"I have had many temptations against the faith, but I have always
resisted", Cardinal Camillo Ruini told Corriere.it (8 December) on the
occasion of his 70th jubilee as a priest.
In his final year of
grammar school, he "quickly" decided, to become a priest: "I thought
that in this way I would serve God, in whom I had always believed, and
dedicate my whole life to him".
The temptations he experienced
against the faith did not necessarily come from Satan, the Cardinal
believes: "The temptations came mainly from reading [bad] books. From my
studies".
From his time as a parish priest, he recalls the
reaction of a mother in a very modest home when he had to tell her that
her son had died in a car accident: "All she said was: 'Our Lady
suffered more.'"
Silvio Berlusconi, as soon as he became Prime
Minister, came to Cardinal Ruini and asked him "what he could do for the
Church". Ruini comments: "No Christian Democrat had ever come before. I
did not expect such an approach." Berlusconi had his own private chapel
where the Eucharist was presided over.
The first time Ruini met
John Paul II was in the autumn of 1984: "He invited me to dinner, to my
great surprise, and asked me several questions about the Italian
Episcopal Conference and the Loreto Conference that was being prepared."
Ruini
replied very frankly, without hiding the problems [e.g. that the
bishops' leadership was not in line with John Paul II]: "Thus was born a
profound relationship that lasted until his death".
John Paul II
knew real communism well: "And he thought that an understanding with
them was not possible". Nevertheless, he had "a real veneration" for
Paul VI, the Pope of the Council who had been soft on communism.
The
Cardinal insists that John Paul II "was not a conservative" and
welcomed the failed Second Vatican Council "with joy". More: "For him,
the Council was the greatest grace of the 20th century."
Of
Benedict XVI, Ruini says that he "was not at ease with the practical
governance of the Church, and he was the first to recognise this
limitation of his".
Ruini says he was convinced that the crisis
of Protestantism, and also of a certain [Council] Catholicism, "was due
to pastoral errors".
But the fact that the same crisis is now
creeping into a country like Italy means that it is deeper: "Because we
have not made pastoral errors, except marginal ones (sic)," Ruini
seriously believes.
John Paul II once said in public that "we
have no certainty" (sic) that there are people in hell. But the cardinal
has doubts: "The older I get, the more I think about it, the more I
read the Gospel, the more I see the force with which Jesus speaks of
hell and of those who go there: 'Away from me, damned, into eternal
fire!' These are very strong words. It seems strange to me that we can
say that hell does not exist or that it is empty. Let us hope that there
are as few people in it as possible."
The recognition of a
homosexual [pseudo] marriage is "a denial of the very concept of
marriage", Cardinal Ruini explains: "Marriage has to be between a man
and a woman. If you take that away, you take away the essence of
marriage.
As president of the International Commission of Enquiry
on Medjugorje, Ruini came to the personal conclusion that "the first
apparitions are authentic. It was really Our Lady who spoke. I reserve
judgement on the others".
On eternal life: "If the whole universe
has an eternal future around Christ, there will also be a place for
animals in this universe."
Picture: Camillo Ruini © wikicommons CC BY-SA, #newsMgpxnoglhp