Tirana, Albania, Sep 25, 2014 / 09:18 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Among the powerful moments on Pope Francis’ Sept. 21 trip to Albania was the Holy Father’s encounter with an 85 year-old Franciscan Stigmatine nun, who recalled witnessing to the faith in the midst of the Communist regime. Sister Maria Kaleta spoke to the Pope during his meeting with priests, religious, seminarians and members of ecclesial lay movements at the Cathedral of St. Paul in Tirana. She recounted that when she was very young, she felt “the call of the Lord without knowing yet what it meant to be a religious sister.” She lived with her parents and was an only child, and thanks to the prayers and help of an uncle who was a priest, she was able to begin her vocational journey. Sr. Maria joined the convent of the Franciscan Stigmatine Sisters for seven years, but the Communist regime forced her to leave and return home to her parents to help her uncle, the priest, who was in prison. He is now being considered for sainthood. Upon her parents death, Sr. Maria was alone and learned “to keep the faith alive in the hearts of the faithful, although secretly.” She recalled one time that she was coming home from work and heard a voice from behind. “It was a woman with a baby girl in her arms who came running towards me and asked me to baptize her.” At that time still a lay Catholic, Sr. Maria “was afraid because I knew the woman was a Communist, and I told her I didn't have anything to baptize her with because we were on the road, but she expressed so much desire that she told me there as a canal with water nearby. I told her I didn't have anything to collect the water with, but she insisted that I baptized that child, and seeing her faith, I took off my shoe, which was made of plastic, and I filled it with water from the canal and baptized her.” The Albanian nun told Pope Francis about other blessings she received amidst the persecution. “Thanks to the consent of the priests, I kept the Blessed Sacrament in a cabinet at my home and brought it to the sick and dying,” she said. Sr. Maria said she could not explain how she was able to persevere in her service as religious. “When I think of it, I wonder how we were able to endure such terrible sufferings, but I know the Lord gave us strength, patience and hope,” she emphasized. “The Lord gave strength to those He called, if fact he has repaid me from all my sufferings here on earth,” she continued, noting that after the Communist regime fell and the churches were reopened, she “had the fortune of becoming a religious, a desire shared by so many other priests and sisters.” “I have had the privilege to be with Your Holiness,” Sr. Maria told Pope Francis, “and to ask for your blessing for me and for my priest uncle and for my Stigmatine Sisters, for the parish where I was born and where I have served to this day, for the bishops, priests, religious and for the entire Albanian people.”   Read more

Tirana, Albania, Sep 25, 2014 / 05:12 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- With tears in his eyes, Pope Francis gave a warm embrace to Father Ernest Troshani Simoni, 84, one of the last survivors of the terrible Communist persecution in Albania. During his visit to Tirana, Albania, on Sept. 21, Pope Francis met with priests, religious, seminarians and members of ecclesial lay movements at the Cathedral of St. Paul, where he listened attentively to Fr. Simoni's testimony. The priest told of how he was imprisoned in inhumane conditions because of his fidelity to the Church and to the Successor of Peter, before winning freedom from a death sentence. He recounted that in December 1944, an atheistic Communist regime came to power in Albania and sought to eliminate the faith and the clergy with “arrests, torture and killings of priests and lay people for seven straight years, shedding the blood of the faithful, some of who shouted, 'Long live Christ the King,' as they were shot.” In 1952, Communist leaders gathered together the priests that had survived and offered them freedom if they distanced themselves from the Pope and the Vatican, which they refused to do. Fr. Simoni said that before he was ordained, he studied with the Franciscans for 10 years, from 1938 to 1948, and when his superiors were shot by Communists, he continued his studies in secret. “Two terrible years passed, and on April 7, 1965, I was ordained a priest, the day after Easter, and on the feast of Divine Mercy, I celebrated my first Mass,” he recalled. On Dec. 14, 1963, as he was concluding Christmas Eve Mass, four officials served him an arrest warrant and decree of execution. He was handcuffed and detained. During interrogation, they told him he would hanged as an enemy because he told the people, “We will all die for Christ if necessary.” He suffered immense torturing, but said that “the Lord wanted me to keep living.” “Divine Providence willed that my death sentence not be carried out right away. They brought another prisoner into the room, a dear friend of mine, in order to spy on me. He began to speak out against the party,” Fr. Simoni recalled. “I responded anyway that Christ had taught us to love our enemies and to forgive them and that we should strive to seek the good of the people. Those words reached the ears of the dictator who, a few days later, freed me from my death sentence,” he explained. The priest was given 28 years of forced labor instead, during which time he celebrated Mass, heard confessions and distributed Communion in secret. Fr. Simoni was released only when the Communist regime fell and freedom of religion was recognized. “The Lord has helped me to serve so many peoples and to reconcile many, driving out hatred and the devil from the hearts of men,” he said. “Your Holiness, with the certainty that I am expressing the intentions of those present, I pray through the intercession of the most holy Mother of Christ, that the Lord grant you life, health and strength in guiding the great flock that is the Church of Christ, Amen.” After concluding his remarks, a visibly moved Pope Francis dried the tears in his own eyes and embraced the Albanian priest.   Read more

Kyiv, Ukraine, Sep 25, 2014 / 04:05 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Since April, Ukraine’s eastern provinces have experienced continual military confrontation between its government, and pro-Russian separatists and Russian forces, and more than 3,200 have been killed in the conflict. Accompanying the soldiers at the front are priests – both Catholic and Orthodox – as well as Protestant chaplains. Vasyl Derkach, 23, recently returned to Lviv, in Ukraine's west, to recover after his rotation in Ukraine's military in the eastern conflict zone. “Can you imagine, I have slept for seven days on clean sheets? I did not sleep on sheets for five months,” Vasyl told CNA in a recent interview. “Have you ever really thanked God for sleeping in a warm bed?” “In my team, no one believed in God. I asked my friend with whom I always stayed on the post: 'Do you believe in God?' He told me, 'No, I have faith in myself.' But when he was wounded, the first thing which he said to me in the hospital, was 'Vasyl, I prayed! Can you believe me, I prayed?!'” “At war there are no atheists. When they start to shoot, everyone begins to make the sign of the cross,” Vasyl says. Before joining the military, Vasyl had been a miner, and then edited a local newspaper for the miners. He belongs to an evangelical community called “The Embassy of God.” He explained that he attends church at the community “because there I really met the living God, I realized that God is the true miracle. My parents are still not believers.” Vasyl did not take part in the Maidan protests in Kyiv, which led to a change of government in the nation, drawing it closer to the West and straining its relations with Russia. When did he arrive in Kyiv, he stood in a pool of blood shortly after the shooting of many activists. “I joined the military for patriotic reasons: I was mobilized, and I knew that I had to defend my land. I don’t want to go back to that hell, but I do not regret that I was there. My church taught me: 'all who take the sword will perish by the sword.'” Many Ukrainian soldiers, Vasyl said, turned to drink. “Guys reduced stress with vodka ... I don’t drink at all, that’s why the situation was very difficult for my psyche. Sometimes I dream that I am killing somebody, or somebody has killed me. Even now I can’t stay alone – depression comes ... there is such an atmosphere, if you don’t drink, you will be crazy. I prayed.” “You sit in a trench and pray, and nothing more can be done.” Ukraine's soldiers have been assisted by chaplains from the numerous Christian confessions in the country: Ukrainian Greek Catholics; Roman Catholics; Ukrainian Orthodox – both Moscow and Kyiv Patriarchates; and Protestant communities. “There is no one ecumenical center for military chaplains for Ukraine's armed forces. We don't have any legislation which allows priests to work in conflict zones,” explained Fr. Lubomyr Yavorskiy, of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church's office, which organizes military chaplains. “There is no official cooperation with the Orthodox in the case of military pastoral care,” he said. “For now, everyone is going alone, as we work in an undeclared war. There have been instances in which the Greek Catholic priests asked the Orthodox bishops of the Moscow Patriarchate to help in the liberation of prisoners, and it did help. But there has been no further cooperation.” Fr. Mihailo Ivanyak, CSsR, spent two weeks as a chaplain in eastern Ukraine. He described the situation as this: “There exists a kind of wall between us, when at the front we meet priests of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church–Moscow Patriarchate." “A military doctor upbraided me once for being a Greek Catholic priest. I responded, 'While at war, let us both call God our Father, rather than focusing on the divide between Catholic and Orthodox.'” Since the beginning of the conflict in eastern Ukraine, there have been 31 Ukrainian Greek Catholic chaplains serving in the area as military chaplains. An official of the Roman Catholic Church estimated that there had been around 20 military chaplains from his rite. As part of the Byzantine tradition, married Ukrainian Greek Catholic men may be ordained priests – which creates a 'double danger' for them when working in the conflict zone. A cleric of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church told CNA under condition of anonymity that the Church has been warned by the nation's military that the prize for the killing or capture of priest chaplains are doubled among the pro-Russian rebels. Fr. Ivanyak added, “They (the pro-Russian forces) are just afraid of the Word. Of priests in the army smoothing conflicts!” In a Sept. 10 appeal, the synod of bishops of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church wrote that “we especially call for responsible action from those whom the Lord has given authority, to take the necessary decisions at the political level in order to restore peace and security in Europe.” Since April, pro-Russian separatists have seized control of territory around the cities of Donetsk and Luhansk, after Russia annexed Crimea the month prior. A ceasefire was signed Sept. 5, and there is now a buffer zone between the two sides. Russian troops have been operating in Ukraine, but NATO announced Sept. 24 that it had observed “significant” withdrawals of Russian troops from Ukrainian land. In an effort to appease the rebels, Ukraine's parliament last week passed a bill increasing autonomy in the eastern portion of the country. Vasyl reflected on the harsh conditions of being at war. “It is easy to say that you are not afraid to die, when you sit in church or your kitchen. But when you are at war, you would like to live very much. Being at war was the first time I started to appreciate the value of life.” “I would like to leave here. I protected this country for five months, and every day in that time I could have died, but I don’t want to live here. I regret, because my family, my mom, my church, are here. I met God here, but I really don’t want to back to that hell.”Editor's note, Sept. 26, 9:33 am: A previous version of this article mis-attributed a statement to Fr. Yavorskiy. The quote was in fact said by Fr. Ivanyak. Read more

Cordoba, Spain, Sep 25, 2014 / 02:02 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Amid widespread reports that Pope Francis might open the door to Communion for the divorced and civilly remarried, a Spanish bishop says the Pope told him that this scenario is not possible. ... Read more