Bishop appointed for Canada’s Chaldean eparchy

Cardinal Celestino Aós Braco of Santiago de Chile peaches at a Te Deum service marking Chile’s independence, Sept. 18, 2022 / Iglesia de Santiago

Santiago, Chile, Sep 19, 2022 / 13:06 pm (CNA).

Cardinal Celestino Aós Braco of Santiago de Chile said in a Te Deum prayer service marking the country’s independence that neither violence nor corruption will build Chile. 

The prelate encouraged living centered on Christ to bear good fruit and working together for the common good.

The cardinal gave a homily at the ecumenical Te Deum that was held Sept. 18 in the Santiago Metropolitan Cathedral in the presence of the president of Chile, Gabriel Boric, and his ministers of state.

Chile’s Fiestas Patrias marks the anniversary of the first meeting of the country’s post-colonial government in 1810. 

“Violence does not build. The violent neither make a present nor a future for Chile, nor do the corrupt build it,” the prelate said.

“We cannot make the other person who doesn’t think like us into an enemy. The people voted in the plebiscite and it’s wrong to do violence with insults or threats to those who voted one way or the other,” he stressed.

In a Sept. 4 plebiscite, 62% of voters rejected a draft constitution that created a right to abortion and euthanasia and was supported by Boric. 

The cardinal also encouraged people to live the authentic freedom that comes from Christ, to face the current “cultural, ideological, economic, and social slaveries.”

The archbishop of Santiago stressed that the large voter turnout in the plebiscite is an impressive fact, “but political participation does not end or stop there.”

“Christians should get involved in politics because it is a lofty form of charity. Among us all we have to build Chile, a country of brothers, where no one is unnecessary and no one is marginalized,” he emphasized.

In his homily, Aós encouraged always seeking “prayer, Sunday Mass, and the sacraments, which are not a luxury, but a necessity for all” in order to bear good fruit, united with God.

“There is an unequivocal criterion, by their fruits you shall know them,” the cardinal said.

“The person who lives in violence, who slanders or insults his adversary, who violates marital fidelity, who kills life, who falsifies or lies, does he bear fruit from the good tree or from the bad tree, always peace and good, unity and harmony,” or does he produce “bitterness, disunity, hatred?” the cardinal asked.

The prelate encouraged getting involved in politics to defend the people’s essential rights, such as “dignity, the equality of citizens, seeking the common good, justice and peace, favoring democratic participation, acting with honesty and transparency in the administration of public goods, caring for and fostering life, family, marriage, the right of parents to educate their children, social justice and solidarity, and the defense of peace.”

The archbishop of Santiago noted that “religious freedom is a right of every human being.” Hostility or contempt for religion is not a healthy separation of church and state but virulent secularism, he said.

Aós said that “the big question is what kind of fruit have you borne this year, what are you going to change to bear good fruit. Faith and works are important, it’s not enough to have ideas and beliefs, you have to put them into practice.”

“Let’s not tire of doing good, because if we don’t give up we will reap the fruits at some point,” he remarked.

This story was first published by ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.

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null / Credit: Twitter/Ministry of Education of Bolivia

ACI Prensa Staff, Mar 23, 2023 / 10:35 am (CNA).
Auxiliary Bishop Pedro Fuentes of La Paz, Bolivia, charged that  ideologies are being imposed on Bolivian society, especially in educa… […]

CNA Staff, Dec 11, 2020 / 04:01 pm (CNA).- Cardinal Carlos Aguiar Retes of Mexico City has said he agrees with Pope Francis’ comments on same-sex civil unions, made public in a recently released documentary.

The cardinal expressed his support for the pope’s comment in an interview with Reuters published Friday. The pope’s comments were published Oct. 21 in the documentary “Francesco,” in which Francis was seen to call for civil unions legislation to protect same-sex coupes from unjust discrimination. The pope’s previously unpublished remarks were later found to have been made during a 2019 interview conducted by Mexican television network Televisa and cut from the interview before broadcast.

In the documentary Pope Francis said “What we have to create is a civil union law. That way they are legally covered. I stood up for that.”

“Homosexuals have a right to be a part of the family. They’re children of God and have a right to a family. Nobody should be thrown out, or be made miserable because of it.”

“I completely agree,” Cardinal Aguiar told David Alire Garcia of Reuters Dec. 11.

Cardinal Aguiar said: “That can’t be. It just can’t be,” adding that “If they decide as a matter of free choice to be with another person, to be in a union, that’s freedom.”

In its 2003 Considerations Regarding Proposals to Give Legal Recognition to Unions Between Homosexual Persons, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith taught that “respect for homosexual persons cannot lead in any way to approval of homosexual behaviour or to legal recognition of homosexual unions.”

Even if civil unions might be chosen by people other than same-sex couples, like siblings or committed friends, the CDF said that homosexual relationships would be “foreseen and approved by the law,” and that civil unions “would obscure certain basic moral values and cause a devaluation of the institution of marriage.”

“Legal recognition of homosexual unions or placing them on the same level as marriage would mean not only the approval of deviant behaviour, with the consequence of making it a model in present-day society, but would also obscure basic values which belong to the common inheritance of humanity,” the document concluded.

The apostolic nuncio to Mexico said in October that the Vatican Secretary of State had asked nuncios to share with bishops that the pope’s comments do not pertain to doctrine regarding the nature of marriage as a union between one man and one woman, but to provisions of civil law.

In a 2019 interview, unpublished parts of which were aired in Francesco, the pope commented at different times on two distinct issues: that children should not be ostracized from their families because of their sexual orientation, and on civil unions, amid discussion of a 2010 same-sex marriage bill in the Argentine legislature, which Bergoglio, who was then the Archbishop of Buenos Aires, opposed.

While filmmaker Evgeny Afineevsky told CNA and other journalists that Pope Francis made comments calling for the passage of civil union laws directly to him, it later emerged that the comments were actually part of a 2019 interview of Pope Francis conducted by Mexican journalist Valentina Alazraki.

It was subsequently revealed that several sentences spoken by the pope in the documentary were spliced together, out of context, from the 2019 interview.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that those who identify as LGBT “must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided. These persons are called to fulfill God’s will in their lives and, if they are Christians, to unite to the sacrifice of the Lord’s Cross the difficulties they may encounter from their condition.”

The Catechism elaborates that homosexual inclinations are “objectively disordered,” homosexual acts are “contrary to the natural law,” and those who identify as lesbian and gay, like all people, are called to the virtue of chastity, and called to holiness.

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