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Fr. Agustine Di Noia O.P. / Pope Benedict XVI Vatican City, Jun 16, 2009 / 10:16 am (CNA).- This morning, the Vatican announced a significant change by Pope Benedict at the Congregation for Divine Worship and Discipline of the Sacraments, the body charged with overseeing the liturgy. The American priest, Fr. Agustine Di Noia O.P., was appointed by the Pope to be the secretary of the Congregation and raised to the level of archbishop.Pope Benedict's appointment of a native English speaker will prove to be valuable as the Congregation prepares to approve and introduce a new English translation of...

Everyone knows American #1 at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, but for all the spotlight on California's own Cardinal William Levada, what's sometimes forgotten is that the former Holy Office's second-ranking Statiunitense isn't much further down the totem pole. In 2002, then-Cardinal Ratzinger recruited Dominican Fr J. Augustine DiNoia -- then an official at Washington's John Paul II Center and the former head of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops' secretariat for doctrine -- to serve as the CDF's undersecretary, the dicastery's #3 post. When the newly-elected Pope Benedict appointed Levada to take the place held by...

It all seems oddly familiar: a statement from the Vatican, a source who insists that the words of the statement should be published far and wide, and then a sudden retraction. Cast your mind back ten months and you will recall this exact chain of events, but the famous name involved was Mel Gibson’s, not Senator John Kerry. In that instance, Peggy Noonan of the Wall Street Journal, Reuters and the National Catholic Reporter all reported the same thing. They had been told the Holy Father had seen Gibson’s Passion and had said, "It is as it was." While Cindy...

Mel Gibson's "Passion": On Review at the Vatican Exclusive Interview With Father Di Noia of the Doctrinal Congregation VATICAN CITY, DEC. 8, 2003 (Zenit.org).- Several high-ranking Vatican officials who attended a private screening of Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ" this past weekend in Rome came away impressed. Members from the Vatican Secretariat of State, the Pontifical Council for Social Communications, and the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the group that oversees Catholic doctrinal questions, expressed unanimous appreciation and approval of the film. The following is an exclusive ZENIT interview with one of the viewers, Dominican Father...