What’s this parish’s secret to forming missionary disciples? ‘It’s Boulder.’

Washington D.C., May 24, 2017 / 05:11 pm (CNA).- President Donald Trump’s budget requests, although applauded for their pro-life measures, were largely met with concern from Catholic aid groups, particularly for their cuts to welfare programs and international aid.

“Rather than balancing the budget on the backs of those who are poor while shoring up military spending, our budgetary policies should reflect compassion for those most fragile and, at the same time, should allocate funds to protect safety and the common good,” Sister Donna Markham, O.P., president and CEO of Catholic Charities, USA, stated on Tuesday.

President Trump released his FY 2018 budget proposal “The New Foundation for American Greatness” on Tuesday, calling for a $54 billion increase in defense spending and an increase in immigration enforcement and border security funding.

To balance the budget over 10 years, these increases would supposedly be offset by cuts elsewhere, including to international aid, the State Department, a $191 billion cut in food stamp funding over 10 years, and cuts to other welfare programs.

The administration also announced a proposed budget increase in fighting the opioid epidemic, including “$12.1 billion for treatment and prevention efforts” and “$10.8 billion in treatment funding.”

In anticipation of the budget proposal, leading U.S. bishops wrote Congress on Tuesday outlining their serious concerns. The goal of reducing the deficit was legitimate, they said, but such deficit reduction must include a comprehensive set of cuts and not just cuts in programs tailored for low-income groups while increasing spending in other areas.

Particularly concerning to them were cuts to international aid programs at a time when conflicts in the Middle East and North Africa threaten to destabilize whole regions, along with droughts and famines. Famine has already been declared in South Sudan, and three other countries are on the brink of famines.

Overall, the proposed cuts to diplomacy and development amount to almost $60 billion, Catholic Relief Services says.

“This budget also shifts attention to short-term ‘strategic’ issues and countries,” Bill O’Keefe, vice president of advocacy for Catholic Relief Services, stated on Tuesday of the proposed cuts. “The danger is that problems elsewhere ignored today become the expensive strategic challenges our military has to address tomorrow.”

“The people who say aid does not work should come stand in my shoes here in Somalia,” said Mohamed Dahir, CRS’ country manager in Somalia. “They should talk to a woman who walked with her children for days and days, trying to escape drought, only to lose some of those children along the way.”

“In previous droughts, people like her found water in the major rivers, but this drought is so bad even the rivers have dried up,” Dahir said. “How can we abandon them – good, hardworking, innocent people who have done nothing wrong? Our aid not only brings them life, it brings them another commodity that is very precious in Somalia – hope.”

Cuts to diplomacy are also distressing, CRS and the bishops said, as the international community still has yet to come together to negotiate a peace to end the six year-long conflict in Syria.

 Other Catholic aid groups largely were concerned over the domestic budget proposals.

Catholic Charities, USA “supports efforts to improve vital safety-net programs needed to move people out of poverty and protect life,” Sister Donna Markham said.

Yet “the disastrous, albeit cruel, cuts to anti-poverty programs such as SNAP, Medicaid and jobs training will have a devastating effect on millions of vulnerable individuals and families who depend on them,” she continued.

The Catholic Climate Covenant also expressed serious concerns about Trump’s proposed budget, calling the cuts to the Environmental Protection Agency “dramatic and unwarranted” and saying that they hurt the poor.

This is because the EPA has done “excellent work” for the environment, “yet far too many families, especially in low-income and of color communities, live near heavily polluted areas such as Superfund and brownfields sites, incinerators and coal-fired power plants,” the group explained.

Trump’s budget would cut programs having to do with clean-up of these areas and enforcement of environmental laws, rendering poor people in these communities more “vulnerable” to pollution.

“These cuts threaten the future of our children not only in the U.S. but around the world,” Bishop Richard Pates of Des Moines, Iowa, bishop liaison to the group’s board of directors, stated on Wednesday, pointing to cuts of programs working “to help reduce greenhouse gases, the major cause of the global warming we are experiencing.”

“Pope Francis has made it clear that the threat of climate change demands that ‘the use of highly polluting fossil fuels – especially coal, but also oil and, to a lesser degree, gas – needs to be progressively replaced without delay’,” he said, quoting the encyclical Laudato Si’ paragraph 165.

The pro-life group Susan B. Anthony List, however, approved of the proposal that funding for Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest abortion provider, would be redirected to community health centers. That funding would be estimated at $422 million.

“We’re encouraged to see that the budget released today prevents federal funds from going to the nation’s largest abortion chain, Planned Parenthood,” the group’s president Marjorie Dannenfelser stated on Tuesday. “Taxpayers should not have to prop up Planned Parenthood’s failing, abortion-centered business model.”

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Pope Francis presides at the end of year Vespers and Te Deum prayer at St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome on Dec. 31, 2022. / Photo by FILIPPO MONTEFORTE/AFP via Getty Images

Rome Newsroom, Dec 31, 2022 / 10:33 am (CNA).

Pope Francis gave thanks for the good works and sacrifices of Benedict XVI, hours after the pope emeritus’ death on Saturday at the age of 95.

“The thought goes spontaneously to the dearly beloved Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, who left us this morning. With emotion we remember his person, so noble, so kind,” Pope Francis said at a prayer vigil in St. Peter’s Basilica on Dec. 31.

In his first public comments since the pope emeritus’ death, Francis said: “We feel in our hearts so much gratitude: gratitude to God for having given him to the Church and to the world; gratitude to him, for all the good he accomplished, and especially for his witness of faith and prayer, especially in these last years of his retired life.”

“Only God knows the value and strength of his intercession, of his sacrifices offered for the good of the Church,” he said.

Pope Francis addressed the news of Benedict’s death during a first Vespers liturgy for the vigil of the Jan. 1 Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God.

Before the start of the liturgy, Catholics in attendance prayed a rosary for the repose of the soul of Benedict XVI.

Benedict’s death, at the age of 95, was announced in Rome on Dec. 31. His body will lie in state in St. Peter’s Basilica from the morning of Monday, Jan. 2, 2023.

Pope Francis will preside over the pope emeritus’ funeral Mass in St. Peter’s Square at 9:30 a.m. on Jan. 5, 2023. He will be buried in the Vatican crypt under St. Peter’s Basilica.

First Vespers was prayed at the Vatican in anticipation of the Jan. 1 Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God. The prayer service also included the singing of the “Te Deum,” a Latin hymn of thanksgiving from the early Church.

Pope Francis, who turned 86 earlier this month, arrived at the basilica in a wheelchair before presiding over the liturgy and delivering a homily.

Benedict XVI was remembered in the vigil’s prayer intentions.

Members of the Roman Curia and the diplomatic corps accredited to the Vatican were also present inside the basilica, where an estimated 8,000 people gathered in prayer on the last day of 2022.

It is Pope Francis’ custom to visit the Nativity scene in St. Peter’s Square following first Vespers on New Year’s Eve. Last year, his visit was canceled to prevent crowds from gathering during the COVID-19 pandemic.

In his homily, Pope Francis reflected on God being born “of a woman,” which was made possible through Mary’s “yes” to the divine plan for Jesus’ birth.

“Let us not take the mystery of divine motherhood for granted,” he said. “Let us be amazed by the choice of God, who could have appeared in the world in a thousand ways showing his power, and instead wanted to be conceived in full freedom in Mary’s womb, wanted to be formed for nine months like any child, and finally be born of her, born as a woman.”

“Let us not pass over this quickly, let us stop to contemplate and meditate on it, for here is an essential feature of the mystery of salvation,” the pope said.

The prayer service concluded with the singing of the Christmas hymn “Adeste Fideles.”

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Pregnancy Test. / Flickr/Ernesto Andrade.

Denver Newsroom, Apr 27, 2022 / 14:19 pm (CNA).
A federal court on Tuesday ordered a lower court to dismiss all legal challenges brought against the enforcement mechanism of a Texas abortion law, a move… […]