Tim Russert has died of a heart attack at the age of 58.

Family members say NBC’s Tim Russert has died. They tell The New York Times that Russert died of an apparent heart attack. The host of NBC’s “Meet the Press” was 58.

Longtime NBC anchor Tom Brokaw has now confirmed Russert’s death, in a special report on NBC. Brokaw says Russert’s death came during a political campaign that “he loved.”

Stunning and sad news.

More from MSNBC:

Russert was recording voiceovers for Sunday’s “Meet the Press” program when he collapsed, the network said. No details were immediately available.

Russert, the recipient of 48 honorary doctorates, took over the helm of “Meet the Press” in December 1991. Now in its 60th year, “Meet the Press” is the longest-running program in the history of television. In 2008, Time Magazine named him one of the 100 most influential people in the world.

Timothy John Russert Jr. was born in Buffalo, N.Y., on May 7, 1950. He was a graduate of Canisius High School, John Carroll University and the Cleveland-Marshall College of Law. He was a member of the bar in New York and the District of Columbia.

After graduating from law school, Russert went into politics as a staff operative. In 1976, he worked on the Senate campaign of Daniel Patrick Moynihan, D-N.Y., and in 1982, he worked on Mario Cuomo’s campaign for governor of New York.

Russert joined NBC News in 1984. In April 1985, he supervised the live broadcasts of NBC’s TODAY show from Rome, negotiating and arranging an appearance by Pope John Paul II, a first for American television. In 1986 and 1987, Russert led NBC News’ weeklong broadcasts from South America, Australia and China.

Of his background as a Democratic political operative, Russert said, “My views are not important.” “Lawrence Spivak, who founded ‘Meet the Press,’ told me before he died that the job of the host is to learn as much as you can about your guest’s positions and take the other side,” he said in a 2007 interview with Time magazine. “And to do that in a persistent and civil way. And that’s what I try to do every Sunday.”

I’ve long fallen out of the habit of watching the Sunday shows, indeed much television current affairs programming at all, but always thought he was the best of his era despite his biases. The political operative to “objective journalist” transition is a strange one. But Russert was personable, funny, and generally fair to his guests. I knew him only as a viewer of his television appearances, which can be deceptive in giving the illusion that we truly know them as people, but he always struck me as a decent fellow.

UPDATE: A tribute from Howie Kurtz fronts the Saturday WaPo.

Henry Farrell recounts getting stuck in pope-security-related traffic, contrasts the differences between this trip and John Paul II’s 1979 visit to Ireland, and takes this photo:

Henry muses that it “seemed to me to have dark undertones that were presumably not intended by the person who was waving it about.” Personally, I find the canine overtones amusing enough.

Cross-posted from
PoliBlog:

Via the BBC: Second Venezuela TV is under fire

Venezuela’s government has accused a TV station of inciting a murder attempt on President Hugo Chavez, hours after taking another network off the air.

It said footage shown on Globovision implicitly called for Mr Chavez to be killed. The station denies the claim.

It would appear that the government is watching television rather closely these days, and with an interpretative eye. The call for assassination was as follows:

Communications Minister William Lara said Globovision had called for the death of Mr Chavez by airing footage of the 1981 assassination attempt against Pope John Paul II with the song “This Does Not Stop Here” sung by Ruben Blades, now Panama’s tourism minister.

“The conclusion of the specialists … is that (in this segment) they are inciting the assassination of the president of Venezuela,” Mr Lara said, as he filed a lawsuit against the news network at the state prosecutor’s office.

Now, granted, all I have to go by is the description above, but it does strike me as something of a stretch (to put it mildly) that the footage described could be interpreted as a call for Chavez’s death.

Further, the notion that the Communications Minister’s “specialists” are so closely monitoring Venezuelan TV looking for possible slights of President is odd at best. Given the RCTV situation, one wonders if the government isn’t looking for reasons to shut down other private stations.

Indeed, it is worth noting that the accusations come in the context of the following:

Globovision was the only TV station to air footage of a large demonstration against the government’s growing control over the media.

While they are at it, the government is suing CNN:

The government was also suing the US station CNN for allegedly linking Mr Chavez to al-Qaeda, Mr Lara said.

“CNN broadcast a lie which linked President Chavez to violence and murder,” he said.

In a statement, CNN said they “strongly deny” being “engaged in a campaign to discredit or attack Venezuela”.

The Houston Chronicle has more on the CNN issue:

Venezuela’s government asked the attorney general to investigate Time Warner’s Cable News Network and local television station Globovision for “lies” and inciting violence against President Hugo Chavez.

Communications and Information Minister Willian Lara said CNN last week falsely portrayed a Mexican protest as being in Caracas and displayed images of Chavez alongside an al-Qaida leader.

[...]

“This is an effort to associate Hugo Chavez with two things, violence and death,” Lara said in a televised news conference today in Caracas. “CNN lies about Venezuela.”

The Chávez government’s interest in controlling media and the media message about the administration is, at a minimum, unhealthy for democracy and pluralism in Venezuela. More specifically it is troublesome that the government acts as if its job is to protect Chávez’s public image continues to make it look as if the goal is build a cult of personality around him. Leaders in democracies are supposed to suffer the slings and arrows of often vicious criticism as if it doesn’t bother them. And certainly they are not supposed to send government functionaries after media outlets for perceived slights. If factually incorrect information is disseminated then the administration in a democracy is supposed to simply try and present a case for their interpretation–they aren’t supposed to send the AG after the offending party.

Of course, I think that the public criticism of Globovision is clearly an attempt to creating a chilling effect in Venezuela’s public discourse. The message is clear: the government just shut down RCTV as a broadcast entity under the argument that it illegally challenged the government. Now Globovision is being accused of promoting the assassination of the President (after being the only station to show the anti-government protests over the RCTV situation). That is not coincidence and it is clearly a warning shot across the bow of Globovision and other media outlets in Venezuela.

The CNN move is probably more about propaganda about standing up to the Big American News Network.

Khalid Sheik Mohammed has signed a two page confession taking responsibility for the 9/11 attacks and dozens of other terrorist operations in a hearing at Guantanamo Bay over the weekend.

WaPo:

Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, confessed at a Guantanamo Bay military hearing that he planned and funded that al-Qaeda operation and said he was involved in more than two dozen other terrorist acts around the world, according to documents released by the Pentagon yesterday.

In a rambling statement delivered Saturday to a closed-door military tribunal, Mohammed declared himself an enemy of the United States and claimed some responsibility for many of the major terrorist attacks on U.S. and allied targets over more than a decade. He said that he is at war with the United States and that the deaths of innocent people are an unfortunate consequence of that conflict. “I was responsible for the 9/11 operation, from A to Z,” Mohammed told a panel of military officers through a personal representative, who read off a list of 31 terrorist acts that were either carried out or planned but not executed. According to transcripts released by Defense Department officials last night, Mohammed later spoke in broken English and Arabic, saying, “For sure, I’m American enemies.”

Mohammed took responsibility for the attacks on New York and Washington in an interrogation detailed in the Sept. 11 commission’s report. But his appearance before the tribunal at Guantanamo Bay marked the first time since his March 2003 arrest that he was allowed to make an extended statement that was not delivered to interrogators.

NYT adds:

In a rambling statement, Mr. Mohammed, a chief aide to Osama bin Laden, said his actions were part of a military campaign. “I’m not happy that 3,000 been killed in America,” he said in broken English. “I feel sorry even. I don’t like to kill children and the kids.”

He added, “The language of war is victims.”

Though American officials had linked Mr. Mohammed to the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and to several others, his confession was the first time he spelled out in his own words a panoply of global terror activities, ranging from plans to bomb landmarks in New York City and London to assassination plots against former Presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton and Pope John Paul II. Some of the plots he claimed to plan, including the attempt on Mr. Carter, had not previously been publicly disclosed.

Mr. Mohammed indicated in the transcript that some of his earlier statements to C.I.A. interrogators were the result of torture. But he said that his statements at the tribunal on Saturday were not made under duress or pressure.

His actions, he said, were like those of other revolutionaries. Had the British arrested George Washington during the Revolutionary War, Mr. Mohammed said, “for sure they would consider him enemy combatant.”

He apparently stopped short of claiming credit for killing the czar and his ministers, and shooting either the sheriff or his deputy.

The story is creating a major blogstorm and is obviously news. Still, I’m not sure what to make of it. He has been in American custody nearly four years, without access to an attorney, and claims to have been subjected to torture. I’m just not sure how seriously to take his claim of responsibility for the 9/11 attack, let alone for all the other crimes. That he’s a liar is a given; that he’s insane, a distinct possibility.

Indeed, even Robert Spencer concedes Mohammed may be “displaying a bit of jihadi braggadocio.”

Andrew Cochran has links to the transcripts of the interviews by the Defense Department of Mohammed and the other two most senior Al Qaeda leaders in custody, Abu Faraj al-Libi and Ramzi Binalshibh. He provides no analysis.

Steve Bainbridge, both on his blog and in a TCS column, answers the title question in the affirmative.

Mehmet Ali Agca, the man who tried to assassinate the late Pope John Paul II, has been released from prison and will be drafted into the army, according to the AP.

A court has approved the release from prison the man who shot Pope John Paul II in 1981, saying he completed his sentence for crimes he committed in Turkey, the semiofficial Anatolia news agency reported Sunday. Mehmet Ali Agca was extradited to Turkey in 2000 after serving almost 20 years in Italy for shooting and wounding the pope in St. Peter’s Square in Rome. His motive for the attack remains unclear.

Agca, 47, was expected to be released as early as Monday. Anatolia said he was expected to be immediately enlisted by the military for obligatory service because he had dodged the draft, Anatolia said. Turkish paramilitary police were expected to take Agca first to a local military station and then to a military hospital in Istanbul for medical check, a routine procedure. His lawyer and family said they were not aware of the court decision. “I’m surprised,” his lawyer, Dogan Yildirim, told The Associated Press by telephone. “If its true, justice will finally be served. He has been in prison for so long.” Agca’s sister, Fatma Agca, also was surprised. “We did not hear it,” Fatma Agca told the AP from the family home in the southeastern city of Malatya.

Vatican spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls said the Vatican would defer to the judgement of the Turkish tribunal. “The Holy See has learned only from news agencies of the news of the possible freedom of Ali Agca,” he said in a brief statement. “The Holy See, before a problem of a judicial nature, submits to the decisions of the tribunals involved in this matter.”

Upon his return to Turkey from Italy, Agca immediately was sent to prison to serve a 10-year sentence for murdering Turkish journalist Abdi Ipekci in 1979. He was separately sentenced to seven years and four months for two robberies in Turkey the same year. An Istanbul court ruled in 2004 that Agca should only serve the longest sentence — his conviction for killing Ipekci. That 10-year sentence was changed twice because of new Turkish laws.

Quite a bizarre spectacle all around. Why a NATO military would want a 47-year-old psychopath is not particularly clear.

Saving endangered species through better pharmaceuticals.

Benedict Keeps Cardinal As Vatican’s No. 2 (AP)

Pope Benedict XVI confirmed Cardinal Angelo Sodano in the Vatican’s No. 2 post Thursday and kept all other top officials, avoiding any immediate shakeup in the late John Paul II’s administration. It was a sign that the new pope, a doctrinal hard-liner, wants to show continuity with the popular John Paul.

Sodano, the Vatican’s secretary of state, is 77, already two years past the normal retirement age for Vatican officials. The new pope is 78.

Interesting.

“God’s Rottweiler” arises from the white smoke:

Thousands Cheer in St. Peter’s Square as New Leader Emerges (NYT | RSS)

Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was elected pope today, taking the name Benedict XVI, then telling a wildly cheering crowd from a balcony on St. Peter’s Basilica, “I entrust myself to your prayers.”

The 265th leader of the Roman Catholic Church, smiling broadly, was introduced by Cardinal Medina Estevez of Chile, who emerged from behind huge velvet drapes to announce, “We have a new pope!”

His selection came in the evening of the second day of the conclave of cardinals in the Sistine Chapel. Bells rang out over St. Peter’s Square and white smoke drifted from a Sistine Chapel chimney signaling that the ballot had been decided.

The new pope, who was born in Marktl am Inn, Germany, and turned 78 on Saturday, was one of the closest collaborators of John Paul II. As the head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith he has been the Church’s doctrinal watchdog since 1981.

He has been described as a conservative, intellectual clone of the late pontiff, and, as the Dean of the College of Cardinals, he was widely respected for his uncompromising – if ultraconservative – principles and his ability to be critical.

As cardinal, he had shut the door on any discussion on several issues, including the ordination of women, celibacy of priests and homosexuality, defending his positions by invoking theological truth. In the name of orthodoxy, he is in favor of a smaller Church, but one that is more ideologically pure.

That last paragraph, which suggests that Ratzinger is authoritarian, requires context. Though he is indeed doctrinally conservative, he doesn’t necessarily have a predisposition to stamping out dissenting voices. Thomas Williams explains:

Particularly striking is Ratzinger’s description of his youth, especially during the years of National Socialism. Having grown up in a Germany dominated by Nazi propaganda and the suppression of heterodox opinions, he grew notably inimical to authoritarianism and ideologies that attempt to stamp out uncomfortable truths, especially the truth about God and the human person. Once we have suppressed the truth, Ratzinger says, we are left only with our personal choice, which is necessarily arbitrary. “When decisions are left solely to the domain of the will, whether particular or collective, man is debased.” Like Pope John Paul, Ratzinger believes that the proclamation of the truth is the greatest guarantee of human freedom. This conviction is enshrined in his episcopal motto, Cooperatores Veritatis, which he adopted when ordained archbishop of Munich-Freising in 1977.

In addition, Ratzinger’s preference for “a smaller Church” isn’t simply “[i]n the name of orthodoxy.” He believes that large bureaucracies can lose track of their central missions and end up doing a disservice to people. Reports John Allen:

Because Ratzinger is the prime theoretician of papal authority, it is often assumed that under him the Vatican would take on even more massive proportions. In fact, like most conservatives, Ratzinger feels an instinctive aversion to big government. He believes that bureaucracies become self-perpetuating and take on their own agendas, rarely reflecting the best interests of the people they are intended to serve.

“The power typical of political rule or technical management cannot be and must not be the style of the church’s power,” Ratzinger wrote in 1988’s A New Song for the Lord. “In the past two decades an excessive amount of institutionalization has come about in the church, which is alarming. … Future reforms should therefore aim not at the creation of yet more institutions, but at their reduction.”

While Ratzinger would not hesitate to make decisions in Rome that others believe should be the province of the local church – revoking imprimaturs, replacing translations, dismissing theologians – he would not erect a large new Vatican apparatus for this purpose. Ratzinger would encourage bishops’ conferences and dioceses to shed layers of bureaucracy where possible. The overall thrust would be for smaller size, less paperwork, and more focus on core concerns.

Update: Since the press is characterizing Ratzinger’s selection as a vote of continuity, I think it’s important to highlight some significant differences between Benedict XVI and John Paul II. Note:

Borrowing John Courtney Murray’s useful distinction between two valid Christian orientations, an incarnational humanism (which emphasizes Christianity’s immanence and the close link between grace and the nature it perfects), and an eschatological humanism (which focuses on Christianity’s otherworldliness and man’s pilgrim condition), Ratzinger clearly leans toward the latter–whereas John Paul II tends toward the former.

Concerning prospects for ecumenism, for example, Ratzinger is typically guarded: “I don’t dare to hope for a full communion of Christians within history.” This reserve hardly seems to square with John Paul’s vision of the third millennium as the millennium of Christian unity, as expressed in the encyclical Ut Unum Sint or in the Pope’s reference to Christians’ “confident quest for full communion.” Citing examples of ongoing fragmentation of the Christian communions and the formation of new splinter groups–including syncretistic sects with a mix of Christian and pagan elements–Ratzinger points to other objectives. “Much more important is that we accept each other with profound respect and love, that we recognize one another as Christians, and that we endeavor to offer the world a common witness in the essential things, both in favor of a just world order and in giving a response to the great questions about God and about man’s origin and destiny.” While this mutual acceptance and common witness are clearly of major importance, one hopes the Cardinal’s soft-pedalling of efforts toward full communion between the Christian churches won’t play at cross-purposes to John Paul’s ecumenical program.

The new evangelization receives the same reserved response. Where Pope John Paul confidently proclaims the third millennium a springtime of evangelization, Cardinal Ratzinger presents a scenario of a shrinking Church of minority status, more concerned with creating small pockets of authentic Christian living than influencing the course of society. It would seem that Ratzinger’s experience with this century’s disastrous attempts at Hegelian Utopianism–both of Marxist and Nietzschean stamp–may have left him with a permanent distaste for programs of large-scale social change.

More to follow….

A new pope has been chosen on just the second day of the conclave. His name has not yet been announced. If precedent is any indication, we should know within hours.

A New Pope Has Been Chosen (WaPo)

White smoke from the Sistine Chapel’s chimney and the pealing of bells Tuesday signaled that the cardinals of the Roman Catholic Church have elected a new pope to succeed Pope John Paul II. Thousands watched in St. Peter’s Square and millions more waited around the world to hear the announcement of the new pontiff’s identity. The election of the new pope came on only the second day of voting by cardinals in a secret conclave. Under the rules, the 115 voting cardinals chose the 265th pope with a two-thirds majority, or at least 77 voting in favor. The balloting followed a day of stately ritual.

One potential candidate, the influential Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger of Germany, delivered a hard-hitting sermon at a pre-conclave Mass attended by the cardinals. A close associate of John Paul and the dean of the College of Cardinals, Ratzinger launched a passionate defense of strict orthodoxy. “To have a clear faith according to the church’s creed is today often labeled fundamentalism,” he told the cardinals and the congregation packed into St. Peter’s Basilica. “While relativism, letting ourselves be carried away by any wind of doctrine, appears as the only appropriate attitude for the today’s times. A dictatorship of relativism is established that recognizes nothing definite and leaves only one’s own ego and one’s own desires as the final measure.”

New pope selected by cardinals (BBC)

White smoke has been seen from the Sistine Chapel chimney indicating that a new pope has been elected. The bells of St Peter’s Basilica rang out shortly after 1800 local time (1600 GMT) to confirm the news. There were jubilant scenes in St Peter’s Square where many thousands of pilgrims had gathered.

The new pontiff was chosen on the fourth ballot held by the 115 cardinals meeting to select a successor to Pope John Paul II. There is no word on the new pope’s identity or what name he will choose, which the Vatican has indicated will be announced 45 minutes after his election.

The new leader of 1.1 billion Roman Catholics worldwide will soon appear on the balcony of the Vatican palace to greet the public and give his traditional “Urbi et Orbi” blessing to the city of Rome and the world.

Interesting. One presumes this means that one of the early favorites, likely Ratzinger or Francis Arinze, has been chosen. It would be unlikely that a lesser-known candidate would achieve two-thirds consensus so quickly.

In 2002, Frei Betto, a renowned liberation theologian, declared that, if Cardinal Hummes were to reach the papacy, “he would be even more socially engaged than John Paul II.” It was a bold statement, but perhaps not ill-informed. After all, how many church leaders can claim to have opened diocesan facilities for labor and political meetings? How many have provided safe haven for striking metal workers — including a young Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva — during Brazil’s military dictatorship? How many have directly urged Catholics to “fight in the legislature for laws favoring the family and life from the moment of conception until natural death”? Yet it would be a mistake to brand Cardinal Hummes a revolutionary. Much to the chagrin of social activists, he has stuck to many traditional doctrines and even withheld support for liberation theology itself.

“Inserted in the World”

Cardinal Hummes believes that Catholics must be engaged. Specifically:

[T]he Church must dialogue today, more than ever, with post-modern, urban and pluralistic society and with all the sectors that make it up, such as culture, science, technology, economy, the market, the financial world, politics and the means of communication, especially through the laity.

This worldview leads him to take clear and concrete stances on urgent social issues. Consider, for instance, the depth with which he analyzes the problem of HIV/AIDS:

The urgent need for treatment for these young patients can be met by the advances in medical science. Unfortunately, the cost of medical treatment is high and often beyond the reach not only of the poor, but even of those in the middle income bracket. This economic problem is compounded by legal issues, such as contentious interpretations of the right to intellectual property. My delegation is heartened by the WTO [World Trade Organization] agreement reached last 30 August 2003, which will make it easier for poorer States to import cheaper generic pharmaceuticals made under compulsory licensing. This agreement should give these young patients greater access to medicines. We dare to hope that more concrete expressions of political will and moral courage like this would soon follow. But the HIV/AIDS sufferers do not only turn to pharmaceutical companies for help; their appeal for political will and moral courage is addressed above all to the whole international community. Indeed, while there are only few investors in the pharmaceutical firms which can provide the medicines these young patients direly need, all of us — as individuals and as community — must be investors in the noble cause of protecting the children and the young from HIV/AIDS infection and rescuing those who already carry the virus, because they are the future of the human race.

He identifies a specific leadership role for the Church:

The Holy See and the Catholic institutions have not shrunk from the global fight against HIV/AIDS. My delegation is pleased to note that 12% of care providers for HIV/AIDS patients are agencies of the Catholic Church and 13% of the global relief for those affected by the epidemic comes from Catholic non-governmental organizations. The Holy See, thanks to its institutions worldwide, provides 25% of the total care given to HIV/AIDS victims, placing itself among the leading advocates in the field, in particular among the most ubiquitous and best providers of care for the victims.

Underlying such positions is a preference for the poor. Cardinal Hummes pays special attention to global poverty, starting in his own Sao Paolo neighborhood:

The cardinal said he was profoundly saddened by “the tragic news of the massacre of our brethren, who are part of the neglected and suffering population of our beloved city.”

“Such violence and cruelty is unacceptable and should be vigorously repudiated. The Church has cried out many times regarding the need to come to the aid of those who are forced to live in our streets, without shelter. She does so out of a duty of humanity and because of her faith in Jesus Christ, who wishes to be identified in each person, especially in the poor and handicapped,” the Cardinal said.

Likewise, he questioned the value of projects to improve the city, “if a significant part of its population suffers from the worst of miseries, is defenseless and subject to all kinds of violence.”

More generally, he blames capitalism, privatization, and tariff reductions for bringing “misery and poverty affecting millions around the world.” Such remarks lead many analysts to categorize him among the anti-globalization movement. But, upon closer examination, he seems to position more along the lines of “a new alternative, a third way to guarantee economic growth without sacrificing the poor and causing unemployment.” Note:

Hummes said that on the global level, the powerbrokers in the G-8 today stand before a historic responsibility.

“They must search an alternate global economic program where all have the possibility to integrate themselves, and no one remains outside. There will be no future if things go on as they now stand,” he said.

Hummes added, however, that he believes progress will be made, if only because it is in the self-interest of the elites to do so.

“The leaders realize we can’t go on like this,” he said. “Also for them, it’s better to be attentive to the question of poverty, of exclusion.”

Therein lies a sense of pragmatism. It seeps into other topics, most notably the Vatican’s reaction to The Da Vinci Code. Rather than blasting author Dan Brown and shining an even brighter light on the subject, as some church leaders have done, Cardinal Hummes puts the controversy in its place:

“It isn’t a big problem,” Cardinal Claudio Hummes, a leading candidate to succeed Pope John Paul, told Folha de S.Paulo newspaper on Monday. “We know it’s a big farce and that it did well commercially. The more people talk about the book, the happier the author will be.”

“Cardinal [Tarcisio] Bertone thought it was correct, with relation to his archdiocese, to warn against the book. It’s a right he has. But the index of prohibited books does not exist anymore,” Hummes said.

“The Church doesn’t censor. It tries to guide its faithful through catechism.”

“In Closer Contact with Jesus Christ”

Though he emphasizes action and results, Cardinal Hummes does not neglect philosophy and teachings. Indeed, his activism is linked to a sophisticated understanding of the importance of work, as inspired by Laborem Exercens. While he values charity, for instance, he argues that the best way to serve the poor is through training:

From a face-off in the 1970s with Brazil’s military government over workers’ rights to the more recent creation of church-run job-training centers, the cardinal’s commitment to fighting poverty and promoting human dignity has focused on the importance of employment.

At a Christmas 2004 fund-raiser for one of the centers, the cardinal said, “Jesus was born poor among the poor to call our attention to the social injustice that makes a portion of humanity increasingly poor, suffering, humiliated and excluded from sufficient access to the goods of the earth.”

[...]

The cardinal said that, as Pope John Paul II wrote in his 1981 encyclical on human labor, “Laborem Exercens,” work not only creates goods for one’s family and society, it also is a way to express one’s personality, creativity and potential.

Training workers, creating jobs and guaranteeing decent working conditions, Cardinal Hummes said, are essential factors “in resolving injustice and its consequences, such as poverty and hunger.”

Charity is not enough, the cardinal said: “Jesus, who was born poor, teaches us to care for the poor with love, intelligence and efficiency.”

More broadly, public action is not meant to distract from spiritual development:

Hummes emphasized that passion for social justice does not have to come at the expense of Christian identity. Concern for development, he said, must not neglect efforts “to help people to encounter the full truth about human beings and their vocation in this world,” meaning “Jesus Christ, in whom this full truth is met.”

Indeed, spiritual development facilitates public action:

“The fundamental mission of the Church is to spread the Gospel and bring people in closer contact with Jesus Christ,” Hummes said. “And it is through this contact that we can start correcting social injustices.”

Related:

Papal Candidates: An Overview
Papal Candidates: Cardinal Francis Arinze, Nigeria
Papal Candidates: Jorge Mario Bergoglio, Argentina
Papal Candidates: Cardinal Dario Castrillón Hoyos, Colombia
Papal Candidates: Cardinal Godfried Danneels, Belgium

The Vatican has deployed countermeasures in an attempt to keep enterprising reporters from spying on the papal selection conclave.

Vatican mobilises anti-surveillance op (The Register)

If press reports are to be believed, then next Monday’s gathering of cardinals in the Sistine Chapel will represent the biggest counter-surveillance operation since the Posh/Becks royal wedding. Indeed, so busy will the Vatican be blocking laser microphone assault, checking vases of flowers for nanobugs and setting the Swiss Guard on suspicious men using 3G mobes to communicate with circling black helicopters that we very much doubt whether there will be enough time to elect a new Pope between the stripsearches and electromagnetic sweeps.

Of course, there is a certain amount of legitimacy to the idea that some will stop at nothing to eavesdrop on the cardinals’ deliberations. The Pope-vote conclave is legendarily secretive. Pope John Paul II tackled the burgeoning technological threat when he introduced rules protecting cardinals from “threats to their independence of judgment”, viz; mobile phones, electronic organizers, radios, newspapers and TVs.

However, according to Wired, the Vatican now faces a mutli-pronged techno-assault on the Sistine Chapel. New menaces include – according to Massachusetts security operative James Atkinson – the aforementioned vibration-detecting laser mics and, chillingly, the possibility that a mole might alert the outside world by “using colored smoke or by flushing dye down a toilet with a discharge pipe that could be monitored elsewhere”.

Not that they’re paranoid or anything.

Despite its enormous riches, the Roman Catholic church is in financial crisis, according to an AP report.

New pope to face enormous financial issues

The next pope will not only have to care for the souls of his 1.1 billion-member flock worldwide, but also the church’s accounts, hit by the falling dollar, sex abuse settlements and a growing diplomatic mission. Like the chief executive of a worldwide corporation, John Paul II demanded financial accountability and promised greater transparency after years of secrecy and even scandal. But in the last years of his papacy the Holy See was back in the red. In presenting the latest accounting, the chief of the Holy See’s economic affairs office cited Europe’s sluggish economic recovery, poor investment climate and the rising strength of the euro against the dollar.

“Our financial statement could not help but reflect all of this,” said Cardinal Sergio Sebastiani.
The College of Cardinals running the church until a new pope is elected said in their daily report Tuesday that Sebastiani briefed them on the 2004 statement and several details of the 2005 budget, but gave no details. “The dollar has really hurt them,” said the Rev. Thomas Reese, a Vatican expert. “We’re not only talking about money coming from the United States. All the rich guys in the Third World also give in dollars.”

Vatican officials bristle at what John Paul once called “the myth” that the Holy See is immensely wealthy. In a rare disclosure last July, a Vatican accountant said the net patrimony, or the Vatican’s real estate holdings, are assessed at a relatively modest $908 million and that such properties as St. Peter’s Basilica and the Sistine Chapel are priceless, listed at a symbolic 1 euro.

The Vatican went through 23 money-losing years until 1993, but the situation improved dramatically after a revised code of church law made clear that dioceses around the world should assist the Vatican. Still, its most recent financial statement, issued in July for fiscal year 2003, reported a deficit for the third consecutive year. It listed 2003 revenues at about 203.6 million euros and expenditures of 213.2 million euros for a deficit of 9.6 million euros, or $11.8 million at the exchange rate at that time.

Vatican financial experts blame heavy personnel costs – 2,674 people work in Holy See offices, more than half of them lay people. But the Vatican has also greatly expanded its diplomatic activity during John Paul’s activist papacy and the Vatican now maintains relations with 174 states around the world – a costly enterprise.

The sex abuse crisis has also taken a heavy financial toll on the Church in the United States and Ireland. The total payout to victims of clergy sex abuse in the United States has now climbed to $840 million since 1950, with three dioceses – Spokane, Wash.; Portland, Ore.; and Tucson, Ariz. – seeking bankruptcy protection.

Given the lack of outside auditors and the absurdity of not counting the enormously valuable material possessions in the Vatican’s collection, I’m more than dubious of claims of poverty. Further, it’s difficult to be overly sympathetic to whatever financial discomfort having to pay for its decades-long coverup of child rape among its priesthood is causing the church.

The currency fluctuation issue is more interesting, however. The fact that even the Vatican is part of the wave of globalization is rather fascinating.

The New York Times reports that cardinals are likely to bow to popular pressure to make the late Pope John Paul II a saint and to do so ahead of the standard schedule.

Cardinals Lobby for Swift Sainthood for John Paul II

The cardinals electing a successor to Pope John Paul II are facing unusual popular pressure to declare him a saint, with some in their select ranks playing a role in the unofficial campaign through deft messages, press leaks and internal lobbying. The canonization campaign may even be playing a part in the succession politics.

Calls for sainthood began almost immediately after the pope died on April 2, and reached a peak at his funeral last Friday, when mourners in St. Peter’s Square held up huge banners saying, “Santo Subito,” or “Saint Now,” and chanted “Santo, Santo.” Soon, reports began pouring in of miraculous cures through the pope’s intervention.

Several Italian newspapers also reported that the Vatican had quietly been collecting letters and messages from people attesting to healings attributed to the widely beloved pontiff. Luigi Accattoli, one of the most senior and respected Vatican beat reporters, wrote in Corriere della Sera that a petition has already been circulated among the cardinals seeking signatures for a fast-track canonization process for John Paul. The process usually involves years – sometimes centuries – of careful investigation before a final declaration of sainthood. Several cardinals confirmed that the idea of rapid canonization was discussed the day after the pope’s funeral, at their daily meeting.

If John Paul is canonized, he would be only the fourth pope to be so honored in 900 years.

In theory, sainthood is not simply the equivalent of the Catholic Hall of Fame. In reality, though, canonization has always been mostly political, with sainthoods handed out to popular figures. Pope John Paul II himself was an avid fan of bestowing sainthood for this purpose, especially to appease local interests in the developing world.

John Tierney argues that speculators at Intrade may give us the best insights as to who will be the next Pope.

If you listened to journalists during last year’s presidential campaign, you heard about a tight race with oscillating polls and shifting momentum. The weekend before the election, we painstakingly analyzed the battleground states and bravely proclaimed them too close to call. But if you watched the Intrade market throughout the campaign, you saw the traders serenely betting on a Bush victory. Most remarkably, the weekend before the election, the traders correctly called the winner in every one of the 50 states.

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For now, the Intrade speculators are expecting the white smoke to signal an Italian pope. The futures contract that pays off in the event any Italian wins was trading at one point yesterday at 41.9, which means the traders gave Italy a 41.9 percent chance, followed by Nigeria at 13. The individual favorite was Dionigi Tettamanzi of Milan, at 23, followed by Francis Arinze of Nigeria, at 14.

Many of the traders probably know little about Vatican politics and are basically recreational gamblers, perhaps sentimentally betting on their local contender. But these amateurs serve a purpose in the ruthless ecosystem of the market. They are the sheep who attract the wolves. The amateurs’ money entices serious investors to spend time scouring cardinals’ past statements and other sources. The sheep’s money also offers a temptation for those with inside knowledge to cash in, even though that’s against the rules of Intrade – not to mention a 1591 papal bull forbidding Catholics from betting on a conclave.

[...]

But suppose a venal Vatican bureaucrat, or a secular friend of some official, hears a piece of useful gossip before or even during the conclave. Is he going to give it free of charge to a journalist, knowing this risks compromising himself as well as his source? Or is he is going to sit down, in the secure privacy of his home, and make a few profitable clicks on his computer?

My guess is neither. But I agree with Tierney that watching Intrade is at least as likely to give insights as listening to talking heads on television. Of course, reading Rob Tagorda’s background summaries on the papabile wouldn’t hurt, either.

Update: Dale Franks looks at Tradesports betting on the next pope.