San Diego Union-Tribune (Sunday)
FRANCIS FILLS KEY POSTS, INCLUDING NUN AS DEVELOPMENT OFFICE DEPUTY
Appointments among first in Vatican overhaul
Tour boat disappears in northern Japan
The Japanese Coast Guard said today that rescue helicopters found four of 26 people on a tour boat missing in the frigid waters of northern Japan since the day before, but their conditions are unknown.
The four people were found near the tip of Shiretoko Peninsula, but the coast guard said it could not confirm whether they were rescued alive. NHK public television said they were unconscious.
The 19-ton Kazu 1 made an emergency call in the early afternoon, saying the ship’s bow had f looded and it was beginning to sink and tilt while traveling off the western coast of Shiretoko Peninsula near the northern island of Hokkaido, the coast guard said.
The tour boat has since lost contact, according to the coast guard. It said the boat was carrying 24 passengers, including two children, and two crew.
Today’s rescue came after nearly 19 hours of intense search involving six patrol boats, several aircraft and divers. The search continued through the night.
Pope Francis made key appointments in his newly reformed Vatican bureaucracy Saturday, naming new deputies for the doctrine office and confirming the highest-ranked woman in the Holy See as the No. 2 in the development office.
The appointments are some of the first since Francis last month issued his long-awaited overhaul of the Vatican Curia, or bureaucracy, which acts as the central government for the 1.3 billion-strong Catholic Church.
Francis promoted Irish Monsignor John Kennedy to head the discipline section of the newly named Dicastery
for the Doctrine of the Faith, which handles clergy sexual abuse cases. In a 2019 interview with The Associated Press, Kennedy said the office had seen a “tsunami” of cases from parts of the world that had previously not reported any.
Joining him as secretary in the parallel doctrine section of the dicastery is Italian Monsignor Armando Matteo, currently the under-secretary in the office and professor of fundamental theology at Rome’s Pontifical Urbaniana University.
The powerful department is headed by Jesuit Cardinal Luis Ladaria, who at 78 could retire when his five-year term expires in July.
Francis also confirmed the new leadership of the Vatican office for human development, which groups together the Holy See’s departments responsible for refugees, the environment, charity as well as its COVID-19 response. Heading that office is Czech-born Canadian Cardinal Michael Czerny, a Jesuit like Francis who was recently dispatched by the pope to Ukraine and its border areas as a sign of solidarity with refugees fleeing the war.
His deputy is Italian Sister Alessandra Smerilli, an economist and the highest-ranked woman at the Vatican in her role as secretary of the dicastery. Smerilli has taken on increasing responsibilities in the past two years after helping steer the Holy See’s response to the pandemic.
Both they and a third official confirmed Saturday, the Rev. Fabio Baggio, had been appointed on an interim basis after Francis removed key officials last year and more recently declined to renew the mandate of
Ghanaian Cardinal Peter Turkson, who was recently appointed chancellor of the pontifical academies for sciences and social sciences.
After nine years of work, Francis issued his blueprint for the Vatican bureaucracy on March 19. For the first time it explicitly allows for laypeople — including women — to head Vatican dicasteries, imposes once-renewable fiveyear term limits on some officials and gives institutional weight to his advisory panel on clergy sexual abuse by incorporating it into the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith.
An official in the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors, Emer Mccarthy, welcomed Kennedy’s appointment, tweeting Saturday: “It’s a good day for #Safeguarding.”