Vatican asks English-speaking officials to air translation concerns

Published: 2003-10-20

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Continuing concerns over English-language liturgical translations will be aired at a meeting at the Vatican. Nigerian Cardinal Francis Arinze, prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Sacraments, has invited the presidents of English-speaking bishops' conferences to the Oct. 23 meeting. The meeting, just over a year after the cardinal's appointment to the congregation, was to focus on improving understanding and cooperation between bishops' conferences, which approve liturgical texts, and the congregation, which must authorize their use. Cardinal Wilfrid Napier of Durban, South Africa, president of the Southern African Catholic Bishops' Conference, said the meeting would be an opportunity for a new dialogue. "I think we will have as much to say as Cardinal Arinze does," the South African said in an Oct. 20 interview. "We had no real dialogue" with the congregation's previous prefect, Cardinal Jorge Medina Estevez, because he did not speak much English and most of the English-speaking bishops did not speak Italian or Spanish well enough to communicate fully, Cardinal Napier said. In addition, he said, "There was no real meeting of the minds."

Copyright (c) 2003 Catholic News Service /U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. The CNS news report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed, including but not limited to such means as framing or any other digital copying or distribution method, in whole or in part without the prior written authority of Catholic News Service .