Angelus News | August 2-9, 2019 | Vol. 4 No. 27

VATICAN MEDIA
WORLD
NEW VOICES — Pope Francis has named Vatican communications
staffer Matteo Bruni (left) and Brazilian
Vatican Radio journalist Christiane Murray (right) as his
new spokesman and deputy spokeswoman. The pair
take over for interim Holy See Press Office Director
Alessandro Gisotti, who has been filling in since American
Greg Burke and Spaniard Paloma Garcia Ovejero
both resigned from their roles at the end of 2018.
Benedict’s surprise daytrip
Summer breaks aren’t just for students.
On July 25, Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI left Vatican City for
the first time in four years to pay a surprise visit to the papal
summer residence of Castel Gandolfo, where he walked the
garden paths where he used to pray.
According to Italian media, his next stop was to pray at a
15th-century Marian sanctuary in the town of Rocca di Papa.
He finished the day with dinner at the house of Bishop Raffaello
Martinelli of Frascati, a small diocese outside of Rome.
Benedict’s last venture outside of Vatican City was in July
2015, when he spent two weeks in Castel Gandolfo at Pope
Francis’ invitation.
The capital of
the crisis of faith?
Germany’s Christian churches — both
Protestant and Catholic — lost more than
400,000 members last year, according to
data published by the German Bishops
Conference and the Evangelical Church in
Germany.
Church membership in Germany is officially
recorded by the government, which
collects donations for religious groups
through a “church tax.” The tax requires
members of a church to pay up to 9 percent
of taxable income, which the state gives to
the church they are registered with. Church
membership can be renounced at any time,
and the state doesn’t require a reason to
leave.
The Catholic Church in Germany, which
counts 23 million members, lost 216,078 in
2018.
“Every departure hurts,” president of
Germany’s Evangelical Church Heinrich
Bedford-Strohm told Vatican News. “Since
people today, unlike in the past, decide out
of freedom whether they want to belong to
the church, it is important for us today to
make even clearer why the Christian message
is such a strong basis for life.”
If membership trends continue, Germany’s
Christian population could drop by half by
2060, according to a study by the University
of Freiburg.
Cardinal Louis Sako at a conference in Rome last month.
Join the army, but don’t start one
If you want to fight ISIS, join the army or get active in politics.
But just don’t get involved with so-called “Christian militias,”
Iraq’s senior prelate told the country’s Catholics.
“We respect individual decisions to join Al-Hashd Al-Shaabi or
to get involved in politics,” read a statement by Cardinal Louis
Raphaël I Sako, head of the Chaldean Catholic Church, “but
not to form a Christian ‘brigade,’ since forming a Christian
armed militia contradicts the Christian spirituality that calls for
love, tolerance, forgiveness, and peace.”
Plans to create Christian militias to help fight against the Islamic
State in Mosul and the Nineveh Plain, two areas with historically
large populations of Christians in Iraq, have emerged
in the past years as violence has threatened the area.
One such militia, known as the Babylon Brigades, has been
relatively successful, giving rise to a political movement, the
Babylon movement, which won two out of five seats reserved for
Christians in Iraq’s 2018 elections.
CATHOLIC NEWS SERVICE/PAUL HARING
4 • ANGELUS • August 2-9, 2019