Madrid, Spain, Apr 28, 2020 / 04:27 pm (CNA).- While most of the students at the San Fulgencia Seminary in Cartagena, Spain, returned home when the country declared a state of emergency over the coronavirus pandemic, one seminarian felt a different calling.
With a background in medicine, first-year seminarian Abraham Martínez Moratón asked permission of the rector at his seminary to go back to work as a doctor to help treat COVID-19 patients in the regional healthcare system.
With permission granted, Martínez got in contact with his former employers at Queen Sofía Hospital. He began working March 16 at a facility in Monteagudo.
Martínez shared his experience in an article posted on the Diocese of Cartagena’s website.
“It was a blessing to go to work everyday and going down the Alicante highway to catch sight of the statue of Christ atop Monteagudo mountain. It was a huge gift to meet all the staff, we worked together as a team very well,” he said.
Martínez spent several weeks in Monteagudo and then was transferred to a facility in the Carmen neighborhood in Murcia.
There he was reunited with some of his former colleagues, who were surprised to see him again. “When they saw me they said, ‘This is a mirage, weren’t you in the seminary?’”
Martínez always felt his vocation in life was to help others, and from a young age he wanted to be a doctor. He said that returning to medicine has made him more aware of “growing in holiness day by day, seeing the face of Christ in the patients and praying more for them.”
Martínez said that the experience has reinforced his vocation.
“I want to be a disciple of Jesus, who is the physician of bodies and souls,” he reflected.
“I used to say to God: If I’m already helping you through medicine, why add on more things? But it’s also true that I always told him and I continue to tell him, whatever he wants for me.”
This article was originally published by our sister agency, ACI Prensa. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.
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This photograph taken on March 18, 2022 shows smoke rising after an explosion in Kyiv. – Authorities in Kyiv said one person was killed early on March 18, 2022 when a downed Russian rocket struck a residential building in the capital’s northern suburbs. They said a school and playground were also hit. / Fadel Senna/AFP via Getty Images
Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Mar 18, 2022 / 12:21 pm (CNA).
While it is logistically feasible for Pope Francis to travel to Kyiv, as the city’s mayor has invited him to do, the danger associated with holding any gatherings with him once he got there makes such a visit unlikely, according to the Vatican’s apostolic nuncio to Ukraine, Archbishop Visvaldas Kulbokas.
“Yesterday, three prime ministers arrived to Kyiv — the prime ministers of Poland, Czech Republic, and Slovenia. So, logistically speaking, yes, it is possible to come to Kyiv,” Kulbokas, the pope’s representative in Ukraine, told Raymond Arroyo, host of EWTN’s “The World Over,” on March 17.
“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,” he added.
However, Kulbokas explained, the hope is that a papal visit could involve more than simply a discussion, as can happen readily enough through conventional or online means. Catholics and church leaders would want to pray with him, as would members of the Orthodox Church and other faiths.
While it is certainly something to hope for, he said, the situation is “too dangerous in Kyiv.”
KYIV, UKRAINE – MARCH 18: A woman sheltering in a metro station brushes her daughter’s hair on March 18, 2022 in Kyiv, Ukraine. Russian forces remain on the outskirts of the Ukrainian capital, but their advance has stalled in recent days, even while Russian strikes – and pieces of intercepted missiles – have hit residential areas in the north of Kyiv. An estimated half of Kyiv’s population has fled to other parts of the country, or abroad, since Russia invaded on February 24. Chris McGrath/Getty Images
Unable to leave nunciature
Kulbokas, 47, who is from Lithuania, is currently bunkering in the nunciature in a residential area of the Ukraine capital.
He told Arroyo that because of the danger of missiles, the upper levels of the building cannot be used. Authorities have asked residents to reduce their movements to only essential ones, he said.
Sleep, prayer, and the celebration of Mass are all held in the same rooms with no windows, he said, adding that the situation is “dramatic.” The government has ordered some of the local shops to stay open, he said, in order that food and other necessities may be available to the people. He said that he has assistants who make the trip to the shops to buy food and other supplies.
Kulbokas also revealed to Arroyo that he has not left his residence for 21 days, because of the frequent attacks on the city. You can watch the full interview in the video below.
‘I will try to get them out’
In the interview, Kulbokas spoke about the solidarity he feels with the pope and the wider Church during this ordeal.
He shared a conversation he had with Polish Cardinal Konrad Krajewski about the difficulties authorities were having evacuating children from an orphanage in the city, Kulbokas said. Such an undertaking is extremely complicated and risky because of ongoing Russian missile and artillery attacks and the damage that these have done to the city’s infrastructure.
Cardinal Konrad Krajewski and Major Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk greet children in Lviv, Ukraine. Screenshot from zhyve.tv YouTube channel.
Moved by the dire predicament, Krajewski pledged to take action himself, if necessary.
“Look, Visvalda, if you will see that the situation remains as difficult as it is now for some more hours, then I will come. I will take a car and I will try. I will try to get them out,” the nuncio said the Polish prelate told him. “Even under bombing. Even under shelling. If I die, I die. But at least I will try.”
The exchange made an enormous impression on the nuncio.
Even though he was speaking with a special envoy of Pope Francis, not the pope himself, “I felt his presence,” Kulbokas said.
“He was some 500 or 600 kilometers away from Kyiv, but I was feeling his presence so strongly that it [gave me] courage also.”
Krajewski, who is in charge of the pope’s charitable efforts as papal almoner, will play a prominent role in Pope Francis’ upcoming consecration of Russia and Ukraine to the Immaculate Heart of Mary on March 25.
That day, while the pope leads the act of consecration at St. Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican, Krajewski will do the same in Fatima, Portugal, where the Blessed Virgin Mary first requested Russia’s consecration during her appearances to three children in 1917.
Asked for his thoughts on the consecration, Kulbokas told Arroyo that the war does not just have political and military aspects, but spiritual ones, as well.
The nuncio said he believes that “God wants to tell us something” by allowing this war to occur.
The Blessed Virgin Mary “is the one able to face these satanic deeds,” he said.
Kulbokas added that it is not enough for the pope to consecrate Russia and Ukraine; “all the believers” should join him in consecrating themselves to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, he said.
Dublin, Ireland, Jan 3, 2021 / 08:29 am (CNA).- In an interview with the Irish Times published on Saturday, January 2nd, the Archbishop-elect of Dublin, Dermot Farrell announced that he is looking into major administrative changes in the Archdiocese. Farrell addressed other issues such as priestly celibacy and women priests, but the newspaper’s quotes are too short and confusing.
Currently, half of Dublin’s priests are over 70, many of them retiring in the next few years, while congregations are aging and declining. Also, because of COVID 19, income is down by close to 80 percent, and priests’ income cut by 25 percent.
“I come as a pastor. “ “and I am up for the challenge” Archbishop elect Dermot Farrell pic.twitter.com/lQdlnUQb30
According to the Irish Times, the newspaper held a “lengthy interview by telephone” with Farrell, which turned into two stories published on Saturday, but both were heavily edited and therefore unclear about the true thinking of the Archbishop-elect.
According to the paper, Farrell believes that in a world “where there are fewer priests”, every parish in the archdiocese will have to change and some will amalgamate, but this will be done in consultation with priests and parishioners, not over their heads.
“[It is about] talking to the people, it’s talking to the priests, listening. These are their churches, their faith communities. It’s not going to be the Archbishop, or Archbishop’s House going round saying, ‘Close this church’,” the Archbishop-elect is quoted as saying.
Also according to the Irish Times, the future Archbishop of Ireland’s capital city supports women deacons, “shows some flexibility” about priestly celibacy, and opposes women priests. But the quotes provided by the newspaper hardly include more than a few words and rarely a full paragraph. CNA has reached out to the author of the interview for the full version.
Pope Francis appointed Dermot Farrell (66) of Ossory, Ireland, as the next archbishop of Dublin. The Archbishop-elect is the Finance secretary to the Irish Bishops’ Conference, a position he was appointed to in March 2019.
Shrewsbury, England, Dec 17, 2019 / 02:06 pm (CNA).- Gavin Ashenden, a former Honorary Chaplain to the Queen in the Church of England who was consecrated a bishop in a Continuing Anglican ecclesial community, will be received into the Catholic Church on Sunday.
He will receive confirmation Dec. 22 during a Mass at Shrewsbury Cathedral from Bishop Mark Davies of Shrewsbury.
His wife, Helen, became a Catholic about two years ago in the Diocese of Shrewsbury.
“Having come to believe that the claims and expression of the Catholic faith are the most profound and potent expression of apostolic and patristic belief, and to accept the primacy of the Petrine tradition, I am grateful to the Bishop of Shrewsbury and the Catholic community in his diocese for the opportunity to mend 500 years of fractured history and be reconciled to the Church that gave birth to my earlier tradition,” Ashenden has said.
“I am especially grateful for the example and the prayers of St John Henry Newman. He did his best to remain a faithful Anglican and renew his mother Church with the vigour and integrity of the Catholic tradition,” he added. “Now, as then, however, his experience informs ours that the Church of England is inclined to be rooted in secularised culture rather than the integrity and insight of biblical, apostolic and patristic values.”
Ashenden added that St. John Henry Newman’s experience “also inspires ours, and charts the way to our proper ecclesial home which is the rock that is the Petrine charism of faith and witness in our struggle for salvation and heaven.”
Ashenden was raised in London and Kent, and studied Law at Bristol University. He studied for priesthood in the Church of England at Oak Hill College, and received orders in 1980.
He served 10 years as a parish priest, and taught 23 years at the University of Sussex, lecturing in literature and pyschology of religion. He also earned a doctorate writing on Charles Williams, a writer and member of the Inklings. He was a member of the Church of England’s General Synod for 20 years.
Ashenden was appointed an Honoray Chaplain to the Queen in 2008.
He was consecrated a bishop in the Christian Episcopal Church, a Continuing Anglican ecclesial community, in 2013, while remaining an Honorary Chaplain to the Queen, Christian Today reported in 2017.
In 2017 he resigned from the Royal Household and relinquished his Church of England orders after a passage from the Quran denying Christ’s divinity was read at the Glaswegian cathedral of the Scottish Episcopal Church.
“It should not happen in the holy Eucharist and particularly a Eucharist whose main intention is to celebrate Christ the word made flesh come into the world,” he told BBC at the time.
Later that year, Ashenden left the Church of England, “convinced that the consecration of women to the episcopate represented the replacement of apostolic and biblical patterns with the competing culture of the values of Cultural Marxism, and dissenting from the increasing accommodation of the Church of England to radical secular views on gender.”
His episcopal consecration was announced in 2017.
When a Church of England bishop delivered a sermon while sliding down an amusement park ride built inside of Norwich Cathedral in August, Ashenden told the BBC that the event was a “mistake” that misjudged “what a cathedral is good for.”
“For such a place, steeped in mystery and marvel to buy in to sensory pleasure and distraction, is to poison the very medicine it offers the human soul,” he said.
Ashenden has said that praying the rosary and researching Eucharistic miracles helped lead him to the Catholic Church.
Bishop Davies commented that “it is very humbling to be able to receive a bishop of the Anglican tradition into full communion in the year of canonisation of St John Henry Newman.”
“I am conscious of the witness which Gavin Ashenden has given in the public square to the historic faith and values on which our society has been built. I pray that this witness will continue to be an encouragement to many,” he added.
Ashenden wrote in the Catholic Herald that “I watched as Anglicanism suffered a collapse of inner integrity as it swallowed wholesale secular society’s descent into a post-Christian culture.”
“I came to realise (too long after both Newman and Chesterton had already explained why) that only the Catholic Church, with the weight of the Magisterium, had the ecclesial integrity, theological maturity and spiritual potency to defend the Faith, renew society and save souls in the fullness of faith,” he said.
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