‘I am close to you,’ Francis tells Ukrainian Catholics in Rome

Madrid, Spain, Mar 6, 2017 / 03:07 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- After an anti-clerical childhood and adolescence, filled with hatred for the Church, Fr. Juan José Martínez says he discovered “that God exists and wants me as his priest.”

“Sunday mornings I would peer out of the balcony of my house, and when the people were going by on their way to Mass, I would spit on them. I told them that the Church was a sect that wanted their money,” explained the priest, who ministers in the Diocese of Almeria, Spain.

Fr. Juan José’s parents were not believers, and he had received no religious formation, but he said they did not raise him to be intolerant. In fact, he says he does not know where he got all those ideas, because the perception he had of the Church and God was that of a “multinational corporation with branches in every neighborhood to extract money, like a sect.”

“I was absolutely anticlerical, I was the first student in my school and the town of Carboneras, Almeria Province, to never be taught Religion because when I was 8 or 9, I chose the alternative course which was Ethics. In the following years, I went on convincing my friends to quit Religion classes and to take Ethics with me. In the end, my whole class ended up being taught Ethics and none of them Religion.”

But what he never imagined is that the end of his journey would be to help his friends to come back to the Church. Fr. Juan José remembers quite well that the first day he went into a Catholic church, “I went to make fun of those who had invited me.”

“It was in January 1995, some friends from class invited me to a Catholic Charismatic Renewal prayer group at the parish. Obviously I told them I wasn’t planning on going because I didn’t want them to brainwash me. For a whole month they persisted. I finally gave in – it was a Thursday in February 1995 when I went into a Catholic church for the first time.”

A golden box

A lot of his friends were there, and he was surprised because “they were all looking at a golden box at the back of the church. I didn’t know what it was, but I thought it was where the parish priest kept the money.”

That golden box was the Tabernacle.

Fr. Juan José says that he came to make fun of them because “I thought they were crazy. Inside, I was laughing at them a lot, but I was polite and concealed it.  But I decided to come back the following Thursday to laugh at them some more.”

And so one Thursday after another, Fr. Juan José was letting go of his prejudices against the Church and religion.

“The pastor seemed to me to be a very wise man who was helping the people,” he told CNA. And little by little, the love of God was penetrating his heart: “I was 15 years old and I started to sing at Mass, which meant I would attend Mass on Saturdays. I liked being in front of the tabernacle and little by little, I realized that God existed and loved me. I felt the love of God. The Charismatic Renewal group, which I had come to make fun of, helped me a lot.”

“My eyes were being opened and I saw that God was not a legend or story for the weak, but that he existed and that he was supporting and guiding me. I experienced that he loved me so much that he wanted me for himself and was calling me,” he recalled.

“I am yours for whatever you need”

Fr. Juan José had been baptized and made his First Communion because of his grandparents’ wishes, but he did not have a relationship with God after that. “I made my Confirmation as I was right in the midst of the process of conversion, and it was a genuine gift. That day I told the Lord, ‘I am yours for whatever you need.’ My mother came but my father did not. It was a unique moment in my life to receive the Holy Spirit and to put my trust in the Lord.”

For months, the young Juan José was resisting the call to the priesthood. “I told the Lord that I didn’t want any hassles and to quit talking to me. Until I had to make a decision and it was to follow him, becoming a priest.”

One Saturday afternoon when he was 17, Fr. Juan José told his father he wanted to go to the seminary. His father beat him and said that “he would be a priest over his dead body.”

“They did not understand that I would want to be a priest. In fact, my father offered to pay for me to go to college in the United States but (he told me) he would never pay for the seminary.”

In such a difficult moment, Fr.  Juan José recalled that all he could think of was the prayer of Saint Teresa of Avila: “Let nothing disturb you, nothing frighten you. All you need is God” and when his father stopped rebuking him, the young man gave him a hug and said to him, “I knew you were going to react like that, but I also knew that one day you’d understand.”

“Welcome”

In fact, his father went so far as to threaten to report the pastor to the police if kept helping his son discern his vocation. “My father was trying everything, but the Lord is stronger,” he said.

To obey his father, Fr. Juan José could not start the seminary, and so he began to study teaching at the University of Almeria. For years he was patient, and continued to be faithful to his vocation to the priesthood. Until one day in May 1999, as he recalled, his mother told him that she had spoken to his father and that finally he would let him enter the seminary. “I began to cry and cry. I remember when I told the pastor about it he said “welcome” and gave me a great big hug.”

In September 2000, he finally entered the seminary.

In 2006, Fr.Juan José was ordained in the Almeria cathedral and his father even attended the ceremony. “In no way did he want me to become a priest, but he saw that I was happy and even though he was totally anticlerical, he decided that the happiness of his son came before his ideology and if I was happy, even though he didn’t understand it, he would have to accept it. “

In fact, he recalled that two years ago, “before dying, my father received the Anointing of the Sick. And it was I who administered it to him.”

“When somebody tells me he doesn’t believe in God, I always tell him that neither did I believe in Him, but I was mistaken, because I have discovered the genuine happiness that Jesus has given to me. If you’re not completely happy, ask the Lord to help you, because only He will give you the happiness that your heart needs.”

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Bishop Philip Egan of Portsmouth, England, pictured on May 21, 2015. / Mazur/catholicnews.org.uk.

Portsmouth, England, Nov 29, 2021 / 05:30 am (CNA).
A Catholic bishop has said that he was “shocked and saddened” by a vote on the Channel Island … […]

Rome, Italy, Apr 1, 2017 / 04:02 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Reproductive issues often leave Catholics and secular feminists at odds, but a recent anti-surrogacy conference in Rome has created an unusual camaraderie between the two.

“Se Non Ora Quando,” a feminist group known for its left-wing views, called surrogacy “incompatible with human rights and with the dignity of women,” according to the Atlantic.

The conference met last Thursday at a lower House of Parliament in Rome. Women intellectuals, doctors, and scholars from all over the world, pleaded with the United Nations to ban European citizens from traveling abroad to procure surrogate mothers.

Surrogacy is when a woman carries a baby to term for a third party, often involving payment. The pregnancy is achieved by in-vitro fertilization, in which an egg is fertilized in a lab then placed into the woman’s womb.

While the practice is legal in Canada and most of the United States, regulations vary depending on the state. Surrogacy is banned, however, in almost all of Western Europe, including France, Spain, Sweden, Germany, and Italy. Some countries, such as England, do not enforce surrogate contracts and women are not required by law to give up the baby they bore for a third party.

The Catholic Church opposed surrogacy in Donum Vitae, a document on biomedical issues written in 1987.

“Surrogate motherhood represents an objective failure to meet the obligations of maternal love,” the document reads. It further called the practice a “detriment” to the family and the dignity of the person by divorcing “physical, psychological and moral elements which constitute those families.”

In recent years, left-wing feminists have actively opposed surrogacy in countries like Spain and France, claiming it as an attack against women’s dignity, especially as an injustice to the poor. They have compared surrogacy to prostitution, and the expressed their concern for its promotion of human trafficking.  

“The state of necessity of women who turn to renting their womb, for a price, is not unlike sexual exploitation,” said the Spain-based Feminist Party, who protested a local surrogacy fair in 2016.

The United Nations’ parliament condemned surrogacy in 2015, labeling it as a practice which “undermines the human dignity of the woman since her body and its reproductive functions are used as a commodity.” World leaders have also identified a high of surrogate mothers are poor women in third world countries.

Sheela Saravanan gave her testimony to the “Se Non Ora Quando” conference last week, detailing the struggle women are faced with in India.

“Our surrogate mothers are stressed physically and mentally even if they receive money,” and they experience “poverty, illiteracy, submissiveness,” Saravanan said, according to the Italian bishops’ newspaper Avvenire.  

She also explained that these “mothers who do not claim rights” are subject to abortions if the baby is disabled.

Many feminists have expressed concern that surrogacy not only coerces impoverished women, but has unhealthy side effects. The psychologist Fabio Castriota, told the conference that birth and motherhood are inseparable, and that a “separation trauma” leaves an impression on both the baby and the woman.

“Se Non Ora Quando,” means “If not now, when?” The group emerged in response to what they view as the sexist treatment of women in the media. They are especially known for organizing the 2011 rally against then-prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, who faced accusations of sleeping with an underage woman.

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