Vatican spokesman says pope did not ask Kissinger to be his adviser

CATHOLIC REVIEW

JANUARY 19, 2012

VATICAN CITY (CNS) — Pope Benedict XVI does not have a foreign affairs advisory board, and he has not asked former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger to become one of his advisers, the Vatican spokesman said.

Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi said it is true that Kissinger met privately with the pope Sept. 28 and that Mary Ann Glendon, a U.S. law professor and president of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences, has invited Kissinger to speak to the academy at the Vatican in late April.

“Those are the only two concrete facts,” Father Lombardi told Catholic News Service.

Articles in Italian and U.S. newspapers reporting that the pope had asked Kissinger to become an adviser or consultant “are without any foundation,” he said Dec. 4.

A New York-based correspondent for the Italian newspaper La Stampa wrote Nov. 4 that Kissinger had told an “important member of the Italian government” of the papal offer and that “a diplomatic source” at the Vatican had confirmed that “an important dialogue is under way” between the pope and Kissinger.

The rumor has been circulating in newspapers and on the Internet since the newspaper article was published."

https://www.archbalt.org/vatican-spokesman-says-pope-did-not-ask-kissinger-to-be-his-adviser/

Henry Kissinger May Contribute to Vatican Newspaper

"I very much like the changes that have been made at the Vatican Newspaper as well as other communication outlets of the Vatican. I still think we are moving at a snails space and both need to be available more to the worldwide audinece of Catholics but we are getting there.

Anywho, The Ratzinger Froum has translated this Piece from a Italian Catholic paper , La Stampa, that I thought was interesting:

A year of change in 'the Pope's newspaper':

Benedict XVI has encouraged its use of non-Catholic contributors by

GIACOMO GALEAZZI

Sept. 29, 2008 .

VATICAN CITY - Rabbis, Anglican bishops, Orthodox prelates, Muslim intellectuals, atheist opinion-makers (in the first line, historian and political philosopher Ernesto Galli Della Loggia and essayist Aldo Schiavone) and women: increasingly, L'Osservatore Romano has taken on board "non-Catholic and non-believing intellectuals' as guest writers.

Giovanni Maria Gian, professor and historian of Christianity, who completes his first year today as editor of the Pope's newspaper, points to the gains that have been made, at the behest of Benedict XVI, in partibus infidelium (on the part of infidels).

The objective of his 'publisher' Joseph Ratzinger, he said, is "to potentiate information to on other Christian confessions and other religions" by opening the Osservatore to 'a growing number of non-Catholic collaborators'.

Vian explained that the Pontiff "follows his newspaper with great attention" and had requested expressly for "a vast international breadth which takes all points of view into account" and to "publish more photographs, illustrations and art reproductions" and The Pope wants "a newspaper that is graphically inviting, with a greater use of color photographs; many interviews; one that can be influential in the cultural debate; and more room for women writers."

The golden list of those who have guest-written for L'Osservatore in the past year includes the Archbishop of Canterbury, Archbishop Rowan Williams, Primate of the Anglican Church, along with "representatives of Protestant and other Christian Churches, particularly the Oriental and the Orthodox".

The ecumenical dialog, in fact, is "a priority of the Holy See and therefore, of its newspaper as well". Open doors, too, for Muslim byliners, such as the Algerian-born Muslim scholar Khaled Fouad Allam, ex-deputy of the Partito Democrata; Hanna Salameh, member of the Union of Jordanian Writers, Jordn's League for Human Rights, and the scientific committee of the Oasis international center for study and research founded by Cardinal Angelo Scola, patriarch of Venice, in 2004; Khaled Abd ar-Ra’uf al Jaber, who has been a bridge for Islam-Christian dialog at the University of Petra (Jordan); and Ahmad Gianpiero Vincenzo, president of the Association of Italian Muslim Intellectuals and first director of the Italian government's department for inter-religious dialog.

Among the Jews - 'older brothers' to Christians, in John Paul II's words - besides Anna Foa and Giorgio Israel, who have both been writing frequently, soon to debut on the pages of the Pope's newspaper is Shear-Yashuv Cohen, chief rabbi of Haifa (Israel) and the first non-Christian ever invited to address a Bishops' Synod (on October 6). Preceding him was the chief rabbi of Rome, Riccardo Di Segni, who contributed his reflections on the papal letter to the Diocese of Rome regarding the educative emergency. "We have known each other for years, we worked together in the Enciclopedia Italiana, and thanks to Roberto Stangler of the Jewish Museum, we have maintained strong contact," says Vian of Di Segni."

moar:

http://opinionatedcatholic.blogspot.com/2008/09/henry-kissinger-may-contribute-to.html

Wait, Why Are Apple and Google Execs Meeting With the Pope?

Pope Francis met with both Tim Cook of Apple and Eric Schmidt

of Alphabet (Google). What's going on?

"It sounds at first like a modern day joke:

The heads of Apple and Google and the Pope walk into a bar…

Okay, there's no bar involved, but in the course of a week recently, Pope Francis has had two 15-minute meetings pop up on his calendar that sparked a lot of raised eyebrows:

Eric Schmidt, executive chairman of Alphabet Inc. (parent company of Google), and

Tim Cook, CEO of Apple.

What the heck did they talk about? Nobody is saying, really, but let's piece things together as best we can.

The meetings

Pope Francis doesn't even have a computer, but he's also not exactly a luddite–having called the Internet a "gift from God … offering immense possibilities for encounter and solidarity."

Here's what we know about the days in question. Reporters who cover the Pope in Rome noticed that on Friday Jan. 15, he had a 15-minute meeting scheduled with Schmidt. A week later, on Jan. 22, he had a similar short meeting set with Cook.

Obvious questions: Why? Also, what could the Pope and these two titans of the tech industry actually cover in such short meetings?

The context

According to one report, Pope Francis keeps a predictable schedule, during which he gets up at 4:45 a.m., prays and reflects, and says mass at 7 a.m. before breakfast at 8 a.m.

Then he's usually off for a full day of meetings. His meetings on the day with Cook for example, highlight a bit about his relative concerns and interests. (It's worth noting that with the exception of the meetings with Cook and Schmidt, every papal meeting we know about on these days was 30 minutes–not 15.)

Before meeting with Cook, for example, the Pope spent 30 minutes with the president of the Caribbean nation of Dominica–a tiny country with about 70,000 citizens (80 percent Catholic, though), and another 30 minutes with a Catholic cardinal whose job is to be the "prefect of the Doctrine of the Faith."

Afterward, he met with the head of the highest appellate tribunal in the Catholic Church–another half hour meeting, by the way.

The policies

Both Cook and the Pope are described as being "keen environmentalists," according to one reporter. There's also the fact that Cook, while not a billionaire himself, has taken a variation of the so-called billionaire's pledge to give away his wealth.

Also interestingly, the Pope made two public pronouncements that I can find after meeting with Cook.

First, he came out against the idea of civil unions, which is currently under debate in the Italian parliament. Cook is openly gay, so I would hope that there was no connection here–and given the Pope's openness toward gay people, it would strike me as unlikely.

Second, however, the Pope made a pronouncement against (of all things), Internet trolls just hours after meeting with Cook. I can't draw the line exactly to their meeting of course, but it certainly is interesting to think it might have been related.

The possibilities

It's also possible that Schmidt or Cook wanted to meet the Pope simply because he's an interesting person–or because they had a spiritual or religious motivation.

According to USA Today, for example, a Vatican official said Schmidt's meeting was "private and not related to the Google parent company's global business."

Finally, it's noting the first ever contacts between Apple and the Vatican. Back in the 1970s, the late Steve Jobs related in an interview, he and Steve Wozniak crank called the Vatican, claiming to be Henry Kissinger and needing to speak with the Pope.

"We got the number of the Vatican and we called the Pope," Jobs reportedly said, "and they started waking people up in the hierarchy … they actually sent someone to wake up the Pope when finally we just burst out laughing and they realized we weren't Henry Kissinger.""

https://www.inc.com/bill-murphy-jr/apple-google-and-the-pope-heres-what-we-know.html