Vatican

Vatican City, Jun 8, 2018 / 08:37 am (CNA/EWTN News).- The Vatican Friday announced that Pope Francis has appointed two new auxiliary bishops for the United States, one of whom will serve the Archdiocese of Washington and one the Diocese of Rockville Centre.

Msgr. Michael William Fisher, 60, will step on as auxiliary bishop for Washington, headed by Cardinal Donald Wuerl, and Msgr. Richard Henning will serve as auxiliary bishop for Rockville Centre, which is overseen by Bishop John O. Barres. Their appointments were announced in a June 8 communique from the Vatican.

Born in Baltimore March 3, 1958, Msgr. Fisher attended the city’s Polytechnic Institute high school and later received a Bachelor’s degree in business administration and accounting from the University of Maryland in 1984.

He then worked as a comptroller for a psychiatric practice in Bethesda before discerning his vocation to the priesthood. He entered Mount Saint Mary’s seminary in Emmitsburg in 1986, and was ordained a priest for the Archdiocese of Washington by Cardinal James Hickey in 1990.

After his ordination, Fisher was assigned to Sacred Heart parish in La Plata. He then served in various other pastoral roles before being given the title of “Monsignor” by Pope John Paul II in 2005.

Later that year, Fisher was tapped by Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, who at the time was archbishop of Washington, to be the vicar general for the apostolates, a role in which he oversaw the diocese’s ministries for education, social justice, parish life, youth ministry and ethnic ministry.

In 2006, Cardinal Donald Wuerl named Fisher vicar for clergy and secretary for ministerial leadership, which is a position the bishop-elect has held for the past 12 years and in which he is tasked with overseeing the formation and care of clergy for the archdiocese.

In addition to his pastoral roles, Fisher has served on a number of boards and committees, including the archdiocese’s College of Consultors, Priest Council, Administrative Board, Priest Retirement Board, Deacon Review Board, Needy Parish Committee and Forward in Faith Committee.

He has also served as an ecclesiastical counselor to the archdiocese’s Centesimus Annus Pro Pontifice foundation, and has dedicated a large portion of his priestly ministry to assisting new pastors in their roles, educating priests and organizing priestly training through conferences and retreats.

Bishop-elect Henning, 53, born Oct. 17, 1964, in Rockville Centre, is currently the interim vicar for the Central Vicariate of the Rockville Centre diocese. He also serves rector of the seminary of the Immaculate Conception and Director of the Sacred Heart Institute in Huntington.

He obtained a bachelor’s degree in history in 1988. He entered the seminary of the Immaculate Conception the same year, and was ordained a priest for the Rockville Centre diocese in 1992.

The bishop-elect then obtained a licentiate degree in biblical theology from The Catholic University of America in Washington in 2000, and later earned a doctorate in the subject from the University of St. Thomas Aquinas in Rome in 2007.

After his ordination, Henning served in various pastoral roles while continuing to pursue his studies. He also held several teaching positions at the Immaculate Conception seminary before being named rector in 2012.

The same year he was named to his position as director of the Sacred Heart Institute for the ongoing formation of clergy in the Archdiocese of New York, the Diocese of Brooklyn and the Diocese of Rockville Centre.

Other recent positions Henning has held include director of the Parresia Project, which is a grant-funded initiative aimed at improving the welcoming process for international priests living in the United States. He was given charge over the project in 2010, and continues in that role today.

In 2008 he was given the title of “Monsignor,” and he was named a member of the diocesan college of consultors in 2013. In addition to his native English, Henning also speaks Spanish and Italian, and is able to read French, Greek and Hebrew.

In a June 8 press release on his appointment, Henning voiced his gratitude to Pope Francis for being named auxiliary bishop, saying his nomination is “a moment of deep reflection and the humble acknowledgment of my dependence upon the grace of God and my joy in His service.”

Bishop Barres, who oversees the Diocese of Rockville Centre, said he is grateful for Henning’s appointment, and praised the bishop-elect’s “pastoral charity and intelligence, his commitment to a demanding life of daily prayer, his love for the Hispanic community and evangelization, his biblical scholarship and experience in seminary formation, his national contributions to the ongoing formation of priests and assistance to international priests who serve in this country.”

These qualities, Barres said, give Henning a broad pastoral experience and the skills “to help advance the New Evangelization and dramatic missionary growth on Long Island.”

Barres will preside over Henning’s episcopal ordination July 24, 2018, at the Cathedral of Saint Agnes, Rockville Centre, New York.

[…]

Rome, Italy, Jun 7, 2018 / 01:58 pm (CNA).- For the first time in its 245-year history, a lay professor has been appointed rector of the Pontifical Lateran University, also known as the “Pope’s university.”
 
Vincenzo Buonomo, a professor of international law and a consultant to the Holy See since the 1980s, was appointed rector of the Pontifical Lateran University by Pope Francis.
 
He will begin the position July 1, succeeding Archbishop Enrico dal Covolo, who has been rector of the university for 8 years and two consecutive mandates.
 
Born April 16, 1961 in the southern Italian city of Gaeta, Professor Buonomo is married with two children.
 
He earned from the Pontifical Lateran University a doctorate juris utriusque- an academic doctorate in both canon and civil law, and began teaching there in 1984.
 
He became a full professor of the university in 2001, he was from 2006–2012 dean of the civil law department, and presently serves as coordinator of the university’s doctorates. He is also the scientific director of the Masters in New Horizons of Cooperation and International Law program, which the Lateran University manages with the NGO FOCSIV.
 
Although his career has been mostly linked to the Pontifical Lateran University, Buonomo is also a professor of international organization at the Catholic-inspired LUMSA University in Rome and visiting professor of international law at the Sophia University Institute of Loppiano.
 
Beyond his academic career, Buonomo has has long-term involvement with the Holy See.
 
He has been the chief of office for the Holy See’s Representation to Food and Agriculture Organization and related UN bodies (namely, FAO, IFAD and World Food Program). He also represents the Holy See on the UN Human Rights Council’s advisory committee, and has twice been a part of the Vatican’s delegation to present reports before the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child.
 
Under Pope Francis, Buonomo provided advice for the Comprehensive Agreement signed by the Holy See an Palestine in June 2015.

On Jan. 25, 2014, he was also appointed an advisor to the Vatican City State’s administration.
 
Buonomo began collaborating with the Vatican in the 1980s, when Cardinal Casaroli was Secretary of State.
 
He was was also a close collaborator with former Secretary of State Tarcisio Bertone, and edited a book of speeches Cardinal Bertone delivered in his capacity of Secretary of State.

His appointment as rector of the Pope’s university is a sign of continuity, and, at the same time, a break from tradition.
 
Buonomo has made his career in the Lateran and Vatican ranks without being linked to any particular ideological group, and so he will be able to carry on the tradition linking the Lateran Pontifical University directly to the pope himself. The Pope’s university will also keep its special bond with the pope through Cardinal-elect Angelo De Donatis, the pope’s vicar for the Diocese of Rome, who serves as the Lateran’s Grand Chancellor.  
 
At the same time, Buonomo is the first lay person to be named for the post.
 
The appointment of a lay person signals that the Pope wants the Lateran University to make improvements: following his curriculum, it is likely Professor Buonomo will lead the Pontifical Lateran University in a more international direction, and increase the caliber and standards of academic offerings.
 
Any new approach must be made according to the university’s storied traditions. The Pontifical Lateran University is formally a university since 1959, but its origins date back to 1773. The university has four departments (philosophy, theology, civil law and canon law) and two Institutes (Redemptor Hominis and Utriusque Iuris), plus a post-graduate specialization center. Teachers and students come from five continents.

[…]

Vatican City, Jun 7, 2018 / 10:30 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Pope Francis has sent a birthday greeting to Fr. Gustavo Gutierrez, widely considered the father of liberation theology, thanking him for his service to the Church and his dedication to the poor.

In a letter dated May 28, Pope Francis assured the Dominican priest of his prayers as he reaches the landmark age of 90, and said he thanked God “for what you have contributed to the Church and to humanity through your theological service and from your preferential love for the poor and discarded in society.”

“Thank you for your efforts and for your way of challenging the conscience of each person, so that no one can be indifferent faced with the drama of poverty and exclusion.”

Francis closed the letter encouraging Gutierrez to “continue with your prayer and your service to others, giving witness to the joy of the Gospel.”

Fr. Gustavo Gutierrez Merino, who will turn 90 June 8, was born in Lima and is considered by many to be the father of the liberation theology movement, which sprung up in Latin America in the 1950s.

Gutierrez is the John Cardinal O’Hara Professor of Theology at the University of Notre Dame.

In a 2015, Gutierrez, wrote an article in the Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano, saying there are two schools of thought on poverty, both of which are rooted in the Gospel.

The first form of poverty, he said, is focused on Christ’s sensitivity toward the poor and their suffering, while the second is that Christ himself “had lived a life of poverty, and so Christians, from their origin, understood that in order to be his disciples they also had to live a life of poverty.”

The Peruvian said that both “poverty as scandal and poverty of spirit” can be useful, however, their meaning must be interpreted in the modern historical and global context.

Gutierrez said “a new notion of poverty” has emerged over the past century, and that “poverty, in bible and in our times, is not a merely economic issue. Poverty is very much more than this. The economic dimension is important, perhaps primary, but it is is not the only one.”

Liberation theology is often criticized for offering a Marxist interpretation of the Gospel, focusing on freedom from material poverty and injustice rather than giving primacy to spiritual freedom.

Gutierrez himself has never been censured by the Vatican, though the Vatican has warned about the implications of liberation theology and its excesses.

Under Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith twice issued instructions regarding liberation theology, the first being 1984’s Libertatis nuntius, which drew attention to “the deviations, and risks of deviation, damaging to the faith and to Christian living, that are brought about by certain forms of liberation theology which use, in an insufficiently critical manner, concepts borrowed from various currents of Marxist thought.”

That document was followed in 1986 by Libertatis conscientia, which presented Christian doctrine on freedom and liberation.

“Through his Cross and Resurrection, Christ has brought about our Redemption, which is liberation in the strongest sense of the word, since it has freed us from the most radical evil, namely sin and the power of death,” the congregation said.

Truth beginning with the truth about redemption, which is at the heart of the mystery of faith, is thus the root and the rule of freedom, the foundation and the measure of all liberating action.

[…]

Vatican City, Jun 7, 2018 / 10:10 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Organizers of the international “Share the Journey” campaign are urging Catholics to step up and interact with migrants and refugees through shared meals or other activities as part of a global action week.

“We invite you to sit down together with migrants and refugees in your community, to look into their eyes, listen to their stories and to share your own,” Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle said in a press release on the initiative.

The cardinal, who serves as archbishop of Manila and is also the president of papal charity organization Caritas Internationalis, said each person’s journey starts “with a moment of sharing which helps us recognize the bonds which bind the whole of humanity together.”

“We are invited to have compassion and courage to open our hearts and minds to the people we don’t yet know and to share the journey with them.”

The Global Action Week will take place June 17-24 and is part of the wider, two-year Share the Journey campaign, which was launched by Caritas Internationalis in September 2017 with the goal of encouraging a “culture of encounter” and bolstering efforts to warmly welcome immigrants and refugees.

The project also aims to shed light on both the challenges and effects of migration at every stage of the journey in order to promote a “shift in thinking” on the issue. It has the support of the ACT Alliance, which is a network of 145 Christian agencies and a variety of other religious congregations and civil society groups worldwide.

As part of the action week, Caritas branches in all regions of the world will organize shared meals with immigrants and refugees, as well as other events aimed at providing opportunities for interaction.

In Rome, the Caritas soup kitchen at Termini, the city’s main train station, will host a meal with migrants and refugees June 19.

They have also promoted other activities, like the “My Mirror” social experiment promoted by Caritas Ambrosiana in Milan, which encourages strangers to look into each other’s eyes as a means of breaking down barriers.

Caritas Cyprus also organized a handbag event for women, giving each woman who came a handbag full of basic toiletries.

In the U.S., the bishops’ conference as well as Caritas organizations like Catholic Relief Services and Catholic Charities USA have promoted the campaign as a way for Catholics to pray for migrants and refugees and make concrete acts to help them.

In one activity, Catholic Relief Services partnered with a local clothing store, which agreed to donate 20 percent of all sock sales to the organization’s work with migrants and refugees.

The official website for the Share the Journey campaign in the U.S. is: www.sharethejourney.org.

[…]

Vatican City, Jun 6, 2018 / 04:26 pm (CNA).- Cardinal Pietro Parolin, Vatican Secretary of State, will take part in the Bilderberg Conference, an annual private gathering of global political, business and media leaders, set to take place this year in Turin, Italy, June 7 – 10.
 
Cardinal Parolin’s name is included in the list of 131 participants in this year’s Bilderberg meeting.
 
His participation in the meeting has not been officially announced by the Vatican, though sources within the Secretariat of State have confirmed that he is scheduled to take part in the meeting.
 
If his participation were confirmed, it would be the first time high-ranking Vatican official has taken part in the Bilderberg Conferences.
 
Started in 1954 the Hotel de Bilderberg in Oosterbeek, The Netherlands, and named after the same hotel, the Bilderberg Conference gathers each year some 120 – 150 participants, among them European and North American political élites, along with industrial, financial, academic and media figures.
 
The first meeting took place at the invitation of Prince Bernhard of Lippe-Biesterfeld. Co-founders of the meeting were Polish politician Jozef Retinger, former Belgian prime minister Paul van Zeeland and Paul Rijkens, who was then the head of Unilever.
 
The success of the first meeting brought the organizers to stage an annual meeting.
 
According to the groups’ official website, about two-thirds of the participants come from Europe, and the rest from North America, and one-third are political figures or government officials.
 
The original meeting objective was to strengthen US – European relations. Over the years, the annual meetings became a forum for discussion on a wider range of topics, from ecology to trade and monetary policies.
 
This year’s meeting is set to discuss populism in Europe, the challenges of inequality, the future of work, artificial intelligence, US midterm elections, free trade, US global leadership, Russia, quantum computing, Saudi Arabia and Iran, the post-truth world, and other current events.
 
The Bilderberg meeting’s official website stresses that discussions are private, no minutes are taken and no reports are written.

The meetings are held under the so-called “Chatham House Rules,” an agreement typical of off-record meetings among academics or political leaders. According to that agreement, participants are free to use the information received, but they cannot disclose the identity nor the affiliation of speakers, nor can they disclose the other participants taking part in the conversation.
 
Dubbed by critics to be a kind of “global shadow government”, and targeted by protesters who picket the meeting, the Bilderberg meeting has has an official website since 2011, and publishes the names of participants in the annual meeting the day before the gathering begins.
 
Cardinal Parolin’s participation may be an expression of the “culture of the encounter” encouraged by Pope Francis. The pope has often asked officials to engage a dialogue with the world.
 
Receiving the Charlemagne Prize May 6, 2016, Pope Francis stressed that ”today we urgently need to engage all the members of society in building ‘a culture which privileges dialogue as a form of encounter’ and in creating ‘a means for building consensus and agreement while seeking the goal of a just, responsive and inclusive society.’”
 
The cardinal’s participation in the Bilderberg Group could be part of a strategy of dialogue the Holy See is engaging with small influential élite group.
 
It is noteworthy that last year, Cardinal Pietro Parolin took part in the World Economic Forum in Davos, and there he delivered Jan. 19 a speech in which he listed the aims of pontifical diplomacy.

[…]

Vatican City, Jun 6, 2018 / 11:02 am (CNA/EWTN News).- In his prayer video for June, Pope Francis asked that digital communications and social media platforms would be a place of inclusion and encounter, rather than isolation and “alienation.&rdq… […]

Vatican City, Jun 6, 2018 / 04:19 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Pope Francis Wednesday said that the sacrament of Confirmation is a gift meant to be shared with other people, both inside and outside of the Church, which he stressed is not only the hierarchy, but is made up of all baptized faithful.

In his June 6 general audience speech, the pope said the sacrament of Confirmation unites candidates more closely to the Church, and gives them a stronger identity as “a living member of the mystical body of Christ.”

“The mission of the Church in the world proceeds through the contribution of those who are a part of it,” he said, noting in off-the-cuff comments that when it comes to how the Church is understood, “some think that there are only bishops, the bosses, and then there are the workers.”

“No, the Church is all of us, everyone, each person has their role in the Church, but we are all the Church,” he said, adding that “we must think of the Church as a living organism, composed of people who we know and with whom we walk, and not as an abstract and distant reality.”

“The Church is us who walk, us who are here in the square. It’s everyone,” he said.

Pope Francis spoke to pilgrims in St. Peter’s Square for his weekly audience address, which is currently dedicated to a series of catechesis on the sacrament of Confirmation.

The gift of the Holy Spirit, he said, helps candidates mature in the faith and allows them to in turn become a gift for others.

“It is precisely the Holy Spirit who de-centers us from our ‘I’ in order to open ourselves to the ‘we’ of the Christian community, as well as to the society in which we live,” he said, adding that the soul is not a “warehouse,” and that as Christians, “we are not the center, we are an instrument to give to others.”

Confirmation is linked to the universal Church and actively involves candidates in the life of the local Churches where they come from, he said, and since the bishop is the head of the local Church, this is why he is the ordinary minister of the sacrament.

This incorporation of the candidate into the Church, he said, is signified by the sign of the peace which takes place at the end of the rite of Confirmation, when the bishop says “peace be with you.”

When a candidate receives this sign of peace from the bishop, it commits them to working for greater communion “inside and outside of the Church, with enthusiasm and without being paralyzed by resistance.”

“To receive peace means committing to work toward improving harmony in the parish, encouraging understanding with others, including, rather than discarding or marginalizing.” It also means being able to recognize and appreciate differences, because “the Holy Spirit is creative and not repetitive. His gifts arouse a symphony and not monotony!”

Pope Francis then challenged the crowd to think of their own parish community and how they act after giving and receiving the sign of peace during Mass.

While the sign of peace is symbolic of the harmony and charity that ought to guide members of the Church, the pope noted that many times when people leave Mass “we start to gossip. And gossip is war against others.”

“If we have received peace, we must give it to others,” he said, stressing that “gossip is not a work of the Holy Spirit…please don’t gossip.”

Francis closed his address reiterating that Confirmation is a gift meant not only for the recipient, but also for the spiritual good of others.

Only by “opening ourselves and going out of ourselves to encounter our brothers can we truly grow and not just fool ourselves,” he said, adding that when Catholics receive the Holy Spirit, “it must in fact be given so that it bears fruit and is not buried because of our selfish fears.”

Quoting his exhortation on holiness Gaudete et Exsultate, the pope said Catholics need to be prompted by the Holy Spirit, “lest we be paralyzed by fear and excessive caution, lest we grow used to keeping within safe bounds.”

“Let us remember that closed spaces grow musty and unhealthy,” he said, and urged Confirmation candidates not to “cage the Holy Spirit” by resisting his inspiration or suffocating “the burning fire of charity which consumes his life for God and for others.”

“May the Holy Spirit grant each of us the apostolic courage of communicating the Gospel, with words and works, to all those we meet on our path.”

[…]

Vatican City, Jun 5, 2018 / 11:32 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Ahead the presentation of the Biagio Agnes International Journalism Award, Pope Francis advised journalists to consider of all walks of life in their work, pursue truth, and always introduce hope.

Often, he said, “the nerve centres of news production are found in large centres,” but stories worth telling exist beyond these hubs of human activity. Many of these quiet existences are proof of great “suffering and degradation.”

Francis, however, suggested that these stories also offer perspective: “other times they are stories of great solidarity that can help everyone to look at reality in a renewed way,” he said.

The pope spoke to a delegation of the award June 4 at the Vatican’s Clementine Hall. The award will be presented in Sorrento June 22-24.

The award is named for Biagio Agnes, a well-known Italian journalist who was director of Italy’s state broadcaster, RAI, and who died in 2011.

“By taking to heart his teaching, you all commit yourselves, first of all personally, to a communication able to place the truth before personal or corporate interests,” Francis told the journalists.

“Being a journalist relates to the formation of people, their vision of the world and their attitudes when faced with events,” he reflected.

Practicing self-discipline, the pope said, is also key “so as not to fall into the trap of logics of opposing interests or ideologies.” Journalists should not be afraid to reveal even the most difficult of truths.

“Today, in a world where everything is fast, it is increasingly urgent to appeal to the troubled and arduous law of in-depth research, comparison and, if necessary, also of remaining silent rather than harming a person or a group of people or delegitimizing an event,” he said.

While acknowledging its difficulty, “the story of a life is understood at its end, and this should help us to become courageous and prophetic,” he added.

Finally, Francis encouraged the journalists to incorporate light and hope into their work. While they shouldn’t aim to communicate news in an unrealistically positive way, he said, they should certainly be “denouncing situations of degradation and despair.”

“It is a matter of opening spaces of hope,” he said.

The pope also called for adaptation to quickly evolving technology.

“It is increasingly necessary if we wish to continue to be educators of the new generations,” Francis said.

[…]

Vatican City, Jun 5, 2018 / 08:18 am (CNA/EWTN News).- With the death count of a massive volcanic eruption in Guatemala already at 65, Pope Francis has offered his prayers for the victims, their families and the thousands who have lost their homes due to the calamity.

In a June 5 telegram, the pope said he was “deeply distressed in hearing the sad news of the violent eruption” of Guatemala’s Volcano de Fuego, meaning “Volcano of Fire,” which so far “has caused numerous victims and enormous material damage which has affected a significant number of the area’s inhabitants.”

Signed by Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin and addressed to Guatemala’s apostolic nuncio, Archbishop Nicolas Henry Marie Denis Thevenin, the telegram conveyed Pope Francis’ prayers for the deceased and for all those “who are suffering the consequences of this natural disaster.”

The pope assured of his spiritual closeness and support to the families “who weep for the loss of their loved ones,” to wounded and to those who are working in relief efforts, asking that God would grant them “the gifts of solidarity, spiritual serenity and Christian hope.”

Francis’ telegram came after the June 3 eruption of Volcano de Fuego, one of the Guatemala’s most active volcano’s, resulting in a death toll of at least 65 people so far, with many still unaccounted for.

During the eruption, a heavy pyroclastic flow – an especially deadly combo of hot toxic gases and volcanic matter – poured out of the volcano and an engulfed several villages below, burying houses and covering surrounding areas with a thick blanket of ash.

According to CONRED, Guatemala’s national disaster agency, so far some 3,265 people have been evacuated and at least 46 others injured due to the volcanic eruption. The nation’s airport was also reportedly shut down due to the hot ash still hanging in the air.

Guatemalan President Jimmy Morales has declared three days of national mourning over the tragedy, and, according to ABC News, has also called in his ministers to discuss declaring a state of emergency in several affected areas.

The eruption of Volcan de Fuego is Guatemala’s largest volcanic eruption since the 1902 eruption of the Santa Maria volcano, which killed thousands.

In a June 4 statement, Bishop Víctor Hugo Palma Paúl of Escuintla, one of the hardest hit areas, assured the people of his diocese of the Church’s “closeness and solidarity, illuminated by faith in the God of Jesus Christ, God of life and not of death, of peace, and not destruction.”

The bishop asked both local and national Guatemalan authorities to continue offering relief services with “promptness and civic commitment.”

In Escuintla, the villages of Los Lotes and El Rodeo – known for the rich agricultural diversity they provide to the nation – have practically been buried, leaving inhabitants largely cut off from aid and from their livelihood.

In his statement, Hugo said three make-shift welcome centers have been set up in parishes in his diocese for those who have lost their homes.

He thanked those working to support victims, and voiced confidence in God’s providence toward “the victims of this tragedy,” and entrusted “the life and spiritual and material well-being” of Guatemalans to the care of Mary, Mother of the Church.

[…]

Vatican City, Jun 5, 2018 / 07:53 am (CNA).- In a letter to Catholics in Chile on May 31, Pope Francis said he is ashamed of the Church’s failure to listen to victims, and urged all the baptized to make a commitment to ending the culture of abuse and cover-up.

Please find below CNA’s translation of the full text of Pope Francis’ May 31 letter:

To the Pilgrim People of God in Chile
 
Dear Brothers and Sisters,
 
This past April 8, I called my brother bishops to Rome to seek together in the short, medium and long term the ways of truth and life in face of an open, painful and complex wound which for a long time has not stopped bleeding.[1] And I suggested that they invite the entire faithful Holy People of God to place themselves in a state of prayer so the Holy Spirit might give us the strength to not fall into the temptation of getting wound up in empty word games,  in sophisticated diagnostics, or in vain gestures which would not allow us the necessary courage to look directly at the pain caused, the face of its victims, the magnitude of the events. I invited them to look to where the Holy Spirit is moving us, since “closing our eyes to our neighbor also blinds us to God.”[2]
 
With joy and hope I received the news that there were many communities, towns, and chapels where the People of God were praying, especially the days we were gathered together with the bishops: the People of God on their knees who implore the gift of the Holy Spirit to find the light in the Church, “wounded by her sin, granted mercy by her Lord, and so that every day she may become prophetic in her vocation.”[3] We know that prayer is never in vain and that “in the midst of darkness something new always buds forth, that sooner or later bears fruit.”[4] 
 
1. To appeal to you, to ask for your prayers was not a practical recourse nor was it a simple goodwill gesture. On the contrary, I wanted to frame things in their precise and valuable place and put the issue where it ought to be: the condition of the People of God “the dignity and freedom of the sons of God, in whose hearts the Holy Spirit dwells as in His temple.”[5] The faithful Holy People of God are anointed with the grace of the Holy Spirit; therefore when we reflect, think, evaluate, discern, we must be very attentive to this anointing. Whenever as a Church, as pastors, as consecrated persons, we have forgotten this certainty, we have lost our way. Whenever we try to supplant, silence, look down on, ignore or reduce into small elites the People of God in their totality and differences, we construct communities, pastoral plans, theological accentuations, spiritualities, structures without roots, without history, without faces, without memory, without a body, in the end, without lives. To remove ourselves from the life of the People of God hastens us to the desolation and to a perversion of ecclesial nature; the fight against a culture of abuse requires renewing this certainty.
 
As I said to the young people in Maipú, I want to specially tell each one of you: “Holy Mother the Church today needs the faithful People of God to challenge us […] you need to take out your adult ID card, as spiritual adults, and have the courage to tell us ‘I like this,’  ‘this is the way I think we should go,’ ‘that’s not going to work,’ …Tell us what you feel and think.”[6] This is capable of involving all of us in a Church with a synodal character which knows how to put Jesus in the center.
 
The People of God does not have first, second or third-class Christians. Their participation is not a question of goodwill, concessions, rather it is constitutive of the nature of the Church. It is impossible to imagine a future without this anointing operating in each one of you, which certainly demands and requires new forms of participation. I urge all Christians to not be afraid to be the protagonists of the transformation that is demanded today and to propel and promote creative alternatives in the daily search for Church that every day wants to put what is important in the center.  I invite all the diocesan organizations from whatever area they may be to consciously and lucidly seek areas of communion and participation so that the Anointing of the People of God may find its concrete mediations to express itself.
 
The renewal of the Church hierarchy by itself does not create the transformation to which the Holy Spirit moves us. We are required to together promote a transformation of the Church that involves us all.
 
A prophetic Church and, therefore, full of hope, demands of everyone an eyes-wide-open mysticism, that questions, that is not asleep.[7] Do not let yourselves be robbed of the anointing of the Spirit.
 
2. “The wind blows where it wills, and you can hear the sound it makes, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes; so it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” (Jn 3:8) This is how Jesus responded to Nicodemus in the conversation they were having on the possibility of being born again in order to enter the Kingdom of Heaven.
 
At this time in the light of this passage it is good for us to look back at our personal and communal history: The Holy Spirit blows where and how he wills with the sole purpose of helping us to be born again. Far from letting us get boxed up in schemes, modalities, fixed or obsolete structures, far from letting yourself be resigned or “letting down your guard” in the face of events, the Spirit is continually in movement to widen your horizons, to make the person who has lost hope[8] to dream, to do justice in truth and charity, to purify from sin and corruption, and always invited to necessary conversion. Without looking at this with faith, everything we could say or do would be useless. This certainty is essential to look at the present without evasions but with bravery, with courage, but wisely, with tenacity but without violence, with passion but without fanaticism, with constancy but without anxiety, and thus change all that which today puts at risk the integrity and dignity of every person; since the solutions that are needed demand facing the problems without getting trapped in them or, what would be worse, repeating the same mechanisms that we want to eliminate.[9] Today we are challenged to look straight ahead, assume and suffer the conflict, and thus be able to resolve and transform it in a new direction.[10]
 
3. In the first place, it would be unfair to attribute this process just to the recently experienced events. Every process of review and purification that we are experiencing is possible thanks to the effort and perseverance of specific individuals, who even against all hope or stains of discredit, did not tire of seeking the truth; I am referring to the victims of abuses of sexuality, power and authority and to those who at the time believed and accompanied them. Victims whose cry reached the heavens.[11] I would like once more to publicly thank all of them for their courage and perseverance.
 
This recent time is a time of listening and discernment to arrive at the roots that allowed such atrocities to occur and be perpetuated and thus find solutions to the abuse scandal, not merely with containment strategies—essential but insufficient—but with the measures necessary to take on the problem in its complexity.
 
In this regard I would like to pause on the word “listening,” since discerning supposes learning how to listen to what the Spirit wants to tell us. And we will only be able to do it if we are capable of listening to the reality of what is going on.[12]
 
I believe that here resides one of our main faults and omissions: not knowing how to listen to the victims. Thus partial conclusions were drawn which lacked crucial elements for a healthy and clear discernment. With shame I must say that we did not know how to listen and react in time.
 
The visit of Archbishop Scicluna and Monsignor Bertomeu was born when we saw that there were situations that we did not know how to see and hear. As a Church we could not continue to walk ignoring the pain of our brothers. After reading the report, I wanted to personally meet with some of the victims of sexual abuse, the abuse of power and the abuse of conscience, to listen to them and to ask forgiveness for our sins and omissions.
 
4. In these meetings, I noted how the lack of recognition/listening to their stories, as well as the recognition/acceptance of the errors and omissions in the entire process impedes us from making headway. A recognition that ought to be more than an expression of goodwill toward the victims, rather that ought to be a new way to for us to adopt a new attitude before life, before others and before God. Hope for tomorrow and confidence arises from and grows in taking on the fragility, the limitations and even the sins in order to help us go forward. [13]
 
The “never again” to the culture of abuse and the system of cover up that allows it to be perpetuated demands working among everyone in order to generate a culture of care which permeates our ways of relating, praying, thinking, of living authority; our customs and languages and our relationship with power and money. We know today that the best thing we can say in face of the pain caused is a commitment to personal, communal, and social conversion that learns to listen to and care for especially the most vulnerable. It is therefore urgent to create spaces where the culture of abuse and cover up is not the dominant scheme, where a critical and questioning attitude is not confused with betrayal. We have to promote this as a Church and to seek with humility all the actors that make up the social reality and promote ways of dialogue and constructive confrontation to move toward a culture of care and protection.
 
To attempt this enterprise by ourselves alone, or with our efforts and tools, would shut us up in dangerous voluntaristic dynamics that would perish in the short term.[14] Let us allow ourselves to be helped and to help create a society where the culture of abuse does not find the space to perpetuate itself. I exhort all Christians and especially those responsible for centers of higher education, formal or informal, healthcare centers, institutes of formation and universities, to join together with the dioceses and with all of civil society to lucidly and strategically promote a culture of care and protection. Let each of these spaces promote a new mentality.
 
5. The culture of abuse and cover up is incompatible with the logic of the Gospel, since the salvation offered by Christ is always an offer, a gift that demands and requires freedom. Washing the feet of the disciples is how Christ shows us the face of God. It is never by way of coercion or obligation but by way of service. Let us say it clearly, every means that attacks freedom and a person’s integrity is anti-Gospel. Therefore it is also necessary to create processes of faith where we learn to know when it is necessary to doubt and when not to. “Doctrine, or better our understanding and expression of it ‘is not a closed system, deprived of dynamics capable of bringing up questions, doubts, questionings,’ since the questions of our people, their anxieties, their fights, their dreams, their struggles, possess an hermeneutical value that we cannot ignore if we want to take seriously the principle of incarnation.[15] I invite all centers of religious formation, theology schools, institutes of higher learning, seminaries, houses of formation and spirituality to promote a theological reflection that is capable of rising to the challenge of the present time, to promote a mature, adult faith that assumes the vital humus of the People of God with their searching and questioning. And thus, to then promote communities capable of fighting against abusive situations, communities where exchanges, debate and confrontation are welcome.[16] We will be fruitful to the extent that we empower and open communities from within and thus free ourselves from closed and self-referential thoughts full of promises and mirages which promise life but which ultimately favor the culture of abuse.
 
I would like to make a brief reference to the pastoral ministry of popular devotion carried out in many of your communities since it is an invaluable treasure and authentic school of the heart for our people and in the same act the heart of God. In my experience as a pastor I learned to discover that pastoral ministry of popular devotion is one of the few places where the People of God is sovereign from the influence of that clericalism that seeks to always control and stop the anointing of God on his people. Learning from popular piety is to learn to enter into a new kind of relationship of listening and spirituality that demand a lot of respect and does not lend itself to quick and simplistic readings since popular piety “reflects a thirst for God that only the poor and simple can know.” [17]
 
To be “the Church that goes out” also is to allow itself to be helped and to be challenged. Let us not forget that “the wind blows where it wills: you hear its sound but you do not know where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.” (Jn 3:8)
 
6. As I told you, during the meetings with the victims I was able to see that the lack of recognition prevents us from getting anywhere. That is why I think it is necessary to share with you that I rejoiced and it gave me hope to confirm in conversation with them their recognition of people that I like to call “the saints next door.”[18] We would be unfair if alongside our pain and our shame for those structures of abuse and cover up that have been so much perpetuated and have done so much evil, we would not recognize the many faithful lay people, consecrated men and women, priests and bishops who give life through love in the most obscure areas of the beloved land of Chile. All of them are Christians who know how to weep with those who weep, who hunger and thirst for justice, who look and act with mercy;[19] Christians who try every day to illumine their lives in the light of the standards by which we will be judged: “Come, you who are blessed by my Father. Inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, a stranger and you welcomed me, naked and you clothed me, ill and you cared for me, in prison and you visited me.” (Mt 25:34-36)
 
I recognize and am thankful for their courage and constant example – in turbulent, shameful and painful moments they continue to make a stand with joy for the Gospel. That witness does me a lot of good and sustains me in my own desire to overcome selfishness to give more fully of myself.[20] Far from diminishing the importance and seriousness of the evil caused and seeking the root of the problem, it also commits us to recognize the acting and operating power of the Holy Spirit in so many lives.   Without looking at this, we would remain half-way there and we could enter into a logic that far from seeking to empower what is good and remedy what is wrong, it would partialize the reality, falling into grave injustice.
 
Accepting the successes, as well as the personal and communal limitations, far from being just one more news item, becomes the initial kickoff of every authentic process of conversion and transformation. Let us never forget that Jesus Christ risen presents himself to his own with his wounds. Moreover, it is precisely from his wounds that Thomas can confess his faith. We are invited to not dissimulate, hide, or cover over our wounds.
 
A wounded Church is able to understand and be moved by the wounds of today’s world, make them its own, suffer them, accompany them and move to heal them. A wounded Church does not put itself at the center, does not think it is perfect, does not seek to cover up and dissimulate its evil, but places there the only one who can heal the wounds and he has a name: Jesus Christ.[21]
 
This certainty is that which will move us to seek in season and out of season, the commitment to create a culture where each person has the right to breathe an air free of every kind of abuse. A culture free of the cover ups which end up vitiating all our relationships. A culture which in the face of sin creates a dynamic of repentance, mercy and forgiveness, and in face of crime, accusation, judgment and sanction.
 
7. Dear brothers, I began this letter telling you that appealing to you is not a practical recourse or a gesture of goodwill, on the contrary it is to invoke the anointing which as the People of God you possess. With you the necessary steps for ecclesial renewal and conversion will be able to be taken, that will be sound and long term. With you the necessary transformation can be generated that is so needed. Without you nothing can be done. I exhort all the faithful Holy People of God who live in Chile to not be afraid to get involved and go forward moved by the Holy Spirit in search of a Church which is increasingly more synodal, prophetic and hopeful; less abusive because it knows how to place Jesus at the center, in the hungry, the prisoner, the migrant, and the abused.
 
I ask you to not cease praying for me. I pray for you and I ask Jesus to bless you and the Virgin to care for you.
 
                                                                                                                           Francis
 
Vatican May 31, 2018, Feast of the Visitation of Our Lady.

[1]Cf. Letter of the Holy Father Francis to the Bishops of Chile following the report of His Excellency Archbishop Charles J. Scicluna, April 8, 2018
[2]BENEDICT XVI Deus Caritas Est, 16.
[3]Cf. Meeting of the Holy Father Francis with priests, men and women religious, consecrated men and women, seminarians, Cathedral of Santiago de Chile, January 16, 2018.
[4] Cf. FRANCIS, Evangelii Gaudium, 278
[5]Cf. VATICAN COUNCIL II, Lumen Gentium, 9.
[6]Cf. Meeting of the Holy Father Francis with young people at National Shrine of Maipú, January 28, 2017
[7]Cf. FRANCIS, Gaudate et Exsultate, 96
[8]Cf. FRANCIS, Homily at Solemnity of Pentecost Mass 2018
[9]It is good to recognize some of the organizations and media that have taken up the issue of abuse in a responsible way, always seeking the truth and not making out of this painful reality a means to boost program ratings.
[10]Cf. FRANCIS, Evangelii Gaudium, 227
[11]“The Lord said ‘I have witnessed the affliction of my people in Egypt and have heard their cry against their taskmasters, so I know well what they are suffering’.” Ex 3:7
[12]Let us remember that this was the first word-commandment that the people of Israel received from Yahweh: “Listen Israel” (Dt 6:4)
[13]Cf. Visit of the Holy Father Francis to the Women’s Correctional Center, Santiago de Chile, January 16, 2018
[14]Cf. FRANCIS, Gaudete et Exsultate, 47-59
[15]Cf. FRANCIS, Gaudete et Exsultate, 44
[16]It is essential to carry out the much needed in the centers of formation promoted by the recent Apostolic Constitution Veritates Gaudium. By way of example, I emphasize that “in fact, are called to offer opportunities and processes for the suitable formation of priests, consecrated men and women, and committed lay people. At the same time, they are called to be a sort of providential cultural laboratory in which the Church carries out the performative interpretation of the reality brought about by the Christ event and nourished by the gifts of wisdom and knowledge by which the Holy Spirit enriches the People of God in manifold ways – from the sensus fidei fidelium to the magisterium of the bishops, and from the charism of the prophets to that of the doctors and theologians. FRANCIS, Veritates Gaudium, 3
[17]PAUL Vl, Evangelii Nuntiandi,48.
[18]Cf. FRANCIS, Gaudete et Exsultate,6-9.
[19]Cf. FRANCIS, Gaudete et Exsultate,76, 79, 82.
[20]Cf. FRANCIS Evangelii Gaudium,76
[21]Cf. Meeting of the Holy Father Francis with priests, men and women religious, consecrated men and women, seminarians, Cathedral of Santiago de Chile, January 16, 2018.

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