Shooting at funeral home in Ecuador leaves four dead

Santiago, Chile, Sep 6, 2018 / 02:07 pm (ACI Prensa).- The Church in Chile’s capital celebrated the National Day of the Migrant September 2 with a Mass of Thanksgiving and a charitable collection for the more than one million displaced people who currently live in the country.

In Santiago, Catholics of more than 20 nationalities gathered at Our Lady of Pompeii parish to celebrate the Eucharist and share their traditions. The parish is locally known as the “Latin American parish” because its members hail from many different Latin American countries.

Auxiliary Bishop Cristián Roncagliolo of Santiago presided over the Mass. He noted that the Church “is a migrant people which traverses the world and announces the Gospel, which constantly calls us to conversion.”

The bishop highlighted that in the midst of different charisms, gifts, nations and rites, “the unity of the Church comes through faith – we’re different but we are members of one and the same faith.”

In his homily, Bishop Roncagliolo encouraged those present to take up the challenge of working for communion, integration and welcome.

“In Chile in recent years, we have taken in a great number of migrants. For us Chileans, this is not just a sociological issue but an issue of charity, to help our brothers from different parts of the world feel at home,” he said.

After Mass, participants enjoyed more than 20 stands with typical food from different countries, cooked by migrants as a way to share their culture and thank the Chileans who have welcomed them.

As part of the observation of the National Day of the Migrant, a collection was held in all dioceses throughout the country, raising money for the Chilean Catholic Migration Institute, which assists migrants, primarily from Venezuela and Haiti.

The fund-raising campaign will last the entire month of September through online donations.

In neighboring Argentina,  the Church commemorated the Day of the Migrant and Refugee September 2 with a call to “welcome, protect, assist and integrate those experiencing this situation.”

The Argentine Bishops’ Committee on the Pastoral Care of Migrants and Itinerant People offered a series of online resources including Pope Francis’ message for the 2017 World Day of Migrants and Refugees, and liturgical suggestions for the day.

This article was originally published by our sister agency, ACI Prensa. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.

[…]

Pope Francis shared a stage with Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni on May 12, 2023, to speak at a two-day conference on “The General State of the Birth Rate,” held at Conciliazione Auditorium close to the Vatican. / Daniel Ibanez/CNA

Rome Newsroom, May 12, 2023 / 07:00 am (CNA).

Pope Francis said Friday a society’s birth rate is a key indicator of the hope people have in the future.

The pope shared the stage on May 12 with Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni during a two-day conference on “The General State of the Birth Rate,” held at Conciliazione Auditorium close to the Vatican.

“The birth of children, in fact, is the main indicator for measuring the hope of a people,” Pope Francis said. “If few are born it means there is little hope. And this not only has repercussions from an economic and social point of view but also undermines confidence in the future.”

“The General State of the Birth Rate” is a conference for Italian political, business, and organization leaders to reflect on Italy’s demographic crisis, caused by one of the lowest birth rates in Europe: 1.25 births per woman.

The event was organized by the Foundation for Births and the Family Associations Forum and supported by the Italian Ministry for Family, Birth, and Equal Opportunity.

This was the third annual conference and the second time Pope Francis attended. In 2022, he sent a message to be read at the event.

Italy hit a historic low number of births in 2022, with only about 393,000 children born in the country.

The same year, the country saw 700,000 deaths, marking a dangerous decline in population.

The low number of births, Pope Francis said, “is a figure that reveals a great concern for tomorrow.”

He lamented that childbearing and rearing is seen as the burden of families only, and the pressure this puts on young adults today, “who grow up in uncertainty, if not disillusionment and fear.”

Young people “experience a social climate in which starting a family has turned into a titanic effort, instead of being a shared value that everyone recognizes and supports,” he said.

The decline in communal living, together with an increasing self-reliance creates loneliness, Pope Francis said, and one consequence is that only the wealthy have the freedom to live the life they want.

“This is unfair, as well as demeaning,” he added.

The pope also criticized a culture that places pets before human children.

He said at a recent audience, he went to greet a woman of around 50 years old — “like me,” he joked — but was surprised to be asked to bless her dog, which she called, “my baby.”

“I had no patience and scolded the lady,” he said, pointing out the great number of hungry children in the world.

Pope Francis used a walker to move on stage on Friday, referencing the pain he experiences while standing.

At the beginning of his speech, the pope said: “I’m sorry for not standing up while speaking, but I cannot tolerate the pain when I am standing.”

In what appeared to be a reference not only to welcoming the birth of children but also to welcoming migrants, Pope Francis said “a happy community naturally develops desires to generate and integrate, to welcome, while an unhappy society is reduced to a sum of individuals trying to defend what they have at all costs.”

He emphasized again that “the birth rate challenge is a matter of hope,” though, he underlined, hope is not the same as optimism or “a vague positive feeling about the future.”

Hope, he said, “is not an illusion or an emotion that you feel, no; it is a concrete virtue, a life attitude. And it has to do with concrete choices. Hope is nourished by each person’s commitment to the good, it grows when we feel we are participating and involved in making meaning of our own and others’ lives.”

“Hope generates change and improves the future. It is the smallest of virtues — Péguy said — it is the smallest, but it is the one that takes you the furthest. And hope does not disappoint,” Francis said.

[…]

Tlaxcala, Mexico, May 26, 2021 / 12:52 pm To avoid being left out of the 2021 Mexican elections because of a constitutional principle of “gender parity”, 18 male candidates from the Force for Mexico party […]