Nun Named Undersecretary of Vatican Congregation

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE, April 24 — Sister Enrica Rosanna, a sociology professor who had been serving as the head of Salesian University in Rome, was appointed April 24 as the No. 3 person in the Vatican's Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life.

The 60-year-old nun is the first woman to obtain a senior position in a Vatican congregation, the news service reported. The congregation oversees both men's and women's religious orders and secular institutes regarding their government, discipline, studies, goods, rights and privileges.

“Women will save humanity,” Sister Rosanna told Vatican Radio, echoing Pope John Paul II's 1988 apostolic letter Mulieris Dignitatem, (The dignity and Vocation of Women) “because they are capable of compassion, because they are able to appreciate beauty, because they are capable of sacrifice, because they are capable of going where there is need and are capable of seeing beyond ordinary life to go where life is wanting or where the necessary is lacking.”

Pope Beatifies Five Religious and One Lay Woman

THE GUARDIAN (U.K.), April 26 — Pope John Paul II on April 25 celebrated a beatification Mass for one man and five women, reading details of their lives in four different languages.

Five were religious: August Czartoryski, a 19th-century Polish prince who became a Salesian priest; Laura Montoya of Colombia, who founded the Congregation of the Missionary Sisters of the Immaculate Mary; María Guadalupe García Zavala of Mexico, co-founder of the Congregation of the Servants of St. Margaret Mary and the Poor; Nemesia Valle of Italy, a nun of the Congregation of the Sisters of Charity of St. Giovanna Antida Thouret; and Eusebia Palomino Yenes of Spain, a nun of the Institute of the Daughters of Mary, Help of Christians.

A lay Portuguese woman, Alexandrina María da Costa, was also beatified. She worked with the local Salesian community and is said to have spent 13 years eating only Communion bread and wine until her death in 1955.

The beatifications bring the number of people beatified by John Paul to 1,330. He has canonized 476.

Papal Trips to France and Switzerland

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS, April 22 — A delegation sent by the Vatican visited Lourdes, France, April 19-22 to explore the possibility of a papal visit there this summer.

The visit to study the area was in response to an invitation to visit the shrine at Lourdes, which draws more than 4 million visitors a year, sometime near Aug. 15, the feast of the Assumption, the wire service reported.

A statement from the French bishops noted that this year marks the 150th anniversary of the Church's promulgation of the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception.

John Paul last visited France in 1997.

The Vatican is also considering a papal trip to Switzerland in June, the Associated Press reported. It said an advance team has already visited the country and bishops there are anticipating the arrival of the Pope.