3 Rome events to look forward to in 2022

Vatican City, Sep 8, 2020 / 05:00 am (CNA).- Pope Francis paid tribute Monday to a cardinal whose life was intertwined with that of St. John Paul II.

The pope said in a telegram Sept. 7 that Cardinal Marian Jaworski would be remembered as an “ex… […]

Vatican City, Sep 3, 2017 / 04:16 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Pope Francis’ upcoming visit to the South American country of Colombia Sept. 6-11 isn’t a political statement a Vatican official said, but about the renewal of the Catholic faith of Colombians in order that violence may be combatted at its root.

“But I say immediately, to see the Pope’s visit as centering on the process of the peace accords is a mistake,” said Guzmán Carriquiry, vice president of the Pontifical Commission for Latin America.

He told journalists Friday that the Church in Colombia “has to face an enormous challenge to be a point of fundamental reference for not only the revolution of Christianity in the Colombian people, but for the rebirth of Colombia, for the spiritual regeneration, and the reconciliation of this country.”

“The Pope certainly goes in order to recall this Christianity of Colombia… that he can start a movement for tackling, from the bottom, these problems at the very source,” he said.

“Certainly that is the crucial point.”

A professor and vice president of the Pontifical Commission for Latin America since May 2014, Carriquiry spoke to journalists after a briefing on the Pope’s schedule for Colombia Sept. 1.

The Pope’s trip, which will include the cities of Bogotá, Villavicencio, Medellín, and Cartagena, marks the third time Francis has visited his native South America since becoming Pope.

His schedule includes Mass in each of the four cities, as well as leading the Angelus on Sunday as usual outside of the church of Saint Peter Claver, where the saint’s remains are buried.

On Sept. 8, in Villavicencio, a large prayer meeting for National Reconciliation will take place, at the end of which there will be a presentation from people who have been victims of violence during the country’s prolonged civil war.

Pope Francis’ visit comes about one year after a peace accord between the Colombian government and the country’s largest rebel group, Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), was finally reached in August 2016.

Following its rejection in an Oct. 2 referendum, a revised agreement was signed Nov. 24 and approved by Colombia’s Congress on Nov. 30, this time bypassing a popular vote.

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

Pope Francis praised the accord last year, voicing 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.”

Despite this, the decision for “this voyage of the Holy Father is realized in a pastoral apostolic visit,” said Archbishop José Octavio Ruiz Arenas, secretary of the Pontifical Council for the Promotion of the New Evangelization.

Archbishop Ruiz, who led the Archdiocese of Villavicencio from 2002 to 2007, told CNA Sept. 1 it is hoped that Francis’ visit will “help the Colombian people to seek that reconciliation, that peace, which is deep in the hearts of all Colombians.”

There is a “deep desire in the hearts of all Colombians to have peace. The Pope certainly comes to encourage this deep desire,” he said.

Colombia faces many challenges at the moment, Carriquiry said, particularly because the reconciliation of a country, after more than 60 years of violence, is difficult.

“The Pope considers the peace process a long and arduous process of reconciliation for the country,” he explained, “and all of the Colombian people want this, yes, these negotiations, these accords, peace…”

But ultimately what the country needs is a “grand movement of regeneration and spirituality and reconciliation in Colombian society,” he noted.

Explaining that the peace accord will not solve all of the problems the country faces, such as the culture of drugs and drug trafficking, he said what it really needs is a “major conversion.”

Colombia is “full of contradictions,” because it is still a stronghold of Christianity and the faith is deeply rooted in the people. But at the same time, it has a culture of violence, drug trafficking, corruption, with decades of war causing many people to be displaced or to become refugees.

Carriquiry said he expects Pope Francis to bring the message of the Gospel to the hearts of Colombians. “Why? Because the Gospel is the greatest force of revolution, of national regeneration, of reconciliation for Colombian society. I am convinced of that aspect of the Pope.”

“For actually when we reduce the Pope’s presence to a political character it is completely wrong.”

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The opening of the Amazon synod at the Vatican’s Synod Hall, Oct. 7, 2019. / Daniel Ibáñez/CNA.

Vatican City, Dec 7, 2021 / 12:40 pm (CNA).

Officials at the General Secretariat of the Synod of Bishops have removed a link to New Ways Ministry from a resource page after they became aware that the U.S. bishops’ conference expressed its disapproval of the LGBT outreach ministry in 2010.

Thierry Bonaventura, communication manager of the General Secretariat, told CNA on Dec. 7 that the link on the website synodresources.org had been taken down.

Writing on his Twitter account on Dec. 6, Father James Martin, S.J., had hailed the link as “a small but historic step forward for #LGBTQ Catholics.”

Martin, the author of “Building a Bridge,” a book advocating stronger ties between the Catholic Church and the LGBT community, wrote: “As Pope Francis has said, all voices must be heard at the Synod…”

New Ways Ministry was founded in 1977 in the Archdiocese of Washington by Sr. Jeannine Gramick and Fr. Robert Nugent, who were the subject of a notification by the Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in 1999.

The notification, signed by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the future Benedict XVI, said that their positions “regarding the intrinsic evil of homosexual acts and the objective disorder of the homosexual inclination are doctrinally unacceptable because they do not faithfully convey the clear and constant teaching of the Catholic Church in this area.”

In 2010, Cardinal Francis George, then president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, issued a statement emphasizing that New Ways Ministry “has no approval or recognition from the Catholic Church and that they cannot speak on behalf of the Catholic faithful in the United States.”

Bonaventura told CNA that synodresources.org is an initiative of the General Secretariat of the Synod of Bishops for sharing resources among dioceses, bishops’ conferences, and official Catholic organizations.

But he noted that the website’s address does not end in “.va,” the internet country code top-level domain for Vatican City.

“It means that the content published doesn’t express the view of the General Secretary of the Synod or of the Vatican,” he explained.

“At the same time, even if we are open to receiving any useful resources without a particular censoring of the material, it is our desire to welcome inputs from officially recognized organizations by the Catholic Church.”

“In this case, my team was not aware of the situation of the New Ways organization and of the clarification given by the USCCB President in 2010.”

The General Secretariat of the Synod of Bishops is currently overseeing what has been described as one of the largest consultation exercises in human history, ahead of the 2023 Synod on Synodality.

A handbook released by the Vatican in September urged dioceses to include “all the baptized” in the process, including those on the margins of Church life.

It said: “Special care should be taken to involve those persons who may risk being excluded: women, the handicapped, refugees, migrants, the elderly, people who live in poverty, Catholics who rarely or never practice their faith, etc.”.

The Vatican announced in May that the Synod on Synodality would open with a diocesan phase starting in October 2021.

A second, continental phase will take place from September 2022 to March 2023.

The third, universal phase will begin with the XVI Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops, dedicated to the theme “For a Synodal Church: Communion, Participation, and Mission,” at the Vatican in October 2023.

The “About” section of synodresources.org says that the website is “a platform for sharing resources, stories, and experiences in the journey of the Synod 2021-2023.”

Bonaventura said: “At the same time, you have to be aware that we are studying the way to listen to all the faithful and also those organizations who are not officially in communion with the Catholic Church as it is a question of consistency of the message we want to spread out, but synodresources.org is not that place.”

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