World Media Watch

Argentinean Politician Is At Odds With Church

BUENOS AIRES HERALD, Nov. 14 — An Argentinean government official accused Catholic Church leaders of being out of touch with reality, a day after bishops warned of the dangers of allegedly rising social inequality in the country, the Herald reported.

“The assessment does not match reality … All indexes show poverty has gone down,” cabinet chief Alberto Fernandez said in a radio interview.

In a Nov. 12 statement, leaders of Argentina's Catholic Church said the growth in social inequality may lead to outbursts of violence and recommended “firm and durable” policies to foster the creation of genuine jobs. The Catholic bishops issued their pastoral letter, titled “A Light to Rebuild the Nation,” after six days of deliberations in the Buenos Aires province district of Pilar.

During their gathering, the bishops also elected Buenos Aires Archbishop Jorge Bergoglio the new head of the Argentine bishops conference.

Italian Woman Healed at Lourdes

ANSA, Nov. 14 — The Catholic Church has officially recognized the miraculous cure of an Italian woman who visited Lourdes more than 50 years ago when she was suffering from a lethal form of rheumatic heart disease, the Italian news service reported.

Anna Santaniello, who is now 94 and lives in southern Italy, says her illness disappeared during a pilgrimage to the French shrine in 1952. The international Catholic committee that runs the shrine has now acknowledged the miracle, making Santaniello the 67th person to have officially been healed at Lourdes.

She told the daily Il Giornale that she was diagnosed with a diseased heart when she was a child and that the same illness had killed one of her brothers and a sister. “My condition got worse as I got older and after a while I was confined to bed, barely able to breathe. The doctors had lost all hope for me,” she said.

“I arrived at Lourdes on a stretcher because I was unable to walk,” she added. “The sisters there submerged me in the spring. The water was icy cold but I immediately felt something hot explode in my chest, as if life was being restored to me.”

Old Road Will Lead to Rome Again

THE TIMES ONLINE, Nov. 14 — Canterbury, immortalized in Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales and a former starting point for a medieval pilgrim route to Rome, will be revived if Romano Prodi wins the general election in Italy next spring, the Times Online reported.

As part of his electoral platform, the former European Commission president is promising to restore and clean up the pilgrim ways of Italy — a pledge bound to win favor among the country's millions of Catholics.

Aides said that Prodi, prime minister from 1996-1998, hoped that British and French authorities would join him in reviving the Via Francigena (the Way of the Franks), which was founded in the 10th century by Sigeric, the Archbishop of Canterbury at the time. The Via Francigena runs from Canterbury through Calais, Rheims, Besançon and Lausanne, crossing into Italy at the St. Bernard Pass. It then reaches Rome via Aosta, Piacenza, Fidenza, Parma, Lucca, Siena and Viterbo. The 1,200 miles between Canterbury and Rome recently took one modern-day pilgrim 70 days to walk.