Vatican City, Mar 8, 2016 / 04:09 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- The concept of mercy is not easy for Cecilia Flores-Oebanda, a Filipina activist who has suffered a series of trials through her life, including imprisonment with her own children. Yet she believes the courage to go on amid adversity – and her ability to forgive – begin with mercy. “Mercy is really about going beyond your own struggle, and your own pains, and your own disappointment,” Flores-Oebanda told CNA. At times, God prepares us for adversities for a “bigger purpose: to give mercy to others,” she said. “You cannot give mercy without forgiveness, and processing that within yourself.” “After I embrace mercy, then I’m more effective to give love, compassion to others, because you are able to manifest it.” Flores-Oebanda, one of the speakers at this week's Vatican-hosted Voices of Faith woman's conference, is founder and president of Visayan Forum Foundation, Inc. The initiative, which addresses modern-day slavery, especially human trafficking and the exploitation of workers, has served 18,000 victims and potential victims of exploitation. Born into poverty, Flores-Oebanda herself had been a child laborer. When she grew older, she fought against the dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos, during which time she watched as two comrades were killed as the government attempted to intimidate her. The Filipina activist was eventually imprisoned with her family, giving birth to her second child while incarcerated, and was released after four years. “Mercy is not an easy thing for me after all,” Flores-Oebanda added, citing the difficulties she has experienced. “But, I believe that courage always began at mercy. And mercy and forgiveness always go hand in hand.” “There are some times I lost my faith,” she admitted. “You’re only a person.” “But, at the end of the day, you will know that [God] is always there,” she said. “I just always go back on him, and know and realize that he’s always on my side, and surrender everything to him.” Flores-Oebanda shared her story at the March 8 conference, a gathering held on International Woman's Day to showcase the achievements of women in the Church throughout the world. Acknowledging Pope Francis' contribution to the fight against human slavery, she expressed her hope to CNA that the Church could take greater advantage of its leadership in the cause. “The Church could actually influence the poorest of the poor and the richest of the rich,” she said. “And it can create a new mindset of sympathy, compassion to the poor.” Flores-Oebanda went on to call leaders to “go beyond just a commitment or words,” but to implement action on the ground. “I just want them to know that we're already there. Women, Catholic like us, are already on the ground, and are waiting for them to support us.” Hosted at the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, the event brought together women from various fields to give witness to their work, such as in areas of poverty and the defense of human dignity and equality. This year's gathering is also co-sponered by the Jesuit Refugee Service (JRS). Chantal Götz, executive director of Fidel Götz Foundation which sponsors the conference, spoke with CNA March 4 about the influence of the Jubilee of Mercy on this year's gathering.    “Mercy is a difficult topic,” she said. “I would say all the speakers” work with so-called “with fallen women, or fallen girls.” “They all try to empower girls and these women,” she added. “This is the way I see they give mercy,” in helping them restore their dignity.   For instance, Sr. Mary Doris of the Sisters of Saint Dominic, a speaker at the conference, has worked with more than 2,500 homeless mothers over the last 26 years. She works in helping them find dignity through various programs, including one which gives mothers the opportunity to create a lullaby for their children, which is then performed at Carnegie Hall. “Mercy comes in so many forms,” Götz said. First held in 2014, the conference was established in response to Pope Francis' call to “broaden the space within the Church for a more incisive feminine presence.” Read more

Vatican City, Jun 21, 2016 / 03:03 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Pope Francis has announced the canonization date of Blessed Elizabeth of the Trinity, a Carmelite nun of the 20th century who will be formally recognzied as a saint October 16. In March, the Pope had acknowledged a miracle worked through the intercession of Blessed Elizabeth, paving the way for her canonization. “The Lord has chosen to answer her prayers for us…before she died, when she was suffering with Addison's disease, she wrote that it would increase her joy in heaven if people ask for her help,” said Dr. Anthony Lilles, academic dean of St. John's Seminary in Camarillo. Lilles earned his doctorate in spiritual theology at Rome's Angelicum writing a dissertation on Bl. Elizabeth of the Trinity. “If her friends ask for her help it would increase her joy in heaven: so it increases Elizabeth's joy when you ask her to pray for your needs,” he told CNA. "That's the first reason (to have devotion to her): the Church has recognized the power of her intercession." Bl. Elizabeth of the Trinity was born in France in 1880, and grew up in Dijon close to the city's Carmelite monastery. Lilles recounted that when one time when Bl. Elizabeth visited the monastery when she was 17, “the mother superior there said, 'I just received this circular letter about the death of Therese of Lisieux, and I want you to read it.' That circular letter would later become the Story of a Soul; in fact, what she was given was really the first edition of Story of a Soul.” ...it was a lightning moment in her life, where everything kind of crystallized and she understood how to respond to what God was doing in her heart. “Elizabeth read it and she was inclined towards contemplative prayer; she was a very pious person who worked with troubled youth and catechized them, but when she read Story of a Soul she knew she needed to become a Carmelite: it was a lightning moment in her life, where everything kind of crystallized and she understood how to respond to what God was doing in her heart.” Elizabeth then told her mother she wanted to enter the Carmel, but she replied that she couldn't enter until she was 21, “which was good for the local Church,” Lilles explained, “because Elizabeth continued to work with troubled youth throughout that time, and do a lot of other good work in the city of Dijon before she entered.” She entered the Carmel in Dijon in 1901, and died there in 1906 – at the age of 26 – from Addison's disease. Elizabeth wrote several works while there, the best-known of which is her prayer “O My God, Trinity Whom I Adore.” Also particularly notable are her “Heaven in Faith,” a retreat she wrote three months before her death for her sister Guite; and the “Last Retreat,” her spiritual insights from the last annual retreat she was able to make. Cardinal Albert Decourtray, who was Bishop of Dijon from 1974 to 1981, was cured of cancer through Bl. Elizabeth's intercession – a miracle that allowed her beatification in 1984. The healing acknowledged by Pope Francis March 4 was that of Marie-Paul Stevens, a Belgian woman who had Sjögren's syndrome, a glandular disease. In 2002 Stevens “had asked Bl. Elizabeth to help her manage the extreme discomforts of the pathology she had, and in thanksgiving, because she felt like she had received graces … she travelled to the Carmelite monastery just outside Dijon,” Lilles said. “And when she got to the monastery, she was completely healed.” Lilles added that a second reason to have devotion to Bl. Elizabeth of the Trinity is because she died “believing that she had a spiritual mission to help lead souls to a deeper encounter with Christ Jesus.” “You could call it contemplative prayer, or even mystical prayer. She said her mission was to lead souls out of themselves and into a great silence, where God could imprint himself in them, on their souls, so that they became more God-like.” In prayer, he said, “we make space for (God) to transform us more fully into the image and likeness he intended us to become, but which sin has marred. Contemplative prayer is a means towards this transformation, and Bl. Elizabeth of the Trinity believed before she died that her spiritual mission would be to help souls enter into that kind of transformative, contemplative prayer, where they could become saints.” She understood that the way she loved souls all the way was to help them find and encounter the Lord. During her time in the Carmel of Dijon, Bl. Elizabeth found encouragement from the writings of St. Therese of Lisieux, particularly her “Offering to Merciful Love,” a prayer found in Story of a Soul, Lilles said: “You find references to the Offering to Merciful Love throughout the writings of Bl. Elizabeth of the Trinity, it was probably something she herself prayed often.” “The second way that Elizabeth of the Trinity was influenced by Therese of Lisieux was a poem that St. Therese wrote called 'Living by Love'; in this poem Therese celebrates how the love of Jesus is the heartbeat, the deepest reality of her life, and because he lived to lay down his life for her, she wants to live to lay down her life for human love, which as the poem goes on, means loving all whom he sends her way, without reserve and all the way, giving people the generous love that we have received from Christ, sharing it with others.” “That idea deeply, deeply influenced Elizabeth of the Trinity and in fact inspired her own way of life and her own spiritual mission to help lead souls into mystical prayer,” Lilles reflected. “She understood that the way she loved souls all the way was to help them find and encounter the Lord.” “So, the spiritual missions of Therese of Lisieux and Elizabeth of the Trinity coincide: great theologians like Hans Urs von Balthasar recognized that. And these spiritual missions have both greatly influenced the Church in the 20th and early 21st centuries in very powerful ways.” “I'm so glad that Elizabeth has been recognized for her part in building up the Church in the 20th century.”An earlier version of this article was originally published on CNA March 8, 2016. Read more

Vatican City, Mar 7, 2016 / 12:47 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Pope Francis met with leaders of the Permanent Synod of the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church (UGCC) on Saturday, praising their people's “tireless witnesses of hope” in Christ amid decades of hardships. “In some circumstances, our human condition is made even more fragile due to difficult historical situations, which mark the life of the People of God, of the Community that Jesus Christ our Lord purchased with his blood,” Pope Francis said in his March 5 message to Major Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk of Kyiv-Halych, head of the UGCC. The UGCC is the largest of the Eastern Catholic Churches, with some 4.42 million faithful. Many of its faithful live in Ukraine, though it has large expatriate communities in Argentina, Canada, Brazil,  Poland, and the United States. The audience coincided with the anniversary of the 1946 pseudo-synod of Lviv, a council orchestrated by Josef Stalin's regime as part of the forcible absorption of the UGCC into the Russian Orthodox Church. At that time, all of the UGCC bishops, hundreds of clergy, and tens of thousands of Catholics had been imprisoned, while all the Church's property was either transferred to the Russian Orthodox Church or confiscated for non-religious use. “A particular ideological and political context, as well as the existence of ideas that were contrary to the very existence of your Church, led to the organization of a pseudo-synod in Lviv, and caused decades of suffering for the pastors and the faithful,” the Pope said, remarking on the 70th anniversary of the event. “In sad memory of these events we bow our heads in deep gratitude before those, who at the cost of suffering and even martyrdom, continued to witness the faith in the course of time and to show dedication to the Church in union with the Successor of Peter.” At the same time, Pope Francis continues, “with eyes lit by the same faith, we look to the Lord Jesus Christ, to place in him, and not in human justice, all of our hope. He is the true source of our trust in the present and in the future, as we are called to announce the Gospel also in the midst of suffering or difficulties.” The Pope expressed his deep gratitude for the loyalty of Ukrainian Greek-Catholics and encouraged them to be “tireless witnesses of that hope which makes our existence and the existence of all of our brothers and sisters more luminous”. Pope Francis also renewed solidarity with the pastors and faithful for all they do in "this difficult time marked by the hardships of war, to alleviate the suffering of the population and to seek the ways of peace for the beloved Ukrainian land.” “In the Lord is our courage and our joy. It is to him that I speak, through the intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary and the martyrs of your Church, so that the divine consolation may illuminate your communities in Ukraine and other parts of the world”. He offered an apostolic blessing as a sign of his "constant affection and prayers" to Archbishop Shevchuk and to the bishops, priests, consecrated, and laity of the UGCC. The Permanent Synod of the UGCC issued a statement after the meeting with Pope Francis, reiterating their unity with the Bishop of Rome. “We came to reaffirm our communion with the Holy Father and to ask for his help for the suffering people of Ukraine during the Jubilee Year of Mercy,” said Archbishop Shevchuk in the statement, who added: “And the Holy Father heard us.” “We reaffirm what no totalitarian regime could break: our communion with Rome and the Universal Church.” The statement goes on to condemn the violence and atrocities against human dignity which has taken place in Ukraine, especially against religious communities and ethnic groups. “The Church condemns the atrocities, the kidnappings, imprisonment and torture of citizens of Ukraine in the Donbas and Crimea – especially abuses directed at religious communities and ethnic groups, especially Muslim Tatars, as well as broad violations of civic rights and the human dignity of millions,” according to the message. The UGCC “ceaselessly prays for and promotes peace,” the statement continues, and calls on the Pope and the global community to “help stop the war and stem the humanitarian crisis caused by the Russian invasion of Ukraine.” 10,000 people have been killed, tens of thousands injured, and over 2 million have been left homeless due to the “ongoing undeclared hybrid war,” the statement asserts.   The crisis has also taken its toll on Ukraine's infrastructure, and its currency has two-thirds of its earlier value, which in turn has impoverished the nation, the UGCC said. “The people are suffering, Holy Father, and they await your embrace,” Archbishop Shevchuk  is quoted as saying. “Pope Francis made it clear that he would act.” The statement went on to recall the long-term suffering endured by the people of Ukraine, between “two World Wars, genocides, a state-planned famine, and ethnic cleansing” which claimed the lives of some 15 million people during the twentieth century. The statement decried the attempts by Stalin's regime to “brutally” suppress the UGCC and to remove it from the “Catholic communion” and the Roman Pontiff, citing the pseudo-synod of Lviv. Despite the hardships endured by the faithful during that time, “the Church has revived miraculously and is a thriving, dynamic body active throughout Ukraine and on four continents, with young clergy and a dedicated laity inspired by the example of their twentieth century martyrs.” Archbishop Shevchuk stressed Pope Francis' “moral authority” over the people of Ukraine. “For Ukrainians who belong to different Churches and religious organizations and even secular citizens, the Holy Father is a global moral authority who speaks the truth,” the archbishop told the Pope. “This voice of truth is particularly important for the suffering people of Ukraine. If the people do not hear or understand this voice they become confused, anxious, and feel forgotten,” he added. Archbishop Shevchuk responded to the Pope Francis' emphasis on not solving “ecumenical problems at the expense of an entire Eastern Catholic Church.” He said the UGCC is “ready to provide responsible, transparent, ecumenically sound administration of international aid,” to the Ukrainian population, regardless of “ethnicity, political or linguistic preferences or religious affiliation.” “Enough of this suffering. It can be prevented. It can be healed. Let us make the 'Year of Mercy' a reality for the people of Ukraine.” Read more

Vatican City, Mar 7, 2016 / 10:57 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Pope Francis and members of the Curia embarked Sunday on their annual Lenten retreat, which this year centers on the theme: “Le nude domande del vangelo” – “The raw questions of the Gospel.” The March 6-10 reflections, led by Fr. Ermes Ronchi of the Servants of Mary, are centering on 10 key questions from the Gospel, including: "Why are you afraid? Have you no faith?" (Mark 4:40) and “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?" (John 8:10).   This is the third consecutive year the Pope has chosen to follow the Lenten spiritual exercises in a location outside of Rome, in order to foster the spiritual retreat and to avoid the temptation to continue working. The five-day spiritual exercises are taking place at the Casa Divin Maestro retreat center in Ariccia, a city located some 16 miles outside of Rome. The 2015 papal retreat, led by Fr. Bruno Secondin, Carmelite, was on the theme: “Servants and prophets of the living God.”   Read more