Europe

Bergamo, Italy, May 19, 2018 / 06:01 am (CNA/EWTN News).- The mortal remains of St. John XXIII will spend more than two weeks away from the Vatican on a “peregrination” to the northern Italian towns where he grew up and served as a priest, the Diocese of Bergamo stated.

Exposed for veneration at an altar inside St. Peter’s Basilica, the saint’s body will return to his home diocese May 24-June 10 marking the 55th anniversary of his death and the publication of his encyclical on establishing universal peace, Pacem in terris.

The trip was announced last year after Pope Francis approved a request by the Bergamo diocese. It will includes stops at various places in the diocese, where St. John XXIII served as a priest for more than 20 years, and in the town of Sotto il Monte, where he was born.

The theme of the visit, “We start from the land where I was born and then continue up to heaven,” was modified from a quotation of St. John XXIII where he referenced a line from the Imitation of Christ by Thomas à Kempis: “Dimitte omnia et invenies omnia – Leave everything and you will find everything.”  

The schedule for the pilgrimage of “Good Pope John,” will begin May 24, when the reliquary containing his body will arrive at the city center in Bergamo.

Following, the body will be transferred to a local prison, recalling the time he visited a prison in Rome and said: “I put my eyes in your eyes, I put my heart next to your heart,” stated a press release from the Diocese of Bergamo.

The reliquary will then be moved to a local seminary dedicated to the saint. At 9:00 p.m. that day the relics will be solemnly welcomed in the Bergamo cathedral.

It will remain at the cathedral through May 27, when it will be brought to a new hospital, also dedicated to the saint, to recall his historic visit to the sick of the Bambino Gesu hospital in Rome.

From there the body will be brought to the Sanctuary of the Madonna of Cornabusa, to whom St. John XXIII was especially devoted. In 1908, when he was a young priest, he was present for the coronation of the Marian image. He later also presided over the 50th anniversary Mass of the coronation in 1958, just months before he was elected pope.

The body will then stop at the Franciscan monastery at Baccanello. In the evening a candlelit procession will accompany the body from the church of Carvico, where the saint was confirmed, to Sotto il Monte, where he was born. The relics will remain in the church of the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Peace for veneration until June 10.

St. John XXIII was born Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli in Sotto il Monte Nov. 25, 1881, as the fourth of 13 children. He was ordained a priest of the Bergamo diocese in 1904, at the age of 22, serving there until he was selected for the Vatican’s diplomatic corps and consecrated a bishop in 1925.

In 1953 he was made a cardinal and appointed Patriarch of Venice. He was elected Bishop of Rome Oct. 28, 1958. He is most remembered for his 1963 encyclical Pacem in terris and for calling the Second Vatican Council.

He was beatified in 2000 and canonized April 17, 2014. While two miracles are typically required for a non-martyr saint to be canonized, in the case of John XXIII, Pope Francis waived the rule and allowed him to be canonized with just one miracle formally acknowledged by the Vatican.

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London, England, May 18, 2018 / 01:13 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- After debate this week, the Guernsey legislature has moved to reject a proposed legalization of physician assisted suicide on the island, drawing praise from the local bishop.

“Delighted… […]

Rome, Italy, May 18, 2018 / 11:41 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Cardinal Darío Castrillón Hoyos, a Colombian and a former head of the Pontifical Commission Ecclesia Dei and of the Congregation for Clergy, died in Rome early Friday morning at the age of 88.

Castrillón, who served as the pontifical commission’s president from 2000 until his retirement in 2009 at the age of 80, was instrumental in the promulgation of Summorum Pontificum, Benedict XVI’s 2007 motu proprio which acknowledged the right of all priests of the Roman Rite to say Mass using the Roman Missal of 1962.

Pope Francis sent his condolences for Castrillón’s death in a telegram May 18, noting the late cardinal’s “generous service to the Church.”

Imploring the intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the pope prayed that the cardinal would be welcomed into joy and eternal peace with the Lord; he also sent his “apostolic blessing to those who share the sorrow of the loss of such a worthy servant of the Gospel.”

Archbishop Oscar Urbina Ortega of Villavicencio, president of the Colombian bishops’ conference, prayed that the Risen Christ would “welcome into the eternal kingdom him who generously served as Pastor of the people of God.”

Born in Medellin July 4, 1929, Castrillón studied at seminaries in Colombia and at Rome’s Pontifical Gregorian University, receiving a doctorate in canon law. He also studied religious sociology, political economics, and business ethics.

He was ordained a priest  of the Diocese of Santa Rosa de Osos Oct. 26, 1952, at the age of 23. From 1954-1971 he served at two rural parishes in the diocese and was an official of its curia.

He was appointed Coadjutor Bishop of Pereira in 1971, and succeeded as ordinary in 1976. He remained there until his appointment as Archbishop of Bucaramanga in 1992, where he continued to serve until 1996.

It is said that during his time as bishop in Colombia he would sometimes walk around the streets at night to feed abandoned children and is reported to have entered the home of drug lord Pablo Escobar while disguised as a milkman to demand that Escobar confess his sins.

He incurred disapproval, however, after admitting that he had accepted money from Escobar’s cartel, which most Colombian bishops had refused. He defended the action, saying the money was used for charitable purposes, keeping it from being spend on illegal activities.

He also said at a meeting of the bishops of Latin America in 1984 that he had warned the cartel members that giving money “would not save their souls.”

From 1983-1991 he served as secretary general of the bishops’ conference of Latin America.

At a January 1968 meeting in Lima, Castrillón was among several bishops who denounced liberation theology in Latin America.

In 1996 he was called to work at the Vatican as pro-prefect of the Congregation for Clergy, and two years after was made a cardinal and prefect of the congregation. He remained head of the congregation until 2006.

Castrillón also served as president of the Pontifical Commission Ecclesia Dei from 2000 until his 2009 retirement. The commission is responsible for institutes and communities which use as their proper Rite the extraordinary form of the Roman rite (the Roman Missal of 1962). It is also responsible for discussion with the Society of St. Pius X (SSPX), a priestly fraternity which is in an irregular situation and whose priests do not legitimately exercise their ministry.

While he was president of Ecclesia Dei, he oversaw the regularization of a traditionalist priestly society in Brazil, which became the Apostolic Administration of St. John Vianney, and of the Transalpine Redemporists (the Sons of the Most Holy Redeemer). It was also during his tenure that the excommunications of the SSPX bishops who were illicitly consecrated in 1988 were remitted.

In 2003, Castrillón celebrated the first Pontifical Mass in a Major Basilica since the liturgical reform which followed the Second Vatican Council, at St Mary Major.

He was criticized in 2010 for a letter he had written in 2001, as prefect of the Congregation for Clergy, in which he congratulated a French bishop for not reporting a priest to the authorities for sexual abuse of a minor.

Bishop Pierre Pican, who had received a suspended three-month jail sentence for his failure to report the abuse, had admitted in court that he had kept the priest in parish work even though he had privately admitted to committing acts of abuse.

In the letter, the cardinal wrote that Pican “acted well,” and that he was pleased that a fellow bishop “preferred prison to denouncing his son and priest.”

Castrillón went on to say that he believed relations between a bishop and his priests were more than professional but had “very special links of spiritual paternity,” which therefore did not oblige bishops to testify against their priests.

Castrillón’s funeral Mass will take place in St. Peter’s Basilica May 19. Cardinal Angelo Sodano, dean of the College of Cardinals, will be the principal celebrant. As customary for the funerals of cardinals, Pope Francis will preside over the final commendation.

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Stockholm, Sweden, May 17, 2018 / 04:54 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- A town in southern Sweden granted permission this week to allow Islamic calls to prayer for the local mosque – a move some are calling controversial in light of the town’s previous denial of the use of bells by the Catholic parish.

Local police approved the mosque’s adhan – or call to worship – in the town of Vaxjo, more than 250 miles southwest of Stockholm, on Tuesday. The May 15 permit requires that the Islamic call to prayer, which is recited by the muezzin, does not exceed a certain level of decibels, so as not to disturb residents, and will take place every Friday for almost four minutes.

The permit will be valid for one year.

The allowance has drawn questions from the local Catholic church, St. Michael’s, whose pastor Fr. Ingvar Fogelqvist said that previous requests to ring the church bells were denied in both the 1990s and the 2000s. The Catholic church is less than a mile from Vaxjo’s mosque.

“It is a matter of fairness and with the decision granting the mosque permission to do a call to prayer, we have discussed the possibility of applying again,” Fogelqvist said, according to the Local.

Fr. Fogelqvist further noted that church’s bells are small and “would make the Catholic Church a bit more visible here in the community,” although there is a long process of seeking permission for such a request. He additionally remarked that the church may reapply for an approval of church bells to mark Sunday Masses and special occasions, such as funerals.

The permit allowing Islamic calls of prayer in Vaxjo comes just months ahead of Sweden’s September general elections, and some politicians are speaking out on the matter.

Prime Minister Stefan Lofven of the Social Democrats party stated that “society in Sweden is built on having different religions,” and saw the permit as a step toward ending segregation.

However other politicians, such as Ebba Busch Thor of the Christian Democrats, said that “people shouldn’t have to hear it [calls to prayer] in their homes.”

Other local politicians have found the move controversial, including Vaxjo’s conservative moderate’s city council, Anna Tenje, who said the permit “will not strengthen integration,” but would rather “risk pulling the city further apart,” according to TT news agency.

One spokesman from the local Muslim community in Vaxjo, Avdi Islami, viewed the call of prayer as a way of celebrating differences, saying that it is “better to think of the differences as making us stronger.”

Two other towns in Sweden have made similar allowances for mosques’ call to prayer, including Botkyrka, a suburb of Stockholm, and Karlskrona, a town in the southeast.

However, a poll found that 60 percent of its participants wanted to prohibit Islamic calls of prayer at mosques in Sweden, according to research conducted by the social research company SIFO.

According to the Swedish Agency for Support to Faith Communities, there are approximately 400,000 Muslims in Sweden. There are a little more than 113,000 Catholics, and most Swedes are Lutheran.

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Dublin, Ireland, May 17, 2018 / 12:36 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Eliminating Ireland’s constitutional protection of life inside the womb would have negative consequences on not only the unborn, but on women and society, said an Irish bioethicicst and m… […]

Dublin, Ireland, May 17, 2018 / 03:02 am (CNA/EWTN News).- With a referendum vote that could legalize abortion in Ireland just days away, the country’s clergy and Church leaders are asking the world for prayers.

In a video message posted to YouT… […]

London, England, May 15, 2018 / 05:07 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Caps on Catholic enrollment in government-funded Catholic schools in England and Wales will continue, despite the ruling party’s campaign pledge to end the limits.

Catholic leaders react… […]

Dublin, Ireland, May 15, 2018 / 05:00 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Less than two weeks before a historic vote on whether to allow increased access to abortion in Ireland, thousands of people gathered on Saturday for a final pro-life rally in the capital city o… […]

Rome, Italy, May 14, 2018 / 03:07 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Pope Francis said Monday he is worried that youth are too enmeshed in a virtual world of cell phones and other technology, separated, in particular, from the real human contact experienced by perfo… […]

Muenster, Germany, May 14, 2018 / 02:28 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- The unresolved debate over a proposal to allow Protestant spouses of Catholics to receive communion in German dioceses under some limited circumstances has gathered steam after the country’s president waded into the debate at the major national Catholic conference in the town of Münster.

The planned proposal has been championed by  Cardinal Reinhard Marx of Munich and Freising, president of the German bishops’ conference, who announced in February that the conference would publish a pastoral handout for married couples that allows Protestant spouses of Catholics “in individual cases” and “under certain conditions” to receive Holy Communion, provided they “affirm the Catholic faith in the Eucharist”.

Subsequently, seven German bishops, led by Cardinal Rainer Woelki of Cologne, ask the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith for clarification, asking whether the question of Holy Communion for Protestant spouses in interdenominational marriages can be decided on the level of a national bishops’ conference, or if rather, “a decision of the Universal Church” is required in the matter.

Speaking in an interview with EWTN this week, Cardinal Woelki reaffirmed his position, calling for all parties to “consider and recognize that the Eucharist is ordered to the unity of the creed”.

The Katholikentag event drew several tens of thousands of Catholics from German-speaking Europe to Münster May 9-11, and saw not only politicians and Cardinals Marx and Woelki restating and clarifying their respective positions, but provided a stage to Germany’s president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, saying, in the keynote speech that opened the event: “Let us seek ways of expressing the common Christian faith by sharing in the Last Supper and Communion. I am sure: Thousands of Christians in interdenominational marriages are hoping for this”.

Similarly, Cardinal Marx stated that he hoped there soon would be a solution to the Communion debate, declaring May 9: “When someone is hungry and has faith, they must have access to the Eucharist. That must be our passion, and I will not let up on this.”

A peculiarly polemical form of this “hunger” caused something of a public scandal shortly after, when an official panel discussion played host to one celebrity’s demand to be “handed that wafer [the Most Blessed Sacrament]” since he pays for it with his Church tax.

Speaking on stage with Cardinal Woelki, the comedian and TV personality Eckart von Hirschhausen sharply criticised the Catholic Church’s teaching – to applause from the predominantly Catholic audience – saying, “I don’t see the point of a public debate about wafers” since climate change, on his view, was a “far more serious” issue.

Since he, as a Protestant spouse to a Catholic, pays Church tax and thus considered himself “a major sponsor”, the Church had “better happily hand out a wafer for it, or give me back my money!”, demanded von Hirschhausen, to an applauding crowd.

The crowd’s mood notwithstanding, Cardinal Woelki politely but firmly disagreed. “As a Catholic, I would never speak of a wafer. Using this concept alone demonstrates that we have a very different understanding” of what the Archbishop of Cologne then reminded the audience “is the Most Blessed Sacrament”, in which “Catholics encounter Christ Himself”.

With CNA’s German edition, CNA Deutsch, covering the diatribe, Catholics on social media quickly reacted with outrage to Hirschhausen’s pronouncements, triggering an apology on the following day, which in turn was widely discussed.

In an interview with EWTN’s German edition, Cardinal Woelki noted “he ecclesiological import of the Eucharist: “The Eucharist constitutes the ecclesial community of the Church. The Eucharist and the Church’s community are very, very close to one another.”

“Now, of course I understand that this constitutes a certain challenge, and that people may experience it as a form of suffering, in particular in the case of interdenominational marriages, that they may not be able to receive the Eucharist together.”

At the same time, the Archbishop of Cologne said, “it is of vital importance for us to recognize that whoever says ‘yes’ to the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist, acknowledging that Christ is indeed really present, thereby naturally also says ‘yes’ to the Papacy, and the hierarchical structure of the Church, and the veneration of the saints and much, much more”.

Any solution found in Germany could also not constitute some form of exceptionalism, but would have to be fully compatible with the universal Church, Woelki told EWTN’s Christina Link-Blumrath, again making an ecclesiological point: “As the Catholic Church, we also have to point out that we are a part and parcel of the universal Church. There can be no German exceptionalism.”

Just before these latest developments, on May 3, seven German bishops attended an inconclusive meeting at the Vatican to discuss prospective guidelines allowing non-Catholic spouses of Catholics to receive the Eucharist in certain “limited circumstances”, with the Vatican sending the Germans back, saying Pope Francis wants the bishops to come to an agreement among themselves.

Rudolf Gehrig contributed to this report.

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