EU recognizes financial system of Vatican City State

Pope Francis at the general audience in St. Peter’s Square on May 4, 2022. / Daniel Ibáñez/CNA.

Rome Newsroom, Jul 21, 2022 / 01:00 am (CNA).
Pope Francis, on the Solemnity of Saints Peter and Paul, issued a letter to Catholics on the liturgy a… […]

Pope Francis at the general audience at St. Peter’s Square on Oct. 18, 2023. / Credit: Vatican Media

Vatican City, Oct 18, 2023 / 09:57 am (CNA).

Pope Francis drew upon the example of St. Charles de Foucauld during his general audience Wednesday in his ongoing catechesis on apostolic zeal to stress the importance of centering our lives on Jesus. 

At the end of his remarks at his weekly general audience in St. Peter’s Square Oct. 18, the pope called for peace in the Middle East and announced that Oct. 27 has been designated as a day of prayer and fasting.

Before the assembled faithful, the pope said the “first step” for evangelization and conversion is putting “Jesus at the center of one’s heart.”

The pope, however, admonished that “we risk talking about ourselves, our group, a morality, or, even worse, a set of rules, but not about Jesus, his love, his mercy.” 

He added, in unscripted remarks: “I see this in some new movements that are arising: They talk about their vision of humanity, they talk about their spirituality and they feel they are on a new path… But why don’t you talk about Jesus? They talk about many things, about organization, about spiritual paths, but they don’t know how to talk about Jesus.”

Epitomizing this love for the Eucharist was St. Charles de Foucauld, who was canonized by Pope Francis in 2022. Born in 1858, he dedicated his life to missionary work in the Sahara, living and working among the Tuareg people (a subgroup of Berber people). 

After serving in the French cavalry, he went on to become a Trappist, going to serve the poor in Syria, an experience that had a profound impact on him and helped define his understanding of poverty. He later discerned out of the Trappists and went to Palestine, where he went to live close to the Poor Clares. 

“It is in Nazareth that he realizes he must be formed in the school of Christ. He experiences an intense relationship with him, spends long hours reading the Gospels, and feels like his little brother. And as he gets to know Jesus, the desire to make Jesus known arises in him,” the pope said.

It was this time in Palestine that provided him with the inspiration to write his prolific works, including “Letters from the Desert,” “Hope in the Gospels,” and “Meditations of a Hermit.” These writings became the essence of his spiritual legacy, inspiring the formation of numerous future religious congregations. He was assassinated in 1916 at his hermitage in Tamanghasset in southern Algeria after being kidnapped by an armed tribal group associated with the Senussi Bedouins. 

Pope Francis closed his 2020 encyclical on fraternity and social action Fratelli Tutti with a reflection on the saint, writing: “Blessed Charles directed his ideal of total surrender to God towards an identification with the poor, abandoned in the depths of the African desert. In that setting, he expressed his desire to feel himself a brother to every human being, and asked a friend to ‘pray to God that I truly be the brother of all.’ He wanted to be, in the end, ‘the universal brother.’ Yet only by identifying with the least did he come at last to be the brother of all. May God inspire that dream in each one of us.” 

Pope Francis, in today’s catechism, noted that while de Foucauld lived “a youth far from God” he converted “by accepting the grace of God’s forgiveness in confession.” He was someone who “drawing upon his intense experience of God, made a journey of transformation towards feeling a brother to all,” the pope said, quoting Fratelli Tutti. 

In contrast to the life of de Foucauld, the pope lamented the loss of Eucharistic devotion today. “I am convinced that we have lost the sense of adoration; we must take it up again, starting with us consecrated people, the bishops, the priests, the nuns, and all the consecrated people. ‘Wasting’ time in front of the tabernacle, to take up again the sense of adoration,” the pope said in an unscripted remark. 

The pope presented the life of de Foucauld as an antidote to this tendency, saying that we “by kneeling and welcoming the action of the Spirit, who always inspires new ways to engage, meet, listen and dialogue, always in collaboration and trust, always in communion with the Church and pastors.” 

“Every Christian is an apostle,” the pope said, quoting de Foucauld. In this way, he continued, “Charles foreshadows the times of Vatican Council II. He intuits the importance of the laity and understands that the proclamation of the Gospel is up to the entire people of God.” 

The Holy Father concluded Wednesday’s general audience by renewing his appeal for peace in the Holy Land. “My thoughts turn to Palestine and Israel. Victims are increasing and the situation in Gaza is desperate. Please do everything possible to avoid a humanitarian catastrophe,” the pope pleaded. 

He added: “War does not solve any problem… It increases hatred and multiplies revenge. War erases the future; it erases the future.” 

In calling for a day of prayer and fasting , the pope invited members of other faiths to join an interfaith prayer vigil for peace on Oct. 27 at 6 p.m. in St. Peter’s Square.

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Santa Fe, N.M., Mar 25, 2019 / 10:38 am (CNA).- The Archbishop of Santa Fe said recently that people praying to “Saint Death” won’t find the answers they’re looking for.

Archbishop John Wester told the Associated Press recently that Catholics praying to the skeletal figure, popular in Central America, may be fooled into thinking that “Santa Muerte” is an approved devotional practice in the Church.

But the practice of praying to “Saint Death” is not consistent with Catholic teaching, the archbishop said.

“It’s really wrong,” Wester told the AP.

“I think in part, it’s (because) people are looking and searching. It’s a symptom of a search looking for answers.”

“Our devotion is to the God of life,” he added.

In 2013, a Vatican official condemned devotion to “Santa Muerte,” equating it to “the celebration of devastation and of hell.”

“It’s not every day that a folk saint is actually condemned at the highest levels of the Vatican,” Andrew Chesnut, a Santa Muerte expert, told CNA in 2016.

Chesnut is the Bishop Walter F. Sullivan Chair in Catholic Studies at Virginia Commonwealth University and author of “Devoted to Death: Santa Muerte, the Skeleton Saint,” the only English academic book to date on the subject.

Despite her condemnation from on high, Santa Muerte remains increasingly popular among criminals, drug lords and those on the fringe of society, as well as cultural Catholics who maybe don’t know (or care) that she is condemned by the Church.

“She’s basically the poster girl of narco-satanic spirituality,” Chesnut said.

According to Chesnut’s estimates, Santa Muerte is the fastest growing religious movement in the Americas – and it’s all happened within the past 10-15 years.

“She was unknown to 99 percent of Mexicans before 2001, when she went public. Now I estimate there’s some 10-12 million devotees, mostly in Mexico, but also significant numbers in the United States and Central America,” he said.

Part of the attraction to Santa Muerte, as several sources familiar with the devotion explained, is that she is seen as a non-judgemental saint that can be invoked for some not-so-holy petitions.

“If somebody is going to be doing something illegal, and they want to be protected from the law enforcement, they feel awkward asking God to protect them,” Fr. Andres Gutierrez, the pastor of St. Helen parish in Rio Hondo, Texas, explained to CNA in 2016.

“So they promise something to Santa Muerte in exchange for being protected from the law.”

Devotees also feel comfortable going to her for favors of vengeance – something they would never ask of God or a canonized saint, Chesnut said.

“I think this non-judgemental saint who’s going to accept me as I am is appealing,” Chesnut said, particularly to criminals or to people who don’t feel completely accepted within the Mexican Catholic or Evangelical churches.

The cultural Catholicism of Mexico and the drug wars of the past decade also made for the perfect storm for Santa Muerte to catch on, Chesnut explained. Even Mexicans who didn’t grow up going to Mass every Sunday still have a basic idea of what Catholicism entails – Mass and Saints and prayers like the rosary, all things that have been hi-jacked and adapted by the Santa Muerte movement.

“You can almost see some of it as kind of an extreme heretical form of folk Catholicism,” he said. “In fact, I can say Santa Muerte could only have arisen from a Catholic environment.”

This, coupled with the fact that Mexican Catholics are suddenly much more familiar with death, with the recent drug wars having left upwards of 60,000 – 120,000 Mexicans dead – makes a saint of death that much more intriguing.

“Paradoxically, a lot of devotees who feel like death could be just around the corner – maybe they’re narcos, maybe they work in the street, maybe they’re security guards who might be gunned down – they ask Santa Muerte for protection.”

Her familiarity and appeal is actually part of the danger of this devotion, Fr. Gutierrez said.

“(Santa Muerte) is literally a demon with another name,” he said. “That’s what it is.”

In his own ministry, Fr. Gutierrez said he has witnessed people who “suffer greatly” following a devotion to the folk saint.

Fr. Gary Thomas, a Vatican-trained exorcist for the Diocese of San Jose, told CNA in 2016 that he has also prayed with people who have had demonic trouble after praying to Santa Muerte.

“I have had a number of people who have come to me as users of this practice and found themselves tied to a demon or demonic tribe,” he said.

Fr. Gutierrez noted that while Catholics who attend Mass and the sacraments on a regular basis tend to understand this about Santa Muerte, those in danger are the cultural Catholics who aren’t intentionally engaging in something harmful, but could be opening the door to spiritual harm nonetheless.

Besides her demonic ties, “Santa Muerte” is also a perversion of what the practice of praying to saints is all about, Fr. Ryan Kaup, a Nebraska priest active in Hispanic ministry, told CNA in 2016.

“What we venerate as saints are real people who have chosen this life to follow the will of our Lord and have done great things with their lives, and now they’re in heaven forever, and so that’s why we ask for their intercession,” Kaup said.

“So taking this devotion and this practice that we have of asking for this saint’s intercession and twisting it in such a way as to invoke this glorified image of death is really a distortion of what we believe is true intercession and truly the power of the saints.”

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