Denver, Colo., Feb 13, 2018 / 02:00 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Last week, a priest wrote to me. He said that as he surveyed the difficulties facing the Church, he was starting to wonder if it had been a mistake to convert to Catholicism.
I felt terrible. At… […]
Mobile, Ala., Feb 13, 2018 / 01:48 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- The U.S. Supreme Court has delayed the execution of an Alabama man who killed a police officer in 1985, on the grounds that the inmate reportedly suffers from dementia.
Vernon Madison, now 67 yea… […]
Washington D.C., Feb 13, 2018 / 12:08 pm (CNA).- The federal budget proposal released by the Trump administration on Monday has been met with worry from U.S. bishops who stressed the need to protect the poor.
“Budget decisions ought to be guided… […]
Vatican City, Feb 13, 2018 / 06:55 am (CNA/EWTN News).- At Mass at Santa Marta Tuesday, Pope Francis concelebrated Mass with the patriarch of the Melkite Greek Catholic Church, Youssef Absi, saying that offering the liturgy together is like an embrace between the two Churches.
“This is what the ceremony of today means: the embrace of the father of a Church with Peter. A rich Church, with its own theology within the Catholic theology, with its own wonderful liturgy, and with a people,” the Pope said Feb. 13.
Speaking in place of a homily, Francis noted how a great number of the people of the Melkite Greek Catholic Church are being “crucified, like Jesus.”
He also said that the Mass was being offered “for the people that suffer, for persecuted Christians in the Middle East, who give their lives, give their goods, their properties, because they are driven away. And we also offer Mass for the ministry of our brother Youssef.”
At the end of the Mass, Patriarch Youssef, who concelebrated, offered his own words to the Pope, saying that he was moved by “his fraternal charity, by the gestures of fraternity, of solidarity that he has shown to our Church during this Mass.”
“We promise to keep it always in our hearts, in the heart of all of us, clergy and faithful, and we will always remember this event, these historical moments, this moment that I cannot describe for how beautiful it is: this fraternity, this communion that binds all disciples of Christ.”
The Melkite Greek Catholic Church is an Eastern Catholic Church of the Byzantine rite in full communion with Rome. It consists of some 1.5 million members and is based in Syria and Lebanon, with most of its eparchies in the Arab world. It also has structures to serve the Melkite diaspora in Australia, Turkey, Canada, Mexico, the United States, Argentina, Brazil, and Venezuela.
On Feb. 12, Pope Francis met with bishops of the Greek-Melkite synod, assuring the patriarch and bishops of his closeness in prayer.
In his speech, the Pope remarked on the presence of their Church in the Middle East, in particular Syria, where their Church “is deeply rooted and performs a precious service for the good of the People of God.”
He also extended his prayer for all the people and priests of the Church throughout the world. “In this difficult historical period, many Christian communities in the Middle East are called to live their faith in the Lord Jesus in the midst of many trials,” he said.
“I sincerely hope that with their testimony of life, the Greek-Melkite bishops and priests can encourage the faithful to remain in the land where Divine Providence has wanted them to be born.”
Francis said that on Feb. 23 he has called for a special day of prayer and fasting for peace, and that on that occasion he would not fail to make special mention of Syria, which has been hit in recent years “by unspeakable suffering.”
Referencing the most recent assembly of the synod of the Melkite Greek Catholic Church, which took place in Lebanon earlier this month, he said that those meetings are both an important moment of communion and when important decisions are made for the faithful.
Among these decisions is the election of new bishops, which Francis said are called to be shepherds, accompanying their people and helping them to seek the things of Christ, not of the world.
“We need so many Pastors to embrace life with the breadth of God’s heart, without settling on earthly satisfactions, without being content to carry forward what is already there, but always aiming high,” he said.
He also asked the bishops and the patriarch, when they return to their offices, to remind the faithful, and the men and women religious, that they are “in the heart and in the prayer of the Pope,” and gave his apostolic blessing.
Seoul, South Korea, Feb 13, 2018 / 05:00 am (CNA/EWTN News).- As the 2018 Winter Olympic Games continue in Pyeongchang, the world is watching Korea for more than just sports.
The sister of North Korean dictator, Kim Jong Un, was present at the games’ opening ceremony where athletes from both Koreas marched together under an inter-Korean flag.
Vice President Mike Pence stated that U.S. policy will remain unchanged after his trip to the region. Pence said, “new strong sanctions are coming very soon and the maximum pressure campaign will only intensify until North Korea abandons its nuclear program” in a post on Twitter on Feb. 12.
As tensions on the Korean peninsula remain high, Catholics there are likely remembering the witness of Korea’s first native-born priest, the martyred Saint Andrew Kim Taegon.
“St. Andrew Kim Taegon exhorted believers to draw from divine love the strength to remain united and to resist evil,” said Pope St. John Paul II on his third and final papal trip to South Korea, in 2001.
Korea’s first priest, Andrew Kim Taegon, was born 1821 into an aristocratic Korean family that eventually included three generations of Catholic martyrs.
Kim’s great-grandfather died for his Catholic faith in 1814, decades before the first Catholic missionary priests arrived on the peninsula from France.
“The first Christian community in Korea [is] a community unique in the history of the Church by reason of the fact that it was founded entirely by lay people,” said John Paul II at the canonization of 103 Korean martyrs, including Andrew Kim Taegon, in 1984.
Andrew Kim traveled over 1,000 miles to attend seminary in Macau. While Kim was away at seminary, his father, Ignatius Kim Chae-jun, was martyred for his faith in 1839.
After Kim was ordained in Shanghai in 1845, he returned to his homeland to begin catechising Koreans in secret. Only 13 months later, he was arrested.
In his final letter from prison before he was tortured and beheaded, Kim wrote to Korean Christians:
“Dearest brothers and sisters: when he was in the world, the Lord Jesus bore countless sorrows and by his own passion and death founded his Church; now he gives it increase through the sufferings of his faithful. No matter how fiercely the powers of this world oppress and oppose the Church, they will never bring it down. Ever since his ascension and from the time of the apostles to the present, the Lord Jesus has made his Church grow even in the midst of tribulations…I urge you to remain steadfast in faith, so that at last we will all reach heaven and there rejoice together. I embrace you all in love.”
During a century in which an estimated 10,000 Christians were martyred in Korea during waves of persecution by the Chosun Dynasty, Christianity continued to grow.
“The splendid flowering of the Church in Korea today is indeed the fruit of the heroic witness of the martyrs. Even today, their undying spirit sustains the Christians in the Church of silence in the North of this tragically divided land,” said John Paul II at the martyrs’ 1984 canonization.
In 1989, at South Korea’s Olympic Gymnastics Hall, Saint John Paul II again pointed young people to look to those martyrs, as the Korean people continued to grapple with the peninsula’s division.
“Your martyrs, many of them of your own age, were much stronger in their suffering and death than their persecutors in their hatred and violence. Violence destroys; love transforms and builds up. This is the challenge which Christ offers to you, young people of Korea, who wish to be instruments of true progress in the history of your country. Christ calls you, not to tear down and destroy, but to transform and build up!” the Pope said.
“The Korean nation is symbolic of a world divided and not yet able to become one in peace and justice,” the Pontiff said on the same papal trip, “yet there is a way forward. True peace – the shalom which the world urgently needs – springs eternally from the infinitely rich mystery of God’s love.”
“As Christians we are convinced that Christ’s Paschal Mystery makes present and available the force of life and love which overcomes all evil and all separation,” St. John Paul II continued. “the Eucharist is the sacrament of Christ’s “peace” because it is the memorial of the salvific redemptive sacrifice of the Cross.”
When speaking of peace on the Korean peninsula, Pope St. John Paul II had the following reminder:
“We must listen carefully to Christ’s words: ‘I do not give (peace) as the world gives (it).’ Christ’s peace is not merely the absence of war, the silencing of weapons. It is nothing less than the communication of ‘God’s love that has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit which has been given to us.’”
Sydney, Australia, Feb 13, 2018 / 12:16 am (CNA/EWTN News).- The bishops of Australia have called on the faithful of the country to begin the season of Lent with four days of fasting and reparation for victims of sexual abuse within the Church.
One su… […]
South Bend, Ind., Feb 12, 2018 / 05:00 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Bishop Kevin C. Rhoades of the Diocese of Fort Wayne-South Bend issued a statement on Thursday criticizing the University of Notre Dame’s recent decision to provide “simple contrac… […]
Tallahassee, Fla., Feb 12, 2018 / 04:55 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- A proposed resolution in Florida would declare pornography a public health risk, allowing for greater education and research into the hazards of porn, especially among developing children and… […]
Vatican City, Feb 12, 2018 / 03:21 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- On Monday, Pope Francis urged all people, and youth in particular, to meet with victims of human trafficking in order to learn more about how to fight the scourge of modern-day slavery.
Youth are in “a privileged place to encounter the survivors of human trafficking,” the Pope said Feb. 12. “Go to you parishes, to an association close to home, meet them, listen to them.”
Change starts with encounter, he said, so “don’t be afraid to encounter them. Open your hearts, let them enter, be ready to change.”
He urged youth who have been victims to speak out to others in order to help protect them and make them aware of the risks.
“Everyone who has been a victim of trafficking is an inexhaustible source of support for new victims and it’s important [to listen to them],” the Pope said, adding that “youth who have encountered organized crime can play a key role in describing the dangers.”
He also encouraged young people to overcome fear and learn the warning signs of trafficking.
Pope Francis spoke off-the-cuff Monday at a question-and-answer session falling a few days after the World Day of Reflection Against Human Trafficking.
During the encounter, Francis received questions from five youth – four women and one man – both migrants and non-migrants, who asked about how young people in the Church can fight the conditions in which trafficking thrives and how they can help other young people from falling into the illusions presented by traffickers.
Pope Francis stressed the importance of encounter. He thanked all the parishes, schools and institutions that listened to his 2015 appeal for every parish, shrine, religious community and monastery in Europe to welcome a family of refugees.
“I ask you present here today to work in favor of opening to the other, above all when they are wounded in their own dignity,” he said.
Social networks and media can also play a key role in helping to create these spaces, the Pope said, explaining that “the internet can offer great possibilities for encounter and solidarity among everyone, and this is a good thing, it’s a gift from God.”
However, these networks can also be misused, he said, noting that “for every instrument that is offered to us, the choice that man decides to make is fundamental.”
Underlying the scourge of human trafficking, the Pope said, is not only a significant amount of ignorance, but also “little will to understand the extent of the problem.”
This, he said, is because it touches our consciences: “A country that does or allows trafficking doesn’t like that this comes to light, because it would embarrass them a lot, so they cover it.”
Hypocrisy from those who condemn human trafficking while at the same time taking advantage of trafficked laborers or sex slaves presents a major obstacle to the abolition of trafficking, he said.
Speaking out against this can be an easier task for youth, the Pope said, because “they are less structured in their thought, less obscured by prejudices, more free to reason with their own mind. Youth don’t have anything to lose.”
He called trafficking a “crime against humanity” and a form of slavery which is “unfortunately increasingly widespread, which involves every country, even the most developed, and touches the most vulnerable people in society: women and young girls, children, the disabled, the most poor, whoever comes from situations of familial or social disintegration.”
“We need a common responsibility and a stronger political will to succeed on this front,” he said.
Pope Francis also highlighted education as a concrete means of helping other young people avoid the snares and illusions of traffickers. He pointed to the example of St. John Bosco, who established schools and a center for prayer and education to welcome boys living on the street.
“Education is the name of peace. Education is also the name of development…never children without an education. This is the first step,” the Pope said.
He also discussed the conditions that can pave the way for trafficking, such as extreme poverty and unemployment, violence, and corruption in government.
For those who have been victims of trafficking, the Church can offer guidance in the healing and rebuilding process, Pope Francis said, explaining that the Church “has always wanted to be at the side of people who suffer, in particular children and youth, protecting them and promoting their integral human development.”
This is especially true for minors “who are often ‘invisible’, subject to danger and threats, alone and manipulable,” he said. “We want, also in the most precarious realities, to be your grain of hope and support, because God is always with you.”
Pope Francis also voiced hope that those who have witnessed the dangers of trafficking would find at the upcoming Synod of Bishops “a place to express themselves, from which to call the Church into action.”
The Synod, which will be held this October in Rome, will discuss young people, the faith, and vocational discernment. The Synod is primarily a gathering of bishops, but about a dozen young people will also participate.
However, some 350 young people will participate in a pre-synod meeting at the Vatican next month. Pope Francis encouraged those present at the trafficking Q-and-A to contact organizers and ask to participate in that event.
Vatican City, Feb 12, 2018 / 03:00 pm (CNA).- A Vatican Court has found two former IOR senior managers liable for mismanagement, and ordered them to compensate the IOR for resulting damages.
IOR is the Institute for Religious Works, better known as “the Vatican bank,” although it is not actually a bank and it does not operate as a bank.
The news of the sentence against the IOR’s former senior managers was delivered Feb. 6 in a short release that provided no names, nor the amount of money to be compensated.
However, it was clear that the managers found liable were Paolo Cipriani and Massimo Tulli, respectively IOR general director and deputy general director until July 2013, when they stepped down following the outbreak of the so-called “Scarano case.”
Msgr. Nunzio Scarano was an official in the Administration for the Patrimony of the Apostolic See, APSA, which does work as a sort of Vatican Central Bank. Scarano was charged with corruption and calumny by a court in Rome and with money laundering by a court in Salerno, and the charges involved the way Msgr. Scarano used his IOR account.
For the record, as a member of the clergy and a Vatican official, Msgr. Scarano was perfectly eligible to hold a IOR account.
In September 2014, after Cipriani and Tulli resigned, the IOR began a civil liability action against them, supported by a comprehensive review of financial investments made by the IOR before mid-2013, the recent IOR release read.
According to the release, the Vatican court ruling “is an important step, illustrating the significant work of IOR senior management over the last 4 years to transform the Institute”, and demonstrates “IOR’s continuing commitment to strong governance, transparency in its operations, and its determination to meet best international standards.”
This court’s ruling was anticipated Feb. 3, during the ceremonial of opening of the Vatican judicial year.
The judicial year is by custom opened by a report by the Vatican Promoter of Justice, who functions as a public prosecutor. The report reviews the court’s work over the prior year.
In his report, Promoter of Justice Giampiero Milani complained about the most recent Council of Europe’s MONEYVAL progress report on the Holy See / Vatican City State. The report urged the Vatican Court to prosecute alleged cases brought to their attention by the Financial Intelligence Authority.
The Promoter of Justice noted that certain slowness is due to the Vatican system of justice, that is intended to protect from allegations until these are proven beyond any reasonable doubt.
Milani then stressed that “two sentenced for self-money laundering” will be delivered in the near future, and mentioned “a judicial civil litigation started toward IOR’s senior managers, charged with mismanagement that caused highly onerous financial loss to the institute.”
Milano underscored that the senior managers “contested the merits of the charges,” and the issue “was complex and widely debated,” and the promoter finally “made an intervention to defend the public interest.”
Within one month, the full sentence will be available, and will clarify why Cipriani and Tulli were found liable for mismanagement.
It is noteworthy that the first IOR Annual report, published October 2013, recorded a 2012 profit of 86.6 million euro, while the 2013 report – issued July 2014 – recorded a 2.9 million euro profit.
The decrease was described as the result of “extraordinary expenses” and “corrections on investment funds managed by third parties” for 28.5 million euros in 2012 and 2013.
Is this the loss Cipriani and Tulli are considered liable for? And how much mismanagement in investments is due to their management and how much is due to those who took the helm of the Institute’s financial operations?
These questions will be filled once the full sentence will be published.
In 2017, Cipriani and Tulli were also found guilty in a Roman court of failing to provide information to another bank on three money transfers.
The sentence had to be read in its entirety: Cipriani and Tulli were found guilty of 3 out of 9 charges, and they were minor charges, compared to those that began the trial.
That story began in 2010, with a decision by an Italian prosecutor to preventively seize money transferred by the IOR.
According to the prosecutor, the IOR did not fulfill its obligation of “reinforced due diligence” when it transferred 20 million euro to JP Morgan and 3 million euro to Banca del Fucino from a bank account the Vatican financial institute held in the bank Credito Artigiano. At the time, the IOR was considered an entity in a non-European jurisdiction, that is “not equivalent” to the Italian jurisdiction.
The Vatican then adopted law n. 127, that is the first Vatican anti-money laundering law. Because of this, the Italian prosecutor revoked the seizure, as “there is no possibility of application, even because of new occurring facts.” That is, the seizure revocation was motivated by the adoption of a general law. Was it really sufficient to fulfill the requirements?
In the meantime, the Holy See carried forward its anti-money laundering reform: “law 127” was replaced by a new law, following recommendations expressed by Council of Europe’s committee MONEYVAL, which the Holy See joined in 2011.
The new anti-money laundering law eventually led to the design of a brand new financial oversight system, and to the strengthening of the Financial Intelligence Authority.
The change of pace given by the developments on new anti-money laundering law indicates the passage from a first phase focused on designing the anti-money laundering system to a second phase with a more stably designed system.
This second phase was marked by the issuance of Law n. 18 Oct. 2013, a comprehensive law governing the Vatican’s financial system, and by the strengthening of the Financial Intelligence Authority via new statutes approved Nov. 2013. The same year, the Financial Intelligence Authority and its Italian counterpart signed a Memorandum of Understanding.
The funds were repatriated to the Vatican Nov. 2014. In a release, the IOR underscored that “the repatriation” of the funds was possible thanks to “the introduction of a fully fledged anti-money laundering and supervisory system in the Holy See in 2013.”
Despite the fact that the funds had been repatriated, the trial against Cipriani and Tulli went on. The investigation started over an alleged lack of information on 155 transfers. In the end, the Italian prosecutor focused just on a few transfers lacking sufficient information.
So, beyond the 23 million transfer, the IOR was investigated for a 220,000 euro transfer operated by a certain Giacomo Ottonello; for a 100,000 euro transfer operated by a certain Giuseppina Mantese; for a 120,000 euros transfer operated by the Little Apostoles of Charity; for a 66,133 euros money transfer operated by Antonio D’Ortenzio; for a 70,000 euros transfer operated by Lelio Scaletti, who served as IOR general director; for a 100,000 euros transfer operated by Lucia Fatello; and 250,000 money transfer operated by “La Civiltà Cattolica”.
While the Vatican’s legal framework had changed, the trial went on. However, the court could only focus on minor issues, while finding Cipriani and Tulli not guilty of money laundering.
As the civil trial in Italy had a generally positive outcome, it is unclear why the Vatican prosecutor found the two former managers liable for mismanagements, especially considering that no investment could be undertaken without the approval of the IOR’s Council of Superintendency.
The IOR’s internal procedures will continue change. The Council of Superintendency met this week, and approved some reforms to the 1990 modification of the IOR’s statutes. According to sources, the reform will eliminate the college of auditors and will establish a new overseeing body within the Institute’s ranks.
This reform must be approved by the Cardinal’s Commission, chaired by Cardinal Santos Abril y Castello.
© Catholic World Report