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Geneva, Switzerland, Jun 16, 2017 / 06:01 am (CNA/EWTN News).- The Holy See’s representative to the United Nations appealed Wednesday to the Human Rights Council to couple psychological treatment with spiritual care.

In response to a recent report on mental health issued by the council’s special rapporteur, Archbishop Ivan Jurkovich agreed that the report “rightly promotes the adoption of an integrated bio-medical, psycho-social, and community-based delivery of mental health care.”

“My Delegation also would like to point out the importance of spiritual care in helping persons living with, or affected by, mental health problems,” he added in his June 14 statement.

Archbishop Jurkovich quoted the words of St. John Paul II: “Whoever suffers from mental illness ‘always’ bears God’s image and likeness in themselves, as does every human being. In addition, they ‘always’ have the inalienable right not only to be considered as an image of God and therefore as a person, but also to be treated as such.”

The archbishop expressed hope that the report’s “caution against reductionist biomedical paradigms” would “awaken the consciences” of human rights advocates, policy makers, mental health practitioners, family members, and communities “to the inalienable and God-given dignity of each person.”

He said the issues and people suffering from mental illness have been ignored for too long. The topic of mental illness, he said, tends to draw fear, discrimination, and even rejection from society, which in the past led to ‘“warehousing’ of such persons in large, isolated, and closed institutions.”

The archbishop stated there must be an established defense against the dangers which may be new forms of isolation, like cultivating an over-dependency on psychiatric drugs, social exclusion, depriving the patients of informed consent, and inhibiting their self-responsibility. He also decried “the increasing encouragement and facilitation of assisted suicide” among those with mental health challenges.

Spiritual care should also aid the people seeking out mental care, he said, noting it is an integral part of the human person. However, he drew a line between spiritual care and “faith healing” which ignores or even rejects medical treatment.

“Spiritual care should not be confused with, or mistaken by, so-called ‘faith healing’ to the exclusion of medical, psychological, and social assistance,” he emphasized.

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Bergamo, Italy, May 19, 2018 / 06:01 am (CNA/EWTN News).- The mortal remains of St. John XXIII will spend more than two weeks away from the Vatican on a “peregrination” to the northern Italian towns where he grew up and served as a priest, the Diocese of Bergamo stated.

Exposed for veneration at an altar inside St. Peter’s Basilica, the saint’s body will return to his home diocese May 24-June 10 marking the 55th anniversary of his death and the publication of his encyclical on establishing universal peace, Pacem in terris.

The trip was announced last year after Pope Francis approved a request by the Bergamo diocese. It will includes stops at various places in the diocese, where St. John XXIII served as a priest for more than 20 years, and in the town of Sotto il Monte, where he was born.

The theme of the visit, “We start from the land where I was born and then continue up to heaven,” was modified from a quotation of St. John XXIII where he referenced a line from the Imitation of Christ by Thomas à Kempis: “Dimitte omnia et invenies omnia – Leave everything and you will find everything.”  

The schedule for the pilgrimage of “Good Pope John,” will begin May 24, when the reliquary containing his body will arrive at the city center in Bergamo.

Following, the body will be transferred to a local prison, recalling the time he visited a prison in Rome and said: “I put my eyes in your eyes, I put my heart next to your heart,” stated a press release from the Diocese of Bergamo.

The reliquary will then be moved to a local seminary dedicated to the saint. At 9:00 p.m. that day the relics will be solemnly welcomed in the Bergamo cathedral.

It will remain at the cathedral through May 27, when it will be brought to a new hospital, also dedicated to the saint, to recall his historic visit to the sick of the Bambino Gesu hospital in Rome.

From there the body will be brought to the Sanctuary of the Madonna of Cornabusa, to whom St. John XXIII was especially devoted. In 1908, when he was a young priest, he was present for the coronation of the Marian image. He later also presided over the 50th anniversary Mass of the coronation in 1958, just months before he was elected pope.

The body will then stop at the Franciscan monastery at Baccanello. In the evening a candlelit procession will accompany the body from the church of Carvico, where the saint was confirmed, to Sotto il Monte, where he was born. The relics will remain in the church of the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Peace for veneration until June 10.

St. John XXIII was born Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli in Sotto il Monte Nov. 25, 1881, as the fourth of 13 children. He was ordained a priest of the Bergamo diocese in 1904, at the age of 22, serving there until he was selected for the Vatican’s diplomatic corps and consecrated a bishop in 1925.

In 1953 he was made a cardinal and appointed Patriarch of Venice. He was elected Bishop of Rome Oct. 28, 1958. He is most remembered for his 1963 encyclical Pacem in terris and for calling the Second Vatican Council.

He was beatified in 2000 and canonized April 17, 2014. While two miracles are typically required for a non-martyr saint to be canonized, in the case of John XXIII, Pope Francis waived the rule and allowed him to be canonized with just one miracle formally acknowledged by the Vatican.

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The high altar of St. Stephen’s Cathedral in Vienna, Austria. Credit: Bwag via Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0). / null

Rome Newsroom, Nov 23, 2021 / 13:00 pm (CNA).
Austria’s Catholic bishops’ conference has tightened rules for attending Mass and othe… […]