“God is not polygamous; he is monogamous, he has only one Bride,” said Rev. Giovanni Traettino, the Pentecostal pastor from Caserta who became famous overnight three years ago when Pope Francis decided to flip protocol […]
Vatican City, Jun 5, 2017 / 03:47 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Pope Francis on Monday challenged the Consolata Missionaries to give a “new impetus” to their missions work, including by inculturation of the Gospel, promoting family values, and dialogue with Islam.
“It will be above all your apostolic fervour that will sustain the Christian communities entrusted to you, especially those that have been recently founded,” the Pope said June 5 to the Consolata Missionaries who were gathered at Clementine Hall of the Apostolic Palace in the Vatican.
“In the effort of the re-qualification of the style of missionary service, it will be necessary to favour certain significant elements, such as sensitivity to inculturation of the Gospel, and the choice of simple and poor forms of presence among the people. Special attention is due to dialogue with Islam, commitment to the promotion of the dignity of women and family values, and sensitivity to the themes of justice and peace.”
The Consolata Missionaries are a community of religious priests and sisters consecrated to God for the evangelization of peoples, especially wherever the Gospel is not yet known. The communities, founded by the Blessed Giuseppe Allamano in 1901, are holding their 13th General Chapter in Rome this month.
Pope Francis urged the Consolata Missionaries to further their charism and reignite their zeal for evangelization by how they encounter the culture and the mercy of God. He said they must follow the example of Blessed Guiseppe, whose faithfulness was identified by how he used his gifts to evangelize and his dedication to sharing the gospel to all people regardless of race or nationality.
“Let yourselves be continually challenged by the concrete realities with which you come into contact and seek to offer in appropriate ways the witness of charity that the Spirit infuses in your hearts.”
He told the community they are called “to project yourselves with renewed zeal in the work of evangelization, in view of pastoral urgencies and new forms of poverty. While I joyfully thank the Lord for the good that you are doing in the world, I would like to urge you to carry out a careful discernment on the situation of the peoples among whom you perform your evangelizing work.”
He urged them to “never tire of bringing comfort” to those whose lives “are often marked by great poverty and acute suffering”, as in much of Africa and Latin America as an example.
Applauding the fruitfulness of the Consolata Missionaries, he identified the sacrifices made by the order’s men and women, to the point of death: “May their evangelical choice, without reserve, illuminate your missionary effort and be of encouragement for you all to continue with renewed generosity on your special mission in the Church,” he said.
In order to move forward in this mission with renewed generosity, Pope Francis said the Consolata Missionaries must have an increasing awareness of God’s mercy.
“It is necessary to live communion with God with increasingly awareness of the Lord’s mercy that we receive. It is much more important to be aware of how much we are loved by God, than of how we love Him ourselves!”
We should consider first of all the “priority of the gratuitous and merciful love of God,” he said, experiencing “our commitment and our effort as a response.”
“We have a great need always to rediscover the love and mercy of the Lord to develop our familiarity with God. Consecrated persons, inasmuch as they make an effort to conform more perfectly to Christ, are most of all, familiar with God, intimate with Him, those who interact with the Lord with full freedom, and with spontaneity, but also with astonishment at the wonders He performs.”
Religious life can thus “become a journey of the progressive rediscovery of divine mercy, facilitating the imitation of the virtues of Christ and His attitudes … to then bear witness to them to all those you encounter in your pastoral service.”
Invoking the intercession of the Blessed Mother, Pope Francis ended his address with hope that their consecrated lives and the guidelines which will be developed in the General Chapters may lead to a greater encounter with Christ’s love, the source of consolation for all humanity.
Editor’s note: The following essay was originally posted on the MondayVatican (Vatican At a Glance) blog, which is the personal site of Andrea Gagliarducci, who is the Vatican analyst for Catholic News Agency (CNA); it is […]
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Mosul, Iraq, Jun 5, 2017 / 12:00 pm (CNA).- As government forces pry apart the Islamic State’s three yearlong grip on Mosul, Muslims and Christians have united to rebuild a damaged monastery.
A Facebook page called “This is Christian Iraq” – dedicated to connecting Iraqi Christians and maintaining the faith amid ISIS threat – recently posted a series of photos showing the joint effort.
The May 27 post said that young Muslims from the northern neighborhood joined Christians at the Monastery of Saint George, participating in cleaning and repairs.
The monastery belongs to the Chaldean Catholic tradition, an Eastern Catholic rite in full communion with the Vatican. ISIS militants vandalized the monastery – smashing windows, damaging the church’s dome, and discarding its cross.
Although still in need of repairs, the17th century monastery gathered Chaldeans for Easter celebration this year, according to the Irish Times.
“God willing, the celebration of the resurrection of Christ will also mark the return and rising-up of the Christians in Iraq,” Kyriacos Isho, an attendee of the service, told the newspaper.
A new cross has now replaced the old one, and the coming together of Christians and Muslims marks a promising time for both religions as reports announce a final push against the Islamic terrorists.
Residents have seen U.S.-backed Iraqi forces gathering around the local Grand al-Nuri Mosque in the 48 hours leading up to May 31, in what Reuters reports to be a “final showdown.”
The nearly 1000 year old mosque has flown the terrorist’s black flag since the group captured the capital city in 2014. The site is where Islamist caliphate was declared by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, announcing the reign of a new Muslim leader.
Three years ago the Islamic State made roads into the Iraqi’s Nineveh Plain, and since then over 3.3 million Iraqis have been displaced internally. Christians and moderate Muslims were also subject to persecution. They were often forced to pay heavy taxes or even offered a choice of conversion or death.
Over 2016, internal and international forces reclaimed parts of the city, and Eastern Mosul had been retaken in early January of this year.
The government forces are now focusing on Western Mosul, where the mosque is located at the Old City center, and the three districts near the Western side of the Tigris River.
Rome, Italy, Jun 5, 2017 / 11:40 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Last week the Order of Malta hosted diplomats and politicians from throughout Europe for a discussion on the effects of violent conflict on children.
Participants said the topic is increasingly urgent since children all over the world are growing up surrounded by war.
“It’s self-explanatory that the well-being of children is key for the future of humanity, and on the other hand the first victims of conflicts, of disasters, of any kind of turmoil, are the weakest in society, and these are women and children,” Order of Malta Grand Chancellor Albrecht von Boeselager told CNA.
Because of this, he said the order tries to concentrate the relief they give to “the weakest…especially, children.”
Providing educational opportunities and psychological care for children affected by violent conflict are among the top priorities “because the lack of education and the effect of traumas very often have very long-term effects, and sometimes they turn up only later and have a deteriorating effect on countries.”
The Grand Chancellor was one of several European leaders participating in a June 1 conference titled “Children Victims of Armed Violence” commemorating the 75th anniversary of the Lidice massacre in the Czech Republic.
Nazi troops stormed the village in 1942 on the order of Adolf Hitler in retaliation for the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich, a high-ranking German official and the main architect of the Holocaust, a few months earlier. Nazi intelligence had erroneously linked the village to Heydrich’s assassins.
The men were rounded up and killed, and the women and 88 children of the village were gathered and sent to the Chelmno extermination camp, where they were gassed to death. Only a few children considered racially suitable for “Germanization” – the spreading of the German language and culture – survived, and were handed over to SS families.
To mark the anniversary, a Czech group came on pilgrimage to Rome last week. They met Pope Francis during his general audience May 31, and later had Mass with Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin, who offered the liturgy for children who are victims of armed conflicts. The group then participated in the half-day conference Thursday, followed by a Mass said by Cardinal Dominik Duka of Prague.
During the conference, Veronika Rymonova, a survivor of the Lidice massacre, shared her testimony. Although she was just five months at the time of the attack, Rymonova said the soldiers hit her on the face, leaving a scar on her forehead, and tore her earlobes.
She was one of the few children to survive, and said that despite the fact she has no memories of her village, she is proud of it because Lidice has become a “symbol against Nazism.”
“This unprecedented act of evil and hatred did not remain without a response,” she said, noting that after the massacre “a wave of solidarity arose all over the world,” with countries naming squares, streets, and towns after the village, and even sending donations to survivors.
“The fact that I am here today proves the fact that you are not indifferent to the fate of a small village in the heart of Europe, even 75 years after its massacre,” Rymonova said, voicing her hope that what happened in Lidice “would be a warning for the next generation” so that innocent lives “would never become a wasted sacrifice.”
In an opening address, Vaclav Kolaja, the Czech deputy foreign minister, told participants that while contemporary European youth have lived in relative peace, armed conflicts “remain part of everyday life in other parts of the world, especially in the Middle East, Africa and Asia.”
Armed conflicts are “leaving behind a growing number of victims, devastated countries and wounded families,” he said, noting that the situation “is even worse for the millions of children growing in war or post-war countries.”
These children “become the passive witnesses and victims of human cruelties, or accept an active role in armed conflicts, becoming child soldiers,” he said. They also face rape and other forms of abuse.
Many times children in conflict areas will lack access to basic food, healthcare, shelter, and education, as well as access to a stable family life.
In his comments, Kolaja noted that if war is the only reality children experience growing up, “this naturally shapes the future of the world.”
As millions of migrants including unaccompanied minors, continue to pour into Europe, greater concern is mounting not only for how to ensure them safe passage, but also for how to help them integrate into their new societies.
In their recent “A child is a child” report, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) reported that the global number of migrant and refugee children who move alone has reached a record high. At least 300,000 unaccompanied minors and separated children were recorded in around 80 countries for 2015-2016, a massive jump from the 66,000 recorded for 2010-2011.
UNICEF Italy Team Leader for Refugee and Migrant Response, Gianfranco Rotigliano also spoke at the conference, telling participants that we are “losing generations” to armed conflicts.
“There is no sanctity anymore for hospitals,” he said, noting that they have often become targets, with numerous children among the casualties.
He also lamented the fact that children from warring countries often stop going to school, saying: “when children do not go to school, they are out of society, or they become the last part of society. They will not participate in the process of development in their own country and in their own society.”
Tomas Bocek, the Council of Europe’s Special Representative of the Secretary General for Migration and Refugees, noted that children who grow up with war generally suffer from anger and often drift into criminal activities.
Children also simply disappear, many times because of poor organization in refugee camps, or out of fear of deportation, he said, stressing the need to focus on systemic problems “so children do not fall through the net.”
Good and effective systems must be put into place, he said, noting that 1 in 3 asylum seekers in Europe is a child.
Because trafficking is such a huge risk, especially for unaccompanied minors, Bocek said the rapid identification of victims is essential so that they are accounted for before they disappear.
Stories from other panelists during the conference provided a shocking dose of reality in terms of what children go through.
One panelist recounted how in a visit to a warring country, she met a child who was waiting for the electricity to come back on after a bombing, not realizing that she had in fact lost her sight.
Other stories told of children who suffered from nosebleeds every time a bomb would go off, as well as the cases of children who, after coming home from school to see their homes destroyed and their family killed, wanted to commit suicide so they could be with their relatives.
In comments to CNA, Bocek said that of all the discussions taking place right now on global conflicts, the topic of how they affect children is one of the most important because “they are the most vulnerable ones, they are without protection, especially when they are on their own.”
One of the “most problematic areas” unaccompanied migrant children face is guardianship and obtaining basic information, he said, explaining that a plan of the Council for Europe provides for age-assessment, family reunification, and integration.
Integration, Bocek said, is key, and begins with learning the language, followed by education.
“They need to go to school. They not only need it, this is their basic right. So we really have to facilitate this, that all children who are coming are educated and can go to school.”
Responding to Pope Francis’ many appeals to European leaders to not only be generous in accepting the number of migrants they can reasonably welcome, but also to facilitate their integration, Bocek said he views the Roman Pontiff’s words as an encouragement for leaders.
“All these pushes, encouragements for our action,” he said, “will help to convince the leaders of European States, not only me, but in Europe, to really think twice and show more solidarity, because now this is really needed most.”
© Catholic World Report