Rome, Italy, Oct 14, 2016 / 10:08 am (CNA/EWTN News).- On Friday Pope Francis visited with young children at the “SOS Village” in Rome, a community made up of homes for children who are in positions of family or social hardship, as recommended by social services. The Village, as it is called, is made up of five houses, each holding up to six boys and six girls, 12 years of age and under. They live in the house with an “SOS Mother.” The Village aims to support the children and nurture their growth in the same way a family would. The Oct. 14 visit is the latest in the Pope’s “Mercy Friday” initiatives to spend time with various groups each month during the Jubilee of Mercy. In previous trips, he has made surprise stops at places including an elderly home, a drug and alcohol rehab center, and a facility for retired priests. During this month’s visit, the Pope was shown around the Village by the boys and girls, accompanied by staff. They showed off the greenspace of the Village, which includes a football field and a playground. Pope Francis was also shown the children's rooms and their toys, where he listened to their stories and shared a snack with them. The children living at the Village are accompanied to school, go to church, and play sports. The professionals, residents, non-residents, and volunteers who work at the Village each work with the same child for several years to allow for the creation of stable human relationships and development. The first SOS Children’s Village was founded in Austria in 1949 as a way to educate children orphaned by the war in a warm family environment, in contrast to the orphanage model prevalent at the time. After his stop at the SOS Village and before returning to the Vatican, Pope Francis went to visit Cardinal Andrea Cordero Lanza di Montezemolo, the archpriest emeritus of the Basilica of Saint Paul Outside the Walls, who has been admitted to the Villa Betania nursing home. Read more

London, England, Oct 14, 2016 / 12:02 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Mother Marie Adele Garnier led no ordinary life. Marked with spiritual and physical suffering, visions of Christ, political upheaval, and a dramatically thwarted engagement early in her life, she eventually became the foundress of an order of sisters based in London that has now spread throughout the world. Due to her remarkable life and virtue, Mother Marie Adele Garnier, founder of the Benedictine Tyburn Convent in London, has now been given the title “Servant of God” by the Congregation for the Cause of Saints, the title given to individuals whose cause has officially opened – the first step to canonization. Her sisters have been trying to open her cause for 20 years, but lack of funds prevented them – vow of poverty, and all. “But, in more recent times, on account of the increasing widespread fame of her holiness and her powerful intercession in obtaining both spiritual and temporal favours in response to prayers through her intercession, we firmly believe that the time has come to go forward with her Cause for Canonisation,” the order explains on their website. Mother Garnier was born Marie Adele Garnier on August 15, 1838 in Grancey-le-Château, in the Diocese of Dijon, one of five children. For a long time she felt a desire to be close to Christ, but she did not always know her vocation was to be a nun. At the age of six, Adele’s mother had passed away. Two years later, Adele was sent to boarding school, where she would complete her education at age 16. Shortly after she returned home from school, a young man asked for her hand in marriage, and Marie accepted. But it didn’t last long. According to a recollection of her life by a Benedictine monastery in France, Adele once overheard her fiance joking with a friend that he would “get rid” of Adele’s piety once they were married. Adele couldn’t stand it, and she stormed down the stairs and hurled back: “Sir, you will not have to take the trouble – I will never be your wife!” An argument ensued, and in a dramatic display of despair, the young man plunged a pair of scissors into his chest. It wasn’t a fatal injury, but suffice it to say that the two never married. (Eventually the young man married someone else.) For years after the incident, Adele worked as a beloved governess for a French family at chateau of Aulne. During her time there, she enjoyed serving as the chateau’s sacristan. It was there that a vision of Christ appeared to her on her Host, which would eventually be the image on her order’s medals. Soon after this vision, France was in the throes of the Franco-Prussian War, which resulted in the end of France’s Second Empire. On December 12, 1871, Adele wrote in her diary: “For France: to pray, expiate, suffer, love!” The political upheaval of her country caused Adele great spiritual suffering and desolation, which her spiritual director ordered her to take to Christ in the Blessed Sacrament. After a time of prayer, she was struck “wild with a joy that stripped me of reason, I felt as though struck by lightning, and remained in the grip of a rapture I cannot describe.” Soon after this experience, and after the war had ended, Adele read an article in 1872 of a devout couple planning to build a church in honor of the revelations of the Sacred Heart of Jesus to Saint Margaret Mary. She heard Christ calling her to be at this particular church, and over the next several years she consulted with her spiritual director and with the archbishop to establish perpetual adoration there, which has now been happening nonstop at the Basilica of the Sacred Heart of Montmarte since August 1, 1885. Adele longed to establish a community of sisters devoted to perpetual adoration at Montmarte, but her health and other logistical issues prevented her for several more years. Finally, in March 1897, Adele and two other sisters set up residence in an apartment in Montmartre, dedicating their lives to prayer and apostolate work and wearing white scapulars under their secular clothing. On March 4, 1898, Cardinal Francois-Marie-Benjamin Richard de la Vergne of Paris authorized the establishment of the new order, and the Adorers of the Sacred Heart of Jesus of Montmartre were founded. A few years later though, in 1901, the anti-clerical French government passed the Law of Associations, which greatly expanded the state's authority over religious orders and regulated their educational work. As a result, the sisters went into exile in London, where they were able to freely wear a habit for the first time. They eventually settled at Tyburn, the “mons martyrum” (“mount of martyrs”) in London where in the 16th and 17th centuries, several hundred martyrs – priests, religious, and lay men and women – were executed by the Protestant state for their refusal to give up their Catholic faith. Throughout her life as a religious, Mother Garnier, who now went by Mother Mary of St. Peter, experienced intense physical suffering, so much so that when she went more than two hours without suffering, she wondered if Christ had forgotten her. Despite her sufferings, which included debilitating migraines, her sisters say she remained cheerful and gentle with everyone, and counseled other sisters through their trials. She once told a particularly distraught young sister: “My poor little daughter, I have such pity for you. When you suffer so much, drag your cross on all fours if you must, and then, when things are a little better, try to get up and carry it more valiantly.” The order as a whole also suffered financial problems and strange demonic attacks, including instances of possession or objects being picked up and thrown across the room. But Christ promised Mother Mary of St. Peter that he would not let the order dissolve. According to a report from The Catholic Herald, Fr. Gianmario Piga wrote a spiritual biography of the nun in 2012, in which he relayed the story of Mother Mary’s witnessing of a Eucharistic miracle. In a letter to Fr. Charles Sauvé, Mother recalled how she saw the Blessed Sacrament turn to bloody flesh. “At the moment in which the priest took a particle of the Holy Host and put it into the chalice I raised my eyes to adore and to contemplate the holy particle,” she wrote. “Oh, if you could know what I saw and how I am still moved and impressed by this vision,” she continued. “The fingers of the priest held not a white particle but a particle of striking red, the colour of blood and luminous at the same time … The fingers of the priest were red on the right of the particle, as from a blood stain that seemed still wet.” In 1922, Christ appeared to Mother Mary of St. Peter and told her that she would suffer and die soon. For the next two years, she suffered intense chest pains and congestion problems, until she became bedridden. In spite of her sufferings, she once said: “I believe that I will be cheerful up to the final moment!” She said she offered her sufferings “so that all nations might become Catholic.” On November 15, 1923, on a Host a priest brought her, she saw the Heart of Jesus, alive in the Eucharist. She died June 17, 1924. Today, the contemplative order has spread throughout the world, with convents in England, Scotland, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Italy, Nigeria, and France. In 1947, some sisters from Tyburn formed a new congregation, the Benedictines of the Sacred Heart of Montmartre, who serve at the Basilica of Montmartre and other places of pilgrimage in France. The Benedictine Adorers of the Sacred Heart of Jesus of Montmartre remain dedicated to “Eucharistic adoration for the glory of God and prayer for the needs of the whole human family.” The next step in Mother Garnier’s canonization will be for her to be declared Venerable, which means that the Pope recognizes that she led a life of heroic virtue. Read more

Rome, Italy, Oct 13, 2016 / 08:02 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco has been elected the new President of the European Bishops Conference – a move which makes a clear statement in terms of how the continent's leaders plan on facing a broad spectrum of current crises. An outspoken voice on many current issues, Bagnasco has come out as a hard-hitter on several biggies, including gender theory, abortion, civil unions and communion for the divorced and remarried. He has a powerful presence in the European Church, and his election can be seen as planting the Church's foot firmly toward the right in a socio-economic context pulling hard to the left. Also the President of the Italian Bishops Conference and Archbishop of Genoa, Bagnasco was elected by the Council of Catholic Episcopal Conferences in Europe (CCEE) during their Oct. 6-9 Plenary Assembly and will take over for Hungarian Cardinal Peter Erdo, who has been at the helm since 2006. The CCEE is a gathering of the presidents of the individual European Bishops Conferences. In his role as president, Bagnasco will be responsible not so much for political procedures, but will head a wide range of activities the individual bishops conferences oversee, including catechesis. Alongside him were the significant elections of two vice presidents: Cardinal Vincent Nichols, Archbishop of Westminster, and Archbishop Stanislaw Gadecki of Poznan, Poland. In front of the backdrop of shady proposals made during the recent Synod of Bishops on the Family that deviate from Church doctrine as well as the increase of secularism in Europe, the selections altogether make a clear statement as to which direction the continent's leaders want the Church to go. In one sense the bishops are striving toward unity, particularly in the appointment of Nichols, who serves as a bridge between Europe and the UK in the age of Brexit and within an increasingly fractured Europe rife with problems caused by migration and economic instability. Gadecki, for his part, is a significant pick given his stance in the recent 2014-2015 Synod of Bishops on the Family. With several pockets, primarily from among the German bishops, pushing for a change in the Church's position on both homosexuality and communion for the divorced and remarried, Gadecki represents the opposite, coming from among those Eastern European bishops who stood firmly in favor of Church doctrine during the two-year gathering. The individual profiles of Bagnasco, Nichols and Gadecki, and the election of the trio to head the CCEE sends a clear signal as to the tone Europe's bishops want to set for the discussion. Effective immediately upon their election, the new president and vice presidents will serve a five year term, either stepping down at the next voting session, or staying on should they be re-elected. Considered by some to be “papabile” – meaning he's in the running to be elected Pope during the next conclave – Cardinal Bagnasco’s personal positions are similar to those of Francis himself, from pastoral action to political involvement. In 2008 he urged Catholics to be more active in the public square, taking on a more courageous and coherent presence, as Francis has often done. “Catholics must bring the contribution of spiritual and ethical values into the public square,” he said in an interview published in L'Osservatore Romano. “The presence (in the public square) must be assumed by Catholics with greater persuasiveness and a greater capacity to respectfully explain our convictions, knowing that they come both from the Gospel and from a common understanding of the value of life,” he added. Catholics “do not want to impose a religious vision of society, but to propose universal values,” he said, adding that “the most credible argument, of course is the witness of our own personal life.” Bagnasco has consistently taken his own words to heart. A year later, when Italian healthcare officials in 2009 approved the sale of the abortion drug RU-486, he urged doctors opposed to the drug to exercise their right to conscientious objection, calling for “an end to corruption and injustice.” More recently, in 2014 the cardinal responded to threats on the life of an anti-mafia priest, offering his support and calling for an end to corruption and injustice. In May of this year, Bangasco came in swinging at the push for civil unions in Italy, throwing a firm punch at the bill approving civil unions which had just passed in the nation’s parliament. In a powerful speech ahead of the annual Plenary Assembly of the Italian Bishops' conference, he stressed that the law “certifies an equivalence” between civil unions and marriage, even “though the law affirms that civil unions and marriage are different things.” Such “differences are only tricks of terminology or juridical artifacts, which can be easily bypassed.” The cardinal said the topic of civil unions is of trivial interest to most, and that people “want the parliament to be committed” to tackling real issues, such as Italy’s high unemployment rate and poverty. “These are the real problems of the country, of the people. So, is not understandable why (the Italian Parliament) spent so much emphasis and energy on causes that do not tackle these issues, and merely respond to ideological schemes.” When it comes to touchy subjects brought up more recently such as communion for the divorced and remarried, Bagnasco has been a strong opponent of the “Kasper Proposal,” referring to German Cardinal Walter Kasper’s push to allow access on a case by case basis, particularly in the lead-in to the 2014 Synod of Bishops on the Family. However, long before Amoris Laetitia and the 2014-2015 Synod, Bagnasco was already speaking out on the issue, presenting theories as to how the Church could be more mother-like while still not allowing access to the Eucharist. In June 2008, while presenting a book on the visit of Pope Benedict XVI to Genoa, Bagnasco came out in strong opposition to the reception of communion for the divorced and remarried, saying it was “impossible” for couples in the state to receive the Sacrament. The fact that these couples can't receive “does not depend on an external disposition but rather comes from the interior of the sacrament of the Eucharist itself, the sacrament of the perennial unity between the love of Christ and humanity,” he said. He pointed to the example of Catholics who are separated and who “suffer from this difficult situation, but nonetheless live in fidelity to the indissolubility of the sacrament and desire to meet and pray together, to exchange experiences and encourage one another.”   This situation “is one of the ways in which the maternity of the Church is expressed,” he added. He has also spoken out about Christian persecution and assisted suicide, which are both things Pope Francis himself has harshly condemned. In his speech at the Eucharistic Congress in Genoa in September, Bagnasco said these things are the result of “a world order without God.” “Even today Christians experience martyrdom,” not only in the bloody, “classical” way, but also in new forms, “refined, but not less cruel; legalized, but not less unjust,” he said, referring to the legalized killing of Christians in countries such as Pakistan, whose blasphemy laws still allow the practice. Cardinal Bagnasco pointed his finger at a Europe that considers Christianity as “divisive” and at the world which “in the name of values like equality, tolerance and rights” claims to “marginalize Christianity” and establish “a world order without God.” In comments to CNA at the time, he criticized the practice of assisted suicide, citing the recent euthanasia of a minor in Belgium – a terminally ill 17 year-old boy – as “definitely one of the outcomes of a world order without God.” Clearly on top of current issues and fearless in speaking out on them, Cardinal Bagnasco has proven himself to be a solid figure that won’t be easily moved. Though he tends toward the Church’s more conservative side, he takes a balanced approach and is willing to listen, yet won’t back down from a fight if needed, even if it should come from within the Church itself. The election of Bagnasco alone is proof that many of Europe’s individual bishops’ conferences are well aware of the issues at stake, and have made it clear how they want to tackle them. And if Bagnasco’s tenure so far is any indication, it won’t take long for him or his two sidekicks to get to work. Read more