‘We must choose between civilizations of love and hate’ Pope Francis tells Romani

June 2, 2019 CNA Daily News News Briefs 2 Print

Blaj, Romania, Jun 2, 2019 / 08:45 am (CNA).- The history of humanity still echoes the relationship of Cain and Abel, Pope Francis told the Romani community on Sunday.

In the final stop of his three-day apostolic trip to Romania, the pope met with the minority community, often called “gypsies,” in the city of Blaj May 2. The Romani, also known as “travelers” in much of Europe, form a marginal and minority people present in countries across the continent.

Francis told the community that the experiences of prejudice and rejection they encountered were all too common, and that they “weighed down” on the pope’s heart.

“History tells us that Christians too, including Catholics, are not strangers to such evil. I would like to ask your forgiveness for this. I ask forgiveness – in the name of the Church and of the Lord – and I ask forgiveness of you,” the pope said.

Francis spoke about the Christian call of fraternal love which must animate human encounters, and apologized for times “when we have discriminated, mistreated or looked askance at you, with the look of Cain rather than that of Abel.”

Indifference to the other, the pope said, is the beginning of anger, resentment, and prejudice. The Romani community had, he insisted, a unique heritage and character with much to offer the wider Christian community.

“We need those gifts: respect for the value of life and of the extended family, solidarity, hospitality, helpfulness, support and concern for the vulnerable within your community, respect and appreciation for the elderly and for the religious meaning of life, spontaneity and joie de vivre.”

“Wherever you find yourselves, share those gifts and try to accept all the good that others can offer to you,” Francis said.

The pope insisted that the Church must be a place of encounter, where the other is always welcomed and valued, but that this required a constant choice by each person.

“There is the civilization of love and the civilization of hate. Each day we have to choose between Abel and Cain. Like a person standing at a crossroads, we are faced with a decisive choice: to go the way of reconciliation or the way of vengeance,” Francis said.

“Let us choose the way of Jesus,” he said, while insisting that though this way demanded effort and intention, passing through forgiveness, ultimately it was the only road to peace.

“May we not let ourselves be dragged along by the hurts we nurse within us; let there be no room for anger. For one evil never corrects another evil, no vendetta ever satisfies an injustice, no resentment is ever good for the heart and no rejection will ever bring us closer to others.”

The pope remined the crowd that the universal human dignity of each person must be the cornerstone of every interaction, and this was not a requirement exclusive to Christians.

“Deep down, we are not Christians, and not even good human beings, unless we are able to see the person before his or her actions, before our own judgments and prejudices.”

“The Gospel of joy is communicated in the happiness of encounter and the knowledge that we have a Father who loves us. Knowing that he watches out for us, we learn how to watch out for one another.”

Asking for the prayers of the people he met, the pope said that his short trip to the country had be a source of great joy, and his final meeting with the Romani people was a fitting end to his time in Romania.

“Our meeting is the last of my visit to Romania. I came to this beautiful and welcoming country as a pilgrim and a brother, in order to meet all its people,” Francis said.

“Now I am returning home enriched by the experience of different places and special moments, but above all by faces. Your faces will color my memories and populate my prayers. I thank you and I bring you with me.”

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St. Dominic, a dog, and Divine fire

August 8, 2019 CNA Daily News 0

Bologna, Italy, Aug 8, 2019 / 10:03 am (CNA).- The first image to greet visitors to the basilica containing the tomb of St. Dominic in Bologna, Italy is a mosaic of the saint next to a dog carrying a flaming torch in its mouth.

This is not a depiction of a pyromaniacal game of fetch, but a reference to a dream which foretold the 13th-century preacher’s mission in the world — to be the bearer of Divine fire across Europe, illuminating the darkness of heresy and sin with truth and charity.

“When St. Dominic’s mother, Blessed Jane of Aza, was pregnant, she had a dream of a dog with a torch in its mouth, running around the world and setting everything on fire. She went to the monastery of Santo Domingo de Silos and asked a monk what it meant. He replied that the child in her womb would be a great preacher, who would set the world ablaze with the fire of his words,” Dominican Fr. Ezra Sullivan, lecturer at the Angelicum University in Rome, told CNA.

“In fact, the word ‘Dominican’ is a play on the Latin, Domini canes, which means ‘dogs of the Lord,” Fr. Thomas Petri, dean of the Dominican House of Studies in Washington DC, explained.

Throughout history St. Dominic has been depicted in paintings and statues standing beside a canine companion.

“One source recounts that the dog Blessed Jane saw in her vision was a greyhound. That seems right to me,” Petri said. “St. Dominic should be associated with breeds that are fast and useful for herding.”

“Imitating Christ himself, St. Dominic is a hound nipping at your heels to bring you to God,” he added.

“In the early thirteenth century, the Church was experiencing increasing devotion among the lay faithful that was unmatched by the clergy. At a time when bishops, priests, and monks were living extravagantly and rarely preaching, St. Dominic came to see that the Church needed priests who lived in poverty but who were also preachers of grace and truth, especially in the face of heretical cults that were leaching the faithful away from the Church of Jesus Christ,” Petri explained.

St. Dominic Guzman was born in Caleruega, Spain on Aug. 8, 1170. Throughout his life, he is said to have converted some 100,000 people through his preaching missions. He spread the devotion to the rosary, and played a key role in doctrinal debates combating the Albigensian heresy, a revival of Manichaeism, which had taken hold in southern France.

Dominic founded the Order of Preachers – the Dominicans – in France in 1216, adapting the Rule of St. Augustine in obedience to the pope, with an emphasis on study and community life in poverty. He died in Bologna, Italy after several weeks of illness on Aug. 6, 1221.

Benedict XVI said in Feb. 2010 that St. Dominic “reminds us that in the heart of the Church, a missionary fire must always burn.”

“Saint Dominic was given the grace not only to have a fervent zeal and love for Jesus Christ, especially Christ crucified, but also the wisdom to preach the Gospel with force and conviction,” Petri said.

Fr. Sullivan noted: “It was also said that ‘he always spoke either about God or to God,’ and therefore his words were like fiery darts that always hit their targets.”

St. Catherine of Siena, a third order Dominican, is frequently quoted as saying, “Be who God meant you to be and you will set the world on fire.”

However, Fr. Petri explained that a more accurate translation of what St. Catherine wrote in a letter in her dying days is, “If you are what you ought to be, you will set fire to all Italy, and not only there.”

She wrote this to her follower Stefano Maconi because she was “concerned that he was tepid in his devotion and pleaded with him to go to Rome to light the fire of Divine charity there amid the turmoil of schism and infidelity the city was experiencing,” Petri said.

St. Catherine of Siena spoke of cultivating the ‘Divine fire’ as “cultivating the charity of God in one’s soul,” he explained.

“The way we cultivate charity is by committing ourselves to be with Christ in prayer, in study, at work, in the home, and at every other moment in our day,” he said.

“Most especially, however, such communion with Christ is nourished and strengthened by receiving the Sacrament of Charity—the Holy Eucharist—in which the One who is Charity itself comes into us and lights our souls aflame in love for him and for our neighbor.”

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