Vatican City, Jan 23, 2017 / 08:24 am (CNA/EWTN News).- On Monday, the Vatican announced that Msgr. Michael J. Boulette, founder of an organization dedicated entirely to giving spiritual direction and training spiritual directors, will now be an Auxili… […]
Vatican City, Jan 23, 2017 / 07:41 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Frequently an outspoken critic against organized crime, Pope Francis again came out with harsh words for those involved in the mafia and other criminal activities, which he said are “stained with blood” and go directly against the faith.
“The phenomena of the mafia, which is an expression of a culture of death, is (something) to oppose and to fight,” the Pope said Jan. 23.
Mafia activity “is radically opposed to the faith and to the Gospel, which are important for life,” he said, adding that true followers of Christ “have thoughts of peace, fraternity, justice, welcome and forgiveness.”
Pope Francis spoke to members of the National Anti-Mafia and Anti-terrorism Bureau during an audience with the organization in the Vatican’s Apostolic Palace.
He initially made headlines regarding the mafia in June 2014 during his visit to the southern Diocese of Cassano all’Jonio, during which he slammed mafia members for being “adorers of evil” and declaring that because they follow a path contrary to the Gospel, they are “excommunicated.”
While the Pope’s words didn’t necessarily imply an official canonical excommunication, they shocked many, especially given the fact that many “mafiosi” claim to be devout Christians and even go to Mass, while at the same time carrying out their crimes.
In his speech to the Anti-Mafia Bureau, Francis pointed to the three main criminal organizations that operate in Italy, mostly in the south: the Mafia, who operate mainly Sicily; the Camorra, who run criminal activities largely in Italy’s Campagna region, particularly in Naples; and the ‘Ndrangheta, who mostly work in Calabria.
In addition to these three main criminal circles in Italy, another more specific organization, the Sacra Corona Unita, operates largely in Puglia, also in the southern half of the country.
These criminal groups are “increasingly assuming a cosmopolitan and devastating aspect” by exploiting economic, social and political weaknesses, which Francis said are “fertile ground to achieve their deplorable projects.”
Now more than ever, increased effort is needed in order to combat the activity and power of these groups, “which are responsible for violence and oppression stained by human blood.”
Society needs to be healed from corruption and exploitation, he said, naming human trafficking and the drug and arms trade as examples. Francis pointed specifically to the impact these have on children, who are often “reduced to slavery.”
Calling organized crime a “social wound,” the Pope said these groups also constitute global challenges that the international community must face “with determination,” and urged greater collaboration among States.
He also turned to the plight of migrants, many of whom fall victim to traffickers, and exhorted leaders “to dedicate every effort especially in combating the trafficking of persons and of the smuggling of migrants.”
“These are very serious crimes that affect the weakest of the weak,” he said, and called for an increase in initiatives aimed at both protecting victims of trafficking and providing assistance to incoming migrants.
“Those who leave their own countries due to war, violence and the persecutions have a right to find adequate welcome and appropriate protection in the countries that call themselves civil,” he said.
All sectors of society, particularly educational programs, families, schools, Christian communities and sporting and cultural activities, ought to promote an honest and fraternal lifestyle, he said, adding that these will “little by little overcome evil and pave the way for good.”
Pope Francis closed his speech pointing to the work many parishes already do in these areas, and prayed that the Lord would give them the strength to continue going forward in their fight against mafia, violence and terrorism.
He assured of his prayers and support, asking that “the just and merciful Lord touch the hearts of the men and women of the various mafias in order to stop, to cease doing evil, to convert and to change their lives.”
“The money of dirty affairs and mafia crimes is blood money and produces an unequal power,” he said, noting that “we all know that the devil ‘enters the pockets:’ the first corruption is here.”
Ann Arbor, Mich., Jan 22, 2017 / 04:00 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- For Catholics, it’s fairly par for the course to be questioned by non-Catholics about the Blessed Virgin Mary at some point.
And that’s probably because the Catholic Church has a … […]
Vatican City, Jan 22, 2017 / 08:05 am (CNA/EWTN News).- In a new interview published Saturday, Pope Francis said he will wait to see what U.S. President Donald J. Trump does before making any judgments, emphasizing God’s own patience with him and his faults.
In an interview with Spanish newspaper El Pais Jan. 20, the same day as the U.S. presidential inauguration, Pope Francis said he doesn’t like to get ahead of himself “or judge people prematurely.”
“We will see how he acts, what he does, and then I will have an opinion. But being afraid or rejoicing beforehand because of something that might happen is, in my view, quite unwise. It would be like prophets predicting calamities or windfalls that will not be either,” he said.
“We will see. We will see what he does and will judge.” The world is so upside down, that it needs a fixed point, grounded firmly in reality: “what did you do, what did you decide, how do you move. That is what I prefer to wait and see.”
Asked if he wasn’t worried about things he had heard about Trump, Francis responded again that he is waiting. “God waited so long for me, with all my sins…” he said.
In the wide-ranging interview, the Pope was questioned about issues ranging from immigration to economics to Vatican diplomacy to the Gospel, among other things.
On the issue of immigration Francis was clear about his position, that “everyone does what they can or what they want. It is a very hard judgment.”
The most important thing is that those in dire need are helped and rescued, he said. After that we should welcome migrants and refugees and help them to integrate into their new country.
In the context of 1930s Germany, where the people were “in crisis” and looking for a charismatic leader, someone who could give them a clear identity, “we all know what happened,” he said. But what is important is that people did not talk to one another, there was no conversation.
“Yes,” borders can be controlled, he said. Countries have a right to control “who comes and who goes, and those countries at risk – from terrorism or such things – have even more the right to control them more, but no country has the right to deprive its citizens of the possibility to talk with their neighbors.”
Asked about Vatican diplomacy and its image, including the public thanks of Barack Obama and Raúl Castro on the one hand, and the parties that criticize the Vatican’s interference, on the other, the Pope said that he asks the Lord “that he give me the grace of not taking any measure for the sake of image.”
“Honesty, service, those are the criteria.” Mistakes are sometimes made, your image suffers, “but it doesn’t matter if there was goodwill. History will judge afterwards,” he said.
For him, he said, the clear, guiding principle for both pastoral action and Vatican diplomacy is that they are “mediators, rather than intermediaries.”
“We build bridges, not walls. What is the difference between a mediator and an intermediary?” he said. An intermediary is someone who enters a business agreement, renders a service and then is compensated, “and rightly so, because it is his job.”
The mediator, on the other hand, “is the one who wants to serve both parties and wants both parties to win even if he loses,” the Pope said. “Vatican diplomacy must be a mediator, not an intermediary. If, throughout history, it has sometimes maneuvered or managed a meeting that filled its pockets, that was a very serious sin.”
“The mediator builds bridges that are not for him, but rather for others to cross.”
Asked if his changes to the Vatican, sometimes criticized both by the more traditional sectors of the church and by the more progressive, are a “revolution of normalcy,” or already contained in the “Gospel’s essence,” as he has said, Pope Francis responded simply that he is a “sinner and not always successful.”
“I try – I don’t know if I succeed – to do what the Gospel says. That is what I try,” he said.
“The true heroes of the Church are the saints. That is, those men and women that devoted their lives to make the Gospel a reality,” he said. “The saints are the specific examples of the Gospel in daily life!”
With the emphasis on going out to the peripheries, how would Francis respond to those Catholics that feel that he ignores the people who have remained faithful to the Church and her teachings, was also questioned.
“I know that those who feel comfortable within a Church structure that doesn’t ask too much of them or who have attitudes that protect them from too much contact are going to feel uneasy with any change, with any proposal coming from the Gospel,” he said.
“The novelty of the Gospel however astonishes because it is essentially scandalous,” he continued. “Saint Paul tells us about the scandal of the cross, the scandal of the Son of God become man. But the evangelical essence is scandalous by those days’ criteria. By any worldly criteria, it is an outrageous essence.”
Once questioned by a German journalist about why he never talks about the middle class, “those who pay their taxes…” Francis said he thinks that maybe he is always talking about the middle class, just without calling it that.
“I use a term coined by the French novelist Malègue, who talks about ‘the middle class of sanctity,’” he said.
“I am always talking about parents, grandparents, nurses, the people who live to serve others, who raise their kids, who work… Those people are tremendously saintly!” he said.
“And they are also the ones who carry the Church onward: the ones that earn their living with dignity, that raise their children, that bury their dead, that care for their elders, instead of putting them into an old people’s home: that is our saintly middle class.”
From an economic point of view, the middle class is vanishing more and more, he said. But “the father, the mother, who celebrate their family, with their sins and their virtues, the grandfather, the grandmother,” he continued. “The family. At the center. That is ‘the middle class of sanctity.’”
A final comment reflected that Francis seems to be a very happy Pope. “The Lord is good and hasn’t taken away my good humor,” he said.
Washington D.C., Jan 22, 2017 / 06:17 am (CNA/EWTN News).- For two Catholic bishops in Virginia, the execution of a man convicted of brutally killing a family of four was a time to reflect on God’s mercy.
“Our Creator, who made us out of love for love, has dominion over all life,” Bishop Francis DiLorenzo of Richmond and Bishop Michael F. Burbidge of Arlington said in a joint statement Jan. 18.
“As children of this loving, merciful God we are led to a profound respect for every human life, from its very beginning until its natural end.”
They said that the death penalty should be abandoned because the state can protect itself in other ways.
“Our broken world cries out for justice, not the additional violence or vengeance the death penalty will exact,” Bishop DiLorenzo and Bishop Burbidge said.
The state of Virginia on Wednesday executed by lethal injection Ricky Gray, age 39.
He and his nephew went on a killing spree in January 2006, murdering seven people in a six day period, CNN reports.
He was convicted of killing a family of four who left their front door open on New Year’s Day 2006. The family had been beaten, bound, and repeatedly stabbed. Their house was then set on fire.
The death sentence concerned the murders of 9-year-old Stella Harvey and her 4-year-old sister Ruby. He was also sentenced to life in prison for killing their parents.
Gray had issued a public apology in the days before his execution, saying, “I’m sorry they had to be a victim of my despair.”
“Remorse is not a deep enough word for how I feel. I know my words can’t bring anything back, but I continuously feel horrible for the circumstances that I put them through. I robbed them from a lifelong supply of joy,” he said in an audio message posted on a website advocating his clemency.
Bishop DiLorenzo and Bishop Burbidge also reflected on the victims.
“We again express profound sorrow and offer our continued prayers for all victims of violence, whose lives have been brutally cut short, and their loved ones, whose grief continues,” the bishops said.
“We pray for a change of heart and a spirt of remorse and conversion on the part of the perpetrators of this violence and ask God to give all of us the grace to work for peace and respect for all life in our communities and our Commonwealth.”
Gray also confessed to the November 2005 killing of his own wife.
His attorneys had filed constitutional challenges with the U.S. Supreme Court against the execution, citing the failure of the lethal drug cocktail to make prisoners unconscious during executions in the states of Alabama, Arizona, Ohio and Oklahoma. The Supreme Court denied a stay of execution.
Lawyers had also appealed his sentence on the grounds that jurors did not receive a clear explanation of the severe abuse that shaped his life and his use of PCP and the drug’s potential to cause psychosis.
Gray’s nephew, Ray Dandridge, is serving a life sentence due to other killings.
Vatican City, Jan 22, 2017 / 04:56 am (CNA/EWTN News).- After his Angelus address Sunday Pope Francis prayed for those who have lost family and friends after the latest set of earthquakes in central Italy this past week, as well as for all those who pr… […]
Edinburgh, Scotland, Jan 21, 2017 / 04:02 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- A 12 year-old boy has been charged with threatening and abusive behavior following an incident on Tuesday at a Catholic Church in Scotland.
A “gang of youths” threw raw eggs and hurled “anti-Catholic abuse” at Fr. Kevin Dow and his parishioners outside St John and St Columba’s Church in Rosyth, 14 miles northwest of Edinburgh, as the churchgoers were leaving Mass the evening of Jan. 17.
Local media report witnesses said about 10 children around age 12 were involved in the incident, which is being treated by authorities as a hate crime. Scottish police said they responded to the complaints and that investigation is ongoing.
People with additional information have been encouraged to contact the authorities.
“It’s dreadfully sad that in today’s Scotland we still have young people who seem to be brought up or encouraged from elsewhere to be anti-Catholic and to do so in an open, intimidating and violent way,” Fr. Dow said following the attack.
There have been several similar incidents in the Scotland in recent years.
In July 2016 young people shouted anti-Catholic chants at a visiting priest in Broxburn, west of Edinburgh.
And in May 2015, a parish in Livingson, also west of Edinburgh, was extensively spray-painted with anti-Catholic graffiti.
Scotland has experience significant sectarian division since the Scottish Reformation of the 16th century, which led to the formation of the Church of Scotland, an ecclesial community in the Calvinist and Presbyterian tradition which is the country’s largest religious community.
When the moderator of the Church of Scotland, John Chalmers, met with Pope Francis in February 2015, he told CNA that such an encounter “means almost the end of that sectarian divide.”
Rome, Italy, Jan 21, 2017 / 10:50 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Saturday Pope Francis encouraged Dominicans to persevere in their good works of the last 800 years, which have been like the “salt” and “light” of Christ, spreading the Gosp… […]
Vatican City, Jan 21, 2017 / 09:45 am (CNA/EWTN News).- In his annual speech to the Holy See’s main court on Saturday, Pope Francis stressed the pressing need for effective education and preparation for the sacrament of marriage – not only to guard against invalid marriages, but also to strengthen the faith of the couple as they prepare for the unique blessings and challenges of married life.
“The goal of this preparation consists, namely, in helping engaged couples to know and to live the reality of marriage as it is intended to be celebrated, so that it is possible to do so not only validly and lawfully, but also fruitfully, so that they are able to make this celebration a stage of their journey of faith,” Pope Francis said.
“In this spirit, I would reiterate the need for a ‘new catechumenate’ in preparation for marriage,” he said in his Jan. 21 address to the judges of the Roman Rota at the Vatican’s Clementine Hall.
“Welcoming the guidance of the Fathers of the last Ordinary Synod, it is urgent to implement effectively what has already been proposed in Familiaris Consortio (no. 66),” he said.
“That is, as for the baptism of adults the catechumenate is part of the sacramental process, so the preparation for marriage must become an integral part of all sacramental marriage procedure, as an antidote that prevents the increase of invalid or tenuous marriage celebrations.”
The Pope delivers a speech to the members of the Rota, a court of higher instance at the Holy See, each January to inaugurate the court’s judicial year.
In this year’s speech, Francis noted that the breakdown of faith, religious values, and belief in eternal truths, particularly regarding the family, has become widespread even among Christians, which can impact the awareness and consent with which people enter into the sacrament.
At the same time, the different backgrounds and experiences of faith of those seeking Christian marriage cannot be ignored, he said. “Some participate actively in parish life; others will come for the first time; some also have a life of intense prayer; others are, however, driven by a more generic religious sentiment.”
“Faced with this situation, we need to find valid remedies,” the Pope emphasized.
The first remedy he proposed is the training of young people: “through an adequate process of preparation aimed to rediscover marriage and the family according to God’s plan,” he said.
The meetings between a priest and an engaged couple are, of course, a fundamental and important part of their preparation. But more than that, Francis said, the period of a couple’s engagement becomes “an extraordinary opportunity for mission” for the “whole community.”
“The Christian community to which the engaged turn is called to cordially announce the Gospel to these people, because their experience of love can become a sacrament, an effective sign of salvation. In this circumstance, the redemptive mission of Jesus reaches the men and women in the concreteness of their love life.”
For many young people, the approach of marriage with all of the changes involved, can be a period of increased openness to a renewal of faith and encounter with “Jesus Christ, with the message of the Gospel and the Church’s doctrine,” the Pope said.
In this regard, teaching the truth about marriage and love becomes extremely important, Francis reminded the judges.
He quoted from Benedict XVI’s last speech to the Rota on Jan. 26, 2013, in which he said that “only in being open to the truth of God […] is it possible to understand, and to achieve in the concreteness of life, even marriage and family, the truth of man…”
“The rejection of the divine proposal,” Benedict said, “in fact leads to a profound imbalance in all human relationships […], including the matrimonial one.”
Pope Francis went on to quote from Lumen fidei, his first encyclical, which says that “Love needs truth. Just as it is based on truth, love can last in time, overcome the ephemeral moment and stand firm to support a common path.”
“If love has no relationship to the truth, it is subject to the changing feelings and does not pass the test of time,” Lumen fidei continues. “True love instead unifies all the elements of our person and becomes a new light towards a great and full life.”
From this perspective, another vital aspect of building up the truth of marriage is in continuing to support and strengthen couples even after the wedding, Francis said.
“You need to identify with courage and creativity, a training project for young married couples, with initiatives aimed at increasing awareness of the sacrament received.”
Often, he said, a young couple is left to themselves, perhaps because they are not even seen in the parish, or the birth of children keeps them busy, “but it is in these first moments of family life they must be guaranteed greater proximity and a strong spiritual support.”
“The Christian community is called to welcome, accompany and help young couples,” by offering them opportunities and tools, aside from just Sunday Mass, he said, including programs for within the parish and within the home.
The Pope concluded his speech by wishing the judges a good new year, reminding them that “it requires great courage to get married in the time in which we live. And the many who have the strength and the joy of making this important step should feel next to them the love and concrete closeness of the Church.”
Madrid, Spain, Jan 21, 2017 / 06:08 am (CNA/EWTN News).- The prison ministry founded by a Spanish Jesuit in the 1960s has had such fruits as a group of inmates donating their own money to help the needy at Christmas, according to the head of the foundation.
At Christmas of 2015, a group of prisoners in the Estremera prison in Madrid did their own food drive to buy non-perishable food with their own money from the prison store, Lola Navarro, president of the Father Garralda-Horizontes Abiertos Foundation, told CNA.
“All the prisoners who participated agreed to deliver the more than 220 pounds of food to the Fr. Garralda Foundation to help those they were thinking of, because they knew that there are people who needed it more than they did.”
Helping prisoners rebuild their lives, overcome addictions, and re-enter the workforce is a challenge that the Father Garralda-Horizontes Abiertos Foundation has been working toward for 40 years.
Navarro said Fr. Jaime Garralda began to work with prisoners and now serves, through his foundation, more than 200 people in prison, halfway homes for parolees, and with workshops on re-entering the workforce.
“Fr. Jaime Garralda, S.J., lived for 16 years in in a shanty town during the ’60s. Many women there wanted to visit their husbands or children who were in prison. Fr. Garralda and some volunteers began to accompany them and began a social action work in the prisons, also addressing all those realities related to the prisons,” Navarro explained.
“We also have the figure of the ‘volunteer resident’, or prisoners who are at the end of their sentence who help others in the prison achieve their goals so they can set out on an itinerary so their stay in the prison is as bearable as possible.”
She pointed out how this is “beautiful, because that person sees that you have helped them and now they’re the ones who get involved with the other prisoners to give back what was given to them, and the horizons that were opened up for them.”
The foundation has a rehabilitation center for prisoners who are addicted to drugs where more than 100 people live, with floors for HIV patients, and they vouch for prisoners who meet certain requirements so they can request a supervised leave.
“We call this assistance “toward freedom” because family members or friends need to give guarantees to ensure that the prisoner’s leave from prison meets some minimum conditions and also that he will return when his permission to leave expires. We vouch for certain people who have no one to turn to and we help make this transition as good as possible,” Navarro said.
She commented that her favorite program is one they do for the children of mothers who are in prison: “We organize camps for the children, outings with the mothers, workshops to lessen the prejudices created by prison, and we help mothers and children have a little more of a normal life, at least for a few days.”
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