Vatican City, May 17, 2019 / 12:00 pm (CNA).- Pope Francis Friday encouraged medical professionals to defend and promote life, highlighting the practice of conscientious objection in today’s healthcare environment.
“Defend and promote life… […]
Vatican City, May 17, 2019 / 03:38 am (CNA).- The Vatican announced Friday that the next World Meeting of Families will focus on the vocation of married life as a path to holiness with a particular emphasis on Amoris Laetitia.
The 2021 World Meeting o… […]
Vatican City, May 16, 2019 / 11:23 am (CNA).- A Vatican court has decided not to initiate canonical charges against a former Vatican official, after an investigation into allegations he made sexual advances toward a woman in the confessional several years ago.
Fr. Hermann Geissler, 53, is a member of Familia spiritualis Opus (FSO), informally known as “Das Werk.”
Geissler’s community announced May 17 that five judges of the Vatican’s supreme tribunal decided this week that Geissler would not be tried for “a delict of solicitation to a sin against the sixth commandment in the context of confession.”
A preliminary investigation into the matter, as specified by canon 1717 of the Code of Canon Law, was carried out by the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura.
Most likely to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest, Pope Francis requested the Signatura undertake the process instead of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which is the Vatican office usually charged with reviewing allegations of this kind.
Geissler, who maintained his innocence throughout the process, stepped down from his position within the CDF Jan. 29, where he had been an official since 1993. From 2009 he had been the head of the congregation’s teaching office.
A statement released Jan. 29 said that Geissler “affirms that the accusation made against him is untrue, and asks that the canonical process already initiated continue. He also reserves the right for possible civil legal action.”
Geissler, an Austrian, is also a prominent scholar of Bl. Cardinal Henry Newman.
The accusations against him became public at the end of September, when a (now-former) member of “Das Werk,” Doris Wagner, claimed in a lengthy piece in the German newspaper DIE ZIET that she had been sexually harassed in the confessional by a member of the religious community she then belonged to, identified in the article as “Hermann G.”
Wagner again spoke of the accusations last November, saying at a conference in Rome that she had received unwanted sexual advances and been “groomed” for sex by “a priest working to this day as capo ufficio at the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith,” according to La Croix International.
The solicitation of a sin against the sixth commandment within the context of confession is considered in the Church law to be a “grave delict,” or offense, for which a priest can be dismissed from the clerical state.
Vatican City, May 16, 2019 / 08:20 am (CNA).- On the 300th anniversary of St. John Baptist de la Salle’s death, Pope Francis urged the Lasallian Brothers to continue their educational mission with the zeal of their founder.
“Dear spiritual… […]
Vatican City, May 15, 2019 / 05:01 am (CNA).- Pope Francis greeted an international group dedicated to Jewish-Catholic dialogue Wednesday, calling dialogue “the way better to understand one another.”
“I offer you my encourageme… […]
Vatican City, May 15, 2019 / 04:08 am (CNA).- Pope Francis said Wednesday that Jesus gave humanity a precious gift on the cross — liberation from evil.
“The Christian knows how overwhelming the power of evil is, and at the same time he experiences how much Jesus, who never succumbed to its flattery, is on our side and comes to our aid,” Pope Francis said in St. Peter’s Square May 15.
The pope connected the last line of the Our Father prayer, “Deliver us from evil,” to Christ’s crucifixion.
“Deliver us from evil” covers a wide range of human experiences, he explained: “the mourning of man, innocent suffering, slavery, the exploitation of others, the cry of innocent children.”
In the Passion “Jesus fully experienced the piercing of evil. Not only death, but death on the cross. Not only loneliness, but also contempt, humiliation,” Pope Francis said.
“Thus the prayer of Jesus leaves us the most precious of inheritances: the presence of the Son of God who has freed us from evil, struggling to convert it,” he said.
Pope Francis explained that invoking God when faced with evil is “an essential characteristic of Christian prayer.”
“Jesus teaches his friends to put the invocation of the Father before everything, even and especially at times when the evil one makes his threatening presence felt,” he said.
“There is evil in our life, its presence is indisputable,” Francis said. “History books are the desolate catalog of how much our existence in this world has often been a failed venture.”
“There is a mysterious evil, which surely is not the work of God,” he explained. “At times it seems to take over: on some days its presence seems even sharper than that of God’s mercy.”
However, Pope Francis said, forgiveness flows from Christ on the cross, which liberates us from evil.
“In the hour of the final fight … He offers a word of peace: ‘Father, forgive them because they do not know what they do,’” he said.
“‘Deliver us from evil.’ With this expression, one who prays not only asks not to be abandoned in the time of temptation, but also begs to be liberated from evil,” he said.
“If there were not the last verses of the ‘Our Father’ how could sinners, the persecuted, the desperate, the dying pray?” Pope Francis asked.
“The ‘Our Father’ resembles a symphony that asks to be fulfilled in each of us,” he said.
As Pope Francis entered the general audience on the popemobile this week, he greeted eight migrant children from Syria, Nigeria, and Congo, who arrived in Italy on a humanitarian vessel from Libya April 29.
Vatican City, May 15, 2019 / 04:03 am (CNA).- Pope Francis Wednesday appointed Bishop Peter Baldacchino to head the Diocese of Las Cruces, New Mexico – making him the first diocesan bishop associated with the Neocatechumenal Way to serve in a mainland U.S. diocese.
Baldacchino, 58, has been an auxiliary bishop of Miami, Florida, since 2014. He was ordained a priest for the Archdiocese of Newark in 1996.
As a seminarian in Newark, Baldacchino studied at the Immaculate Conception Seminary at Seton Hall University but lived at the Redemptoris Mater Archdiocesan Missionary Seminary.
Baldacchino’s formation was in part guided by the Neocatechumenal Way, a post-baptismal itinerary of Christian formation first approved by Pope Paul VI and supported by each of the subsequent popes.
Seminarians who discern their vocation while involved with the Neocatechumenal Way are encouraged to place special emphasis on the universal missionary character of the priesthood and offer themselves, at the discretion of their local bishop, in service to the New Evangelization anywhere in the world.
Baldacchino is the first graduate of a Redemptoris Mater seminary to serve as a diocesan bishop in a mainland U.S. diocese.
He was born on the European island country of Malta, to a family of four children. His family joined the Neocatechumenal Way while he was a child, but he was not initially drawn to the priesthood.
After studying science and chemistry at the University of Malta, he began working as a technical manager at a bottling plant. At age 28 he attended the 1989 World Youth Day in Santiago de Compostela, Spain, after which he became more involved in the Neocatechumenal Way.
Through the movement he was sent on mission, during which he started to feel called to the priesthood, eventually being matched with the Redemptoris Mater seminary in Newark. He was ordained a priest for the Archdiocese of Newark on May 25, 1996.
Baldacchino served for over a decade as a missionary in the Turks and Caicos Islands in the Caribbean, and speaks Maltese, English, Italian, Creole, and Spanish.
The Diocese of Las Cruces was established in 1982. According to 2015 estimates, it has more than 236,600 Catholics, accounting for just over 42% of the area’s population.
Vatican City, May 14, 2019 / 06:53 am (CNA).- Pope Francis Tuesday gave his approval for eight sainthood causes to proceed, including that of Blessed Dulce Lopes Pontes, a 20th-century religious sister who served Brazil’s poor.
With the pope&rsq… […]
In the tradition of St. Thomas Aquinas, members of the Dominican Order tend to be particularly well-versed in philosophy, theology, scholasticism, and the great intellectual tradition of the Church. This is part of the reason […]
Washington D.C., May 13, 2019 / 02:44 pm (CNA).- Pope Francis’ recently promulgated policy on sexual abuse allegations made against bishops, Vos estis lux mundi, offers a new and much expanded interpretation of what constitutes a canonical sexual… […]
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