Pope Francis names Filipino priest an auxiliary bishop of Sacramento

Vatican City, May 16, 2020 / 09:52 am (CNA).- The coronavirus emergency is also causing a food-related crisis, Vatican officials said Saturday, encouraging people to do their small part to help those who are going hungry.

“What happens now with the coronavirus crisis is it is increasing food-related problems,” Fr. Augusto Zampini-Davies said during a livestreamed press conference May 16.

“We know the value of a society is determined by how we treat the poorest, the most vulnerable, so what are we going to do for all these people, who, apart from the health issues, are suffering from hunger or food-related problems?” he asked.

Zampini-Davies is adjunct secretary of the Vatican’s Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development. He said the COVID-19 emergency is affecting food availability on many levels of society: for example, children who rely on school lunches are going hungry while schools are closed, and supply chains are being impacted by restrictions on imports and exports.

There are also millions of people who have lost their jobs or are being prevented from working by measures intended to control the health emergency, he noted. And this often means going hungry.

What happens to the millions of people who are helped neither by the market nor by the state, but we are forcing them to stay home? the priest asked. “What happens to these people? We cannot force them to stay at home without any support.”

Responding to a question about Pope Francis’ proposal for a “universal basic wage,” Zampini-Davies said it is “one tool” that has been used in the past to help confront emergency economic situations.

“As a tool, it has its pros and cons,” he said, but “if we want to promote health for everybody, we need to do something.”

“We cannot remain indifferent,” he said. “All the structures of society are being challenged at the moment, so what we are trying to do is to implement the preferential option for the poor, which is a fundamental element and an ethical imperative.”

A food crisis is one of the issues the Vatican’s new COVID-19 Commission is considering how to combat in the wake of the coronavirus.

The commission is under the auspices of the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development, headed by Cardinal Peter Turkson, and is intended to work for about one year.

Turkson noted May 16 that “COVID-19 started as a healthcare issue; but it has affected drastically the economy, jobs/employment, lifestyles, food security, the primary role of Artificial Intelligence and internet security, politics, governance and policies (nationalistic or open and in solidarity), research and patents.”

“Hardly any aspect of human life and culture is left unscathed by this pandemic.”

The commission is “an organ of the Holy See to occupy itself with the multifaceted COVID-19 pandemic.”

Zampini-Davies said FAO estimates 800 million people around the world were already “chronically hungry.”

“However … there is hope, because this terrible situation can be an opportunity to change,” he said.

He made some suggestions of actions to be taken on the international level, but also highlighted how “ordinary people” can help by reducing food loss and waste, and by changing their diets to include more seasonal food and fewer high polluting products.

He pointed to St. Therese of Lisieux for her example that “every small gesture of care counts” and noted that the pandemic has shown “we do not need as many things as we think. We can do more with less.”

Aloysius John, secretary general of Caritas Internationalis, the largest Catholic global aid network, said: “as the Holy Father told us, at this tragic moment of human history I want the Church to be present through the work of charity and if you do not do it who will do it?”

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President Joe Biden speaks to members of the press prior to his Marine One departure from the White House on Oct. 20, 2022 in Washington, D.C. / Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images

Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Oct 20, 2022 / 15:36 pm (CNA).
President… […]

Archbishop Domenico Battaglia leads a procession in honor of St. Januarius in Naples, Italy, on April 30, 2022. / Jacob Stein’s Instagram account Crux Stationalis.

Rome Newsroom, May 3, 2022 / 08:10 am (CNA).

For the first time in three years, Catholics held a solemn procession through the streets of Naples on the first weekend of May after the blood of St. Januarius was found liquefied.

Archbishop Domenico Battaglia of Naples opened the safe holding the relic of St. Januarius’ blood in Naples Cathedral on April 30 and found that the blood had already liquefied.

The reputed miracle usually occurs up to three times a year when the archbishop holds up and rotates the ampoules containing blood, revealing that the dried blood has liquified.

In Neapolitan lore, the failure of the blood to liquefy signals war, famine, disease, or other disaster.

Local Catholics gathered at the cathedral after 5 p.m. on April 30 and exclaimed: “The miracle has happened!”

A bust of St. Januarius and the ampoules holding the saint’s blood were then carried in a traditional procession through the narrow streets of Naples from the cathedral to the Basilica of St. Clare.

Jacob Stein, an American, and a friend were visiting Naples when they stumbled upon the procession with the relic of St. Januarius, who is known in Italian as San Gennaro.

“My friend and I looked at each other and said, ‘I guess we are processing with San Gennaro tonight,’” Stein told CNA.

“Shoulder to shoulder, we processed behind San Gennaro who had come from the Duomo [cathedral] and ended at the Monastery of Santa Chiara with Holy Mass. On the streets, many were looking from the windows and balconies. You could hear ‘Alleluia’ and ‘Viva, San Gennaro!’ as we passed the piazzas.”

“The occasional confetti gun went off above our heads, as Neapolitans joined the procession in the many-layered, chaotic yet full expression of their religious procession throughout the small streets of Naples.”

Januarius’ blood also liquefied in May 2020 and 2021, but the celebratory processions were canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The May 2019 procession was canceled due to adverse weather conditions.

During the Mass to mark the liquefaction, Archbishop Battaglia highlighted St. Januarius’ faithfulness to the Gospel by following Jesus to the point of martyrdom.

St. Januarius, the patron saint of Naples, was a bishop in the third century who is believed to have been martyred during the Christian persecution of Emperor Diocletian.

“If we are here tonight it is because Bishop Januarius took this Word seriously, following the Lord Jesus to the end, even to the point of shedding his blood, even to the point of giving his life, knowing that there is no greater love than one who gives his life for his friends,” Battaglia said in his homily.

The archbishop also condemned the violence he has witnessed in the city of Naples since his installation in 2020.

“Too many times in this still short time I have lived here in Naples have I had to caress the faces of young mothers wounded by the unprecedented pain of the loss of their child, killed through no fault of their own, perhaps in the context of an argument between boys,” he said.

The 59-year-old archbishop said that the sign of the liquefaction of Januarius’ blood was an invitation to the people of Naples to work to “stop the flow of innocent blood, the hands of brothers who hurl themselves against brothers, the wounds that tear the social, educational, economic fabric of our city and the whole world.”

He asked for St. Januarius’ intercession to stop not only the violence in his archdiocese, but also to bring an end to the “blood still flowing” in the war in Ukraine.

“How important is all this in such a complex, difficult, heavy time in which the blood of our martyr Januarius, a luminous sign of the blood of the One who loved us by offering Himself for us on the cross, continually reminds us of the blood of so many small, innocent victims of evil, violence, malfeasance, and war,” Battaglia said.

Stein and his friend experienced some of the crime in the city of Naples on a small scale when they were mugged the day after the procession.

“After we recovered, we were walking to the police station to make the formal declaration of the theft. We passed a group of teenagers preparing a processional float with lilies for the Madonna dell’Arco at the start of May. They called out to us, there will be a procession at 4:30 p.m., beginning just around the corner from where we were accosted,” he said.

A local couple also invited Stein and his friend into their home for a few hours and offered them coffee, cigarettes, bruschetta, pasta, and wine.

The liquefaction of St. Januarius’ blood traditionally happens three times a year: the first Saturday of May, Sept. 19, the saint’s feast day, and Dec. 16, the anniversary of the 1631 eruption of nearby Mount Vesuvius.

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