All five entered a plea of not guilty to the charge of failing to register the humanitarian fund with the police, according to AFP.
For a first conviction, this charge can reportedly incur a fine of up to $1,274, but likely will not fall under Hong Kong’s national security law.
The date set for Cardinal Zen’s trial is Sept. 19.
Father Joseph Chan, Hong Kong’s vicar general was present in the courtroom, but the cleric told AFP that he was not there as a representative of the diocese.
Zen plans to offer a Mass to pray for China on the night of May 24, the feast of Our Lady Help of Christians.
Zen was arrested by the authorities in Hong Kong on May 11 and was released on bail later on the same day.
Diplomats from Italy, France, Germany, Sweden, and other European countries were in the courtroom to attend Zen’s hearing.
The cardinal’s arrest earlier this month sparked reactions around the world. A Vatican spokesman said that the Holy See “is following the development … with extreme attention.”
White House principal deputy press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre called on Chinese and Hong Kong authorities to “cease targeting Hong Kong’s advocates and to immediately release those who have been unjustly detained and charged, like the Cardinal Joseph Zen … and others arrested today.”
David Alton, an independent member of the House of Lords, the upper house of the U.K. parliament, described the cardinal’s arrest as “an act of outrageous intimidation.”
Pope Francis said in his Regina Coeli address on May 22 that he is praying for the Church in China and “attentively and actively following the often complex life and situations of the faithful and pastors” there.
Without specifically mentioning Zen by name, the pope called on people to pray for Catholics in China “so that the Church in China, in freedom and tranquility, might live in effective communion with the universal Church, and might exercise its mission of proclaiming the Gospel to everyone.”
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Less than a week after being violently attack outside of a Baltimore Planned Parenthood on May 26, 2023, Dick Schafer, 80, returned to the abortion facility to continue his pro-life work. / Credit: Eric Stocklin/CNA
CNA Newsroom, Aug 8, 2022 / 10:00 am (CNA).
A German prelate who served as bishop in Ecuador is not only accused of having sexually abused minors in several countries. As director of a German aid… […]
Michelangelo’s The Creation of Eve, from the Sistine Chapel ceiling, c. 1510. / null
Denver, Colo., Nov 15, 2022 / 09:00 am (CNA).
Michelangelo’s artistic masterpiece in the Sistine Chapel broke new ground in portraying the dynamic creative acts of God, but his work also depicts the combined importance of men and women through all of sacred history, art historian Elizabeth Lev has said.
“The spirit of artistic adventure led the artist to experiment with a completely new vision of creation,” Lev said Nov. 12. “He took a book that had been painted, sculpted, mosaiced, and illuminated over and over again in the history of art and created something completely new.”
She spoke at the closing keynote Saturday evening at the fall conference of the University of Notre Dame’s de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture. Lev teaches at the Rome campus of Duquesne University and the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas. Her speech, “Creation, Complementarity, & St. John Paul II in Michelangelo’s Sistine Ceiling,” focused on one of the key artistic treasures of Vatican City.
The 16th-century Florentine artist Michelangelo was commissioned by Pope Julius II to paint the Sistine Chapel’s ceiling and the upper section of its walls. This was the artist’s focus from 1508 to 1512. He later finished the Last Judgment above the chapel altar from 1535 to 1541.
The ceiling frescoes show the creation of the heavens and the earth, the creation of Adam and Eve, their expulsion from the Garden of Eden, the great flood, and the rebirth of humankind through Noah.
Lev cited St. John Paul II’s description of Michelangelo’s work in his poem “Meditations on the Book of Genesis at the Threshold of the Sistine Chapel.”
“It is the book of the origins — Genesis,” the pope said. “Here, in this chapel, Michelangelo penned it, not with words, but with the richness of piled-up colors. We enter in order to read it again, going from wonder to wonder.”
Lev reflected on the first three panels depicting the creation of the world. These show “the mighty dynamic figure of God the Father at work.”
“It’s not what God creates, it’s that God creates,” she said. Michelangelo broke ground in portraying God as “physically engaged in creation.” For Lev, this offers “a preview of the Incarnation.”
Turning to Michelangelo’s famous depiction of the Creation of Adam, Lev noted that the artist depicts “just God and the creature formed in his likeness.” Adam is shown as “somewhat listless” in contrast with God’s energy. Adam is “sentient and awake but he has no will or strength or purpose to rise,” she said. “He looks completely passive and dependent despite that incredibly beautiful form.”
“It’s God who reaches towards man,” she continued. For Lev, the outstretched finger of God makes the viewer “almost lean forward in his seat waiting for that final Act of Creation, the divine spark, the Breath of Life that will release that latent energy and allow Adam to take his place as the greatest of creations.”
“This is the joy in humanity that permeates the Renaissance,” Lev said.
Michelangelo’s The Fall and Expulsion from Paradise from the Vatican’s Sistine Chapel (1508-12).
There is academic debate over a female figure shown in the Creation of Adam. As God the Father stretches out one arm to Adam, his other arm curls around a female figure. Some have identified this figure as Wisdom, some as Mary.
Lev suggested it is best to identify this figure as Eve, both because the figure provides visual balance to Adam and because her gaze “connects her more intimately with Adam.”
The creation of Eve from Adam, depicted next on the chapel ceiling, shows Eve emerging from Adam’s side with her hands clasped in prayer, an image of the Church and the personification of Mary, the “Second Eve.”
Lev cited St. John Paul II’s 1999 homily inaugurating the newly restored Sistine Chapel, after centuries of grime and soot were removed. The pope called the chapel the “sanctuary of the theology of the human body,” alluding to his catecheses offered from 1979 to 1984. The pope suggested that Michelangelo allowed himself to be guided by the Book of Genesis’ depiction of mankind in Eden: “the man and his wife were both naked and they felt no shame.”
Before the fall, Lev commented, Michelangelo depicted Adam and Eve in the state of grace as “two of his most beautiful figures.”
“They are filled with dynamism. They’re buoyant. They’re luminous,” Lev said, adding that their bodies “suggest immortality.” After the fall, however, both of their bodies “lose their luminosity” and appear heavier, like a burden. Adam’s shoulder seems to force Eve into the background, “subjugating her.”
For Lev, the artistic depiction of the genealogy of Jesus Christ also deserves attention. The portrayal of the ancestors of Jesus Christ shows “a genealogy of men and women struggling from generation to generation.” These figures seem “more approachable” and “much more similar to candid family photographs.” Even though 22 women in Jesus’ genealogy are not named, Michelangelo pairs them with their husbands.
Lev noted that Michelangelo broke with artistic convention both by including mothers and by showing them as busy, everyday women “tending to toddlers, toilettes, and tasks.” His style of painting them with “incredible immediacy” adds observations of human nature: Eleazar’s wife holds the purse strings and the key to the house, and her husband looks “startled” as she surveys their son. Other depictions are “tender and intimate,” like the portrayal of the wife of Manasseh, who cradles a swaddled son while rocking an infant’s cradle.
Here, Lev drew on John Paul II’s 1995 “Letter to Women.” He wrote that womanhood and manhood are complementary at the physical, psychological, and even ontological level.
“It is only through the duality of the masculine and the feminine that the human finds full recognition,” the pope said. “To this unity of the two, God has entrusted not only the work of procreation and family life but the creation of history itself.”
Lev noted that the passing of generations “necessarily emphasizes the begetting of children.” This means that the complementarity of the sexes is essential for a population to form and for creation to continue.
In Michelangelo’s portrayal of the Last Judgment, the artist still looks back to creation but also breaks new ground. He placed Mary next to Christ, as “a foil to Christ’s sternness.”
“She is the picture of mercy gazing down towards the elect, placed by the wound in Christ’s side whence the Church sprang,” Lev said. “Mary is transfigured into the Bride of Christ, for whom he gave his life and to whom he cannot say no. She is the conduit to Christ, as Eve was the link between God and man in the creation of woman.”
For Lev, the Sistine Chapel shows the “incredible gift of creation” from the beginning of the world down through the generations, “through which all of us today are a part of that continuation of creation.”
https://www.whec.com/rochester-new-york-news/-amherst-buffalo-compasscare-pro-life-arson/6493927/?cat=12713