VOLUME 3, ISSUE 15  •  JUNE 10, 2017

Table of Contents

Copyright Notice

VATICAN NEWS

Audience with lower middle school pupils participating in ‘The Grail’ or ‘The Knights’ Christian educational experience

Francis declares future month of prayer for missionary work

Pope hears testimonies of earthquake children, asks them to trust in Jesus

The gifts of the Holy Spirit are for everyone, Pope Francis says

Holy Mass for the Solemnity of Pentecost

Pope prays for victims of terror attack in central London

Message of the Holy Father Francis for World Missionary Day 2017

The Pope’s words at the Regina Coeli prayer

Audience with participants in the General Chapters of the Consolata Missionaries

Pope dedicates June to praying for an end to the arms trade

Pope Francis warns against flattery and deceit

General Audience: God’s paternity, wellspring of our hope

Venezuela’s bishops: President Maduro starves his people into submission

WORLD NEWS

Body of African bishop who reportedly committed suicide found

Italian exorcist to Jesuit leader: No, the devil isn’t just a ‘symbol’

Catholic bishops respond to tragic terrorist attacks in London

European leaders discuss plight of child victims of war

Muslims and Christians unite to rebuild Mosul monastery

Ukraine’s Cardinal Lubomyr Husar recalled as a spiritual father

Salesians eager to recover relic of St John Bosco’s brain

Autopsy raises questions about circumstances of African bishop’s death

This priest and three companions were killed for the faith in Iraq

U.S. NEWS

How ISIS genocide victims still face discrimination in Kurdistan

How a Supreme Court decision about pension plans affects religious hospitals

U.S. bishops say draft religious freedom rule ‘long overdue’

Fix health care bill’s major defects, bishops ask U.S. Senate

Speak up for the voiceless, Pence encourages Catholic prayer breakfast

Mythologizing the devil won’t end well, Archbishop Chaput warns

Why this bill could be crucial for Iraq’s beleaguered Christians

Delaware legislature votes to drop restrictions on abortion

Missouri governor calls special session to protect St Louis pro-lifers

FEATURES

Nun who received birthday greeting from Pope Francis dies at 110

One of Poland’s new priests is the prime minister’s son

Catacomb frescoes in Rome restored using lasers

Watch a 20-week baby in utero with new groundbreaking technology

Kathy Griffin and the vanishing of argument

Mother Teresa was heroic – but maybe not for the reasons you think

Can the Catholic Church help an addicted generation?

Movie review: ‘The Mummy’

SCRIPTURE READINGS

Sunday • June 11, 2017

Monday • June 12, 2017

Tuesday • June 13, 2017

Wednesday • June 14, 2017

Thursday • June 15, 2017

Friday • June 16, 2017

Saturday • June 17, 2017

The Catholic Digital News

The Free Weekly Newsmagazine for the Church of the 21st Century

Volume 3, Issue 15 • June 10, 2017

Copyright © 2017 by LGC Publishing. All rights reserved.

News articles and images originating from the Catholic News Agency, Libreria Editrice Vaticana, and other media outlets have been reproduced with the full permission of their respective copyright holders. All rights reserved.

Scripture readings for Daily Mass have been reproduced from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Catholic Edition. Copyright © 1989, 1993 by the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission through the Gratis Use Policy of the copyright holder. All rights reserved.

Content editing, cover image design, and digital book creation by P. C. Weber

The Catholic Digital News

Website: catholicdigitalnews.com

New issues of The Catholic Digital News are published every Saturday as free e-book downloads that are released exclusively through this website. Although these files are provided gratis to the public, they remain fully protected under copyright law. Consequently, users should be aware that certain actions are expressly forbidden once an issue of The Catholic Digital News has been downloaded onto a device. These include reproduction or distribution of the file at other websites, over the Internet, or through other media; utilization of the file for commercial use or other unauthorized purposes; disassembly of the file or alteration of its internal code or content; modification of the file to create derivate works; or violation of third-party copyrights on text and images contained within the file. For full compliance, please download issues of The Catholic Digital News for personal use only and refer others to this website instead of sharing downloaded copies.

VATICAN NEWS

Audience with lower middle school pupils participating in ‘The Grail’ or ‘The Knights’ Christian educational experience

The Holy See Press Office • June 2, 2017

Vatican City — At midday today, in the Paul VI Hall, the Holy Father Francis received in audience the lower middle school pupils participating in “The Grail” or “The Knights” Christian educational experience.

The following are the Pope’s answers to the questions posed by the children during the meeting:

Holy Father’s answers to questions

Marta: Dear Pope Francis, my name is Marta. In this period I am very worried by the fact that, since I am in the third year of middle school [eighth grade], next year I will not see most of my best friends and I am afraid of the change from middle school to high school. I am happy as I am now, with the friends I have now. Why must everything change? I can’t and I don’t want to imagine my life and everything that will happen to me without those friends I love. What shall I do?

Pope Francis: Thank you, Marta. I will tell you this. Life is a continuous “hello” and “goodbye.” Very often they are small things, but many times it is a “goodbye” for years or forever. We grow up, meeting each other and bidding each other farewell. If you do not learn to say goodbye well, you will never learn how to meet new people. What you say here is a challenge, it is the challenge of life. It is true, your companions will not be the same – maybe you will see them, you will talk to them … but there are new companions you must meet, and that is the challenge. And in life we must get used to this journey: to leave something and to meet new things. And that is also a risk. There are people who are very afraid – you used the word, “I’m afraid” – to take a step, who always stay still, too calm, and do not grow. When a boy, a girl, a man, a woman says “enough” and – as the parish priest recalled – “gets comfortable on the couch,” he or she does not grow. He or she closes the horizon of life. And here I use another word … See, look at that wall: what’s behind the wall? But do not you see what’s behind the wall? Tell me, tell me … come to the microphone …

Marta: I don’t know …

Pope Francis: You don’t know … That is how it is when someone doesn’t want to grow: he has a wall in front of himself, he doesn’t know what there is. But if you go out, into the countryside – think – what do you see? Where there are no walls, what do you see?

Marta: I see everything …

Pope Francis: Everything. You see the horizon. We must learn to look at life, looking at horizons, always more, always more, always ahead. And this is meeting new people, encountering new situations. Do not forget the others, no! There is always a good memory, and usually we meet old companions, we say hello to each other … But we must always journey on, to grow. It is true that you used the word “afraid”: “I am afraid to grow,” “I am afraid of going ahead”… but use instead the word “challenge”: do I rise to the challenge, or do I let myself be defeated by the challenge? Do you understand? Look at the wall and think about how it is in the countryside, on the horizon. And this is the choice you must make. You cannot see what is behind the wall; with the horizon, you go ahead, and the farther you go … the horizon never finishes! And we must grow on the horizon. I don’t know if I have explained myself. And I said a word: remember the friends from before, all those you must leave to take another road. Remember them, call them at times, meet up with them … But live with the new ones, and follow the path with the new ones. In this way you will grow up. But you have been good! Because you could not tell me what was behind the wall, and this is a very good thing, because you cannot see behind the wall, and you were able to tell me that when you are in the countryside and look at the horizon you can see everything. Well done! Keep going!

Marta: Thank you.

Giulia: Dear Pope Francis, my name is Giulia and I would like to ask you what we young people can do in a concrete way to change the world around us a bit, in view of everything that is happening …

Pope Francis: We can think of calling a fairy that comes with a magic wand and changes the world. Can this be done? How does the world change? Is it possible to change the world? All of you answer, is it possible? [Children]: “Yes!” Is it easy to change the world? [Children]: “No!.” Is it difficult to change the world? [Children]: “Yes!” If it is difficult for grown-up people, for people who have studied, for people who have the capacity to govern the countries, it must be even harder for a boy or a girl, mustn’t it? It’s difficult. But I would like to ask you, all of you, a question: you, can you change the world? [Children]: “Yes … .” You’re not very sure, are you? Can you or can you not? [Children]: “Yes!” Good, that’s better. But how? With the things that are around you. For example, always, when I meet children – you are a little bigger, but children – I ask this question: if you have two candies, and a friend comes along, what do you do? Almost everyone says, “I’ll give one to him and keep one for me.” Some do not say it, but they think, “I’ll keep them both in my pocket and eat them afterwards when he goes away.” The first is a positive attitude: one for you, one for me. The other is an egoistic, negative attitude: everything for me. Look at your hands. Everyone, look at your hands and make this gesture. Positive gesture: how is your hand? Let’s all do it together: take it, yes … let’s share. Negative attitude: how is your hand? Closed. Let’s do the gesture. To change the world, do you want your hand closed? [Children]: “No!.” What does it take? Let me see … There! Yes, it takes an open hand. But the hand is a symbol for the heart, we cannot do this with the heart here, it would be difficult … But it is a symbol of the heart: open heart. You can begin to change the world with an open heart. Now for the other question I always ask children. And if you have just one candy, and a friend comes along, what do you do? It’s not easy. Most answer, “Half and half!” And this is like this or like that [gestures] half and half. And some say, “I put it in my pocket and eat it by myself.” This, how is it? Like this or like that? [gestures] Let’s see … The world is changed by opening the heart, listening to others, accepting others, sharing things. And you can do the same. If you have a companion, a friend, a schoolmate, a schoolmate you don’t like, who isn’t very nice … If you go to others to gossip about that person, how is this, like this or like that? [gestures]. Good. Instead, if you let it pass – “But, I don’t like it, I won’t say anything” – how is that? Good. You have understood. Changing the world with little everyday things, with generosity, with sharing, creating these attitudes of brotherhood. If someone insults me and I insult him, how is this? Instead, if someone insults me and I do not answer, how is that? Have you understood? Never repay evil with evil! [Applause from the children]. Never. Do you hurt me? And what did Jesus teach us about this? Listen: pray for everyone; pray for your friends and pray also for your enemies, for those who make you suffer. And Jesus says: like “the Father Who is in heaven … [Who] makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good.” Yes: pray for everyone. Prayer for everyone, and do not wish bad things on others. In this way we can change the world. There is no magic wand, but there are little everyday things that we must learn. And I will make you a proposal. In a group, for about half an hour, speak about this. Little groups, when you are all together. If they do this to me, what must I do? If I am faced with this choice, what must I do? Speaking about things which are like “this” and things which are like “that” [gestures], with the heart. Thank you for your question.

Tanio: Dear Pope Francis, my name is Tanio, I was born in Bulgaria and in the first month of my life my parents left me in an orphanage. At the age of five I was adopted by a new Italian family. After a year, however, my mother died. I have lived so far with my father and my grandparents. This year my grandparents died too. The Knights are a gift, a great gift, for me: because they are close to me and support me in every moment of my life. However, this question comes to me: how can you believe that the Lord loves you, when He makes you lose people or makes things happen that you would never want?

Pope Francis: How can you believe that the Lord loves you, when He makes you lose people or makes things happen that you would never want? Let us think a bit, all together, with our imagination, of any hospital with children. How can we think that God loves children and lets them get sick, lets them die, very often? Think of this question: why do children suffer? Why are there children in the world who suffer from hunger, while in other parts of the world there is great waste? Why? You know, there are questions – like the one that you have asked – that we cannot answer with words. Tanio, you have asked this question and there are no words to explain. Only, you will find some explanation – not “why,” but “para que” [“for what purpose”] – in the love of those who care for you and support you. There is no explanation for why these things happen, but there are people who accompany you. I say to you sincerely, and you will understand this well: when I, myself, ask in prayer, “why do children suffer?,” I usually do so when I go to children’s hospitals and I leave – I tell you the truth – with my heart not destroyed, but very pained, the Lord does not answer me. I look only to the Crucified Jesus. If God let His only Son suffer so for us, there must be something that has a meaning. But, dear Tanio, I cannot explain that meaning to you. You will find it yourself: further along in life, or in the other life. But explanations, like how we explain a mathematical theorem or an historical question, I cannot give you, nor can anyone else. There are, in life – you understand this well! – there are in life questions and situations that cannot be explained. One of those is what you have experienced, your suffering. But behind this, there is always God’s love. “Ah, how do you explain it?” It cannot be explained. I cannot explain it. And if someone says, “Come, come, I will explain it to you!,” doubt him. Only those who support you, who accompany you and help you grow, will make you feel God’s love. Thank you for asking this question, because it is important that you, boys and girls, at this age, begin to understand these things, because this will help you to grow well and to go ahead. Thank you, Tanio.

And taking a little of the pain of the last question, let us turn to our Mother, our Mother in heaven, to the Mother: She understands pain, like all mothers, and let us pray the consecration together.

[Prayer of consecration]: “Jesus, my Lord and King …”

[Blessing]

And before finishing, to be able to go ahead in life and to have a generous heart, how must our heart be? With the hand …

Children: Open!

Pope Francis: To go backwards … to go backwards: how do you go backwards? With the heart, how?

Children: Closed!

Pope Francis: Closed. And other question: can all situations in life be explained?

Children: No!

Pope Francis: I haven’t understood, I can’t hear …

Children, more loudly: No!

Pope Francis: Good. Let’s keep going ahead!

Copyright © Libreria Editrice Vaticana (vatican.va)

VATICAN NEWS

Francis declares future month of prayer for missionary work

by Hannah Brockhaus (CNA/EWTN News) • June 3, 2017

Pope Francis meets with street children during his visit to the Philippines on Jan. 16, 2015. (ANSA/L’Osservatore Romano)

Vatican City — On Saturday Pope Francis agreed to dedicate the month of October 2019 to reflection and prayer for the missionary work of the Church.

“To renew the ardor and passion, the spiritual engine of the apostolic activity of innumerable saints and missionary martyrs, I very much welcomed your proposal … to announce an extraordinary time of prayer and reflection on the Ad gentes mission,” Pope Francis said during a meeting with members of the Pontifical Mission Societies.

Directors of the Pontifical Mission Societies and Cardinal Fernando Filoni, head of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples, met with the Pope at 11 a.m. on June in the Vatican’s Clementine Hall.

The Pope made the announcement for the extraordinary month based on a proposal by the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples, to dedicate time to pray and reflect on Ad gentes, a Second Vatican Council decree on the missionary activity of the Church, promulgated by Pope Paul VI on Dec. 7, 1965.

Francis said that he hopes the month will be a promising time of prayer and reflection on the testimony of missionary saints and martyrs, the Bible and theology, as well as catechesis and charitable missionary work towards the evangelization of the Church.

This taking place: the Church may “once again find the freshness and ardor of the first love for the crucified and risen Lord,” going out to “evangelize the world with credibility and evangelical efficacy.”

The month of October 2019 was chosen because of its proximity to the centenary anniversary of the publication of Pope Benedict XV’s apostolic letter, Maximum Illud, which was published on Nov. 30, 1919.

“In this most important document of his Magisterium about the mission,” Pope Francis said, Pope Benedict XV remembers “the necessity of the sanctity of life to the apostolate’s effectiveness.”

“Therefore he recommends an ever stronger union with Christ and a more convivial and joyful engagement in his divine passion to proclaim the Gospel to all, loving and using mercy for all.”

This, Francis highlighted, is even more essential for the Church’s mission today. In fact, he said - quoting from Maximum Illud - men and women “distinguished by zeal and holiness” are needed for the mission more and more.

Blessed Pope Paul VI wrote in his apostolic exhortation, Evangelii nuntiandi: “Evangelizing, the Church begins with evangelizing herself,” the Pope pointed out.

This renewal requires a personal conversion, he said, “living the mission as a permanent opportunity to announce Christ,” meeting him and helping others to have a personal encounter with him too.

Responsible for material and spiritual assistance to churches around the world, the Pope said that he hopes the aid of the Mission Societies will make the churches “more and more based on the Gospel and on the baptismal involvement of all the faithful, laymen and clerics.”

Because “the Church’s only mission,” he continued, is “to make God’s love close to every man, especially to those most in need of his mercy.”

“The Extraordinary Month of Prayer and Reflection on Mission as First Evangelization will serve this renewal of ecclesial faith so that the Easter of Jesus Christ, the only Savior, Lord and Spouse of his Church, will always and ever work.”

Concluding his meeting, the Pope gave his blessing on the eve of the Solemnity of Pentecost, asking the Virgin Mary, Queen of Apostles and Mother of the Church, to give her motherly intercession.

“May the Blessed Apostles Peter and Paul, the holy martyrs Carlo Lwanga and his companions, Blessed Paul Manna, never cease to pray to God for all of us, his missionaries,” he said.

Share this article

Original article with sharing options:  Link

VATICAN NEWS

Pope hears testimonies of earthquake children, asks them to trust in Jesus

by Hannah Brockhaus (CNA/EWTN News) • June 3, 2017

Pope Francis listened to the testimonies of several children from earthquake-struck areas on June 3, 2017 at the Vatican. (L’Osservatore Romano)

Vatican City — On Saturday, Pope Francis met with 400 children from towns hit by earthquakes in central Italy, telling them that during times of tragedy and natural disasters, we must deepen our trust in the Lord, who helps us.

“What you have experienced is a bad thing because it is a calamity,” Pope Francis told the children June 3.

“Is it true or not? It’s a calamity. And calamities wound the soul. But the Lord helps us to recover.”

The Pope met with the school-age children at the Vatican as part of the fifth edition of the “Children’s Train” initiative, promoted by the Pontifical Council for Culture’s “Court of Gentiles” and Trenitalia, the Italian train company which sponsored the children’s train ride from Rome’s main station, Termini, to a station inside the Vatican.

Sitting in the atrium outside the Pope Paul VI hall, Francis led the children in an informal exchange which included random comments from one child about visiting the beach later with her mother, sister and cousin and another about being hungry for lunch.

“Do you trust in the Lord, or not?” the Pope asked them, as they sat on the floor, holding balloons they received on the train.

“Yes!” the children responded, Pope Francis asking again, “Are you sure?” to which they enthusiastically responded: “Yes!”

“And also in Our Lady?” the Pope continued, saying “and now, if we trust, we thank Our Lady for the good things that she has given us in this calamity.” The Pope then led them in praying the Hail Mary.

At the beginning of the meeting, Francis had said: “Boys and girls, they tell me I have to talk. But I like to listen! You, do you want to talk?”

He listened carefully while a few children offered some brief testimony about their experiences during the earthquake, which hit parts of central Italy on August 24, 2016 and resulted in nearly 300 deaths.

One boy from the town of Norcia, one of the most severely-hit, shared how after the earthquakes, they couldn’t return to their school building, but had to hold school in tents for a period of time. Only after March of this year were they able to return to a normal schedule and building.

The Pope told each child “good job,” after hearing their testimony.

“One of the things that Jesus likes most, one of the words that most pleases the Lord,” the Pope told the young boys and girls, “are the words ‘Thank you very much.’”

He thanked them all for their visit and for remembering the “bad time” with him.

“Was the train nice?” he asked. “Yup!” the children responded in a group.

“Are you hungry?” he continued. The answer was again: “Yes!”

“Have you heard? They are hungry,” the Pope concluded to the parents and chaperones. “Goodbye, thank you!” he said smiling.

Share this article

Original article with sharing options:  Link

VATICAN NEWS

The gifts of the Holy Spirit are for everyone, Pope Francis says

by Hannah Brockhaus (CNA/EWTN News) • June 4, 2017

Rose petals shower from the ceiling of the Pantheon, a Pentecost tradition in Rome symbolizing the descent of the Holy Spirit. (Marina Testino/CNA)

Vatican City — On Saturday, Pope Francis said that the grace of the Holy Spirit is for everyone – something we must keep in mind as we continue to walk the path toward Christian unity through prayer and good works.

“Share with everyone in the Church Baptism in the Holy Spirit, praise the Lord without ceasing, walk together with Christians of different Churches and Christian communities in prayer and action for the most needy,” Pope Francis said June 3.

The grace of the Holy Spirit “is for the whole Church, not just for some, and none of us is the ‘master’ and all the others the servants. No. We are all serving this current of grace.”

Pope Francis addressed around 50,000 members of the Catholic Charismatic Renewal movement during an ecumenical prayer vigil inside Rome’s Circus Maximus on June 3. The vigil was part of five days of celebrations for the 50th anniversary of the movement.

The May 31-June 4 jubilee was organized by the International Catholic Charismatic Renewal Services and the Catholic Fraternity of Charismatic Covenant Communities and Fellowships.

Saturday night’s meeting with Pope Francis, on the eve of Pentecost, was preceded by praise and worship music, readings and testimonies. Papal preacher Fr. Raniero Cantalamessa, O.F.M. also gave a meditation. On stage were leaders of the Charismatic Renewal and representatives of Evangelical, Pentecostal and other Christian churches.

During the encounter, the Pope reminded those present that they are in a privileged place for working toward Christian unity, something for which they should never stop striving.

The most precious gift we have all received, he explained, is our Baptism. “And now the Spirit leads us on the path of conversion that goes through the whole Christian world …”

Additionally, praising God should be accompanied by serving those in need.

“To serve the poorest and the sick, this is what the Church and the Pope are expecting from you, Catholic Charismatic Renewal, but from all of you, everyone, all of you who have entered this current of grace!”

Celebrating the 50th anniversary of the movement is the perfect time, he said, to stop and reflect.

“And I would say to you: It is time to move forward with more force, leaving behind us the dust of time we have left to accumulate, giving thanks for what we have received and facing the new with faith in the action of the Holy Spirit!”

Today, he said, we are gathered in an open-air space, because we are not afraid and because our hearts are open to the promises of the Father. Together, we all profess that “Jesus is Lord.”

People may have come from many different parts of the world, but in the Holy Spirit, we are united, “to announce together the love of the Father for all his children! To announce the Good News to all peoples! To show that peace is possible.”

Showing to the world that peace is possible isn’t always so easy, the Pope continued, “but in the name of Jesus we can prove with our testimony that peace is possible!”

“Jubilee, cheerfulness, joy, fruit of the same action of the Holy Spirit! The Christian either experiences joy in his heart or there is something that does not work. The joy of announcing the Good News of the Gospel!”

Francis also commented on the unity found in the “ecumenism of blood,” a phrase he has used before, in speaking about the number of Christian martyrs there are today. When Christians are killed for their faith, he said, they aren’t asked, “Are you Orthodox? Are you a Catholic? Are you evangelical? Are you Lutheran? Are you a Calvinist?”

“Today, it is more urgent than ever before, the unity of Christians, united by the Holy Spirit, in prayer and action for the weak. Walk together, work together. Love each other,” he said.

“And now we are here and we are many!” he continued. “We have come together to pray together to ask for the coming of the Holy Ghost over each of us to go out into the streets of the city and the world to proclaim the Lordship of Jesus Christ.”

Share this article

Original article with sharing options:  Link

VATICAN NEWS

Holy Mass for the Solemnity of Pentecost

The Holy See Press Office • June 4, 2017

Vatican City — At 10:30 this morning, Sunday of Pentecost, the Holy Father Francis celebrated Holy Mass in St. Peter’s Square. Cardinals, bishops and priests concelebrated.

During the Eucharistic celebration, after the Gospel reading, the Pope pronounced the following homily:

Homily of the Holy Father

Today concludes the Easter season, the fifty days that, from Jesus’ resurrection to Pentecost, are marked in a particular way by the presence of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit is in fact the Easter Gift par excellence. He is the Creator Spirit, who constantly brings about new things. Today’s readings show us two of those new things. In the first reading, the Spirit makes of the disciples a new people; in the Gospel, he creates in the disciples a new heart.

A new people. On the day of Pentecost, the Spirit came down from heaven, in the form of “divided tongues, as of fire … [that] rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit, and began to speak in other languages” (Acts 2:3-4). This is how the word of God describes the working of the Spirit: first he rests on each and then brings all of them together in fellowship. To each he gives a gift, and then gathers them all into unity. In other words, the same Spirit creates diversity and unity, and in this way forms a new, diverse and unified people: the universal Church. First, in a way both creative and unexpected, he generates diversity, for in every age he causes new and varied charisms to blossom. Then he brings about unity: he joins together, gathers and restores harmony: “By his presence and his activity, the Spirit draws into unity spirits that are distinct and separate among themselves” (Cyril of Alexandria, Commentary on the Gospel of John, XI, 11). He does so in a way that effects true union, according to God’s will, a union that is not uniformity, but unity in difference.

For this to happen, we need to avoid two recurrent temptations. The first temptation seeks diversity without unity. This happens when we want to separate, when we take sides and form parties, when we adopt rigid and airtight positions, when we become locked into our own ideas and ways of doing things, perhaps even thinking that we are better than others, or always in the right, when we become so-called “guardians of the truth.” When this happens, we choose the part over the whole, belonging to this or that group before belonging to the Church. We become avid supporters for one side, rather than brothers and sisters in the one Spirit. We become Christians of the “right” or the “left,” before being on the side of Jesus, unbending guardians of the past or the avant-garde of the future before being humble and grateful children of the Church. The result is diversity without unity. The opposite temptation is that of seeking unity without diversity. Here, unity becomes uniformity, where everyone has to do everything together and in the same way, always thinking alike. Unity ends up being homogeneity and no longer freedom. But, as Saint Paul says, “where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom” (2 Cor 3:17).

So the prayer we make to the Holy Spirit is for the grace to receive his unity, a glance that, leaving personal preferences aside, embraces and loves his Church, our Church. It is to accept responsibility for unity among all, to wipe out the gossip that sows the darnel of discord and the poison of envy, since to be men and women of the Church means being men and women of communion. It is also to ask for a heart that feels that the Church is our Mother and our home, an open and welcoming home where the manifold joy of the Holy Spirit is shared.

Now we come to the second new thing brought by the Spirit: a new heart. When the risen Jesus first appears to his disciples, he says to them: “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them” (Jn 20:22-23). Jesus does not condemn them for having denied and abandoned him during his passion, but instead grants them the spirit of forgiveness. The Spirit is the first gift of the risen Lord, and is given above all for the forgiveness of sins. Here we see the beginning of the Church, the glue that holds us together, the cement that binds the bricks of the house: forgiveness. Because forgiveness is gift to the highest degree; it is the greatest love of all. It preserves unity despite everything, prevents collapse, and consolidates and strengthens. Forgiveness sets our hearts free and enables us to start afresh. Forgiveness gives hope; without forgiveness, the Church is not built up.

The spirit of forgiveness resolves everything in harmony, and leads us to reject every other way: the way of hasty judgement, the cul-de-sac of closing every door, the one-way street criticizing others. Instead, the Spirit bids us take the two-way street of forgiveness received and forgiveness given, of divine mercy that becomes love of neighbor, of charity as “the sole criterion by which everything must be done or not done, changed or not changed” (Isaac of Stella, Or. 31). Let us ask for the grace to make more beautiful the countenance of our Mother the Church, letting ourselves be renewed by forgiveness and self-correction. Only then will we be able to correct others in charity.

The Holy Spirit is the fire of love burning in the Church and in our hearts, even though we often cover him with the ash of our sins. Let us ask him: “Spirit of God, Lord, who dwell in my heart and in the heart of the Church, guiding and shaping her in diversity, come! Like water, we need you to live. Come down upon us anew, teach us unity, renew our hearts and teach us to love as you love us, to forgive as you forgive us. Amen.”

Copyright © Libreria Editrice Vaticana (vatican.va)

VATICAN NEWS

Pope prays for victims of terror attack in central London

CNA/EWTN News • June 4, 2017

Pope Francis celebrates Mass for the Solemnity of Pentecost in St. Peter’s Square on June 4, 2017. (Daniel Ibáñez/CNA)

Vatican City — At the end of Mass on Pentecost Sunday, Pope Francis prayed for the victims of the London Bridge terrorist attack.

“May the Holy Spirit grant peace to the whole world,” the Pope said after Mass, before praying the Regina Coeli.

“May He heal the wounds of war and of terrorism, which even this (Saturday) night, in London, struck innocent civilians: let us pray for the victims and their families.”

Seven people were killed and 48 others injured last night when three men drove a van into a crowd of people on London Bridge around 10 p.m. local time last night. The men then went on a stabbing spree in nearby Borough Market where people were enjoying a Saturday night out at restaurants and pubs.

The three men reportedly shouted “This is for Allah” during the attack. The three attackers were shot dead by police within eight minutes of the first emergency call.

According to police, 12 more people have been arrested in connection to the attacks.

It is the third terror attack in the UK in three months, after another car and knife attack in Westminster in March, which left five people dead, and the Manchester bombing at a concert less than two weeks ago, in which 22 people were killed.

In a statement on Sunday, U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May promised to crack down on terrorism in the face of the recent attacks.

“(W)e believe we are experiencing a new trend in the threat we face, as terrorism breeds terrorism, and perpetrators are inspired to attack … by copying one another and often using the crudest of means of attack,” May said.

“We cannot and must not pretend that things can continue as they are,” she added.

May noted that while the recent attacks were connected by one common theme - “they are bound together by Islamistic extremism that preaches hatred, sews division, and promotes sectarianism. It is an ideology that is a perversion of Islam and a perversion of truth,” she said.

“It will only be defeated when we turn people’s minds away from this violence and make them understand that our values, pluralistic, British values, are superior to anything offered by the preachers and supporters of hate.”

May also said that internet must be regulated against terrorism, and that “extremism” must be stamped out both in the private and public sector.

“It is time to say enough is enough.”

Share this article

Original article with sharing options:  Link

VATICAN NEWS

Message of the Holy Father Francis for World Missionary Day 2017

The Holy See Press Office • June 4, 2017

Vatican City — The following is the Holy Father Francis’ Message for the 91st World Missionary Day, to be celebrated on Sunday 22 October 2017.

Mission at the heart of the Christian faith

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

Once again this year, World Mission Day gathers us around the person of Jesus, “the very first and greatest evangelizer” (Paul VI, Evangelii Nuntiandi, 7), who continually sends us forth to proclaim the Gospel of the love of God the Father in the power of the Holy Spirit. This Day invites us to reflect anew on the mission at the heart of the Christian faith. The Church is missionary by nature; otherwise, she would no longer be the Church of Christ, but one group among many others that soon end up serving their purpose and passing away. So it is important to ask ourselves certain questions about our Christian identity and our responsibility as believers in a world marked by confusion, disappointment and frustration, and torn by numerous fratricidal wars that unjustly target the innocent. What is the basis of our mission? What is the heart of our mission? What are the essential approaches we need to take in carrying out our mission?

Mission and the transformative power of the Gospel of Christ, the Way, the Truth and the Life

1. The Church’s mission, directed to all men and women of good will, is based on the transformative power of the Gospel. The Gospel is Good News filled with contagious joy, for it contains and offers new life: the life of the Risen Christ who, by bestowing his life-giving Spirit, becomes for us the Way, the Truth and the Life (cf. Jn 14:6). He is the Way who invites us to follow him with confidence and courage. In following Jesus as our Way, we experience Truth and receive his Life, which is fullness of communion with God the Father in the power of the Holy Spirit. That life sets us free from every kind of selfishness, and is a source of creativity in love.

2. God the Father desires this existential transformation of his sons and daughters, a transformation that finds expression in worship in spirit and truth (cf. Jn 4:23-24), through a life guided by the Holy Spirit in imitation of Jesus the Son to the glory of God the Father. “The glory of God is the living man” (IRENAEUS, Adversus Haereses IV, 20, 7). The preaching of the Gospel thus becomes a vital and effective word that accomplishes what it proclaims (cf. Is 55:10-11): Jesus Christ, who constantly takes flesh in every human situation (cf. Jn 1:14).

Mission and the kairos of Christ

3. The Church’s mission, then, is not to spread a religious ideology, much less to propose a lofty ethical teaching. Many movements throughout the world inspire high ideals or ways to live a meaningful life. Through the mission of the Church, Jesus Christ himself continues to evangelize and act; her mission thus makes present in history the kairos, the favorable time of salvation. Through the proclamation of the Gospel, the risen Jesus becomes our contemporary, so that those who welcome him with faith and love can experience the transforming power of his Spirit, who makes humanity and creation fruitful, even as the rain does with the earth. “His resurrection is not an event of the past; it contains a vital power which has permeated this world. Where all seems to be dead, signs of the resurrection suddenly spring up. It is an irresistible force” (Evangelii Gaudium, 276).

4. Let us never forget that “being Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with an event, a Person, which gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction” (BENEDICT XVI, Deus Caritas Est, 1). The Gospel is a Person who continually offers himself and constantly invites those who receive him with humble and religious faith to share his life by an effective participation in the paschal mystery of his death and resurrection. Through Baptism, the Gospel becomes a source of new life, freed of the dominion of sin, enlightened and transformed by the Holy Spirit. Through Confirmation, it becomes a fortifying anointing that, through the same Spirit, points out new ways and strategies for witness and accompaniment. Through the Eucharist, it becomes food for new life, a “medicine of immortality” (IGNATIUS OF ANTIOCH, Ad Ephesios, 20, 2).

5. The world vitally needs the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Through the Church, Christ continues his mission as the Good Samaritan, caring for the bleeding wounds of humanity, and as Good Shepherd, constantly seeking out those who wander along winding paths that lead nowhere. Thank God, many significant experiences continue to testify to the transformative power of the Gospel. I think of the gesture of the Dinka student who, at the cost of his own life, protected a student from the enemy Nuer tribe who was about to be killed. I think of that Eucharistic celebration in Kitgum, in northern Uganda, where, after brutal massacres by a rebel group, a missionary made the people repeat the words of Jesus on the cross: “My God, My God, why have you abandoned me?” as an expression of the desperate cry of the brothers and sisters of the crucified Lord. For the people, that celebration was an immense source of consolation and courage. We can think too of countless testimonies to how the Gospel helps to overcome narrowness, conflict, racism, tribalism, and to promote everywhere, and among all, reconciliation, fraternity, and sharing.

Mission inspires a spirituality of constant exodus, pilgrimage, and exile

6. The Church’s mission is enlivened by a spirituality of constant exodus. We are challenged “to go forth from our own comfort zone in order to reach all the peripheries in need of the light of the Gospel” (Evangelii Gaudium, 20). The Church’s mission impels us to undertake a constant pilgrimage across the various deserts of life, through the different experiences of hunger and thirst for truth and justice. The Church’s mission inspires a sense of constant exile, to make us aware, in our thirst for the infinite, that we are exiles journeying towards our final home, poised between the “already” and “not yet” of the Kingdom of Heaven.

7. Mission reminds the Church that she is not an end unto herself, but a humble instrument and mediation of the Kingdom. A self-referential Church, one content with earthly success, is not the Church of Christ, his crucified and glorious Body. That is why we should prefer “a Church which is bruised, hurting and dirty because it has been out on the streets, rather than a Church which is unhealthy from being confined and from clinging to its own security” (ibid., 49).

Young people, the hope of mission

8. Young people are the hope of mission. The person of Jesus Christ and the Good News he proclaimed continue to attract many young people. They seek ways to put themselves with courage and enthusiasm at the service of humanity. “There are many young people who offer their solidarity in the face of the evils of the world and engage in various forms of militancy and volunteering. … How beautiful it is to see that young people are ‘street preachers,’ joyfully bringing Jesus to every street, every town square and every corner of the earth!” (ibid., 106). The next Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops, to be held in 2018 on the theme Young People, the Faith and Vocational Discernment, represents a providential opportunity to involve young people in the shared missionary responsibility that needs their rich imagination and creativity.

The service of the Pontifical Mission Societies

9. The Pontifical Mission Societies are a precious means of awakening in every Christian community a desire to reach beyond its own confines and security in order to proclaim the Gospel to all. In them, thanks to a profound missionary spirituality, nurtured daily, and a constant commitment to raising missionary awareness and enthusiasm, young people, adults, families, priests, bishops and men and women religious work to develop a missionary heart in everyone. World Mission Day, promoted by the Society of the Propagation of the Faith, is a good opportunity for enabling the missionary heart of Christian communities to join in prayer, testimony of life and communion of goods, in responding to the vast and pressing needs of evangelization.

Carrying out our mission with Mary, Mother of Evangelization

10. Dear brothers and sisters, in carrying out our mission, let us draw inspiration from Mary, Mother of Evangelization. Moved by the Spirit, she welcomed the Word of life in the depths of her humble faith. May the Virgin Mother help us to say our own “yes,” conscious of the urgent need to make the Good News of Jesus resound in our time. May she obtain for us renewed zeal in bringing to everyone the Good News of the life that is victorious over death. May she intercede for us so that we can acquire the holy audacity needed to discover new ways to bring the gift of salvation to every man and woman.

From the Vatican, 4 June 2017, on the Solemnity of Pentecost

Copyright © Libreria Editrice Vaticana (vatican.va)

VATICAN NEWS

The Pope’s words at the Regina Coeli prayer

The Holy See Press Office • June 4, 2017

Vatican City — At the end of the Holy Mass celebrated on the forecourt of the Vatican Basilica on the Sunday of Pentecost, Pope Francis led the recital of the Regina Coeli prayer with the faithful and pilgrims gathered in St. Peter’s Square.

The following are the words of the Holy Father in introduction to the Easter time Marian prayer:

Before the Regina Coeli

Dear brothers and sisters, good morning!

Today, the Feast of Pentecost, my Message for the next World Missionary Day is published; the Day is celebrated every year in the month of October. The theme is: Mission at the heart of Christian faith. May the Holy Spirit sustain the mission of the Church throughout the world and give strength to all the missionaries of the Gospel. May the Spirit give peace to all the world and heal the wounds of war and terrorism, that last night, too, in London, struck innocent civilians: let us pray for the victims and their families.

I greet all of you, pilgrims from Italy and from many parts of the world, who have participated in this celebration. In particular, groups from Catholic Charismatic Renewal, which celebrates the fiftieth anniversary of its founding, and also the brothers and sisters of other Christian confessions who join in our prayer. I greet the Daughters of Mary Help of Christians from Latin American countries.

I greet and give my heartfelt thanks to the young people’s choir and orchestra from Carpi, who have performed several hymns during the Holy Mass, in collaboration with the Sistine Chapel Choir.

Let us now invoke the maternal intercession of the Virgin Mary. May she obtain for us the grace of being strongly inspired by the Holy Spirit, to bear witness to Christ with evangelical frankness.

Copyright © Libreria Editrice Vaticana (vatican.va)

VATICAN NEWS

Audience with participants in the General Chapters of the Consolata Missionaries

The Holy See Press Office • June 5, 2017

Vatican City — At midday today, in the Clementine Hall of the Apostolic Palace, the Holy Father Francis received in audience the participants in the General Chapters of the Consolata Missionaries.

The following is the Holy Father’s address to those present:

Holy Father’s Address

Dear Consolata Missionaries,

I am glad to welcome both the male and female branches of the religious family founded by Blessed Giuseppe Allamano, on the occasion of your respective General Chapters. I greet you all with affection and I hope that your works in the Chapters will take place with serenity and obedience to the Spirit. I extend my affectionate greeting to your confreres and consoeurs who work, often in difficult conditions, in various continents, and I encourage them to continue with generous fidelity in their commitment to the missio ad gentes. I wish now to offer you some suggestions so that these days may bear abundant fruits of good in your communities and in the missionary activity of the Church.

You are called to further your charism, to project yourselves with renewed zeal in the work of evangelization, in view of pastoral urgencies and new forms of poverty. While I joyfully thank the Lord for the good that you are doing in the world, I would like to urge you to carry out a careful discernment on the situation of the peoples among whom you perform your evangelizing work. Never tire of bringing comfort to the populations who are often marked by great poverty and acute suffering, as for example in many parts of Africa and Latin America. Let yourselves be continually challenged by the concrete realities with which you come into contact and seek to offer in appropriate ways the witness of charity that the Spirit infuses in your hearts (cf. Rm 5.5).

The history of your Institutes, made up – as in every family – of joys and sorrows, lights and shadows, has been marked and made fruitful even in these recent years by Christ’s cross. How can we neglect to mention here your confreres and consoeurs who loved the Gospel of charity more than themselves, and crowned their missionary service with the sacrifice of their lives? May their evangelical choice, without reserve, illuminate your missionary effort and be of encouragement for you all to continue with renewed generosity on your special mission in the Church.

To go ahead in this not easy mission, it is necessary to live communion with God with increasingly awareness of the Lord’s mercy that we receive. It is much more important to be aware of how much we are loved by God, than of how we love Him ourselves! It is good for us to consider, first and foremost, this priority of the gratuitous and merciful love of God, and to feel our commitment and our effort as a response. To the extent to which we are persuaded by the Lord’s love, our attachment to Him grows. We have a great need always to rediscover the love and mercy of the Lord to develop our familiarity with God. Consecrated persons, inasmuch as they make an effort to conform more perfectly to Christ, are most of all, familiar with God, intimate with Him, those who interact with the Lord with full freedom, and with spontaneity, but also with astonishment at the wonders He performs.

From this perspective, religious life can become a journey of the progressive rediscovery of divine mercy, facilitating the imitation of the virtues of Christ and His attitudes, rich in humanity, to then bear witness to them to all those you encounter in your pastoral service. Know also how to receive with joy the continuous stimuli to renewal and effort that come from real contact with the Lord Jesus, present and working in the mission through the Holy Spirit. This enable you to be actively present in the new arenas of evangelization, favoring – even if this may lead to sacrifices – openness towards situations that, with their particular needs, reveal themselves to be emblematic for our time.

Following the example of your Blessed Founder, never tire of giving a new impetus to missionary animation. It will be above all your apostolic fervour that will sustain the Christian communities entrusted to you, especially those that have been recently founded. In the effort of the requalification of the style of missionary service, it will be necessary to favor certain significant elements, such as sensitivity to inculturation of the Gospel, and the choice of simple and poor forms of presence among the people. Special attention is due to dialogue with Islam, commitment to the promotion of the dignity of women and family values, and sensitivity to the themes of justice and peace.

Dear brothers and sisters, continue your journey with hope. May your missionary consecration always be a source for the life-giving and sanctifying encounter with Jesus and with His love, wellspring of consolation, peace and salvation for all humanity.

I hope that the guidelines drawn up by the respective Chapters will guide your Institutes to continue with generosity on the way traced by your Founder and followed with heroic courage by many confreres and consoeurs. I invoke the heavenly protection of Mary, Queen of Missions, and of Blessed Giuseppe Allamano, and I wholeheartedly impart to you all my blessing, extending it to the entire Family of the Consolata.

Copyright © Libreria Editrice Vaticana (vatican.va)

VATICAN NEWS

Pope dedicates June to praying for an end to the arms trade

by Elise Harris (CNA/EWTN News) • June 5, 2017

Pope Francis. (Daniel Ibáñez/CNA)

Vatican City — Pope Francis has been a consistent and vocal personality in condemning the arms trade and urging world leaders to do the same, and he raised his voice on the issue again in his latest prayer video.

Published June 2, the video begins showing two world leaders sitting at a table to sign a join-accord, exchanging copies of the agreement to sign while Pope Francis says that “it’s an absurd contradiction to speak of peace, to negotiate peace, and at the same time promote or permit the arms trade.”

“Is this war or that war really a war to solve problems, or is it a commercial war for selling weapons in illegal trade, and so that the merchants of death get rich?” he asks, as images of explosions and gunfire interchange with frames of the leaders shaking hands dripping with blood.

“Let us put an end to this situation,” he said. “Let us pray all together that national leaders may firmly commit themselves to ending the arms trade which victimizes so many innocent people.”

The topic is one Pope Francis has spoken out about since the beginning of his pontificate, and which he continues to bring up in any relevant occasion.

In fact, the first line of the video is taken almost verbatim from the Pope’s May 2014 speech to seven new ambassadors to the Holy See who presented him with their credentials.

In the speech, Francis spoke about peace, saying “everyone talks about peace (and) everyone claims to want it, (but) the proliferation of weapons of every type leads in the opposite direction.”

He said the arms trade both complicates and distances us from finding solutions to conflicts, especially because “it takes place to a great extent outside the boundaries of the law,” and urged the new ambassadors to work toward eradicating the proliferation of weapons.

The Pope was also outspoken about the topic during his September 2015 speech to the U.S. Congress, in which he emphasized that Christians must ask “why are deadly weapons being sold to those who plan to inflict untold suffering on individuals and society?”

“Sadly, the answer, as we all know, is simply for money: money that is drenched in blood, often innocent blood. In the face of this shameful and culpable silence, it is our duty to confront the problem and to stop the arms trade,” he said.

Last July, in a video message promoting peace in Syria, he lamented that “while the people suffer, incredible quantities of money are being spent to supply weapons to fighters.”

Some of the arms suppliers “are also among those that talk of peace,” he said. “How can you believe in someone who caresses you with the right hand and strikes you with the left hand?”

In his Jan. 22 , 2017, speech to the Diplomatic Corps Accredited to the Holy See, he said part of the peace-building process means eradicating the causes of violence and injustice, one of which is the “deplorable arms trade and the never-ending race to create and spread ever more sophisticated weaponry,” particularly nuclear weapons.

Coincidentally, the Pope’s prayer video was published just days before six countries decided to cut diplomatic ties with the Middle-Eastern country of Qatar over it’s alleged support or terrorism.

On Monday it was announced that Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Yemen and Libya have severed diplomatic relations with Qatar over the terrorism problem, giving Qatari ambassadors just a few days to leave their countries.

The move was made over allegations that Qatar is backing Islamist groups such as ISIS and AL-Qaeda, providing financial support despite recently joining the U.S.-led coalition against IS. Part of the decision also arose from concern that Qatar is getting too cozy with Iran, the growing regional rival of Saudi Arabia and which presents a significant nuclear threat.

What progress will actually come from the decision to cut ties is unknown, especially since Saudi Arabia itself has also been accused by many neighboring countries of financially supporting ISIS. So while the long-term effects of the decision remain to be seen, the move seems to make Francis’ prayer intention all the more timely.

His prayer videos first launched during the Jubilee of Mercy and are part of an initiative of the Jesuit-run global prayer network Apostleship of Prayer. They are filmed in collaboration with the Vatican Television Center and the Argentinian marketing association La Machi.

The Apostleship of Prayer, which produces the monthly videos on the Pope’s intentions, was founded by Jesuit seminarians in France in 1884 to encourage Christians to serve God and others through prayer, particularly for the needs of the Church.

Since the late 1800s, the organization has received a monthly, “universal” intention from the Pope. In 1929, an additional missionary intention was added by the Holy Father, aimed at the faithful in particular.

Starting in January, rather than including a missionary intention, Pope Francis has elected to have only one prepared prayer intention – the universal intention featured in the prayer video – and will add a second intention focused on an urgent or immediate need if one arises.

The prayer intentions typically highlight issues of importance not only for Pope Francis, but for the world, such as families, the environment, the poor and homeless, Christians who are persecuted, youth, women and a swath of other relevant topics in the world today.

Share this article

Original article with sharing options:  Link

VATICAN NEWS

Pope Francis warns against flattery and deceit

CNA/EWTN News • June 6, 2017

Pope Francis says Mass at the chapel of Santa Marta house in the Vatican on June 9, 2016. (L’Osservatore Romano)

Vatican City — Pope Francis said Tuesday that truthfulness is the weapon against the temptation of hypocrisy, which destroys the community with lies and flattery.

“The hypocrite is capable of destroying a community. While speaking gently, he ruinously judges a person. He is a killer,” said the Pope during his homily at Mass June 6 at the chapel of the Vatican’s Casa Santa Marta.

Pope Francis reflected on the Gospel passage in which the Pharisees and Herodians, who tried to ensnare Christ with his words, began by flattery.

“The hypocrite always uses language to flatter,” said the Pope, explaining that they will exaggerate the truth, “feeding into one’s vanity.”

He continued to the say that hypocrites are two-faced, and “the language of hypocrisy is the language of deceit, it is the same language the serpent used with Eve.”

He gave an example of a priest he met who “drank up all the flattery,” and he said that flattery is initiated by bad intentions. He said the Pharisees were trying to hide their true intentions, hoping to test Christ by asking him, “is it lawful to pay the census tax to Caesar or not?”

However, he said reality and truth are the tools to combat such hypocrisy, and it is Christ who exposes a lie with reality.

“Jesus always responds to hypocrites and ideologists with reality: ‘this is the reality; everything else is either hypocrisy or ideology.’”

He continued to say that “the reality was that the coin carried the image of Caesar.”

Hypocrisy not only destroys community, but he said it also “tears to pieces the personality and the soul of a person.”

Pope Francis ended his homily asking the Lord to strengthen a commitment to truth by the members of the Church.

“Let us ask the Lord to guard us from this vice, to help us be truthful, and if this is not possible to keep silent – but never to be a hypocrite.”

Share this article

Original article with sharing options:  Link

VATICAN NEWS

General Audience: God’s paternity, wellspring of our hope

The Holy See Press Office • June 7, 2017

Vatican City — This morning’s General Audience took place at 9:20 a.m. in St. Peter’s Square, where the Holy Father Francis met with groups of pilgrims and faithful from Italy and all over the world.

In his address in Italian the Pope focused on the theme “God’s paternity, wellspring of our hope” (cf. Lk 11: 1-4).

After summarizing his catechesis in several languages, the Holy Father addressed special greetings to the groups of faithful present. He then launched an appeal in favor of the “One minute for peace” initiative.

The General Audience concluded with the recital of the Pater Noster and the Apostolic Blessing.

Catechesis of the Holy Father

Dear brothers and sisters, good morning!

There was something fascinating in Jesus’ prayer, so fascinating that one day His disciples asked to be introduced to it. The episode takes place in the Gospel of Luke, who among the Evangelists was the one who most documented the mystery of the “prayerful” Christ. The Lord prayed. Jesus’ disciples are struck by the fact that He, especially in the morning and in the evening, retires in solitude and “immerses” Himself in prayer. And for this reason, one day, they ask Him to teach them too how to pray (cf. Lk 11:1).

It is at this point that Jesus transmits what has become the quintessential Christian prayer: the Pater Noster. In truth, Luke, compared to Matthew, gives us Jesus’ prayer in a slightly abbreviated form, beginning with a simple invocation: “Father“ (v.2).

All the mystery of Christian prayer is summarized here, in this word: having the courage to call God with the name of Father. It is also affirmed in the liturgy when, inviting us to recite together Jesus’ prayer, he uses the expression “let us dare to say.”

Indeed, calling God with the name of “Father” is not to be taken for granted by any means. We are led to use more elevated titles, that seem to us more respectful of His transcendence. Instead, invoking Him as “Father” places us in a relation of confidence with Him, like a child who addresses his father, knowing that he is loved and cared for by him. This is the great revolution that Christianity impresses in the religious psychology of man. The mystery of God, which always fascinates us and makes us feel small, no longer makes us afraid, nor does it crush us or cause us anguish. This is a difficult revolution to accept in our human heart: so much so that it is true that even in the accounts of the Resurrection, it is said that the women, after having seen the empty tomb and the angel, “fled … for trembling and astonishment had seized them” (Mk 16:8). But Jesus reveals to us that God is a good Father, and says to us, “Do not fear!”

Let us think of the parable of the merciful father (cf. Lk 15: 11-32). Jesus tells the story of a father who knows only love for his sons. A father who does not punish his son for his arrogance, and who is capable even of entrusting to him his part of his inheritance, and letting him leave home. God is the Father, says Jesus, but not in a human way, because there is no father in the world who would act like the protagonist of this parable. God is Father in His way: good, helpless in the face of the free will of man, capable only of conjugating the verb “to love.” When the rebellious son, after having squandered everything, finally returns to the home of his birth, that father does not apply criteria of human justice, but feels first and foremost the need to forgive, and with his embrace he makes his son understand that during all that long period of his absence he was missed, he was painfully missed by his loving father.

What an unfathomable mystery is a God Who reserves this type of love for His children! Perhaps it is for this reason that, evoking the center of the Christian mystery, the apostle Paul does not wish to translate into Greek a work that Jesus pronounces in Aramaic: “abbà.” St. Paul touches on this theme twice in his epistles (cf. Rm 8: 15; Gal 4: 6), and twice he does not translate the word, leaving it in the same form in which it passed Jesus’ lips, “abbà,” an even more intimate term than “Father,” and which some translate as “papa,” or “daddy.”

Dear brothers and sisters, we are never alone. We may be distant, hostile, we may even profess ourselves to be “without God.” But the Gospel of Jesus Christ shows us that God cannot stay without us: He will never be a God “without man”; it is He Who cannot stay without us, and this is a great mystery! God cannot be God without man: the great mystery is this! And this certainty is the wellspring of our hope,” which we find conserved in all the invocations of Our Father. When we are in need of help, Jesus does not tell us to resign ourselves and close ourselves up, but instead to turn to the Father and to ask Him trustfully. All our needs, from the most evident and everyday, such as food, health and work, up to those such as being forgiven and kept from temptation, are not the reflection of our solitude: there is instead a Father who always looks upon us with love, and Who certainly does not abandon us.

I will now make you a proposal: each one of us has many problems and many needs. Let us think a little, in silence, of these problems and these needs. Let us think also of the Father, of our Father, Who cannot stay without us, and Who in this moment is looking at us. And all together, with trust and hope, let us pray: “Our Father, who art in heaven … .”

Thank you!

Greetings in various languages: English

I greet the English-speaking pilgrims and visitors taking part in today’s audience, particularly the groups from England, Scotland, Germany, the Netherlands, Ghana, India, Indonesia, Singapore, Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan, the Philippines, Canada and the United States of America. Upon all of you, and your families, I invoke the joy and peace of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Appeal

Tomorrow, at 13:00, in various countries we revisit the “One minute for peace” initiative, that is, a brief moment of prayer to commemorate the meeting in the Vatican between myself, the late Israeli president Peres, and the Palestinian president Abbas. In our time there is a great need to pray – Christians, Jews and Muslims – for peace.

Copyright © Libreria Editrice Vaticana (vatican.va)

VATICAN NEWS

Venezuela’s bishops: President Maduro starves his people into submission

by Elise Harris (CNA/EWTN News) • June 8, 2017

Pope Francis meets with members of the Venezuelan bishops’ conference at the Vatican on June 8, 2017. (L’Osservatore Romano)

Vatican City — After a last-minute meeting with Pope Francis Thursday to discuss the dire situation of their country, Venezuela’s bishops said they have his full support in facing the trials of a regime they say oppresses its people to maintain power.

“The government has as a goal to maintain power at the cost of the life of any person at all costs,” Archbishop Diego Padrón Sanchez of Cumana told journalists June 8.

Not only this, but the government “has the desire, the will, the scope, to have a submissive, silent people that doesn’t protest,” he said. And to ensure that this happens, society must be made up of a people who have “no food, no medicine (and) which spends every moment trying to resolve daily problems.”

“A people that is oppressed, suffering and sick doesn’t have the strength to raise itself in revolt against anyone,” he said.

Archbishop Padrón spoke to a group of journalists after the leadership of the Venezuelan bishops conference met with Pope Francis and other Vatican officials earlier that morning.

The meeting was not planned in advance, and was not included in the weekly schedule sent out by the Vatican’s Secretariat for Communications. Announced just days before, the conversation was squeezed into the Pope’s agenda before his meeting with the Panamanian bishops, who are in Rome for their ad limina visit, and a meeting with Nigeria’s bishops.

During the meeting, Archbishop Padrón said they discussed the ongoing crisis in the country, and that the conversation was very “cordial, very simple, fraternal” and relaxed. The Pope asked questions, and the bishops were able to answer freely.

The Pope is “very well informed” on the situation, the archbishop said, explaining that Francis himself said he receives a daily update on what is going on.

Francis voiced his closeness to the bishops and the “people who are suffering,” the archbishop said, recalling that Francis was “very moved” by the description of some of the cases they’ve witnessed in recent days.

Venezuela is currently undergoing a humanitarian emergency in which fundamental necessities are inaccessible and many, including children, die due to the lack of basic foods and medicines.

The country has been ruled by a socialist government since 1999. In the wake of Nicolas Maduro succeeding Hugo Chavez as president in 2013, Venezuela has been marred by violence and social and economic upheaval. Poor economic policies, including strict price controls, coupled with high inflation rates, have resulted in a severe lack of basic necessities such as toilet paper, milk, flour, diapers and medicines.

The socialist government is widely blamed for the crisis. Since 2003, price controls on some 160 products, including cooking oil, soap and flour, have meant that while they are affordable, they fly off store shelves only to be resold on the black market at much higher rates.

The Venezuelan government is known to be among the most corrupt in Latin America, and violent crime in the country has spiked since Maduro took office.

The regime is known to have committed gross abuses, including violence, against those who don’t share their political ideologies, and are accused of taking many political prisoners.

Archbishop Padrón said that for the bishops, their “Magna Carta” on how to move forward in the crisis is the letter Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin sent them in December, in which he indicated the conditions under which dialogue with the Maduro regime ought to be carried out.

The four conditions listed by Cardinal Parolin are: the assurance of a humanitarian corridor for food and medicine; respect for and the re-establishment of the National Assembly; the release of political prisoners; and the guarantee of elections.

While Venezuelans had been protesting many of Maduro’s moves for some time, the final straw for many was when in late March the president announced his decision to call a constitutional assembly and and to revoke the power of the National Assembly, which had been in the hands of the opposition since 2015.

Part of Maduro’s guarantee was that after the constitutional assembly takes place July 30, elections will finally be held in December.

However, Archbishop Padrón said he doesn’t have faith in the regime, and believes the deal is “a trap” for the people, because during the July assembly “you can easily vote to annul or not the elections in December. So the December date is just an imaginary figure for the people.”

But even though they have very real problems with Maduro, Archbishop Padrón said this doesn’t mean that the bishops are on the side of the opposition.

“We don’t represent any party, and we don’t want to be on the side of the government or the opposition,” he said. “We want to help the people.”

The bishops came “to present to the Holy Father the situation of the Venezuelan people, whether they are those people who are close to the government, or those who feel far from the government. We don’t have any preference in this sense.”

During the meeting, the prelates gave the Pope two dossiers, the first containing a list of some 70 people, mostly youth, who have been killed during protests in Caracas and other cities throughout Venezuela. The second document was a detailed outline of the work the bishops conference has done so far to help alleviate the crisis.

After meeting with the Pope, who gave the bishops his “full support” and “total confidence” in their efforts, the six prelates present for the encounter then met with Cardinal Parolin, who before becoming Secretary of State was the apostolic nuncio to Venezuela for four years.

They later met with officials of the Vatican’s charitable organization Caritas Internationalis, which is offering concrete support to needy families on the ground in Venezuela.

Pope Francis specifically told the bishops to “reinforce” the work that Caritas does, not only for the Venezuela branch, but the international organization as a whole, because they are “ready to help” in acquiring and distributing food and mostly medicines to the people.

However, the bishops conference still faces issues when it comes to getting medicines to the people, Archbishop Padrón said. Even though the government technically gave them permission to distribute medication a few weeks ago, the conditions outlined in the fine print make it nearly impossible to do.

The government does this, he said, because they don’t want to appear “insensitive” or as “a needy country.”

“The international image of the government must be maintained,” he observed.

Share this article

Original article with sharing options:  Link

WORLD NEWS

Body of African bishop who reportedly committed suicide found

CNA/EWTN News • June 2, 2017

(Antonio Nardelli via Shutterstock)

Yaounde, Cameroon — The body of Cameroon Bishop Jean-Marie Benoît Balla, who has reportedly committed suicide, has been found, African sources have reported.

The Bishop of Bafia in Cameroon had been declared missing earlier this week when his car was spotted on Wednesday near the Sanaha river, near the nation’s capital, Yaoundé.

A note was reportedly found in his car, which read: “Do not look for me! I am in the water.”

While many believe this was the bishop’s suicide note, others believe he may have been murdered, due to other unsolved murders of priests in the country. Boko Haram has been accused of kidnapping priests and nuns in the country.

The La Croix newspaper in its edition for Africa reported that the Cameroonian Bishops’ Conference had issued a communique asking for prayers to find the Bishop, in whose car “the police have not found any sign of violence or blood.”

Obianuju Ekeocha, founder of Culture of Life Africa, posted a series of photos of the Bishop’s car and pleas for prayers early in the morning on Friday, June 2.

Yesterday, fishermen discovered the body of the bishop underneath a bridge. He was 58 years old.

Investigations into his death are ongoing.

Bishop Balla was born on May 10, 1959. He was ordained a priest for the Diocese of Yaoundé on June 20, 1987.

He was appointed Bishop of Bafia on May 3, 2003 and consecrated on July 12 of that same year. The Diocese of Bafia has more than 200,000 Catholics.

Share this article

Original article with sharing options:  Link

WORLD NEWS

Italian exorcist to Jesuit leader: No, the devil isn’t just a ‘symbol’

CNA/EWTN News • June 2, 2017

(Cosma via Shutterstock)

Lima, Peru — Italian priest and exorcist Fr. Sante Babolin said that “the devil, Satan, exists” and that “evil is not an abstraction,” in response to recent comments from Fr. Arturo Sosa, Superior General of the Society of Jesus.

In an interview with the Spanish newspaper El Mundo, Fr. Arturo Sosa said that “we have made symbolic figures, like the devil, to express evil.”

“Social conditioning can also represent this figure, since there are people who act [in an evil way] because they are in an environment where it is difficult to act to the contrary,” Fr. Sosa added.

Speaking to ACI Prensa June 2, Fr. Babolin recalled several places in documents and statements of the Church that show the true existence of the devil.

Fr. Babolin recalled the documents of the IV Lateran Ecumenical Council in 1215, state that Christians “firmly believe and simply confess” that God created “from nothing … the spiritual and the corporal, that is, the angelic and the mundane, and then the human. “

“(T)he devil and other demons were created by God good in nature, but they themselves through themselves have become wicked,” notes the text of the council.

Fr. Babolin, known as the “exorcist of Padua,” also recalled two speeches of Pope Paul VI in 1972, which also confirm the existence of the devil “to the faithful, who tend to doubt the existence of Satan … his presence and action. “

On June 29, 1972, Paul VI, alluding to the contemporary situation of the Church, said in his homily that it seemed “the smoke of Satan” entered the temple of God. That same year, on November 15, Paul VI warned that “one of the major needs of the Church” is to defend ourselves “from that evil that we call the Devil.”

Fr. Babolin also noted that the Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that the devil exists in reality, not in the abstract. In the section of the Catechism regarding the “deliver us from evil” petition of the Our Father, in para. 2851, it states that “in this petition, evil is not an abstraction, A person, Satan, the Evil One, the angel who opposes God. The ‘devil’ (dia-bolos) is the one who ‘crosses’ in the design of God and his work of salvation fulfilled in Christ.”

Fr. Babolin said that the faithful should see the statement of the Fourth Lateran Ecumenical Council, the assertions of Paul VI and what is recorded in the Catechism as “three irrefutable points” about the existence of the devil.

Share this article

Original article with sharing options:  Link

WORLD NEWS

Catholic bishops respond to tragic terrorist attacks in London

CNA/EWTN News • June 4, 2017

(Carl Ballou via Shutterstock)

London, England — Catholic Cardinals and bishops throughout the world are offering their prayers after the terrorist attack in London last night that left seven dead and dozens more injured.

Cardinal Vincent Nichols, Archbishop of Westminster and President of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales, said on Twitter last night that the victims of the attack were in his prayers.

Cardinal Wilfrid Fox Napier, OFM, Archbishop of Durban, South Africa, responded to Cardinal Nichols’ tweet with his prayers and condolences.

Seven people were killed and 48 others injured last night when three men drove a van into a crowd of people on London Bridge around 10 p.m. local time last night. The men then went on a stabbing spree in nearby Borough Market where people were enjoying a Saturday night out at restaurants and pubs.

The three men reportedly shouted “This is for Allah” during the attack. The three attackers were shot dead by police within eight minutes of the first emergency call.

According to police, 12 more people have been arrested in connection to the attacks.

The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops also offered their prayers and condolences to the victims and their families in a statement released Sunday.

“The Vigil of Pentecost had barely begun when the world was burdened yet again, this time by the sinister attacks on innocent men and women in the heart of London,” Cardinal Daniel N. DiNardo of Galveston-Houston, President of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, said in the statement.

“In such tragic hours we implore the Holy Spirit to pour out His gift of comfort on those who grieve the loss of loved ones and on the dozens who were so tragically injured in this horrible attack.”

“At the same time,” he added, “we see in the courage of the first responders the true and courageous spirit of our brothers and sisters, the people of Great Britain. May God grant strength, wisdom and protection to the men and women who safeguard our families and may He convert the hearts of all who follow the path of evil extremism. Our solidarity in Christian hope and commitment to peace is a bond that cannot be broken.”

“Together with my brother bishops and with Catholics throughout the United States, we join the prayerful intercession made already by Pope Francis: ‘May the Holy Spirit grant peace to the whole world. May He heal the wounds of war and of terrorism, which even this (Saturday) night, in London, struck innocent civilians: let us pray for the victims and their families.’”

Many dioceses and churches also offered their prayers and condolences over social media.

Share this article

Original article with sharing options:  Link

WORLD NEWS

European leaders discuss plight of child victims of war

by Elise Harris (CNA/EWTN News) • June 5, 2017

Twelve-year-old twins stand near garbage outside a building in the old city of Homs, Syria. (UNICEF)

Rome, Italy — Last week the Order of Malta hosted diplomats and politicians from throughout Europe for a discussion on the effects of violent conflict on children.

Participants said the topic is increasingly urgent since children all over the world are growing up surrounded by war.

“It’s self-explanatory that the well-being of children is key for the future of humanity, and on the other hand the first victims of conflicts, of disasters, of any kind of turmoil, are the weakest in society, and these are women and children,” Order of Malta Grand Chancellor Albrecht von Boeselager told CNA.

Because of this, he said the order tries to concentrate the relief they give to “the weakest … especially, children.”

Providing educational opportunities and psychological care for children affected by violent conflict are among the top priorities “because the lack of education and the effect of traumas very often have very long-term effects, and sometimes they turn up only later and have a deteriorating effect on countries.”

The Grand Chancellor was one of several European leaders participating in a June 1 conference titled “Children Victims of Armed Violence” commemorating the 75th anniversary of the Lidice massacre in the Czech Republic.

Nazi troops stormed the village in 1942 on the order of Adolf Hitler in retaliation for the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich, a high-ranking German official and the main architect of the Holocaust, a few months earlier. Nazi intelligence had erroneously linked the village to Heydrich’s assassins.

The men were rounded up and killed, and the women and 88 children of the village were gathered and sent to the Chelmno extermination camp, where they were gassed to death. Only a few children considered racially suitable for “Germanization” – the spreading of the German language and culture – survived, and were handed over to SS families.

To mark the anniversary, a Czech group came on pilgrimage to Rome last week. They met Pope Francis during his general audience May 31, and later had Mass with Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin, who offered the liturgy for children who are victims of armed conflicts. The group then participated in the half-day conference Thursday, followed by a Mass said by Cardinal Dominik Duka of Prague.

During the conference, Veronika Rymonova, a survivor of the Lidice massacre, shared her testimony. Although she was just five months at the time of the attack, Rymonova said the soldiers hit her on the face, leaving a scar on her forehead, and tore her earlobes.

She was one of the few children to survive, and said that despite the fact she has no memories of her village, she is proud of it because Lidice has become a “symbol against Nazism.”

“This unprecedented act of evil and hatred did not remain without a response,” she said, noting that after the massacre “a wave of solidarity arose all over the world,” with countries naming squares, streets, and towns after the village, and even sending donations to survivors.

“The fact that I am here today proves the fact that you are not indifferent to the fate of a small village in the heart of Europe, even 75 years after its massacre,” Rymonova said, voicing her hope that what happened in Lidice “would be a warning for the next generation” so that innocent lives “would never become a wasted sacrifice.”

In an opening address, Vaclav Kolaja, the Czech deputy foreign minister, told participants that while contemporary European youth have lived in relative peace, armed conflicts “remain part of everyday life in other parts of the world, especially in the Middle East, Africa and Asia.”

Armed conflicts are “leaving behind a growing number of victims, devastated countries and wounded families,” he said, noting that the situation “is even worse for the millions of children growing in war or post-war countries.”

These children “become the passive witnesses and victims of human cruelties, or accept an active role in armed conflicts, becoming child soldiers,” he said. They also face rape and other forms of abuse.

Many times children in conflict areas will lack access to basic food, healthcare, shelter, and education, as well as access to a stable family life.

In his comments, Kolaja noted that if war is the only reality children experience growing up, “this naturally shapes the future of the world.”

As millions of migrants including unaccompanied minors, continue to pour into Europe, greater concern is mounting not only for how to ensure them safe passage, but also for how to help them integrate into their new societies.

In their recent “A child is a child” report, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) reported that the global number of migrant and refugee children who move alone has reached a record high. At least 300,000 unaccompanied minors and separated children were recorded in around 80 countries for 2015-2016, a massive jump from the 66,000 recorded for 2010-2011.

UNICEF Italy Team Leader for Refugee and Migrant Response, Gianfranco Rotigliano also spoke at the conference, telling participants that we are “losing generations” to armed conflicts.

“There is no sanctity anymore for hospitals,” he said, noting that they have often become targets, with numerous children among the casualties.

He also lamented the fact that children from warring countries often stop going to school, saying: “when children do not go to school, they are out of society, or they become the last part of society. They will not participate in the process of development in their own country and in their own society.”

Tomas Bocek, the Council of Europe’s Special Representative of the Secretary General for Migration and Refugees, noted that children who grow up with war generally suffer from anger and often drift into criminal activities.

Children also simply disappear, many times because of poor organization in refugee camps, or out of fear of deportation, he said, stressing the need to focus on systemic problems “so children do not fall through the net.”

Good and effective systems must be put into place, he said, noting that 1 in 3 asylum seekers in Europe is a child.

Because trafficking is such a huge risk, especially for unaccompanied minors, Bocek said the rapid identification of victims is essential so that they are accounted for before they disappear.

Stories from other panelists during the conference provided a shocking dose of reality in terms of what children go through.

One panelist recounted how in a visit to a warring country, she met a child who was waiting for the electricity to come back on after a bombing, not realizing that she had in fact lost her sight.

Other stories told of children who suffered from nosebleeds every time a bomb would go off, as well as the cases of children who, after coming home from school to see their homes destroyed and their family killed, wanted to commit suicide so they could be with their relatives.

In comments to CNA, Bocek said that of all the discussions taking place right now on global conflicts, the topic of how they affect children is one of the most important because “they are the most vulnerable ones, they are without protection, especially when they are on their own.”

One of the “most problematic areas” unaccompanied migrant children face is guardianship and obtaining basic information, he said, explaining that a plan of the Council for Europe provides for age-assessment, family reunification, and integration.

Integration, Bocek said, is key, and begins with learning the language, followed by education.

“They need to go to school. They not only need it, this is their basic right. So we really have to facilitate this, that all children who are coming are educated and can go to school.”

Responding to Pope Francis’ many appeals to European leaders to not only be generous in accepting the number of migrants they can reasonably welcome, but also to facilitate their integration, Bocek said he views the Roman Pontiff’s words as an encouragement for leaders.

“All these pushes, encouragements for our action,” he said, “will help to convince the leaders of European States, not only me, but in Europe, to really think twice and show more solidarity, because now this is really needed most.”

Share this article

Original article with sharing options:  Link

WORLD NEWS

Muslims and Christians unite to rebuild Mosul monastery

CNA/EWTN News • June 5, 2017

(SevenMaps7 via Shutterstock)

Mosul, Iraq — As government forces pry apart the Islamic State’s three-year-long grip on Mosul, Muslims and Christians have united to rebuild a damaged monastery.

A Facebook page called “This is Christian Iraq” – dedicated to connecting Iraqi Christians and maintaining the faith amid ISIS threat – recently posted a series of photos showing the joint effort.

The May 27 post said that young Muslims from the northern neighborhood joined Christians at the Monastery of Saint George, participating in cleaning and repairs.

The monastery belongs to the Chaldean Catholic tradition, an Eastern Catholic rite in full communion with the Vatican. ISIS militants vandalized the monastery – smashing windows, damaging the church’s dome, and discarding its cross.

Although still in need of repairs, the17th century monastery gathered Chaldeans for Easter celebration this year, according to the Irish Times.

“God willing, the celebration of the resurrection of Christ will also mark the return and rising-up of the Christians in Iraq,” Kyriacos Isho, an attendee of the service, told the newspaper.

A new cross has now replaced the old one, and the coming together of Christians and Muslims marks a promising time for both religions as reports announce a final push against the Islamic terrorists.

Residents have seen U.S.-backed Iraqi forces gathering around the local Grand al-Nuri Mosque in the 48 hours leading up to May 31, in what Reuters reports to be a “final showdown.”

The nearly 1000 year old mosque has flown the terrorist’s black flag since the group captured the capital city in 2014. The site is where Islamist caliphate was declared by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, announcing the reign of a new Muslim leader.

Three years ago the Islamic State made roads into the Iraqi’s Nineveh Plain, and since then over 3.3 million Iraqis have been displaced internally. Christians and moderate Muslims were also subject to persecution. They were often forced to pay heavy taxes or even offered a choice of conversion or death.

Over 2016, internal and international forces reclaimed parts of the city, and Eastern Mosul had been retaken in early January of this year.

The government forces are now focusing on Western Mosul, where the mosque is located at the Old City center, and the three districts near the Western side of the Tigris River.

Share this article

Original article with sharing options:  Link

WORLD NEWS

Ukraine’s Cardinal Lubomyr Husar recalled as a spiritual father

CNA/EWTN News • June 6, 2017

Major Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk (l) greets his predecessor, Cardinal Lubomyr Husar (r), who died May 31, 2017. (Ukrainian Archeparchy of Kyiv-Halych)

Kyiv, Ukraine — Cardinal Lubomyr Husar, Major Archbishop Emeritus of Kyiv-Halych and former head of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, died May 31 at the age of 84.

Among his many accomplishments as priest, bishop, and cardinal, he is well remembered for welcoming St. John Paul II on his visit to Kyiv and Lviv in Ukraine in 2001, when he was the first Pope to visit the former Soviet republic.

Cardinal Husar was born in 1933 in Lviv. He fled from the Soviets in Ukraine with his parents in 1944, first to Austria, and then to the United States in 1949. He studied at St. Basil’s College Seminary in Stamford, Conn. in the early 1950s, and continued his studies at the Catholic University of America in Washington and at Fordham University in New York.

He was ordained a priest of the Ukrainian Eparchy of Stamford in March 1958 and taught at St. Basil’s College Seminary until 1969. From 1966 to 1969 he was the pastor of Holy Trinity Ukrainian Catholic Church in Kerhonkson, N.Y.

He was secretly consecrated a bishop in 1977, and celebrated the 40th anniversary of his episcopal ordination in April of this year. His consecration was unacknowledged publicly until 1996 due to Blessed Paul VI’s Ostpolitik efforts at reaching out to the Russian Orthodox Church and the Eastern Bloc.

Bishop Husar returned to Ukraine in 1991 after the collapse of the Soviet Union and served as spiritual director of Holy Spirit Seminary in Lviv.

The Ukrainian Catholic synod of bishops elected him major archbishop – father and head of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church – in 2000, and St. John Paul II made him a cardinal the following month. He resigned his position as in February 2011 at the age of 77.

Pope Francis sent a letter to Cardinal Husar’s successor, Major Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk of Kyiv-Halych, calling the late cardinal “one of the highest and most respected moral authorities of recent decades for the Ukrainian people,” and praising him for his love and warmth, especially the young.

He called Cardinal Husar a father and spiritual guide for his Church, “which he gathered from the ‘catacombs’ where she was forced to flee persecution, and to whom he restored not only the ecclesiastical structures, but above all the joy of her history, founded on faith through and beyond any suffering.”

The Pope expressed his desire to “be among those praying to the heavenly Father” for Cardinal Husar’s soul.

The Divine Liturgy for the cardinal’s burial was held June 5 at the Patriarchal Cathedral of the Resurrection.

Cardinal Husar is greatly admired in Ukraine, where signs have already appeared calling for his speedy canonization.

Share this article

Original article with sharing options:  Link

WORLD NEWS

Salesians eager to recover relic of St John Bosco’s brain

CNA/EWTN News • June 7, 2017

The tomb of St. John Bosco in the Basilica di Maria Ausiliatrice in Turin. (Bohumil Petrik/CNA)

Turin, Italy — Police in Italy are investigating the missing relic of the brain of St. John Bosco, which was reportedly stolen from its reliquary on Friday night.

The Salesians, the religious order founded by St. John Bosco, issued desperate pleas for prayers for its return after it was discovered missing June 2.

The reliquary was kept in the Basilica of John Bosco in Castelnuovo, fewer than 20 miles east of Turin. It contained a small piece of the saint’s brain.

“We are very saddened, along with the many devotees … for what happened,” Fr. Ezio Orsini, rector of the Basilica, said in a statement.

“We trust that John Bosco can touch the heart of (whomever committed this act) as he transformed the lives of young he met,” he said. “We are also confident that though you can steal a relic of John Bosco, as has happened, you can not steal John Bosco from us and from the many pilgrims who daily visit these places.”

St. John Bosco was a 19th century Italian priest who had a particular love and apostolate for at-risk and underserved youth. Today, the order serves youth throughout the world primarily in schools, homeless shelters, and community centers.

The basilica, located in the saint’s birthplace, has experienced some other minor thefts in recent weeks, though nothing of spiritual value.

Archbishop Cesare Nosiglia of Turin also commented on the missing relic, saying it was news “you would never want to hear, because it makes us think of a profound moral misery” that someone would steal something of spiritual and devotional value, he told an Italian news source.

The archbishop said that he asked all of his priests to say a special prayer during their Pentecost Masses for the Salesian family and the recovery of the relic, so that it can “continue to be a point of devotion for the millions of faithful who come to the sanctuary dedicated to him.”

He implored whomever stole the relic to return it immediately.

“I also invite those who have stolen the relic to return it immediately, without conditions: in order to close this painful chapter and in order to continue to honor the memory of John Bosco in his native place.”

Share this article

Original article with sharing options:  Link

WORLD NEWS

Autopsy raises questions about circumstances of African bishop’s death

CNA/EWTN News • June 7, 2017

(Massimo Valiani via Flickr CC BY-NC 2.0)

Obala, Cameroon — Local news reports say that “signs of torture” have been found on the body of a Cameroonian bishop whose body was found in a river last week.

Unusual circumstances surrounded the death of Bishop Jean-Marie Benoît Balla of Bafia, leading some to think he had committed suicide.

Bishop Balla, who was 58, left his residence late in the evening of May 30. He disappeared, and his car was found parked on the Sanaga bridge near Ebebda, about 25 miles northwest of Obala. His body was found June 2, about 10 miles from the bridge.

A note was found in his car which reportedly read: “Do not look for me! I am in the water.”

While some believe this was the bishop’s suicide note, others believe he may have been murdered, due to other unsolved murders of priests in the country. The bishop’s autopsy seems to support those suspicions.

The autopsy shows that the bishop’s body spent fewer than 4 hours in the water before it was found, even though his body was found several days after he had disappeared. The autopsy also notes the lack of water in his lungs, which would have been present had he died by drowning.

“The body removed from the river Sanaga had a stiffened arm, folded on its abdomen indicating that Bishop Balla was not fighting against the fury of the waters. Bishop Balla was tortured and brutally murdered,” stated the findings of the autopsy, according to BaretaNews.

Father Ludovic Lado, a Cameroonian Jesuit living in Ivory Coast, told the African edition of La Croix that for the most part, the suspected cause of death in the case has now moved from suicide to murder.

Archbishop Cornelius Esua of Bamenda told the daily Le Jour that Bishop Balla “did not seem to us as troubled as that (to have committed suicide),” and noted that bishop suicides are rare.

“The bishops do not commit suicide,” he said.

Fr. Lado noted that it was hard to imagine why a “discreet and devoted” person like Bishop Balla would be the target of assassins. The Cameroon Concord notes that the bishop was a beloved pastor whom the faithful often called “Papa Benoit,” and he was known especially for his care for the sick and under-served.

Fr. Lado added that some have suspected a link between the bishop’s death and the death of Father Armel Collins Ndjama, the rector of the minor seminary of Bafia, who was found dead in his room earlier in May.

Reportedly, Bishop Balla was particularly affected by the death of the young priest and cancelled several of his appointments after finding out about his death.

Catholic leaders in the country have called for prayers for Bishop Balla, as the investigations surrounding the bishop’s death are ongoing.

Bishop Balla was born in 1959, and was ordained a priest of the Archdiocese of Yaounde in 1987. He was consecrated Bishop of Bafia in 2003.

Share this article

Original article with sharing options:  Link

WORLD NEWS

This priest and three companions were killed for the faith in Iraq

by Hannah Brockhaus (CNA/EWTN News) • June 9, 2017

Father Ragheed Aziz Ganni, who was killed for the faith on June 3, 2007 in Mosul, is seen with a group of young adults. (Aid to the Church in Need)

Rome, Italy — When Fr. Ragheed Aziz Ganni was confronted by armed men after celebrating the Eucharist at his Chaldean Catholic parish in Mosul, they asked him why he was still there and why he hadn’t closed the church as they had demanded.

“How can I close the house of God?” he responded, right before they shot and killed him, alongside three friends and subdeacons at the parish: Waheed, Ghasan, and Basman.

An Iraqi priest born in 1972 in a town in the Plain of Ninevah, Fr. Ganni moved to Rome in 1996 to study at the Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas on a scholarship from the pontifical foundation Aid to the Church in Need.

In 2003 he decided to return to Iraq, despite the war following the American invasion, and the persecution of Christians that was taking place. He served at a parish in Mosul until the day of his death, June 3, 2007.

Ten years after his death, Fr. Ganni’s friend and fellow priest, Fr. Rebwar Basa, has written a book about his life and death, and about the ongoing situation of Christians in Iraq. He spoke to CNA at a presentation for A Catholic Priest in the Islamic State, published by Aid to the Church in Need.

The martyrdom and testimony of Fr. Ganni, he said, “is very important for the whole Church, but especially in Iraq.”

“He is an example for all of us to resist and to testify to the Gospel in the midst of the conflict and violence that we have in Iraq. Because we need this kind of witness to reconstruct Iraq, to be able to live together in peace and unity.”

Baian Adam Balla, the wife of Waheed Hanna Isho’a, one of those killed with Fr. Ganni, was an eyewitness to the events of the martyrdom, though her life was spared. In an interview published in the book, she described how they were attacked.

The day of the murder, Fr. Ganni was accompanied by three subdeacons of the parish, Waheed, Ghasan and Basman, as well as Waheed’s wife, Baian.

Driving home after saying Sunday evening Eucharist at Holy Spirit church in Mosul, they were approached by masked men carrying machine guns and told to get out of the car and put their hands up in the air.

“And then they fired and took the car. And I began to cry out. There was a butcher, I do not know, a butcher man. He was a Muslim. They took the car and kidnapped him. But at us Christians … they shot and they killed them,” Baian recounted.

“Certainly there is an effect. Not an effect on our faith, but an effect on us, because we are not able to go in the church … because we are not able to continue so … How are we able to continue like this? In these conditions? But what do they want from us? What have we done?”

There had been around 10 different attacks on the church before this, though with no casualties. But Fr. Ganni seemed to know that something worse might happen.

The morning of his death, after meeting with some young men for breakfast and renewing his ID, he visited his father and mother, bringing with him a recent photograph of himself, which he gave them.

In an interview recorded in Fr. Basa’s book, Fr. Ganni’s father recalled him saying to his mother that the photograph “is for my funeral, so it is not a worry to you.”

His mother remembered that he said to her, “Mamma, if I die now or I die in 10 years, there is always a death. If they cut my throat with a knife, at the beginning it will hurt badly, but then I will feel nothing more.”

She said to him, “So they have threatened you!” and he answered: “I know that they have threatened the whole Church, but have they threatened me personally?” He was laughing but he didn’t answer the question, she related.

Fr. Basa explained that Fr. Ganni himself described the situation in Iraq during his five years as a priest there as “worse than hell.”

“Now it is even worse than in that period because of the invasion of ISIS and the dramatic situation for the minorities in Iraq, including Christians,” he said.

He added that people should be very careful to distinguish between Muslims and a certain ideology which doesn’t tolerate other religions. This ideology “should be refused,” and Muslims encouraged not to become victims of this ideology themselves.

But as a Christian and a Catholic priest, he explained, he doesn’t feel it is his place to say what Islam is – it is up to Muslims themselves to show they are peaceful.

The solution to the violence, he said, is to respect human rights and human freedom, which is a product of real religion, “not the propaganda that terrorists and fundamentalists want to offer us.”

“Real religion is the religion in which we live in peace and respect each other and the freedom of others to express their ideas, their faith, as they like,” he said.

“What we need is very simple, that they (the government) recognize our human rights, the human rights of the Iraqi people in general, and especially the minorities.”

Continuing, he maintained that Islam should not be the established religion of the nation.

Iraq’s constitution establishes Islam as the country’s official religion and a foundation source of legislation. It adds that no law may contradict Islam’s established provisions, the principles of democracy, or the rights and basic freedoms stipulated in the constitution.

It also guarantees the Islamic identity of the majority of Iraqis, while also guaranteeing “the full religious rights to religious freedom of religious belief and practice of all individuals such as Christians, Yazidis, and Mandean Sabeans.”

The priest maintained that “saying that Islam is the official religion of the State, is an official invitation for the fundamentalists to feel better a superior to others. That could be the start point for terrorism!”

Fr. Basa explained that from the beginning of time, Iraq has been made up of many different religions and civilizations, and that is what should be focused on.

His hope, he noted, is that the United Nations, the United States, Europe, and the whole world will help Iraq to overcome present divisions and concentrate on the human dignity and rights of all citizens of the country.

“Because when there are these rights – religious freedom and other kinds of freedoms – I think everybody can live his or her faith as they like and we can live in peace,” he said. “This would be a great richness for Iraq, for the whole region, and for the whole world.”

Share this article

Original article with sharing options:  Link

U.S. NEWS

How ISIS genocide victims still face discrimination in Kurdistan

by Matt Hadro (CNA/EWTN News) • June 4, 2017

(Mikael Damkier via Shutterstock)

Washington D.C. — After the Islamic State ravaged large parts of Iraq and Syria in 2014, religious minorities targeted for genocide fled into Kurdistan – but a new report alleges continued discrimination against them.

“We praise the Kurdistan Regional Government for sheltering and protecting these oppressed groups and urge it to continue to take steps to ensure that these communities realize their rights and fully participate in society,” said Fr. Thomas Reese, chair of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom.

He made his remarks in the wake of the release of the commission’s report on the situation for persecuted religious minorities in Kurdistan.

The report, “Wilting in the Kurdish Sun,” was prepared for the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) between May and August of 2016 and released on June 1.

USCIRF is a bipartisan federal commission charged with monitoring abuses of freedom of religion around the world and making policy recommendations to the State Department on international religious freedom.

In their new report, USCIRF explains how religious minorities in Northern Iraq – Yazidis, Christians, Shabak, and Turkmen – fled the ISIS onslaught in 2014 into Kurdistan. Christians, Yazidis, and Shi’a Muslims were labeled by the U.S. as genocide victims of ISIS, while other minorities were said to be victims of “crimes against humanity.” They took shelter in Kurdistan, including around 70,000 Christians in Erbil.

This has added to the ethnic and religious diversity of the region, which had already become more diverse since the U.S. invasion in 2003 resulted in minorities moving to Kurdistan, the report explained.

However, despite the freedom of religion of these minorities being “comparatively robust” in Kurdistan to other areas in the region, they still face discrimination, violence, and restrictions upon their movement there, the report alleged.

Furthermore, the region’s “strained resources and security situation” threaten to contribute to future unrest and ethnic and religious conflict, the report warned.

Laws in Kurdistan are on the surface “favorable to religious freedom,” USCIRF said, and “senior religious leaders are frequently consulted by ministers and government officials.” Minorities are represented in the regional parliament as mandated by law.

However, “many religious groups complained to researchers that they remain second-class citizens compared with Sunni Kurds,” the report said. And while laws may be friendly to religious minorities, they may not experience such support from their neighbors in their communities.

Some Assyrian Christian lands have been seized or built upon by Kurds in the northern part of the region. In one case “involving Erbil International Airport,” Christian leaders claimed that “land owned by the Chaldean Catholic Church (and others) was built on by developers without permission.”

Although authorities have spoken out against the land appropriations, “Christians, however, are frustrated by a perceived lack of action by the authorities and a lack of recourse in the courts,” the report said. “They believe that encroachments are increasing.”

Christians who tried to demonstrate against the appropriations were prevented from doing so by Kurdish security forces in one instance in 2016.

Additionally, Yazidis have reported pressure that they be identified as ethnic Kurds, contrary to the opinions of some Yazidis that they are separate ethnically.

NGOs have also reported that, in the Sinjar region, there are “economic blockades” and “restrictions on freedom of movement and return, and the prevention of goods and supplies being distributed.”

Other countries surrounding Kurdistan feature abuses of freedom of religion, USCIRF reports.

USCIRF rates countries on how much they respect religious freedom in a tier system. Tier 1 Countries of Particular Concern (CPC) are those with the worst situations for religious freedom, with “severe” abuses of freedom of religion that are “systematic, ongoing, and egregious.”

The State Department has followed USCIRF’s recommendations and has listed Iran as a CPC. USCIRF has also recommended that Syria be designated as a CPC.

Tier 2 countries represent the next level where the religious freedom situations are not as serious, but are still concerning. Iraq is a Tier 2 level country, according to USCIRF’s latest recommendation.

“Until 2017, it was also recommended that Iraq be included in the list of CPCs, but improvements in the country have led to USCIRF revising its assessment,” the commission explained. USCIRF has also listed Turkey as a Tier 2 country.

Yet despite its security for religious minorities that is comparatively better than surrounding areas, Kurdistan on its own “might well be considered a so-called ‘tier 2’ country, requiring close monitoring due to the nature and extent of violations of religious freedom engaged in or tolerated by its authorities,” USCIRF stated.

This is concerning, the report said, because there is already a push for Kurdistan to be an independent country, and the pressure for such a state of affairs may only increase in the future.

“By strengthening institutions and encouraging reforms to promote and protect religious freedoms and minority rights now, (Kurdistan) and its population will ensure that these rights and freedoms are deeply ingrained in the makeup of any new nation and its social contract,” USCIRF said.

“On the other hand, allowing rights and freedoms to be eroded now risks setting a trend that will likely continue after independence.”

Share this article

Original article with sharing options:  Link

U.S. NEWS

How a Supreme Court decision about pension plans affects religious hospitals

by Matt Hadro (CNA/EWTN News) • June 5, 2017

(Sfam photo via Shutterstock)

Washington D.C. — The Supreme Court of the United States, in an 8-0 decision on Monday, ruled that the pension plans of religious hospitals meet religious exemptions from costly regulations.

“The Supreme Court got it right,” Eric Rassbach, deputy general counsel at Becket, a legal firm which filed a friend-of-the-court brief on behalf of the Catholic health care networks, stated June 5. “Churches – not government bureaucrats and certainly not ambulance chasers – should decide whether hospitals are part of the church.”

Justice Elena Kagan delivered the opinion of the Court in Advocate Health Care Network v. Stapleton, a consolidation of three cases involving religious hospitals like St. Peter’s HealthCare System in New Jersey and Advocate Health Care Network. Justice Sonia Sotomayor issued a concurring opinion.

Justice Neil Gorsuch, the newest member of the Court, did not join in the ruling as he had not yet been confirmed to the Court when oral arguments in the case took place March 27.

Employees of the health care networks had sued when the institutions tried to have their pension plans, which were regulated for years like the plans of for-profit corporations, re-classified under the religious exemption allowed by federal law, the Earned Retirement Income Security Act of 1974.

This “church plan” exemption meant that the plans would not have to be subject to regulations of the plans of for-profit corporations. One such requirement was that employers have a pension reserve fund of a certain amount.

Requirements like this one, however, would take away resources from religious non-profits that could be spent elsewhere, like helping further the mission of the religious institutions, Becket argued.

Furthermore, it is important to see these religious institutions, which further the mission of churches, as part of churches, Rassbach said.

“It is simple common sense that nuns, soup kitchens, homeless shelters, seminaries, nursing homes, and orphanages are a core part of the church and not an afterthought,” he said.

One of the hospitals, St. Peter’s, is sponsored by the Diocese of Metuchen. Mass is offered at the hospital daily, Catholic devotionals are provided, and some board members are appointed by the local bishop.

Justice Kagan, in the Court’s opinion, explained that under ERISA, not only “church plans,” but also the pension plans of “church-affiliated nonprofits,” were considered to be religiously exempt, “even though not actually administered by a church.”

“The question presented here,” the opinion continued, “is whether a church must have originally established such a plan for it to so qualify. ERISA, we hold, does not impose that requirement.”

This meant that even though churches did not directly set up pension plans of Catholic or Christian hospitals, they could be considered “church plans” if they were maintained by a “principal-purpose organization,” or a religious non-profit.

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops insisted, in a previous amicus brief submitted on behalf of the religious hospitals, that the ministries of the religious hospitals should ensure that they are considered part of churches.

“Indeed, charity has always been a core component of the Catholic Church’s activities, ‘as essential to her as the ministry of the sacraments and preaching of the Gospel,’” the USCCB said, quoting Benedict XVI’s 2005 encyclical Deus caritas est.

This charity is lived out “through myriad Catholic ministries” like health care providers, they added, which should be treated as part of the Church.

Share this article

Original article with sharing options:  Link

U.S. NEWS

U.S. bishops say draft religious freedom rule ‘long overdue’

CNA/EWTN News • June 5, 2017

The White House. (Solomonjee via Shutterstock)

Washington D.C. — A draft federal rule from the Trump administration regarding the contraception mandate is “encouraging news” that could help return federal health care policy to a better approach toward matters of conscience, the U.S. bishops have said.

“Regulations like these reflect common sense, and what had been the consistent practice of the federal government for decades to provide strong conscience protection in the area of health care,” Archbishop William E. Lori of Baltimore, chair of the U.S. bishops’ Ad Hoc Committee for Religious Liberty, said June 1.

The bishops voiced hope that the final version of the regulations would remain strong. The bishops’ conference will analyze the final version in a more careful manner for more formal comment.

“Throughout, our goal will remain to protect both the conscience of individuals and our mission of sharing the Gospel and serving the poor and vulnerable through our ministries,” the bishops said.

Their comments responded to a 125-page draft memo of a religious liberty rule reportedly under consideration at the Department of Health and Human Services. The memo, dated May 23, was leaked and posted to the Vox news and opinion site.

The rule would add to, not replace, an Obama-era HHS rule, announced in late 2011, that required employers’ health plans to include coverage of sterilization and contraception. The mandate included some contraceptives that can cause abortion.

The initial rule’s religious exemption was so narrow it only exempted houses of worship, drawing widespread objections and lawsuits from more than 300 plaintiffs. Among those suing over the mandate is EWTN Global Catholic Network. CNA is part of the EWTN family.

Subsequent revisions allowed changes to the mandate for some religious entities. However, groups like the Little Sisters of the Poor objected that the rule still required their complicity in providing such coverage, which violates their religious and moral ethics. Refusal to comply with the current rule would result in heavy fines.

While the U.S. bishops noted the rule is still not approved, they said it is “long overdue.”

“If issued, these regulations would appropriately broaden the existing exemption to a wider range of stakeholders with religious or moral objections to the mandated coverage – not just houses of worship,” said Archbishop Lori, speaking on behalf of the U.S. bishops.

“This not only would eliminate an unwarranted governmental division of our religious community ‘between our houses of worship and our great ministries of service to our neighbors,’ but would also lift the government-imposed burden on our ministries ‘to violate their own teachings within their very own institutions.’” they said, citing the bishops’ 2012 statement “United for Religious Freedom.”

Other support for the draft rule came from Mark L. Rienzi, an attorney at the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, the legal group that represents the Little Sisters of the Poor.

He told a May 31 press call that the draft rule acknowledges that, given how widely available the mandated products are, “there is simply no need for the government to force unwilling religious groups who serve the poor to provide them or to pay massive fines that would shut down these types of ministries.”

In 2014, the Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Supreme Court decision ruled that the mandate violated the religious freedom of closely-held private companies; but this did not apply to the Little Sisters’ case, as their organization is a non-profit.

In May 2016, the Supreme Court ordered a lower court to re-hear the nuns’ case, a decision considered a technical win for the Little Sisters.

Share this article

Original article with sharing options:  Link

U.S. NEWS

Fix health care bill’s major defects, bishops ask U.S. Senate

CNA/EWTN News • June 6, 2017

(Alexkich via Shutterstock)

Washington D.C. — Despite its pro-life actions, the latest health care reform bill has “many serious flaws,” the U.S. bishops have said.

People without a strong voice in the political process “must not bear the brunt of attempts to cut costs,” several leaders with the U.S. bishops’ conference told U.S. Senators in a June 1 letter. They said lawmakers have “grave obligations” related to health care legislation and need to reject the “grave deficiencies” of the American Health Care Act.

The U.S. bishops’ letter to senators stressed the principles of universal health care access, respect for life, truly affordable health care, conscience protections, and the need for health care that is comprehensive and of high quality.

They asked the Senate to reject major changes to Medicaid, to retain protections for human life, to increase tax assistance for those with low-income and the elderly, to retain a cap on health care plan costs for the elderly, to protect immigrants, and to add health care protections.

On May 2 the House of Representatives narrowly voted (217 to 213) to pass a bill to repeal the 2010 Affordable Care Act and to replace it with the American Health Care Act.

The latest bill would replace the 2010 legislation’s individual insurance mandate with a 30 percent premium fine for having a significant gap in coverage. More tax credits would be offered, and the allowable contributions to health savings accounts would also be expanded.

The bill would cap the expansion of Medicaid and would allow states to determine which “essential health benefits” to recognize as mandatory for health plans. Under the 2010 legislation, this included hospitalizations and maternity care. The new bill would allow states to charge persons more based upon their health history, provided the states set up pre-existing pools. Under current law, this is forbidden.

The bill bars funding for abortion providers like Planned Parenthood for one year, instead directing $422 million in these funds to health care providers that do not perform abortions.

However, the new legislation faces an uncertain future in the Senate.

The bishops said that the Catholic Church “remains committed to ensuring the fundamental right to medical care, a right which is in keeping with the God-given dignity of every person, and the corresponding obligation as a country to provide for this right.”

The U.S. bishops’ conference leaders who signed the letter were Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan of New York, chair of the bishops’ Committee on Pro-Life Activities; Archbishop William E. Lori of Baltimore, chair of the Ad Hoc Committee for Religious Liberty; Bishop Frank J. Dewane of Venice, who chairs the Committee on Domestic Justice and Human Development; and Bishop Joe S. Vásquez of Austin, who heads the Committee on Migration.

Share this article

Original article with sharing options:  Link

U.S. NEWS

Speak up for the voiceless, Pence encourages Catholic prayer breakfast

by Matt Hadro (CNA/EWTN News) • June 6, 2017

United States Vice President Mike Pence. (Gino Santa Maria via Shutterstock)

Washington D.C. — United States Vice President Mike Pence exhorted those in attendance at the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast on Tuesday to continue to be a “voice for the voiceless,” after proclaiming that “life is winning” in the nation.

“Life is winning in America. Life is winning through the steady advance of science that continues to illuminate more and more when life begins,” Pence told the audience in Washington, D.C., June 6.

He added that the pro-life cause is advancing also “through the generosity of millions of adoptive families” and “through the compassion of caregivers and volunteers at crisis pregnancy centers and faith-based organizations.”

Pence addressed an estimated crowd of 1,300 at the 13th annual National Catholic Prayer Breakfast attended by many Catholic leaders including Archbishop Timothy Broglio of the Archdiocese for the Military Services, U.S.A., and Bishop Mario Dorsonville, auxiliary bishop of Washington.

The vice president stated: “I believe we’ve come to a pivotal moment in the life of our nation, and indeed, the life of the world. The Catholic community in America has made an enormous difference in the life of this nation.”

“And at this moment, I urge you to continue to stand up, to speak out, to continue to be that voice for the voiceless that the Church has been throughout its history, continue to be the hands and feet of our Savior, reaching in with love and compassion, embracing the dignity of all people of every background and every experience.”

Pence also reflected on the importance of daily prayer, saying that “in these challenging times I encourage you to take time every day to pray” with confidence, insisting that there is “so much need for healing” today.

The National Catholic Prayer Breakfast has taken place each year since 2004 as a response to St. John Paul II’s call for a “new evangelization.” Political leaders are invited to attend and speak, but the event is non-partisan.

Past keynote speakers have included Cardinal Robert Sarah, prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship; House Speaker Paul Ryan; the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia; and former US President George W. Bush.

Earlier on Tuesday morning, Archbishop Broglio and Mother Olga of the Sacred Heart, founder of the Daughters of Mary of Nazareth, addressed the audience.

Archbishop Broglio told those present to remember the virtues as the key to living heroic lives and being good citizens.

“The practice of virtue also leads to good citizenship,” he said, noting that there is “no dichotomy between faith and life if we practice good virtue.”

“Each of us has the potential to rebuild our society and our world if we cultivate authentic virtue,” he continued.

Carl Anderson, Supreme Knight of the Knights of Columbus, introduced Pence by saying that the U.S. needs a “new national political consensus” built on faith.

He added that “the times require men and women of prayer and humility, courage and conviction, leaders who can help bring healing to our nation.”

Pence began his keynote address by expressing his sorrow on behalf of the administration at the recent terror attacks in London that killed seven and injured 48, after attackers drove a van into pedestrians on London Bridge, disembarked from the vehicle, and stabbed other persons in the vicinity on Saturday.

Pence also mentioned Monday’s hostage situation in Melbourne, Aus., in which a gunman was killed in a shootout with police and several officers were injured, according to the BBC.

“Our hearts break for the families and the victims,” Pence said. “They have our prayers. They have our unwavering resolve.”

Pence, one of six children, was baptized and raised Catholic, but said in October’s vice presidential debate that “my Christian faith became real for me when I made a personal decision for Christ when I was a freshman in college.”

He referred to himself as a “born-again Evangelical-Catholic” in a 1994 interview, and began attending an Evangelical megachurch with his family in the 1990s. He now says in public that he is a Christian.

Pence recalled on Tuesday that he received the Sacrament of Confirmation as a youth, with the name “Michael Richard Christopher Pence.” He also noted how “my Catholic faith poured an eternal foundation in my life” during his childhood in Indiana, and joked that he spent “eight years of hard time in a Catholic school,” the “beneficiary of an extraordinary Catholic education.”

“My own faith journey has taken me and my family in a different direction,” he said on Tuesday. Pence has not revealed which church he regularly attends. He stated Tuesday that he had “just attended Mass this weekend with my mom in Chicago.”

“My mom would be so proud,” he said of his speaking at the Catholic prayer breakfast, adding that “this honestly feels like coming home to me.”

He focused some of his speech on persecuted Christians worldwide, maintaining that the Trump administration is committed to promoting and protecting the freedom of religion. He said the administration “stands with those who are persecuted for their faith around the world” and “stands with the most vulnerable, the aged, the infirm, and the unborn.”

Pence also cited President Donald Trump’s executive order on religious freedom, issued last month, as an “action to protect men and women of faith in the public square.”

The order, which granted “regulatory relief” to religious organizations fighting the previous administration’s contraception mandate, was nonetheless criticized by certain religious freedom advocates as being not broad enough. One chief criticism was that it failed to protect persons and institutions sued for discrimination for not supporting same-sex marriage.

Pence also mentioned Trump’s May 24 meeting with Pope Francis at the Vatican, saying the president and the Pope had a “lengthy and meaningful discussion about issues facing our world, about how our nation and the Church can work together.”

In particular, one area of collaboration could be to counter “the persecution of people of faith across the wider world,” he said on Tuesday, noting recent violence against Coptic Christians in Egypt as well as the genocide of Christians in Iraq and Syria. “I believe that ISIS is guilty of nothing short of genocide,” he said of the terror group the Islamic State.

“Protecting and promoting religious freedom is a foreign policy priority of this admin,” he insisted.

However, the administration has yet to appoint an international religious freedom ambassador, a key position in the State Department charged with promoting religious freedom as part of U.S. diplomacy.

Share this article

Original article with sharing options:  Link

U.S. NEWS

Mythologizing the devil won’t end well, Archbishop Chaput warns

CNA/EWTN News • June 7, 2017

(Estitxu Carton via Flickr CC BY-SA 2.0)

Philadelphia, PA — A society that relies on reason and technology, without faith, risks forgetting God and making a deal with the devil, Archbishop Charles J. Chaput of Philadelphia has warned.

“We’re in a struggle for souls. Our adversary is the devil. And while Satan is not God’s equal and doomed to final defeat, he can do bitter harm in human affairs,” Archbishop Chaput said. “The first Christians knew this. We find their awareness written on nearly every page of the New Testament.”

Writing in his June 5 column for Catholic Philly, titled “Sympathy for the Devil,” he said: “The modern world makes it hard to believe in the devil. But it treats Jesus Christ the same way. And that’s the point.”

The archbishop noted a medieval Christian saying, “no devil, no Redeemer.” When the devil is denied, it is difficult to explain why Christ came to suffer and die for humankind.

“The devil, more than anyone, appreciates this irony, i.e., that we can’t fully understand the mission of Jesus without him,” he said. “And he exploits this to his full advantage. He knows that consigning him to myth inevitably sets in motion our same treatment of God.”

The archbishop’s column drew on the life of Leszek Kolakowski, a onetime critic of the Catholic Church who was a leading Marxist in communist-ruled Poland before being exiled. He later became an admirer of St. John Paul II.

In 1987, Kolakowski delivered a lecture at Harvard, saying, “when a culture loses its sacred sense, it loses all sense.”

“Evil is continuous throughout human experience,” the scholar said. “The point is not how to make one immune to it, but under what conditions one may identify and restrain the devil.”

Continuing this theme, Archbishop Chaput reflected on the story of Faust, the intellectual and scholar who sells his soul to the devil to learn the secrets of the universe.

“Faust doesn’t come to God’s creation as a seeker after truth, beauty, and meaning,” the archbishop said. “He comes impatient to know, the better to control and dominate, with a delusion of his own entitlement, as if such knowledge should be his birthright. A prisoner of his own vanity, Faust would rather barter away his soul than humble himself before God.”

“Without faith there can be no understanding, no knowledge, no wisdom,” Archbishop Chaput said. “We need both faith and reason to penetrate the mysteries of creation and the mysteries of our own lives.”

A society that relies on mastery of reason and its products like science and technology, but does not have faith, “has made a Faustian bargain with the (very real) devil that can only lead to despair and self-destruction.”

“Such a culture has gained the world with its wealth, power and material success. But it has forfeited its soul,” Archbishop Chaput warned.

Share this article

Original article with sharing options:  Link

U.S. NEWS

Why this bill could be crucial for Iraq’s beleaguered Christians

by Matt Hadro (CNA/EWTN News) • June 7, 2017

A center for internally displaced persons, most of whom are Christians, in Dawodiya, Iraq on April 10, 2016. (Elise Harris/CNA)

Washington D.C. — After a myriad of reports of United States humanitarian aid not reaching Christian genocide survivors in Iraq, their advocates in the U.S. are hoping that will change very soon.

“There is an emergency here,” Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.), chair of the House panel on global human rights, stated at a press conference on Capitol Hill on Wednesday regarding emergency relief for Iraq and Syria genocide victims.

“We’re not asking for new money,” he said June 7. “We’re asking to make sure the money that’s in the pot is provided to those who have been left out and left behind for about three years.”

After forces of the Islamic State swept through Syria and Iraq in 2014, the U.S. has sent humanitarian aid for the victims of the caliphate, who were driven from their homes by the hundreds of thousands. Many fled to refugee camps or have been living in temporary shelters, at risk of disease and malnutrition or starvation.

However, many Christians reportedly avoided refugee camps because of the security situation, and U.S. aid that was sent to the central government of Iraq or local governments has not reached Christians. There has been an “appalling lack of equitable distribution of U.S. humanitarian assistance when it came to the Christians and the Yazidis,” Smith said.

Thus, Christian genocide survivors in Iraq are almost completely dependent on NGOs and aid groups. The Knights of Columbus alone has sent over $12 million for their aid.

That money has been “squeezed to get every ounce of efficacy out of it to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, provide shelter, and of course to provide medicines,” Smith said.

However, the money from the private sector is “not enough,” he insisted, saying that Archbishop Bashar Warda of the Chaldean Archeparchy of Erbil has warned of “severe food shortages” if nothing is done.

Before Christmas, Smith toured the region around Erbil where many Christian families are living after they fled from the Islamic State.

“When I went to Erbil with my staff and a few other individuals, I can tell you I was shocked that we were not supplying the kind of assistance to these women, children, and men families,” he explained on Wednesday. He was told by the consulate that a camp for displaced persons a 10-minute drive away was unsafe to tour.

“It was not dangerous. It was filled with little kids and young families,” he said. “They had not even been there to do an assessment.”

So, Reps. Smith and Anna Eshoo (D-Calif.) co-sponsored a bill that passed the U.S. House Tuesday evening and is set to move on to the Senate, which would help ensure that the U.S. aid can go to churches and their auxiliaries that serve Christian refugees.

The Trump administration has reportedly signaled its support for the bill, the Iraq and Syria Genocide Emergency Relief and Accountability Act.

“The State Department would not allow any U.S. dollars to flow to church organizations. And this legislation allows for that,” Eshoo explained on Wednesday. “It is so essential to work with those that are on the ground who know exactly where the dollars should go.”

The money is there, Smith insisted, noting that Congress set aside a “huge pot of money” for beleaguered minorities in the recent omnibus bill. However, it has to reach the churches that are on the ground helping Christians.

A 2012 GAO report found that USAID had failed to show how it was fulfilling a 2008 mandate that funds be “provided” for aid to religious and ethnic minorities in Iraq during the war.

“I am still trying to track, through the GAO, dollars that the Congress appropriated many years ago at the height of the Iraq War,” Eshoo said. “And that all went through the State Department and their agencies, and we’re still trying to figure out where that money went.”

It is vital that more aid reaches Christians and other minorities in Iraq to ensure that they remain there, advocates insist.

Christians are examples of forgiveness and can help with the reconciliation process between different ethnic and religious parts of the region, and the preservation of minorities can help ensure “pluralism and stability” in Iraq, the Religious Freedom Institute explained.

Share this article

Original article with sharing options:  Link

U.S. NEWS

Delaware legislature votes to drop restrictions on abortion

CNA/EWTN News • June 8, 2017

(Ray Dumas via Flickr CC BY-SA 2.0)

Dover, DE — In Delaware, lawmakers’ vote to pass a bill that would strike down almost all remaining abortion restrictions drew strong criticism from pro-life advocates, who warned it would provide safe harbor for Kermit Gosnell-style abortionists.

“Planned Parenthood and the ACLU are using Delaware as a testing ground for their extreme legislation to ensure abortionists can carry out abortions without limit – even on healthy children hours from birth,” charged Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the Susan B. Anthony List.

Under Delaware’s current law, which was rendered inactive by federal laws and court decisions, abortion is allowed only in cases where the mother’s life is at risk, if there is a substantial risk the unborn child would be born with serious disabilities, or if the child was conceived in rape or incest, the Associated Press reports.

Current law also bars abortion after 20 weeks into pregnancy. It requires parental consent for girls under 18, and written consent and a 24-hour waiting period for a woman seeking abortion. Women seeking abortion must also receive a full explanation of fetal development, the abortion procedure and its effects, and reasonable alternatives to abortion.

These measures are stripped under the bill. Instead, the bill would allow abortion without restriction before viability, and would allow abortion after viability if a doctor determines it is necessary to protect a woman’s life or health, or that the baby is not likely to survive without extraordinary measures.

The Susan B. Anthony List and other critics charged that the bill would make abortion legal throughout all nine months of pregnancy.

The bill passed the Senate by one vote in May. It passed the House June 6 by a vote of 22-16.

Democratic Gov. John Carney will sign the bill, a spokesman said.

Ellen Barrosse, a pro-life leader in Delaware and a Republican National Committeewoman, invoked the crimes of Kermit Gosnell, a Philadelphia abortionist convicted of murdering three infants who had survived abortion at a legal abortion clinic that went without a health inspection for 17 years. Gosnell would also work in Delaware, but did not face legal charges there.

“This bill would open the floodgates to Gosnell-style ‘houses of horrors’ abortion clinics in Delaware,” Barrosse said.

She charged that Delaware women have “suffered at the hands of unscrupulous abortionists.”

The Susan B. Anthony List cited other abortionists who have faced disciplinary action in the state as well as a 2013 report from ABC Philadelphia that two nurses at the Planned Parenthood of Delaware abortion clinic quit their jobs and alleged unsafe, unsanitary conditions and “a meat-market style of assembly-line abortions” at the facility.

Barrosse cited a trend favoring abortion restrictions in 20 U.S. states, saying: “Delaware is headed backwards.”

Dannenfelser, who chaired the Donald Trump presidential campaign’s pro-life coalition and its Catholic advisory board, contended that abortion advocates are “running scared” given the presence of “a pro-life president in the White House and already one pro-life [Supreme Court] justice nominated and confirmed.”

On June 6, the Susan B. Anthony List announced details of a nearly six-figure campaign to urge legislators in the Delaware House of Representatives to oppose the bill, which passed the House the same day. The campaign included a radio ad, digital campaign, direct mail, constituent phone calls, and a rally.

Share this article

Original article with sharing options:  Link

U.S. NEWS

Missouri governor calls special session to protect St Louis pro-lifers

CNA/EWTN News • June 8, 2017

Missouri Governor Eric Greitens. (CNA)

Jefferson City, MO — Missouri’s Gov. Eric Greitens has called a special session of the legislature to pass stronger legal protections for pro-life groups, like pregnancy centers he charged are “under attack” by a controversial St. Louis ordinance.

“Our faith community and volunteers do incredible work to support people in need. And there’s few finer examples than the work pregnancy care centers do across our state,” Greitens said in a video posted to his Facebook page June 7.

He said his pro-life stand was motivated in part from witnessing “the value of true love and compassion in one of Mother Teresa’s homes for the destitute and dying.”

The governor’s action follows the February enactment of a controversial ordinance in the City of St. Louis which has drawn strong pro-life opposition. Opponents said the law would bar any individual or entity, including Christian organizations, from refusing to sell or rent property to individuals or businesses that promote or provide abortions. It could create the risk of lawsuits for Catholic schools with a policy against hiring abortion supporters.

The ordinance creates a protected status for anyone who has “made a decision related to abortion,” even in cases where the abortion was not their own. The protections apply to corporations and all businesses, not only individuals.

The St. Louis’ archdiocesan school system, a pro-life pregnancy center called Our Lady’s Inn, and a Catholic-owned private business are among the parties to a lawsuit challenging the ordinance.

Last month, Archbishop Robert Carlson of St. Louis said the archdiocese will not comply with the “vile bill” which he said marks the city’s “embrace of the culture of death.”

Greitens was also among the ordinance’s critics.

He praised pregnancy centers’ pro-life work with pregnant women, new mothers, and newborns.

“In the city of St. Louis, some of these pregnancy care centers are under attack,” his video message said. “There’s a new city law making St. Louis an abortion sanctuary city – where pregnancy care centers can’t work the way they’re supposed to. Politicians are trying to make it illegal, for example, for pro-life organizations to say that they just want to hire pro-life Missourians.”

The governor said the Missouri Senate failed to act on a bill that would address the measure, which prompted the need for the special session.

Another focus of the special session will be what the governor called “common-sense health and safety standards in all medical facilities.” These include proposed requirements such as annual safety inspections in abortion clinics and mandatory plans for abortion complications.

The governor also advocated laws that “will stop abortion clinics from interfering with emergency responders.” He contended that abortion clinics currently can tell an ambulance to come slowly, not to use lights and sirens, or go around to the back of the clinic.

According to the governor, a court decision weakened health standards for abortion clinics.

In April a federal judge, citing a 2016 U.S. Supreme Court decision on a similar law in Texas, struck down a Missouri law that required abortion clinics to have the same standards as similar outpatient surgical centers. The law also required abortionists to have hospital privileges.

Missouri Attorney General Josh Hawley is appealing the ruling.

Allison Dreith, executive director of NARAL Pro-Choice Missouri, charged that the governor’s action was intended “to shame women for their personal medical decisions and make basic reproductive health care harder to access.”

Susan Klein, legislative liaison for Missouri Right to Life, backed the legislation, saying it would allow legislators to pass “a life-saving bill to protect women, unborn babies and reaffirm our religious liberties so that Pregnancy Resource Centers and Faith Communities from all denominations are not forced to participate in abortion.”

Share this article

Original article with sharing options:  Link

FEATURES

Nun who received birthday greeting from Pope Francis dies at 110

CNA/EWTN News • June 3, 2017

Sister Candida Bellotti celebrates her 110th birthday. (Congregation of St. Camillus of Lellis)

Florence, Italy — Sister Candida Bellotti, thought to be the oldest nun in the world, died Saturday at the age of 110.

Sister Bellotti had celebrated her 110th birthday on Feb. 20, 2017 and received a special birthday greeting from Pope Francis.

“To the Reverend Sister Candida Bellotti, Sister Minister of the Sick, who with gratitude to God is celebrating her 110th birthday, the Holy Father Francis spiritually participates in the joy we all share for this happy occasion and sends warm congratulations and heartfelt wishes,” said the pontiff in his message at the time.

The Italian nun was 30 years older than Pope Francis. Her life spanned ten pontiffs: Pius X (1903-1914), Benedict XV (1914-1922), Pius XI (1922-1939), Pius XII (1939-1958), John XXIII (1958-1963), Paul VI (1963-1978), John Paul I (1978), John Paul II (1978-2005), Benedict XVI (2005-2013), and Pope Francis (2013- ).

Sister Bellotti was born in 1907 in the province of Verona in Italy. She belonged to the Congregation of San Camillus de Lellis, which observed the 150th anniversary of the death of its founder, Blessed Maria Domenica Brun Barbantini, in May.

“Love, love and love still more, with joy,” is the advice she gave everyone, especially the new generations. She had a special invitation for young people: “Have confidence in the future, and strive to the utmost to accomplish your desires.”

Share this article

Original article with sharing options:  Link

FEATURES

One of Poland’s new priests is the prime minister’s son

CNA/EWTN News • June 3, 2017

(Thoom via Shutterstock)

Warsaw, Poland — A son of the Polish prime minister has been ordained a Catholic priest, and he celebrated his first Mass this last Sunday.

Father Tymoteusz Szydlo, 25, celebrated Mass at the church in the southern Polish town of Przecieszyn, where he was baptized as a child, the U.K. newspaper The Catholic Herald reported. He was ordained over the weekend.

“Human words are unable to express the gratitude I owe You, my God,” said the newly ordained priest. “Therefore, I humbly ask You to keep me in Your holy service.”

The priest is a member of the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter, which celebrates a Latin-language Mass in the Extraordinary Form. Fr. Szydlo’s mother, Prime Minister Beata Szydlo, heads a government formed by the ruling Law and Justice party.

She said she and her husband are “very happy and proud,” the Associated Press reports. On Pentecost, Fr. Szydlo will celebrate Mass in Krakow at the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter’s Church of the Holy Cross.

Poland is known for its strong Catholic identity, and is currently considering legislation that would completely ban abortion.

Thousands of Polish pro-lifers have rallied within the last year, calling on parliament to pass a bill that would allow abortions only to save a women’s life. The legislation would increase the maximum prison sentence for unauthorized abortions from two years to five.

Since 1993, Poland’s abortion law allows abortions only for pregnancies that result from rape or incest, that pose a risk to the health of the mother, or that involve a baby with severe deformities.

Share this article

Original article with sharing options:  Link

FEATURES

Catacomb frescoes in Rome restored using lasers

CNA/EWTN News • June 5, 2017

An image of Orpheus in Rome’s Catacombs of St. Callixtus. (Bohumil Petrik/CNA)

Rome, Italy — Adorning the crypts hidden among Rome’s catacombs are frescoes which reveal 1,600 year-old history, as well as the life of early Christians, which are regaining vividness through new technology.

The paintings had been masked by a veil of algae and calcium deposits, and blackened by the smoke of oil lamps until lasers were used to strip the paintings of centuries of grime without damaging their integrity.

“Until recently, we weren’t able to carry out this sort of restoration – if we had done it manually we would have risked destroying the frescoes,” said the head of the restoration project, Barbara Mazzei, in a comment to The Telegraph May 30.

“When we started work, you couldn’t see anything – it was totally black. Different wavelengths and chromatic selection enabled us to burn away the black disfiguration without touching the colors beneath.”

About a dozen crypts out of the 70 buried in the Catacombs of St Domitilla have been restored so far. The underground labyrinth extends 10 miles, and is decorated with both Christian and pagan images which demonstrate the process of conversion from Roman paganism to Christianity. The frescoes were painted around the year 360.

“It’s a fusion of older pagan symbols with new Christian images. The family had only recently converted to Christianity,” said Mazzei.

The superintendent of the Pontifical Commission for Sacred Archaeology, Fabrizio Bisconti, said wealthier Romans were among the last to convert to Christianity.

Shortly before the frescoes were painted, Christians were hunted and killed – including Saints Nerius and Achilleus, whose basilica sits above the crypts and is the entrance to the catacombs.

These two Roman soldiers of the imperial guard were martyred for confessing their faith. They were victims to the military persecutions conducted by the Emperor Diocletian at the very beginning of the fourth century – about 60 years before the frescoes were painted.

Share this article

Original article with sharing options:  Link

FEATURES

Watch a 20-week baby in utero with new groundbreaking technology

CNA/EWTN News • June 6, 2017

(ChannelMum.com via YouTube)

London, England — When the fetal ultrasound gained popularity in the 1970s, it was hailed as a “window to the womb.” But now, new technology could offer a much more in-depth view of babies before birth.

Courtesy of a recent multimillion dollar project based out of London, some parents are able to see clear scans of every movement and organ of their babies in the womb starting as early as 20 weeks, using advanced MRI technology.

“There is nothing quite as emotional as seeing your unborn child moving inside you, and these MRI scans are taking images to the next level,” stated Cathy Ranson, the editor of ChannelMum.com, a website that is distributing videos of the MRI scans.

“They are truly breathtaking,” Ranson continued.

Traditionally, ultrasounds are used during pregnancy to check in on growing babies in the womb using high frequency sound waves. Although useful, ultrasounds usually produce limited visual scopes of the womb and can vary in quality depending on various factors, such as age, weight, and position.

However, a curious team of medics pushed the limits of the ultrasound to find out if there was a better way to get in-utero scans.

Top minds from Kings College London, St. Thomas’ Hospital, Imperial College London, University of Firenze, the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto and Philips Health were given £10 million from the Wellcome Trust and Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council to see if they could advance antenatal scans.

This team of medics composed a new series of algorithms and magnetic fields to go beyond the limits of the ultrasound. This new technology is allowing clear pictures of the entire womb, making details like a 20-week heart valve crystal clear.

A video, produced by the iFIND project, shows just how detailed the scans are: the baby is stretching, turning, and even playing with the umbilical cord. They also recorded the reverberations of the baby’s movements, which could be seen rippling through the mother’s belly.

In addition to creating the optimal scan, the MRI technology also has a mechanism that auto corrects any small movements to produce an overall smooth image.

Dr. David Lloyd, a Clinical Research Fellow at King’s College London, said the new MRI scans “can see the structures inside the body, regardless of whether there’s bone, muscle or fat in the way.”

“It is also one of the few imaging techniques that is safe to use in pregnancy,” Dr. Lloyd continued.

This new technology is more than just a great picture for excited parents to see. The MRI scans could also reveal complications or growth deficiencies earlier in the pregnancy, which could allow for advanced treatment even before the baby is born.

The MRI scans have already kicked up some debate, especially in the UK where abortion is legal up to 24 weeks. These new scans, showing how babies actively move around at 20 weeks, is making the current abortion limit even more questionable.

Moving forward, the iFIND project wants the MRI scans to become available for all pregnant women around the world.

This article was originally published on CNA Feb. 8, 2017.

Share this article

Original article with sharing options:  Link

FEATURES

Kathy Griffin and the vanishing of argument

by Bishop Robert Barron • June 6, 2017

By now the whole world has heard about comedian Kathy Griffin’s appalling staged-photo of herself holding a mock-up of the bloody, severed head of Donald Trump. Despite her rather pathetic apology, a firestorm of protest has broken out pretty much everywhere. To say that this stunt was in poor taste or, in the parlance of our times, “offensive,” would be the understatement of the decade. At a time when the most barbarous people on the planet are, in point of fact, decapitating their enemies and holding up the heads as trophies, it simply beggars belief that Griffin would have imagined this escapade as an acceptable form of social protest.

But I would like to situate what Griffin did in a wider context, for it is but a particularly brutal example of what is taking place throughout our society, especially on university campuses. Speakers of a more conservative stripe, ranging from serious academics such as Charles Murray and Heather McDonald to provocateurs such as Ann Coulter and Milo Yiannopoulos, have been shouted down, obstructed, insulted, and in extreme cases physically assaulted on the grounds of institutes of higher learning throughout the United States. Very recently, at Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington, a tenured professor was compelled to hold his biology class in a public park. His crime? He had publicly criticized a planned “Day of Absence” during which white students, staff, and faculty were coerced into leaving the campus, since people of color claimed they felt “unsafe” at the college. For calling this blatantly racist move by its proper name, the professor was, of course, himself labeled a racist and mobs of angry students shut down his classes, forcing him to lecture in the park.

What is most striking to me in all of this is the obvious lack of anything resembling rational argument. Students are not posing counter-positions, marshaling evidence, drawing logical conclusions, proposing more convincing scenarios, etc. In a word, they are not arguing with their opponents. They are bullying them, drowning them out, intimidating them, physically attacking them. This is not only irrational; it is deeply disrespectful, for it fundamentally denies the humanity of their adversaries. Nowhere is this de-humanization more patently evident than in the case of Kathy Griffin’s protest. And the impatience with argument is rooted in a more basic assumption of many on the left — which is precisely why this violence is breaking out in environments where a radical ideology holds sway. I’m talking about the questioning of objective truth and the concomitant hyper-valorization of the self-assertive will. It is a commonplace on the left that claims to objective truth are thinly-veiled plays of power, attempts by one group to impose its views on another. Accordingly, “truth” is construed as a function of the will of the individual. I determine the meaning of my life, and you determine the meaning of yours; I decide my gender and you decide yours — and therefore the best we can do together is tolerate one another’s choices.

But when there is no truth, there can be no argument, for argument depends upon a shared appeal to certain epistemic and ethical values. If I might propose an analogy, it’s something like the common rules that make a game possible. Precisely because the players all agree to certain strictures and delimitations, real play can ensue. If every participant is making up the rules as he goes along and according to his whim, the game promptly evanesces. Indeed, if we continue with this analogy, the game, in fact, doesn’t simply disappear; it devolves into bickering and finally into violence, since the players have no other recourse for the adjudication of their disputes. Now we can see why it is a very short step indeed from epistemic and moral relativism in the classroom to violence on the quad. Since I can’t argue with my opponent, I can only silence him, de-humanize him, shut him down.

The valorization of will over intellect is described by the technical term “voluntarism,” and the roots of this ideology are tangled indeed. Jean-Paul Sartre and Michel Foucault were advocates of it in the twentieth century, and they both found their inspiration in the nineteenth-century German theoretician, Friedrich Nietzsche. Nietzsche’s Ubermensch (Superman) stood blithely beyond the conventional categories of good and evil and determined the meaning of his life through his limitless will to power. The problem, of course, is what happens when two Supermen clash, when two limitless wills collide. The only path forward, Nietzsche correctly intuited, would be warfare — and let the strongest survive. What should be clear to everyone is that this has remained anything but high theorizing, that in fact Nietzsche’s vision now dances in the heads of most young people in our society today.

Are we surprised, therefore, that stridency, anger, violence, censorship, and the will to power dominate the public conversation? I realize that it might sound a bit frumpy to put it this way, but the path forward is better epistemology.

Bishop Robert Barron is an auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles and the founder of Word on Fire Catholic Ministries (wordonfire.org). He is the creator of two award-winning documentary series, Catholicism and Catholicism: The New Evangelization.

Share this article

Original article with sharing options:  Link

FEATURES

Mother Teresa was heroic – but maybe not for the reasons you think

by Elise Harris (CNA/EWTN News) • June 7, 2017

Mother Teresa. (Funky Tee via Flickr CC BY-SA 2.0)

Vatican City — There are many things about Saint Mother Teresa of Calcutta that could be called heroic – her tireless service to the world’s most rejected and her courageous witness to millions of what it is to live the Gospel, just to name a couple.

But the priest who oversaw her path to sainthood said that for him, one thing stands out above all the rest: her experience of spiritual darkness and what she described as feeling totally abandoned by God for the majority of her life.

“The single most heroic thing is exactly her darkness. That pure living, that pure, naked faith,” Fr. Brian Kolodiejchuk, the postulator for Mother Teresa’s canonization cause, told CNA in an interview. Fr. Kolodiejchuk is a priest of the Missionaries of Charity Fathers, founded by Mother Teresa in 1989.

By undergoing the depth and duration of the desolation she experienced and doing everything that she did for others in spite of it, “that’s really very heroic,” he said.

Born Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu Aug. 26, 1910 in Skopje, in what is now Macedonia, Mother Teresa joined the Sisters of Loretto at the age of 17, but later left after she felt what she called “an order” from God to leave the convent and to live among the poor.

She went on to found several communities of both active and contemplative Missionaries of Charity, which include religious sisters, brothers, and priests.

The first community of active sisters was founded in 1950. An order of active brothers was founded nearly 20 years later in 1968. Then two contemplative orders came, one of women (in 1976) and one of men (in 1979).

In 1989 the Missionaries of Charity Fathers was established, and is a clerical religious institute of diocesan right whose members make promises of poverty, chastity, obedience, and wholehearted and free service to the poorest of the poor.

Additionally, an order of lay missionaries was also founded in 1984, and several movements who organize various works of charity have also been born as part of the Missionaries of Charity spiritual family.

One of the first steps in declaring someone a saint is to determine their heroic virtue. Fr. Kolodiejchuk said that Mother Teresa’s entire life was lived heroically, which was clear from what he had seen firsthand and heard from the testimonies of others, even though he himself has only been a part of the Missionaries of Charity family for 20 years.

He said the most heroic aspect of Mother Teresa’s life and vocation is the more than 50 years of darkness and abandonment she felt after receiving what she termed “a call within a call” to leave the Sisters of Loretto and found the Missionaries of Charity.

Although the Albanian nun is always seen beaming and smiling brightly in photos, she experienced a profound internal desolation during which she felt silence and rejection from God, who seemed distant.

In a letter to her spiritual director in 1957, Mother Teresa wrote that “I call, I cling, I want, and there is no one to answer. Where I try to raise my thoughts to heaven, there is such convicting emptiness that those very thoughts return like sharp knives and hurt my very soul.”

“Love – the word – it brings nothing. I am told God lives in me – and yet the reality of darkness and coldness and emptiness is so great that nothing touches my soul,” she said.

Mother Teresa had prayed fervently to share in Jesus’ suffering, and many, including her spiritual director, believed her feelings of rejection and abandonment to be a mirror of Christ’s own experience of loneliness and desolation during his Passion and death.

Because of the depth and duration of Mother Teresa’s spiritual desert, many have hailed her as a great mystic when it comes to topic of spiritual darkness.

Fr. Kolodiejchuk himself said Mother Teresa was “a great mystic, but also very concrete, very down to earth.”

The priest had met Mother Teresa in his early 20s while attending the vows of his sister, who had joined the active branch of the Missionaries of Charity sisters. He joined the order of priests a year later.

A lot of people “think that saints are somewhere in the mystical clouds,” he said, but cautioned that this wasn’t true of Mother Teresa, who was spiritual, but also observant and active in the lives of others.

From the first moment he met her, of Mother Teresa’s most distinguishing qualities was “this sense that she really was Mother,” he said, explaining that being a mother was something important to her, and was the only thing she was ever called.

When Mother Teresa was first elected superior general of the Missionaries of Charity, her immediate response after receiving congratulations, he noted, was to say “Oh that means nothing, the title. No, I want to be a mother.”

The nun also placed a heavy emphasis on God’s tenderness, Fr. Kolodiejchuk said, recalling that “tender” was one of her favorite words – even more so than mercy.

“She would talk more about Jesus’ tender love and mercy; his thoughtfulness, his presence, his compassion … So mercy was a word in her vocabulary, but with this quality especially of tenderness.”

“Even in the darkness she still had an intimate sense of God’s tender love for us,” he said, and recited a prayer that Mother Teresa would often teach and have others repeat: “Jesus in my heart, I believe in your tender love for me. I love you.”

The priest said that her canonization during the Jubilee of Mercy was providential since the core mission of the Missionaries of Charity is to respond to Chapter 25 in the Gospel of Matthew, which lists the works of mercy.

He noted how the day of Mother Teresa’s canonization also marked a special jubilee day for workers and volunteers of mercy.

Given the work the Missionaries of Charity do, “it’s appropriate” that the nun would become a patroness for all who carry out the same type of activities, he said.

Part of the reason Mother Teresa is such a strong example for the world today, Fr. Kolodiejchuk believes, is because “people like to see,” and the work the Missionaries do is something visible that others can easily touch and participate in, no matter what religion they profess.

“Mother was a great believer in that we receive in giving. So there’s something attractive about the work. And then you receive by sharing in it,” he said.

This article was originally published on CNA April 4, 2016.

Share this article

Original article with sharing options:  Link

FEATURES

Can the Catholic Church help an addicted generation?

by Mary Rezac (CNA/EWTN News) • June 8, 2017

(Syda Productions via Shutterstock)

Greenwich, CT — Young Americans are dying at a rate not seen since the Vietnam War.

But they are not dying in combat - they’re dying of the effects of drug overdoses, alcoholism, mental illness and suicide, at a rate 200 percent higher than the 1980s in much of the United States.

A recent report from the U.S. surgeon general estimates that more than 27 million Americans have problems with prescription drugs, illegal drugs or alcohol. But just a fraction of those people, only 10 percent, get meaningful help.

And it’s not just substance addictions that are on the rise. Process addictions, related to behaviors, have also seen recent spikes. Pornography addiction in particular has reached what some view as crisis levels.

A 2011 study by the National Center for Biotechnology Information estimated that roughly 47 percent of all American adults struggle with at least one of the 11 most common forms of process or substance addictions.

The prevalence of all kinds of addiction likely mean that most people in the pews of a Catholic Church on any given Sunday have experienced addiction in themselves or in a loved one.

So what is the Church doing to address the problem?

Understanding addiction

Dr. Gregory Bottaro is a clinical psychologist and the founder and director of Catholic Psych Institute in Connecticut. He frequently sees clients who are dealing with either substance or process addictions.

Part of the problem of addiction is a widespread misunderstanding of addiction as a lack of intellectual or spiritual willpower, Dr. Bottaro said.

“You have to recognize that there is an actual brain disease in effect,” he told CNA.

“So as much as you can sit and talk through the issues, you’re dealing with real brain chemicals that are out of balance, and a real disease that has occurred in the brain, so approaching it from a number of different angles is very important.”

Behaviors or substance abuse have to reach certain diagnostic marks to be considered addictions, Dr. Bottaro said. Generally, an addiction is occurring when a person is compulsively dependent on a substance or behavior, and continues to do it despite negative consequences and a desire to stop.

And just like addicted individuals can build up tolerances to substances and require more to achieve the same effect, process addictions also show tolerance buildups, such as when a pornography addict requires more hardcore viewing to achieve the same release.

Erik Vagenius is the founder of Substance Abuse Ministry Scripts, or SAM Scripts, a faith and scripture based ministry designed to help ease the process from recognition of addiction to seeking professional help.

Vagenius, who has been involved in addiction ministry for decades and is a recovered alcoholic himself, said that the first step to solving the problem is recognizing that there is one.

“I firmly believe so much for this (ministry) to be part of the church,” he told CNA. “(T)o have a church community that recognizes that they’re behind you, just as they would be if somebody had cancer, helps to destigmatize this thing.”

“Unfortunately the reactions I sometimes get are well, this isn’t really a Catholic problem. But I’ll bet everybody in the pew on any given day has had some relationship with the disease of addiction,” he added.

What does faith have to do with it?

Faith has long been a tenet of many addiction recovery programs. One of the most popular, Alcoholics Anonymous has strong Christian roots because it’s co-founder, Bill Wilson, had a spiritual awakening after he was hospitalized for his drinking in 1934. He joined the Oxford Group, a nondenominational Christian movement popular in the U.S. and Europe at the time, and helped found AA in 1935.

The AA tenets of self-examination, acknowledgment of character defects and restitution for harm done to others grew out of Oxford Group teachings.

Today, allegiance to a specific creed is not required for membership, though the group still considers itself a spiritual, albeit denominationally non-preferential group. Four of the 12 steps in the AA program mention God directly, and the 12th calls for a “spiritual awakening as a result of these steps.”

Vagenius also considers addiction a spiritual battle.

“We’re dealing with a spiritual disease, and that’s why the Church needs to be involved with it,” he said.

The website for SAM Scripts recognizes that “addiction is a spiritual illness that disconnects a person: from self, loved ones, and God. SAM’s mission is to help these individuals reconnect through education, prevention, referral, and family support.”

Dr. Bottaro said he also incorporates faith in his recovery programs for addicts.

He said he was especially inspired after hearing a talk by Catholic speaker Christopher West, who specializes in Theology of the Body.

“He said basically we have this desire, and our desires are insatiable. So God made us with this desire for more, more, more, and with that desire we can do one of three things … we can become a stoic, and addict or a mystic.”

A stoic ignores the desire or tries to repress it and pretend it doesn’t exist. An addict tries to fulfill their desires with the things of this world, and a mystic “directs their desires towards God, and that’s where we enter into that mysticism by transcending the finitude of this life,” he said.

That’s still an abstract way of looking at a very real disease, Dr. Bottaro said. However, there are several Catholic programs that offer concrete assistance to struggling addicts of all levels.

Catholic recovery programs

On the less intensive side, Dr. Bottaro has developed an 8-week online program that anyone can access from home called Catholic Mindfulness. It adds the Catholic understanding of abandonment to Divine Providence to a traditional mindfulness approach to healing.

“If you look into what mindfulness is, you’re basically training your brain to know that you’re safe, because the anxiety response is how God made us to react to danger,” he said. “The problem is we overuse that … we activate our anxiety response, but most of the time we’re not actually in danger. So mindfulness is basically paying attention to what’s actually real right now to convince your brain that you’re safe, and that corrects the brain chemistry.”

“The Catholic perspective as to why we’re safe is that we have a Father who loves us and who always keeps us in his hands, and we have a reason to trust that everything is going to be ok.”

Vagenius refers to those in his ministry as “SAM teams” who share their time and talent, typically through talks and meetings, to offering hope, healing and reconciliation to those touched by addiction. SAM teams provide a safe, confidential place for people to seek help and referral at the parish level.

Team members do not have to be in recovery but need to be acquainted with addiction, and must be approved by their pastor.

The ministry’s exact format varies from parish to parish, depending on those involved and the needs of the faith community. Vagenius’ trainings provide a basic format, and the parish SAM team develops its own dynamic from that outline based on specific needs.

Depending on the person, more intensive work may be necessary, including outpatient psychotherapy and group counseling, or even residential programs.

St. Gregory Retreat Center is a Catholic residential program for adults struggling with substance abuse located in Adair, Iowa.

The program offers separate residential facilities for men and women and offers a “holistic approach that combines the very best research in psychology, health, social support, and other methodologies.”

The program targets addiction behavior in four different aspects of life: biological, psychological, social, and spiritual.

Besides counseling, social activities and physical exercise, daily Mass and regular access to the sacraments are part of the residents’ normal routine.

Natalie Cataldo, Director of Admissions at St. Gregory, told CNA that incorporating spirituality in the recovery process has proven to be very effective.

“Research shows that people are more successful in overcoming addiction when they have an active spirituality in their lives,” she told CNA in an e-mail interview.

“Most people who come to us have had not a great past. With the sacrament of reconciliation, our guests are able to ask for forgiveness. … Allowing them to feel like they are getting rid of the past, making new good habits for the future that they can start using and making better choices. It also allows for self reflection and self evaluation.”

For those in post-recovery, there are programs available to help ease people back into their normal routine.

Dr. Bottaro works at one such facility, Ender’s Island in Connecticut, a residential program for young men “with or without faith” who are recently out of recovery. The program provides a community in which to practice the 12 steps and support for a better transition into regular life, as well as daily Mass and regular access to the sacraments.

The biggest barriers to seeking help for addiction can be denial on the part of the individual and a perceived stigma in seeking help. Increased education and understanding from everyone in the Church can help break these barriers, Dr. Bottaro said.

“It’s important to have support and understanding that there are other ways to fight these battles than just prayer, or just kind of sucking it up and hanging in there and seeing how far you can go before you get help,” he said.

“Once you’re looking for help, there’s a wide spectrum.”

This article was originally published by CNA on Dec. 16, 2016.

Share this article

Original article with sharing options:  Link

FEATURES

Movie review: ‘The Mummy’

by Carl Kozlowski • June 9, 2017

Between his 1983 breakthrough in “Risky Business” and “Collateral” in 2004, it seemed Tom Cruise could do no wrong. But ever since he went off the deep end in 2005, jumping up and down on Oprah’s couch, the magic that had enabled him to jump from action flicks to romantic comedies to dramas seemed to disappear, leaving him stuck between science-fiction films and the “Mission: Impossible” franchise, with only the “M:I” entries still delivering explosive returns.

The chance to finally land another blockbuster by bringing the Universal studio’s classic 1932 horror film “The Mummy” and its 1999 Brendan Fraser remake back to life no doubt seemed like a slam-dunk. It gives Cruise the chance to attempt Indiana Jones-style heroics that combine his old sly charm with his current reliance on stunts.

While it is a nice change of pace to see him play a character who’s not unstoppably superhuman like his “M:I” agent Ethan Hunt, this “Mummy” is too convoluted in places, too gruesome in others, never quite scary enough and sadly falls completely to pieces in its utterly bizarre and confusing final half hour.

The film kicks off in England in 1127 AD, as a knight who fought in the Crusades is buried with a giant red diamond in his tomb while other knights chant in Latin amid a foreboding ceremony. It then jumps to the present day, where the tombs of the knight and his peers have been discovered and a mysterious man named Henry (Russell Crowe) takes over the excavation site with his minions.

As Henry stands in awe of the tombs, his pretentious voiceover and a rather intense flashback informs viewers that the site is tied to an evil ancient Egyptian woman named Ahmanet (Sofia Boutella). She was the daughter of a pharaoh, destined to inherit the throne until he fathered a son, who would take her place in line.

Ahmanet clung to her power by killing her father, his wife and son, and attempted to live forever by ritually killing a lover with the supernaturally powered Dagger of Set, the god of Death. After being captured before achieving her goal, she was mummified alive and trapped in a pit more than 1,000 miles outside of Egypt, with the intention of keeping her there forever.

But back in present-day Iraq, two U.S. reconnaissance officers – Nick Morton (Tom Cruise) and his sarcastic sidekick, Chris Vail (Jake Johnson) – have gone rogue by looting and selling the ancient treasures of the villages they are supposed to protect from insurgents. Nick finds way more than he bargained for while seeking the Dagger of Set, when the ground opens to reveal Ahmanet’s pit, with Nick unwittingly bringing her sarcophagus to the surface.

This discovery results in a confrontation with beautiful archeologist Jenny Halsey (Annabelle Wallis), who is angry because Nick stole her map to the pit after a one-night stand. Nick’s military supervisor orders the sarcophagus flown on a cargo plane to the U.S. for examination, unleashing a string of disasters including a sandstorm and a massive swarm of crows that destroy the plane’s engines and windshield.

Nick saves Jenny from certain death by offering her the only parachute on the plane as it careens to the ground, then awakens mysteriously unscathed and in a body bag in a hospital morgue. But Chris is now a wisecracking zombie and Nick is troubled by visions that make Jenny realize that Ahmanet is alive and attempting to make him her accomplice in bringing Set to life and making herself immortal.

Ahmanet is also on a rampage to find the diamond that was buried with the Crusader, as it is key to giving the Dagger its full evil powers.

I’m exhausted just typing all that, and events only get more confusing from there. Somehow, director Alex Kurtzmann manages to make it seem fun and coherent for the first two-thirds, but when Nick and Ahmanet each wind up at Henry’s bizarre compound, the movie goes off the deep end with a string of violent and annoying confrontations that destroy what little logic remains.

To make things worse, the film ends with a ridiculous voiceover conversation between Henry and Jenny that attempts to establish further globetrotting adventures for Nick. But judging from the fact that the audience didn’t laugh and cheer during the climactic fight’s big catchphrase, and didn’t even provide the customary round of applause that accompanies nearly every free screening in Hollywood, Universal can stop the franchise development process right now.

What’s truly disappointing is the fact that the movie features a dark focus on Ahmanet’s occult behavior and chanting throughout. The sequence in which Ahmanet kills her family, strips naked (her rear end is seen directly, with her exposed breasts seen from the side) and attempts ritual murder while atop her implied naked lover really pushes the limits of the PG-13 rating. Repeated flashbacks to these killings and some truly gruesome zombie transformations mean this is inappropriate for kids under that age, while people 13 and older are more likely to be offended by the fact they spent $15 on a ticket.

Carl Kozlowski has been a professional film critic and essayist for the past five years at Pasadena Weekly, in addition to the Christian movie site Movieguide.org, the conservative pop culture site Breitbart.com’s Big Hollywood, the Christian pop culture magazine Relevant, and New City newspaper in Chicago. He also writes in-depth celebrity interviews for Esquire.com and The Progressive. He is owner of the podcasting site radiotitans.com, which was named one of the Frontier Fifty in 2013 as one of the 50 best talk-radio outlets in the nation by talkers.com and will be re-launching it in January 2014 after a five-month sabbatical. He lives in Los Angeles.

Share this article

Original article with sharing options:  Link

SUNDAY • JUNE 11, 2017

The Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity

First Reading (Ex 34:4b-6, 8-9; NRSVCE)

Moses rose early in the morning and went up on Mount Sinai, as the Lord had commanded him, and took in his hand the two tablets of stone. The Lord descended in the cloud and stood with him there, and proclaimed the name, “The Lord.” The Lord passed before him, and proclaimed,

“The Lord, the Lord,

a God merciful and gracious,

slow to anger,

and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness.”

Moses quickly bowed his head toward the earth, and worshiped. He said, “If now I have found favor in your sight, O Lord, I pray, let the Lord go with us. Although this is a stiff-necked people, pardon our iniquity and our sin, and take us for your inheritance.”

Responsorial Psalm (Dn 3:52, 53, 54, 55, 56; NRSVCE)

R: (52b) Glory and praise for ever.

“Blessed are you, O Lord, God of our ancestors,

and to be praised and highly exalted forever;

And blessed is your glorious, holy name,

and to be highly praised and highly exalted forever.”

R: Glory and praise for ever.

“Blessed are you in the temple of your holy glory,

and to be extolled and highly glorified forever.”

R: Glory and praise for ever.

“Blessed are you who look into the depths from your throne on the cherubim,

and to be praised and highly exalted forever.”

R: Glory and praise for ever.

“Blessed are you on the throne of your kingdom,

and to be extolled and highly exalted forever.”

R: Glory and praise for ever.

“Blessed are you in the firmament of heaven,

and to be sung and glorified forever.”

R: Glory and praise for ever.

Second Reading (2 Cor 13:11-13; NRSVCE)

Brothers and sisters, rejoice. Put things in order, encourage one another, agree with one another, live in peace; and the God of love and peace will be with you. Greet one another with a holy kiss. All the saints greet you.

The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with all of you.

Gospel Reading (Jn 3:16-18; NRSVCE)

God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.

Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. Those who believe in him are not condemned; but those who do not believe are condemned already, because they have not believed in the name of the only Son of God.

MONDAY • JUNE 12, 2017

Monday of the Tenth Week in Ordinary Time

First Reading (2 Cor1:1-7; NRSVCE)

Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, and Timothy our brother,

To the church of God that is in Corinth, including all the saints throughout Achaia:

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and the God of all consolation, who consoles us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to console those who are in any affliction with the consolation with which we ourselves are consoled by God. For just as the sufferings of Christ are abundant for us, so also our consolation is abundant through Christ. If we are being afflicted, it is for your consolation and salvation; if we are being consoled, it is for your consolation, which you experience when you patiently endure the same sufferings that we are also suffering. Our hope for you is unshaken; for we know that as you share in our sufferings, so also you share in our consolation.

Responsorial Psalm (Ps 34:2-3, 4-5, 6-7, 8-9; NRSVCE)

R: (9a) O taste and see that the Lord is good.

I will bless the Lord at all times;

his praise shall continually be in my mouth.

My soul makes its boast in the Lord;

let the humble hear and be glad.

R: O taste and see that the Lord is good.

O magnify the Lord with me,

and let us exalt his name together.

I sought the Lord, and he answered me,

and delivered me from all my fears.

R: O taste and see that the Lord is good.

Look to him, and be radiant;

so your faces shall never be ashamed.

This poor soul cried, and was heard by the Lord,

and was saved from every trouble.

R: O taste and see that the Lord is good.

The angel of the Lord encamps

around those who fear him, and delivers them.

O taste and see that the Lord is good;

happy are those who take refuge in him.

R: O taste and see that the Lord is good.

Gospel Reading (Mt 5:1-12; NRSVCE)

When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up the mountain; and after he sat down, his disciples came to him. Then he began to speak, and taught them, saying:

“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

“Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.

“Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.

“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.

“Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy.

“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.

“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.

“Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

“Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.”

TUESDAY • JUNE 13, 2017

Memorial of Saint Anthony of Padua

First Reading (2 Cor 1:18-22; NRSVCE)

As surely as God is faithful, our word to you has not been “Yes and No.” For the Son of God, Jesus Christ, whom we proclaimed among you, Silvanus and Timothy and I, was not “Yes and No”; but in him it is always “Yes.” For in him every one of God’s promises is a “Yes.” For this reason it is through him that we say the “Amen,” to the glory of God. But it is God who establishes us with you in Christ and has anointed us, by putting his seal on us and giving us his Spirit in our hearts as a first installment.

Responsorial Psalm (Ps 119:129, 130, 131, 132, 133, 135; NRSVCE)

R: (135a) Lord, make your face shine upon your servant.

Your decrees are wonderful;

therefore my soul keeps them.

R: Lord, make your face shine upon your servant.

The unfolding of your words gives light;

it imparts understanding to the simple.

R: Lord, make your face shine upon your servant.

With open mouth I pant,

because I long for your commandments.

R: Lord, make your face shine upon your servant.

Turn to me and be gracious to me,

as is your custom toward those who love your name.

R: Lord, make your face shine upon your servant.

Keep my steps steady according to your promise,

and never let iniquity have dominion over me.

R: Lord, make your face shine upon your servant.

Make your face shine upon your servant,

and teach me your statutes.

R: Lord, make your face shine upon your servant.

Gospel Reading (Mt 5:13-16; NRSVCE)

Jesus said to his disciples, “You are the salt of the earth; but if salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything, but is thrown out and trampled under foot.

“You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hid. No one after lighting a lamp puts it under the bushel basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.”

WEDNESDAY • JUNE 14, 2017

Wednesday of the Tenth Week in Ordinary Time

First Reading (2 Cor 3:4-11; NRSVCE)

Such is the confidence that we have through Christ toward God. Not that we are competent of ourselves to claim anything as coming from us; our competence is from God, who has made us competent to be ministers of a new covenant, not of letter but of spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.

Now if the ministry of death, chiseled in letters on stone tablets, came in glory so that the people of Israel could not gaze at Moses’ face because of the glory of his face, a glory now set aside, how much more will the ministry of the Spirit come in glory? For if there was glory in the ministry of condemnation, much more does the ministry of justification abound in glory! Indeed, what once had glory has lost its glory because of the greater glory; for if what was set aside came through glory, much more has the permanent come in glory!

Responsorial Psalm (Ps 99:5, 6, 7, 8, 9; NRSVCE)

R: (see 9c) The Lord our God is holy.

Extol the Lord our God;

worship at his footstool.

Holy is he!

R: The Lord our God is holy.

Moses and Aaron were among his priests,

Samuel also was among those who called on his name.

They cried to the Lord, and he answered them.

R: The Lord our God is holy.

He spoke to them in the pillar of cloud;

they kept his decrees,

and the statutes that he gave them.

R: The Lord our God is holy.

O Lord our God, you answered them;

you were a forgiving God to them,

but an avenger of their wrongdoings.

R: The Lord our God is holy.

Extol the Lord our God,

and worship at his holy mountain;

for the Lord our God is holy.

R: The Lord our God is holy.

Gospel Reading (Mt 5:17-19; NRSVCE)

Jesus said to his disciples, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill. For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the law until all is accomplished. Therefore, whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments, and teaches others to do the same, will be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven.”

THURSDAY • JUNE 15, 2017

Thursday of the Tenth Week in Ordinary Time

First Reading (2 Cor 3:15 — 4:1, 3-6; NRSVCE)

To this very day whenever Moses is read, a veil lies over the minds of the children of Israel; but when one turns to the Lord, the veil is removed. Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And all of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord, the Spirit.

Therefore, since it is by God’s mercy that we are engaged in this ministry, we do not lose heart. And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing. In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. For we do not proclaim ourselves; we proclaim Jesus Christ as Lord and ourselves as your slaves for Jesus’ sake. For it is the God who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

Responsorial Psalm (Ps 85:9ab and 10, 11-12, 13-14; NRSVCE)

R: (see 10b) The glory of the Lord will dwell in our land.

Let me hear what God the Lord will speak,

for he will speak peace to his people.

Surely his salvation is at hand for those who fear him,

that his glory may dwell in our land.

R: The glory of the Lord will dwell in our land.

Steadfast love and faithfulness will meet;

righteousness and peace will kiss each other.

Faithfulness will spring up from the ground,

and righteousness will look down from the sky.

R: The glory of the Lord will dwell in our land.

The Lord will give what is good,

and our land will yield its increase.

Righteousness will go before him,

and will make a path for his steps.

R: The glory of the Lord will dwell in our land.

Gospel Reading (Mt 5:20-26; NRSVCE)

Jesus said to his disciples, “I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.

“You have heard that it was said to those of ancient times, ‘You shall not murder’; and ‘whoever murders shall be liable to judgment.’ But I say to you that if you are angry with a brother or sister, you will be liable to judgment; and if you insult a brother or sister, you will be liable to the council; and if you say, ‘You fool,’ you will be liable to the hell of fire. So when you are offering your gift at the altar, if you remember that your brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your brother or sister, and then come and offer your gift. Come to terms quickly with your accuser while you are on the way to court with him, or your accuser may hand you over to the judge, and the judge to the guard, and you will be thrown into prison. Truly I tell you, you will never get out until you have paid the last penny.”

FRIDAY • JUNE 16, 2017

Friday of the Tenth Week in Ordinary Time

First Reading (2 Cor 4:7-15; NRSVCE)

We have this treasure in clay jars, so that it may be made clear that this extraordinary power belongs to God and does not come from us. We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be made visible in our bodies. For while we live, we are always being given up to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus may be made visible in our mortal flesh. So death is at work in us, but life in you.

But just as we have the same spirit of faith that is in accordance with scripture —”I believed, and so I spoke”— we also believe, and so we speak, because we know that the one who raised the Lord Jesus will raise us also with Jesus, and will bring us with you into his presence. Yes, everything is for your sake, so that grace, as it extends to more and more people, may increase thanksgiving, to the glory of God.

Responsorial Psalm (Ps 116:10-11, 15-16, 17-18; NRSVCE)

R: (17a) I will offer to you a thanksgiving sacrifice, O Lord.

I kept my faith, even when I said,

“I am greatly afflicted”;

I said in my consternation,

“Everyone is a liar.”

R: I will offer to you a thanksgiving sacrifice, O Lord.

Precious in the sight of the Lord

is the death of his faithful ones.

O Lord, I am your servant;

I am your servant, the child of your serving girl.

You have loosed my bonds.

R: I will offer to you a thanksgiving sacrifice, O Lord.

I will offer to you a thanksgiving sacrifice

and call on the name of the Lord.

I will pay my vows to the Lord

in the presence of all his people.

R: I will offer to you a thanksgiving sacrifice, O Lord.

Gospel Reading (Mt 5:27-32; NRSVCE)

Jesus said to his disciples, “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away; it is better for you to lose one of your members than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away; it is better for you to lose one of your members than for your whole body to go into hell.

“It was also said, ‘Whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce.’ But I say to you that anyone who divorces his wife, except on the ground of unchastity, causes her to commit adultery; and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery.”

SATURDAY • JUNE 17, 2017

Saturday of the Tenth Week in Ordinary Time

First Reading (2 Cor 5:14-21; NRSVCE)

The love of Christ urges us on, because we are convinced that one has died for all; therefore all have died. And he died for all, so that those who live might live no longer for themselves, but for him who died and was raised for them.

From now on, therefore, we regard no one from a human point of view; even though we once knew Christ from a human point of view, we know him no longer in that way. So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us. So we are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making his appeal through us; we entreat you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

Responsorial Psalm (Ps 103:1-2, 3-4, 9-10, 11-12; NRSVCE)

R: (8a) The Lord is merciful and gracious.

Bless the Lord, O my soul,

and all that is within me,

bless his holy name.

Bless the Lord, O my soul,

and do not forget all his benefits.

R: The Lord is merciful and gracious.

Who forgives all your iniquity,

who heals all your diseases,

who redeems your life from the Pit,

who crowns you with steadfast love and mercy.

R: The Lord is merciful and gracious.

He will not always accuse,

nor will he keep his anger forever.

He does not deal with us according to our sins,

nor repay us according to our iniquities.

R: The Lord is merciful and gracious.

For as the heavens are high above the earth,

so great is his steadfast love toward those who fear him;

as far as the east is from the west,

so far he removes our transgressions from us.

R: The Lord is merciful and gracious.

Gospel Reading (Mt 5:33-37; NRSVCE)

Jesus said to his disciples, “You have heard that it was said to those of ancient times, ‘You shall not swear falsely, but carry out the vows you have made to the Lord.’ But I say to you, Do not swear at all, either by heaven, for it is the throne of God, or by the earth, for it is his footstool, or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King. And do not swear by your head, for you cannot make one hair white or black. Let your word be ‘Yes, Yes’ or ‘No, No’; anything more than this comes from the evil one.”