Did Pope Francis call himself ‘the devil?’

Vatican City, Dec 17, 2019 / 12:56 pm (CNA).- In 2019, Pope Francis unveiled a new bronze sculpture in St. Peter’s Square, “Angels Unawares,” a depiction of migrants throughout history crammed together on a boat with the holy family.

The sculpture’s artist, Timothy Schmalz, told CNA Tuesday that a second cast of the “Angels Unawares” sculpture will be touring different cities around the U.S. before being permanently installed in a yet-to-be-disclosed location in the United States.

The 20-foot-tall bronze statue is based off of Hebrews 13:2, “Be welcoming to strangers, many have entertained angels unawares.”

“Most of the time when I sculpt, I turn on the Bible. Actually I have it on unabridged tapes read by Steven B. Stevens,” Schmalz told CNA. “Just listening to the Bible as I sculpt … turns my studio into a sort of a chapel and a very spiritual place when the sound is being filled up with Biblical texts.”

For this work, Schmalz also had refugees from Africa visit his studio in Canada to model for some of the 140 different people depicted in the sculpture. He also collected vintage photographs of people’s grandparents, who crossed the Atlantic as immigrants.

“What I wanted to do is create a sculpture that is really inclusive of all migration,” he said. “It exemplifies all historical, all cultures, all races that have ever moved throughout the world.”

“You have a Jew escaping Nazi Germany right beside a Muslim from today escaping Syria and … you have a Polish woman leaving communist Poland right beside an Irish boy escaping from the potato famine,” Schmalz said.

“They’re actually sculpted out of one big mass of clay which is to symbolize unity … in it you have Mary and Joseph being worked within this tapestry of people,” he said.

Mother Cabrini, the patron saint of immigrants, is also among the faces huddled together on the sculpted boat.

Pope Francis first revealed the “Angels Unawares” sculpture in St. Peter’s Square after the Mass for the World Day of Migrants and Refugees Sept. 29, 2019.

While it is not the first statue to be added to St. Peter’s Square in 400 years as many Vatican pundits claimed — the current statues of St. Peter and St. Paul were commissioned by Pope Pius IX in the mid-19th century — the bronze sculpture is the first post-conciliar statue to be permanently added to the piazza.

“Knowing that it was meant for Saint Peter’s Square, I made sure I created 140 migrants within the piece, sort of a symbolic attachment to the 140 statues around the colonnade,” Schmalz said.

The artist said that he hopes the new piece of art in St. Peter’s Square “confirms the idea that this is a living Church, that it’s not a museum,” as Pope Francis has frequently repeated.

It is “something that has been created in the year 2019, and so it doesn’t necessarily and it should not look like a sculpture that was created in the 1600s,” he said.

It is not his first work for the Vatican – an installation of Schmalz’s “Homeless Jesus” was created for Vatican City in 2016. In November 2019, his sculpture entitled “I was naked and you clothed me” was installed in front of St. Matthew’s Cathedral in Washington D.C.

“Angels Unawares” came about after Cardinal Michael Czerny, then a Jesuit priest, asked Schmalz to think about creating a new sculpture based on the theme of migration.

The artist sent Czerny photos of a small model of his idea, which Fr. Czerny then showed them to Pope Francis who invited Schmalz to come to Rome for further discussions.

“It was probably after six months of working on the concept that I heard that Pope Francis wanted to install it right here in Saint Peter’s Square. And so at that time I began to drop everything in my life to start working on this project,” Schmalz said. “Everyday I woke up at 4 in the morning until basically at then end of the day working obsessively on the piece.”

Schmalz recently completed a live sculpting of a nativity display at the Museum of the Bible in Washington D.C. in which visitors to the museum could watch him as he worked.

“I’m always searching for Scripture that I can bring to life, bring to sculpture, bring to art,” he told CNA.

“Within Christianity today, we need to use as many weapons as possible to get our message across because there’s a lot of competition out there for people’s attention on so many different issues,” Schmalz said.

“Christianity is an endless source of creativity for artists,” he said.

All photos credit: Daniel Ibanez / CNA.

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Vatican City, Oct 6, 2017 / 04:41 am (CNA/EWTN News).- On Friday, Pope Francis told a group of religious and secular experts from around the world that protecting minors against increasing online threats is a serious new concern, and one in which the Church can be a leading voice given the experience gleaned from past mistakes.

“As all of us know, in recent years the Church has come to acknowledge her own failures in providing for the protection of children,” the Pope said Oct. 6. “Extremely grave facts have come to light, for which we have to accept our responsibility before God, before the victims and before public opinion.”

Because of this, “as a result of these painful experiences and the skills gained in the process of conversion and purification, the Church today feels especially bound to work strenuously and with foresight for the protection of minors and their dignity, not only within her own ranks, but in society as a whole and throughout the world.”

The Church can’t even attempt to “do this alone – for that is clearly not enough,” he said, but she stands ready by “offering her own effective and ready cooperation to all those individuals and groups in society that are committed to the same end.”

In this sense, he said, the Church adheres fully to the goal of putting an end to “the abuse, exploitation, trafficking and all forms of violence against and torture of children” that was set by the United Nations in the 2030 Sustainable Development agenda.

Pope Francis spoke to participants in the global “Child Dignity in the Digital World” conference being held in Rome Oct. 3-6, who had an audience with him the Clementine Hall of the Apostolic Palace.

Organized by the Pontifical Gregorian University’s Center for Child Protection in collaboration with the UK-based global alliance WePROTECT and the organization “Telefono Azzurro,” the first Italian helpline for children at risk, the conference brings together people from all sectors of society, including social scientists, civic leaders, and religious representatives.

Key points of discussion included updates on the situation, the prevention of abuse, pornography, the responsibility of internet providers and the media, and ethical governance.

In their audience with the Pope, participates presented him with a common declaration outlining several action-points for each area and field to develop moving forward.

In his speech, Pope Francis thanked attendees for gathering to address such “a grave new problem” which, until this week’s conference, had not yet been studied in-depth by experts from various fields.

“The acknowledgment and defense of the dignity of the human person is the origin and basis of every right social and political order,” he said, noting that children “are among those most in need of care and protection.”

This is why the Holy See received the U.N. Declaration on the Rights of the Child in 1959, and participated in the 1990 U.N. convention on the same subject, he said, adding that “the dignity and rights of children must be protected by legal systems as priceless goods for the entire human family.”

While we are living in a world “we could hardly have imagined” only a few years ago, Francis said this world is the fruit of “extraordinary achievements of science and technology” that are in many ways changing “our very way of thinking and of being.”

However, while admirable these rapid advancements also bring a certain concern and apprehension with them, he said, explaining that questions naturally arise as to whether “we are capable of guiding the processes we ourselves have set in motion, whether they might be escaping our grasp, and whether we are doing enough to keep them in check.”

As representatives of various fields in digital communications and organizations, conference participants “with great foresight” have put a spotlight on “what is probably the most crucial challenge for the future of the human family: the protection of young people’s dignity.”

Citing various statistics, the Pope noted that currently more than a quarter of the over 3 billion internet users are minors, meaning there are more than 800 million young people navigating the internet throughout the world. In India alone, he said, more than 500 million people will have access to the internet in the coming years, and that half of them will be minors.

“What do they find on the net? And how are they regarded by those who exercise various kinds of influence over the net?” he asked, stressing that when it comes to protecting them, “we have to keep our eyes open and not hide from an unpleasant truth that we would rather not see.”

“For that matter, surely we have realized sufficiently in recent years that concealing the reality of sexual abuse is a grave error and the source of many other evils,” he said, and urged people to “face reality” in this regard.

On this point, he referred to the “extremely troubling” yet increasingly frequent diffusion of problematic activities for youth, such as the spread of extreme pornography online; “sexting” on social media; online bullying; the “sextortion” of young people on the internet; human trafficking and prostitution, as well as a rise in the commissioning of live viewings of rape and violence against minors in other parts of the world.

He also referred to what has been described as the “dark net,” in which traffickers and pedophiles use secure and anonymous channels to exchange photos and information about minors, as well as for human and drug trafficking.

These are the places “where evil finds ever new, effective and pervasive ways to act and to expand,” the Pope said, explaining that the spread of printed pornography in the past “was a relatively small phenomenon compared to the proliferation of pornography on the net.”

And unfortunately, many people are still bewildered by the fact that these things happen, he said, noting that what makes the internet so distinct “is precisely that it is worldwide.”

“It covers the planet, breaking down every barrier, becoming ever more pervasive, reaching everywhere and to every kind of user, including children, due to mobile devices that are becoming smaller and easier to use,” he said.

As a result, no one in the world today, no single nation or authority, “feels capable of monitoring and adequately controlling the extent and the growth of these phenomena,” since many are themselves linked to other serious problems involving the internet such human and drug trafficking, financial crimes and international terrorism.

From an educational standpoint, the Church is also surprised, he said, because the speed of online growth “has left the older generation on the sidelines, rendering extremely difficult, if not impossible, intergenerational dialogue and a serene transmission of rules and wisdom acquired by years of life and experience.”

However, he told the that despite the ominous and widespread nature of the threats, “we must not let ourselves be overcome by fear,” nor allow ourselves “be paralyzed” by a sense of powerlessness.

Instead, a global network must be formed to “limit and direct technology,” putting it at the service of a true human and integral progress.

In this regard, he cautioned attendees not to “underestimate” the harm done to minors by various forms of online abuse and exploitation. “These problems will surely have a serious and life-long effect on today’s children,” has has been proven many times over by fields such as neurobiology, psychology and psychiatry.

And while these crimes are especially problematic for minors, the Pope said it’s also necessary to recognize the harm done to adults, including addictions, distorted views of love and various other disorders.

“We would be seriously deluding ourselves,” he said, “were we to think that a society where an abnormal consumption of internet sex is rampant among adults could be capable of effectively protecting minors.”

Francis also cautioned against another “mistaken approach” to the problem, which he said would be to think that “automatic technical solutions,” such as filters and algorithms, are enough to deal with the problem.

While such measures are necessary and large tech companies ought  to invest in speedy and effective protective software, “there is also an urgent need, as part of the process of technological growth itself, for all those involved to acknowledge and address the ethical concerns that this growth raises, in all its breadth and its various consequences.”

He also emphasized the need to not give into the mistaken “ideological and mythical” belief that the internet is “a realm of unlimited freedom.”

“The net has opened a vast new forum for free expression and the exchange of ideas and information,” yet it has also opened the door to new ways of engaging “in heinous illicit activities,” including the abuse of minors.

“This has nothing to do with the exercise of freedom,” he said. Rather, “it has to do with crimes that need to be fought with intelligence and determination, through a broader cooperation among governments and law enforcement agencies on the global level, even as the net itself is now global.”

Pope Francis closed his speech noting that when he travels abroad, he always meets and looks into the eyes of children, both rich and poor, happy and suffering.

“To see children looking us in the eye is an experience we have all had. It touches our hearts and requires us to examine our consciences,” he said.

“What are we doing to ensure that those children can continue smiling at us, with clear eyes and faces filled with trust and hope? What are we doing to make sure that they are not robbed of this light, to ensure that those eyes will not be not darkened and corrupted by what they will find on the internet, which will soon be so integral and important a part of their daily lives?”

“Let us work together,” he said, “so that we will always have the right, the courage and the joy to be able to look into the eyes of the children of our world.”

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Vatican City, Jun 1, 2018 / 08:29 am (CNA/EWTN News).- The Vatican announced Friday that Pope Francis has tapped Slovakian-born Bishop Milan Lach S.J. as the new head of the Ruthenian Eparchy of Parma, which encompasses a large portion of the Midwest region of the United States.

Born in Kezmarok, Slovakia in 1973, Lach, 44, has been the apostolic administrator for the vacant eparchy since 2017.

His appointment as the eparchy’s new bishop was announced in a June 1 communique from the Vatican. The news was published stateside in Washington D.C. by the pope’s ambassador to the U.S., Archbishop Christophe Pierre.  

Headquartered in Parma, Ohio, the Byzantine Catholic Eparchy of Parma governs the majority of Ruthenian Catholics throughout the Midwest. The eparchy encompasses the majority of Ohio, apart from certain eastern border counties, as well as Indiana, Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Missouri, Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, North Dakota and South Dakota.

The Ruthenian Catholic Church is an Eastern Catholic Church and in full communion with the Bishop of Rome. Ruthenian Catholics use the Byzantine rite and are led by the Ruthenian Archbishop of Pittsburgh.

Bishop Lach was admitted to the Greek-Catholic seminary in Presov, Slovakia in 1992, and three years later he entered the novitiate with the Society of Jesus in Trnava.

After finishing his theological studies at the University of Trnava, Lach was ordained a deacon for the Society of Jesus in 2000, and was ordained priest for the order in the Diocese of Kosice in 2001.

That same year he began working in the scientific area of the Center of Spirituality East-West of Michal Lacko in Kosice. In 2009, he was tapped as the center’s superior, a role he held until 2011.

Lach also obtained both a master’s degree and a doctorate from the Pontifical Oriental Institute in Rome, completing his studies in 2009.

In 2011 the bishop was named vice dean of the Faculty of Theology of the University of Trnava for foreign relations and development.

He was named auxiliary bishop of the Archeparchy of Presov of the Byzantines by Pope Francis in June 2013, and in 2017 he was named apostolic administrator of the Parma eparchy when the former bishop, John Michael Kudrick, retired.

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