Rome, Italy, Sep 22, 2016 / 12:25 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development has announced in their 2016 report that developing countries are beginning to feel the impact the global economic slowdown resulting from the financial crisis of 2007-08. In response, a close collaborator of one of Pope Francis’ senior Vatican officials has sent a reminder that as the global community looks for solutions, the Christian perspective is to ensure these answers don’t forget the impact on the poor. “We absolutely need to learn to hear the voices of those who are not at the table. The voices of those who often carry a disproportionate burden from the decisions that are made, but who say, 'look, this is what this decision is actually costing us',” Fr. Michael Czerny, a spokesman of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, told CNA Sept. 22. The exclusion of those who bear the burden of decisions made from the discussion is something that “has to be overcome,” he said, adding that Christians have an obligation “not only to become a bit knowledgeable, but also to dialogue with their representatives.” Policies are frequently “in our name,” he said, explaining that Christians have the duty to speak up and tell their representatives, “we’re not satisfied with decisions that are short-term or self-interested.” Fr. Czerny moderated discussion during the Sept. 22 launch of the 2016 United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) report, titled “Structural Transformation for Inclusive and Sustained Growth.” In a summary of the report provided by UNCTAD officials, it was explained that the economic slowdown in advanced economies has steadily continued to decline since the economic crisis of 2008, and is the “biggest drag on global growth.” However, the novelty found in 2016’s report is that while the slowdown has previously impacted mainly advanced nations, developing countries “are now caught in the downdraft,” and are starting to feel the impact. Held at the Rome headquarters of Vatican Radio, the news conference presenting the report was hosted by the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, which is headed by Cardinal Peter Turkson. The cardinal was scheduled to speak at the presentation but was unable to attend due to a last minute commitment. His speech was read aloud by Fr. Czerny, who collaborates with the pontifical council. In his speech, Cardinal Turkson noted how the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace was established in 1967 as a result of the Second Vatican Council, just three years after the U.N. had instituted the UNCTAD. Recalling Bl. Paul VI’s words at the founding meeting for UNCTAD, Cardinal Turkson said that “Development (is) the new name of peace,” but stressed that true development “must foster the development of every person and of the whole person.” This not only means each individual man, woman and child, but “each human group, and humanity as a whole,” the cardinal said. He noted how in the 52 years since the founding of UNCTAD, new technologies have broken down the traditional borders between nations and helped open new areas of economic opportunity. “A less polarized political landscape has provided new possibilities for worldwide trade,” he said, noting that economic power “has become more dispersed, mostly due to globalization and to industrialization and rapid growth in East Asia, with corresponding changes in the workings of the international trading system.” However, the cardinal asked what forms of trade, growth and development would be able to meet the “pervasive challenges of poverty, of inequality and lack of progress,” adding that the answer must always focus on the good of the human person, including that of future generations. When it comes to safeguarding the environment and ensuring that economic affairs are ordered to the well-being of everyone, “human leadership or governance still seems to have a lot to learn,” he said. Cardinal Turkson stressed that world governance, including that of institutions belonging to the U.N., needs “to appreciate the poor,” viewing them “not as a problem, but as people who can become the principal builders of a new and more human future for everyone.” Turning to the financial crisis of 2008, the cardinal said it has left “a long shadow” resulting from “a combination of ethical and technical breakdowns,” which are seen in the 2016 UNCTAD report. “Have the right lessons been learned yet?” he asked, insisting that it is not yet evident that “the organizations, institutions and decision-makers responsible for ethical and technical breakdowns have acknowledged their role, much less made the necessary repairs.” “We must do better,” he said, adding that our societies must to find ways to exercising greater corporate, financial and governmental responsibility for both the economy and the environment. “The world economy has been marooned in growth doldrums for the past six years, and this state of affairs is in growing danger of becoming accepted as the ‘new normal,’” he observed. Both dialogue and cooperation are needed in response, Cardinal Turkson said, but noted that these aren’t always easy to achieve. However, “the ‘old normal’ of isolated sectors and competing institutions will not meet the challenges.” Integrated policies are needed, and will require both persistence and generosity from various sectors of society, including those of banking, finance, commerce, business, and politics, as well as workers, the unemployed, migrants, youth, and the elderly. Peace, the cardinal said, “is not the mere absence of violence. It bespeaks human fulfilment, integral in all its aspects – material, social, spiritual.” Given this fact, “trade and development must aim at the fullest human flourishing if we are ever to have real peace.” In his comments to CNA, Fr. Czerny said that while affairs surrounding economics and development are primarily the concern of politicians and world leaders, it’s important for religious institutions such as the Holy See to have a voice. “Our most important role is to encourage our members, Christians in this case, and all people of good will, to get informed and get involved,” he said, adding that “too much of this stuff is happening behind our backs.” “We can’t understand it, we know we don’t like the results, but we haven’t learned how to get in there and make our voices heard.” The priest stressed that it’s the duty of Christians to be involved and informed about political issues, uniting their faith to what’s happening in the political, economic, and environmental sphere. “We really need to learn to live our faith in daily life,” he said, explaining that “there are seven days in the week. Sunday is only one day.” Fr. Czerny noted that “daily life is structured and marked so much by important economic, political, social, cultural decisions,” so to exclude our faith from any of these spheres “is to say that our faith has nothing to do with our life, and that’s exactly the opposite of what we want to say.” “Our faith does have everything to do with our life, and we need to learn to live our faith in the public sphere.” Read more

Rome, Italy, Sep 22, 2016 / 03:02 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Known around the globe as simply “Padre Pio,” Saint Pio of Pietrelcina has been called one of the “most active” saints in the Church, and continues to work miracles for those who pray through his intercession. “St. Padre Pio is a pretty powerful intercessor…a priest said to me once that he’s probably one of the most active saints in the Church,” Fr. John Paul Zeller MVFA, told CNA in an interview. A friar with the Franciscan Missionaries of the Eternal Word and a Missionary of Mercy from Birmingham, Ala., Fr. Zeller is the proud owner of a first-class relic of Padre Pio, and has witnessed several healings in first-person after praying through Padre Pio's intercession with the relic in hand. Fr. Zeller said that while he initially had no specific devotion to Padre Pio, he developed one after taking a trip to San Giovanni Rotondo, where Padre Pio served as a priest for the majority of his life, after the 2014 canonization of St. John Paul II. After learning more about Padre Pio's life, the priest said he was moved, and worked up the courage to ask one of the superiors in San Giovanni for a relic. The superior agreed, and gave Fr. Zeller not one but two pieces of a blood-soaked bandage Padre Pio had wrapped around the wounds of his stigmata. Padre Pio was born Francesco Forgione May 25, 1887, to a devout Catholic family in Pietrelcina, Italy. At the age of 15, he joined the Capuchin Friars, and eventually became a priest with the order. Throughout his life, Padre Pio was known as a mystic who experienced the stigmata for 50 years. Many miracles and wonders have been attributed to him, including reports of healing, soul-reading, levitation and even bi-location. Fr. Zeller said that after he received the relics, he gave one to his community, founded by Mother Angelica, and was granted permission to keep the other for himself. “I keep that relic on me at all times,” he said, noting that in his role as Director of the pilgrimage department at EWTN’s headquarters in Birmingham, “I have the opportunity to pray with a lot of people.” “I’ve prayed with people and there have been cases where there have been, I would say, some healings,” the priest said, explaining that people will come up to him several months, even a year, after he prayed with them and recount experiences of healing. One such experience happened only a few months ago during a healing service at the Shrine of the Most Blessed Sacrament in Hanceville on the feast of Our Lady of Fatima, he said, recalling how during the service, he and two other priests prayed over people with the two blood-soaked bandages as well as a glove of Padre Pio’s that belonged to Mother Angelica. As they were praying a woman suffering from sciatica came up “and I prayed over her,” Fr. Zeller said, noting that the woman approached him later and said that after she went back to her seat, she told her husband “I’m healed.” Sciatica “is a very serious back condition that doesn’t really go away and is very painful,” the priest said, noting that “it totally went away” for this woman after he prayed over her with the relic. In another instance, Fr. Zeller recalled how shortly after he received the relic he was talking with some friends and found out that their 12-year-old daughter had been suffering from an ear infection that “wouldn’t seem to go away.” He asked the girl if he could pray over her with his relic, and when she said yes, “I showed her mom and I showed her and I said ‘which ear is it?’” Fr. Zeller said that as soon as he put the relic to the girl’s ear and began to pray “she dropped to the ground. She totally slipped out of my hands.” “I should have caught her, but I didn’t know what was happening, I was kind of scared that something happened to her, but she totally slipped out of my hands and fell on the ground,” he said, noting that while he was anxious over the situation, the girl’s mother was calm, saying “that would be ‘Slain in the Spirit.’” “The ear infection was completely knocked out of her,” he said, noting that from that point on, “from what I know she didn’t have the ear infection.” In yet another case “there was a lady that had some kind of heart disease for 40 years that she’d suffered from in her life,” he said, adding that while he didn’t have time to get into the specifics, “she’s totally healed” after having been prayed over with the relic of Padre Pio. “It’s a longer story than that, but she’s totally free from that,” Fr. Zeller said, recalling how another women recently came to him, saying she “had experienced some kind of physical healing” after being prayed over with the relic. Referring to the healings, Fr. Zeller stressed that “that’s not me, that’s the intercession of St. Padre Pio.” Although he initially had no devotion to Padre Pio until just a few years ago, the priest said he feels like the sudden connection that came is because the saint chose him, rather than the other way around. “One of my professors at seminary used to say that we don’t choose saints, saints choose us,” he said, noting that while we may have “a particular liking of a saint, we may look at a saint’s personality and be drawn to them…I think there is a truth to saints choosing us rather than us choosing them.” Padre Pio “was really a joyful friar,” he said, explaining that he had always envisioned the saint as being “really stern” and was afraid to ask for his intercession, lest Padre Pio “be stern with me.” However, it was during his trip to San Giovanni Rotondo that he learned who Padre Pio really was, Fr. Zeller said, explaining that in his view, the reason for the saint’s seemingly serious disposition is that “he knew when people were not repentant.” “It was said that he could even smell sin, and I don’t even imagine what eternal separation from God smells like,” the priest said. “So that was his concern for the salvation of people’s souls. He was concerned about people’s souls and bringing them God’s mercy and God’s forgiveness.” To honor his upcoming Sept. 23 feast, devotees in Rome will celebrate with an entire week of events and activities. Thousands of devotees with 600 groups will gather in the Roman parish of San Salvatore in Lauro, adjacent to Rome’s famous Piazza Navona, which will serve as a hub for the people attending the various activities linked to Padre Pio’s feast. Inside San Salvatore numerous relics of Padre Pio, including his cloak, gloves, stole and blood from the wounds of the stigmata that marked his body for 50 years. Festivities opened Sept. 18 with a special Mass celebrated by Rome’s auxiliary bishop Guerino Di Tora. On Sept. 20 Padre Pio’s relics were exposed in San Salvatore for veneration, and a special Mass celebrated by another of Rome’s auxiliary bishops, Angelo De Donatis. Two days later, on the 22nd, the “Vigil of Transit” commemorating what is believed to be the exact moment of Padre Pio’s death will be celebrated. After the vigil, Mass will be celebrated by Msgr. Carmelo Pellegrino, Promotor of Faith of the Vatican’s Congregation for the Causes of Saints. Celebrations will culminate on Padre Pio’s Sept. 23 feast with several Masses said throughout the day as well as a procession of a statue of the saint and his relics from San Salvatore to Piazza Navona, which will take place in the afternoon. A special blessing will be given and a prayer offered for the victims of the recent earthquake that devastated several cities in Central Italy. Read more