VATICAN CITY
National Catholic Reporter
by Dennis Coday,Joshua J. McElwee | Mar. 17, 2013
Vatican City —
About 300,000 people enthusiastically greeted Pope Francis for his first Angelus prayer and address Sunday and heard a short reflection on mercy, a theme the new pope had preached on at the Mass he celebrated that morning in the parish church of Vatican City dedicated to St. Anne.
When he appeared at the window of his study in the apostolic palace, he showed again a knack for engaging his audience. He greeted the crowd with a simple, “Buongiorno,” [good day], and the people in the square roared back, “Buongiorno.”
The pope also surprised some observers by mentioning in his address retired German Cardinal Walter Kasper, a theologian and former Vatican official known for his sometimes public disagreements with Pope Benedict XVI. …
About halfway through his Angelus address, Francis mentioned he had been reading a book about mercy by Kasper, a retired prelate who has previously served as secretary and president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity.
Previous to working in the Vatican, Kasper had received public disapproval from then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger in 1993, when Kasper was serving as bishop of the German diocese of Rottenburg-Stuttgart.
As head of the Vatican’s powerful Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Ratzinger expressed his disapproval over a letter Kasper had signed along with other German bishops allowing divorced and remarried Catholics access to the sacraments.
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