Reports: Cdl Müller out at the CDF [UPDATED]

Washington D.C., Sep 12, 2018 / 03:00 pm (CNA).- The GIVEN Institute hopes to shape a new generation of Catholic leaders through a program of faith formation, mentoring, and leadership for young women.

The institute was launched on Sept. 12, as it announced a program focused on engaging and supporting young women in the work of evangelization, vocational discernment, and professional advancement.

The GIVEN Institute was founded in response to what it says are bleak statistics on female involvement with the Church. According to a 2018 study published by the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate at Georgetown University, only about 17 percent of young Catholic women attend Mass each week, while only about one-third of those women say they pray every day.

“At a time where millennial women are disaffiliating from the Church in increasing numbers, it would be really important for the Church to turn its attention to shoring up the faithfulness of the women who do want to serve the Church, so that they can carry on the legacy of faithful women who have gone before them,” GIVEN executive director Elise Italiano told CNA.

The first iteration of the GIVEN project was a 2016 conference called the GIVEN Catholic Young Women’s Leadership Forum.

That event was sponsored by the Council of Major Superiors of Women Religions (CMSWR) and gathered together 300 young women from across the United States who met and discussed how best to “receive the gift they are, recognize the gifts they have been given, and respond with the gift that only they can give.”

The new GIVEN Institute aims to continue that mission by confronting what it says are two major challenges facing young Catholic women today: disaffiliation from the faith and Church, and a lack of integration of their gifts in areas of Church ministry.

“GIVEN celebrates the Church’s vision for women’s dignity and flourishing,” Italiano said, stressing that this will form the baseline from which the institute will develop its programming to form young leaders.

“The question that GIVEN wants to tackle is: given that vision–for women’s dignity and call–where can we move forward? Where can we expand on that?” 

The institute’s work will be based around two related programs.

The Catholic Young Women’s Leadership Forum will be GIVEN’s centerpiece event, held every two to three years. There participants will focus on different tracks, including vocational discernment, post-missionary work, and secular professional careers. The forum will feature keynote speakers, spiritual accompaniment, and networking opportunities, in addition to track-specific workshops and speakers.

Additionally, the institute will also launch the “Art of Accompaniment Mentoring Program” for alumnae of the Leadership Forum. This program will begin at the Leadership Forum, where attendees will be paired with a mentor from their specific track.

After the Leadership Forum, GIVEN will release digital webinars to assist with ongoing formation and to “extend the exploration of topics covered at the forum.” The mentoring program aims to build a network of female leaders who will meet with forum attendees on a one-on-one basis and provide them with personalized accompaniment.

“It’s always the right time to help young people pursue a path to holiness,” said Italiano, “but it’s increasingly clear that the Church must better facilitate a more robust presence of skilled, faithful women in its ranks.”

“The Church is always strongest and most effective in its mission when men and women work together.”

The GIVEN Institute’s events program will commence in 2019, with the first Leadership Forum expected to be held in June.

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Vatican City, Oct 15, 2020 / 10:30 am (CNA).- Pope Francis said Thursday that, among other global goals for education, he wants the world “to see in the family the first and essential place of education.”

The pope spoke in a video message … […]

Pope Francis smiles during his general audience in St. Peter’s Square Sept. 27, 2023. / Daniel Ibanez/CNA

CNA Staff, Oct 4, 2023 / 06:03 am (CNA).

Pope Francis on Wednesday released a new document on the environment that he has described as the “second part” of his 2015 encyclical Laudato Si’, and which warns of “grave consequences” if humanity continues to ignore the threat of climate change.

The apostolic exhortation, titled Laudate Deum (“Praise God”), is meant to address what Francis in the document calls the “global social issue” of climate change. The pope said that in the eight years since Laudato Si’ was published, “our responses have not been adequate” to address ongoing ecological concerns.

“Climate change is one of the principal challenges facing society and the global community,” the pope wrote in the document, arguing that its effects are borne by the world’s “most vulnerable people” and that the climate issue is “no longer a secondary or ideological question.”

Francis wrote that the effects of climate change “are here and increasingly evident,” and warned of increasing heat waves and the possible melting of the polar ice caps, which he said would lead to “immensely grave consequences for everyone.”

“No one can ignore the fact that in recent years we have witnessed extreme weather phenomena, frequent periods of unusual heat, drought, and other cries of protest on the part of the earth that are only a few palpable expressions of a silent disease that affects everyone,” the pope said.

Warns of ‘resistance’ to climate science

Environmentalism has long been a favorite topic of Francis. Laudato Si’ was heralded at the time of its publication as a revolutionary papal document for its emphasis on Catholic ecological responsibility. 

Then-U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops President Bishop Joseph Kurtz called the encyclical “our marching orders for advocacy.” The document launched the Laudato Si’ Movement, which bills itself as a “broad range of Catholic organizations and grassroots members from all over the world” walking “on a journey of ecological conversion.”

In the earlier document Francis conceded that the Church “does not presume to settle scientific questions or to replace politics,” but in the exhortation this week the Holy Father took a more forceful line, criticizing those who “have chosen to deride [the] facts” about climate science and stating bluntly that it is “no longer possible to doubt the human — ‘anthropic’ — origin of climate change.”

“It is not possible to conceal the correlation of these global climate phenomena and the accelerated increase in greenhouse gas emissions, particularly since the mid-20th century,” Francis wrote. “The overwhelming majority of scientists specializing in the climate support this correlation, and only a very small percentage of them seek to deny the evidence.”

Francis said in the document that what he described as a “technocratic paradigm” has “destroyed” the mutually beneficial relationship with the environment that humans have at times enjoyed. Humanity’s “power and the progress we are producing are turning against us,” the pope argued. 

Francis noted that climate mitigation efforts over the years have been met with both “progress and failures,” though the pope expressed hope that next month’s 2023 United Nations Climate Change Conference could “allow for a decisive acceleration of energy transition, with effective commitments subject to ongoing monitoring.”

He argued, however, that longtime global diplomatic arrangements have failed to meet the challenges of the climate emergency.

“It continues to be regrettable that global crises are being squandered when they could be the occasions to bring about beneficial changes,” he wrote. The world, he argued, should look toward “the development of a new procedure for decision-making” to solve global problems. 

The pope pointed to what he described as the “spiritual motivations” of climate action, noting that the Book of Genesis records that, upon his creation of the universe, “God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good.”

“‘Praise God’ is the title of this letter,” Francis wrote at the encyclical’s conclusion. “For when human beings claim to take God’s place, they become their own worst enemies.”

Francis since 2015 has been active in warning about the potential devastation posed by climate change. In 2021, he launched the Catholic Church’s seven-year “Laudato Si’ action plan,” which he described as the Church’s part in “a new ecological approach that can transform our way of dwelling in the world.”

The pope later that year joined religious leaders in calling upon the global community to “achieve net zero carbon emissions as soon as possible” to head off potentially devastating temperature rises.

Laudate Deum’s publication date — Oct. 4 — is the feast of St. Francis of Assisi, from whom Francis drew his pontifical name at the start of his papacy in 2013. It is also the start date of the first monthlong assembly in Rome of the ongoing Synod on Synodality. 

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