Mourners pay tribute to ‘much-loved’ Scottish Archbishop

Pope Francis at the General Audience in St. Peter’s Square, March 14, 2018. / Daniel Ibanez/CNA.

Denver Newsroom, May 25, 2022 / 11:24 am (CNA).

A telegram sent to the Archbishop of San Antonio on Wednesday conveyed Pope Francis’ deep sadness over the deaths of 21 people at a school shooting in Texas the previous day.

“Assuring those affected by this attack of his spiritual closeness, His Holiness joins the entire community in commending the souls of those children and teachers who died to almighty God’s loving mercy and he implores the divine gifts of healing and consolation upon the injured and bereaved,” reads the May 25 telegram sent on the pope’s behalf.

“With firm faith in the risen Christ, through whome every evil will be overcome by good, he prays that those tempted to violence will choose instead the path of fraternal solidarity and love,” it continued.

A gunman opened fire at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, about 90 miles west of San Antonio, May 24, killing 19 children and two adults.

A Border Patrol officer killed the shooter, a local 18-year-old identified as Salvador Ramos. Two police officers were injured by rounds from Ramos.

Earlier on Wednesday, Pope Francis had addressed the tragedy after his General Audience address.

“My heart is broken for the massacre at the elementary school in Texas. I am praying for the children and the adults killed and their families,” he said in St. Peter’s Square.

“It is time to say enough to the indiscriminate trafficking of weapons. Let us all work hard so that such tragedies can never happen again.”

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops said May 24 that the country was facing an “epidemic of evil and violence.”

“There have been too many school shootings, too much killing of the innocent,” the USCCB’s public affairs director Chieko Noguchi said in a statement.

“Our Catholic faith calls us to pray for those who have died and to bind the wounds of others, and we join our prayers along with the community in Uvalde and Archbishop Gustavo García-Siller.”

“As we do so, each of us also needs to search our souls for ways that we can do more to understand this epidemic of evil and violence and implore our elected officials to help us take action.”

Hours before the general audience, Archbishop Garcia-Siller appealed to Pope Francis to pray for the victims of the shooting in his San Antonio archdiocese.

He tweeted: “Holy Father Pope Francis, say some prayers for the souls of our little ones killed today and two teachers. Uvalde is in mourning. The families are having a very dark time. Your prayer will do good to them.”

He added in Spanish: “Gracias por ayudarnos. Queremos ser como Jesús. Cuente con nuestra oración” (“Thank you for helping us. We want to be like Jesus. Count on our prayers”).

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A hearing in the Vatican finance trial is held on Nov. 17, 2021. / Vatican Media.

Vatican City, May 5, 2022 / 11:30 am (CNA).
Cardinal Angelo Becciu was questioned about investments during a hearing in the Vatican’s ongoing finance trial on Thu… […]

Pope Francis speaks at the general audience in Vatican City’s Paul VI Hall on Feb. 22, 2023. / Vatican Media

Rome Newsroom, Mar 11, 2023 / 05:20 am (CNA).

Pope Francis has said that gender ideology is “one of the most dangerous ideological colonizations” today.

In an interview with journalist Elisabetta Piqué for the Argentine daily newspaper La Nación, Pope Francis explained the reasoning behind his strong statement.

“Gender ideology, today, is one of the most dangerous ideological colonizations,” Francis said in the interview published on the evening of March 10.

“Why is it dangerous? Because it blurs differences and the value of men and women,” he added.

“All humanity is the tension of differences. It is to grow through the tension of differences. The question of gender is diluting the differences and making the world the same, all dull, all alike, and that is contrary to the human vocation.”

Pope Francis has frequently used the term “ideological colonization” throughout the 10 years of his pontificate, particularly to describe instances when aid money for developing countries has been tied to contraceptives, abortion, sterilization, and gender ideologies.

In a conversation with Polish bishops in 2016, Pope Francis said: “Today children — children — are taught in school that everyone can choose his or her sex. Why are they teaching this? Because the books are provided by the people and institutions that give you money. These forms of ideological colonization are also supported by influential countries. And this is terrible!”

The pope told Piqué that he was not currently writing a new encyclical and denied that he had been asked to write a document on the subject of gender.

While he is not writing something on gender ideology, the pope said that he talks about the subject “because some people are a bit naive and believe that it is the way to progress.”

He said that they “do not distinguish what is respect for sexual diversity or diverse sexual preferences from what is already an anthropology of gender, which is extremely dangerous because it eliminates differences, and that erases humanity, the richness of humanity, both personal, cultural, and social, the diversities and the tensions between differences.”

The pope noted that he always distinguishes “between what pastoral care is for people who have a different sexual orientation and what gender ideology is.”

“They are two different things,” he added.

When Piqué asked Pope Francis if he knew that in Argentina people are asked to indicate on official forms if they are male, female, or non-binary sex, the pope said that it reminded him of the “futuristic” novel, “Lord of the World,” written by Monsignor Robert Hugh Benson in 1907.

He said that the book presents the idea of “a future in which differences are disappearing and everything is the same, everything is uniform, a single leader of the whole world.”

In the interview with La Nación — the third papal interview published on March 10 — Pope Francis also reflected on the 10 years of his pontificate, his concern for the war in Ukraine, and why he has not traveled to his native Argentina.

Days ahead of the 10th anniversary of his pontificate on March 13, the pope said that he was especially happy about the legacy of his “pastoral line of forgiveness and understanding of the people, to make room in the Church for everyone.”

Asked to identify any mistakes he might have made in the past 10 years, the pope regretted times when he had lost his patience.

“More than once. It did not appear in the newspapers, but more than once,” he added with a laugh.

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