Vatican City, Jan 24, 2015 / 07:02 am (CNA/EWTN News).- In a letter to the 20 bishops who will be elevated to the cardinalate next month, Pope Francis said that the role is one of sacrificial service rather than an award, and cautioned against a worldl... Read more

Vatican City, Jan 23, 2015 / 03:55 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Pope Francis said that confessing our sins isn't a “mechanical” procedure like getting a stained removed but rather a joyful embrace from God, who forgives everything from a heart that's repentant. “There is no sin which (God) won’t pardon. He forgives everything…If you go (to confession) repentant, he will forgive everything,” Pope Francis told those gathered in the Vatican’s Saint Martha guesthouse for his Jan. 23 daily Mass. Pope Francis centered his homily on the day's first reading from St. Paul to the Hebrews where the apostle says that the new covenant enacted by Jesus is better than the old covenants, and that the previous ones will “vanish away.” In the reading St. Paul also speaks of God’s mercy, saying that God “will be merciful” toward his people’s injustices, and will “remember their sins no more.” God always forgives every sin without exception whenever someone asks for pardon, the Pope explained, noting that Jesus came in order to make a pact with humanity, and the foundation of this pact is the forgiveness of our sins. “God always forgives us. He never tires of this. It’s we who get tired of asking for forgiveness, but HE does not tire of pardoning us,” Pope Francis said. He recalled how when Peter in the Gospel asks Jesus how often we should forgive others, Jesus responds by saying “Not seven times: seventy times by seven,” or, “Namely always.” This is how God forgives, Pope Francis noted, saying that even if a person has lived their entire life committing many sins and terrible acts, if they repentantly ask for forgiveness the Lord will “immediately” pardon them. The Pope observed how doubts can often arise in a person’s heart as to how far and how much God is willing to forgive. However, he said that we don’t have to worry because Christ has already paid the price of sin on our behalf. Although there are many who might say “I don’t go to confession because I have committed so many really bad sins, so many that I can’t be pardoned,” the pontiff stressed that “No, this is not true. (God) forgives everything.” Often times God doesn’t even let us finish speaking, the Pope said, noting that as soon as we begin to ask for pardon, “He lets you feel that joy of forgiveness before you have even finished confessing.” Pope Francis then said that God rejoices whenever a person asks for forgiveness, and erases our sins from his memory. God does this, the Pope said, because what is important for him is that we encounter him, because going to confession is not a judgment, but rather a meeting point with God. “Confessions often seem like a procedure, a formality. Everything is mechanical! No! Where’s the meeting in this?” the Pope asked, noting that confession is instead an encounter with the Lord who “pardons you, hugs you and rejoices.” He concluded his homily by encouraging those present to teach others, especially their children and the youth, how to make a good confession. To go to confession “is not like going to the dry cleaners to get a stain removed,” the Pope said. “No! It’s about going to meet with our Father who pardons us, who forgives us and who rejoices.” Read more

Vatican City, Jan 23, 2015 / 01:16 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- In investigating the validity of a marriage, ecclesial judges should consider whether the decision to marry was made in the context of values and faith, Pope Francis said on Friday. Pope Francis opened the judicial year of the Roman Rota, the highest appellate tribunal of the Church, addressing them Jan. 23. Among its competences, the Rota is the highest appellate court for cases of the declaration of nullity of marriages, and this is why Pope Francis address was a reflection on  “the human and cultural context in which matrimonial intention is formed.” In his speech, Pope Francis maintained that an understanding of the nature of marriage is a criterion by which to judge the validity of a marriage; asked for an increase of the number of canon lawyers available at local tribunals; and that the availability of services free of charge be increased. In his address, Pope Francis stressed that “the crisis of values in society” is not a recent phenomenon, quoting Bl. Paul VI's 1974 address opening the Rota's judicial year, in which he said that modern man “at times wounded by a systematic relativism, that bends to the easiest choices of circumstance, of demagogy, of fashion, of passion, of hedonism, of selfishness, so that externally he attempts to dispute the mastery of the law, and internally, almost without realising, substitutes the empire of moral conscience with the whim of psychological consciousness.” Pope Francis added that “in effect, the abandonment of the perspective of faith leads inexorably to a false understanding of marriage, which does not lie without consequences for the maturation of the nuptial will.” He reflected that the Church is able “to rejoice in the many, many families who, sustained and nurtured by a sincere faith” partake of the goods of marriage and participate in it with “fidelity and determination,” but added that the Church also knows the pain of many families which “collapse, leaving behind the rubble of relations, projects, common expectations.” A tribunal judge, Pope Francis said, “is required to perform his judicial analysis where there is doubt regarding the validity of marriage, to ascertain whether there was an original shortcoming in consent, either directly in terms of a defect in the validity of intention or a grave deficit in the understanding of marriage itself to the extent of determining will.” The Pope made reference for the first of two times in his speech to canon 1099 of the Code of Canon Law, which states that “error concerning the unity or indissolubility or sacramental dignity of marriage does not vitiate matrimonial consent provided that it does not determine the will.” He continued, saying, “the crisis in marriage, indeed, not infrequently has at its root the crisis in knowledge enlightened by faith, or rather by adhesion to God and his plan of love realized in Jesus Christ.” Pope Francis asserted that “pastoral experience teaches us there is today a large number of faithful in irregular situations, whose histories have been strongly influenced by the widespread worldly mentality” citing his words in Evangelii Gaudium about “spiritual worldliness” as a temptation faced by pastoral workers. “It is evident that, when people adopt this attitude, faith is deprived of its normative and orienting value, and leaves open a space for compromises with selfishness and with the pressures of the current mentality, which has become dominant through the mass media.” “Therefore, the judge, in evaluating the validity of the consent given, must take into account the context of values and faith – or their deficiency or absence – in which the marriage intent was formed.” Again citing canon 1099, he said “the lack of knowledge of the contents of faith may lead to what the Code describes as an error determining the will.” According to Pope Francis, this kind of error is not to be “deemed as exceptional as in the past, given the frequent prevalence of worldly thought over the magisterium of the Church.” Such an error “threatens the stability of marriage, its exclusivity and its fecundity, as well as marriage's orientation to the good of the other,  of conjugal love as ‘vital principle’ of the consensus, of mutual giving to establish a life-long union,” Pope Francis stressed. The Roman Pontiff therefore exhorted the members of the Rota “to a greater and passionate diligence in your ministry, offered in the service of the protection of the unity of the jurisprudence of the Church.” “Here too there is a need for pastoral conversion on the part of ecclesiastical structures to be able to offer the opus iustitiae (work of justice) to all those who turn to the Church to shed light on their matrimonial situation,” he said, referring again to Evangelii Gaudium. He made reference to paragraph 27, in which he wrote, “I dream of a 'missionary option', that is, a missionary impulse capable of transforming everything, so that the Church’s customs, ways of doing things, times and schedules, language and structures can be suitably channeled for the evangelization of today’s world rather than for her self-preservation.” “This is the great difficulty of your mission, along with judges in every diocese,” he told the members of the Rota: “not to keep the salvation of persons enclosed within the straits of legalism.” “The function of law is guided toward the salus animarum (salvation of souls) on the condition that, avoiding sophisms distant from the living flesh of people in difficulty, it may help to establish the truth of the moment of consent: whether it was faithful to Christ or to the deceitful worldly mentality.” Pope Francis also cited a 1973 address of Bl. Paul VI in which he noted that the supreme goal of law is the salvation of souls. Pope Francis also urged an increased presence of canon law experts in every dioceses to “counsel about a possible cause for a declaration of nullity,” and for the presence of “stable court appointed attorneys,” so that “real access for all the faithful to the justice of the Church’s justice” is assured. He added, “I would like to underline that a significant number of cases dealt with before the Roman Rota are enabled by legal aid granted to those whose economic situation would not otherwise allow them to engage the services of lawyer.” “This is a point I would like to stress,” he concluded: “sacraments are free-of-charge. The sacraments give us grace. And marriage processes touch on the sacrament of marriage. How I would like all marriage processes to be free-of-charge!” According to data, 53 percent of the processes adjudicated at the Rota are free, and the contribution to the expenses of the procedures consists in a one time fee of $650. Bishops conferences have also addressed the issue. The Ialian bishops conference, for example, has a defined payment structure for canon lawyers, who cannot be paid more than $3,610, or less than $1,870. The possibility of lack of faith as a potential cause of nullity was also discussed by Benedict XVI. In a 1998 paper republished by L’Osservatore Romano on Nov. 30, 2011, Pope Francis' predecessor also considered the possible expansion of the canonical recognition of the nullity of marriages celebrated "without faith" by at least one of the spouses, even if they are baptized. And in his final address inaugurating the Rota's judicial year, Benedict XVI said on Jan. 26, 2013 that “one must not … disregard the consideration that can arise in the cases in which, precisely because of the absence of faith, the good of the spouses is jeopardized, that is, excluded from the consent itself … With these reflections, I certainly do not intend to suggest any facile automatism between the lack of faith and the invalidity of the matrimonial union, but rather to highlight how such a lack may, although not necessarily, also damage the goods of the marriage, since the reference to the natural order desired by God is inherent in the conjugal pact.” In the same address, similarly to Pope Francis, the Pope Emeritus had noted that “the principle that the salus animarum is the supreme law in the Church must indeed be borne in mind and every day must find in your work the strict respect that it merits.” Read more

Vatican City, Jan 23, 2015 / 10:28 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Servant of God Aloysius Schwartz is one of the 11 causes for canonization that Pope Francis advanced yesterday, and will be granted the title “Venerable” with the pontiff’s recog... Read more

Vatican City, Jan 23, 2015 / 04:02 am (CNA/EWTN News).- The journalist who won a big smile from Pope Francis after giving him an image of St. Therese of Lisieux on his way to the Philippines said that she found it in a flea market, and gave it as the second in a pair. “I found (the Virgin of Lujan) at the flea market just before Christmas (and) I also found another medal which was Sister Therese and I thought: Well that’s wonderful, because it would be the perfect pair. We could do one for his birthday and one for Christmas,” Caroline Pigozzi told CNA Jan. 19. The French author and journalist is the one responsible for giving Pope Francis his personal visit from St. Therese after he prayed for her guidance and intercession ahead of his Jan. 12-19 trip to Sri Lanka and the Philippines. Pope Francis received the gift while speaking with journalists during his Jan. 15 in-flight news conference from Sri Lanka to the Philippines. He said that whenever he asks St. Therese to help with something, he also asks her to send him a rose so that he knows she has taken on the task. “I asked also for this trip; that she'd take it in hand and that she would send me a rose. But instead of a rose she came herself to greet me,” the Pope said after receiving the gift. Pigozzi, who works with French newspaper Paris Match, said that she first started to learn about Pope Francis after going to Argentina to meet his friends and fellow priests that work in the slums after his election. “He has a lot of friends,” she said, and recalled that after spending some time with them, they quickly arranged for her to go to one of the Pope’s Masses at the Vatican’s Saint Martha guesthouse. After meeting the Pope at Mass, Pigozzi noted that she saw him nearly every day during October’s Extraordinary Synod of Bishops on the Family. On the last day of the gathering, the journalist recalled how she was sitting in the cafeteria of the Saint Martha guesthouse when the Pope came up to her and told her “I’ve seen that you have been here every single day,” and noted that “he likes (to do) this kind of thing.” She first got the inspiration to give the Pope a birthday gift after finding a silver bas-relief, or carving, of Our Lady of Lujan at the flea market in Paris, where she goes every weekend. “I bought it immediately and I spent one night polishing it because it was absolutely dirty, from the 30s I think. It wasn’t in bad condition, but it hadn’t been cleaned since the 1930s so I spent the whole night (cleaning it),” Pigozzi explained. After having it framed she brought it to the Vatican during an interview the day before the Pope’s birthday on Dec. 17. When she dropped it off at the reception counter in the St. Martha guesthouse, Pigozzi said that she had her doubts that it would make it into the pontiff’s hands. So once the Pope came to greet journalists on his flight to the Philippines Pigozzi asked whether or not he had received the image of Our Lady of Lujan – to which he responded “No, of course not.” “If I had a Virgin of Lujan I would have thanked you immediately because for me it’s a very important thing,” he told her, and went to inquire with his staff about what had become of the image. Once they located it, Pigozzi said that she then wanted to give him the image of St. Therese, which she had also polished by hand. So when the Pope came to greet her again and thank her personally for the image of Virgin of Lujan, she told him “Santo Padre that was the Virgin of Lujan. Now I have a present for Christmas to make the pair. So, I give you a Sister Therese.” The Pope, she recalled, was “so happy” when he received the gift “because I think Sister Therese is important for him.” On the back of the framed bas-relief was a note Pigozzi had written saying that she was presenting him the image “with all my admiration and respect,” as well as her signature. Pigozzi said that she was so emotional after giving Pope Francis the gift that she didn’t realize how happy he was. “It was like a child with a toy. I think he was so happy, it was incredible. So I (also) was very happy, because it’s difficult to please a Pope (and) to have such a reaction,” she said. The journalist said that she always looks for gifts in advance for the people who are important to her, and waits until the right occasion to give them away. When asked if she would also find her next gift at the flea market, Pigozzi said that “I hope so!” Read more

Vatican City, Jan 23, 2015 / 04:00 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Pope Francis chose the family as his theme for this year’s World Communications Day, saying that as the first place we learn to communicate, families teach us to go out of ourselves and enco... Read more

Vatican City, Jan 23, 2015 / 12:03 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Pope Francis completed the membership of the new Vatican body with responsibility for dealing with clerical sex abuse on Wednesday,  marking a further step in providing adequate procedures to insure justice for all the victims. The body is a specific office within the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith that will deal with 'delicta graviora', or 'more grave crimes'. These are the most serious crimes in the Church, and most notably include offenses against morality: the sexual abuse of a minor by a cleric; or the acquisition, possession, or distribution of child pornography by a cleric. The new office is established as a college of seven people, whose names were announced Jan. 21. Bishop Charles Scicluna has been appointed president of the college. Now the Auxiliary Bishop of Malta, Bishop Scicluna served from 2002 to 2012 as Promoter of Justice in the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith – that is, as the Vatican's public prosecutor – personally handling the sex abuses crises of 2002 and 2010 and carrying forward the ‘zero tolerance’ line wanted by St. John Paul II and Benedict XVI to tackle the issue. The other members of the college are: Cardinal Zenon Grocholewski, prefect of the Congregation for Catholic Education; Cardinal Attilio Nicora, president emeritus of the Administration of the Patrimony of the Apostolic See; Cardinal Francesco Coccopalmerio, president of the Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts; Bishop Juan Arrieta Ochoa de Chinchetru, secretary of the Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts; Cardinal Giuseppe Versaldi, president of the Prefecture for the Economic Affairs of the Holy See;  and Archbishop José Mollaghan, Emeritus of Rosario. The college has also two supplementary members: Cardinal Julian Herranz Casado, president emeritus of the Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts; and Bishop Giorgio Corbellini, president of the Labour Office of the Apostolic See and of the Disciplinary Commission of the Roman Curia. The new office is charged with lightening the work of the ordinary session of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, handling the appeals on 'delicta graviora'. Aside from sexual abuse of minors, the 'delicta graviora' which the college will examine include those against the sacraments -- including those against Eucharist, such as profaning a consecrated Host; against Confession, such as violating the seal; and against Holy Orders, such as the attempted ordination of a woman. According to the 2001 motu proprio Sacramentorum sanctitatis tutela, which transferred authority for investigating abuse cases from the Congregation for Clergy to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith so that they could be dealt with more speedily, a person aggrieved by an administrative decision of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith could ask for a review of the decision by the ordinary session of the congregation. This session is called ‘feria quarta’, and takes place once a month on a Wednesday, and includes all 25 cardinal and bishop members of the congregation. The new office will assist the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in this work. According to Fr. Federico Lombardi, director of the Holy See press office,  the congregation “had to examine 4-5 appeals a month, of priests who were deemed to have been wrongly accused.” It is yet to be decided how the new college will organize the work, nor if the college’s judgement on each case will be always accepted by the feria quarta, or if the feria quarta will be able to overturn the college's judgements. The work will obviously depend on the number of cases waiting for review, and monthly meetings will be likely scheduled. The rescript simply reads that the work of the commission will juxtapose the work of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which will maintain its competences. It will be likely the congregation itself entrusts the new office with a certain numbers of appeals which are usually examined during the ordinary session. All of these details will be discussed in the further months, probably with the issuance of specific regulations that will establish the functions and modus operandi of this new body. Read more