2016-02-05T00:29:00+00:00

Vatican City, Feb 4, 2016 / 05:29 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- On Thursday the “Pope of Surprises” made an unscheduled stop at the welcoming center for pilgrims in Rome for the Jubilee of Mercy, before heading to three Vatican departments for a lengthy visit after. Francis dropped by the Jubilee Welcoming Center at 9 a.m. Feb. 4, where he surprised the roughly 10 workers and the different groups of pilgrims who were present when he arrived through the back entrance. The center, which provides resources to pilgrims that have come to Rome specifically for the Holy Year as well as registration for tickets to go through the Holy Door in St. Peter's Basilica, is located right next to the office for the Pontifical Council for the Promotion of the New Evangelization, which the Pope also visited. Pope Francis visited three different Vatican departments today as part of his continued tour of various dicasteries in the Roman Curia. Among them were the Pontifical Council for the Promotion of the New Evangelization and the Pontifical Council Cor Unum, which share the same building, and then the Pontifical Congregation for Eastern Churches. Once he left the welcoming center, the Pope continued on to the rest of Curial departments next door. According to sources inside, Francis spent about 60 minutes with the council Cor Unum, speaking to them about their work, expectations and interactions with other offices. Similarly, in his last stop Francis spent nearly an hour with the Congregation for Eastern Churches and talked with department members about the current issues Eastern Churches face. Officials familiar with the visit said the Pope showed that clearly understands and shares the concerns of department members. In a Feb. 4 interview with Vatican Radio, Archbishop Rino Fisichella, President of the council for the Pontifical Council for the Promotion of the New Evangelization, said that his department is “deeply grateful” to the Pope for his visit. “The Pope gave us a great lesson on how to carry forward the New Evangelization, above all (on) the theme of pastoral conversion…as well as the theme of catechesis, which is a great challenge that is in our hands but is a great challenge for the Church,” he said. He said that the Pope was also very open in answering questions from different collaborators of the council, and that Francis also brought up the procession that will take place Saturday, bringing the relics of Saint Padre Pio of Pietrelcina and Saint Leopold Mandic to St. Peter's Basilica. The Pope “made reference to that, recalling his deep devotion to Fr. Leopold in particular,” the archbishop said, noting that Francis wanted draw attention to the “great example” the saints are of confession. The “great value” these saints add both in the life of faith and the individual life of Christians is owed to the Sacrament of Confession, Archbishop Fisichella said, “because it is celebrated with a deep warmth and with a sense of great mercy.”#PopeFrancis visits more #Vatican dicasteries, today stopping by New Evangelization, Cor Unum & Eastern Churches pic.twitter.com/A6oGq5kaEI— Elise Harris (@eharris_it) February 4, 2016 Read more

2016-02-05T00:10:00+00:00

Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Feb 4, 2016 / 05:10 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- In its first statement related to the health crisis sparked by the Zika virus, the Brazilian Conference of Catholic Bishops said that the disease is “no justification whatsoever to promote abortion.” In the statement, released Feb. 4, the Brazilian bishops say that it is not morally acceptable to promote abortion “in the cases of microcephaly, as, unfortunately, some groups are proposing to the Supreme Federal Court, in a total lack of respect for the gift of life.” Early this week, a group of feminist organizations asked the Supreme Federal Court in Brazil to legalize abortion in cases of “malformation of the fetus.” Abortion is illegal in Brazil, except in cases of rape, situations deemed to be health emergencies, or if the baby has a fatal abnormality known as anencephaly. Concerns over the Zika outbreak continue to grow as the virus – spread by mosquitos and sexual contact – has reached at least 29 countries. World Health Organization estimates suggest that 3 to 4 million people throughout the Americas will be infected in 2016.  While the symptoms are usually mild to moderate, the virus can have serious consequences for pregnant women. It has been linked to a rise in microcephaly – a condition in which babies are born with small heads and other complications. As a result, some groups have called for an expansion of abortion in Latin America. Regarding the World Health Organization decision to declare a global health emergency because of the Zika virus, which has significantly expanded in Brazil, the bishops said that “we should not give in to panic, nor act as if we were in a situation that, despite its gravity, is not invincible.” Brazil's ministry of health announced today that its investigation has reported 3,670 cases of microcephaly. So far, 709 have been discarded and 404 confirmed, out of which only 17 are related to the Zika virus.  “The connection between the Zika virus and microcephaly deserves special attention, even though it has not been scientifically proven,” the bishops also say.  They called “all Catholics in Brazil to continue cooperating in the fight against the Aedes Aegypti mosquito” – which transmits the Zika virus as well as the Dengue and Chikungunya viruses – and called politicians to “secure medical assistance to the persons affected by the disease, especially babies with microcephaly and their families.” “Health is a right that must be guaranteed. Without a comprehensive and effective national health policy, all efforts to fight the decease will be compromised.” Finally, the bishops asked lay Catholic leaders across the country to “get organized and help the people to acquire awareness of the dire situation, as well as the best ways to prevent the decease. With the help of each one of us, we will prevail.”   Read more

2016-02-04T23:39:00+00:00

Los Angeles, Calif., Feb 4, 2016 / 04:39 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- For months, Erwin Mena donned vestments, called himself “Padre,” and convinced Southern California Catholics that he was a priest, police say. He was good at it, too, reportedly. He attended seminary in El Salvador for a time years ago before dropping out, so he was able to convincingly officiate Masses, funerals, and even at least one wedding. He had a likeable personality and said all the right things.   On Tuesday, he was arrested by Los Angeles police for allegedly impersonating a Roman Catholic priest and on suspicion of grand theft. Mena allegedly conned parishioners into buying thousands of dollars’ worth of fake tickets to see Pope Francis in the fall, and he would sell religious CDs and books only to line his own pockets with the profit. He has been charged with 22 felonies and 8 misdemeanors, according to a criminal complaint filed by the L.A. County district attorney’s office. For 5 or 6 months beginning in January of last year, Mena, who would also go by Menacastro, showed up at St. Ignatius of Loyola parish in Highland Park, claiming to be a visiting priest covering for the pastor, who was on vacation, according to police reports. When priests assist at parishes for any significant length of time (more than one Mass), they have to file the appropriate paperwork to prove their priestly credentials. LAPD Det. Gary Guevara told CNA that Mena’s paperwork would sporadically trickle in, enough to raise suspicions but not completely sound the alarm for the parish secretary. “Some of it was coming in, he would say everything’s in San Bernardino, so it was trickling in,” Guevara said. During his time in the archdiocese, Mena would also travel around from parish to parish, selling $25 videos and fundraising for a project he said he was working on - producing CDs about Pope Francis, the Los Angeles Times reports. He also reportedly asked for anywhere from $500-$1,000 from parishioners for a package deal trip to see Pope Francis during his U.S. visit. The cost supposedly included lodging at convents and airfare, and more than two dozen people signed up. Michelle Rodriguez, who heard about the trip from a friend who would host Mena for dinner, originally thought it sounded like a great deal and gave him more than $900 in cash. But when she pressed Mena for details about the trip, he would dodge the specifics, assuring her that she just needed to be patient. Now, she is among those who have filed criminal complaints against Mena. “He used us, he stole from us, and that's it,” Rodriguez told the Los Angeles Times. When a priest approached Mena about his production project, he had an explanation – he claimed he was a Paulist priest. It’s clear he had done his homework, Guevara said, because Paulists specifically focus on evangelization through media. “Everything he said always made sense,” Guevara said, “So it was kind of like the perfect storm in that nobody wanted to pull the trigger, as far as confronting him.” He always had enough of an explanation to be plausible, and people generally liked him.   “There were people who thought he was a great priest, that they really liked him, he looked like a priest, he walked like a priest, he could talk like a priest all the way to the very end,” Guevara added. But Mena couldn’t fool what Guevara called the “professional Church ladies.” It was a feast day with particular Mass parts, and Mena just wasn’t getting it right, he said. “It was a complicated Mass that some of the real professional church ladies have memorized, and literally the jig was all up,” Guevara said. “He was screwing up and everybody was like, what’s going on here?” Within hours, phone calls were being made, and the archdiocese was officially alerted of Mena’s suspicious activities. Soon after, the archdiocese reported him to the police.   “They were collecting information and they were very transparent about it,” Guevara said. “They contacted the police department really quickly and provided us with everything we needed, so it was a really good partnership with us and them.” It seems that Mena may even be a repeat offender – Guevara said that according to Archdiocesan documents, there were issues with Mena as far back as the 1990s. His name has been on a list of unauthorized priests and deacons since 2008, when the record was started. The current investigation is only focusing on his recent alleged transgressions. It’s important to note that Mena was arrested because he was allegedly masquerading as a Roman Catholic priest, Guevara said. A defrocked or retired priest could theoretically start up their own “storefront church” with a ministry certificate from the internet, but he said Mena’s offense is specifically that he pretended to be a Roman Catholic, sacrament-distributing priest. The archdiocese has already reimbursed some of Mena’s alleged victims, and more could be reimbursed at the conclusion of the case. Because of the nature of the ongoing criminal investigation, the archdiocese could not provide much further comment, but asked that anyone with additional information come forward. “We are grateful to the Los Angeles Police Department for working to ensure that Erwin Mena was brought to justice. Our prayers go out to all the victims of his scam. The Archdiocese of Los Angeles is committed to providing pastoral care and sacramental support to the victims and others impacted by this situation,” the Archdiocese said in a statement. “If anyone in the Archdiocese has any questions regarding the validity of any priest’s credentials, or the credentials of any employee of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, please call the Archdiocese Catholic Center, at (213) 637-7000.”   Read more

2016-02-04T23:01:00+00:00

Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, Feb 4, 2016 / 04:01 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Évila Quintana Molina is a single mother in a Mexican prison. She has never spoken in public, to protect her little daughter from being teased by other children. But when she was chosen to give her testimony to Pope Francis, her eight-year-old daughter encouraged her to go ahead. “What’s more, I want to be there with you,” her daughter Camilla told her. On Feb. 17, she will address Pope Francis on the last day of his visit to Mexico. Évila Quintana is imprisoned at Social Rehabilitation Center Number Three in Ciudad Juarez. About 800 prisoners are housed there, including some 100 women. Around 200 of the inmates’ relatives will also be in attendance. Évila Quintana had been a university student who worked in a bank and took care of her daughter. In 2010, she was jailed on accusations of money laundering. She said going to prison was her entrance into very hostile territory. She had never been in jail, not even to visit someone. It was a very difficult stage that she managed to overcome, especially for the sake of  her child. “My little daughter sees this... I ask her if she’s ashamed of me and she says no, that she never would be. On the contrary, (she says) that I’m a very brave woman,” Évila said. The 34-year-old woman told the Mexican daily news outlet Presencia Digital that her case is still in legal proceedings and so she held back details of her case. However, she says that she now believes she has a God of justice who will determine how much time she will spend in prison. She recounted the day she heard she had been chosen to speak to the Pope. She was working in the store at the women’s prison when she was called in for a hearing. She did not know what it was for. “I thought: ‘what’s happened now?’” She read a piece of paper they gave her. After a few hours they told her she had been chosen to give a testimony to the Pope. Évila Quintana asked the hearing: “Do you think I really deserve this? Because I’m really a sinner. To stand up in a public place and offer him a few words, I think this is a huge responsibility, and I am a sinner for real.” The person at the hearing answered: “I’m not the one who chose you, it was God.” The woman acknowledged that she is not a practicing Catholic. But she said she knows that “God is always with me, this is part of my getting closer to his Church again, to come back.” Writing her speech for the Pope was another matter. “They told me you’ve got to tell him what was it like going to prison, your time there, your feelings as a mom, how you’re getting through it, how you feel, what a visit is like for you. They gave me three topics to talk on and I had to develop them, and I said, ‘how am I going to relate to a holy person?’” she told Presencia Digital. The young mother could not find anything to write about. Then she remembered that when she was arrested in Mexico City, she read a Bible verse she paraphrased as saying, “you need to talk to the prisoners, as if you were in the jail with them.” “I think this is what I’m going to base my speech on,” Évila Quintana thought. More than material things, she emphasized, prisoners need “a phone call, and occasionally asking you how you’re doing. Those things are important.” In Pope Francis’ travels as “a missionary of mercy” he is “emulating the footsteps of Christ,” she said. “He’s trying to be with everyone who has a spiritual need.” “I’m part of his people, and so he serves as a pastor who starts to gather together his little sheep to get them back on the path... we’re part of the people of God, we’re part of society, we need a period of time to rejoin society, but we’re not outside of God’s people,” she reflected. To prepare for her speech, Évila Quintana tried to think of what she had in common with the Pope. Help came in the form of a phone call from Camilla. “My daughter told me, ‘you and the Pope have the same birthday.'” Évila Quintana was still concerned that children will be cruel to her daughter if they learn her mother is in jail. She tried her best to keep the news quiet that she was going to speak in front of the Pope. However, her daughter had a different view. “Mommy, I’m not going to be ashamed at all. What’s more, I want to be with you,” were Camilla’s words. She will be next to her mother on Feb. 17, when she addresses the Pope. Évila Quintana said that Pope Francis’ visit will help all of Mexico. Ciudad Juarez, as a border city, has been “very much harmed by violence.” “I believe that he is bringing a message of peace,” she said. Read more

2016-02-04T19:59:00+00:00

Washington D.C., Feb 4, 2016 / 12:59 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- In their keynote address at the National Prayer Breakfast, the couple behind the History Channel’s ‘The Bible’ miniseries called for efforts to unite people of different faiths... Read more

2016-02-04T17:03:00+00:00

Vatican City, Feb 4, 2016 / 10:03 am (CNA/EWTN News).- The incorrupt body of Padre Pio has arrived to Rome for the first time ever alongside that of another friar, St. Leopold Mandi?, as a special initiative for the Jubilee of Mercy. Urns containing t... Read more

2016-02-04T13:22:00+00:00

Los Angeles, Calif., Feb 4, 2016 / 06:22 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Efforts to combat social injustice cannot forget that the right to life is foundational, Archbishop Jose H. Gomez of Los Angeles said at a Hispanic pro-life gathering last week. Pro-life qu... Read more

2016-02-04T10:03:00+00:00

Chicago, Ill., Feb 4, 2016 / 03:03 am (CNA/EWTN News).- The Chicago area didn’t get the piles of snow that much of the rest of the country did this week, to the disappointment of students and staff at Holy Family Academy. “We’ve carved out a little cross-country trail for when we get snow, so the kids from first grade on up go cross-country skiing for gym,” Deb Atkins, director of school development, told CNA. “So, we were cheering for snow, but it’s not happening,” she said. Just rain and cold temperatures. Normally, the students at Holy Family Academy spend a lot of time outside. Located just outside of Chicago in Iverness, Ill., the school is situated on 20 acres of land that has recently been converted into an “outdoor classroom.” With the help of the Lincoln, Neb.-based “Nature Explore”, a collaboration of the Arbor Day Foundation and Dimensions Educational Research Foundation, Holy Family Academy became the first school in the Chicago area to have a certified outdoor classroom, which is incorporated into the daily life and learning of the students. A retention area that used to flood all the time has been allowed to grow wild and return to its native prairie state. There’s a playground, athletic fields, a hill with a rope attached for climbing and rappelling, and a supply of sleds for snowy days. Almost every class incorporates the outdoor space in some way, Atkins said. “It really is hard to say where the outdoor classroom stops and the other learning starts,” she said. Right now, some students are designing a squirrel-proof bird feeder, after the squirrels outsmarted what was a supposedly squirrel-proof bird feeder from the store. There are several different types of gardens, including a rain garden – designed by third graders – with specifically selected native plants that filter out some of the pollutants that can seep into groundwater. Atkins said she’s noticed how much more comfortable the students are out in nature since they’ve been using the outdoor classroom. “It is getting back to nature, appreciating nature,” she said. “When we first started, we had the little girlies who, if they saw a spider they would scream. Now they come up to me with a grasshopper in hand and say ‘Look what we found!’” The care and appreciation the kids are learning for creation carries over into everything they do, Atkins said. For example, every year the students participate in a “Know Hunger” campaign, where they research hunger in their area and try to come up with some practical solutions. The students were especially appalled by the amount of food waste in fields, grocery stores, and even at home, Atkins said, so the school decided to donate extra lunch food to a nearby shelter for elderly people. “We’re caring for God’s creation, but we’re caring for each other at the same time,” Atkins said. This upcoming Lent, the students are also going to be participating in “Waste-free Wednesdays,” during which they will learn more about recycling and alternatives to wasting food. “It’s one of those things where if you start them early, it really becomes a habit,” Atkins said. The outdoor space has also been a great way thing for students physically – it promotes exercise and even better attention spans in the classroom, Atkins said. “I have a son who has ADHD, and the worst thing to happen to that guy is that he had to stay in for recess, because he could control himself better if he had physical activity,” she said. “So we don’t have that kind of consequence, that you need to stay in from recess, because it wasn’t working.” “It really promotes independence and exploring, and physical activity,” she said. “These kids are lifting logs and poles, running around, and we have a hill with a rope attached … it really does get the kids moving.” Much of the materials for the outdoor space have been made possible through donations, either monetary or plant-like in nature, Atkins said. Three alums of the K-8 school even came back to donate their Eagle Scout projects as part of the outdoor space. Even before the established outdoor classroom, Holy Family Academy would send its middle school students on overnight outdoor education trips, Atkins said, so the idea of outdoor education and care for creation has always been important to them. They were even more thrilled when they found out Pope Francis was on board, with the publication of his environmental encyclical, Laudato si'. “We’ve had an emphasis on this for a while,” Atkins said, “and we just love that the Pope is promoting it, because that’s what we want to do.” Read more

2016-02-04T07:04:00+00:00

Washington D.C., Feb 4, 2016 / 12:04 am (CNA/EWTN News).- The future of religious freedom in the United States will one day be in the care of today’s college students, so one Catholic college is working to equip them for that struggle. Wyoming Catholic College is trying to form a “community of people who care about what’s going on in the world,” Dr. Kevin Roberts, the college's president, explained to CNA in an interview. They do this through “informal circles of conversation” among faculty, staff, and students on specific current-day threats to religious freedom such as the HHS contraception mandate and anti-discrimination statues, he explained. Roberts was speaking at a Jan. 21 Heritage Foundation panel on “Religious Liberty and the Future.” He addressed the topic from the vantage point of a college president who is forming students – future leaders – to deal with threats to religious freedom. “We would much rather be focused on the formation of human persons,” he admitted. “It would delight us to no end not to have to worry about religious liberty beyond it being an academic topic.” The reality, he acknowledged, is different. The college must not only must teach students about their civic heritage of religious freedom, but must “give them some advice, some practical tools for being involved in that fight.” The school is a co-plaintiff with the Diocese of Cheyenne against the HHS mandate, in a case currently suspended before the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals. Students have been updated about this mandate case, Roberts told CNA.   Another possible threat to religious freedom he listed is the expansion of Title IX protections. Title IX “prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex in any federally funded education program or activity.” While it is a good law, Roberts noted, the definition of sex discrimination could be radically expanded. If so, it could establish new prohibitions that conflict with the Catholic identity of schools receiving federal funding. As a result, Wyoming Catholic College has cut ties with federally-funded student loans and grants. They had to “hustle” to make up the funding loss, he admitted, but maintained it was the best decision. Students are part of the decisions on student loans, he added. “The point is, that as we inform them on those things, we update them on those things, they want to become more involved in what’s going on there,” he said of the students. Faculty can talk with them about this every day over lunch. “That’s essential in Catholic higher education right now,” Roberts said, noting that there is “passivity, if not outright apathy” among many young people. “It’s really important that leaders in Catholic higher education be pointed and specific with their students about the threats we’re seeing.” Ultimately, however, these conversations must be prefaced with an intense spiritual and intellectual grounding for the students, he explained. “When we’re talking about religious liberty, that’s the fourth or fifth step in this formation,” he said. “The first step is our relationship with [God], and secondly the outward devotions, the signs, of course the sacraments,” he said. “The third would be the building of the community, and then fourth is the knowledge. And then the fifth step is this kind of explicit participation in the public square.” That step “is very empty, in our minds, it is very hollow … if the first four aren’t kept,” he added. Apathy about religious freedom is the most notable problem among students on this issue, he said, but there are others – many students don’t recognize heroes any more. “The content, the substance, of curricula in American secondary education is abysmal, from a historical perspective,” he said. “There’s a lot of pablum,” he added, and “one of the things we don’t do is get students to have a love for heroes in history, generally.” Thus, students “become very distrusting of leaders and of institutions, and then they don’t even have the knowledge to understand that plenty of generations in American history have been asked to do heroic things, and they don’t know what to do other than put their heads in the sand.” Read more

2016-02-03T22:55:00+00:00

Vatican City, Feb 3, 2016 / 03:55 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Pope Francis will leave for Mexico in just over a week. In a new interview with a Mexican news agency, he told citizens of the crime-ridden country that while there, he hopes to be a messenger of peace, which must be fought for daily. “Violence, corruption, war, children who cannot go to school because of their countries at war, trafficking, arms manufacturers who sell weapons so that the wars in the world can continue.” “More or less this is the climate in which we are living in the world today,” the Pope said in an interview with Mexican news agency Notimex State, published Feb. 3. The interview marks the first time Pope Francis has participated in a collective interview, in which he responded to four questions posed by 33 people from various states across Mexico. Francis recorded his answers to the questions, which were raised by some 16 women and 17 men, on Jan. 22, in his residence at the Vatican’s Saint Martha guesthouse. Echoing the well-known prayer named after his patron, “The Prayer of St. Francis of Assisi,” the Pope said that “I would like to be an instrument of peace in Mexico,” but said that he won’t be able to do it alone. “It is obvious that I cannot do it alone, it would be crazy if I said that, but with all of you, an instrument of peace,” he said, adding that peace is something that is “kneaded with your hands” every day through small gestures of charity. “Peace is born from tenderness, peace is born from understanding, peace is born or made with dialogue, not in rupture,” he said, and emphasized the importance of dialogue in the various areas and environments of one’s life. He also encouraged Mexico's citizens to pray to Our Lady of Guadalupe, “Mexico's mother,” for assistance in achieving peace in the country, which has been plagued by increasing violence and drug trafficking for years. “I would ask each of you the question: do I ask the Virgin of Guadalupe, Mexico's mother, Empress of America, do I ask her for peace? Do I ask her to make peace, in that place, in that person?” he asked. The Pope said he's going to pray to Our Lady of Guadalupe on behalf of Mexico's citizens, “that she gives you peace of heart, of family, of city and of country.” Pope Francis is scheduled to visit Mexico from Feb. 12-17, just over a week from now. In addition to visiting the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe, which he has said is the primary reason for the visit, Francis will also travel to the border U.S. border city Ciudad Juárez, as well as Chiapas, one of the poorest regions in the country. In the interview, Francis said that he’s not coming to Mexico as a “Wise Man” with a list of messages, ideas or solutions to problems, but rather as “a pilgrim” who wants to receive from the people and culture he encounters. “I’m going to look for the wealth of faith that you have, I'll try to be contaminated by that wealth of faith,” he said, adding that Mexico has an “idiosyncrasy, a way of being that is the result of a very long journey, of a history that was slowly forged” with both joy and sorrow, success and failure. Above all, Mexico has the wealth of refusing to be “orphans” because of their Mother, he said, referring to the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe. This, Francis said, is perhaps “the greatest wealth that I will seek.” Veneration of Our Lady of Guadalupe dates back to the 16th century, and surrounds a miraculous image of Mary left on a tilma, made from a piece of poor-quality cactus cloth. It all started when a “Lady from Heaven” appeared to Saint Juan Diego, a poor Indian from Tepeyac, on a hill northwest of Mexico City. Over the course of a series of apparitions in 1531, the woman, who identified herself as the Mother of the True God, instructed Juan Diego to have the bishop build a church on the site. As a sign, the now-famous image of Our Lady of Guadalupe, was imprinted miraculously on his tilma. Both the image and the tilma remain intact after more than 470 years. The Pope said that when he thinks of Our Lady of Guadalupe, he things of “safety and tenderness.” He said that he frequently prays to her whenever he has a problem or when he doesn’t know how to react to a bad situation. When these things happen, the Pope said he likes to repeat Mary’s words to St. Juan Diego during one of her apparitions: “Do not be afraid. Am I not here who am your Mother?” “This is what I feel: that she is a Mother, that she cares, protects, carries a people forward, conducts a family, that she gives warmth to the home, tenderly caresses and takes away the fear. That's what I feel in front of the image.” Pope Francis explained that during one of his two previous visits to the shrine before his election, someone attempted to explain the symbolic image to him, but he declined and preferred to sit in silence before the “talkative” image. This time, which marks his third visit to the shrine, the Pope asked for a similar favor: “What I would ask is that this time…you leave me alone for a little while before the image. It is the favor I ask.” In his final response, Francis offered a few of his own expectations for Mexicans, primarily that they wouldn’t keep their faith inside to themselves, but would instead go out “to the streets,” and become visible in public life. “Faith must grow and go out and put itself into daily life, a public faith. And faith becomes stronger when is public, especially in times of crisis,” he said. “There is a great blessing and a desire – expressed by you – of faith jumps out, that faith is a missionary faith, that faith is not bottled, like a tin can,” he said, explaining that faith is born from an encounter with Jesus, our savior. From this encounter, faith then “has to go out on the street,” including our schools, places of work, and even our conversations with others, he said. The Pope alluded to the Cristero War of the 1920s, saying that Mexico has “martyrs in your history who have given their lives to follow this path,” and encouraged them not to stay locked up inside with Jesus, but to let him out, because “if we don’t go out, he doesn’t go out.” He said that to renew one’s faith in this way means not being afraid of conflicts, but instead means searching for solutions. While this might have its risks, the Pope reminded Mexicans of Mary’s words to Juan Diego: “do not be afraid to go out, do not be afraid my little son, my little daughter. Am I not here who am your Mother?" Read more




Browse Our Archives