Category: +Benedict

I didn't get to The Weekly Benedict last week, so here's a double dose of our awesome pope! 

Here are this week's items for The Weekly Benedict (subscribe here):

AUDIENCE: 30 November 2011 (series on prayer)

AUDIENCE: 7 December 2011 (series on prayer)

ANGELUS: Angelus, 4 December 2011 

ANGELUS: Angelus, 8 December 2011, Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary 

ANGELUS: Angelus, 11 December 2011

MESSAGE: 45th World Day of Peace 2012, Educating Young People in Justice and Peace

MESSAGE: Message to His Holiness Bartholomew I, Archbishop of Constantinople, Ecumenical Patriarch, on the occasion of the Feast of Saint Andrew the Apostle (November 24, 2011)

SPEECH: Concert offered by the Asturias Principality Symphony Orchestra (November 26, 2011)

SPEECH: To students taking part in the meeting promoted by theSorella Natura Foundation (November 28, 2011) 

Here are this week's items for The Weekly Benedict (subscribe here):

ANGELUS: Angelus, 27 November 2011

AUDIENCE: 23 November 2011, Apostolic Journey to Benin

SPEECH: To the Bishops from the United States of America on their ad Limina visit (November 26, 2011)

Here are this week's items for The Weekly Benedict (subscribe here):

AUDIENCE: 16 November 2011, Psalm 110 (109)

APOSTOLIC VOYAGE TO BENIN (cont. from last week) . . .

SPEECH: Meeting with children at St. Rita Parish in Cotonou (November 19, 2011) 

SPEECH: Meeting with the Bishops of Benin at the Apostolic Nunciature of Cotonou (November 19, 2011)

HOMILY: Holy Mass at the "Stade de l’amitié" of Cotonou  (November 20, 2011) 

SPEECH: Consignment of the Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation to the Bishops of Africa at the "Stade de l’amitié" of Cotonou (November 20, 2011)

ANGELUS: Recitation of the Angelus Domini (Cotonou, 20 November 2011) 

SPEECH: Farewell ceremony at Cardinal Bernardin GantinInternational Airport (Cotonou, 20 November 2011)

Here are this week's items for The Weekly Benedict (subscribe here):

APOSTOLIC EXHORTATION: Africae Munus: Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation on the Church in Africa in Service to Reconciliation, Justice and Peace  (November 19, 2011)

ANGELUS: Angelus, 13 November 2011

AUDIENCE: 9 November 2011, Psalm 119 (118)

MESSAGE: Message on the occasion of the Second National Family Conference [Ecuador, 9-12 November 2011] (1 November 2011) 

SPEECH: To participants in the International Conference promoted by the Pontifical Council for Culture (November 12, 2011)

APOSTOLIC JOURNEY TO BENIN . . .

INTERVIEW: Meeting of His Holiness Benedict XVI with journalists during the flight to Benin (Papal Flight, 18 November 2011)

SPEECH: Welcome Ceremony at Cardinal Bernardin GantinInternational Airport of Cotonou (November 18, 2011)

SPEECH: Visit to the Cathedral of Cotonou (November 18, 2011)

SPEECH: Meeting with Government members, representatives of the Institutions of the Republic, Diplomatic Corps and representatives of the major religions gathered in the Presidential Palace of Cotonou (November 19, 2011)

SPEECH: Meeting with priests, seminarians, men and women religious and lay faithful gathered in the Courtyard of St Gall Seminary (Ouidah, 19 November 2011)

SPEECH: Visit at the Basilica of the Immaculate Conception of Mary of Ouidah and signing of the Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation (November 19, 2011)

Here are this week's items for The Weekly Benedict (subscribe here):

ANGELUS: Angelus, 1st November 2011, Solemnity of All Saints

ANGELUS: Angelus, 6 November 2011

AUDIENCE: 2 November 2011, Commemoration of All the Faithful Departed 

HOMILY: 3 November 2011: Mass for the repose of the souls of  Cardinals and Bishops who have died in the past year

HOMILY: 4 November 2011: Vespers for the beginning of the Academic Year of the Pontifical Universities

SPEECH: To Bishops of the Episcopal Conference of Angola and São Tomé (C.E.A.S.T.) on their ad Limina visit (October 29, 2011)

SPEECH: To the new Ambassador of Brazil to the Holy See (October 31, 2011)

SPEECH: To members of the Israeli Religious Council (November 10, 2011)

SPEECH: To participants in the meeting promoted by the Pontifical Council Cor Unum (November 11, 2011)

Here are this week's items for The Weekly Benedict (subscribe here):

ANGELUS: Angelus, 30 October 2011

AUDIENCE: 5 October 2011, Psalm 23

AUDIENCE: 19 October 2011, The Great Hallel, Psalm 136 (135)

AUDIENCE: 26 October 2011, Prayer in preparation of the Meeting in Assisi

A note about the above audiences: There's a longstanding practice at the Holy See's web site where they post a one-paragraph summary of the pope's Wednesday audience and then leave it there for a few weeks until they get a full English translation ready. That slipped my mind when I started doing The Weekley Benedict, so for the first couple of weeks, I accidentally posted links to the one-paragraph summaries of some recent audiences. Now I'm fixing that and linking to the full versions, which are available for October 5, 19, and 26 (though for some reason the audience of Oct. 12 still has the one-paragraph summary; go figure). In the future I will be linking only the most recent full version rather than the temporary, one-paragraph summaries. This will mean that the audience listed will be a little more date-lagged, but that way you won't miss any of the great Benedict audience action.

Here are this week's items for The Weekly Benedict:

MESSAGE: Message on the occasion of World Food Day 2011 (October 17, 2011)

HOMILY: 23 October 2011: Canonization of the Blesseds: Guido Maria Conforti, Luigi Guanella, Bonifacia Rodríguez De Castro

ANGELUS: Angelus, 23 October 2011

AUDIENCE: 26 October 2011, Prayer in preparation of the Meeting in Assisi 

VOYAGE DOCUMENT: Day of reflection, dialogue, and prayer for peace and justice in the world "Pilgrims of Truth, Pilgrims of Peace": Address of the Holy Father (Assisi, 27 October 2011)

VOYAGE DOCUMENT: Farewell address by the Holy Father (Saint Francis Square, 27 October 2011) (NOTE: The first paragraph of this is left in Italian, in an apparent mistake)

SPEECH: To the delegations taking part in the meeting for peace in Assisi (October 28, 2011) 

Here are the initial entries for The Weekly Benedict:

AUDIENCE: 5 October 2011, Psalm 23

SPEECH: To the Prefects of Italy (October 14, 2011)

SPEECH: To participants in the meeting promoted by the Pontifical Council for Promoting New Evangelization (October 15, 2011)

ANGELUS: Angelus, 16 October 2011

HOMILY: 16 October 2011: Holy Mass for the New Evangelization

SPEECH: To a delegation of the Syro-Malabar Church (October 17, 2011)

SPEECH: Inauguration of the Domus Australia - the Australian Pilgrimage Centre in Via Cernaia (Rome, 19 October 2011)

SPEECH: To the Bishops of the Episcopal Conference of Australia on their ad Limina visit (October 20, 2011)

I love Pope Benedict!

Among the many reasons are, he's an awesome teacher. As a result, I've tried to study his thought closely, and I'm frequently amazed and delighted by the insights he provides.

The problem is accessing all of his teachings.

The Vatican Information Service and similar press agencies run by the Holy See provide news stories that contain brief English-language quotations from his writings and speeches, but I don't want excerpts. I want full documents.

The Vatican web site's section on Pope Benedict provides full documents, but they aren't always in English, and they aren't always released in a timely manner. Sometimes you have to wait weeks (or longer or till never) for an English translation to appear.

The Vatican web site also has an arcane–even Byzantine–organizational scheme in the Pope Benedict section that requires you to click multiple links to check each category to see what may have been posted recently.

What should happen is this: The Vatican web site guys need to (a) devote the resources to translating all of Pope Benedict's interventions into English in a timely manner and (b) they need to create a page or RSS feed that links them as they are released.

So far they haven't done that.

But I hate having neat-o keen Benedict documents slip past me because of the irregularity and user-unfriendliarity of it all.

As a result, I'm creating The Weekly Benedict.

Here's the plan: Once a week, if I at all can (I may sometimes have to miss a week, in which case I'll do double duty next time), I'm going to check a set of links I've developed that unwind the complicated organizational scheme that the Vatican web site uses to present Pope Benedict's documents. If I find a new document posted in English, I'll include it in a blog post under the heading "The Weekly Benedict" in the "+Benedict" section.

Depending on how much time I have to read the documents as I find them, I may provide quotations, notes, or commentary to help the reader find interesting things.

I'd call this thing "This Week with Pope Benedict" if the Vatican web site released English translations within a week of when Pope Benedict gave particular communications, but they don't, so there we are.

It should, nevertheless, provide a way for English-speaking Benedict fans such as myself to access his thought in as timely a manner as possible.

To make things even easier, I'm creating a special RSS feed called JimmyAkin.Org +Benedict to make distribution easier.

Here's the direct link: http://feeds.feedburner.com/jimmyakin/benedict

If you already subscribe to the regular JimmyAkin.Org feed or the JimmyAkin.Org +Religion feed then you will get these posts automatically and do not need to subscribe separately.

So that's the plan, anyway. We'll see how it works out in practice. I may need to adjust things as we go, but hopefully it will provide a new and better way for English-speakers to stay up with the thought of our wow-awesome Pope Benedict XVI!

Hope this helps!