She
also recalled that around twenty per cent of the European population
undertakes some kind of voluntary activity. "Volunteer work",
she said, "is a great resource for Europe and part of the
continent's DNA".
Addressing
the participants at the end of the conference last year, Benedict XVI
noted that their meeting was taking place on the liturgical memorial
of St. Martin of Tours. "Often portrayed sharing his mantle with
a poor man", he said, "Martin became a model of charity
throughout Europe and indeed the whole world. Nowadays, volunteer
work as a service of charity has become a universally recognised
element of our modern culture. Nonetheless, its origins can still be
seen in the particularly Christian concern for safeguarding, without
discrimination, the dignity of the human person created in the image
and likeness of God. If these spiritual roots are denied or obscured
and the criteria of our collaboration become purely utilitarian, what
is most distinctive about the service you provide risks being lost,
to the detriment of society as a whole".
RESULTS
OF THE STRUGGLE AGAINST CHILD ABUSE IN THE U.S.A.
Vatican
City, 13 April 2012 (VIS) - The annual report for 2011 on the
implementation of the U.S. Church's "Charter for the Protection
of Children and Young People" was presented recently in the
United States. The Charter, which advocates a zero tolerance policy,
was promulgated by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops
in 2002 and is observed by all Catholic dioceses in the country. It
contains a series of rules and makes prevision for periodic checks to
control efficiency and determine the need for any further
improvements.
According
to an article in the "Osservatore Romano", the results for
2011 throw light on ongoing efforts to ensure the protection of
children and young people from sexual abuse by the clergy, a
commitment which constitutes a priority for the local Church. The
report shows that almost all the the archdioceses, dioceses and
eparchies in the U.S.A. have respected the rules laid down in the
Charter. The Charter itself was updated last year by introducing the
offence of child pornography, and by placing abuse against people
with disabilities on a par with abuse against minors.
The
annual report includes 683 new complaints of abuse made by adults,
most of which refer to incidents which took place between 1960 and
1984. Assistance programmes have been offered to the people involved
and 453 of them have accepted. The report also includes twenty-one
accusations presented by minors; some of these have been considered
reliable by the police, three have turned out to be false and the
rest are still being investigated. As for those accused, 253 have
since died, 58 have been reduced to the lay state and 281 have been
relieved of their pastoral duties.
The
bishops note that the results must not encourage a lowering of guard.
Presenting the 2011 report, Cardinal Timothy Dolan, archbishop of New
York and president of the United States Conference of Catholic
Bishops, highlights how "even if most of the complaints refer to
the past, the Church must remain vigilant. She must do everything
possible to ensure the abuses are not repeated, We must all continue
to work for complete healing and reconciliation with the victims".
For the bishops, the question of abuse "is a shared priority",
he says. In earlier remarks Cardinal Dolan had emphasised that all
priests found guilty of "these intolerable crimes" will be
permanently removed from the ministry.
The
report also recalls how more than two million volunteers throughout
the country have participated in training courses on protection, held
in parishes and schools. Moreover, more than 4.8 million children
have been taught how to recognise and protect themselves from
attempts at abuse. The U.S. Church's efforts in this field include a
series of initiatives culminating in the National Child Abuse
Prevention Month, held each year in April.
FROM
PARABLES TO TWITTER
Vatican
City, 13 April 2012 (VIS) - A congress entitled "From Parables
to Twitter" is due to begin this afternoon at the "Istituto
Massimo" in Rome. It will focus on the challenges and
opportunities for evangelisation presented by modern communications
technology.
The
conference will begin with some remarks by Fr. Francesco Tata S.J.,
rector of the "Istituto Massimo". Participants will include
Ettore Franzini, professor of new communications media at Rome's
LUMSA University; Fabio Bolzetta, journalist of TV2000 and
spokesperson of "WeCa", the association of Catholic
webmasters, and Lucandrea Massaro, social media editor of "Aleteia",
a Christian social network created under the patronage of the
Pontifical Council for Social Communications and the Pontifical
Council for Promoting New Evangelisation. The moderator of the event
will be Alessandro Gisotti, a Vatican Radio journalist.
VATICAN
APOSTOLIC LIBRARY TO DIGITISE A MILLION PAGES OF MANUSCRIPTS AND
INCUNABULA
Vatican
City, 13 April 2012 (VIS) - Msgr. Cesare Pasini, prefect of the
Vatican Apostolic Library, announced in yesterday's "Osservatore
Romano" that over the next five years 1.5 million pages of
manuscripts and incunabula held in the Vatican and in the Bodleian
Library in Oxford will be be transferred into digital format. This is
the largest such initiative yet carried out by the Vatican Library
and is being put into effect with the assistance of the Polonsky
Foundation.
Two
thirds of the works to be digitised - around one million pages or
2,500 books - will be chosen from the Greek and Hebrew manuscripts
and incunabula in the Vatican Apostolic Library. The institution
possesses 8,900 incunabula, making it the fourth largest collection
in the world. A catalogue of the incunabula has recently been
published on the internet and, thanks to this latest project, it is
hoped to make more than 800 complete works available online. They
include the famous "De Europa" by Pope Pius II, printed by
Albrecht Kunne in Memmingen before 1491, and the 42-Line Latin Bible
of Johann Gutenberg, the first book printed using moveable type,
between 1454 and 1455.
Certain
particularly important Hebrew manuscripts are also due to be
digitised, including the "Sifra", written some time between
the end of the ninth and the middle of the tenth century and perhaps
the oldest surviving Jewish codex; a Bible written in Italy around
the year 1100; commentaries on the Bible and the Talmud; Halakhah and
Kabbalah, as well as writings on philosophy, medicine and astronomy.
Among
the Greek manuscripts to be transferred into digital format are works
by Homer, Sophocles, Plato and Hypocrites, as well as New Testament
codices and works by Church Fathers, many decorated with Byzantine
miniatures.
As
well as its 8,900 incunabula, the Vatican Apostolic Library also
possesses more than 80,000 manuscripts. Msgr. Pasini explains that
transferring them to digital format is a way of "better
conserving cultural heritage, facilitating consultation and ensuring
a high-quality reproduction before any eventual degradation of the
original. It also means making those works immediately accessible to
many more people online".
The
Vatican Apostolic Library’s digitisation project began two years
ago, since when the number of manuscripts available in digital format
has been gradually increasing thanks to the efforts of the library's
own reproduction laboratory. There are also a number of initiatives
under way in collaboration with other cultural institutions, such as
the ongoing digitisation of the Latin Palatine manuscripts being
carried out with the University of Heidelberg.
You
can find more information at: www.visnews.org
The
news items contained in the Vatican Information Service may be used,
in part or in their entirety, by quoting the source:
V.I.S.
-Vatican Information Service.
Copyright
© Vatican Information Service 00120 Vatican City
No comments:
Post a Comment