Czech Republic: in memory of Cardinal BeranThe 40th anniversary of Cardinal Josef Beran will be celebrated on 17 May. Metropolitan, Czech Primate, Archbishop of Prague, Cardinal Beran was a strenuous defender of the Christian faith under the Communist regime. The Czech Bishops’ Conference has organized various events to mark the anniversary. As reported to SIR by Irena Sargankova, spokesperson of the Bishops’ Conference, the foundation stone for a commemorative statue of the cardinal was laid at the Theological Faculty of Prague on 13 May; it will be unveiled in November. A mass will be celebrated in St. Vito’s Cathedral on 16 May, and on the same day a concert of classical music will be held in memory of Cardinal Beran as part of the International Prague Spring Music Festival, inaugurated on 12 May. The cardinal was imprisoned by the Czechoslovak regime from 1949 to 1963; he died in Rome in 1969. The archdiocese of Prague opened the cause of his beatification on 2 April 1998. Homage to the cardinal, buried in the Vatican Crypts below St. Peter’s, was also paid by Cardinal Miloslav Vlk, Archbishop of Prague, Ludìk Sefzig, chairman of the EU Affairs Committee of the Senate of the Czech Republic, and Ambassador Pavel Voalík at a ceremony held in the Vatican on 16 December last year.Italy: WYD Cross and Abruzzo earthquakeThe wooden Cross of World Youth Day will make a pilgrimage to the sites devastated by the earthquake in the Abruzzo at the end of this month. The initiative is the brainchild of the youth section of the Pontifical Council for the Laity, and the Council’s John Paul Foundation for Youth, in collaboration with the national service for youth pastoral work of the Italian Bishops’ Conference, the diocese of L’Aquila and the Abruzzo-Molise ecclesiastical region. “It will be a real pilgrimage of the Cross – explained Mgr. Pietro Santoro, bishop delegate for youth of Abruzzo and Molise, in a briefing to SIR -; we’ll visit the various tent cities [where the population left homeless by the quake are being temporarily housed] and where prayer meetings will be held. I would like to emphasize that on this occasion the original WYD Cross, the one given by John Paul II to youth in 1984 and kept in the San Lorenzo Centre [near St. Peter’s] will be used”. The final programme of the pilgrimage is in process of being finalized. What is known is that the Cross will leave Rome on Saturday 30 May, also accompanied by a youth delegation from the San Lorenzo Centre, and arrive in L’Aquila from where it will set out (on 31 May and 1st June) to visit the various tent sites. On 2 June the Cross will be present at the meeting of the bishops of Abruzzo and Molise, at the Marian sanctuary of San Gabriele dell’Addolorata, and at Isola del Gran Sasso, for the conclusion of the triennial youth meeting of Italian youth.Austria: the value of grandparents”An important step in the direction of parity of treatment between child care inside and outside the family”: that’s how Clemes Steindl, President of the Association of Austrian Catholic Families (KFÖ) commented on the new Austrian tax regime which for the first time permits the costs of child care to be tax-deductible. According to the new law, presented by the Austrian Secretary of State for the family Christine Marek in recent days, parents will be able to decide whether to entrust their own children to babysitters or to grandparents, with the possibility of deducting up to 2,300 euro per year per child for the costs of providing care to their children. Costs incurred for kindergartens or nursery schools will thus be tax-deductible. So too will services provided by “qualified persons at the pedagogical level”, including babysitters or grandparents, though they will have to demonstrate they have completed preparatory training of at least eight hours, a prerequisite considered “reasonable” by Steindl. The President of the KFÖ also expressed satisfaction for the fact that the new law honours and rewards the invaluable contribution grandparents make to caring for children, which “remains indispensable for many families”.Hungary: towards the beatification of Cardinal MindszentyMany events have characterized the life of the Hungarian Church in recent days. The 34th anniversary of the death of Cardinal Jozsef Mindszenty was commemorated in Rome on 5 May. On the previous day a mass was celebrated by Cardinal Urbano Navarrete in the ancient basilica of Santo Stefano Rotondo on the Caelian, the church of which Mindszenty was the titular cardinal; the participants prayed for the beatification of the cardinal persecuted by the Communists. A few days later, on 9 May, another solemn event was commemorated: the 950th anniversary of the death of Blessed Queen Gisella. A mass in her honour was celebrated at Veszprém by the Archbishop of Esztergom-Budapest, Cardinal Péter Erdo, and members of the Hungarian Bishops’ Conference. Some relics of the Blessed, of St. Stephen of Hungary, her husband, and of her son St. Emeric arrived in Veszprém for the occasion. At Veszprém the Bavarian-born queen, a key figure for the spread of Christianity in tenth-century Hungary, promoted the building of the cathedral and a convent. Lastly, we may mention two social and cultural events: Caritas in Eger, guest of the University Days of Miskolc on 6 and 9 May, underlined the need to combat the spread of drugs among the young. The Book Week dedicated to St. Stephen is now in progress in Budapest; it will end on 16 May.
