Rome, Italy, Mar 9, 2015 / 09:51 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Christians cannot hide their lives from Jesus, Pope Francis has said. Instead, they must recognize their sins and trust in the mercy of God. During the season of Lent, the Pope said, we should as... Read more
Vatican City, Mar 8, 2015 / 05:06 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Women across the globe received a special greeting on Sunday from Pope Francis, who stressed the importance of their unique perspectives on the world. “A world where women are marginalized is a sterile world,” the Pope said during his address to the crowds who had gathered in St. Peter's Square to take part in the recitation of the Angelus with the Pope. “Not only do women carry life,” he said, “but they transmit to us the capacity to see otherwise– they see things differently.” Women also pass on the ability to “understand the world with different eyes, to feel the most creative, most patient, most tender things with the heart.” The Pope's words came on International Woman's Day, celebrated each year on March 8 throughout the world. To mark the occasion, the Holy Father offered his greeting to all those who “seek each day to build a more human and welcoming society.” He also offered a “fraternal thanks” to those women who, in thousands of ways, bear witness to the Gospel and work in the Church.” Pope Francis' remarks coincided with a conference held on Sunday at the Vatican aimed at giving a voice to those women working on the fringes of society. The gathering, titled “Voices of Faith,” brought together various women – human rights activists, policy makers, academics -- to give witness to their work in areas of poverty and the defense of human dignity and equality. Read more
Washington D.C., Mar 8, 2015 / 03:18 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- With the Supreme Court set to rule on a potentially far-reaching marriage case this summer, several hundred corporations are pushing for the court to require “gay marriage” recogniti... Read more
Vatican City, Mar 8, 2015 / 10:28 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Pope Francis drew a penitential lesson from Jesus’ Cleansing of the Temple, encouraging Christians to allow Jesus to drive out “all the behaviors that are against God, against our neighbor, and against ourselves.” “Does the Lord feel at home in my life? Do we allow Him to ‘cleanse’ our hearts and to drive out the idols, those attitudes of cupidity, jealousy, worldliness, envy, hatred, those habits of gossiping and tearing down others?” the Pope asked in his Angelus address March 8, according to Vatican Radio. Before thousands of people gathered in St. Peter’s Square Sunday, the Pope reflected on the Sunday gospel reading about Jesus’ confrontation with moneychangers and merchants in the Temple in Jerusalem. Driving out the merchants and money changers with a whip, Jesus said: “Take these things away; you shall not make my Father's house a house of trade.” (John 2:16). The Pope noted how the people and the disciples saw this action as a “prophetic gesture.” “Jesus cleanses with tenderness, with mercy, with love. Mercy is His way of cleansing,” Pope Francis said. “Let us, each of us, let us allow the Lord to enter with His mercy – not with the whip, no, with His mercy – to cleanse our hearts. The whip of Jesus with us is His mercy. Let us open to Him the gates so that He would make us a little cleaner.” Pope Francis encouraged Christians to “travel in the world as Jesus did” and to “make our whole existence a sign of love for our brothers, especially the weakest and poorest.” “Let us build for God a temple of our lives,” he continued. “If we are witnesses of this living Christ, so many people will encounter Jesus in us, in our witness.” The Pope also reflected on the nature of Jesus’ body as a temple of God. “His body, destroyed on the Cross by the violence of sin, will become in the Resurrection the universal meeting place between God and men,” he said. “And the Risen Christ is Himself the universal meeting place – for everyone! – between God and men.” “For this reason, His humanity is the true temple where God is revealed, speaks, is encountered,” the Pope added. The true worshippers of God are not only “the guardians of the material temple, the keepers of power and of religious knowledge.” God’s true worshippers are also “those who worship God ‘in spirit and truth’.” Pope Francis connected Christians’ call to become temples of God with the reception of the Holy Eucharist. “Every Eucharist that we celebrate with faith makes us grow as a living temple of the Lord, thanks to the communion with His crucified and risen Body,” the Pope said. “Jesus recognizes that which is in each of us, and knows well our most ardent desires: that of being inhabited by Him, only by Him.” “Let us allow Him to enter into our lives, into our families, into our hearts,” the pontiff concluded. Read more
Philadelphia, Pa., Mar 8, 2015 / 06:06 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI’s visit the United Kingdom in 2010 was supposed to be a disaster. Several people were calling for his arrest upon arrival. No one was expected to show up for h... Read more
Vatican City, Mar 7, 2015 / 06:39 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Jesus’ cleansing of the moneychangers from the Temple is a reminder to Christians of the need for “authentic worship” and “conformity between liturgy and life,” Pope Francis said. The Pope warned against entering the “Lord’s House” while behaving in a way contrary to “justice, honesty, and charity toward one’s neighbor.” Worship and liturgical celebrations, he explained in a homily, are “a privileged environment for listening to the Lord’s voice, which guides us on the path of righteousness and of Christian perfection.” Pope Francis delivered his March 7 homily at Rome’s Church of Ognissanti--the Church of All Saints. He began with a reflection on the Gospel of St. John’s account of Jesus’ confrontation with money changers and merchants within the Temple in Jerusalem. Driving out the merchants and money changers, Jesus said: “Take these things away; you shall not make my Father's house a house of trade” (John 2:16). Christ’s words, the Pope said, refer not only to those conducting business within the Temple, but “above all a type of religiosity.” Jesus’ act of cleansing and “purification” is a reminder of the need for authenticity in worship. Pope Francis added that Christians do not go to church only to “observe a precept,” or to feel right with God but to “encounter the Lord” and discover the “strength to think and act according to the Gospel.” “The Church calls us to have and promote an authentic liturgical life,” the Pope said, explaining that this is “harmony between that which the liturgy celebrates and that which we experience in our lives.” More than a “doctrine” or a “rite to be executed,” the liturgy is “fundamentally a source of life and light for our faith.” Pope Francis cited “Sacrosanctum Concilium,” the Second Vatican Council's Constitution of the Sacred Liturgy, which he said “reaffirms the essential bond that unifies the life of Jesus' disciple and liturgical worship.” The Pope reflected on the liturgical season of Lent as a “time of interior renewal” and for remission of sins. He stressed the importance of the Sacrament of Reconciliation. This sacrament “helps us grow in union with God, regain lost joy, and experience the consolation of feeling personally welcomed by the merciful embrace of the Father.” The pastoral visit to the Church of Ognissanti marks the 50th anniversary of Blessed Pope Paul VI’s 1965 visit to the same parish. Pope Paul VI celebrated the Mass in the vernacular for the first time there according to the new norms of the Second Vatican Council. On Saturday, Pope Francis recalled Paul VI’s inaugural Mass in the “language of the people.” He expressed his hope that the anniversary would revive in everyone “love for God’s house.” “Hearing the Word of God, proclaimed in the liturgical assembly, sustains you in the journey of your Christian life,” he said. He concluded his homily with a call for a renewed commitment to the purification of the Church’s “spiritual edifice.” Read more
Santiago, Chile, Mar 7, 2015 / 04:32 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Proponents of a euthanasia bill in Chile are exploiting a sick young girl for political purposes, the girl’s father has charged. Fourteen-year-old Valentina Maureira suffers from cystic... Read more
Vatican City, Mar 7, 2015 / 01:49 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- What’s so important about an encounter? Pope Francis thinks one encounter is key to everything. “Everything in our life, today as at the time of Jesus, begins with an encounter,” the Pope said at a March 7 audience. Christ is always there first: “when we arrive, He is there waiting.” He reflected on the life of Monsignor Luigi Giussani, founder of the Communion and Liberation movement. His life was not an “encounter with an idea,” the pontiff said, but “with a Person, with Jesus Christ.” It was in this context of encountering Christ that Msgr. Giussani taught about freedom, since “Christ gives us true freedom.” Around eighty thousand Communion and Liberation members from 50 countries gathered in St. Peter's Square Saturday morning to mark the tenth anniversary of the death of Msgr. Giussani. The papal audience also coincided with the 60th anniversary of the movement's founding. Fr. Giussani was born Oct. 15, 1922, in the Italian city of Desio, located just north of Milan, the country's second most populous city. Upon his death on Feb. 22, 2005, then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who was a close friend and confidant of Giussani, delivered the homily at his funeral. Pope Francis expressed his gratitude for the priest known as Don Giussani, praising his writings and the positive impact they made on him and his own priesthood. He also praised the priest’s “deeply human way of thinking” which reached the “most intimate yearning of man.” Pope Francis said the Communion and Liberation movement “has not lost its freshness and vitality” after sixty years, but he reminded those present to remember always that Jesus Christ is its only center. “All spiritualities, all charisms within the Church, must be ‘decentralized': at the center, there is only the Lord!” The Pope cited St. Paul’s discussion of spiritual gifts, called charisms, in the First Letter to the Corinthians. The apostle says that love that comes from God is “proper” and “allows us to imitate him.” The Pope said that a charism is not meant to be “preserved in a bottle of ‘distilled water’,” or “turned to stone.” Nor can it be “reduced to a museum of memories, decisions, rules of conduct.” Pope Francis reflected upon Christian morality, describing it as a response to God rather than a force of its own. Christian morality is not “a titanic, voluntaristic force” or a “solitary challenge facing the world,” the Pope said. Rather, morality is the response to a mercy that is “surprising, unpredictable, even ‘unjust,’ according to human criteria.” This mercy is from God, “who knows me, who knows my betrayals and loves me all the same, who esteems me, embraces me, calls me again, hopes in me, awaits me.” The Communion and Liberation movement traces its roots back to Msgr. Giussani’s close ties with the Catholic “Gioventù Studentesca” (“Student Youth”) group that was born in 1954 at Milan’s Berchet High School, where he was a teacher. The movement is composed mainly of lay persons. It also has members who are priests, religious, and consecrated lay men and women. Pope Francis concluded his address by imploring God’s blessing and Mary’s protection, reminding the faithful to remember him in their prayers. Read more
Denver, Colo., Mar 7, 2015 / 06:08 am (CNA/EWTN News).- For Archbishop Samuel Aquila of Denver, the biggest challenges to priestly formation today can be overcome through divine friendship with Christ and the practice of Christian love. “The priest is to be a man of charity because he must know himself as a beloved son in the Son,” the Denver archbishop said in a Feb. 20 address, adding that the priest should be someone who “lives in deep communion and friendship with Christ.” “Human formation finds its fulfillment in that friendship with Christ, which is at the heart of spiritual formation,” he said. “In other words, human formation finds its fulfillment in charity.” The archbishop spoke at a symposium for the Institute for Priestly Formation, co-sponsored by the Archdiocese of Denver’s Saint John Vianney Theological Seminary, which hosted the Feb. 19-21 event. Priestly formation is “one of the most demanding and important tasks that the Church must carry out,” he explained, taking guidance from St. John Paul II’s 1992 apostolic exhortation on the priesthood, Pastores dabo vobis. Archbishop Aquila stressed the importance of the virtue of charity in both human and divine friendship. The archbishop stressed the importance of spiritual formation that is “all about living in intimate and unceasing union with God and the mysteries of Christ.” Its core is “friendship with God.” “To abide in Christ means to enter into a relationship of friendship with him that is analogous to the relationship between God the Father and the Son. Jesus is the Way. Becoming sons in the Son, we are inserted in the very life of the Trinity.” Just as Christ's love for God the Father is manifested in his “obedience unto death” and “gift of self” for the Church, priests’ love for Christ is shown in their obedience and “gift of self” to Christ and the Church. “Sheer obedience does not create friendship, let alone this supernatural kind of friendship,” Archbishop Aquila explained. Rather, obedience is the expression of this supernatural friendship. He said the priest should have “a hidden life in Christ” in order to “to taste the intimacy that friends enjoy.” “If we tell our secrets to Christ in prayer, he will tell us his,” the archbishop said. “In this hidden life in Christ, the priest, as a man of charity, is called to think with the mind of Christ, to have the same feelings as Jesus, to freely will what Christ wills, and to educate accordingly his thoughts, feelings, and desires.” The archbishop reflected on the nature of gifts, which are “gratuitous” and given “without intention of payback.” “For this reason, one gives something for free to another, because one wants the good for him,” he added. The gift of one’s love is “the first and foremost gratuitous gift that a person offers to another.” The archbishop said priestly formation faces “serious challenges.” Families once offered a solid human formation that was a basis for seminary formation, but this is no longer the situation in many cases. Seminary candidates often lack sufficient catechesis and knowledge of the faith and have been affected by “worldliness” such as broken families, a lack of maturity, and pornography and a sex-saturated culture. However, he said, these challenges can be faced with hope through formation in the Holy Spirit and through the person of Jesus Christ, who is “rich in mercy.” Read more
Lashio, Burma, Mar 6, 2015 / 04:31 pm (UCA News).- A parish in the Shan state of Burma, also known as Myanmar, became embroiled in the region’s spiraling conflict last week when small artillery shells landed in the church compound. Kutkai Township, located between the cities of Lashio and Muse on the main overland trade route between Burma and China’s Yunnan province, has seen an influx of internally displaced persons so far this year as clashes between Burmese government forces and a number of ethnic armed groups operating in the region have intensified. It is rare for the conflict to directly impact the local Catholic Church, but Kutkai’s parish faced suspicion by the military following an incident on the night of Feb. 24. Father John Sau Luk, the parish priest, told UCA News that a bomb attack followed by a brief skirmish took place close to the front of the church’s compound that night. “Three shells were fired at the church. Two exploded and one did not, so the army came to deal with the unexploded shell on Wednesday” the priest said. “When it happened I crawled under the bed. My assistant parish priest was sleeping in his room and some shrapnel hit the window and smashed it.” In addition to the window in the priest's quarters, one of the windows on the facade of the church itself was also broken. Fr. John Sau Luk said the shells were only about four inches long, but sent small pieces of metal flying in all directions. It was not clear who was responsible for firing the shells. As well as the Burmese military and a local government-backed militia group, fighters of the Kachin Independence Army, the Ta’ang National Liberation Army and the Shan State Army-North are all known to be active in the area. The day after the shelling, the military entered the church compound, questioned a number of people and thoroughly searched the church and priests’ house. Five young men who live in the church compound and a 55-year-old gatekeeper were then taken to the local military base for further questioning. “They blindfolded three of us and hit me with the butt of a rifle,” said one of those questioned, a 19-year-old who helps out with gardening in the church compound, who asked that his name be withheld. All six men insisted they were not involved in the clashes the night before, he said, but they were interrogated, often violently, for five hours by the military before being handed over to the police and later released. “They accused us of being rebels, and shouted at us: ‘Where are the guns? Where are the bombs?’” the young man said. “One of the others couldn't speak much Burmese, so they beat him more,” he added. The majority of Catholics in Kutkai belong to the Kachin ethnic minority. Recent fighting in the area around Kutkai has led to 450 new internally displaced people taking refuge in the township since the start of 2015, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA). Hundreds of people are already living in temporary camps in the town — including one situated in the Catholic church compound — and elsewhere in northern Shan state, where fighting has spilled over from the four-year old conflict in Kachin state to the north. Heavy clashes broke out last month in the Kokang self-administered region, about 60 miles east of Kutkai, involving an ethnic Chinese rebel group called the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army. At least 30,000 people have fled over the border into China, where humanitarian access has been limited, and according to UNOCHA around 13,000 people, mostly ethnic Bamar migrant workers, escaped westward, many returning to their homes in central Burma. Read more
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