Pope Francis on All Saints’ Day: True happiness is found by following Jesus

Vatican City, Mar 10, 2017 / 08:21 am (CNA/EWTN News).- The Vatican announced Friday that Pope Francis will make a six-day trip to Colombia in September with four cities on his itinerary, almost a year after the government and FARC rebels signed a major peace agreement.

“Accepting the invitation of the President of the Republic and the Colombian bishops, His Holiness the Pope Francis will make an Apostolic Trip to Colombia from 6 to 11 September 2017,” a March 10 communique from the Vatican read.

While the official schedule is expected to be released shortly, the Vatican confirmed that Francis will visit the cities of Bogotá, Villavicencio, Medellín and Cartagena.

The trip will mark the third time Francis has visited his native South America since becoming Pope, with the first taking place in July 2013 when he traveled to Rio de Janiero for World Youth Day. The second tour took place in July 2015, with stops in Bolivia, Ecuador and Paraguay.

In August 2016 a peace accord between the Colombian government and the country’s largest rebel group, Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), was finally reached following four years of negotiations in Cuba.

Since 1964, as many as 260,000 people have been killed and millions displaced in the civil war.

According to Human Rights Watch, with more than 6.8 million people forcibly displaced due to the conflict, Colombia has the world’s second largest population of internally displaced people, with Syria in first place.

However, the August agreement was narrowly rejected in a referendum Oct. 2, with many Colombians claiming that it was too lenient on FARC, particularly when it came to kidnapping and drug trafficking.

A revised agreement was signed Nov. 24, and sent to Colombia’s Congress for approval, rather than being submitted to a popular vote. The reformed accord was approved Nov. 30, with revised features including the demand that FARC hand over assets to be used for reparations, a 10 year time limit for the transitional justice system, and FARC rebels’ providing information about their drug trafficking.

In December Pope Francis met with Colombia’s President Juan Manuel Santos Calderón and former president Senator Álvaro Uribe Vélez, at the Vatican, encouraging them to continue working for peace.

When the deal was initially reached, the Pope praised the move, voicing his support “for the goal of attaining the peace and reconciliation of the entire Colombian people, in light of human rights and Christian values, which are at the heart of Latin American culture.”

The Pope’s trip was officially presented in the country March 10 by Bishop Fabio Suescún Mutis, head of Colombia’s military diocese and who is in charge of the preparation committee for the trip.

During presentation, Bishop Suescún said the Pope’s visit “is a moment of grace and joy to dream with the possibility of transforming our country and taking the first step,” according to the Colombian Bishops Conference website.

“The Holy Father is a missionary for reconciliation,” he said. “His presence helps us to discover that yes, it’s possible to re-unite as a nation in order to learn to look at ourselves again with eyes of hope and mercy.”

He pointed to the logo of the trip, which in yellow and white pictures Pope Francis walking next to the thematic phrase “Demos el primer paso,” meaning “Let us take the first step.”

To take the first step, Suescún said, means “to again draw near to Jesus, to meet again the love of our families, to disarm words with our neighbor and to have compassion with those who have suffered.”

According to the Colombian Bishops Conference, after receiving the official confirmation of the Pope’s visit, Colombia President Juan Manuel Santos expressed his joy saying “we will receive (Francs) with open arms and hearts, as a messenger of peace and reconciliation.”

He noted that on many occasions Pope Francis “gave courage and impelled” the peace process in the country, adding that “he is a messenger of love and faith; he’s a forger of bridges and not walls.”

The president pointed to the fact that the Pope’s trip will be made exclusively to Colombia, whereas there are typically multiple countries included in international papal trips.

“To have the Pope with us for four days, to know that he’s traveling exclusively to give a voice of encouragement and faith to Colombians, is a privilege that fills us with gratitude,” Santos said.

The Pope’s visit, he said, is an “encounter with the teachings of Jesus, the encounter among ourselves, as a society, as compatriots, as human beings and as children of God.”

He voiced his hope that the visit would help Colombians to unite around the “building of a more just and equitable country, with peace and more solidarity.”

“We have already begun to prepare and will continue to prepare so that this apostolic journey of Pope Francis in Colombia will bear the greatest of fruits of harmony and unity in our country.”

(This article was updated at 5:06p.m. local time in Rome with the words of Bishop Fabio Suescún Mutis and Colombian president Juan Manuel Santos).

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Rome, Italy, Jul 17, 2018 / 12:14 pm (CNA).- The Vatican’s former top advisor on canon law has made a public call to insert legal obligations for the care of creation into the Church’s universal canon law –  making it a legal duty for Catholics not only “not to harm” the environment, but to improve it.

According to veteran Vatican watcher Andrea Tornielli, Cardinal Francesco Coccopalmerio, former head of the Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts, made the proposal during a July 12 event in Rome titled “Dialogue on Catholic Investments for the Energy Transition.”

During the closed-door discussion, representatives from the Vatican and Catholic organizations spoke about how to invest responsibly towards a transition to renewable energies.

In an interview with Vatican Insider, Coccopalmerio discussed canons 208-221 of the Church’s Code of Canon Law, which enumerate “Obligations and rights of all the faithful.”

This section “outlines an ‘identikit’ of the faithful and of their life as a Christian,” the cardinal said, but noted that nothing is mentioned “about one of the most serious duties: that of protecting and promoting the natural environment in which the faithful live.”

The proposal he outlined, which he suggested could be submitted to the pope but considered by his former department, would be to ask for a new canon to be added to the obligations of the all faithful, specifically treating environmental responsibility. 

Coccopalmerio, whose resignation was accepted by Pope Francis in April this year, went on to give his own ideas of how it might be worded: “Every faithful Christian, mindful that creation is the common house, has the grave duty not only not to damage, but also to improve, both through everyday behavior, and through specific initiatives, the natural environment in which each person is called to live.”

The canons Coccopalmerio referenced address general obligations for Catholics relating to the practice of the faith and maintaining communion with the Church. They do not address specific moral obligations or particular doctrinal teachings. Those canons do not, for example, include the Church’s prohibition of artificial contraception or the obligation to observe just labor practices. 

Drawing inspiration from Laudato si’, Pope Francis’ 2015 encyclical on the environment, participants at the event agreed on the Catholic Program of Disinvestment, sponsored by the Catholic Climate Movement, which urges ecclesial institutions to make a public commitment to move away from financial investments in fossil fuels.

Participants also highlighted the importance of pursuing ethical investment strategies in line with the social doctrine of the Catholic Church, according to Tornielli.

Pope Francis has often expressed his environmental concerns and, in his message on the World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation in 2016, he said maintaining our common home ought to be considered a work of mercy.

“We usually think of the works of mercy individually and in relation to a specific initiative: hospitals for the sick, soup kitchens for the hungry, shelters for the homeless, schools for those to be educated, the confessional and spiritual direction for those needing counsel and forgiveness,” the pope said in that message.

Looking at the concept of works of mercy, “we see that the object of mercy is human life itself and everything it embraces,” he said. Francis proposed caring for creation as “a complement” to the two traditional sets of seven corporal and spiritual works of mercy.

“May the works of mercy also include care for our common home,” he said, explaining that as a spiritual work, care for creation “calls for a grateful contemplation of God’s world which allows us to discover in each thing a teaching which God wishes to hand on to us.”

In a conference held earlier this month to mark the third anniversary of the publication of Laudato si’, Pope Francis said a change of heart is needed when it comes to issues related to the environment.

Future actions which promote the care of creation, “presuppose a transformation on a deeper level, namely a change of hearts and minds,” he said, adding that while this obligation binds all religious  communities, Christians have a special role to play.

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