Thursday at Castel Gandolfo

From the morning Bollettino, we have a couple goodies:

• Levada was received in audience with Amato -- the first time they've been brought in together since Darth's first appearance in Rome as Prefect in June. JP always met with Ratzinger one-on-one, unless the latter were away for the CDF's weekly audience in which case the Secretary would brief the Boss in Ratzi's stead. Judging by the presence of both, some heady things might've been on today's agenda... some long-term projects on CDF's plate might just be nearing completion.
  
• Cardinal Zenon Grocholewski, Prefect of the Congregation for Catholic Education, was also called in today. As Catholic Education's purview includes seminaries, Grocholewski is the point-man on the two Big Stories of the moment: the American Visitations and "The Document" implementing the ban on celibate homosems.... You can put money on Gay-Away and Ed O'Brien having been on the agenda there.
• The Pope also received Cardinal Daoud from the Eastern Churches and, of special note, the two Chief Rabbis of Israel, Moshe Amar and Yona Metzger. And a group of Mexican bishops on their ad limina to boot. It was a full day.
• Lastly, but certainly not least, today saw two papal appointments to the Pontifical Committee for the Historical Sciences. And one of them was given to the brilliant Italian medieval historian Agostino Paravicini-Bagliani. For the community of church historians, this is thrilling beyond words. While taking a course in early church history at Penn (and researching the influence of Bernard of Clairvaux on the development of the college of cardinals), the prof recommended to me Paravicini-Bagliani's The Pope's Body, a treatment of the mid-stages of the development of the papacy and how the physical figure of the Pope in ritual, in presentation, in mortality has stood as metaphor for the state of the church. It's a pretty rare find in its English translation, but it's a wonder of scholarship, and I love mine so much that it's one of the few volumes that keeps a constant place on my desk. So tante felicitazioni to Paravicini-Bagliani.
  

-30-