Cameroon bishop says Africa offers synod an example

Rome, Italy, Oct 24, 2019 / 11:00 am (CNA).- As the pastor of a parish in which many families lost a mother, father, or child in a bombing on Easter Sunday, Fr. Jude Raj Fernando has seen how healing from loss can be a long, difficult journey of faith.

Fr. Fernando is the rector of St. Anthony’s shrine in Colombo, Sri Lanka — one of the churches bombed during the Easter attacks by a group affiliated with Islamic State that killed 258 people in April. He spoke of his painful pastoral experience Oct. 24 at an Aid to the Church in Need event in Rome on the ongoing persecution of Christians.

“I had never heard a sound like that. My first words after the blast were ‘Father forgive them, they know not what they do,’” Fernando said, beginning to weep as he remembered the parishioners at Mass the day of the bombing. 

“There was a young couple married eight months before together at Easter Sunday Mass … and a man who had given an older lady his seat … a pregnant mother who lost her husband.” He noted that this woman gave birth to a healthy baby last week and she is now a single mother. 

Along with offering trauma counseling at the parish, Fernando said that the local Church remains committed to aiding the religious education of the children who lost parents and occupational training for households that lost their breadwinner. 

People at the parish are still asking, “Why did God allow this to happen to us?” he said. A young child asked him ‘why did God take my mother from me at church?’

“We priests walked this difficult journey with our victims,” Fernando said. “It is a long journey of faith.” 

“Please continue to pray for us … we can overcome evil with the love in our hearts,” he said. “Our faith is stronger than their bomb.”

Fr. Fernando spoke in the Basilica of St. Bartholomew on Tiber Island, a basilica devoted to the Church’s modern martyrs and home to 120 relics of persecuted Christian communities around the world. 

The Sri Lankan priest presented the basilica with items from St. Anthony’s church in Colombo that survived the bombing during the Aid to the Church in Need event “Persecuted more than ever.”

“This place, the Basilica of St. Bartholomew on Tiber Island, is a testimony,” said Cardinal Leonardo Sandri, Prefect of the Congregation of Oriental Churches, “to this dimension of the Church’s today … surrounded by innumerable signs, coming from the various continents, men and women who gave their lives for the Lord Jesus.” 

“They make us sure that the passion of Christ continues in the children of the Church, as He tells us in the Gospel ‘If they persecuted me, they will persecute you too,’ but they also ask us to purify our heart and our eyes, learning to live all these experiences in faith,” the cardinal said.

The Aid to the Church in Need report on Christian persecution 2017-2019 defined Iraq, Syria, Iran, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Nigeria, Cameroon, Burkina Faso, Central African Republic, Sudan, Eritrea, North Korea, China, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Philippines, Pakistan, India and Myanmar as countries with the most severe persecution of Christians.

Cardinal Sandri said that an awareness of this ongoing persecution should also always be framed by the victory of Christ, who tells us “take courage, I have conquered the world.”

The cardinal said that he learned during his diplomatic service to the Holy See to look for and recognize the signs of victory that the Lord grants over time. He pointed to the example of a Eucharistic procession that took place in Zocalo Square in Mexico City after Cardinal Posadas Ocampo was assassinated.

“It was a historic fact after the prohibition of public acts of faith that had lasted since the time of the anticlerical and anti-religious persecutions that gave the country many glorious martyrs and witnesses to the faith, Christ returned to physically tread the streets of the city in the Blessed Sacrament,” he said.

Sandri stressed that, while circumstances were growing more difficult for Christians in different ways across the globe, the whole Church was rediscovering the early Church’s understanding of bearing witness to the faith.

“In different geographical and social contexts, witnessing will take on a different meaning,” Sandri said.

“In some places it will be giving life, even physically, in blood; in others it will require the courage of parresia; in others, isolation, misunderstanding or derision.” 

“In any case,” the cardinal said, “it will require a willingness to pay a high and true price, as happened in the first centuries.” 

“Being a Christian cost life, but this did not prevent the Gospel from spreading. Modern times have given us back the ancient meaning of the word witness.”

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Vatican City, Oct 2, 2017 / 06:34 am (CNA/EWTN News).- On Monday Pope Francis offered his condolences and spiritual support to victims of a deadly shooting in Las Vegas that left at least 50 people dead and 200 more wounded when a gunman opened fire at a country music festival.

“Deeply saddened to learn of the shooting in Las Vegas, Pope Francis sends the assurance of his spiritual closeness to all those affected by this senseless tragedy,” read an Oct. 2 telegram signed by Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin.

Addressed to Las Vegas Bishop Joseph Anthony Pepe, the telegram offered the Pope’s encouragement for the efforts of police and emergency service personnel. Francis also assured of his prayers “for the injured and for all who have died, entrusting them to the merciful love of Almighty God.”

In what has become deadliest the mass shooting in U.S. history, at least 50 people died and 200 were wounded when a shooter opened fire on the last of a the three-day Route 91 Harvest festival in Las Vegas, Nev. just after 10p.m. Sunday night, BBC News reports.

According to the Las Vegas Police department, an estimated 406 people have been hospitalized after the incident.

The death toll, which police say is only preliminary, tops last year’s massacre at a nightclub in Orlando, which left 49 dead. It was also reminiscent of a deadly shooting in Paris in November 2015 that killed 89 people as part of a coordinated attack by the Islamic State that left a total of 130 people dead.

The festival, which took place along the Las Vegas Strip, was sold out, and had drawn thousands of participants to see top performers such as Eric Church, Sam Hunt and Jason Aldean.

Identified as Stephen Paddock, 64, the shooter opened fire from the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay Hotel, raining bullets on the open-air music festival happening below. Although the local sheriff department has not given an exact number of casualties, two of the at least 50 killed were off-duty officers.

The Associated Press reports that Paddock shot and killed himself as police tried to enter his room. Officers believe he acted alone, but are unsure of his motive. They are also currently pursuing a female Asian companion, reported to be Paddock’s roommate, as a “person of interest” in the incident.

In a tweet sent this morning, U.S. President Donald Trump offered his “warmest condolences and sympathies” to victims and families affected by “the terrible Las Vegas shooting.”

Various other global leaders have also voiced support and condolences, including representatives from the UK, Australia and Sweden.

In separate tweets, Cardinal Sean O’Malley of Boston also offered his support to victims, their families and emergency workers, asking that “God grant strength and faith to families affected by last nights violence; Lord welcome the dead into your loving embrace.”

Grant strength and faith to families affected by last nights violence; Lord welcome the dead into your loving embrace #LasVegasShooting

— Cardinal Seán (@CardinalSean) October 2, 2017

He also prayed that God would bless all first responders “as they care for the victims of last nights’ violence.”

Bishop Edward Burns of Dallas, Texas, also tweeted-out support, saying “Our prayers and concerns are with all those affected by the horrific mass shooting in Las Vegas. May God, the giver of all life, sustain us.”

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Pope Francis continued a series of lessons on the Holy Spirit during his weekly meeting with the public in the Vatican’s Paul VI Hall on Aug. 21, 2024. / Credit: Daniel Ibanez/CNA

Vatican City, Aug 21, 2024 / 07:00 am (CNA).

Pope Francis said Wednesday the person who lives with joy his anointing in the sacrament of confirmation cannot help but spread the fragrance of holiness in the Church and the world.

“We know that, unfortunately, sometimes Christians do not spread the fragrance of Christ, but the bad odor of their own sin,” the pope also warned during the general audience Aug. 21, adding that “sin turns us into bad oil.”

During his weekly public audience in the Vatican’s Pope Paul VI Hall, Pope Francis continued a series of lessons on the Holy Spirit, focusing on the fruits of being anointed with the blessed oil called Chrism in the sacraments of baptism and confirmation.

The audience hall brimmed over with thousands of pilgrims from around the world, some of whom held flags from their countries or waved colored bandanas, eager to catch a sight of the pope.

At the end of the meeting, before praying the “Our Father” and giving his blessing, the pontiff remembered certain countries and territories experiencing war, including Ukraine, Myanmar, South Sudan, and the North Kivu province of the Democratic Republic of Congo.

“Let us pray for peace,” he said, “and let’s not forget Palestine and Israel, that there will be peace there.”

In his catechesis, Pope Francis recalled the baptism of Christ, when “the very Spirit descended on Jesus.”

Christians, he explained, are “anointed in imitation of Christ,” as St. Cyril of Jerusalem wrote in his Mystagogical Catecheses.

The pope recited the prayer said by the bishop when he consecrates the chrism oil on Holy Thursday: “May those formed into a temple of your majesty by the holiness infused through this anointing and by the cleansing of the stain of their first birth be made fragrant with the innocence of a life pleasing to you.”

“A person who lives his anointing with joy gives fragrance to the Church, gives fragrance to the community, gives fragrance to his family,” the pontiff said.

Quoting from St. Paul’s Letter to the Galatians, Francis said, “the fragrance of Christ emanates from the ‘fruits of the Spirit,’ which are ‘love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.’”

“It’s beautiful to find a good person, a faithful person, a meek person, not proud,” he commented.

Sin, the pope emphasized, “must not distract us from the commitment of realizing, as far as we are able and each in their own environment, this sublime vocation of being the good fragrance of Christ in the world.”

“Let us ask the Holy Spirit to make us more conscious [of being] anointed, anointed by him,” he concluded.

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