Pope Francis laments that tons of food are thrown away as people starve

Vatican City, Feb 9, 2019 / 06:01 am (CNA/EWTN News).- An environmental group is asking Pope Francis to abstain from all animal products during Lent, promising a $1 million donation to a charity of his choice if he does so.

“Today, Pope Francis, I am asking you to join me in abstaining from all animal products throughout Lent, and to endorse the Million Dollar Vegan campaign,” Genesis Butler wrote in a Feb. 6 open letter to the Roman Pontiff.

“Should you join me, the Blue Horizon International Foundation will donate $1 million to a charity or charities of your choice as a gesture of their utmost gratitude for your commitment.”

While a vegan fast is not now prescribed by the Church, the practice would hearken back to practices of the early Church, and of the Christian east.

Butler, 12, is an animal rights and environmental campaigner. Her letter is backed by Million Dollar Vegan, a non-profit group which highlights the effects of animal farming on climate.

She recalled that in Laudato si’, his 2015 encyclical on care for our common home, Francis “stated that every effort to protect and improve our world will involve changes in lifestyle, production, and consumption.”

She also expressed her appreciation for his “speaking out on climate change, habitat loss, and pollution, and for reminding the world that Earth is a home we all share.”

Butler said that “the current eating habits of predominantly richer nations are causing global destruction and devastation,” as animal farming is resource-intensive relative to calories yielded.

The activist said that “moving towards a plant-based diet will have substantial environmental benefits.” She said it would protect the environment, “help feed the world’s most vulnerable,” and “benefit human health.”

An accompanying petition asking Pope Francis to try vegan for Lent and to encourage others to do the same has garnered more than 33,000 signatures.

This year, the Lenten season begins March 6; Easter Sunday will be April 21.

Under the 1983 Code of Canon Law, Catholics aged 18-59 are to fast on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday. And Catholics 14 and older are  to abstain from meat on all Fridays; this rule allows the use of eggs, milk products, and condiments made of animal fat.

But in times past, a vegan Lent would not have been so different from Catholic practice.

According to The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, “during the early centuries the observance of the [Lenten] fast as very strict.”

The reference work says that in the early Church the Lenten fast allowed one meal per day, taken towards evening, and that “flesh-meat and fish, and in most places also eggs and lacticinia, were absolutely forbidden,” but that the practice “began to be considerably relaxed” in the west from the 9th century.

The 12th century Decretum Gratiani, a compendium of ecclesiastical law, includes the text of a letter which was believed by Gratian to be from St. Gregory the Great to St. Augustine of Canterbury. This letter says that during Lent “we abstain from flesh meat and from all things that come from flesh, as milk, cheese, eggs.” A critical edition of the Decretum calls the source of the quote Pseudo-Gregory, and according to Dr. Mark DelCogliano, an associate professor of theology at the University of St. Thomas, the quoted text “first appears in Gratian.”

Writing in the late 13th century, St. Thomas Aquinas said that it was “common custom” that those fasting abstained from meat, eggs, and dairy products, but were allowed fish.

It is said that the practice of calling “Fat Tuesday” the day preceding Ash Wednesday derived from a period when the use of animal products was barred during Lent. “Fat” Tuesday was thus the last day to use up the meat, cheese, and animal fat stored in the home.

And while not precisely vegan, the traditional Byzantine fast barred the use of meat, dairy, eggs, and fish. Animal-based foods that were permitted included honey and invertebrates.

In the Byzantine rite, Lent is preceded by a pre-Lenten period known as Fore-Lent. The last two Sundays of this preparatory period are known as Meatfare Sunday and Cheesefare Sunday.

Under traditional fasting rules, Meatfare Sunday was the last day before Easter to consume meat, and Cheesefare was the last day to use dairy products. The Lenten fast then began on the Monday after Cheesefare.

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Vatican City, Dec 7, 2018 / 10:02 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Ahead of the beatification Saturday of Bishop Pierre Claverie and his 18 companions, who were martyred in Algeria between 1994 and 1996, Pope Francis said martyrs have a special place in the Church.

“The Church has always paid special devotion to the martyrs, who have faith and love for the Lord Jesus, even to the shedding of their blood as witness,” he wrote in a letter to Cardinal Giovanni Angelo Becciu.

Prefect of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, Becciu, as the pope’s envoy, will celebrate the Dec. 8 beatification of the 19 Algerian martyrs at the Shrine of Our Lady of the Holy Cross in Oran.

In his letter, composed in Latin, the pope recalled the suffering and persecution experienced by Christ, quoting his words to his disciples that “a servant is no greater than his master. If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you.”

These words have been confirmed throughout time and place in the persecution and martyrdom of Christians, he continued.

“Persecutions are not a reality of the past,” he said, quoting his 2018 apostolic exhortation Gaudete et exsultate, “for today too we experience them, whether by the shedding of blood, as is the case with so many contemporary martyrs, or by more subtle means, by slander and lies.”

He also said that “at other times, persecution can take the form of gibes that try to caricature our faith and make us seem ridiculous.”

But Christians should not be afraid of persecution, Francis said, because Christ told his followers that “all power in heaven and on earth has been given to me. […] And behold, I am with you always, until the end of the age.”

The death of these 19 martyrs has acted like a seed planted in the desert, and “the seeds have sprouted,” resulting in the growth of virtues, Francis said. The martyrs loved eternal life more than death, and now “they possess what they loved, and they will possess it even more fully at the resurrection of the dead.”

Pope Francis authorized the Congregation for the Causes of Saints to recognize the martyrdoms in January.

Bishop Claverie, who was a French Algerian and the Bishop of Oran from 1981 until his Aug. 1, 1996 martyrdom, is one of the future blesseds. He and his companions were killed during the Algerian Civil War by Islamists.

In addition to Claverie, those being beatified are: Brother Henri Vergès, Sister Paul-Hélène Saint-Raymond, Sister Esther Paniagua Alonso, Sister Caridad Álvarez Martín, Fr. Jean Chevillard, Fr. Alain Dieulangard, Fr. Charles Deckers, Fr. Christian Chessel, Sister Angèle-Marie Littlejohn, Sister Bibiane Leclercq, Sister Odette Prévost, Brother Luc Dochier, Brother Christian de Chergé, Brother Christophe Lebreton, Brother Michel Fleury, Brother Bruno Lemarchand, Brother Célestin Ringeard, and Brother Paul Favre-Miville.

The best known of Claverie’s companions are the seven monks of Tibhirine, who were kidnapped from their Trappist priory in March 1996. They were kept as a bartering chip to procure the release of several imprisoned members of the Armed Islamic Group of Algeria, and were killed in May. Their story was dramatized in the 2010 French film Of Gods and Men, which won the Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival.

After the death of the monks of Tibhirine, Bishop Claverie knew his life was in serious danger. A bomb exploded at the entrance of his chancery Aug. 1, 1996, killing him and an aide, Mohamed Bouchikhi.

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Pope Francis at the Synod on Synodality on Oct. 6, 2023. / Credit: Vatican Media

Vatican City, Oct 11, 2023 / 10:00 am (CNA).
Pope Francis dined with a group of Rome’s poor at his Vatican residence on Tuesday during the second week of the Synod… […]