Pope Francis speaks at his general audience Dec. 13, 2023, in the Paul VI Hall at the Vatican. / Credit: Vatican Media
Rome Newsroom, Dec 13, 2023 / 09:38 am (CNA).
Pope Francis on Wednesday closed his catechetical series on apostolic zeal, delivered during his recent general audiences, by noting that the attitude of being open is a duty for every Christian and a precondition for authentically announcing the Gospel.
“The Christian must be open to the Word of God and to the service of others,” the pope said during the audience. He went on to juxtapose this notion of openness with a mentality of “closure,” noting that the latter contradicts the central message of the Gospel and allows for people to fall into ideological ways of thinking.
Pope Francis greets pilgrims at his general audience Dec. 13, 2023, in Paul VI Hall at the Vatican. Credit: Elizabeth Alva/EWTN
“Closed Christians always end up badly, because they are not Christians, they are ideologues, ideologues of closure,” the pope said.
The pope highlighted this openness by pointing to the Gospel of Mark when Jesus performs the miracle of healing a deaf-mute man, using “the decisive word” of “effatà,” which the Holy Father noted means “open up” in Aramaic.
Pope Francis greets pilgrims at his general audience Dec. 13, 2023, in Paul VI Hall at the Vatican. Credit: Vatican Media
“And for this reason, this effatà, this ‘open up,’ is an invitation to all of us to open up,” he continued.
While acknowledging the condition of “physical deafness,” the pope noted that in the biblical context it assumes a metaphorical character, conveying that “one who is deaf to the word of God is mute, who does not communicate the word of God.”
Pope Francis blesses a pregnant women during his Dec. 13, 2023, general audience in Paul VI Hall at the Vatican. Credit: Vatican Media
Pointing out that it is Jesus “who is capable of opening his ears and mouth,” the pope noted that this mandate to be open in evangelizing comes for all Christians at the moment of baptism when the priest, “touching the ears and lips of the baptized person,” says: “May the Lord Jesus, who made the deaf hear and the mute speak, grant you to quickly listen to his word and profess your faith.”“We too, who have received the effatà of the Spirit in baptism, are called to open ourselves. ‘Open yourself,’ says Jesus to every believer and to his Church: Open yourself because the message of the Gospel needs you to be witnessed and announced,” Francis continued.
Pilgrims cheer during Pope Francis’ general audience on Dec. 13, 2023, in Paul VI Hall at the Vatican. Credit: Elizabeth Alva/EWTN
The Holy Father closed his remarks by suggesting that before becoming a witness to the Gospel, it is critical to have a moment of reflection and ask ourselves a series of key questions.
“Do I really love the Lord, to the point of wanting to announce him? Do I want to become his witness or am I content with being his disciple? Do I take the people I meet to heart, do I bring them to Jesus in prayer? Do I want to do something so that the joy of the Gospel, which has transformed my life, makes their lives more beautiful?”
Pope Francis receives gifts from young people at his general audience on Dec. 13, 2023. Credit: Vatican Media
During his greeting to the Italian pilgrims gathered for the audience, Pope Francis recalled that Dec. 13 is the feast day of St. Lucy, a virgin and martyr of Syracuse, Sicily, who was martyred in the fourth century during the Christian persecutions of the Roman Emperor Diocletian.
“In some areas of Italy and Europe it is customary to exchange gifts for the upcoming Christmas on this occasion,” the pope said. “I would like to invite all of you to exchange the gift of friendship and Christian testimony — which is a beautiful gift.”
If you value the news and views Catholic World Report provides, please consider donating to support our efforts. Your contribution will help us continue to make CWR available to all readers worldwide for free, without a subscription. Thank you for your generosity!
Click here for more information on donating to CWR. Click here to sign up for our newsletter.
A group of people in St. Peter’s Square hold a Ukrainian flag during Pope Francis’ Angelus on Sunday, March 20, in Vatican City. / Vatican Media
Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Mar 20, 2022 / 05:28 am (CNA).
Pope Francis continued to call for an end to the war in Ukraine Sunday, calling the violence against innocent Ukrainians “inhuman and sacrilegious.”
Without mentioning Russia by name, the pope said, “The aggression against Ukraine has not ceased. Violent acts of aggression occur each day. There is no justification for this. I appeal to the world to put an end to this.”
The pope spoke about the situation in Ukraine from his balcony above St. Peter’s Square in the Vatican, following the recitation of the Angelus, a Catholic Marian prayer.
The children suffering from cancer, neurological diseases, and other illnesses were brought to Italy for medical treatment during the first days of the war in Ukraine. Some had serious blast wounds from the war, a Vatican spokesman said.
Pope Francis visited Ukrainian refugee children being treated in the Bambino Gesù Children’s Hospital in Rome on March 19, 2022. Vatican Media
“I went to visit the young children who are here in Rome who have been wounded in the war. Young, innocent children. One had an amputated arm. One a wound to the head,” the pope reflected.
“I think about the millions of Ukrainian refugees who have had to leave everything behind, and those who do not even have the possibility to leave,” the pope said.
“All of this is inhuman and sacriligeous, because it goes against the sacredness of human life.”
Pope Francis also called on the faithful to join him on March 25 in praying for the consecration of Ukraine and Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. EWTN will broadcast the consecration ceremony at 12 noon EST.
Pope Francis visited Ukrainian refugee children being treated in the Bambino Gesù Children’s Hospital in Rome on March 19, 2022. Vatican Media
The pope also praised the “solidarity and closeness” demonstrated by the pastors and other priests and church leaders in Ukraine who have remained with their people during the crisis.
The pope specifically mentioned the Vatican’s representative in Ukraine, Archbishop Visvaldas Kulbokas, who revealed in an interview March 17 with Raymond Arroyo on “The World Over” that he has not left the nunciature in Kyiv because the situation outside is too dangerous.
Kulbokas said in the interview that while it is logistically feasible for the pope to travel to Kyiv, such a visit is unlikely to happen because continued Russian missile and artillery attacks on the city make it impossible to have public gatherings.
“I know that Pope Francis wants to do all that is possible for him in order to contribute for peace, so I know for sure that he is evaluating, he is thinking about all the possibilities,” the nuncio said.
A photo of Deborah Emmanuel’s photo on her Facebook page. Emmanuel, a Christian student in Nigeria, was killed by an Islamic mob on her college campus on May 12, 2022. / CNA
Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Jun 23, 2022 / 14:01 pm (CNA).
Deborah Emmanuel, the Nigerian Christian student who was murdered by a Muslim mob last month, spent her final hours with a close friend who has shared exclusive details of the brutal killing with CNA.
CNA is using the pseudonym “Mary” for the woman’s protection. A Christian herself, she nearly was killed by the same mob.
Significantly, Mary’s account contradicts the claim of authorities that they attempted to rescue Emmanuel from the mob but were “overwhelmed.”
On the contrary, the police “could have stopped the murder if they had really tried,” Mary told CNA.
Emmanuel’s so-called “blasphemy murder” took place on May 12 on the campus of Shehu Shagari College of Education in Sokoto, Sokoto State, a major city located in the northwest corner of Nigeria. The city is home to the Muslim Sultan who serves as the top religious authority for Nigeria’s 100 million Muslim believers.
Prior to the attack, Emmanuel, a home economics major who attended Evangelical Church Winning All, was bullied by fanatical Muslim students at the teacher’s college for audio statements she made on WhatsApp, a messaging platform. She credited Jesus Christ for her success on a recent exam, and when threatened and told to apologize she refused, invoking the Holy Spirit, saying “Holy Ghost fire! Nothing will happen to me,” according to WhatsApp messages reviewed by CNA.
In the aftermath of these heated exchanges, a Muslim mob attacked Emmanuel on the college’s campus. After an hours’ long siege, the mob beat and stoned her to death, then set her body on fire with burning tires, according to graphic video footage posted online. The rioters also rampaged in a Catholic Church compound in Sokoto, according to reports. The riots spread to other Christian-owned properties over two days.
A relative of Emmanuel’s, who said he was standing approximately 60 feet from the mob, also told CNA he believes the police could have saved her. He, too, asked that his identity be withheld for his safety.
Unarmed campus security personnel made a futile attempt to rescue Emmanuel, according to a campus security report shared with CNA. But Emmanuel’s relative said there were dozens of armed police officers on the scene who didn’t fire their weapons.
The commissioner of police in the state also said officers did not fire their weapons. However, he maintained that only 15 of his officers were at the scene, according to a report in The Epoch Times.
Bishop Matthew Hassan Kukah of the Diocese of Sokoto has strongly condemned the attack and called on Emmanuel’s killers to be brought to justice..
“This matter must be treated as a criminal act,” he said. You can read his full statement here.
A plea for help
On the day of Emmanuel’s death, Mary received a frantic phone call from her around 9 a.m, asking for help. By that time, women who lived in her dormitory had begun slapping Emmanuel, Mary told CNA.
Mary arrived at the campus to see her friend surrounded by a mob and being led by a campus staffer to a gatehouse building for her protection. The Muslim students had bloodied her face and head with blows from rods and were joined by male students who believed their duty was to execute a blasphemer on the spot, Mary said.
“Allahu Akbar!” meaning “God is Great” was bellowed for hours, she said.
Mary initially stayed outside the building and tried to intercede for her friend, but she said it wasn’t long before the mob turned on her, too. Within moments Mary was trying to ward off punches and blows from sticks as she backed away from the gatehouse and toward the gate of the college 40 feet away.
Mary said a college lecturer rescued her and brought her to join Emmanuel inside the gatehouse by 10 a.m.
At 10:25 a.m., the relative said, six officers of the Department of State Security (DSS) — the equivalent to the FBI in the U.S. — arrived, firing their rifles in the air but with no effect. Five minutes later, he said, a group of Sokoto police came on the scene and fired tear gas, temporarily scattering the mob.
The above map is based on eyewitness accounts of the murder of Nigerian Christian student Deborah Emmanuel on her college’s campus on May 12, 2022. Graphic by Alexander Hunter
For about 10 minutes police had an opportunity to disperse the mob and force their way to the gatehouse to extract Mary and Emmanuel, Emmanuel’s relative believes. But that did not happen.
By 11 a.m., the mob had returned to the building, holding cloths against their faces to ward off the tear gas. The mob tried hurling stones at Mary through the windows of the locked gatehouse, but Mary barricaded herself behind a table.
The mob then threw gasoline on the women through the front windows and attempted to burn them alive, Mary said.
“Deborah was soaked with gasoline, but when lighted plastic was pitched in through the windows, I quickly stamped the flames out,” Mary said.
No escape
All of this transpired as police and DSS officers watched from a safe distance, according to Emmanuel’s relative.
The traumatized women said little to each other, but Emmanuel was still hoping to do her examination that day, Mary said. At one point, she recalled, Emmanuel asked, “What time is it? I have an examination at noon.” Mary said she looked at her cell phone and told her it was 1 p.m.
After another excruciating hour of siege, the mob pushed down a single Sokoto policeman guarding the door, broke the padlock on the door, and rushed in to find Mary and Emmanuel hiding behind furniture, Mary and the relative related. Two rioters placed a chain around Mary’s neck and pulled it hard, trying to strangle her, she recounted.
“Let this girl go! She is not an offender,” Mary recalled one of the rioters shouting. But as they released her, a young man in the mob grabbed Emmanuel and took her to the front steps of the gatehouse. There she was bludgeoned with steel pipes and wooden rods and stoned, the relative said.
Two DSS officers attempted to rescue Emmanuel but were hit by stones and pushed aside, the relative said. The police officers remained in position and did not come to her aid, he alleged.
Mary collapsed inside the gatehouse gasping from the strangulation. Approximately 40 minutes later, she said, she was roused by one of the mob to leave the building, which was on fire.
As she walked through the smoke, Mary saw the gatehouse burning and Emmanuel’s lifeless body in flames.
The face of Christian persecution
In the aftermath of Emmanuel’s murder, human rights advocates and others have leveled sharp criticism at Nigeria’s government leaders for not doing enough to stem the rising tide of violence directed at Christians and other non-Muslims.
Relatives of Deborah Emmanuel at her burial in Niger State, Nigeria. Courtesy of the Emmanuel family
Anti-Christian hatred was evident in days of rioting in Sokoto following the arrest of two suspects in Emmanuel’s murder. The rioters reportedly were incensed that there were any arrests at all.
“Deborah Emmanuel, like kidnapping victim Leah Sharibu (who was enslaved by Boko Haram insurgents in 2019), has become the face of Christian persecution in Nigeria,” said Kyle Abts, executive director of the International Committee on Nigeria (ICON). “There has not been an official report from the security forces on the lynching of Ms. Emmanuel. Her killing and subsequent riots show clear government complicity and coverup.”
Tina Ramirez, founder of the international nonprofit Hardwired Global, also believes the Nigerian government has been unwilling to take a strong stand against blasphemy killings.
“The recent attacks on students are reminiscent of the attacks at Nigerian colleges two decades ago that were the precursor to the growth of extremist groups across Nigeria’s North and Middle Belt,” Ramirez wrote in a text to CNA.
Vatican City, Aug 20, 2018 / 05:55 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Pope Francis called Monday for every member of the Catholic Church to pray and fast in penance for the evil of clerical sex abuse, and to be involved in needed change within the Church.
You go first, Francis. Show us your devotion to the Word of God, and to service of others. Then we can follow what you do, but not that which (only) you say.
“Preach the Gospel at all times; use words when necessary.”
The Holy Father’s exegesis is itself closed. God can save “closed Christians”. At the end the Holy Father mentions that God can make the deaf hear and the dumb speak. Well, God also can stop up your hearing and your ability to speak what He wants.
But it is flawed in other ways. For example, leading people into temptation -whether in the name of fraternity or the Name of Jesus or the name of charity or the name of being open or whatever name- is not the Gospel and is not speaking of Jesus.
We do not exchange our baptism for the human virtue of brotherliness. To do that comes up to Pelagianism. VATICAN II recommends the practice of human virtues in charity because it is most fitting the call to holiness and the apostolates for these times.
In the first place the fruit of the Holy Ghost is not brotherliness but benignity. And the fruits are not summed up in brotherliness but in magnifying God in His gifts. Holy Father presents the danger not merely in what he says but also in what he does.
In its best light, might we suppose that Pope Francis goes overboard, or maybe only backwards, in his style or sequence of inculturation? Two quotes and a proposal:
FIRST, Cardinal Danielou explains:
“Christianity is always at first [at first!] led to take a stand against the errors of paganism, it [then] goes on to take to itself the good things in it. An obvious example which offers proof of this is the evangelization of the West. Christianity has taken up all that was valuable in the religions of Greece and Rome. Shrines of pagan goddesses became shrines of the Virgin Mary, and the seasonal pagan feasts were displaced by Christmas and Candlemas […] Christianity lifts them up, purifies them, and transfigures them” (“Prayer as a Political Problem,” 1953, p. 91).
SECOND, related to which, and possibly explaining the way-station of pluralist (?) “fraternity,” the Anglican convert, Fr. George William Rutler, gives us this:
“We might say that the cardinal virtues have their counterparts in the quadrivium: music and justice are both sciences of harmony; arithmetic and prudence are sciences of order; geometry and temperance are sciences of transcendence. And the theological virtues comport themselves with the fundamental trivium: grammar being to discourse what faith is to supernatural conversion; rhetoric being to grammar what hope is morally to faith; and dialectic providing a natural analogy of the heavenly discourse of love, just as love is the highest logic of creation. It is an arbitrary scheme, to be sure, but a fair reminder of the community between natural and spiritual sciences” (“Beyond Modernity: Reflections of a Post-Modern Catholic,” Ignatius, 1987, p. 123).
PROPOSAL: “The community between natural AND spiritual sciences”?
Which is to propose that once the Church gets back to making an “un-mess” [!] of things, the prevailing disconnect between so-called “concrete” experiences and so-called “abstract” rigidities might draw from reflections such as these…BECAUSE these frontward reflections are, today, messily perceived and branded as “backwardist.”
(Still, at the Synod on Youth, exchanging the papal crozier for a Wiccan stang was a bit much. Also, housing Pachamama within St. Peter’s Basilica on the same floor as the tabernacle and Real Presence.)
The “abstract rigidities” could be misnomer, Beaulieu, or a misconstrued business (or something off). In different senses too.
For Pope Francis the rigidity is the problem whether it is to do with abstraction or anything else. He is saying either grace is incipiently blocked or virtue is lacking.
I don’t accept it merely on such terms. A priest RIP of the “Francis” type mold used to converse at length about all kinds of things some of it plain out NOT our faith; eg., “Trinity” is “God with 3 hats”.
Trinity is God with 3 chips? Chocolate chips? Raiding the ref? Passing in the night? With 3 hats?
Here you encounter loose wobbly abstracting that is not “rigid” itself but is not our belief. What is behind it COULD be rigid, actually; in the sense of wrong and weighed down stubbornness.
But in another mode abstracting does not produce rigidity just so nor is it a sign of blockaded grace or undeveloped virtue or style-less-ness.
One of the priests who moved my faith now deceased RIP, was brief, repetitive, rebuking, retiring; yet uniquely real and transparent. For his 10-minute homilies he merely repeated passages from the readings. That was his level of abstracting and it was effective articulation.
And the attraction was the father.
In yet a third sense, the explanation of the faith say in the outline of a heresy, ITSELF contains the cure -incipiently; when it often happens that the rigidity lies in the one doing the resisting/rejecting of the faith or resisting/rejecting of the incipient cure that is attempting to pass.
Begging your pardon sir and the Lord’s, I wished to do this well.
You go first, Francis. Show us your devotion to the Word of God, and to service of others. Then we can follow what you do, but not that which (only) you say.
“Preach the Gospel at all times; use words when necessary.”
The Holy Father’s exegesis is itself closed. God can save “closed Christians”. At the end the Holy Father mentions that God can make the deaf hear and the dumb speak. Well, God also can stop up your hearing and your ability to speak what He wants.
But it is flawed in other ways. For example, leading people into temptation -whether in the name of fraternity or the Name of Jesus or the name of charity or the name of being open or whatever name- is not the Gospel and is not speaking of Jesus.
We do not exchange our baptism for the human virtue of brotherliness. To do that comes up to Pelagianism. VATICAN II recommends the practice of human virtues in charity because it is most fitting the call to holiness and the apostolates for these times.
In the first place the fruit of the Holy Ghost is not brotherliness but benignity. And the fruits are not summed up in brotherliness but in magnifying God in His gifts. Holy Father presents the danger not merely in what he says but also in what he does.
In its best light, might we suppose that Pope Francis goes overboard, or maybe only backwards, in his style or sequence of inculturation? Two quotes and a proposal:
FIRST, Cardinal Danielou explains:
“Christianity is always at first [at first!] led to take a stand against the errors of paganism, it [then] goes on to take to itself the good things in it. An obvious example which offers proof of this is the evangelization of the West. Christianity has taken up all that was valuable in the religions of Greece and Rome. Shrines of pagan goddesses became shrines of the Virgin Mary, and the seasonal pagan feasts were displaced by Christmas and Candlemas […] Christianity lifts them up, purifies them, and transfigures them” (“Prayer as a Political Problem,” 1953, p. 91).
SECOND, related to which, and possibly explaining the way-station of pluralist (?) “fraternity,” the Anglican convert, Fr. George William Rutler, gives us this:
“We might say that the cardinal virtues have their counterparts in the quadrivium: music and justice are both sciences of harmony; arithmetic and prudence are sciences of order; geometry and temperance are sciences of transcendence. And the theological virtues comport themselves with the fundamental trivium: grammar being to discourse what faith is to supernatural conversion; rhetoric being to grammar what hope is morally to faith; and dialectic providing a natural analogy of the heavenly discourse of love, just as love is the highest logic of creation. It is an arbitrary scheme, to be sure, but a fair reminder of the community between natural and spiritual sciences” (“Beyond Modernity: Reflections of a Post-Modern Catholic,” Ignatius, 1987, p. 123).
PROPOSAL: “The community between natural AND spiritual sciences”?
Which is to propose that once the Church gets back to making an “un-mess” [!] of things, the prevailing disconnect between so-called “concrete” experiences and so-called “abstract” rigidities might draw from reflections such as these…BECAUSE these frontward reflections are, today, messily perceived and branded as “backwardist.”
(Still, at the Synod on Youth, exchanging the papal crozier for a Wiccan stang was a bit much. Also, housing Pachamama within St. Peter’s Basilica on the same floor as the tabernacle and Real Presence.)
The “abstract rigidities” could be misnomer, Beaulieu, or a misconstrued business (or something off). In different senses too.
For Pope Francis the rigidity is the problem whether it is to do with abstraction or anything else. He is saying either grace is incipiently blocked or virtue is lacking.
I don’t accept it merely on such terms. A priest RIP of the “Francis” type mold used to converse at length about all kinds of things some of it plain out NOT our faith; eg., “Trinity” is “God with 3 hats”.
Trinity is God with 3 chips? Chocolate chips? Raiding the ref? Passing in the night? With 3 hats?
Here you encounter loose wobbly abstracting that is not “rigid” itself but is not our belief. What is behind it COULD be rigid, actually; in the sense of wrong and weighed down stubbornness.
But in another mode abstracting does not produce rigidity just so nor is it a sign of blockaded grace or undeveloped virtue or style-less-ness.
One of the priests who moved my faith now deceased RIP, was brief, repetitive, rebuking, retiring; yet uniquely real and transparent. For his 10-minute homilies he merely repeated passages from the readings. That was his level of abstracting and it was effective articulation.
And the attraction was the father.
In yet a third sense, the explanation of the faith say in the outline of a heresy, ITSELF contains the cure -incipiently; when it often happens that the rigidity lies in the one doing the resisting/rejecting of the faith or resisting/rejecting of the incipient cure that is attempting to pass.
Begging your pardon sir and the Lord’s, I wished to do this well.
The Good News is healing and empowering. Long live the Good News in thought, word, and action.