ROME
Chiesa
He is Timothy Dolan, one of the thirteen cardinals of the letter to the pope. A living example of that “parresia,” that candor of word and thought, so desired by Francis
by Sandro Magister
ROME, October 19, 2015 – In the uproar unleashed by the publication of the letter of the thirteen cardinals to the pope, the Vatican authorities who manage communication – from Santa Marta more than from the Apostolic Palace – have in fact fomented attacks not so much against the one responsible for the publication, but much more against the synod fathers who signed the letter.
And yet these are personalities of the highest rank, archbishops of important dioceses like New York, Toronto, Houston, Utrecht, Bologna, Durban, Nairobi, Caracas. Not to mention three pillars of the Roman curia old and new like George Pell, Gerhard Müller, and Robert Sarah, themselves bishops in the past of dioceses like Sydney, Regensburg, and Conakry.
There was so much aggression in the media against this towering and tightly knit representation of the worldwide hierarchy – accused of “conspiring” against the pope even before the letter was published – that it brought up another unresolved question on top of those raised in the letter: concerning the management of the communication of what happens in the synod.
It is enough to see how Fr. Thomas Rosica, the official media liaison at the synod for the English-language media, has immediately circulated with his own enthusiastic approval the most virulent and authoritative attack against the thirteen signers of the letter, made by Washington archbishop Donald Wuerl, one of Bergoglio’s preferred cardinals, in an October 18 interview with “America,” the magazine of the “liberal” New York Jesuits:
The fact is that, in spite of these reactions, the letter of the thirteen cardinals has gotten results. And it got them above all after its publication, which allowed a larger number of synod fathers to become acquainted with it and recognize themselves in it, and therefore to exercise firmer pressure on those who govern the synod, in order to obtain answers more satisfying than the ones given until then.
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