Earlier I linked a Catholic News Service story regarding B16′s forthcoming encyclical. That was only one small point in the article, though.
The piece as a whole dealt with things that are happening at the Vatican these days. Among them:
– The Vatican’s chief ecumenist, Cardinal Walter Kasper, traveled to Jerusalem, Turkey and Geneva in November for meetings to commemorate the Second Vatican Council’s major documents on ecumenical and interfaith dialogue.
– A flurry of beatification Masses were held at the Vatican and elsewhere, all for sainthood causes that were advanced under Pope John Paul. Unlike his predecessor, Pope Benedict has opted not to preside over these liturgies.
– The Congregation for Catholic Education prepared to release a document on homosexuals and seminary admission, under preparation since 2001.
– At the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Sacraments, a commission held another in a series of meetings on reworking liturgical translations in English.
– The Vatican’s major pontifical academies sponsored a series of international conferences in November on a wide range of topics: the science and ethics of water distribution, globalization and education, and the concept of the human person.
– This year even saw "dueling conferences," when a bioethics congress sponsored by the Vatican’s Pontifical Academy for Life coincided with an international conference on the human genome, sponsored by the Pontifical Council for Health Care Workers.
The article also focused singificantly on B16′s management style, which made for fascinating reading.
