Vatican News | Week 25

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Vaticano Update
Hello and welcome to this week’s Vaticano Updates – the most important news from the Holy Father and the Vatican.

Vatican Published Papal Primacy Document

The Vatican published a 130-page study on papal primacy containing suggestions from Orthodox and Protestant Christian communities for how the role of the bishop of Rome might look in a future “reunited Church.” The study document, titled “The Bishop of Rome: Primacy and Synodality in Ecumenical Dialogue and Responses to the Encyclical Ut Unum Sint,” is the first Vatican text since the Second Vatican Council to outline the entire ecumenical debate on papal primacy.

Vatican Library to Award NFTs to Donors
The Vatican library announced that it will expand its use of Web3 technologies by awarding nontransferable nonfungible tokens – so-called NFTs – to supporters of the manuscript collections. For the time being, the project, considered “experimental,” only applies to Italian donors to the Vatican Apostolic Library. The future of the project, the Vatican said, may also include the ability to visit the library through immersive extended reality (XR) experiences, like augmented or virtual reality.

New Metropolitan See in Zambia
Pope Francis has erected the Archdiocese of Ndola in Zambia and appointed Bishop Benjamin Phiri as its first archbishop. The southern African nation has had two metropolitan sees — the Archdiocese of Lusaka, headquartered in the country’s capital city, and the Archdiocese of Kasama in northern Zambia. The newly erected metropolitan has a population of 3.2 million, of which 1.9 million are Catholic, representing 59.6% of the total population of the archdiocese, according to the Holy See Press report.

Pope Met Armenian Church Leader
For the first time in 10 years, Pope Francis met with Aram I, the leader of the Armenian Church of Cilicia with jurisdiction over some 800,000 Armenian Christians in Lebanon, Syria, Cyprus, Iran, and Greece. The meeting took place behind closed doors in the Holy Father’s personal office and the Vatican has not offered any further details. The Armenian Church has over 5 million members worldwide.

Theologians Conclude Evaluation of Synod Reports
A group of 20 theologians concluded an evaluation of 107 synod reports from national bishops’ conferences and Eastern Catholic Churches following nearly two weeks of meetings in Rome. The theologians, who met from June 4 through June 14, were asked to provide an analysis of the reports, which will help synod officials draft the Synod on Synodality’s “Instrumentum Laboris 2” — the document that will guide the work of the second session of the synod in October.