Ratzinger’s New Team Trains in the Holy Office

[The following is an excerpt from the entire article by Sandro Magister.]

www.chiesa:

Dias, Bertone, Lajolo, Lombardi... Appointment by appointment, Benedict XVI is changing the face of the Church’s central governance. At the center is the pope himself, and the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith

by Sandro Magister

[...]

In the area of the liturgy, the new secretary of the Congregation for Divine Worship, archbishop Malcolm Ranjith of Sri Lanka, has made it clear that there are “corrections” of certain postconciliar tendencies on the way, which will be discussed in the document finalizing the synod on the Eucharist that Benedict XVI will publish by the end of the summer (9).

Some of these “reforms of the reform” will concern music. On June 30, the head of the Pontifical Institute of Sacred Music, Msgr. Valentino Miserachs Grau, announced that the pope will make a personal visit there in November to inaugurate the new academic year. And he said he expects the creation of a new Vatican office “that would coordinate with authority the activity of all those who work in liturgical music, and would watch over the liturgical celebrations.”

Benedict XVI’s thought on the matter was confirmed with a concert held in his honor on June 24 in the Sistine Chapel by Maestro Domenico Bartolucci, a living symbol of liturgical music inspired by Gregorian chant and polyphony (10).

Other alterations are foreseen for other offices of the curia. One of the candidates for prefect of a congregation is the current secretary of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith Angelo Amato, whom Ratzinger knows very well and trusts completely (11). Amato’s promotion would be further confirmation of the preeminence of the Holy Office within the new curia, in part as the training ground of its most highly placed officials.