Nicaragua’s political tensions need our prayers, US archbishop says

Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Aug 28, 2018 / 03:06 pm (ACI Prensa).- The recent wedding of a young Brazilian woman with terminal cancer was a powerful witness to the sacrifice and permanence of marriage, said the priest who celebrated the sacrament for the couple.

Fr. Mario Silva celebrated the wedding of a young couple, Jessica and Fernando, in the chapel at the Napoleão Laureano Hospital in the Brazilian state of Paraíba Aug. 20.

Silva told ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish language sister agency, that the couple had been civilly married in 2012 and had a three-year-old child.

Jessica, who is now 27, has been fighting a very aggressive form of bone cancer since 2016 and had been hospitalized when the priest was called to administer the sacrament of the Anointing of the Sick.

“That night, she was in a lot of pain, and when I finished administering the sacrament to her, I asked her… if I could do anything else, and she told me she wanted to get married,” Silva said.

“She told me she had a great desire to receive the blessing of God and she knew that was missing. That would be a great healing and grace in her life. She did not want to die without receiving the blessing of marriage, because both were Catholics and had the dream of getting married in order to have a sacramental life,” he explained.

“I called her family and they gave me the husband’s telephone number. I asked him if he were interested in getting married. I began to visit the hospital more often and to go through with the process of determining whether they could enter into marriage or not,” he related.

Fr. Silva obtained the authorization of the Archdiocese of Paraíba to celebrate the wedding in the hospital and processed the couple’s corresponding papers. He interviewed the couple to ensure that they were certain in their choice and that there were no impediments or grounds for nullity.

He also discussed the nature of sacramental marriage with them.

“I emphasized that this was not simply a social event that lasts a night and then people need another one. I told them that marriage is something that they were administering, that they were giving themselves one to another and that I was just an assistant,” he recounted.

“I explained to them about love, fidelity, joy and sadness in sickness and in health. At that moment I turned to speak to the groom: Fernando, you are aware you are marrying Jessica in a very difficult moment in her life. If your love is capable of enduring these difficulties, you will be able to give her a definitive and free ‘yes’.”

During the homily, the priest spoke “about how people have little hope for Christian marriages” and that celebrating the wedding of Jessica and Fernando was a light for the whole hospital. “I think that that was what created such a stir, besides that the bride and groom had a beautiful appearance,” the priest said.

While Jessica rarely smiled while in the hospital, Silva said, “On the day of the wedding, she was smiling and spoke with great ease which was unusual. You could see that she was very renewed.” He said the bride told her that the sacramental wedding “was like starting over or being reborn.”

“Her husband takes very good care of her and wants to accompany her every day. He left his job and everything to take care of her. He gave witness to permanence and the Catholic marriage was a concrete realization of that,” the priest emphasized.

This article was originally published by our sister agency, ACI Prensa. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.

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An image from the Canadian pro-life group Choice42’s animated video encouraging pregnant women to choose life. / Choice42

Montreal, Canada, Jul 5, 2021 / 11:00 am (CNA).

A viral video is challenging society and the media for pressuring women to choose abortion. Its message is simple: Women have an incredible Wonder Woman-like ability to choose life for their unborn baby – and succeed. They can, in other words, choose life for two.

Canadian pro-life group Choice42 released its animated video encouraging pregnant women to choose life on May 29. The short film follows a scared, wide-eyed young woman as she flees from the dark monsters of societal pressure and struggles to climb up a mountain. The video attracted hundreds of thousands of views on social media and was so successful that, on June 28, the group released a version in Portuguese, appealing to countries like Brazil. It empowers women with the truth that, yes, “you can do this.”

EWTN Pro-Life Weekly highlighted a clip from the two-minute video on June 26. 

“So you’re pregnant. You didn’t plan this. You didn’t want it. And now you have a choice to make,” the narrator says as the animation begins. “Take a breath. You can do this.”

“No matter what’s going on in your life, you can rise up and take this on,” she adds. “You can rock this.”

But, the narrator cautions, “I’m going to be real with you.”

“The choices that our society and the media are going to present you with, they’re not all equal,” she says. “Right now, your baby’s heart is already beating. That started about 21 days after conception. We’re talking about another human being here, and not just any human being. Your baby.”

The video goes on to warn that “abortion is probably going to be suggested, even pushed on you” also “by the people closest to you.”

But, the narrator urges, “you’re already this baby’s mother.”

“This child is already here in the world, living and growing inside you,” she says. “And what these people are suggesting to you is that you murder your own baby.”

While the narrator acknowledges that her words might sound harsh, she says, “I’m not going to lie to you. Not when your baby’s life is on the line.”

But pregnant women are “not alone, not by a long shot.”

“Reach out for help if you need it,” the narrator says. “We’ll help you.”

As an organization, Choice42 does just that: It exists to expose abortion for what it is and to empower pregnant women to choose life by providing emotional support, educational programs, and financial assistance.

The founder and director, Laura Klassen, dedicates her time to creating videos like this and others, in which she often wears her trademark pink wig. This one, she said, took six months to create.

“We just thought, why don’t we just put this into a video,” she told EWTN Pro-Life Weekly. “Something really relatable to mostly younger women, and just put that out there so that hopefully we can reach more women with our message even if we’re not talking with them one-on-one.”

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Santiago, Chile, Nov 1, 2018 / 03:29 pm (ACI Prensa).- Three victims of former Chilean priest Fernando Karadima filed a complaint last week against Cardinal Francisco Javier Errázuriz Ossa, accusing him of perjury in the civil suit for compensation for damages filed against the Archdiocese of Santiago.

The complaint was filed in a Santiago court Oct. 25 by attorney Juan Pablo Hermosilla, representing Juan Carlos Cruz, José Andrés Murillo, and James Hamilton.

The legal action states that in September 2015 Cardinal Errázuriz, Archbishop Emeritus of Santiago, gave a statement as a witness under oath which “in the light of subsequent facts constitutes the crime of perjury.”

In his statement, the cardinal said that when he was Achbishop of Santiago, “in June 2006, I did not close the process (against Karadima) but put it on hold; the resignation of the priest from the parish is for them to decide.”

However, several weeks ago an e-mail was seized by regional prosecutor Emiliano Arias Madariaga which Cardinal Errázuriz sent Feb. 1, 2009 to the then-Apostolic Nuncio to Chile, Archbishop Giuseppe Pinto.

According to La Tercera news Cardenal Errázuriz says in the e-mail: “Out of respect for Fr. Karadima, I did not ask the Promoter (of Justice) to interrogate him; I just asked Bishop Andrés Arteaga his opinion. He considered everything to be absolutely implausible. As it was beyond the statutes of limitations, I closed the investigation. That is how I wanted to protect them, aware that my way of proceeding, if the accusers would one day bring the case to the press, would turn against me.”

Based on this, the complainants are asking the Public Prosecutor’s Office to issue a summons to Cardinal  Errázuriz as the accused, and as witnesses Archbishop Pinto; the minister of the Court of Appeals, Juan Manuel Muñoz; Cardinal Ricardo Ezzati Andrello of Santiago; and the Auxiliary Bishop of Santiago,  Andrés Arteaga Manieu.

This complaint relates to the lawsuit for “moral damages” against the Archdiocese of Santiago filed in 2015 by Cruz, Murillo, and Hamilton, in which they ask for 450 million pesos (about $640,000)  in compensation, in addition to a public apology from the Church for the alleged cover-up of abuse committed by Karadima.

Regarding the e-mail by Cardinal Errázuriz, according to El Mercurio news, the Court of Appeals “did not accept the request to incorporate the document made ad videndi (in order to be seen) by the plaintiffs’  counsel at the hearing of the case, given that it was not added in a timely or legal manner to the case” and so could not be used as evidence.

The Court of Appeals also denied the request by the Archdiocese of Santiago for the court to to ask the Vatican to provide all the documentation from the canonical investigation surrounding Karadima compiled in the report by Archbishop Charles Scicluna.

Karadima was  found guilty  of sexual abuse by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in 2011.

On Oct. 26, the Santiago Court of Appeals rejected the appeal by the Karadima victims which sought to cancel a Nov. 20 conciliation hearing the civil courts ordered in the lawsuit against the Archdiocese of Santiago for cover-up.

The appeal filed Oct. 24 argued that the process of conciliation would be very trying for the victims. However, the president of the Ninth Chamber of the Court of Appeals, Miguel Vasquez, explained to the press that this action “is not a way to reject a conciliation.”

That is, the way to proceed is “formally to formulate it at the hearing, or simply not make any presentation.”

This article was originally published by our sister agency, ACI Prensa. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.

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