Catholic Church in Belgium sees rise in adult baptisms

Poland’s bishops celebrate Mass in Zakopane on June 7, 2002. / EpiskopatNews via Flickr.

Warsaw, Poland, Jun 8, 2022 / 08:57 am (CNA).
Poland’s Catholic bishops said on Tuesday that many Ukrainians “will not be able to survive” without continue… […]

Rakovski, Bulgaria, May 6, 2019 / 05:39 am (CNA).- Pope Francis Monday gave First Communion to 245 boys and girls in Rakovski, Bulgaria, telling them the Lord wants them to share the joy of the Eucharist with others.

“Making your First Communion shows that you want to be closer to Jesus every day, to grow in friendship with him and to lead other people to share in the joy he wants us to feel,” the pope said May 6.

“The Lord needs you,” he told the first communicants, “because he wants to work the miracle of bringing his joy to many of your friends and family members.”

Pope Francis said Mass at Sacred Heart Church in Rakovski as part of his May 5-7 trip to Bulgaria and North Macedonia. Catholics in Bulgaria are a small minority — estimated to be fewer than 50,000 in a population of more than 7 million. Rakovski, a town of around 20,000 people, is mainly Catholic.

According to local authorities, at Mass there were around 700 people inside the church and another 10,000 outside.

In his homily, Francis addressed the first communicants, pointing out that Jesus’ miracle of the five loaves and two fish began with “one child who offered all he had.”

“Like that child, you too have helped a miracle to take place today. The miracle by which all of us older people have recalled our own first meeting with Jesus in the Eucharist, and are filled with gratitude for that day.”

Always pray with the same enthusiasm and joy you feel today, he urged.

He reminded the youth that this is their “first Communion,” but it is not their last, and to remember that Jesus is always present and waiting for them in the Sacrament.

“I hope that today will be the beginning of many Communions, so that your hearts may always, like today, be festive, full of joy and, above all else, gratitude,” he said.

Pope Francis said he was happy to spend this moment of celebration, friendship, joy, and fraternity with all of them, noting that it is a day of communion with themselves and with the whole Church, which “especially in the Eucharist, expresses the communion that makes all of us brothers and sisters.”

“This,” he continued, “is our identity card: God is our Father, Jesus is our brother, the Church is our family. All of us are brothers and sisters, and our law is love.”

He told the boys and girls he is sure they will always remember this day: their first encounter with Jesus in the sacrament of the Eucharist.

“One of you might ask me: How can we meet Jesus? He lived a long time ago, but then he died and was laid in the tomb!” Francis said. “It is true: Jesus carried out an immense act of love to save human beings of all times.”

But, he explained, after three days, he rose from the dead. “Now Jesus is alive and is here with us. That is why we can encounter him today in the Eucharist. We do not see him with our physical eyes, but we do see him with the eyes of faith.”

Early Monday morning, before traveling to Rakovski, Pope Francis made a visit to the Vrazhdebna Refugee Center on the outskirts of Sofia, Bulgaria, where he greeted about 50 parents and children from Syria and Iraq.

During the visit, some of the children performed a song for Pope Francis and gave him drawings they had made.

The pope thanked the group for their welcome and the children for their beautiful singing. “They bring joy to your journey,” he said. “Your journey is not always beautiful, and then there is the pain of leaving your homeland…”

But, there is always hope, he said, adding that “today, the world of migrants and refugees is a bit of a cross, a cross of humanity; it is the cross that so many people suffer…”

Before parting, Francis asked for their prayers and gave them his apostolic blessing.

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London, England, Jul 17, 2019 / 12:10 am (CNA).- A planned restriction on websites that host pornography in the United Kingdom, set to go into effect July 22, has been delayed for another six months. This marks the third delay for the proposed rules, which mandate that porn websites verify that users are over 18.

“I’m extremely sorry that there has been a delay…mistakes do happen, and I’m terribly sorry that it happened in such an important area,” UK Digital Minister Margot James told the BBC.

Then-Digital Minister Matt Hancock signed a commencement order for the Digital Economy Act in 2017 as a means to curb pornography access by those under 18.

To view online pornography, internet users would need to confirm their age by entering information from a driver’s license, credit card, or passport. If users do not wish to input their personal information, they may purchase a special ID card, available at thousands of retail shops across the nation for under £10.

The British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) would supervise the age checks, and internet service providers would block websites which fail to comply, the BBC reported.

The rules cover sites where more than a third of content is pornographic. This rules out platforms such as Twitter and Reddit, which are known to have small pockets of pornography. Non-commercial pornographic sites will also be exempt.

The rule was originally scheduled to take effect in April 2018, but in March the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport announced it would begin “later in the year.” In June, the department announced the program would not launch until July because the UK government failed to properly notify European regulators of the change.

Originally, websites that failed to follow the age verification rules were expected to face a nearly $330,000 fine, but this will not be enforced because of the difficulty enforcing payment from porn companies overseas. Rather, the government said a threat to block noncompliant websites should be sufficient to ensure conformity, the BBC reported.

In March 2019, Matt Fradd, author of The Porn Myth and creator of the new 21-day porn detox STRIVE, voiced support for increased restrictions surrounding pornography.

“If it’s something as simple as age verification, I’m all for it,” he told CNA at the time.

“It just sounds like we are expecting the same thing of people online that we already expect of them offline.”

Among the available age verification services is AgeID, built by MindGeek, which operates and owns several common pornographic sites. Sarah Wollaston, chairwoman of the UK Health and Social Care Committee, said putting Mindgeek in charge of age verification is akin to putting “a fox in charge of the hen house.”

Mindgeek has said that it is not in their interest to attract minors to its sites.

Some critics of the new rule say it violates the privacy of pornography users and that personal data could be at risk of leakage under the new policy.

Others, however, say it does not go far enough in protecting children from encountering pornography.

Children’s access to online pornography has been identified as a significant problem: A 2016 study by internet security company Bitdefender found that about 1 in 10 visitors to porn video sites is under age 10.

Fight the New Drug, an organization that works to educate on the harmful effects of pornography, has highlighted numerous studies showing the negative impact of pornography on underage users, including the creation of addictions, changes in sexual taste, and physical impact on the brain.

“Just more broadly, I would say pornography perverts a child’s understanding of human intimacy and sexual life, which is a very beautiful thing,” Fradd stressed.

“It’s as pernicious as sex is beautiful and human intimacy is worthwhile. Since those two things are beautiful and worthwhile, the corruption of it [in regards to] a child is all together something despicable and horrid.”

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