Pope Francis highlights hope for fifth World Day for Grandparents and the Elderly

Vatican City, Oct 28, 2018 / 07:53 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Pope Francis offered prayers for the victims of the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting in his Angelus address Sunday.

“May the The Most High welcome the dead in his peace, comfort their families… […]

Rome, Italy, Oct 28, 2017 / 10:30 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- In 2003, British Prime Minister Tony Blair was asked about his faith during a magazine interview.  As Blair began to offer an answer, he was interrupted, cut off by Alastair Campbell, the prime minister’s director of strategy and communications.

“We don’t do God,” Campbell said. “ I’m sorry.”

Campbell seemed to know, in the not-so-distant past of European politics, that any public mention of religion was a serious taboo.

This week, as top ecclesial and political leaders gather in Rome to discuss the future and identity of Europe, Vatican Secretary for Relations with the States Archbishop Paul Gallagher said that religion is no longer a forbidden subject in European politics.  

“The days when you could say ‘we don’t do religion’ are over,” Gallagher said.

“Many diplomatic services throughout Europe and elsewhere are now running courses, literally accelerated courses to make up time on religion,” he said, explaining that political leaders are beginning to recognize that “the world is a very religious place.”

Increase in religious affiliation worldwide continues to grow around the world, he said, explaining that this fact “brings with it a very big responsibility for believers.” 

“I think we have to take that responsibility very seriously, and make sure that religion is making a positive contribution, and that religion, and if you want to say even the Catholic religion, is a part of the solution and not the problem.”

Archbishop Gallagher spoke alongside German Cardinal Reinhard Marx at an Oct. 27 press conference on a major conference titled “(Re)Thinking Europe: A Christian Contribution to the Future of the European Project,” taking place in Rome this week, drawing hundreds of high-level European Church and political leaders. 

Running Oct. 27-29, the conference is organized by the Commission of the Bishops’ Conferences of the European Community (COMECE) in partnership with the Holy See, and will consist of a joint, constructive reflection on the challenges facing Europe.

Some 350 participants from 28 delegations representing all E.U. countries are in attendance, including high-level E.U. politicians and Catholic hierarchy, academics, ambassadors, representatives of different Catholic organizations and movements, as well as from other Christian delegations.

Responding to a question posed by CNA on the role religion can play in Europe given its Christian roots, Pope Francis’ continuous call to go back to those roots, and the growing presence of Islam, Gallagher said he believes there is a growing awareness and recognition in the world of “the positive things religion does.”

Although Europe continues to grapple with a high influx of migrants, Gallagher said,“I think we have to stick to principles.  If we believe in religions freedom, then it is valid for a Hindu, for a Muslim or anybody, as it’s valid for a Christian.”

The archbishop also said that, in his view, there is “often a great degree of misinformation and ‘scaremongering’ of the sizes of the Islamic communities around Europe.” The Pew Research Center estimates that Muslims constituted 6% of Europe’s population in 2010.

While Europe works to carve out a path forward, Gallagher said he believes religions will play “a positive role.” This, he said, is first of all because “we do recognize that some of the liberal, secularist thought that was part of much of our societies, is not in good health either.”

He said we have to “combat a lot of political correctness that exists within Europe,” as well as the tendency “to kick religion into the private sphere and not to allow it to be part of the public debate.”

“This is something which we obviously have to work on, and it is a work in progress,” he said. 

Also weighing in on the issue, Cardinal Marx, Archbishop of Munich, President of the COMECE and Coordinator of the Vatican’s Council for the Economy, noted that 20 years ago many people thought “religion would disappear” from society. 

“That was the common conviction of many sociologists and politicians, that society will progress and religion will disappear; secularism.” However, “that’s not the case.”

“Religions will be very important for the 21st century,” he said, explaining that a key question conference participants will have to ask themselves on the role of religions is: “will they be an instrument of peace and dialogue, or of confrontation?”

For Christians in particular, the Second Vatican Council said the People of God, the Church, are “a sacrament of unity for all human beings,” and not just those inside the Church. 

“We are not only for us, and the Pope is underlining this,” Marx said. “We are not narcissistic, inside ourselves, we are part of a solution for all human beings.”

“I do not see that the Church is ‘less interesting’ in the public world,” he said, and stressed the need to continue pursuing a dialogue with Islam, which he noted isn’t new to Europe.

“So for the future, I think the Catholic Church has to play a very important role to find ways of dialogue, ways of relating to this religion, which is very important for the 21st century and Europe,” he said.

The cardinal said his greatest fear moving forward is not so much that religion will be ignored or eradicated, but that “it will be instrumentalized for other reasons, for political reasons. That will be perhaps the great fear for the 21st century.”

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Rome, Italy, Sep 11, 2018 / 03:58 pm (CNA).- While the current sex abuse crisis is tantamount to the Church’s own ‘9/11,’ Catholics can maintain hope if they remain focused on seeking God above all else, said Archbishop Georg Gänswein, personal secretary of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI.
 
“I perceive this time of great crisis, which today is no longer hidden from anyone, above all as a time of Grace, because in the end it will not be any special effort that will free us, but only ‘the Truth,’ as the Lord has assured us,” the archbishop said.
 
Gänswein, who is prefect of the Papal Household, spoke at a Sept. 11 presentation of the German edition of Rod Dreher’s recent book, “The Benedict Option.”
 
In that book, he said, Dreher notes “that the eclipse of God does not mean that God no longer exists. Rather, it means that many no longer recognize God, because shadows have been cast before the Lord.”
 
Today, Ganswein reflected, “it is the shadows of sins and of transgressions and crimes from within the Church that for many darken His brilliant presence.”
 
The archbishop noted the timing of the presentation, which fell on the 17th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks in the United States.
 
He drew attention to “the report of the Grand Jury of Pennsylvania, on which now the Catholic Church too must cast a horrified glance at what constitutes its own ‘9/11,’ even if this catastrophe unfortunately is not only occurred on a single day, but over many days and years, and affecting countless victims.”
 
Ganswein clarified that he was “neither comparing the victims nor the numbers of abuse cases in the Catholic Church with those 2,996 innocent people who lost their lives in the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon on September 9, 2001.”
 
However, he said, the reality of the souls damaged by the actions of Catholic priests in the U.S. is catastrophically grave.
 
Benedict XVI had warned in vain about this damage to souls when he lamented to the U.S. bishops in 2008 “the enormous pain that your congregations have suffered as clergy have betrayed their priestly duties and responsibilities through such gravely immoral behavior,” Ganswein said.
 
He reflected on other words from Pope Benedict XVI that shed light on the current crisis in the Church. Speaking to journalists onboard a flight to Fatima in 2010, Benedict had cautioned, “The Lord told us that the Church would constantly be suffering, in different ways, until the end of the world… attacks on the Pope and the Church come not only from without, but the sufferings of the Church come precisely from within the Church, from the sin existing within the Church.”
 
Five years earlier, as a cardinal reflecting on the Stations of the Cross, Benedict – then Josef Ratzinger – had observed, “How much filth there is in the Church, and even among those who, in the priesthood, ought to belong entirely to him!”
 
Even before the recent revelations of sex abuse and cover-up, people have been leaving the Church in drastic numbers in some countries, Ganswein said, pointing to recent statistics indicating that “of the Catholics who have not yet left the Church in Germany, only 9.8 percent still meet on Sunday” for Mass.
 
In his book, Dreher highlights the monasteries founded by St. Benedict in the 500s as a template for preserving culture amid social turmoil.
 
But in implementing this model, Gänswein said, it is important to note Pope Benedict’s observation that “it was not [the monks’] intention to create a culture nor even to preserve a culture from the past.” Rather, their motivation was simply to seek God.
 
This is the task for those today who hope to contribute to the rebuilding of the Church, the archbishop said.
 
“If the Church does not know how to renew itself again this time with God’s help, then the whole project of our civilization is at stake again. For many it looks as if the Church of Jesus Christ will never be able to recover from the catastrophe of its sin – it almost seems about to be devoured by it.”
 
But ultimately, Catholics have hope in the promise of the Christ, that sin will never prevail over the Church, he said.
 
Pope Benedict recognized this truth as well, in the first Mass of his papacy, when he said, “[T]he Church is alive. And the Church is young. She holds within herself the future of the world and therefore shows each of us the way towards the future… The Church is alive – she is alive because Christ is alive, because he is truly risen.”
 
With this reality in mind, Catholics can face the future with hope, Archbishop Ganswein said, praying that the present crisis may be transformed a time of purification and renewal.
 
“Even the satanic ‘9/11’ of the Universal Catholic Church cannot weaken or destroy this truth, the origin of its foundation by the Risen Lord and Victor.”
 
 
Translations from German by Anian Christoph Wimmer

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