By Vatican News staff writer

Pope Francis on Wednesday appointed Professor José Nelson Onuchic as a new member of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, the Vatican’s international scientific academy, established by Pope Pius XI in 1936.

Curriculum vitae

Prof. José Nelson Onuchic was born on January 17, 1958, in São Paulo (Brazil), where he graduated in Electrical Engineering in 1980, in Physics in 1981 and in Applied Physics in 1982.

He completed his PhD in Chemistry at the California Institute of Technology (USA) in 1987. After a brief period of post-doctoral study in Santa Barbara, California, he taught at the University of São Paulo (Brazil) from 1987 to 1990, the year in which he returned to the United States, where he taught at the University of San Diego (California) until 2011. He then moved to Rice University in Houston, Texas, to teach Physics and Astronomy, Chemistry and Biosciences. Here he is co-director of the Centre for Theoretical Biological Physics.

He has received several awards for his studies, including the Beckman Young Investigator Award in 1992; he became a fellow of the American Physical Society in 1995 and was elected a member of the US National Academy of Sciences in 2006, and of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences in 2009.

His current research interests centre on theoretical and computational methods on the borderline between physics and biology, with their effects on human biology and genomics.

The Academy

The work of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences comprises six major areas: Fundamental Science, Science and technology of global problems, Science for the problems of the developing world, Scientific policy, Bioethics and Epistemology.

By Vatican News staff writer

Pope Francis on Wednesday named Fr William D.Byrne as the new Bishop of Springfield, Massachusetts in the United States. Until now he has been parish priest of Our Lady of Mercy Parish in Potomac, Maryland.

He succeeds Archbishop Mitchell T. Rozanski who was appointed as the new Metropolitan Archbishop of Saint Louis by the Pope in June 2020.

Curriculum vitae of Fr. William D.Byrne

Bishop-elect Byrne was born on September 26, 1964 in Washington, D.C., and ordained to the priesthood on June 25, 1994 for the Archdiocese of Washington. Father Byrne attended Georgetown Preparatory School in Rockville, Maryland and received a bachelor’s degree in English from College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts. He studied at the Pontifical North American College in Rome and received a Bachelor’s in Sacred Theology (STB) in 1992 and a Licentiate in Sacred Theology (STL) in 1994, both from the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas in Rome.

After ordination, Father Byrne was assigned to the Church of the Little Flower in Bethesda, Maryland as parochial vicar where he served until 1995 when he was assigned as parochial vicar at the Shrine of Saint Jude in Rockville, Maryland. From 1999 until 2007, he served as the chaplain for the University of Maryland’s Catholic Student Center in College Park, Maryland. He was named pastor of St. Peter’s parish in Washington, D.C. in 2007 where he served until 2015. From 2009 until 2015, while serving as pastor of St. Peter’s, Father Byrne was also Secretary for Pastoral Ministry and Social Concerns for the Archdiocese of Washington. In 2015, Father Byrne was named pastor of Our Lady of Mercy parish in Potomac, Maryland where he currently serves.

Bishop-elect Byrne’s ministry also includes service on the Archdiocese of Washington’s Vocations Team (1998), Formation Board (2002-present), Priest Council (2003-2006), Priest Personnel Board (2006-2009), and Archdiocesan Administrative Board (2009-2015), as well as membership on the board of directors of St. Ann’s Infant and Maternity Home, Catholic Youth Organization, and Redemptoris Mater Seminary, as well as the advisory board of the Lay Leadership Institute.

The Diocese of Springfield is comprised of 2,822 square miles in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and has a total population of 828,667 of which 199,289 are Catholic.

By Vatican News staff writer

An online meeting provided the six Cardinal advisors that make up the so-called C6 (Council of Cardinals) the occasion to meet together with Pope Francis after an eight-month suspension of meetings caused by the coronavirus pandemic.

A Vatican Press Office statement said Pope Francis engaged in the virtual meeting on Tuesday afternoon from his office in the Casa Santa Marta to discuss some aspects of the text of the new Apostolic Constitution on the Roman Curia.

Once approved, that text will replace the Constitution Pastor Bonus promulgated by Pope Saint John Paul II.

“During the summer months,” the statement explained, “the Council had the opportunity to work via internet on the text of the new Apostolic Constitution whose updated draft was presented to the Holy Father. According to the usual practice, the competent Dicasteries are now proceeding with the reading of the draft.”

Planning next steps

In particular, the statement noted, the meeting was convened “to summarize the work done and to study how to support the implementation of the new Constitution, once it has been promulgated.”

It also said that during the meeting Pope Francis highlighted the fact that “the reform is already underway, even under some administrative and economic aspects.”

Participating in the meeting were Cardinals Óscar A. Rodríguez Maradiaga, Reinhard Marx, Sean Patrick O’Malley, Oswald Gracias, as well as Vatican Secretary of State, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, Cardinal Giuseppe Bertello, the Secretary of the Council, Bishop Marcello Semeraro and the Adjunct Secretary, Bishop Marco Mellino.

The next meeting, the statement concluded, “is set for the month of December and will take place via internet, due to the health emergency, and according to the already established plan.”