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Pope Francis: ‘Sacramental confession is the way of sanctification’

March 29, 2019 CNA Daily News 1

Vatican City, Mar 29, 2019 / 10:28 am (CNA).- Pope Francis told priests and seminarians Friday that the sacrament of penance is “the way of sanctification” in which miraculous conversions occur.

“Every single confession is always a new and definitive step towards a more perfect sanctification; a tender embrace, full of mercy, which helps to expand the Kingdom of God, the Kingdom of love, truth and peace,” Pope Francis said March 29 at the Vatican’s Paul VI Hall. He was addressing participants in a course on the internal forum organized by the Apostolic Penitentiary.

“Sacramental confession is the way of sanctification for both the penitent and the confessor. And you, dear young confessors, you will soon experience it,” he said.

“As confessors, we have the privilege of constantly contemplating miracle conversions,” Francis said.

“Grace operates within the secrecy of the confessional miracles of which only and the angels will be witnesses,” he added.

Before turning to his prepared text, Pope Francis emphasized the gravity of the internal forum: “This is not a nonsense expression: it is said seriously. The internal forum is an internal forum, and cannot come out into the open.”

“I say this because I have realized that some groups in the Church, appointees, superiors, let us say – mix the two things and take decisions made in the internal forum for those taken in the external one, and vice versa. Please, this is a sin!”

The pope’s discussion of the blurring of the distinction between the internal and external fora would appear to be aimed at religious superiors and seminary formators.

This “is a sin against the dignity of the person who trusts the priest, who expresses their own reality to ask for forgiveness, and then uses it to put things in order for a group or a movement, perhaps – I don’t know, I am making it up – perhaps even a new congregation, I don’t know. But the internal forum is the internal forum. And it is sacred. This I wanted to say, because I am concerned about this,” Francis stated.

Francis then explained that the wisdom of the Church has always safeguarded the sacramental seal with all its moral and juridical strength: “Reconciliation itself is a good that the wisdom of the Church has always safeguarded with all her moral and legal force with the sacramental seal. Although not always understood by the modern mentality, it is indispensable for the sanctity of the sacrament and for the freedom of conscience of the penitent; who must be certain, at any time, that the sacramental conversation will remain in the secrecy of the confessional, between one’s conscience that opens to grace, and God, with the necessary mediation of the priest.”

“The sacramental seal is indispensable and no human power has, nor may it claim, jurisdiction over it,” he emphasized.

Pope Francis said that many perceive the sacrament of penance – and with it a sense of sin — to be in crisis in the contemporary world. To this he said that formation of priests is necessary to overcome the crisis to “offer an ever more qualified service capable of really manifesting the beauty of the Divine Mercy.”

The pope also encouraged priests to frequent the sacrament of penance themselves, as a means of sanctification in order to be better confessors.

“Let us always remember – and this will help us a lot – before going to the confessional, to be first forgiven sinners and, only later, ministers of forgiveness,” he said. “Humbly, like all sinners, we kneel before the confessor and implore for ourselves the Divine Mercy.”

“Sacramental absolution, validly celebrated, gives us baptismal innocence, full communion with God,” he explained.

He said the importance of the “ministry of mercy” necessitates adequate formation of confessors, so that each encounter in the confessional is “always a real meeting of salvation, in which the embrace of the Lord is perceived in all its power.”

“We must always recognize the powerful action of grace, which is capable of transforming the heart of stone into a heart of flesh, of changing a sinner who fled far away into a repentant son who returns to his father’s house,” he said.

“Jesus came to save us by revealing to us the merciful face of God and drawing us to him with his Sacrifice of love,” Pope Francis said.

The sacrament of penance is “the efficacious sign that Jesus left to the Church so that the door of the Father’s house would always remain open and that the return of men to Him would always be possible,” he said.

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Recalling Mother Angelica, prelate says Catholic journalists are to spread the gospel

March 27, 2019 CNA Daily News 0

Vatican City, Mar 27, 2019 / 10:24 am (CNA).- The crisis facing the Church today calls Catholic journalists not only to “relentless and fair reporting” but also to spreading the gopsel, Archbishop Georg Gänswein said in a Mass said in memory of Mother Angelica.

The March 27 Mass at Santa Maria della Pieta in Camposanto dei Teutonici in Vatican City marked the third anniversary of the death of Mother Mary Angelica of the Annunciation, foundress of EWTN Global Catholic Network. EWTN is the publisher of Catholic News Agency.

In attendance at the Mass celebrated by the prefect of the papal household were employees of the EWTN Vatican bureau, various embassies to the Holy See, the Holy See press office, and a variety of ecclesial organizations.

Archbishop Gänswein reflected in his homily on Divine Providence, noting that Mother Angelica founded EWTN on the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe.

He said the faith is brought to us through witnesses, and reflected that Mother Angelica “with visionary genius understood the role you have to play in the new Information Age even the Catholic Church has now entered, whether she wants it or not. And that’s why you are now all called to be witnesses in a completely new and very special way.”

“This role is not necessarily undramatic,” he said, adding that “you as Catholic media professionals are challenged to be better and more professional than your colleagues from non-Catholic media.”

“God, for every need of the Church, calls men and women who will give us special assistance in all sorts of danger,” the archbishop said.

“Thus, in the great confusion caused by presbyter Arius in the early Church, he called Athanasius the Great; in the chaos of the migrations of peoples, St. Columban; after the French Revolution, the holy parish priest of Ars – and so on. Only in this way can we understand what Mother Angelica from the ‘Poor Clares of Perpetual Adoration’ really set in motion, when she began to build the spiritual channel EWTN in a garage of her monastery in Alabama, without any means and against all odds.”

Archbishop Gänswein said that “by doing so, she implanted in the Catholic Church of America at that time a media power that did not depend on the bishops: a ‘fourth power’ so to say, in which faithful journalists disclose any sort of abuse just as intrepidly as they indicate dangerous wrong ways, on which some shepherds today seem to get lost just as they did in all times of history.”

In light of the clerical and, indeed, episcopal abuse scandals, the archbishop exhorted, “as Catholic journalists you are not only responsible for the ‘hard news’ and a relentless and fair reporting, but more than ever for the core of all good news: the Gospel.”

“That means that today you are called to follow Mother Angelica and spread the most important news of all time in a completely new way, and with the most modern means, in freedom and together with the Magisterium of the Church: the news of the Incarnation of God as the greatest news that the world has ever heard and seen.”

“In Saint Francis de Sales, we already have a long-established patron of journalists. In Mother Angelica, however, the one, holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church has received the gift of a prophetess and apostle for the digital future, from whom we can learn anew that we can always trust in a miracle, especially in the darkest hours of history,” Archbishop Gänswein concluded.

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