News/International

ROME - Cardinal Thomas Collins of Toronto took possession of his titular church Oct. 23, celebrating an evening Mass at St. Patrick's Church in Rome.

"Now, after 40 years of ordination to the priesthood, I am, in a certain sense, becoming a parish priest," the cardinal said in his homily.

Cardinal Collins, who became a cardinal in February, was assigned to be honorary pastor of the Irish national church in Rome, which is entrusted to the Augustinian order. All cardinals are given honorary title to a church in Rome, as a reminder that the early popes were elected by the city's pastors.

"Although a cardinal relates to the universal church, he is also a parish priest, and that's something very, very beautiful," the cardinal told the congregation, which included pilgrims from Toronto and his former Archdiocese of Edmonton, Alberta, as well as Anne Leahy, Canada's ambassador to the Vatican.

"The church is universal and the church is always local, like concave and convex, the universal and local," he said. "Those two must go together."

The cardinal concelebrated with about 20 priests, including Archbishops Gerald Lacroix of Quebec, Gerard Pettipas of Grouard-McLennan, Alberta, and Richard Smith of Edmonton, president of the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops; and Bishop Lionel Gendron of Saint-Jean-Longueuil, Quebec.

"As Christians, we need to be solid as a community of faith in building the temple of the Lord," the cardinal said. "But it's not enough to be stable, solid, joined together. If we were only to do that, we would miss the point of who we are."

"We need to have that fire, that zeal for evangelization," he said, pointing to the example of St. Patrick, the apostle of Ireland. "We are called to spread that life, that light, that fire, and kindle fire in the hearts of others."

VATICAN CITY - The leadership of the traditionalist Society of St. Pius X has expelled British Bishop Richard Williamson from the society, saying he distanced himself from them and refused "to show due respect and obedience to his lawful superiors."

"This painful decision has become necessary by concern for the common good of the Society of St. Pius X and its good government," said a brief note posted on the group's web site Oct. 24.

Williamson had been a harsh critic of the group's engagement in doctrinal discussions with the Vatican, which were aimed at bringing the society back into full communion with the Catholic Church.

In comments published Sept. 1 in a newsletter that Williamson e-mails to subscribers, he wrote that the SSPX had set out six conditions for reconciliation with Rome, which included: freedom "to teach the unchanging truth of Catholic tradition"; freedom to criticize "the errors" of the Second Vatican Council; freedom to celebrate only the extraordinary form of the Mass; the promise of at least one new bishop; and the independence of SSPX houses from the oversight of the local diocesan bishop.

In the September letter, Williamson said, the SSPX position was "no longer 'Rome must convert because truth is absolute,' but now merely 'the SSPX demands freedom for itself to tell the truth.' Instead of attacking the (Vatican II) conciliar treachery, the SSPX now wants the traitors to give it permission to tell the truth?"

The bishop concluded, "Unless the society's leadership is shaken out of its dream of peace with conciliar Rome ... then the last worldwide bastion of Catholic tradition risks being on its way to surrendering to the enemies of the faith."

The statement announcing the ouster of Williamson from the SSPX said the decision was made by the superior general, Bishop Bernard Fellay, and by members of the SSPX council. It said the SSPX leadership met Oct. 4 and gave Williamson a deadline of Oct. 23 "to declare his submission" to the SSPX leaders. Instead, the statement said, Williamson sent a letter resigning from the group.

Even as the Vatican negotiated with the SSPX, Vatican officials said separate discussions would be required with Williamson, who not only criticized the dialogue, but has publicly denied the extent of the Nazi Holocaust of the Jews.

The bishop's Holocaust denials were included in an interview aired by a Swedish TV network on the same day in 2009 that the Vatican announced Pope Benedict XVI had lifted the excommunication of Williamson and three other of the society's bishops, ordained without papal permission in 1988.The Pope later repudiated Williamson's remarks, saying he had been unaware of the bishop's views on the Holocaust. The Pope met with Jewish leaders at the time to calm tensions over the incident.

Additionally, the Vatican told Williamson that he would not be welcomed into full communion in the Church unless he disavowed his remarks about the Holocaust and publicly apologized.

After lifting the excommunications, Pope Benedict launched a new series of doctrinal discussions with the SSPX in 2009. As the discussions progressed, the Vatican asked SSPX leaders to sign a "doctrinal preamble,"' which outlines principles and criteria necessary to guarantee fidelity to the Church and its teaching.

When it appeared Fellay was close to signing an agreement with the Vatican, internal tensions within the SSPX erupted. Williamson was excluded from the July general chapter meeting of the SSPX "due to his stand calling to rebellion and for continually repeated disobedience," according to a letter leaked to the press. Without Williamson present, SSPX leaders recovered their "profound unity," according to a public statement released after the July meeting.

In an early October interview with a German radio station, Archbishop Gerhard Muller, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, confirmed that the talks with the SSPX had broken down and that no further discussions had been scheduled.

VATICAN CITY - Pope Benedict XVI surprised pilgrims in St. Peter's Square Oct. 24 by announcing he would create six new cardinals in late November.

The Pope said the consistory to create the new cardinals, who come from six countries, would take place Nov. 24, the feast of Christ the King.

It will be the smallest group of cardinals created since the 1977 consistory when Pope Benedict, the then-Archbishop Joseph Ratzinger, received his red hat from Pope Paul VI along with three other churchmen.

The new cardinals will include: 63-year-old U.S. Archbishop James Harvey, prefect of the papal household; Lebanon's Maronite Patriarch Bechara Rai, 72; Archbishop Baselios Cleemis Thottunkal, 53, head of the Syro-Malankara Catholic Church; Nigerian Archbishop John Olorunfemi Onaiyekan of Abuja, 68; Colombian Archbishop Ruben Salazar Gomez of Bogota, 70; and Philippine Archbishop Luis Tagle of Manila, 55.

Pope Benedict made the announcement at the end of his weekly general audience, which was attended by about 20,000 pilgrims. As is usual, Cardinal-designate Harvey was seated next to the Pope during the audience. While he did not visibly react when his name was announced, the new cardinal-designate smiled and had a brief moment with the Pope before returning to his normal duties of helping lead important guests up to the Pope.

Telling the crowd that he had the "great joy" of announcing new cardinals, Pope Benedict said cardinals have "the task of helping the successor of Peter in his ministry" of strengthening people's faith and promoting the unity of the Church.

The Pope asked Catholics to pray that the new cardinals would "always love Christ and His Church with courage and dedication."

Of the six soon-to-be cardinals, only Cardinal-designates Harvey and Salazar were not members of the world Synod of Bishops on the new evangelization, which was meeting at the Vatican when the Pope made his announcement.

The late-November consistory will bring the total number of cardinals to 211 and the number of cardinals under age 80 to 120. Until they reach their 80th birthdays, cardinals are eligible to vote in a conclave to elect a new pope.

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Claudio Sciarpelletti, the Vatican Secretariat of State computer technician accused of aiding and abetting the pope's butler in stealing confidential Vatican correspondence, will go on trial at the Vatican Nov. 5.

The Vatican announced the trial date Oct. 23. Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi, Vatican spokesman, told reporters that Sciarpelletti's trial on the "minor charges" of aiding and abetting was expected to be brief.

Also Oct. 23, the Vatican released a 15-page document from the three-judge panel that found the butler, Paolo Gabriele, guilty Oct. 6 and sentenced him to 18 months in jail.

After criminal trials in Italy and at the Vatican, the judges publish a detailed explanation of how they arrived at their verdict and how they determined the sentence. Father Lombardi said a Vatican prosecutor will study the document and has 40 days to decide whether he will file an appeal, something usually done to request a harsher sentence.

Gabriele, who also had a chance to appeal his conviction, declined to do so; he remains under house arrest until the prosecution decides about its appeal, Father Lombardi said. Pope Benedict XVI also could pardon his former butler.

Father Lombardi said that if the pope does not pardon the 46-year-old Gabriele, Vatican judicial officials plan to have him serve his sentence in a 12-foot-by-12-foot cell in the Vatican police barracks and not in an Italian prison.

The report included the fact that the judges denied a request by Gabriele's lawyer to have retired Cardinals Ivan Dias, former prefect of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples, and Georges Cottier, former theologian of the papal household, testify before a papally appointed commission of cardinals conducting a separate investigation of the leaking of Vatican documents.

The judges said it was beyond their powers to do so; there was no explanation of what kind of information the defense thought the two cardinals could provide.

In the judges' report, they said that while Gabriele consistently maintained he acted out of love for the pope and the church, the judges felt an obligation "to observe how the action undertaken by Gabriele in reality was harmful" to "the pontiff, the laws of the Holy See, the whole Catholic Church and Vatican City State."

Much of the material simply summarized information collected during the initial investigation of Gabriele and the testimony given during his trial Sept. 29-Oct. 6.

But the judges' reactions to several points raised by Cristiana Arru, Gabriele's lawyer, were explained in detail, particularly regarding Arru's contention that since the material found in Gabriele's apartment consisted of photocopies, not originals, the former butler didn't actually steal anything.

First, the judges said testimony from Msgr. Georg Ganswein, the pope's personal secretary, and from Vatican police officers who searched Gabriele's Vatican apartment proved to them that a few originals were among the photocopies.

Second, they said, Gabriele removed the originals without permission in order to photocopy them, but even more, they said, while he might not have stolen many original documents, by photocopying them he took the information written on them without consent.

"The paper document is nothing other than the support material for an immaterial content," the judges said.

During the trial, Arru repeatedly raised questions about the Vatican prosecutor's assertion that police found in Gabriele's Vatican apartment three items given to Pope Benedict as gifts: a check for 100,000 euros ($123,000); a gold nugget from the director of a mining company in Peru; and a 16th-century edition of a translation of the "Aeneid."

The judges' explanation of their verdict basically said they made their judgment based on the theft of confidential papal and Vatican documents, not on the three gifts.

A separate area of the report concerned whether or not Gabriele was capable of understanding his actions, which the judges answered affirmatively.

The judges cited several statements made by Gabriele, both during the investigation and at the trial, to the effect that he knew what he was doing was wrong, he took extra precautions to avoid being caught and he went to confession when it became clear he was about to be arrested.

The judges also discussed the points that, in their view, made Gabriele's actions a case of "aggravated theft" and not simple theft.

The main aggravating factor, they said, was the fact that Gabriele abused his position of trust: "In effect, Gabriele was able to commit the crime he's accused of because of his work relationship with the Holy Father, which necessarily was based on a bond of trust."

Gabriele's job brought him into the very private life of Pope Benedict, and the butler violated the "absolute reserve" such a position required, the judges said.

"He used this unique position to perpetrate his criminal actions," they said.

While recognizing that Gabriele was not paid for leaking the documents to an Italian journalist (who, in turn, published them in an instantly best-selling book), the judges said he still committed the crime with the intent to profit from it "intellectually and morally."

The judges quoted him as telling investigators, "Even if the possession of those documents was illicit, I felt I had to do it for various reasons, including my own personal interests." Gabriele, they said, felt that having the documents would help him better understand the inner workings of the Vatican, and leaking them to a journalist would help him provide the "shock" that could lead to change in the Vatican, which he felt was becoming filled with corruption and careerism.

In the verdict, the judges ordered Gabriele to pay the Vatican's court costs, which Father Lombardi said amounted to the equivalent of about $1,300.

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Wearing Native American beads and feathers, Hawaiian leis, classic Filipino shirts, or German dirndls, Catholics from around the globe gathered in St. Peter's Square to celebrate the recognition of seven new saints.

One of the pilgrims who came to celebrate the canonization of St. Kateri Tekakawita Oct. 21 was Blessed Sacrament Father Dana Pelotte, twin brother of the late Bishop Donald E. Pelotte of Gallup, N.M., the first American Indian bishop of the United States.

"I think the canonization will have a tremendous spiritual effect on the native peoples -- I really do. Being a native person has so much spiritual beauty," and the canonization of Kateri, the first indigenous saint of North America, will strengthen that, said the priest, whose father was of Abenaki descent.

Attending a reception sponsored by the U.S. Embassy to the Holy See in the Vatican Museums' garden Oct. 19, Father Pelotte was constantly approached by American Indian pilgrims who told him of their love for his brother and how pleased he would be by the canonization. "I know he's here in spirit with us today," Father Pelotte told each one of them.

Archbishop Charles J. Chaput of Philadelphia, a member of the Prairie Band Potawatomi Tribe, told Catholic News Service that he and his fellow Native American Catholics have been praying for St. Kateri's canonization for a very long time.

The saint was born to an Algonquin Christian mother and a Mohawk father, who died when she was young. She resisted strong pressure from the Mohawks to abandon her faith, so she could be considered a model for those facing religious persecution, the archbishop said.

St. Kateri, who died in 1680 at the age of 24, also is a model for the new evangelization, Archbishop Chaput said.

"She was a young, vibrant member of her community, but she was different from the rest of them because of her unique personal relationship with Jesus Christ, which is what sanctity is generally about -- it's about taking Christ seriously in a personal way, in a way that goes beyond where most of us go."

Clarence "Boogie" Kahilihwa and Gloria Marks were two of nine patient-residents who came to the canonization from Kalaupapa, Hawaii, where the new St. Marianne Cope ministered among people with Hansen's disease, which is commonly called leprosy.

Kahilihwa said St. Marianne left as her legacy "how she felt toward humanity," and that her message is "never underestimate" the value of person, no matter what their sickness is; "and don't be afraid to challenge the unchallenged and down low."

"I could have gone out a long time ago, but I chose to stay" to help care for older members of the community, he said.

Kahilihwa also said part of St. Marianne's legacy is the affirmation that there is no such thing as "a leper," because leprosy "is a disease, not a person."

Marks, like Kahilihwa, came to Rome in 2009 for the canonization of St. Damien de Veuster of Molokai, who founded the Kalaupapa community and who later was among those cared for by St. Marianne.

"I'm really proud because (there are) two of them from the same county, the smallest county in Hawaii," she said.

"Those two put Hawaii on the map. So it's very, very important to us."

U.S. citizens and residents also turned out in large numbers for the canonization of St. Pedro Calungsod, a Philippine teenager and catechist who was martyred in 1672 in Guam, which is a territory of the United States.

At a thanksgiving Mass Oct. 22 at the Altar of the Chair in St. Peter's Basilica, Archbishop Anthony Sablan Apuron of Agana, Guam, called St. Pedro a wonderful model for Catholic youth. "May it never be said that we who had the privilege of witnessing the canonization of San Pedro did not make it heaven!" he told the pilgrims, who included many young people.

The archbishop, who concelebrated the Mass with retired Cardinal Ricardo Vidal of Cebu, Philippines, composed a song in honor of St. Pedro 12 years ago on the occasion of the youth's beatification. Archbishop Apuron sang it during the homily, demonstrating that he, too, saw the martyred saint as a model.

"San Pedro proclaimed his faith using human means to attract the Chamorros (native people of Guam) through the use of visual aids, putting the doctrines and teachings to music so as to enable the natives to learn the doctrines of the church more easily," Archbishop Apuron said.

Discalced Augustinian Father Alex Remolino, a Philippine priest working in Rome, said that in addition to being a model for youth, "St. Pedro is a patron saint of our emigrants."

St. Pedro left the Philippines to work with the Jesuits in Guam, and he carried his faith with him, just as many Philippine emigrants do today when they go abroad to study or work, he said.

"Faith is part of our DNA," Father Remolino said. "Wherever we go, we bring the Gospel. It's not just part of our culture, but part of our character."

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Contributing to this story were Carol Glatz and Francis X. Rocca.

VATICAN CITY - After decades of resentment and horror over the abuse of indigenous children, the canonization of St. Kateri Tekakwitha marked a further step toward the reconciliation of the indigenous communities and the Catholic Church.

Phil Fontaine, former national chief of the Assembly of First Nations of Canada, told Canadian church and government officials the canonization "makes it possible, very much possible, to bring our community -- the First Nations -- very much closer with the Catholic Church. There was a rupture for too long."

Fontaine headed a 2009 Canadian aboriginal delegation to the Vatican, which received a formal apology from the church for the treatment of native children in Canadian residential schools.

An estimated 100,000 aboriginal children passed through the schools, which were abolished in the 1990s. They were established and paid for by the Canadian government, but were administered by various church organizations, including Roman Catholic dioceses and religious orders. The schools became known for widespread physical and sexual abuse of children and have been blamed for contributing to the disappearance of native languages and cultures.

Fontaine spoke at a reception after the canonization and Mass Oct. 21, addressing Canadian bishops, other First Nations leaders and a government delegation led by Andrew Scheer, speaker of the House of Commons.

Anne Leahy, Canadian ambassador to the Holy See, said the government delegation was a sign of just how much importance the government gave the canonization of St. Kateri, the first aboriginal saint from North America.

When Fontaine led the native delegation to the Vatican in 2009, he said, "we were blessed with a private audience with His Holiness (Pope Benedict XVI)," who gave the First Nations "great comfort. And now, here we are, three years later and we have another blessing: being witness to another very significant event," the official recognition of St. Kateri.

Her canonization, he said, "makes it possible to share our daughter with the universal church."

"If you link the two events" -- the 2009 meeting and the canonization -- "it is all about imparting reconciliation," Fontaine said.

The canonization, he said, "is an opportunity for us to say, 'We accept your apology, we forgive, and so now let us begin taking the important steps of healing and reconciliation."

Sylvain Chicoine, a member of the Canadian Parliament representing Chateauguay-Saint-Constant, Quebec, which includes the mission where Kateri died in 1680, told Catholic News Service the canonization is especially important in his region.

"They used to tell stories of Kateri in our schools, until about 30 years ago," he said. "Now the young will know her, too."

"Kateri made a bridge between the Europeans and the First Nations, and she can be an example today to rebuild bridges between our communities," which are still experiencing lingering tensions over land-use disputes from the 1990s, Chicoine said. "There is still work to do in repairing the relationship."

Elaine Johnson, a nurse and member of the Peter Ballantyne Cree Nation in northeastern Saskatchewan, said she came to Rome for the celebration because St. Kateri "is our first First Nations saint. We need to empower ourselves and she's our role model for being prayerful, humble and giving. As a First Nations person, I just wanted to be present."

"We as First Nations people would not look at her as having adopted European culture. Christianity does not take away our identity," she said. "I was born and raised a First Nations person and a Catholic, which empowers you because your ultimate goal is heaven. The church strengthens you."

Tobasonakwut Kinew, an Ojibway elder and university lecturer, came from Winnipeg for the canonization. A survivor of abuse at a residential school, he was part of the First Nations delegation that met the pope in 2009.

He told CNS, "I was sitting in a hotel in Thunder Bay (Ontario) in 1970 and was asking, praying, begging to be freed from alcohol and that's the last time I took a drink. I grew up praying to Kateri, and I used to think prayers were never answered, but here I am today."

Asked to write out his name for a reporter, Kinew did so, saying, "That's one thing I did learn at the residential school."

VATICAN CITY - In a continuing effort to preserve the integrity of the Mass and highlight the meaning of a canonization, when Pope Benedict XVI declares seven new saints Oct. 21, the ceremony will look different than it has in the past.

Msgr. Guido Marini, master of papal liturgical ceremonies, said the change will mark another step in Pope Benedict's efforts to remove from the papal Mass elements that are not strictly part of the liturgy, in accordance with the teaching of the Second Vatican Council.

Earlier, the Pope stopped giving new cardinals their rings during Mass; and in June he started the practice of giving new archbishops a pallium — a woolen band around their necks — before the entrance antiphon of the Mass.

In a similar way, beginning Oct. 21, the canonization rite will take place before Mass begins.

"Canonization is basically a canonical act" through which the Pope exercises his ministry to teach and to legislate, Marini told L'Osservatore Romano, the Vatican newspaper.

"In effect, a canonization is a definitive sentence through which the supreme pontiff decrees that a servant of God, already listed among the blessed, is to be inscribed in the catalogue of saints and venerated in the universal church," the monsignor said.

"The authority exercised by the Pope in a canonization sentence will now be even more visible through the use of certain ritual elements," particularly through the Pope's triple invocation of God's help in making such an important decision, he said.

Marini said the distinction between the canonization rite and the celebration of the Mass is meant to respond to the Second Vatican Council's call for the "splendour of the noble simplicity" of the Mass to shine forth.

The seven women and men who will be proclaimed saints with the new ceremony are:

-- Blessed Kateri Tekakwitha, a native American who was born in upstate New York and died in Canada in 1680 at the age of 24.

-- Blessed Marianne Cope of Molokai, who led a group of sisters from New York to the Hawaiian Islands in 1883 to establish a system of nursing care for leprosy patients.

-- Blessed Peter Calungsod, a lay catechist from the Philippines who was martyred April 2, 1672, in Guam.

-- Blessed Jacques Berthieu, a Jesuit who was born near Polminhac, France, and was martyred June 8, 1896, in Ambiatibe, Madagascar.

-- Blessed Giovanni Battista Piamarta, an Italian priest and founder of the Congregation of the Holy Family of Nazareth for men and the Humble Servants of the Lord for women. He died in 1913.

-- Blessed Carmen Salles Barangueras, the Spanish founder of the Sisters of the Immaculate Conception. She died in 1911.

-- Blessed Anna Schaffer, a lay German woman who wanted to be a missionary, but could not because of a succession of physical accidents and diseases. She died in 1925.

VATICAN CITY - A papal delegation of bishops will travel to the capital of wartorn Syria in late October to show solidarity with victims and encourage peace negotiations.

"In the certainty that the only possible solution to the crisis is a political solution, and bearing in mind the immense suffering of the population, the fate of displaced persons, and the future of that nation, it has been suggested that our synodal assembly express its solidarity," said Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, Vatican secretary of state, who announced the visit at the world Synod of Bishops.

Syria's civil war has left thousands dead and has displaced hundreds of thousands of refugees since March 2011.

The cardinal said that Pope Benedict XVI had instructed a delegation of six bishops and a priest to express, on behalf of the Pope and the synod, "our fraternal solidarity with the entire population"; "our spiritual closeness to our Christian brothers and sisters"; and "our encouragement to all those involved in seeking an agreement that respects the rights and duties of all, with particular attention to the demands of humanitarian law."

Bertone gave no date for the trip, but said it would take place next week, after completion of the "necessary formalities" with the papal nuncio and the "local authorities" in Damascus.

He also mentioned that the delegation would bring a "personal offering from the synod fathers as well as from the Holy See," which the Vatican press office later confirmed would take the form of a financial contribution.

Members of the delegation will be New York's Cardinal Timothy Dolan, Congolese Cardinal Laurent Monsengwo Pasinya of Kinshasa, Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran, president of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue, Bishop Fabio Suescun Mutis, the military ordinary of Colombia, Bishop Joseph Nguyen Nang of Phat Diem, Vietnam, Archbishop Dominique Mamberti, Vatican secretary for relations with states, and Msgr. Alberto Ortega, an official of the Vatican Secretariat of State.

Dolan, chairman of the board of the Catholic Near East Welfare Association, said he was "honoured" that the Pope had chosen to send him to Syria.

"There can be no question but that the violence in this strife-torn country is causing immense suffering," Dolan said, "and it is the hope of the bishops of the synod that this display of pastoral concern on the part of Pope Benedict might help draw the world's attention even more closely to this unspeakable tragedy."

Another synod member, Bishop Gerald Kicanas of Tucson, Ariz., said that one purpose of the visit will be "to look, to listen, to try to see and understand better what is going on and how the Church can be helpful."

"But it's also a way of saying to people that we are concerned, that we are here in solidarity with you," said Kicanas, chairman of the board of Catholic Relief Services, which is aiding Syrian refugees in neighbouring Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan.

"We hope to make known to the international community what the situation is and that the international community must step up and address this very serious situation," the bishop said.

WASHINGTON - Some of Egypt's Christians feel uncomfortable with Islamists in power, but there is greater freedom of speech than before the revolution, said the Pope's ambassador to the Middle Eastern country.

"I think there is a greater freedom now, though they accuse the present regime of also clamping down on people, on trying to control the press ... so they say that the president is becoming a pharaoh," the Vatican nuncio, Archbishop Michael Fitzgerald, told Catholic News Service.

"Christians are feeling uncomfortable and certainly the Salafi group," an ultraconservative sect of Islam, "is showing ... disrespect for Christians," he said during a mid-October visit to Washington. "There are complaints and, I would say, they are genuine complaints."

The archbishop said that often what begins as a conflict over property or family affairs turns religious and "ends up with people having their houses burned or their shops destroyed or their place of worship also attacked."

"It's easy to arouse a group of Muslims against the Christians, and there can be also a reaction on the Christian side," he said, adding, "The thing is that people are rather hot-tempered and they don't reason very much before they react."

When there is a problem, he said, Christians feel "that the security forces don't come in time, they always come late, and, very often, they hold reconciliation sessions and the Christians are always the losers.

"They would prefer to have people brought to trial and to be condemned ... to have their full rights," he said.

After Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak was ousted in February 2011, an Egyptian military council assumed broad powers. Sixteen months later, Mohammed Morsi of the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood was elected Egypt's new president.

During those 16 months, the Church sponsored seminars and lectures to encourage awareness of parties and issues. Cairo's justice and peace commission also sponsored candidate forums, the archbishop said.

Morsi has finished his first 100 days in office, and critics say he has not kept most of his promises about what he would achieve in that time.

Egyptians also are awaiting a court ruling on whether the assembly drafting the country's new constitution is legal. Members of Parliament chose members of the assembly, and some Egyptians argue that the assembly does not reflect all sectors of society. The court has said it will issue its ruling Oct. 23.

Fitzgerald said these were signs of emerging democracy.

"Certainly people are ready to criticize the president and to say 'Look, you promised many things, and you're not fulfilling your promises,' ” he said, noting that probably would not have happened before the revolution.

He said he is trying to encourage Christians to participate in the new democracy, although some express fear for what the future holds for their children.

"My own message to them has been, look, there is a new spirit of democracy, and you have to build on that. Though the Islamists are in power now, this doesn't mean to say that they will always be in power. This depends on you," he said.

VATICAN CITY - Pope Benedict XVI said the enduring desire for God, the truth of the Gospel and the "restlessness" of today's youth are reasons to hope for a "new springtime for Christianity" in Europe and beyond.

The pope made his remarks to an interviewer in a new documentary film, "Bells of Europe," which was shown at the Vatican Oct. 15 after the day's session of the world Synod of Bishops.

The synod is dedicated to the new evangelization, a project aimed at reviving the Christian faith of secularized societies, especially in Europe and other Western lands.

Pope Benedict told his interviewer that he has three main reasons to hope for a Christian revival, starting with the "fact that the desire for God, the search for God, is profoundly inscribed into each human soul and cannot disappear."

He said he also takes heart from the eternal truth of the Gospel.

"Ideologies have their days numbered," the pope said. "They appear powerful and irresistible but, after a certain period, they wear out and lose their energy because they lack profound truth."

"The Gospel, on the other hand, is true and can therefore never wear out," he said.

Finally, Pope Benedict cited the dissatisfaction of young people today with the "proposals of the various ideologies and of consumerism."

Answering a question about Christianity's prospects in Europe, Pope Benedict said that the continent is undergoing a crisis of identity, divided between "two souls."

One of these souls is "abstract anti-historical reason," which seeks "to liberate itself from all traditions and cultural values in favor of an abstract rationality," he said, citing for example a ruling (subsequently overturned) by the European Court for Human Rights that crucifixes should be removed from classrooms in Italian public schools.

"We could call Europe's other soul the Christian one," Pope Benedict said, describing it as a "soul which itself created the audaciousness of reason and the freedom of critical reasoning, but which remains anchored to the roots from which this Europe was born."

A blend of these two souls, the pope concludes, will lead to a "new humanism" arising "directly from the view of man created in the image and likeness of God."