Pope Francis urges ‘human-centered’ approach to ‘climate finance’ at UN COP29 summit

Vatican City, Mar 3, 2021 / 04:00 am (CNA).- Pope Francis appealed on Wednesday for an end to “bloody clashes” and the release of political leaders in Burma.

Speaking at the end of his general audience on March 3, the pope lamented th… […]

Vatican City, Oct 12, 2018 / 10:17 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Young people are “hungry for mission,” Bishop Robert Barron said Friday during the 2018 Synod of Bishops, convened to discuss young people, the faith, and vocational discernment

“They’re hungry for involvement in the life of the Church, and to be out in the field declaring the Lord,” Barron said at an Oct. 12 Vatican press conference.

Barron, the auxiliary bishop of Los Angeles, is a delegate to the bishops’ synod. He has advocated in conversations in and around the synod that young people should be challenged intellectually and morally.

In his four-minute intervention at the Synod of Bishops, he called for greater intellectual faith formation of young people, particularly catechesis and apologetics.
“Why has it been the case, over the past several decades, that young people in our own Catholic secondary schools have read Shakespeare in literature class, Homer in Latin class, Einstein in physics class, but, far too often, superficial texts in religion?” Barron asked the synod.

Barron also said that acceptance and outreach to young people needs to be accompanied by a call to holiness and conversion, in response to a question about outreach to same-sex attracted young people.

“As always, the church’s first move in regard to everybody, in regard to gay and lesbians, is to reach out and say …  ‘You are a beloved child of God,” Barron responded to reporters in Rome. “It is under that rubric that the Church does its work.”

“Now, having said that, the Church also calls people to conversion. So Jesus calls, but then he always moves people to fullness of life, and so the Church also has a set of moral demands to everybody, and it calls them to conversion,” Barron continued.

“My hesitation is that ‘inclusion’ is more of a secular term. I would use the word ‘love,’” he said.

“The Church reaches out in love, and love is ‘willing the good of the other,’ and sometimes that means calling people to a change of life.”

“I think that is where the Church’s attitude is situated is included in both those moments. Of course outreach in love, but acceptance and inclusion doesn’t mean that we don’t call to conversion. So that’s again to speak about it in a more general term.”

Barron also touched on the idea that many young people will be called to holiness through a generous family life, connecting it to Pope Paul VI’s upcoming canonization Oct. 14.

The canonization on Sunday will be “a moment to celebrate some of that prophetic quality of Humanae Vitae,” said Barron.

“We certainly have talked about marriage and family life in the small groups,” he added, speaking about the synod discussions.

Youth delegates are auditing the 2018 Synod of Bishops and participate in the discussions in the synod hall in a historic first.

“Pope Francis told the young people present in the synod hall to ‘continue making noise,’” Barron shared.

At the Oct. 12 press conference, one bishop from the Netherlands said that a youth testimony in the synod hall motivated him to work with young Catholics to aid persecuted Christians.

Bishop Everard de Jong, auxiliary bishop of Roermond, Netherlands said he was very moved by the testimony from an Iraqi young man in the synod hall.

“At that moment, I realized, ‘what am I doing in my diocese for these Christians there?’” Bishop Jong  reflected.

He said that in his experience Christian refugees from Iraq have brought “a lot of faith into our Catholic communities that are getting grey, getting older, dying.”

Jong concluded that it will be good for all involved to stress the importance of learning about issues of Christian persecution all around the world in the youth pastoral care in his diocese.

“This global solidarity for our church would be very good because it is also for our faith,” Jong said.

[…]

The Institute for Religious Works, or ‘Vatican bank’. (File Photo/CNA).

Rome Newsroom, Aug 23, 2022 / 05:51 am (CNA).

Pope Francis has ordered that the Holy See and connected entities move all financial assets to the Institute for Works of Religion (IOR), commonly known as the Vatican bank.

The pope’s rescript, issued Aug. 23, clarifies the interpretation of a paragraph in the new constitution of the Roman Curia, Praedicate Evangelium, promulgated in March.

According to Francis’ rescript, financial and liquid assets held in banks other than the IOR must be moved to the Vatican bank within 30 days of Sept. 1, 2022.

The IOR, based in Vatican City State, has 110 employees and 14,519 clients. As of 2021, it looked after 5.2 billion euros ($5.6 billion) of client assets.

Though commonly called a “bank,” the IOR is technically a financial institute, with no branches, working within Vatican City State to provide services to clients, which include the Holy See and connected entities, religious orders, clergy, Catholic institutions, and Holy See employees. 

The IOR saw its number of clients decline by 472, from 14,991 clients at the end of 2020 to 14,519 in 2021. Nearly half of its clients in 2019 were religious orders.

According to its annual report, the financial institution’s $19 million net profit in 2021 was also down from $44 million in 2020 and $46 million in 2019.

In his Aug. 23 rescript, Pope Francis said article 219, paragraph 3 of Praedicate Evangelium “must be interpreted to mean that the activity of asset manager and custodian of the movable patrimony of the Holy See and of the Institutions connected with the Holy See is the exclusive responsibility of the Institute for Works of Religion.”

The decree will force Holy See institutions, including the Secretariat of State, to move their financial assets to the IOR by the end of September. The Secretariat of State is known to have had accounts in Swiss financial institutions, including Credit Suisse, through which the controversial London building investment was initially carried out.

Article 219, paragraph 3 of the new curial constitution says: “The execution of the financial transactions referred to in §§ 1 and 2 is carried out through the Institute for the Works of Religion,” the IOR.

The financial transactions described in paragraphs 1 and 2 of article 219 are the administration and management of the Holy See’s real estate and movable assets and entities entrusting their assets to the Holy See.

[…]