Five Cardinals Join Highest Church Court

ASSOCIATED PRESS, June 7 — Five new cardinals have joined the Apostolic Signatura, the Church's highest court of appeal in Canon Law, which handles such cases as annulments, disputes between clergy and discipline of priests and religious.

The new appointments are Cardinal Edward Egan of New York; Cardinal Jozef Glemp, former primate of Poland; Cardinal Agostino Cacciavillan, the former Papal Nuncio in the United States; Cardinal Sergio Sebastiani; and the president of the pontifical council for promoting Christian unity Cardinal Walter Kasper.

Make Jesus the Center of Your Personal Life

VATICAN INFORMATION SERVICE, June 8 — When Pope John Paul greeted a group of pilgrims from the Italian Archdiocese of Capua, he urged them to try to find Christ “with new ardor, to listen to his voice, he who calls you to a more intense evangelical faithfulness.”

The Holy Father continued: “He asks you to make him present wherever man finds himself alone, rejected or humiliated due to sorrow or violence and wherever people, tired of human words, have a deep desire to be close to God. …[Y]oung people: Do not ever lose pride in being Christians…forge a friendship with Christ …look for what he looks for… behave as he behaved. Jesus must become the center of your life. He helps you to be the ‘salt and leaven’ of your land.”

A Few More Questions for Neocatechumenate Way

CWNEWS.COM, June 4 — While their activities have received extensive encouragement from Pope John Paul, the lay and clerical movement “NeoCatechumenate Way” will not yet have its official statutes approved by the Vatican, reported CWNews.com.

It appeared there were still questions remaining about the role of priests within the group and their relationship to local bishops. The statutes are still unclear, Vatican sources said, about who will exercise authority over the clergy associated with the apostolate.

Work has continued on these statutes, which are necessary for full Church approval of the group, for more than a year. CWNews.com reported that “four successive drafts of those statutes have been produced, and each time the drafts have been sent back for further modifications.”

Three Vatican congregations must approve the statutes before they are published.

Founded in 1967, the Neocatechumenate is active around the world, encouraging Catholics to minister to the poor and dispossessed with their presence and friendship as well as material aid.