Arezzo and Sansepolcro -- two communities that for centuries have embodied the model of the “city of man” built in the image of  “The City of God” -- welcomed Benedict XVI on Sunday, 13 May, on his first visit to Tuscany. The Pope had also planned to visit the Franciscan Shrine of La Verna, but was canceled at the last minute due to bad weather. To the faithful of Arezzo, he entrusted the “precious legacy” of a Church distinguished in the course of history for her sense of “freedom and her capacity...

The words of Benedict XVI were stronger than the bad weather that prevented him from going to the memorial of the Franciscan mystic, La Verna, where he had planned to give a reflection on the roots of Christian life which, when it calls for the commitment of Catholics in secular cities, today afflicted by crisis and discouragement, explain the soul. Arezzo and Sansepolcro were the two stops of the Pope's 27th Apostolic Visit in Italy, along with La Verna, which in the end the Holy Father found...

Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1197) is one of the great figures of medieval culture: because the profundity of her world-view and the versatility of what she produced, she has risen to the height of such personages as John Scotus Erigena, Avicenna, Dante. She has been recognized for years now, after centuries of being marginalized in the great currents of medieval thought. She was an authoritative woman and from a monastery which she herself founded, having broken away from those among whom she had...

On Thursday, 10 May, Pope Benedict XVI extended to the Universal Church the liturgical worship in honour of St Hildegard of Bingen. This is a typical case of “equivalent canonization”. But what does that mean? In his work De Servorum Dei beatificazione et de Beatorum canonizatione, Bennedict XIV formulated the doctrine on equivalent canonization; when the Pope enjoins the Church as a whole to observe the veneration of a Servant of God not yet canonized by the insertion of his feast into the Liturgical...