Jesuit Father James Martin says there are many chaste gay priests in the Church

Vatican City, Nov 15, 2019 / 03:45 am (CNA).- Pope Francis told those who are sick and suffering Friday that the world needs their prayers.

“You, who are at the foot of the cross, perhaps alone, isolated, abandoned, homeless, expelled from your … […]

Vatican City, Oct 8, 2017 / 06:50 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Having dignified work is a topic Pope Francis has continuously returned to since his election, and it surfaced again in his latest prayer video, which urges viewers to spend October praying that employees have just working conditions, and for the unemployed.

The video, published Oct. 3, opens showing a young woman in an office searching through files and, when she can’t find the one she is looking for, an older colleague comes over and helps her.

As the scene plays out, Francis speaks in his native Spanish, saying “we should always remember the dignity and rights of those who work, condemn situations in which that dignity and those rights are violated, and help to ensure authentic progress by man and society.”

The video depicts various scenes of people working in inhumane conditions, before switching to show an unemployed man walking around the city handing out resumes. As he stands on the corner, a pizza delivery man he bumps into sees the folder of resumes and writes down the phone number of his company.

In the next frame, the formerly-unemployed man is shown delivering a pizza to the woman who helped her younger colleague in the first scene, drawing a smiley face on her napkin when he sees that she is stressed out about her work.

Francis closes the video making an appeal to viewers, asking them to “pray that all workers may receive respect and protection of their rights, and that the unemployed may receive the opportunity to contribute to the common good.”

Launched as a special project for the Jubilee of Mercy, the videos are part of a larger initiative of the Jesuit-run global prayer network Apostleship of Prayer, and are filmed in collaboration with the Vatican Television Center (CTV) and the Argentinian marketing association La Machi.

The Apostleship of Prayer, which produces the monthly videos on the Pope’s intentions, was founded by Jesuit seminarians in France in 1884 to encourage Christians to serve God and others through prayer, particularly for the needs of the Church.

Since the late 1800s, the organization has received a monthly, “universal” intention from the Pope. In 1929, an additional missionary intention was added by the Holy Father, aimed at the faithful in particular.

However, as of January, rather than including a missionary intention, Pope Francis decided to have only one prepared prayer intention – the universal intention featured in the prayer video – adding a second intention for an urgent or immediate need if one arises.

The prayer intentions typically highlight issues of importance not only for Pope Francis, but for the world, such as families, parishes, the environment, the poor and homeless, Christians who are persecuted and youth.

Work is something that is especially important for Francis, and has been since his election. Not only has he highlighted the dignity of work and the need for humane working conditions regularly in his speeches, but in nearly every trip he’s taken within Italy he has met with the local working force.

In his speeches, he typically advocates for a more just society with equal opportunity, for managers to be honest and to steer away from temptations of corruption, and for everyone to have the right to a fare wage.

He has also spoken out frequently on common problems in the working world that impact Italy specifically, condemning businesses that pay employees “under the table” with no set contract or benefits, or employers who only hire workers for 10-month contracts that don’t include the summer months, so as to avoid paying them a full year’s wage.

In his latest trip within Italy, which he made to the dioceses of Cesena and Bologna, the Pope again met with workers, unemployed persons and union representatives, telling them that to seek a more just society “is not a dream of the past but a commitment, a job that everyone needs today.”

We cannot grow accustomed to the number of unemployed people in our communities as if they are a mere number or a statistic, he said, but instead, we must help the poor and needy around us to find work, thus restoring their dignity.

He said we must also dethrone the profit-mentality that often governs our intentions, instead placing the human person and the common good at the heart of what we do. But for this to happen, “it is necessary to increase the opportunities for decent work.”

“This is a task that belongs to the whole society,” he said. “At this stage in particular, the whole social body, in its various components, is called upon to make every effort, because work, which is the primary factor of dignity, is a central concern.”

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Vatican City, Mar 7, 2018 / 09:08 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- For the Vatican’s point man on migration, ever since the crisis reached a fever pitch in 2015, the mass movement of people has been painted in an overly negative, ominous and threatening light – a narrative he says needs to change.

When it comes to the perplexing question of migrants and refugees, “we need positive stories,” Fr. Michael Czerny, SJ, told members of the International Catholic Migration Commission March 7.

He said the migration crisis which has captured the public eye and dominated much of the world’s political discourse over the past few years has largely been painted in a negative light.

As one of two co-secretaries for the Dicastery for Integral Human Development’s section for migrants and refugees, Czerny said part of their job is “to help change the narrative” on the issue, because “the public view is negative.”

Fr. Czerny was one of three panelists addressing the 2018 U.N. global compacts on migrants and refugees during the ICMC’s March 6-8 plenary assembly in Rome. Speaking alongside him were Fr. Fabio Baggio, who serves as the second secretary for the dicastery and helps Czerny to oversee the section for migrants and refugees, and Stephane Jaquemet, the ICMC’s head of policy.

In comments to CNA, Czerny said a simple answer for the negative reaction is globalization and the fact that it was first viewed “as the great leap forward for the whole world, it was supposed to benefit everybody … the bitter, bitter, bitter disappointment of people all over the world and the way in which they’ve been betrayed by their economic and political leaders, is easy to scapegoat on people who are different from us, and who need and deserve our help but who are caught up in this pattern.”

Czerny said that in his view, the prevalent negative narrative on migration issue has nothing to do with migrants and refugees, but is rather “a misplaced disappointment with our leaders.”

Migrants and refugees, he said, “are being scapegoated. So I think by telling the truth and by telling positive stories, that’s how I hope we can reverse that narrative.”

Especially where the Church is concerned, migrants, refugees, asylum seekers, and victims of human trafficking “should feel that they are part of the life of the Church,” he said. “They should feel that they are welcomed and accompanied.”

Part of dicastery’s task, he said, is to ensure that “migration is a matter of choice,” and that no one is forced to leave their home country, especially not as a result of poverty or violence.

However, since migration is and always will be a reality the world has to face, another part of their mission means supporting the Church “in her mission to accompany migrants.”

“It’s no lie” that societies have been “enormously enriched” by migration and will continue to do so, he said, and pointed to the global compacts as a means of both helping migrants throughout their journey and making the process more bearable when they arrive.

The UN is drafting compacts aimed at improving the international community’s response to large movements of refugees and migrants, ensuring safe and orderly passage for migrants, and as well as to protracted refugee situations.

According to Czerny, issues of pastoral interest for the Church are ensuring that migrants, refugees, displaced persons, asylum seekers, and victims of trafficking have the adequate resources and support needed to arrive safely and integrate into their new societies.

To this end, he pointed to the four-point “action plan” outlined by Pope Francis in his message for this year’s World Day for Peace, titled “Migrants and Refugees: men and women in search of peace.”

The four points – to welcome, protect, promote, and integrate – have been adopted by the Holy See as a response to the migration issue and have been widely promoted in the diplomatic scene.

By promoting and advancing the integral development of migrants and refugees, the Church is putting into action “what social doctrine has taught all along,” he said, adding that by helping migrants and refugees integrate, the communities where they live become enriched.

In his comments to CNA, Czerny noted how many western governments in particular, not wanting to take in their share of the influx of migrants and refugees, try to solve the problem by providing financial support to countries of origin so citizens don’t have to leave in the first place.

“We have been trying to promote – we the west, the well-developed countries, have in some ways been trying to promote development in the third world practically since World War Two,” Czerny said. However, “the results are not very impressive.”

“So if there is going to be a real effort to promote real integral sustainable development, God bless us, let’s do it,” he said, but cautioned that if this promise of “development” is in reality “a way of trying to trick and bribe people to stay home because we don’t want them here, I think we should denounce it.”

In his comments during the panel, Jaquemet outlined the process of drafting and discussing the compacts.

One of the biggest stumbling blocks for the compact on refugees, Jaquemet said, is the issue of “solidarity,” because there are many states who have taken in refugees for years, but who are now seeing a decrease in financial support.

“Those countries are not happy,” he said, noting that western countries tend to be “quite reluctant to go into formal commitments in terms of burden sharing and solidarity.”

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