Vatican City, Feb 13, 2017 / 10:40 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Pope Francis on Monday spoke about what it means to kill your brother in your heart, which, may be something as small as envy or bitterness, and if left to grow, can lead to even worse things, suc... Read more

Vatican City, Feb 13, 2017 / 10:10 am (CNA/EWTN News).- In the wake of several contentious events surrounding the Vatican recently, Pope Francis' advisory board in his ongoing reform of the Roman Curia affirmed their support of the Pope and his work. On behalf of the group, Cardinal Oscar Andrés Rodríguez Maradiaga greeted Pope Francis at the start of the councils of cardinal's Feb. 13 meeting. He thanked the Pope for his Christmas address to the Roman Curia Dec. 22, and acknowledging “his encouragement and direction for the work of the council,” a Vatican communique stated. “In relation to recent events, the Council of Cardinals expresses its full support of the work of the Pope, while ensuring full adhesion and support to his person and his Magisterium,” it added. The statement comes just over one week after posters criticizing the Pope were plastered on walls of the city center of Rome Feb. 4. Depicting a dour looking Pope Francis, they read: “Ah Francis, you've taken over congregations, removed priests, decapitated the Order of Malta and the Franciscans of the Immaculate, ignored Cardinals…but where’s your mercy?” After hearing about the posters, the Pope himself was reportedly unfazed. According to Italian news agency ANSA, Pope Francis received the news of the posters with “serenity and detachment.” The brief phrase included on the posters was written in the Roman dialect, and indicates the culprit is someone who comes from more conservative sectors of the Church, many of whom have been in sharp disagreement with the Pope regarding his decisions and ongoing reform of the curia, which he is doing with the help of the Council of Cardinals. Established by Pope Francis shortly after his pontificate began in 2013, the council, also called “the Council of Nine,” serves as an advisory body on Church governance and reform, with special emphasis on the reform of Pastor Bonus, the 1988 apostolic constitution of St. John Paul II that regulates the competencies and work of the Roman Curia. The anti-Francis posters clearly referenced several contentious issues from his pontificate, such as the letter written to him by four cardinals in September asking for clarification on five points – called “dubia” – in Amoris Laetitia. The letter was subsequently published in November, after the Pope did not respond. Another recent one was the Pope’s request at the end of January for the Order of Malta’s former Grand Master, Matthew Festing, to resign while ousted Grand Chancellor Albrecht Freiherr von Boeselager be reinstated. The cardinals' council is currently holding their 18th session at the Vatican Feb. 13-15 for what is their usual three days of meetings with Pope Francis. A session is generally held every few months. Their last session was held Dec. 12-14, and focused on synodality and the Church’s “missionary drive” forming the basis of the discussion on how reform of the curia’s various departments will move forward. Discussion largely centered around the role of the Secretary of State and the Congregations for the Evangelization of Peoples (Propaganda Fides), for Bishops, and for Oriental Churches. In the past, the council has also emphasized the need for greater harmonization and simplification in the curia. Read more

Vatican City, Feb 12, 2017 / 09:30 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Christ's Sermon on the Mount shows that he wanted to fulfil the law of Moses, not abolish it, Pope Francis said Sunday during his Angelus address. He “wants to help his listeners to achieve a reinterpretation of the Mosaic law. What was said in the Old Covenant was true, but it was not all: Jesus came to fulfill and to enact definitively the law of God, down to the last iota,” the Pope said Feb. 12 in St. Peter's Square. “He manifests the Law’s original purposes and He fulfils its authentic aspects – and He does all this by His preaching and even more by offering Himself on the Cross.” Christ “teaches how to do the will of God fully – and   He uses this expression: with a 'justice superior' to that of the scribes and Pharisees – a justice animated   by love, charity, mercy, and therefore capable of realizing the substance of the commandments, avoiding the risk of formalism,” he said, calling us to “more”. The Gospel passage the Pope considered included Christ's words on homicide, adultery, and oath swearing. Christ explained that the commandment against murder “is violated not only by actual homicide, but also by those behaviors which offend the dignity of the human person, including insulting words. Certainly, these injurious words do not have the same gravity and sinfulness of killing, but they are placed on the same line, because they are the premises of the more serious acts and they reveal the same malevolence.” We are invited “not to establish a gradation of offenses, but to consider them all harmful, insofar as they are all moved by the intention to do harm to one’s neighbor,” he said, urging: “Please, do not insult! We earn nothing by doing so.” “Another fulfilment is made to marriage law,” Pope Francis said. “Adultery had been considered a violation of a man’s property right to his wife. Jesus, however, goes to the root of the evil. Just as one comes to murder through injuries, offenses, and insults, so one comes to adultery through intentions of possession with respect to a woman other than one’s wife.” “Adultery, like theft, corruption and all other sins, are first conceived in our hearts and, once the wrong choice is made in the heart, they are actuated in concrete behavior. And Jesus says: He who looks with a possessing spirit at a woman who is not his own is an adulterer in his heart, he has begun to go down the road to adultery. Let us think a little on this: on the bad thoughts that are in this line.” The Pope then turned to Christ's words on swearing oaths, noting that Christ advised against it because “the oath is a sign of insecurity and duplicity with which human relations are conducted. Oath-swearing exploits the authority of God to give assurance to our human affairs. Rather we are called to establish among ourselves, in our families and in our communities, a climate of clarity and mutual trust, so that we can be considered honest without resorting to higher interventions in order to be believed. Mistrust and mutual suspicion always threaten serenity!” Pope Francis concluded by turning to Mary, “a woman of docile listening and joyous obedience, might help us to approach the Gospel, to be Christians not in name, but in substance! And this is possible with the grace of the Holy Spirit, who permits us to do everything with love, and so to fulfil the will of God.” Read more

Vatican City, Feb 11, 2017 / 09:21 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Pope Francis on Saturday appointed Archbishop Henryk Hoser of Warszawa-Praga as a delegate of the Holy See to look into the pastoral situation at Medjugore, the site of alleged Marian apparitions in Bosnia and Herzegovina. “The mission has the aim of acquiring a deeper knowledge of the pastoral situation there and above all, of the needs of the faithful who go there in pilgrimage, and on the basis of this, to suggest possible pastoral initiatives for the future,” stated a Feb. 11 communique from the Vatican Secretariat of State. “The mission will therefore have an exclusively pastoral character,” it added. Greg Burke, the Holy See press officer, strenuously reiterated the pastoral, and not doctrinal, nature of Archbishop Hoser's mission, while speaking at a press conference. “The special envoy won’t enter into the substance of the Marian apparitions, which is a doctrinal question in the competency of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith,” he said. The alleged apparitions originally began June 24, 1981, when six children in Medjugorje, a town in what is now Bosnia and Herzegovina, began to experience phenomena which they have claimed to be apparitions of the Blessed Virgin Mary. According to these six “seers,” the apparitions contained a message of peace for the world, a call to conversion, prayer and fasting, as well as certain secrets surrounding events to be fulfilled in the future. These apparitions are said to have continued almost daily since their first occurrence, with three of the original six children – who are now young adults – continuing to receive apparitions every afternoon because not all of the “secrets” intended for them have been revealed. Since their beginning, the alleged apparitions have been a source of both controversy and conversion, with many flocking to the city for pilgrimage and prayer, and some claiming to have experienced miracles at the site, while many others claim the visions are non-credible. In April 1991, the bishops of the former Yugoslavia determined that “on the basis of the research that has been done, it is not possible to state that there were apparitions or supernatural revelations.” On the basis of those findings the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith directed in October 2013 that clerics and the faithful “are not permitted to participate in meetings, conferences or public celebrations during which the credibility of such 'apparitions' would be taken for granted.” In January 2014, a Vatican commission completed an investigation into the supposed apparitions' doctrinal and disciplinary aspects, and was to have submitted its findings to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. When the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith will have analyzed the commission's findings, it will finalize a document on Medjugorge, which will be submitted to the Pope, who will make a final decision. Pope Francis visited Bosnia and Herzegovina in June 2015, but declined to stop at Medjugorje during his trip. During his return flight to Rome, he indicated that the process of investigation in the apparitions was nearly complete. When journalists noted this point at Saturday's press conference, Burke responded that the doctrinal question of the alleged apparitions “are still being studied … this is neither a recognition nor a negative judgement. That is always a doctrinal question separate from this, which is pastoral. If you read [the communique], you can’t read any doctrinal judgement” in the pastoral appointment of Archbishop Hoser. Rather than being involved in the doctrinal questions, Archbishop Hoser's mission is a matter of “people’s needs,” Burke emphasized: “pastoral life, liturgy, catechesis, sacraments and the experience of devotion they have there,” but not the management of local parishes. “It’s important to note that it’s not an apostolic visitation,” Burke concluded. “Look at the words. This is more 'for' than 'against'. It’s for the life of the pilgrims who go there.” Archbishop Hoser will remain Bishop of Warszawa-Praga, and is expected to complete his role at Medjugorje by the summer. Read more

Vatican City, Feb 10, 2017 / 06:50 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- A newly released decree from the Vatican's congregation for religious life states that the founder of the Sodalitium Christianae Vitae, Luis Fernando Figari, may not have contact with members of the community. A Jan. 30 decree of the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life addressed to the superior general of the Sodalitium, Alessandro Moroni Llabres, directs him to order that Figari be “prohibited from contacting, in any way, persons belonging to the Sodalitium Christianae Vitae, and no way have any direct personal contact with them.” The Sodalitium Christianae Vitae is a society of apostolic life which was founded in 1971 in Peru, and granted pontifical recognition in 1997. CNA's executive director, Alejandro Bermúdez, and its global director of operations, Ryan Thomas, are both members of the community. The decree, obtained by CNA Feb. 10, is a fruit of an apostolic visitation made by Bishop Fortunato Pablo Urcey, Prelate of Chota, who was charged with investigating allegations of sexual and psychological abuse committed by Figari. The dicastery had first received accusations against Figari in 2011. The visitation resulted “in the conviction that Mr. Figari, during his many years as Superior General of the Sodalitium Christianae Vitae, had adopted a style of government excessively or improperly authoritarian, directed to impose one's own will, not willing to accept any form of dialogue and fraternal and sincere confrontation, nor sensitive to the convictions and demands of others, and therefore not prone to understand, appreciate and accept, even partially, opinions different from his own.” In addition, Figari, “in order to obtain the obedience of his brothers, used improper strategies and methods of persuasion, that is to say, underhanded, arrogant and nonetheless violent and disrespectful of the right to the inviolability of one's own interiority and discretion, and therefore to the freedom of the human person to independently discern the proposals or decisions.” The congregation wrote that they consider it credible that Figari committed the crime of abuse of office, as outlined in canon 1389. “Numerous witnesses have consistently asserted that, in order to manipulate, to make them dependent and therefore to control more than to direct consciences, especially of young people in formation, Mr. Figari has also asked, in an improper and in any case excessive, confidences in the sensitive field of sexuality, and in some cases has committed acts contrary to the VI Commandment.” It added, however, that according to documentation that it had received through April 2016 the persons, with whom Figari had violated the commandment that “thou shalt not commit adultery”, all of whom belong in some way to the Sodalitium Christianae Vitae, were all “much older than 16” when the events occurred. Moreover, it added that Figari's abuse, while it could be “considered severely sinful”, cannot be affirmed with moral certainty as constituting child abuse or violence, as outlined in canon 1395. Yet the decree also states that documentation it found in May 2016 clearly shows that “Figari, before 2001, committed some acts against the VI Commandment with some young people in formation in the Sodalitium Christianae Vitae, of which, with certainty at least in one case occurred in 1974, with a person under 16 years of age.” It stated that Figari and his lawyer have been notified of the charges made against him. Figari's crime of abuse of office cannot be prosecuted because of a statute of limitations, however, and he cannot be prosecuted for his abuse of minors under canon 1395 because he is a layman, and not a cleric – the only persons covered by that canon. However, his sexual abuse of minors means he is to be dismissed from his institute, unless “the superior decides that dismissal is not completely necessary and that correction of the member, restitution of justice, and reparation of scandal can be resolved sufficiently in another way.” The congregation determined that Figari does not have to be expelled from the Sodalitium Christianae Vitae, citing his abuse having taken place “in the very distant past”; his being the founder of the community “and therefore the mediator of a charisma of divine origin”; his age and poor health; his manifested willingness to collaborate; that Bishop Pablo “verified that there are no current members of the apostolic life Society who support Mr. Figari or who are particularly attached to him in government positions or in the formation”; and that the Sodalits' current government “are clearly aware of the mistakes made in the past by Mr. Figari and that there is firm determination of the General Government to free itself of the style of government and formation adopted by him in the course of the many years in which he has directed the Sodalitium Christianae Vitae, as well as remedying, as much as possible and in any case what is just, to the harm caused to anyone.” It directed that Moroni, in addition to keeping Figari from contacting any Sodalits, is to order that Figari not return to Peru, except for very serious reasons and with written permission; that he be placed in a residence where there are no Sodalits; that a member of the Sodalits be entrusted with the task of referring to Figari, for any eventuality and request; and that Figari be prohibited from granting any statement to the media or from participating in any public demonstrations or meetings of the Sodalitium Christiane Vitae. The decree bears the signatures of the congregations' prefect, Cardinal Joao Braz de Aviz, and its secretary, Archbishop José Rodriguez Carballo. Last month, the Sodalitium Christianae Vitae announced that 66 persons can be considered victims of abuse of mistreatment by members of the community, and that it has set aside more than $2.8 million in reparations and assistance for victims. In May 2016 Cardinal Joseph Tobin of Newark was appointed as the Vatican's delegate to oversee ongoing reform of the society. The month prior, an ethics commission created to investigate and offer proposals surrounding accusations of abuse against Figari had released a report which detailed an internal culture of extreme “discipline and obedience to the founder” which was “forged on the basis of extreme physical demands, as well as physical punishments, constituting abuses which violated the fundamental rights of persons.” The commission charged that Figari’s arbitrary use of authority led to “an organizational culture based on the cult of personality.” Those who discerned out of the community were hindered from doing so, and were treated as if they were “treasonous,” the report suggested: “In many cases, this has led to grave psychological effects and even the rejection of the Catholic faith, even after being incorporated into live outside the community, obliging them to suffer unmerited spiritual conflicts.” In addition to Peru, the Sodalitium Christiane Vitae operates in Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Chile, Ecuador, the U.S. and Italy. Read more