The Pope accepts the resignation of Cardinal Sarah

(InfoCatlica) The Holy Father accepted Cardinal Sarah’s resignation as Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments. Only six months after turning 75. He had been working since November 2014

Today the Pope has accepted the renunciation of my office as Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship after my seventy-fifth birthday. I am in the hands of God. The only rock is Christ. We will soon meet in Rome and elsewhere. + RS pic.twitter.com/4sTLa4JjWB

Cardinal R. Sarah (@Card_R_Sarah) February 20, 2021

Today the Pope accepted the resignation of my post as Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship after my 75th birthday. I am in the hands of God. The only rock is Christ. We will see you very soon in Rome and elsewhere. + RS

From fear in Rome

Cardinal Robert Sarah was born on June 15, 1945 in the city of Ourous in French Guinea (Africa). In 1957, at the age of 12, he entered the Petit Séminaire Saint Augustin in Bingerville, Côte d’Ivoire, where he studied for three years.

In his book God or Nothing, Cardinal Sarah tells how his vocation was born: It is in the context of the daily Eucharist that Father (Marcel) Bracquemond, discovering my ardent desire to know God and perhaps impressed by my love of prayer and my fidelity to daily mass, he asked me if I wanted to enter the seminary.

With the surprise and spontaneity that characterize children, I replied that I would love to, not knowing exactly what I was getting into, because I had never left town or experienced seminary life, says- he.

The cardinal says his parents did not believe him and went to see Father Bracquemond, who confirmed the news: My mother, widening her eyes, told me that she had lost her mind or that she was not hadn’t understood what the priest had told me. dad. For her and for the villagers, all priests were necessarily white. In fact, it seemed impossible that a black man could be a priest!

As relations between newly independent Guinea and Côte d’Ivoire became strained in 1960, Robert Sarah returned to study at Dixinn Seminary in Guinea, until the government expropriated Church property in August 1961.

After studying only for a time at home, the Church found a place for him and other seminarians at a public school in Kindia in March 1962. Negotiations opened a seminary where Sarah obtained her baccalaureate in 1964.

In September of this year, he was sent to the Grand Séminaire de Nancy in France. Also due to strained relations, this time between Guinea and France, he had to interrupt his training. He continued his theological studies in Sbikotane, Senegal, where he studied between October 1967 and June 1969.

Robert Sarah was ordained a priest on July 20, 1969, at the age of 24. He was appointed Archbishop of Conakry on August 13, 1979, when he was only 34 years old. He received episcopal consecration on December 8, Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception, the same year.

On October 1, 2001, Pope Saint John Paul II appointed him Secretary of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples. On October 7, 2010, he was appointed President of the Pontifical Council Cor Unum. A month later, Pope Benedict XVI created him cardinal.

On November 23, 2014, he was appointed Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments.

Three books that have helped many Catholics in times of distress

When I finished writing It’s getting late and it’s dark announced that it was the third part of a trilogy, with God or nothing Yes The strength of silence

God or nothing: interview on faithwas an autobiographical interview published in 2015 detailing how he was inspired by missionary priests who had made great sacrifices to bring the faith to their remote village. He also remembered how he became a priest amid the oppression of the Church by the government. Guinean and how he later became bishop and cardinal.

His second book,The force of silence: facing the dictatorship of noise, was published in 2017. Cardinal Sarah wrote a spiritual treatise on the power of silence at a time when technology is entering people’s lives and materialism is exerting a powerful influence in the modern world.

Thousands of people have read his books with great utility for their interior life, to draw closer to God. Silence, he writes, is more important than any other human work, because it expresses God. The true revolution comes from silence, it pushes us towards God and towards others to put ourselves humbly and generously at his service.

Defender of the family, the right to life and religious freedom

Cardinal Sarah is one of the most important cardinals in Africa and of the Universal Church. He is an ardent defender of the liturgy, of the right to life, to the family and to religious freedom.

He has criticized gender ideology on numerous occasions, an approach that considers sex is a socio-cultural construct before something natural. In 2016, he declared that this current is demonic and a deadly impulse that attacks families.

I participated in the Synod of Bishops on Youth in 2018. There he noted that dilute Catholic moral doctrine in the area of ​​sexuality without attracting new generations.

He also attended the Synod of Bishops on the Amazon in October 2019. In an interview with the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera, Cardinal Sarah lamented that some used the assembly to advance their plans. I am thinking in particular of the ordination of married men, the creation of women’s ministries and the jurisdiction of the laity. These points touch on the structure of the universal Church.

Those who proclaim revolutions and radical changes loud and clear are false prophets

Seizing the opportunity to introduce ideological plans would be outrageous manipulation, dishonest deception and an insult to God who guides his Church and entrusts his plan of salvation to him. Additionally, I was shocked and outraged that the spiritual anguish of the poor in the Amazon was used as an excuse to support projects typical of bourgeois Christianity around the world. It is abominable

In January 2020, Cardinal Sarah and Benedict XVI published a book on the priesthood and priestly celibacy entitled From the depths of our hearts (From the bottom of our hearts).

The Cardinal has been the target of some attacks accusing him of having lied about the participation of Pope Emrito but he replied by showing the correspondence he had had with Benedict XVI on the text which was written with both hands.

In April 2020 and faced with the restrictions due to the coronavirus pandemic, Cardinal Sarah recalled that priests must do everything to stay close to the faithful and stressed that no one has the right to deprive a sick or dying person of the spiritual assistance from a priest. It is an absolute and inalienable right.

I also remembered that no transmission of the Mass is comparable or can replace a personal participation