Rome, Italy, Apr 13, 2017 / 11:24 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Pope Francis spent Holy Thursday washing the feet of inmates, telling them in a brief homily that God is someone who loves until the end. He urged them to imitate this love even while in prison. &... Read more
Lincoln, Neb., Apr 13, 2017 / 06:59 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Eucharistic adoration offers a powerful chance to encounter Christ’s love in silence and humility, and that experience can transform our hearts, both individually and as a Church, said Bish... Read more
Vatican City, Apr 13, 2017 / 06:22 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Pope Francis has given an interview ahead of his Holy Thursday visit to a prison, warning, among other things, against the hypocrisy of viewing inmates only as criminals beyond hope who deserve to... Read more
Vatican City, Apr 13, 2017 / 03:00 am (CNA/EWTN News).- During his annual Chrism Mass for Holy Week Pope Francis told priests to always convey the truth and mercy of the Gospel with joy, saying the “Good News” brought by Jesus can never be ... Read more
Buenos Aires, Argentina, Apr 13, 2017 / 12:43 am (CNA/EWTN News).- A bishop in the Argentine province in Santa Fe is investigating a Eucharistic host that appeared to bleed during adoration at a drug rehabilitation home. Bishop Luis Fernandez of the R... Read more
Buenos Aires, Argentina, Apr 13, 2017 / 12:43 am (CNA/EWTN News).- A bishop in the Argentine province in Santa Fe is investigating a Eucharistic host that appeared to bleed during adoration at a drug rehabilitation home. Bishop Luis Fernandez of the R... Read more
Minya, Egypt, Apr 12, 2017 / 03:42 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- After two bomb attacks on worshippers at Coptic Orthodox churches on Sunday, the Coptic Orthodox Archdiocese of Minya has announced it will celebrate Easter without the typical festive accoutrements. The observance of Easter in the Minya Coptic Orthodox archdiocese will be limited to liturgical services “without any festive manifestations” in mourning for the nearly 45 Coptic Orthodox faithful who were killed in attacks on Sunday, the AP reports. Two Coptic Orthodox churches were the targets of Islamic State bombings on April 9, Palm Sunday. The attack on St. George's in Tanta, nearly 60 miles north of Cairo, killed 28. Shortly after, another bomb went off outside St. Mark's cathedral in Alexandria, killing 17. The attacks came only weeks before Pope Francis plans to visit Egypt to promote peace and dialogue between Christians and Muslims in the country. Pope Francis, after celebrating Palm Sunday Mass at St. Peter’s Square, decried the violence and asked God to “convert the hearts of those who sow fear, violence and death, and those who make and traffic arms.” He also expressed solidarity with Tawardos II, the Coptic Orthodox Patriarch of Alexandria. Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi declared a three-month state of emergency following the attacks. Sunday’s atrocities follow a months-long spike in anti-Christian violence in Egypt, particularly in the country’s Sinai region. In December 2016, 29 died in a bombing of a chapel next to St. Mark’s Coptic Orthodox cathedral in Cairo, for which the Islamic State claimed responsibility. Egyptian society was also profoundly shocked by the beheading in Libya of 20 Coptic Orthodox faithful and a companion by Islamic State militants in February 2015. Read more
Washington D.C., Apr 12, 2017 / 02:33 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Three chairmen of the U.S. Catholic Bishops Conference have voiced strong support for a measure that would restore certain religious freedoms to child welfare providers. The recently introduced Child Welfare Provider Inclusion Act of 2017 would prevent the federal government, and any state receiving federal funds for child welfare services, from taking adverse action against a provider that, for religious or moral reasons, declines to provide a child welfare social service. Under the previous administration, several faith-based child welfare providers in multiple states including in Massachusetts, Illinois, California, and the District of Columbia, have been forced to shut down their adoption and foster care services because of beliefs that children should be placed with a married mother and father. In the case of Illinois, more than 3,000 children were displaced after religiously affiliated adoption and foster care services had to close their doors. Catholic Social Services of Southern Illinois decided to cut ties from their affiliated Catholic diocese and operate as a separate Christian non-profit in order to maintain consistent services for the children. Bishop Frank J. Dewane of Venice, Archbishop William E. Lori of Baltimore, and Bishop James D. Conley of Lincoln expressed their support for the Inclusion Act in letters to Rep. Mike Kelly (R-PA) in the U.S. House of Representatives and Sen. Mike Enzi (R-WY) in the U.S. Senate, who introduced the bill. "The Inclusion Act would remedy this unjust discrimination by enabling all providers to serve the needs of parents and children in a manner consistent with the providers' religious beliefs and moral convictions," the bishops said. “Our first and most cherished freedom, religious liberty, is to be enjoyed by all Americans, including child welfare providers who serve the needs of children. The Inclusion Act protects the freedom of all child welfare providers by ensuring they will not be discriminated against by the government because of their religious beliefs or moral convictions,” they wrote. The Bishops also stressed that the Inclusion Act respects the religious freedom of parents who are looking to place their children into adoption or foster care services. “Women and men who want to place their children for adoption ought to be able to choose an agency that shares the parents’ religious beliefs and moral convictions. The Inclusion Act recognizes and respects this parental choice.” Read more
Vatican City, Apr 12, 2017 / 07:21 am (CNA/EWTN News).- As the Church this week reflects on Jesus’ crucifixion and death, Pope Francis said that it is the cross that gives us hope, and urged faithful to enter into the mystery of Christ’s death by contemplating the joy that comes from sacrifice. “During these days, days of love, let us be enveloped by the mystery of Jesus who, like a grain of wheat, in dying gives us life. He is the seed of our hope,” the Pope said April 12. “Let us contemplate the Crucified Christ, the source of hope. Little by little we realize that hope with Jesus is learning to see, indeed right now, the plant in the seed, Easter in the cross, life in death.” Speaking during his weekly general audience in St. Peter’s Square, Francis told pilgrims he was giving them some homework. He instructed them when they get home to stop in front the crucifix, look at Jesus and tell him: “With you, I can always hope. You are my hope.” “Now imagine the crucifix,” he told the crowd, “and all together say to Jesus Crucified, three times: ‘You are my hope.’” When the crowd said, Francis wasn’t convinced, and had them repeat it again even louder. “We we really believe that in the Crucified Christ our hope is reborn,” he said, but cautioned that “it is a different hope from that of the world. What hope is this? The hope that is born of the cross.” Love and hope come together on the cross of Christ, he said, explaining that this is a cross everyone must carry at different points in their lives. “But it's beautiful to help others, to serve others,” he said, noting that this can get tiring at times, “but life is like that…This is love and hope together: to serve and give.” “Of course, this love comes from the cross, from sacrifice, as it did for Jesus,” he said, stressing that the cross in itself is not the goal, but rather “a necessary step” to the ultimate goal, which is “glory, as Easter shows us,” he said. It is in laying down one’s life, not holding onto it, that we find true joy, the Pope said, and pointed to the sacrifice of a mother, which he said is “another beautiful image that Jesus left to his disciples during the Last Supper.” Jesus says in John 16:21 that “the woman, when giving birth, is in pain, because her hour has come; but, when she has given birth to the child, she no longer remembers the suffering, because of the joy that a child has come into the world.” This is what mothers do, Francis said, noting that they give life to another through suffering, but then they are “joyful and happy (because) love gives birth to life and even gives meaning to pain.” Love is the “engine” that fuels our hope, he said, and encouraged pilgrims to ask themselves: “Do I love? Have I learned to love? Am I learning every day to love more?” “There is no other way to overcome evil and to give hope to the world,” he said, except by serving with humility and love. “Have you thought about this?” he asked. No one likes to lose power and the logic of the seed that must die before bearing fruit is difficult to understand, he said, but stressed that this is the way of God. He pointed to how many times in life we move forward with the mentality that the more we have the more we want. However, Jesus clearly says the opposite: “He who loves his life will lose it.” This is why our hope is born from Christ’s transformation of death into life, he said, explaining that in the same way Jesus transforms our own sin into forgiveness, “our death into the resurrection, our fear into confidence.” “That's why there on the Cross, our hope is born and is always born again; that's why with Jesus all our darkness can be transformed into light, every defeat into victory, every disappointment into hope. Every? Yes, every.” Read more
Vatican City, Apr 12, 2017 / 12:57 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- On Wednesday, the Vatican announced that EWTN’s Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Michael P. Warsaw has been named by Pope Francis as a consultor to the Vatican Secretariat for Communicat... Read more
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