Media Watch

Pope's Pen Still Sharp, UPI Notes

UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL, Oct. 11— “Pope John Paul II has done it again,” UPI correspondent Uwe Siemon-Netto acknowledged in an article that contrasted the Holy Father's physical frailty with his still-acute intellect. “Just as news about a further deterioration of the state of his health leaked out of the Vatican, he issued a significant new apostolic letter taking on one of the most tragic deficits of contemporary Christian piety.”

The writer was commenting on John Paul's Oct. 8 apostolic letter Mane Nobiscum, Domine (Stay With Us, Lord), released just before the Church began its official celebration of the Year of the Eucharist.

Siemon-Netto cited a recent Catholic World News report that said the Pope is finding it increasingly difficult to speak because his chest and diaphragm muscles are being weakened by Parkinson's disease. But while this malady has curtailed his public speaking and private conversations, the Pope nevertheless continues to lead the Church effectively, the UPI correspondent said.

Wrote Siemon-Netto, “John Paul has stressed that he will not shirk from his suffering, just as Christ has not come down from his cross. Thus, suffering ‘in public’ is part of his apostolic mission, which he exercises primarily in writing these days.”

Irish Seek Second Papal Visit

IRISH NEWS, Oct. 12 — At the Oct. 11 Mass celebrating the 25th anniversary of Pope John Paul II's visit to Ireland, that country's primate, Archbishop Sean Brady, prayed that a return visit would be possible.

In his homily at Our Lady of Lourdes Church in Derry, Archbishop Brady compared the Holy Father to Derry's patron saint, Columba (also known as Columcille or Colmcille, “dove of the Church”), the sixth-century missionary to the Scots and founder of the monastery on the island of Iona. He said the Pope shares with the saint a “figure of powerful build,” the attributes of “scholar, poet and ruler” and a “fearless commitment to Christ.”

In 1979, the Pope was unable to visit Northern Ireland as planned. Security concerns dictate that a visit this year would have to be approved by the British government.

From Naples to Rome via Carolina

ASSOCIATED PRESS, Oct. 7 — A 1637 masterpiece by Jusepe de Ribera, “The Immaculate Conception,” now part of the collection of the Columbia Museum of Art in Columbia, S.C., is to be displayed at a Vatican museum next year.

“I love the company we're in,” museum director Karen Brosius said. The Vatican has also borrowed paintings from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Louvre and the Prado for its exhibition “A Woman Dressed in Sun: Iconography of the Immaculate Conception.”

Ribera, known as “the little Spaniard,” studied in Rome and later made his home in Naples, where he enjoyed the patronage of King Philip IV. His “Immaculate Conception,” unusually cheerful for the artist, was bequeathed to the Columbia museum by dime-store magnate Samuel Kress, one of the founding benefactors of the National Gallery of Art, who gave 700 Old Masters to American regional museums in the 1950s.