Cardinal Luis Pascual Dri, Argentine friar held up by Pope Francis as model confessor, dies at 98
Dri, a Capuchin friar, died Monday in the Argentine capital, where his funeral was being celebrated Wednesday, the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano said.
Dri was made a cardinal by Francis in 2023 at the age of 96 in recognition of his lifetime of work hearing confessions of the faithful and dispensing merciful absolutions. Up until his death, he worked as the confessor at the Our Lady of Pompeii parish in Buenos Aires.
Francis frequently referred to Dri during his pontificate and held him up as a model confessor for other priests, urging them to always be merciful in the confessional. For Francis, the sacrament of reconciliation was particularly important and he urged priests to always pardon those who seek forgiveness.
He once quoted Dri as saying he was so willing to dispense absolutions because God himself 'gave me a bad example' in forgiving all his sins.
Pope Leo XIV, who was made a cardinal during the same consistory as Dri, issued a message of condolences Wednesday signed by the Vatican secretary of state. In it, he recalled Dri as a 'devoted pastor, who was so dear to Pope Francis, and who for so many years gave his life to the service of God and the church as a confessor.'
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Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP's collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.
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Times
17 hours ago
- Times
Excavation may reveal how 796 babies died in Irish mother and baby home
She is considered a national hero, but Catherine Corless was amused that her refusal to meet Pope Francis when he visited Ireland in 2018 attracted so much media attention. 'It was never about me,' said the 71-year-old arable farmer-turned-local historian. 'It was about the babies. They didn't matter in life. They didn't matter in death — but they were all that mattered to me.' On Monday, digging will finally begin at the Tuam mother and baby home where Corless uncovered the deaths and mass burial of 796 babies. An investigation prompted by her work found that 9,000 children died in similar homes across Ireland in the 20th century. 'I could never understand how anyone could turn a blind eye,' said Corless, for whom Monday marks some sort of personal closure. 'This is all I have ever asked for, right from the beginning. These are baptised babies. We have to get them out.' Corless said she began 'naively dabbling' in local and family history after she discovered that her own mother, Kathleen, was born out of wedlock and subsequently fostered. While doing a part-time history course in the nearby village of Kilkerrin, Co Galway, in 2011, she became interested in the local Tuam mother and baby home, which had closed down in 1961 and was demolished in 1972. Run by the Bon Secours Sisters, a Catholic order of nuns, between 1925 and its closure, the home housed pregnant women and babies born to unmarried mothers — who found themselves subjected to huge stigma in Ireland at the time. It was only closed down due to the dilapidation of the building, rather than the current scandal. In 1975, two boys, Frannie Hopkins, 12, and Barry Sweeney, 10, were playing on the Tuam site when they discovered, under a concrete slab, an underground septic tank containing the bones of children. Local people assumed they were remains from the workhouse that had been on the same site before 1925, or the bones of victims of the Great Famine of the 1840s. In 2012, Corless published a piece in the Journal of the Old Tuam Society establishing that she had found 796 records of children that had died with no corresponding burial record. 'By then,' she said, 'I had heard the story of the two little boys who found bones in the sewage tank. I was putting two and two together.' She concluded the bones that the boys had found in the septic tank could only belong to the 796 babies from the home. Not long afterwards, the press uncovered her findings and the stories of survivors began to come forward. The story exploded around the world. 'I was in prison for seven years,' recounted PJ Haverty, 73, matter of factly. Born in Tuam, he lived in the home until he was seven, when he was fostered by Teresa and Mikey Hansbury, local farmers from Menlough, near Tuam. He does not remember much about Tuam: 'There was a high wall all around, so we couldn't see anything. We were allowed out just to go to school, ten minutes late in the morning and ten minutes early in the evening because we weren't allowed to mix with the other kids. Then we were marched back in again to the prison.' His mother, Eileen, became pregnant with him in 1951, age 26. She went to the local priest for help but the reaction from the Catholic Church was one of stigma, not mercy. Her experience was far from unique. The Commission of Investigation into Mother and Baby Homes in Ireland found in 2021 that there were approximately 56,000 unmarried mothers and 57,000 children in the homes across Ireland between 1922 to 1998, when the last of the institutions closed. Almost 15 per cent of all children in the institutions were found to have died — around 9,000. Micheál Martin, the Irish taoiseach, apologised, saying: 'The most striking thing is the shame felt by women who became pregnant outside of marriage and the stigma that was so cruelly attached to their children. 'I apologise for the profound generational wrong visited upon Irish mothers and their children who ended up in a mother and baby home or a county home. As the commission says plainly, 'They should not have been there.'' Haverty explained how shame came knocking for his mother: 'The priest said she was to be kept indoors till the baby was due to be born, and she wasn't to enter the house of God, that's the church, because she was a sinner.' Eileen was taken to the Tuam baby home to give birth and lived there for 12 months, after which she was told to leave by the nuns. She was not allowed to take her baby son with her, though she desperately wanted to, but was expected to pay five shillings a week for his upkeep. In 1953, she had to write a letter to the home to beg for respite from the payments when a period of sickness prevented her from working. Eileen tried often to visit Haverty, he later discovered, but she was refused entry and eventually moved to Brixton, south London. As a young man, shame followed Haverty too: 'You were called a bastard and a dog from the street and a disease carrier. All that was thrown at me. It was awful, very hurtful.' In 1977, with the help of his foster mother, Haverty found and travelled to meet Eileen, and they met twice more before she died in 2011. Haverty, now married to an English woman, who is also called Eileen, with three sons of his own, John, Kevin and Connor, had not spoken of his experience publicly until he met Corless in 2021. 'Catherine said to me: 'Stand up, you did nothing wrong.' It was a weight off my shoulders.' He was adamant: 'I want everybody to come forward, walk around with their heads up. We did nothing wrong to anyone.' On average, Corless's research showed, a baby died at Tuam every two weeks. They were buried, without coffins, one on top of the other in the 9ft-deep chambers of the underground septic tank. 'My God, it dragged on and on and on,' Corless explained of the path to get to a proper excavation of the site on Monday. 'It was horrific the way it carried on but the more it did, the more determined I got. In my mind I thought they're not getting away with this, the government had to buckle eventually.' In 2017, an initial analysis of some bones carbon-dated them to the same period as the mother and baby home. In 2018, the Irish government announced the site would be excavated but did not draft the bill enabling a dig until 2019. The coronavirus pandemic further delayed matters. The Institutional Burials Act was finally passed in 2022 and a year later, the independent Office of the Director of Authorised Intervention was created to oversee the excavation. Daniel MacSweeney, 51, a former aid worker and Red Cross solicitor, has led the work with a team of forensic scientists and archaeologists from around the world, in order to prepare the site for Monday's breaking of the ground. The excavation is expected to take two years to complete. 'Survivors have been waiting a long time for answers and this marks the shift from looking and prepping to finally doing,' MacSweeney said. But he cautioned that there is no way of predicting what they will find over the course of the dig: 'For many survivors and family members it's a time of heightened emotion — they are pleased we are moving ahead but it brings into view lots of questions that may or may not be answered.' Anna Corrigan, 68, was not aware of the Tuam mother and baby home until she was in her fifties and became more interested in her family's history. With the help of Barnardo's children's charity, she discovered around Christmas time 2012 that she had two half-brothers, who had both been born in the mother and baby home. 'I had some vague recollection of an argument my mother had with a family member about her having sons but I thought it was a dream,' she said. 'But once I get a bone between my teeth, I'm like a dog.' Through her own research she uncovered that her mother, Bridget Dolan, who died in 2001, had two sons: John Desmond Dolan, born February 22, 1946, and William Joseph Dolan, born May 21, 1950. Beyond their birth certificates, the documentation Corrigan found is sparse, leaving her with more questions than answers. At his birth, John was recorded as weighing 8lb 9oz and healthy. When he died at just 14 months old, the cause of death was given as measles. His notes also said he was a 'congenital idiot' and 'emaciated'. She believes it is evidence her brothers were mistreated in Tuam. William lacks even a death certificate — merely a note in the nun's files from the time which reads: 'Dead 3rd February 1951'. John is listed as one of the 796 babies uncovered by Corless's research. Corrigan is still unsure whether William's death has been inaccurately recorded, or if he was in fact adopted and might still be alive. Like many families and survivors she awaits Monday's excavation with bated breath: 'I just want truth or answers or closure, if they are in that pit at least I can tool on my mother's headstones, 'pre-deceased by her two sons John and William', it's truth, closure, finality, answers.' Does she expect that closure? 'No, the nuns lie through their teeth, they hand you an apology, I could wallpaper my kitchen with apologies that won't bring answers.' The Bon Secours Sisters have been contacted for comment.
Times
2 days ago
- Times
Church seeks to exhume skull of Thomas More for 500th anniversary
A church in Canterbury wants to open up its vault to see what remains of Sir Thomas More's head, almost 500 years after it was chopped off on Tower Hill and retrieved from a spike on London Bridge by his daughter. Parts of the Tudor lawyer's skull could go on public display after the church applied for permission to exhume and preserve the remains and potentially place them in a shrine. Although it is an Anglican church, St Dunstan's is a popular site for Roman Catholic pilgrims, particularly from the US, who come to venerate the final resting place and only known remains of the former lord chancellor. He was put to death in 1535 on the orders of Henry VIII after refusing to recognise the king as head of the Church of England following his declaration of the church's independence from Rome during the English Reformation. More was canonised as a martyr by the Vatican 400 years later in 1935, making his remains holy relics in Catholic teaching. The parochial church council (PCC) at St Dunstan's wants to prepare More's remains in time for the 500th anniversary of his death in 2035 but needs permission from the commissary court in Canterbury, which rules on church buildings and grounds. After his execution, More's body was buried in the Chapel of St Peter ad Vincula at the Tower of London but his head, after being parboiled, was placed on a spike on London Bridge. A month later, his daughter, Margaret Roper, was rowed up the Thames and rescued the head to prevent it from being thrown in the river. She is thought to have kept it in spices to preserve it for the rest of her life. After her death in 1544, Roper was buried in Chelsea. When her body was moved to the Roper family grave at St Dunstan's in the 1570s, her father's head was brought with it, inside a lead casing. Shortly afterwards, a new vault was created, with More's head placed behind metal bars in a niche in the wall. The church played a role in the story of another Henry and Thomas. Henry II stopped there in 1174 to change into a sackcloth to begin a penitential pilgrimage to Canterbury Cathedral over his role in the murder of Thomas Becket four years earlier. Last Sunday, the congregation at St Dunstan's was told of plans to mark the 500th anniversary of More's death, and that the church gets 'one or two requests a year to chip off a bit of skull and post it somewhere in the world' to devotees of More. • Thomas More — saintly victim or fanatical torturer? 'What the PCC has agreed, subject to all the right permissions being granted, is to exhume and conserve what remains of the relic, which will take several years to dry out and stabilise,' the statement said. 'We could just put it back in the vault, maybe in a reliquary of some kind, or we could place the reliquary in some sort of shrine or carved stone pillar above ground in the Roper chapel, which is what many of our visitors have requested. We'd really appreciate your ideas and thoughts.' The church will seek to raise £50,000 from More's devotees around the world to start the project and pay for expert archaeologists and conservators. No one has set eyes on More's remains for almost 30 years since the vault was last opened in 1997. A video from the time shows that the lead casing around the skull was partially opened, accelerating the decay. All that remained, before the vault was re-sealed, was some fragments of cranium, a piece of lower jaw, and lots of dust. The vault was accidentally opened in the 19th century during renovations. An unusual drawing was made showing an intact skull 'grinning' out from a casket, but Sue Palmer, a churchwarden, doubts the artist set eyes on it himself. The church said: 'Having the relic deteriorating in a vault is not good enough for many who venerate Thomas More. He's here, he's staying here — despite many of our Catholic visitors who would like him back — and we need to consider our ecumenical responsibility.' The Venerable Dr Will Adam, Archdeacon of Canterbury, said: 'The 500th anniversary of the martyrdom of St Thomas More provides an opportunity to reflect on past divisions and redouble efforts towards reconciliation and Christian unity.' Church courts often refuse requests to exhume remains unless in exceptional circumstances so as not to disrupt the 'permanence' of burial. Saints and relics are not typically venerated in the Anglican tradition. Church of England officials want to ensure that any shrine would be appropriate in an Anglican church. Palmer said she was 'expecting views on both sides', but the Rev Jo Richards, rector of the benefice, said the congregation seemed positive about the plans on Sunday. She said there was already a steady stream of two or three pilgrims a day, adding: 'We're blessed the church is open every day from nine to five. For me, it's mission through pilgrimage, heritage and for tourists as well. But predominantly a place of pilgrimage. If that encourages people to come into the church and they encounter God, that to me is the good news.'
The Independent
7 days ago
- The Independent
Pope speaks about childhood and early mornings as an altar boy
Pope Leo XIV has, for the first time since becoming pontiff, offered a glimpse into his childhood, recalling his early days in Chicago. He shared how, from the tender age of six, he would rise early to serve as an altar boy at the 6.30am Mass before heading to school. These personal memories emerged during an unscripted visit with children of Vatican employees attending the Holy See's summer camp. They were joined by other young people, including Ukrainian children, participating in summer programmes run by Italy's Caritas charity. The unannounced event took place in the Vatican's main audience hall, which had been transformed with large inflatable bouncy castles for the estimated 600 children present. One of the young campers, Giulia, asked Leo if he used to go to Mass as a child. The former Robert Prevost, who grew up the youngest of three brothers in the south Chicago suburb of Dolton, said the family always went to Mass on Sundays. 'But starting from when I was around six years old, I was also an altar boy in the parish. And so before going to school – it was a parochial school – there was Mass at 6.30am,' he said. 'And Mom would wake us up and say 'We're going to Mass!' Because serving Mass was something we liked because starting from when I was young, they taught us that Jesus was always close to us.' Leo, who was born in 1955, recalled that at the time, Mass was celebrated in Latin. He said he had to learn it to serve Mass even before he made his First Communion, one of the key sacraments in the church. 'It wasn't so much the language that it was celebrated in but the experience of getting to know other kids who served the Mass together, the friendship, and this closeness with Jesus in the church,' he said. Leo's brother, John Prevost, has said his little brother knew from a very young age that he wanted to be a priest. Young Robert used to pretend to celebrate Mass using their mother's ironing board as an altar and Necco candies — a once-popular sweet — as Communion wafers. History's first American pope spoke in Italian, but he switched to English to address a group of Ukrainian children, some of whom held up Ukrainian flags and snagged Leo autographs. He spoke about the benefits of meeting people from different backgrounds, languages and lands. It was one of the first times Leo has spoken unscripted at length in public, responding to questions posed to him by the children. He has tended to stick to his prepared texts for his audiences so far in his young pontificate.
