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Bayeux, France, Jun 6, 2019 / 02:27 pm (CNA).- Marking Thursday’s 75th anniversary of the Normandy landings during World War II, bishops from across the world said the operations recall the need for peace and the duty of gratitude to veterans.

Some 156,000 Allied forces landed on five beaches of Normandy June 6, 1944 to liberate the European continent from Nazi German occupation. About 4,400 Allied servicemen died that day, and there were between 4,000 and 9,000 German casualties.

Within a year of D-Day, Nazi Germany had been defeated.

Cardinal Marc Ouellet, prefect of the Congregation for Bishops, gave an address June 5 at the Abbey of Saint-Étienne in Caen, not far from the landing sites.

“Seventy-five years after the end of the Second World War, the memory of the victims of this massacre imposes on us a homage of respect and a duty to prevent conflicts by all means,” he said.

“Believing in peace” implies “an increased rational commitment to transform the world according to the imperative of unconditional respect for the dignity of the human person, unfortunately undermined by ideological colonization hostile to the sanctity of human life,” he said.

“In this difficult context, believing in peace also means relying on the efficiency of prayer for peace, since the Spirit of God directs human history towards its transcendent accomplishment with the imperfect but voluntary support of human freedoms.”

Cardinal Ouellet lamented the terrible cost of the World Wars: “The bitter feeling of the monstrous cost of these conflicts remains a heavy legacy that does not erase what has been achieved in the positive and generous achievements in European reconstruction. That is why remembering the end of the last great conflict is a duty of respect for the too many victims of these tragedies and a permanent requirement for reflection and commitment to prevent such disasters from happening again in the future.”

“There is a constant need for reflection and commitment to prevent such tragedies,” he stated. “But man does not seem to have learned much from his past sufferings: we are experiencing a globalization of oblivion and indifference to the victims of today, and conflicts have not ceased to increase and fragment on all continents.”

Archbishop Timothy Broglio of the US Military Services marked the anniversary saying: “On my last visit to Normandy in 2015 I was struck by the number of French men and women who came up to me and said: ‘We will never forget what your countrymen did here.’ Indeed it is important to remember and give thanks for the sacrifices made on the beaches of Normandy and elsewhere in Europe and in the Pacific Theater.”

“We are continually reminded of the commitment of those who have gone before us and we pause on this 6th day of June to give thanks for those who 75 years ago made the ultimate sacrifice on the beaches of Normandy to liberate Europe from the Nazis and to defend the cause of freedom for all humanity. As we pause to honor their memory, we thank them for their sacrifice. As Christians, we pray for the repose of their souls and pray for their families. Can we forget all who lost their lives because of their religion or ethnic group? We recognize that all people are created in the image of God and pledge to live that belief in the day-to-day activities of ordinary life.”

The archbishop said that “Christ reminds us there is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. We give thanks to God Almighty for all the brave servicemen and women who have faithfully kept the Lord’s commandment to love their compatriots even to the point of death throughout the course of our nation’s history from the time of its birth.”

He added that “we ask God that their sacrifice not be in vain. We beg Him to transform our power to turn war into a force for peace, to transform our weapons into plowshares, to give us the ability to negotiate, to talk, and to listen. We pray to remain vigilant against the forces of evil in our troubled world, and to pour our energies into building lasting peace and justice among nations.”

Pope Francis, in a May 31 letter to Bishop Jean-Claude Boulanger of Bayeux-Lisieux, reflected that the Normandy landings were “decisive in the struggle against Nazi barbarism and that they opened the way to the end of this war which so profoundly wounded Europe and the world.”

“That is why I remember with gratitude all the soldiers who, coming from several countries including France, had the courage to commit themselves and to give their lives for freedom and peace. I entrust them to the infinitely merciful love of the Lord, as well as the millions of victims of this war, without forgetting those who, on the German side, fought in obedience to a regime animated by a deadly ideology.”

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Rome, Italy, Mar 25, 2018 / 03:02 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- As the Vatican gears up for the Synod on youth in October, Pope Francis has chosen a group of Italian high school students to write the meditations for his Good Friday Way of the Cross at the Colosseum.

The Pope tasked religion teacher Andrea Monda with choosing and coordinating the 15 students, who attend a classical high school in Rome.

Marta Croppo, 18, is writing the meditation for the 14th station, when Christ’s body was laid in the tomb.

She told CNA March 23 that she thinks Pope Francis wanted young people to write the meditations because of their simplicity and their ability “to communicate another type of message to the world.”

“We are not scholars, and we do not have a theological degree or something like that,” she noted. Therefore, this is “a great occasion for us to talk with simplicity,” relying on our experience of faith and religion in daily life.

Croppo said that in her meditation she did not want to speak about a social problem or “send a message to youth,” but to reflect on more existential themes. “I wanted to emphasize the human side of Jesus, because he is God, but he is human as well,” she said.

“He has suffered, and he has died just like us, so I wanted to talk about this aspect and the fact that he’s very near, [that] he comprehends deeply our condition of suffering and of sorrow.”

In the 10th station Jesus is stripped of his garments. Greta Giglio, 18, said that in her reflection on this station she tried to address present issues, such as immigration, because “immigrants, like Christ in that specific moment, come lacking everything.”

Monda said that he sees the Pope’s choice to entrust young people with the Via Crucis reflections as being in line with the greater focus of his pontificate, “trying to give a voice to those who have no voice.”

In Monda’s view, young people are also often at the peripheries. But Pope Francis says not to speak only about youth or to youth, but to “let the youth talk and then listen to them.”

The last time the reflections for the Via Crucis were written by young people was in 2013, when Benedict XVI asked youth from Lebanon to write them after visiting the country the previous September.

Those meditations were written by 45 young Lebanese between the ages of 17 and 30 and were focused on unity and peace between Christians and Muslims.  

In 2017 the meditations were written by French biblical scholar Anne-Marie Pelletier, who was the fourth woman to do so after St. John Paul II first started the practice, inviting Mother Anna Maria Canopi from the Benedictine abbey “Mater Ecclesiae” in 1993.

In recent years they have mostly been penned by Italian bishops; notably, in 2015, they were written by Bishop Emeritus Renato Corti of Novara, who preached the final Lenten spiritual exercises for St. John Paul II the week before his April 2, 2005 death.

The Roman tradition of holding the Way of the Cross at the Colosseum on Good Friday goes back to the pontificate of Benedict XIV, who died in 1758.

After dying out for a period, the tradition was revived in 1964 by Bl. Paul VI, while under St. John Paul II the Way of the Cross at the Colosseum became a worldwide television event; the Pope himself used to carry the cross.

Now the cross is usually carried by individuals and families – including religious and laity – from around the world.

The Pope personally selects who writes the meditations for the stations, and the choice can indicate issues the Pope wants to zero in on.

In 2017, the Via Crucis at the Colosseum was attended by around 20,000 people.

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CNA Staff, Feb 16, 2021 / 01:03 pm (CNA).- A statement Tuesday from the bishops of England and Wales said they are “distressed” by recent reports that COVID-19 patients are being given “do not resuscitate” orders solely on the grounds of intellectual d… […]