Vatican delegation in Iran discuss human rights with Muslim leaders

November 15, 2019 CNA Daily News News Briefs 0 Print

Vatican City, Nov 15, 2019 / 08:00 am (CNA).- A Vatican delegation traveled to Tehran this week to discuss opportunities for Catholics and Muslims to serve humanity together.

“Muslims and Christians, along with all persons of good will who do not profess any particular religion, are called to promote fundamental human rights for everybody, everywhere, at all times,” participants in the interreligious meeting concluded in a final statement released by the Vatican Nov. 15.

The interreligious colloquium in Iran focused on shared values found within Shia Islam and Catholicism. The event was organized by the Vatican Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue and the Iranian government’s Islamic Culture and Relations Organization.

At the end of the colloquium, participants agreed to a final statement of broad support for fundamental human rights, religious freedom, environmental protection, and service to others.

“Freedom of conscience and of religion is the cornerstone of the edifice of human rights and therefore should be preserved and promoted,” the final statement of the conference declared.

In Iran, Muslim converts to Christianity have suffered persecution and arrest by the Iranian government, according to a 2019 report by the  U.S. Council for International Religious Freedom. At least 171 Christians were arrested in Iran in 2018, the report found.

Among the Iranian participants in the colloquium were Iranian clerics and diplomats: Ayatollah Mohammad Ali Taskhiri, Ayatollah Dr. Ahmad Beheshti, Ayatollah Dr. Reza Ramezani, and Ayatollah Abolghasem Alidoust Abarghouei.

Cardinal Miguel Ángel Ayuso Guixot, president of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue, co-chaired the colloquium along with Dr. Abuzar Ibrahimi Turkaman, president of the Islamic Culture and Relations Organization.

Cardinal Ayuso has degrees in Arabic and Islamic studies, in addition to a doctorate in dogmatic theology from the University of Granada. He previously served as dean of the Pontifical Institute of Arabic and Islamic Studies in Rome. Pope Francis named made Ayuso a cardinal in Oct. 2019.

The Tehran colloquium was the 11th interreligious dialogue meeting between the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue and the Islamic Culture and Relations Organization since 1996. The participants decided to hold the next colloquium in Rome in 2021.

“Service to others, especially the sick, the poor and the needy, is of capital importance to Christians and Muslims,” the colloquium’s final statement declares. “Serving others witnesses to the universal love of God for all human beings, because He created everyone and everything, and cares for all His creation with the same love.”

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On St. Joseph’s feast, Italy to pray rosary for protection from coronavirus

March 19, 2020 CNA Daily News 0

Vatican City, Mar 19, 2020 / 04:45 am (CNA).- On the Solemnity of St. Joseph, the protector of families and the Church, Catholics in Italy will pray the rosary together from their homes for protection from the coronavirus.

Pope Francis said he will also be praying the rosary from his home at the Vatican.

“Mary, Mother of God, health of the sick, leads us to the luminous and transfigured face of Jesus Christ and to her Heart, to whom we turn with the prayer of the rosary, under the loving gaze of St. Joseph, Custodian of the Holy Family and of our families,” he said March 18.

The Italian bishops have asked people across Italy to pray the rosary together March 19 at 9:00 pm.

A rosary will be live broadcast at that hour on the local Catholic television station and online from Rome’s Basilica of St. Joseph al Trionfale.

The president of the Italian bishops’ conference, Cardinal Gualtiero Bassetti, has also invited families to place a lit candle in the window of their home at that time.

Bassetti said he will be the first “to join in the prayer that will unite us in emphasizing faith, hope and, above all, that love which becomes a red thread from the Valley d’Aosta to Sicily, the red thread of charity, which is much stronger than the red zone.”

At his morning Mass in the Santa Marta guesthouse March 19, Pope Francis said he was thinking about the Church.

St. Joseph, in the midst of his ordinary life as a carpenter, was able to enter into the mystery of God, he said.

“Our faithful, our bishops, our priests, our consecrated men and women, the popes: are they capable of entering into the mystery?” he asked.

“When the Church loses the ability to enter into the mystery, she loses the ability to worship,” he stated. “The prayer of adoration can only be given when one enters the mystery of God.”

On the feast of St. Joseph, the pope prayed that the Church will be given the grace to live both the concreteness of daily life and the “concreteness” of the mystery.

Without this understanding of the mystery, the Church will just be a “pious association” of rules, lacking in adoration of God, he said.

“To enter into the mystery is not dreaming; to enter into the mystery is precisely this: to worship.”

Francis added that “to enter the mystery is doing today what we will do in the future, when we arrive in the presence of God: worship.”

“May the Lord give the Church this grace,” he prayed.

Pope Francis’ daily Masses are being livestreamed during the coronavirus emergency.

At the end of Mass, the pope invited everyone following along through the internet or TV to make a spiritual communion with him.

“I adore you in the Sacrament of Your love, I wish to receive you in the poor abode which my heart offers you,” he prayed.

“In anticipation of the happiness of sacramental communion, I want to possess you in spirit. Come to me, O my Jesus, that I come to you. May Your love inflame my whole being, for life and death. I believe in you, I hope in you, I love you.”

He then led Eucharistic adoration and gave benediction.

Pope Francis’ March 19 Mass was offered for prisoners during the coronavirus outbreak.

“They suffer so much,” he said, “because of the uncertainty of what will happen inside the prison, and also thinking about their families, how they are, if someone is sick, if something is missing.”

“We are close to prisoners today who suffer so much in this moment of uncertainty and pain,” he said.

 

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