Love is in the air: Pope marries couple mid-flight during Chile visit

Vatican City, Sep 22, 2020 / 03:45 am (CNA).- In a new document released Tuesday, the Vatican’s doctrinal office reaffirmed the Church’s perennial teaching on the sinfulness of euthanasia and assisted suicide, and recalled the obligation of Catholics to accompany the sick and dying through prayer, physical presence, and the sacraments.

The document also addressed the pastoral care of Catholics who request euthanasia or assisted suicide, explaining that a priest and others should avoid any active or passive gesure which might signal approval for the action, including remaining until the act is performed.

Samaritanus bonus: on the Care of Persons in the Critical and Terminal Phases of Life is a new document by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), published Sept. 22.

The 45-page text, approved by Pope Francis on June 25, is signed by CDF prefect Cardinal Luis Ladaria and secretary Archbishop Giacomo Morandi.

The letter presents Catholic teaching on a range of end-of-life issues, affirming the intrinsic value and dignity of every human life, especially for those who are critically sick and in the terminal stages of life.

The document’s introduction noted that “it is widely recognized that a moral and practical clarification regarding care of these persons is needed.” 

Pastoral accompaniment of those who expressly request euthanasia or assisted suicide “today presents a singular moment when a reaffirmation of the teaching of the Church is necessary,” Samaritanus bonus said.

It explained that closeness to a person who has chosen euthanasia or assisted suicide is necessary, but must always be ordered toward the person’s conversion.

The document recalled that a person who has made this decision, “whatever their subjective dispositions may be, has decided upon a gravely immoral act and willingly persists in this decision.” 

This state “involves a manifest absence of the proper disposition for the reception of the Sacraments of Penance, with absolution, and Anointing, with Viaticum.” In this situation, the congregation explained, the priest must withhold absolution.

“Here it remains possible to accompany the person whose hope may be revived and whose erroneous decision may be modified, thus opening the way to admission to the sacraments,” it continued.

It added that “to delay absolution is a medicinal act of the Church, intended not to condemn, but to lead the sinner to conversion.” 

The Church’s position in this situation “does not imply non-acceptance of the sick person,” the letter emphasized. Withholding absolution “must be accompanied by a willingness to listen and to help, together with a deeper explanation of the nature of the sacrament, in order to provide the opportunity to desire and choose the sacrament up to the last moment.” 

“The Church is careful to look deeply for adequate signs of conversion, so that the faithful can reasonably ask for the reception of the sacraments,” it said.

The purpose of the new letter, the CDF explained in the introduction, is to enlighten pastors and the Catholic faithful “regarding their questions and uncertainties about medical care, and their spiritual and pastoral obligations to the sick in the critical and terminal stages of life.” 

It said that there were particular situations today which require “a more clear and precise intervention on the part of the Church,” to reaffirm the message of the Gospel and its expression in the basic doctrinal teachings of the Magisterium, especially for the sick and dying and those who come into contact with them.

Euthanasia, the CDF letter affirmed, is “an intrinsically evil act, in every situation or circumstance” and “any formal or immediate material cooperation in such an act is a grave sin against human life.”

“Euthanasia and assisted suicide are always the wrong choice,” it said, because, as St. Pope John Paul II wrote in Evangelium vitae, “euthanasia is a grave violation of the Law of God, since it is the deliberate and morally unacceptable killing of a human person. This doctrine is based upon the natural law and upon the written Word of God, is transmitted by the Church’s Tradition and taught by the ordinary and universal Magisterium.” 

There is also “no right to dispose of one’s life arbitrarily,” it continued, which is why “no health care worker can be compelled to execute a non-existent right.” 

It is also “gravely unjust to enact laws that legalize euthanasia or justify and support suicide,” the congregation stated, and “such laws strike at the foundation of the legal order: the right to life sustains all other rights, including the exercise of freedom.”

“The existence of such laws deeply wound human relations and justice, and threaten the mutual trust among human beings,” the document continued. “The legitimation of assisted suicide and euthanasia is a sign of the degradation of legal systems.”

The CDF explained that according to Church teaching, euthanasia “is an act of homicide that no end can justify and that does not tolerate any form of complicity or active or passive collaboration.”

It said: “Those who approve laws of euthanasia and assisted suicide, therefore, become accomplices of a grave sin that others will execute. They are also guilty of scandal because by such laws they contribute to the distortion of conscience, even among the faithful.”

To take one’s own life breaks one’s relationship with God and with others. “Assisted suicide aggravates the gravity of this act because it implicates another in one’s own despair,” it said.

The Christian response to these actions is to offer the help necessary for a person to shake off this despair, it emphasized, and not to indulge “in spurious condescension.”

“The commandment ‘do not kill’ … is in fact a yes to life which God guarantees, and it ‘becomes a call to attentive love which protects and promotes the life of one’s neighbor,’” the letter said. 

“The Christian therefore knows that earthly life is not the supreme value. Ultimate happiness is in heaven. Thus the Christian will not expect physical life to continue when death is evidently near. The Christian must help the dying to break free from despair and to place their hope in God.” 

The letter affirmed that it is “a supreme act of charity” to spiritually assist the Christian at their moment of death.

“Death is a decisive moment in the human person’s encounter with God the Savior. The Church is called to accompany spiritually the faithful in the situation, offering them the ‘healing resources’ of prayer and the sacraments.”

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Vatican City, May 12, 2018 / 05:42 am (CNA/EWTN News).- From May 15-17 Pope Francis will meet with 33 Chilean bishops to share his personal take on the country’s massive clerical abuse crisis and help the local Church to find a way forward implementing processes of healing and prevention.

During the discussion, Francis will share his reflections on the results of an investigation into abuse cover-up by Church hierarchy in Chile conducted by Maltese Archbishop Charles Scicluna earlier this year, and the subsequent 2,300 page report he drafted on conclusions of the investigation.

According to a May 12 Vatican communique, Pope Francis, “questioned by the circumstances and the extraordinary challenges that the sexual abuse and abuses of power and conscience planted in Chile in recent decades, considers it necessary to profoundly examine their causes and consequences, as well as the mechanisms which in some cases have led to the cover-up and serious omissions from the victims.”

The objective of the 3-day “synodal process,” the Vatican said, is for the pope and Chilean bishops to place themselves in the presence of God and discern together the culpability of both individuals and of the local Church as a whole “in these devastating wounds.”

They will also study “the adequate and lasting changes” which ought to be implemented in order to prevent the repetition “of these always reprehensible acts.”

Set to take place in the Vatican’s Paul VI Hall, the meeting will also be attended by Cardinal Marc Ouellet, prefect of the Congregation for Bishops.

The meeting with Chilean bishops falls just two weeks after he held individual meetings with three survivors of clerical sexual abuse from Chile: Juan Carlos Cruz, James Hamilton and Andres Murillo.

After their meetings with the pope, Cruz, Hamilton and Murillo said they believed Francis was largely misinformed by people around him, and called out Archbishop Ivo Scapolo, nuncio to Chile since 2011, and Chilean Cardinal Francisco Javier Errazuriz, Archbishop Emeritus of Santiago and a member of Pope Francis’ council of cardinal advisors, as main agents in the cover-up.

Notably, Errazuriz will not be present for the meeting with Pope Francis this week, saying he would be skipping the event due to “personal reasons.”

Pope Francis invited the survivors to meet with him and at the same time summoned Chilean bishops to Rome April 8 after reading the concluding report of Scicluna’s investigation, assisted by Spanish Fr. Jordi Bertomeu of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, and admitting to having made “serious mistakes” in judgment of the situation given a lack of “truthful and balanced” information.

Initially the investigation was centered around Bishop Juan Barros of Osorno, who was appointed to the diocese in 2015 and who has been accused by Cruz and several others of not only covering up Karadima’s abuses, but at times also participating.

Allegations were also made against three other bishops – Andrés Arteaga, Tomislav Koljatic and Horacio Valenzuela – who Karadima’s victims accuse of also covering the abuser’s crimes.

While on the ground Scicluna interviewed some 64 people, most of whom were victims, but the scale of the investigation went beyond Barros. It is said to be much more extensive, including details from other cases, such as the Marist Brothers, who are currently under canonical investigation after allegations of sexual abuse by some of the members surfaced in August 2017.

Pope Francis had previous defended Barros, saying he had received no evidence of the bishop’s guilt, and called accusations against him “calumny” during a trip to Chile in January.

However, after receiving Scicluna’s report, Francis issued his major “mea culpa” and asked to meet the bishops and more outspoken survivors in person.

In the May 12 communique, the Vatican said Pope Francis is grateful to his brother bishops in Chile for “being attentive to the docile and humble listening to the Holy Spirit,” and he renews his appeal to Catholics in Chile “to continue in a state of prayer so that the conversion of all might take place.”

No public statement or press release is expected after the encounter in order to ensure confidentiality.

[…]

Vatican City, May 28, 2019 / 01:54 am (CNA).- A former priest-secretary to Theodore McCarrick has issued a report that claims to contain excerpted quotes from correspondence between the disgraced former cardinal McCarrick and various church officials.

The quotes seem to contain admissions of wrongdoing from McCarrick, and to confirm subsequent reports about the Vatican’s response to the former cardinal’s behavior.
 
Msgr. Anthony Figueiredo of the Archdiocese of Newark published a website, “The Figueiredo Report,” May 28 which contains apparent excerpts from private correspondence between McCarrick, the priest, and various other Church officials.

News of the priest’s report was first reported by CBS News and news site Crux.
 
Neither the full text of the correspondence nor images of the letters have been published on Figueiredo’s site.
 
“I present facts from correspondence that I hold relevant to questions still surrounding McCarrick. These facts show clearly that high-ranking prelates likely had knowledge of McCarrick’s actions and of restrictions imposed upon him during the pontificate of Benedict XVI. They also clearly show that these restrictions were not enforced even before the pontificate of Francis,” Figueiredo’s report claims.

“It is not my place to judge to what extent the fault lies with the failure to impose canonical penalties, instead of mere restrictions, at the start, or with other Church leaders who later failed to expose McCarrick’s behavior and the impropriety of his continued public activity, and indeed may have encouraged it,” the priest writes.

In one apparent excerpt, from a September 2008 letter from McCarrick to Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, McCarrick wrote that “in one particular [case] I had been at fault in an unfortunate lack of judgment. I have always considered my priests and seminarians as part of my family, and just as I have shared a bed with my cousins and uncles and other relatives without thinking of it being wrong, I had done this on occasion when the Diocesan Summer House was overcrowded. In no case were there minors involved, but men in their twenties and thirties.”

However, “I have never had sexual relations with anyone, man, woman or child, nor have I ever sought such acts,” McCarrick reportedly wrote to Bertone.

The quotes excerpted by the monsignor, who was formerly attached to the Pontifical North American College in Rome as a spiritual director, appear to confirm claims by former apostolic nuncio to the United States, Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, that in 2008 McCarrick was ordered to leave the archdiocesan seminary where he had been living.

Sources present at a 2008 meeting between then-nuncio Archbishop Sambi and McCarrick told CNA in August 2018 the former cardinal had been ordered out of that seminary.

According to Figueiredo, McCarrick wrote in a letter to Sambi after that meeting that “having studied the letter of Cardinal Re and having shared it with my Archbishop, I pledge again that I shall always try to be a good servant of the Church even if I do not understand its desires in my life. Of course, I am ready to accept the Holy Father’s will in my regard.”

“I could find a place to live in one of the parishes of the Archdiocese of Washington. The Archbishop is willing to arrange for that in any area that the Holy See would desire,” McCarrick apparently added.

“In summary, in the future I will make no commitments to accept any public appearances or talks without the express permission of the Apostolic Nuncio or the Holy See itself.”

After leaving the seminary residence in early 2009, McCarrick moved into a specially renovated suite of rooms at the parish of St. Thomas the Apostle in Woodley Park, an upscale neighborhood in central Washington D.C.

In August, a priest resident in the parish in 2008-2009 told CNA that he been told McCarrick was “no longer allowed” to live in the seminary, and that Cardinal Wuerl had “ordered” the move, but he stressed that he did not have direct knowledge of those circumstances.
 
In August 2018, Figueiredo made public statements in support of Vigano.

“I know him personally,” Figueuiredo said at the time. “I know him as a man of great integrity, honest to the core.”

The excerpts from Figueredo’s correspondence also appear to confirm reports that McCarrick played an ongoing, though sometimes unofficial, role in Vatican diplomatic efforts, especially in China, during the pontificates of both Benedict XVI and Francis.

Some Vatican officials have said Figueiredo’s report does not fully explain the ways in which McCarrick operated in the Vatican.

Sources at the Congregation for Bishops in Rome told CNA that Figueiredo’s excerpts offer only “partial” context for McCarrick’s apparent ability to work around the imposition of restrictions on his ministry.
 
“McCarrick was very good at exploiting the left and right hands not speaking,” an official at the Congregation for Bishops said.
 
“[Cardinal] Re could tell [McCarrick] ‘No appearances, no living here,’ and then [McCarrick] would go to Bertone and present himself as being available for discreet use, ask to travel somewhere and use the conflicting instructions to slip through the cracks.”
 
Another official close to the Congregation said that McCarrick exploited a curial culture which resisted plain speaking.

“He would talk and write about needing to keep a low profile, about having to change residence, but never explicitly say why. Those that knew didn’t need it to be spelled out, those that didn’t but suspected were smart enough not to ask,” he explained.

The same official told CNA that piecing together McCarrick’s complex engagement with various curial office is part of an investigation now being undertaken by the Congregation for Bishops at the direction of Pope Francis.

“The man made a total mess of the communications with Bishops, State, the Holy Father, the dioceses, everyone,” he said. “Anyone looking to check on him could find three different things in three different places.”

CNA has learned from senior sources in Rome that the Archdiocese of Washington has already completed a review of all of McCarrick’s personal correspondence and forwarded the results to Rome.

A spokesman for the Archdiocese of Washington declined to comment about that review.

The spokesman did tell CNA that “Cardinal Wuerl has previously stated – and he reiterates again – that he was not aware of any imposition of sanctions or restrictions related to any claim of abuse or inappropriate activity by Theodore McCarrick. Based on descriptions from [media report], none of the documents released today explicitly indicate that Cardinal Wuerl had any such knowledge.”

Figueiredo, who served as priest-secretary to McCarrick for one year in the 1990s, previously described McCarrick as a “spiritual father.” He told CBS News that revelations about McCarrick had driven him to a relapse of alcoholism.

In October 2018, Figueiredo was involved in a car accident outside of London, in which he hit another vehicle, driven by a pregnant woman. A visibly intoxicated Figueiredo initially stopped after the accident, but then fled the scene. He was caught by police and tested at more than twice the legal limit of alcohol. He pled guilty to driving under the influence and received an 18 month driving ban.

Figueiredo was employed on a part-time basis by the EWTN News Vatican Bureau as a “Senior Contributor” beginning November 2017 and ending on October 27, 2018 following news reports of his guilty plea for drunk driving. CNA is a service of EWTN News.

Senior sources at the Archdiocese of Newark, where Figueiredo is incardinated, told CNA that the priest was asked, and then directed, to return to the archdiocese following his road accident last year.

Despite repeated instructions to return to his home archdiocese, they told CNA, Figueiredo has refused to do so, or to meet with his archbishop, Cardinal Joseph Tobin. He has remained in Rome without an ecclesiastical assignment, sources said.

“There has been contact between him and the cardinal, but it’s done little good.”

According to a May 28 report from CBS News, Figueiredo says he has now “embraced a life of sobriety” and claims to have been “trying for months” to share the correspondence with Church leaders, though the report does not specify the nature of those efforts, and makes no mention of his apparent resistance to meet with his own archbishop.

Beginning in November 2018, Figueiredo approached CNA and other EWTN News media outlets to indicate possession of correspondence concerning McCarrick. The priest was unwilling to provide access to primary documents, offering only excerpts, and his overtures were declined.

On May 28, Crux reported that it had been given original copies of the correspondence in Figueiredo’s report, and had them authenticated by “a cyber-security expert.”

While complete copies of the correspondence have not been released by Figueiredo, the priest claims that he was inspired to release some information by Pope Francis.  

“Pope Francis himself has asked all of the church to be transparent. That’s the reason I feel a moral obligation to put out this correspondence.”

[…]