Vatican City, Jun 28, 2020 / 06:00 am (CNA).- There is no true love without the cross, Pope Francis said in his Angelus address Sunday.
Speaking from a window overlooking St. Peter’s Square June 28, the pope reflected on the day’s Gospel r… […]
CNA Staff, Jun 28, 2020 / 04:00 am (CNA).- While hand washing and social distancing have been implemented around the globe as tools to fight the spread of the coronavirus pandemic, refugees face challenges in putting these recommendations into practice… […]
CNA Staff, Jun 27, 2020 / 09:36 pm (CNA).- Fr. Stephen Schumacher, a priest of the Archdiocese of St. Louis, was among the defenders of a prominent statue of the city’s namesake as protesters called for its removal Saturday.
Umar Lee, an organizer of the protests, said June 27 that the statue “is gonna come down,” reported Joel Currier of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. “This guy right here represents hate and we’re trying to create a city of love. We’re trying to create a city where Black lives matter. We’re trying to create a city where there is no antisemitism or Islamophobia … this is not a symbol of our city in 2020.”
Fr. Schumacher, whose priestly ordination was in May 2019, addressed a shouting mob, attempting to inform them about St. Louis’ life, saying, “St. Louis was a man who willed to use his kingship to do good for his people.”
<blockquote class=”twitter-tweet”><p lang=”en” dir=”ltr”>Video from this moment earlier. <a href=”https://t.co/PXLMoT3s1c”>https://t.co/PXLMoT3s1c</a> <a href=”https://t.co/WE6vHeEsJH”>pic.twitter.com/WE6vHeEsJH</a></p>— Joel Currier (@joelcurrier) <a href=”https://twitter.com/joelcurrier/status/1276969627025911809?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”>June 27, 2020</a></blockquote> <script async src=”https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js” charset=”utf-8″></script>
Moji Sidiqi of the Regional Muslim Action Network, another organizer of the protest, said: “It’s a revolution. It’s time for change … right now, our number one mission is to take this thing down and sit down with people who want to see positive change take place and continue to heal our country.”
Sidiqi added that she thought the city should be renamed.
The statue, Apotheosis of St. Louis, sits in the city’s Forest Park in front of the Saint Louis Art Museum. It was erected in 1906 and depicts Louis IX of France, for whom the city is named.
According to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, some 200 people were at the protest.
Catholics defending the statue at the protest prayed the rosary and sang, and several police officers separated them from the protesters.
Maria Miloscia told the Post-Dispatch that St. Louis “symbolizes deep faith and convictions. I stand for him. And I stand for those Catholic virtues and those Catholic values that I think are important, like courage, faith and love. But ultimately, I’m here for Christ the King.”
St. Louis was King of France from 1226-70, and he partook in the Seventh and Eighth Crusades. He restricted usury and established hospitals, and personally cared for the poor and for lepers. He was canonized in 1297.
Numerous statues of historic figures have been pulled down in recent weeks amid ongoing protests and riots throughout the country. While some protests have torn down the statues of Confederate figures as part of a call to end systemic racism, other statues have also been torn down from prominent locations, including one of George Washington.
Several statues of St. Junipero Serra have been pulled down or protested against.
In a June 23 letter, Bishop Donald Hying of Madison wrote that “If we allow the commemorative and visual history of our nation to be destroyed by random groups in the current moment of anger, how will we ever learn from that history? Does toppling and vandalizing a statue of George Washington because he owned slaves, really serve our country and our collective memory?”
“The secular iconoclasm of the current moment will not bring reconciliation, peace, and healing. Such violence will only perpetuate the prejudice and hatred it ostensibly seeks to end…Only the love of Christ can heal a wounded heart, not a vandalized piece of metal,” the bishop added.
Vatican City, Jun 27, 2020 / 11:30 am (CNA).- Pope Francis “appreciates” the German Church’s “Synodal Way,” the president of the German bishops’ conference said after meeting with the pope Saturday. In a statement following […]
CNA Staff, Jun 27, 2020 / 02:02 pm (CNA).- A member of the Parliament of Victoria has urged that there be an inquiry into the treatment of Cardinal George Pell by the state’s police and judiciary, months after Australia’s High Court unanimo… […]
Washington D.C., Jun 27, 2020 / 12:00 pm (CNA).- In the wake of a gene-editing experiment gone wrong, the president of the National Catholic Bioethics Center said that the Church must stand firm against the unborn being “sacrificed on the al… […]
MADISON, Wisconsin — A Black Lives Matter activist who allegedly harassed and threatened a mother of four praying the Rosary on the Capitol Square on June 23 has now been charged by the U.S. Attorney […]
Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Jun 27, 2020 / 06:01 am (CNA).- Tennessee’s new pro-life legislation is “designed to stand up to court challenges,” State Rep. Susan Lynn (R), a sponsor of the bill, said Thursday.
Speaking during an interv… […]
CNA Staff, Jun 27, 2020 / 03:00 am (CNA).- An Italian prisoner, sentenced to 30 years for murder, will make vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience on Saturday, in the presence of his bishop.
Luigi*, 40, wanted to be a priest when he was young, according to Avvenire, the newspaper of the Italian bishops’ conference. Kids called him “Father Luigi” when he was growing up. But alcohol, drugs, and violence changed the path of his life. In fact, he was under the influence of alcohol and cocaine when, getting into a fist fight, he took a life.
He was sentenced to prison. There, he became a lector for Mass. He began to study. He started to pray again. He prayed, especially, “for the salvation of the man I killed,” he wrote in a letter.
That letter was to Bishop Massimo Camisasca of Reggio Emilia-Guastalla. The two began a correspondence last year. By then, Luigi had grown close with two priests who acted as chaplains to the prison in Reggio Emilia- Fr. Matteo Mioni and Fr. Daniele Simonazzi.
Bishop Camisasca told Avvenire that in 2016 he decided to spend time in prison ministry. “I didn’t know much about the reality of prison, I confess. But since then a path of presence, celebration and sharing has started that has enriched me greatly,” the bishop said.
Through that ministry, his correspondence with Luigi began. Speaking of his letters, the bishop said that “a passage that greatly touched me is the one in which Luidi says that ‘real life imprisonment is not lived inside a prison but outside, when the light of Christ is missing.” Luigi’s June 26 vows will not be part of joining a religious order or other organization. They are instead a promise to God to live poverty, chastity, and obedience, commonly called the evangelical counsels, exactly where he is — in prison.
The idea emerged from his conversation with prison chaplains.
“Initially he wanted to wait for his release from prison. It was Fr Daniele who suggested a different path, which would allow him to make these solemn vows now,” Camisasca told Avvenire.
“None of us are masters of our own future, the bishops said, “and this is all the more true for a person deprived of his freedom. This is why I wanted Luigi to think first of all what these vows mean in his present condition.” “In the end I convinced myself that in his gesture of self-giving there is something luminous for him, for the other prisoners and for the Church itself,” the bishop said.
In reflections on his vows, Luigi wrote that chastity will allow him to “mortify what is external, so that what is most important about us may emerge.”
Poverty offers him the possibility of settling for “the perfection of Christ, who has become poor” by making poverty itself “go from misfortune to bliss,” he wrote.
Luigi wrote that poverty is also the ability to share life generously with other prisoners like him. Obedience, he said, is obedience is the willingness to listen, even while knowing that “God also speaks through the mouth of the ‘fools.'”
Bishop Camisasca told Avvenire that “with the [coronavirus] pandemic we are all experiencing a time of combat and sacrifice. Luigi’s experience can really be a collective sign of hope: not to escape difficulties but to face them with strength and conscience. I did not know prison, I repeat, and also for me the impact was very hard at the beginning.”
“It seemed to me a world of despair in which the prospect of resurrection was continually contradicted and denied. This story, like others I have known, shows that this is not the case,” said the bishop.
Bishop Camisasca stressed that the merit of this vocation is “of the action of the priests, the extraordinary work of the prison police and of all health personnel, without a doubt.”
“But on the other hand there is the mystery that I can’t help but think about when I look up at the crucifix in my study. It’s from the prison workshop, it prevents me from forgetting the prisoners. Their sufferings and hopes are always with me. And they concern each of us,” he concluded.
*A pseudonym has been used in the reporting of this story.
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