Catholic News
Yerevan, Jun 24, 2016 / 07:12 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Pope Francis has said the result of the U.K.’s referendum to leave the European Union reflects the “will of the people” and that there is now a “great responsibility” to e... Read more
Yerevan, Jun 24, 2016 / 07:12 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Pope Francis has said the result of the U.K.’s referendum to leave the European Union reflects the “will of the people” and that there is now a “great responsibility” to e... Read more
London, England, Jun 24, 2016 / 04:26 am (CNA/EWTN News).- After Britain's passing of the historic referendum to withdraw from the European Union, the UK's leading prelate stressed the need to continue working with the international community, and to ensure that the vulnerable in society remain protected. “A great tradition of the United Kingdom is to respect the will of the people, expressed at the ballot box,” said Cardinal Vincent Nichols, archbishop of Westminster in a statement Friday. “Today we set out on a new course that will be demanding on all.” “Our prayer is that all will work in this task with respect and civility, despite deep differences of opinion,” the cardinal continued. “We pray that in this process the most vulnerable will be supported and protected, especially those who are easy targets for unscrupulous employers and human traffickers.” The British withdrawal from the European Union referendum – popularly known as “Brexit” – was passed by a narrow margin on Thursday. The results were released early Friday morning, showing that 52% of British citizens had voted to exit the EU. Debates leading up to the referendum centered on a variety of concerns, including the impact such a decision would have on immigration and the economy, both in Britain and Europe. “We pray that our nations will build on our finest traditions of generosity, of welcome for the stranger and shelter for the needy,” said Cardinal Nichols said. “We now must work hard to show ourselves to be good neighbours and resolute contributors in joint international efforts to tackle the critical problems our world today.” Over 30 million people – nearly 72% – took to the polls for the historic the referendum, the highest voting turnout the nation had seen since 1992, the BBC reports. In response to Friday's results, British Prime Minister David Cameron announced he would be stepping down in October. Cameron had been a supporter of the “Remain” campaign from the start, the BBC said. In a June 24 interview shortly after the results of the referendum came through, Catholic Herald editor Luke Coppen told CNA he was surprised by the outcome, but said it was impossible at this juncture to know how it would affect British Catholics. “We have no data about how Catholics voted, but certainly Catholics were vocal on both sides of the debate,” he said. “I suppose the result leaves Catholics divided.” Coppen added that most of the nation's bishops favored remaining in the EU, “so I think they are likely to feel deeply disappointed this morning.” “The vote is historic, but the long-term consequences are obviously certain. I hope that after a bruising and at times quite unpleasant referendum debate, there will be a resurgence of kindness, neighbourliness and compassion.” Britain has been part of the EU since 1973 when it joined European Economic Community, later to be known as the EU. The June 23 referendum was the second such vote pertaining to British membership in the EU, the first taking place in 1975.Anian Christoph Wimmer contributed to this story. Read more
Washington D.C., Jun 23, 2016 / 05:00 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom has a new chairman, and for the first time, the position will be held by a Catholic priest. Jesuit priest Fr. Thomas Reese was first appointed to a two-year term as a member of the commission by President Barack Obama in 2014, and re-appointed in 2016. Now he will take over as the chair of the organization, an independent, bipartisan commission that monitors and reviews religious freedom violations around the world, and makes policy recommendations to the Secretary of State, Congress and the president. “I am honored to serve as USCIRF's Chair and work with my fellow Commissioners in support of freedom of religion or belief,” said Fr. Reese in a statement. “World events underscore the importance of this fundamental right: A key factor in many of the United States' foreign policy challenges, religious freedom is under serious and sustained attack across much of the globe,” he added. Created by the 1998 International Religious Freedom Act, the commission issues annual reports on the state of religious freedom around the world, and names countries that are guilty of severe religious freedom violations during the previous year. It also holds public hearings and conducts fact-finding missions to aid in its efforts. In taking over as chair of the body, Fr. Reese replaces Princeton law professor Dr. Robert George. Fr. Reese serves as the senior analyst for the National Catholic Reporter. Previously, he served as editor-in-chief at America Magazine – a publication of the Jesuit order – from 1998-2005 and its associate editor from 1978-1985. Fr. Reese also was a senior fellow at the Woodstock Theological Center from 1985-1998, and again from 2008-2013. In his time at America, the Vatican raised issues with several articles published at the magazine, including some on abortion and homosexuality. Fr. Reese resigned from the publication in May 2015. This week, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom also appointed two vice-chairs: Dr. Daniel Mark, an assistant professor of political science at Villanova University and visiting fellow in the Department of Politics at Princeton University; and Dr. James Zogby, founder and president of the Arab American Institute, and Managing Director of Zogby Research Services, which conducts specialized public opinion polling within the Arab world. Mark had been reappointed as a member of the commission Speaker of the House Paul Ryan in May 2016, and President Barack Obama has reappointed Zogby in May 2015. Read more
Washington D.C., Jun 23, 2016 / 12:58 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- A divided Supreme Court allowed a hold on the Obama administration’s immigration policy to continue, disappointing Catholic advocates of immigration reform. The Court’s decision &l... Read more
Washington D.C., Jun 23, 2016 / 10:07 am (CNA).- A meeting with Donald Trump in New York City on Tuesday was intended to answer the questions that some Christian leaders have about the presumptive Republican nominee. But after the event, those in atte... Read more
Gyumri, Armenia, Jun 23, 2016 / 06:01 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Pope Francis’ visit to Armenia is a chance to build on decades of productive ecumenical dialogue with the Armenian Apostolic Church, a local Catholic bishop has said. “Now there is more friendship, more collaboration, a more open dialogue, and I am very optimistic about the future, from this point of view,” Archbishop Raphael Minassian, the Armenian Ordinary of Eastern Europe, told CNA. The archbishop will be at the Pope’s side during his journey to Armenia, fifteen years after St. John Paul II visited in 2001. Armenia’s national church is the Armenian Apostolic Church, an Oriental Orthodox Church to which 93 percent of the population belongs. Armenia prides itself on having been the first nation to adopt Christianity as a state religion, which it did in the year 301. For Archbishop Minassian, the separation between the Catholic Church and the Armenian Apostolic Church is due to human factors, not theological ones. On theological matters, “there is no difference.” “No difference in sacraments, nor in theology, nor in the profession of faith,” he said. Unlike national churches still linked to the universal Church, the Armenian Apostolic Church’s nationalism has “taken a different direction,” the archbishop said. As an Oriental Orthodox Church, the Armenian Apostolic Church separated from the Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Churches over its rejection of the Christological definitions of the Council of Chalcedon, in 451. For the Armenians, the break was solidified when they held a local council in 554, in which they chose to become autocephalous. Chalcedon defined that Jesus Christ has both a human and a divine nature. Because the Oriental Orthodox rejected this definition, both the Catholics and the Eastern Orthodox historically considered them to be monophysites – those who believe Christ has only one nature. But since the Second Vatican Council, the Catholic Church and the Armenian Apostolic Church have improved their relations. Catholicos Vasken I, the head of the Armenian Apostolic Church, visited Blessed Paul VI at the Vatican in May 1970. There, the Pope gave Catholicos Vasken a relic of St. Bartholomew, who is considered to be one of the founders of the Armenian Apostolic Church. During St. John Paul II’s pontificate, Catholicos Karekin I made two visits to the Pope, with whom he was a friend. In December 1996 St. John Paul II and Karekin signed a joint declaration on Christology, recognizing that the Armenian Apostolic Church's Christological doctrine does not imply any confusion about Jesus Christ’s two natures in a single person – the belief held by the Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox. Pope Francis will visit Armenia June 24-26. Like St. John Paul II before him, Francis will stay at the Etchmiadzin Cathedral compound that is nicknamed “the Holy See of the Apostolic Church.” This could give a new impetus to ecumenism, building on the good relations developed over recent decades. Archbishop Minassian is a bishop of the Armenian Catholic Church – an Eastern Catholic Church that came into communion with the Bishop of Rome in 1742 – and is based in Gyumri, Armenia's second largest city. He underscored that the possibility of a renewed ecumenism with the Armenian Apostolic Church will need the help of God: “I believe in prayer. I believe in witness. I believe in the example given by these pontiffs. Then, God’s grace is called to work on the souls. We can only rely on Divine Providence,” he said. At present, according to the archbishop, there had been no rapprochement between the two Churches because unity is seen as “the submission of the one to the other.” “In fact, unity is rather a path toward a mutual aim, Christ,” he said. “Unfortunately, this separation is mostly given by a sort of immaturity.” Read more
Mexico City, Mexico, Jun 23, 2016 / 12:28 am (CNA).- Archbishop José Luis Chavez Botello of Antequera-Oaxaca, México, called for intensifying prayer for peace after clashes between authorities and a teachers' union left at least seven dead and more than 50 injured. Since June 11, the National Coordinator of Education Workers (CNTE) in the state of Oaxaca in southern Mexico has held a series of demonstrations against the educational reforms undertaken by the government of President Enrique Peña Nieto. The protests included blocking highways connecting Mexico City and the states of Puebla, Veracruz, Chiapas and Guerrero. The Oaxaca Department of Public Safety says that it deployed 800 officers on June 19. During the confrontation between demonstrators and authorities, at least seven people died and 51 were injured. <blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="es" dir="ltr">México: Choques entre policías y maestros en Oaxaca se cobran la vida de al menos 6 personas <a href="https://t.co/8qTampBQa7">https://t.co/8qTampBQa7</a> <a href="https://t.co/Ry8CmbzpMM">pic.twitter.com/Ry8CmbzpMM</a></p>— RT en Español (@ActualidadRT) <a href="https://twitter.com/ActualidadRT/status/745027498124148736">June 20, 2016</a></blockquote> <script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script> The authorities are blaming alleged infiltrators among the demonstrators, saying “civilians, so far unidentified, fired shots against elements of public safety and the civilian population.” However, they stated that they will open investigations to “determine who is responsible for what.” According to the teachers' union, 10 people were killed, including teachers and parents. In a statement released June 20, the Archdiocese of Antequera-Oaxaca lamented “the fatal outcome” of June 19 and expressed its solidarity “with the families of those who died and those who were injured.” Archbishop Chavez said that the Church “as an institution committed to the protection and defense of life, opened its doors to care for everyone without distinction to provide first aid for anyone who needed it.” The archbishop encouraged the faithful to provide “all our knowledge, skills and the best we have to together achieve reconciliation and peace.” “Let us intensify prayer at all levels,” he urged, “in personal prayer, as well as in families, apostolic groups and movements, and all the communities and parishes, so that God may move the hearts of everyone and dispose us to dialogue, to understanding and to the willingness to resolve the conflict in a constructive manner, with words, gestures, agreements and actions that benefit everyone.” Starting June 21, the archbishop Saud, “I am inviting all of us to be spiritually united” so that “wherever we are, when the bells toll from all the churches and chapels we pray the Angelus at 12 noon, and at 6:00 p.m., the recitation of the Holy Rosary, preferably in the churches.” Also on Thursdays at 6:00 p.m., “let us make a Holy Hour” and at daily Mass “at 7:00 p.m. let us remember this intention.” “May the ringing of the bells at those times be a call from God to be sowers, artisans and guardians of reconciliation and peace from our family and community,” he urged.Photo credit: Frank Gaertner via www.shutterstock.com. Read more
Washington D.C., Jun 22, 2016 / 04:54 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- The Obama administration has rejected a challenge to the State of California’s requirement that health care plans include abortion coverage. A major federal budget amendment intended to p... Read more
Vatican City, Jun 22, 2016 / 04:37 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- In a video message sent Wednesday to a gathering of advocates for abolition of the death penalty, Pope Francis welcomed their efforts as a way to promote the right to life of all persons. “Nowadays the death penalty is unacceptable, however grave the crime of the convicted person,” the Pope said in his June 22 message to the Sixth World Congress against the Death Penalty, which is being held in Oslo this week. More than 1,000 people are in attendance from governments, international organizations, and society. Capital punishment “is an offence to the inviolability of life and to the dignity of the human person,” Pope Francis continued. “It likewise contradicts God’s plan for individuals and society, and his merciful justice.” He expressed his “personal appreciation” to the participants for their “commitment to a world free of the death penalty.” That “public opinion is manifesting a growing opposition to the death penalty, even as a means of legitimate social defence,” he called a “sign of hope.” In addition to being offensive to the inviolability of human life, Pope Francis said that the death penalty is not “consonant with any just purpose of punishment.” “It does not render justice to victims, but instead fosters vengeance. The commandment 'Thou shalt not kill' has absolute value and applies both to the innocent and to the guilty.” Recalling the Jubilee of Mercy being celebrated currently, the Roman Pontiff said the year is “an auspicious occasion for promoting worldwide ever more evolved forms of respect for the life and dignity of each person.” “It must not be forgotten that the inviolable and God-given right to life also belongs to the criminal,” he exhorted. In addition to calling for an end to capital punishment, Pope Francis called on the participants to work for the improvement of prison conditions “so that they fully respect the human dignity of those incarcerated.” He reiterated that rendering justice “does not mean seeking punishment for its own sake, but ensuring that the basic purpose of all punishment is the rehabilitation of the offender.” The question of justice should be answered “within the larger framework of a system of penal justice open to the possibility of the guilty party’s reinsertion in society,” he said. “There is no fitting punishment without hope! Punishment for its own sake, without room for hope, is a form of torture, not of punishment.” Pope Francis' video message echoed earlier calls he has made for an end to the use of the death penalty. His immediate predecessors, Benedict XVI and St. John Paul II, also spoke out against its use in modern society. In a March 2015 letter to the president of the International Commission against the Death Penalty, Francis went so far as to say that “life imprisonment, as well as those sentences which, due to their duration, render it impossible for the condemned to plan a future in freedom, may be considered hidden death sentences, because with them the guilty party is not only deprived of his/her freedom, but insidiously deprived of hope." The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that the death penalty may be used “if this is the only possible way of effectively defending human lives against the unjust aggressor.” However, it adds, such cases today “are very rare, if not practically nonexistent.” Read more
Vatican City, Jun 22, 2016 / 04:37 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- In a video message sent Wednesday to a gathering of advocates for abolition of the death penalty, Pope Francis welcomed their efforts as a way to promote the right to life of all persons. “Nowadays the death penalty is unacceptable, however grave the crime of the convicted person,” the Pope said in his June 22 message to the Sixth World Congress against the Death Penalty, which is being held in Oslo this week. More than 1,000 people are in attendance from governments, international organizations, and society. Capital punishment “is an offence to the inviolability of life and to the dignity of the human person,” Pope Francis continued. “It likewise contradicts God’s plan for individuals and society, and his merciful justice.” He expressed his “personal appreciation” to the participants for their “commitment to a world free of the death penalty.” That “public opinion is manifesting a growing opposition to the death penalty, even as a means of legitimate social defence,” he called a “sign of hope.” In addition to being offensive to the inviolability of human life, Pope Francis said that the death penalty is not “consonant with any just purpose of punishment.” “It does not render justice to victims, but instead fosters vengeance. The commandment 'Thou shalt not kill' has absolute value and applies both to the innocent and to the guilty.” Recalling the Jubilee of Mercy being celebrated currently, the Roman Pontiff said the year is “an auspicious occasion for promoting worldwide ever more evolved forms of respect for the life and dignity of each person.” “It must not be forgotten that the inviolable and God-given right to life also belongs to the criminal,” he exhorted. In addition to calling for an end to capital punishment, Pope Francis called on the participants to work for the improvement of prison conditions “so that they fully respect the human dignity of those incarcerated.” He reiterated that rendering justice “does not mean seeking punishment for its own sake, but ensuring that the basic purpose of all punishment is the rehabilitation of the offender.” The question of justice should be answered “within the larger framework of a system of penal justice open to the possibility of the guilty party’s reinsertion in society,” he said. “There is no fitting punishment without hope! Punishment for its own sake, without room for hope, is a form of torture, not of punishment.” Pope Francis' video message echoed earlier calls he has made for an end to the use of the death penalty. His immediate predecessors, Benedict XVI and St. John Paul II, also spoke out against its use in modern society. In a March 2015 letter to the president of the International Commission against the Death Penalty, Francis went so far as to say that “life imprisonment, as well as those sentences which, due to their duration, render it impossible for the condemned to plan a future in freedom, may be considered hidden death sentences, because with them the guilty party is not only deprived of his/her freedom, but insidiously deprived of hope." The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that the death penalty may be used “if this is the only possible way of effectively defending human lives against the unjust aggressor.” However, it adds, such cases today “are very rare, if not practically nonexistent.” Read more
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