VATICAN CITY
National Catholic Register
by EDWARD PENTIN 10/13/2015
VATICAN CITY — The Vatican spokesman said today that the leaking of a private letter sent to the Holy Father to bring to his attention some concerns about the synod on family unnecessarily disrupted the meeting.
Father Federico Lombardi told reporters that the “disruption” was unintended by the most authoritative signatories of the letter, and so “it would be inappropriate to allow it to have any influence.”
It was the first time Father Lombardi admitted the existence of the letter, published in full yesterday by veteran Vatican watcher Sandro Magister, but which was first revealed in some detail by fellow Vaticanista Andrea Tornielli last week. At a briefing yesterday, Father Lombardi said he had “nothing to confirm about the document, as it was a confidential one.”
One of the signatories of the letter, Cardinal Jorge Urosa Savino, archbishop of Caracas, Venezuela, told the Register Oct. 13 that the incident is a “storm in a teacup” and that the matter “is a very small thing compared with the wonderful work that’s being done by the almost 400 people working at the synod.”
The letter alerted the Holy Father to some concerns regarding the composition and selection process of the drafting committee for the synod’s final report, the quality of the instrumentum laboris (working document) and excessive emphasis on the “theological/doctrinal issue of Communion for the divorced and civilly remarried.”
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