Posted: October 29, 2009, 8:38 AM by NP Editor
Filed under: Father Raymond J. De Souza
This week, the diplomatic corps is bidding farewell to Archbishop Luigi Ventura, the apostolic nuncio to Canada for the past eight years and the most influential Catholic in Canada this young century.
The apostolic nuncio is generally thought of as ambassador of one state to another, but that is not quite right. The Vatican City State does not have diplomatic relations with any country. Diplomatic relations are with the Holy See.
What's the difference? The Holy See is the legal expression of the pope's role as universal pastor of the Church. States maintain diplomatic relations with the supreme authority of the Catholic Church, which is recognized as a sovereign power in international law.
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According to the Office of the Apostolic Nuncio, we do not know who the new Nuncio for Canada is as of yet as the former Nuncio, Archbishop Ventura, goes to Paris.
And from his farewell address, he writes some fairly amazing words, particularly the following quoting Spanish writer, J.M. Prada
We are not without our challenges even today, and we know that they are not small. The principal challenge of our age seems to me to be anthropological, a hegemonic vision of the world that transforms the human person into a socially engineered object. A new anthropology imposes cultural paradigms that are unattackable and indisputable. One offers, according to the inspired expression of a young Spanish philosopher, "the opportunity to transform one’s interest and one’s desires into liberties and rights. However these are not more inherent to nature but they become gracious concessions of a power that legally consecrates them" (J. M. de Prada).
Full article here...
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