Prayers go out amid confusion, chaos following London attack

CNA Staff, Oct 7, 2020 / 10:30 am (CNA).- Pope Francis said he hoped to visit Spain to mark the 500th anniversary of the conversion of St. Ignatius of Loyola in an interview published Wednesday.

The pope told the Spanish edition of the monthly magazine Il Mio Papa that he hoped to travel to Manresa, in central Catalonia, where the founder of the Jesuit order arrived in 1522 seeking to pray and do penance.

“I believe that the conversion of St. Ignatius is also an encounter of the heart and can invite us to reflect on our personal conversion, to ask for the gift of conversion to love and serve more in the way of Jesus Christ,” said Francis, the first member of the Jesuits to be elected pope, in the interview released Oct. 7.

Ignatius’ military career came to an abrupt end in 1521 when a cannonball injured his right leg while he was defending the city of Pamplona. He experienced a spiritual awakening while recovering from surgery. When he could walk again, he decided to embark on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. 

He went to a Benedictine abbey in Montserrat, where he confessed his sins, exchanged his expensive clothes for sackcloth, and left his sword before an altar dedicated to the Virgin Mary. 

He then walked to Manresa, arriving on March 25, 1522, and settling in a natural cave where he would spend the next 11 months. It was there that he underwent the religious experiences that led him to write the Spiritual Exercises, the foundation of Ignatian spirituality.

In 2022, Manresa will be the focus of events marking the 500th anniversary of this turning point in the life of Ignatius, who went on to complete his pilgrimage to Jerusalem and then founded the Society of Jesus in 1534. 

In July, Jesuit superior general Fr. Arturo Sosa announced that 2021-2022 would be designated an Ignatian Year. The year will begin on May 20, 2021, the 500th anniversary of the wounding of St. Ignatius during the Battle of Pamplona, and end on July 31, 2022, the Jesuit founder’s feast day.

The pandemic has forced Pope Francis to cancel his plans for international travel in 2020. His last foreign visit was to Thailand and Japan in November 2019. Last Sunday he made his first official trip outside Rome since the COVID-19 outbreak in Italy, signing his new encyclical, “Fratelli tutti,” in Assisi.

The Vatican has given no indication of when the pope will make his next journey outside Italy. If he visits Manresa, it would be his first trip to Spain — where 60% of the 47 million population consider themselves Catholic — since his election in 2013.

In his interview with Il Mio Papa, a publication founded in Italy in 2014, Pope Francis also reflected on the world after the coronavirus pandemic, migration, and service of the poor. 

He revealed what was going through his mind when he gave an extraordinary Urbi et Orbi blessing March 27 at the height of the pandemic in Italy. The 83-year-old said that at first he was afraid of slipping on the rain-slicked steps outside St. Peter’s Basilica.

“My heart was with all the people of God who were suffering, with a humanity that had to endure this pandemic and, on the other hand, which had the courage to strive forward,” he said, according to a translation of the Spanish interview by Vatican News.

“I climbed the stairs praying. I prayed the entire time, and I went away praying. That’s how I lived that March 27.”

The pope admitted that he had struggled with his general audiences during lockdown because they took place without members of the public present.

He said: “It was like talking to ghosts. I made up for many of these physical absences with telephone calls and letters. That helped me to take the pulse of how families and communities were living this.”

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Natalia Tsarkova works on a portrait of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI in her studio in central Rome. / Daniel Ibáñez / CNA

Rome Newsroom, Nov 3, 2022 / 07:03 am (CNA).
Natalia Tsarkova, official portrait artist to the popes for more than 20 years,… […]

London, England, Mar 6, 2018 / 03:43 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- On Tuesday, London’s Court of Appeal upheld a lower court’s decision to end life support for an ill 21-month-old boy, despite the parent’s wishes to continue treatment.

Justice Anthony Hayden of the High Court ordered two weeks ago that life support could be removed from Alfie Evans, who is stationed at Alder Hey Children’s Hospital in Liverpool. Hayden said that “continued ventilatory support is no longer in Alfie’s interests.”

Alfie is in a “semi-vegetable state” due to an unknown neurological degenerative condition. His parents want to transfer him to the Vatican-linked Bambino Gesu Pediatric Hospital in Rome, to receive further diagnosis and treatment.

However, the Liverpool hospital where Alfie is currently said it considered further treatment to be “futile.”

“Our aim is always to try and reach an agreement with parents about the most appropriate care plan for their child. Unfortunately there are sometimes rare situations such as this where agreement cannot be reached and the treating team believe that continued active treatment is not in a child’s best interests,” said the hospital.  

Justice Eleanor King was one of the three judges who denied the appeal on March 6 and agreed with the High Court’s previous decision.

Justice Hayden “could not have done more to ensure the father and mother had every opportunity to express their views and have them taken into consideration,” she said, according to BBC.

She said the evidence showed that the child was “deeply comatose” and “to all intents and purposes unaware of his surroundings.”

Justice King applauded Tom Evans’ passionate “fight on with Alfie’s army,” but said the father had “no clear plan.”

Evans said afterward that he would challenge the case before the Supreme Court.

“At this moment, Alfie’s not ready so we’re not ready to let go,” he said, according to the BBC.

Head of Alfie’s parents’ legal team, Barrister Stephen Knafler QC, said the state’s decision wrongly hinders “parental choice.”

The court ruling echoes a similar case last year, when England’s courts ordered Charlie Gard to be taken off life support.

At 11 months old, Gard died in July 2017 after a months-long debate regarding his parents’ right to pursue further treatment. The parents had fundraised over $1.6 million to seek experimental treatments and had received offers from European and U.S. hospitals. However, courts rejected the request to transfer him for experimental therapy.

The case drew widespread attention and outcry. Dr. Melissa Moschella, a Catholic University of America philosophy professor, disagreed with the court’s decision, telling CNA that the United Nations “clearly indicates that the parents, not the state will have primarily responsibility.”

 “It seems to me completely wrongheaded that the state should be stepping in here when the decision that the parents are making is really aimed at the best interests of the child,” Moschella said in 2017.

“It’s not crazy, it’s not abusive, it’s not neglectful. It’s the decision of parents who want to, however they can, to give their very sick child a chance for life.”

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