Vatican City, Oct 27, 2014 / 10:14 am (CNA/EWTN News).- In his homily for Mass celebrated at the Santa Marta residence Monday Pope Francis warned against the harm of “lukewarm” Christianity, calling on faithful instead to be “children of light.” The Lord has strong words towards Christian who avoid overstating their Christianity, the Pope told the congregation on Oct. 27. Such Christians do great harm “because their Christian witness is a witness which ultimately disseminates confusion, disseminates a negative witness.” At the End Times, the Pope continued, the Lord will say to these “gray” Christians: “You are neither hot nor cold. If only you were hot or cold. But because you are lukewarm – therefore gray – I vomit you from my mouth'.” Contrasting lukewarm Christians with the “children of light” and the “children of darkness,” the Holy Father described these “gray” Christians as going from one side to the other, making it difficult to determine whether they follow God or the devil. “They are always lukewarm,” he said. “They are neither luminous nor dark.” Pope Francis turned his reflection to the day's first reading from Saint Paul, calling on Christians to be children of light, rather than children of darkness. In order to know which sort of children we are, the Pope said, we should consider whether the words we use fall into one of four categories: hypocritical, empty, frivolous, or obscene.   Such words, he said, are not used by “the children of light. They are not from the Holy Spirit. They are not from Jesus, they are not the words of the Gospel. . . this way of speaking, always speaking of filthy things, or frivolously, or empty, or speaking hypocritically.” Instead, the Holy Father said, citing Saint Paul, we are called to imitate God by walking in charity, goodness, and gentleness. “Therefore, be imitators of God and walk in charity. And this is the word of a child of light.” “There are luminous Christians, full of light,” the Pope said, “who seek to serve the Lord with this light.” He added that there are “dark” Christians “who lead a life of sin, a life far from the Lord.” Warning against being deceived by statements which are “beautiful, well said, but empty,” Pope Francis challenged Christians to ask themselves: “Am I a Christian of light? Am I a Christian of darkness? Am I a Christian of gray?” In this way, he said, we can “take a step forward toward an encounter with the Lord.” Read more

Vatican City, Oct 27, 2014 / 12:03 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Pope Francis called for the abolition of capital punishment during a speech on Thursday, as well as all forms of penal punishment which violate human dignity. In an Oct. 23 audience with delegates from the International Association of Penal Law, the Pope decried the “growing conviction” in recent decades “that through public punishment it is possible to solve different and disparate social problems, as if for different diseases one could prescribe the same medicine.” “It is impossible to imagine that today (there are) states which cannot make use of means other than capital punishment to defend the life of other persons from unjust aggressors,” he said. According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which Pope Francis cited in his discourse, “the traditional teaching of the Church does not exclude recourse to the death penalty, if this is the only possible way of effectively defending human lives against the unjust aggressor.” However, in a quote from St. John Paul II cited in the Catechism, such cases, “are very rare, if not practically nonexistent.” During his speech, Pope Francis called on “all Christians and people of goodwill … to fight not only for the abolition of the death penalty be it legal or illegal, in all of its forms.” He also called the faithful to work toward “the improvement of prison conditions in the respect of the human dignity of those who have been deprived of freedom,” adding: “I link this to the death sentence.” The Pope also compared the death penalty to life imprisonment, recalling that the Vatican Penal Code no longer employs life sentences. “A life sentence is a death sentence which is concealed,” he said. The Holy Father also noted that the penal system goes beyond its own sanctions, infringing on the freedom and rights of persons – “above all the most vulnerable” – in the name of prevention. “There is the risk of losing sight of the proportionality of penalties that historically reflect the scale of values upheld by the state,” he said. “The very conception of criminal law and the enforcement of sanctions as an ‘ultima ratio’ in the cases of serious offenses against individual and collective interests have weakened. As has the debate regarding the use of alternative penal sanctions to be used instead of imprisonment.” The Pope also decried the “deplorable conditions” of some detention centers throughout the world, which he describes as “an authentic inhuman and degrading trait, often caused by deficiencies of criminal law, or by a lack of infrastructures and good planning.” He added that such conditions are, in many cases, “the result of an arbitrary and merciless exercise of power over persons who have been deprived of freedom.” Criticized the “cruel, inhumane and degrading punishments and sanctions” in these centers, the Holy Father noted that this “'surplus of pain” merely adds to the already present suffering of detention. Such instances of “torture” exist not only in illegal detention centers and modern-day concentration camps, “but also in prisons, in rehabilitation centers for minors, in psychiatric hospitals, in police stations and in other institutions for detention or punishment.” Pope Francis also spoke about the role of the state with regard to the crime of human trafficking: “Based on the fact that it is impossible to commit such a complex crime as is the trafficking of persons without the complicity, be it active or of omission of action of the state,” he said, “it is evident that, when the efforts to prevent and combat this phenomenon are not sufficient, we find ourselves before a crime against humanity.” He added: “This is even truer if those who are responsible for the protection of persons and the safeguard of their freedom become an accomplice of those who trade in human beings; in those cases the state is responsible before its citizens and before the international community.” The Holy Father spoke at length about corruption: “The forms of corruption that must be persecuted with greatest severity are those that cause grave social damage,” he said, “both in economic and social questions.” “Respect for human dignity must operate not only to limit the arbitrariness and the excesses of state officials,” the Pope concluded, “but as a criteria of orientation for the persecution and the repression of those behaviors that represent grave attacks against the dignity and the integrity of the human person.” Pope Francis' words on capital punishment echoed those of his predecessor, Benedict XVI, as well as bishops around the world, including the Canadian bishops' conference, the bishops in Ohio, and Archbishop Charles Chaput of Philadelphia. In his General Audience address delivered Nov. 30, 2011, Benedict XVI commended members of the Sant'Egidio community gathered for a conference themed “No Justice without Life,” saying that “I express my hope that your deliberations will encourage the political and legislative initiatives being promoted in a growing number of countries to eliminate the death penalty and to continue the substantive progress made in conforming penal law both to the human dignity of prisoners and the effective maintenance of public order.” Read more

Vatican City, Oct 26, 2014 / 12:52 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- In an audience with members of an international Marian movement, Pope Francis warned that the sacrament of marriage has been reduced to a mere association, and urged participants to be witnesses in a secular world. “The family is being hit, the family is being struck and the family is being bastardized,” the Pope told those in attendance at the Oct. 25 audience. He warned against the common view in society that “you can call everything family, right?” “What is being proposed is not marriage, it's an association. But it's not marriage! It's necessary to say these things very clearly and we have to say it!” Pope Francis stressed. He lamented that there are so many “new forms” of unions which are “totally destructive and limiting the greatness of the love of marriage.” Noting that there are many who cohabitate, or are separated or divorced, he explained that the “key” to helping is a pastoral care of “close combat” that assists and patiently accompanies the couple. Pope Francis offered his words in a question-and-answer format during his audience with members of the Schoenstatt movement, held in celebration of the 100th anniversary of its founding in Germany. Roughly 7,500 members of the international Marian and apostolic organization, both lay and clerics from dozens of nations around the world, were present in the Vatican’s Paul VI Hall for the audience. In his answers to questions regarding marriage, Pope Francis explained that contemporary society has “devalued” the sacrament by turning it into a social rite, removing the most essential element, which is union with God. “So many families are divided, so many marriages broken, (there is) such relativism in the concept of the Sacrament of Marriage,” he said, noting that from a sociological and Christian point of view “there is a crisis in the family because it's beat up from all sides and left very wounded!” In regard to Mary, the Roman Pontiff said that her visit to her cousin Elizabeth is a strong symbol for the movement’s mission, and emphasized how no Christians can call themselves orphans because they have a mother who continues to give them life. Pope Francis recalled this history of the movement’s foundation, noting how it was started by Fr. Joseph Kentenich during the First World War. It was after his time in a concentration camp during World War II, the Pope noted, that the priest traveled to the peripheries of the world in order to preach the Gospel. Witness is key to spreading the Gospel, he said, explaining that true witness means living “in such a way that the will to live as we live is born in the heart of others…Living in a way (so that) others are interested and ask: ‘why?’” However, the Bishop of Rome emphasized that although we are called to give this witness, “we are not the saviors of anyone,” but rather are the transmitters of Jesus, who is the one that already saved us all. True witness propels us out of ourselves and into the streets of the world, the Pope continued, repeating his common declaration that a Church, movement or community that doesn’t go out of itself “becomes sick.” “A movement, a Church or a community that doesn't go out, is mistaken,” he said. “Don't be afraid! Go out in mission, go out on the road. We are walkers.” In answer to questions regarding how he can be defined as “reckless,” the Roman Pontiff admitted that although he can be considered “a little reckless,” he still surrenders himself to prayer, saying that it helps him to place Jesus at the center, rather than himself. “There is only one center: Jesus Christ – who rather looks at things from the periphery, no? Where he sees things more clearly,” the Pope observed, saying that when closed inside the small worlds of a parish, a community and even the Roman Curia, “then you do not grasp the truth.” He explained how reality is always seen better from the peripheries rather than the center, and noted how he has seen some episcopal conferences who charge for almost every small thing, where “nothing escapes.” “Everything is working well, everything is well organized,” the pontiff observed, but they could do with less “functionalism and more apostolic zeal, more interior freedom, more prayer, (and) this interior freedom is the courage to go out.” When asked about his process of reforming the Roman Curia, Pope Francis explained that often renewal is understood as making small changes here or there, or even making changes out of the necessity of adapting to the times. But this isn’t true renewal, he said, noting that while there are people every day who say that he needs to renew the Vatican Bank or the Curia, “It's strange (that) no one speaks of the reform of the heart.” “They don't understand anything of what the renewal of the heart means: which is holiness, renewing one's (own) heart,” the Pope observed, saying that a renewed heart is able of going beyond disagreements such as family conflicts, war and those that arise out of the “culture of the provisional.” He concluded by blessing the missionary crosses of those present, who are called to missionaries in the five continents of the world, and recalled how some time ago he was given an image of the Mother of Schoenstatt, who prays and is always present. The movement’s encounter with Pope Francis came on the second day of their visit to Rome, which culminated with a Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica presided over by Cardinal Francisco Javier Errazuriz.   Read more

Vatican City, Oct 26, 2014 / 06:36 am (CNA/EWTN News).- The message Pope Francis sent during his Sunday Angelus address was that love of God and neighbor are inseparably united, and that we see God’s face most clearly in the weak and vulnerable. “In the middle of the thicket of rules and regulations – of the legalisms of yesterday and today – Jesus opens a gap that allows you to see two faces: the face of the Father and that of the brother,” the Pope told pilgrims gathered in St. Peter’s Square for the Oct. 26 recitation of the traditional Marian prayer. “He doesn't deliver us two formulas or two precepts, but two faces, indeed one face, the face of God reflected in many faces, because in the face of each brother, especially in the smallest, the most fragile and the most helpless, the same image of God is present.” Pope Francis took his cue from the day’s Gospel reading from Matthew, in which Jesus is tested by a doctor of the law who asks which is the greatest commandment. In his response, Jesus first quotes the Book of Deuteronomy in saying that the greatest commandment is to love God with all of one’s heart, soul and mind, the pontiff observed. “And it could have stopped there, (but) instead Jesus adds something that was not requested from the doctor of the law. He says: ‘The second then is similar to this: love your neighbor as yourself,’” which is also a biblical reference to the Book of Leviticus, the Pope noted. The Bishop of Rome explained how the true novelty Jesus brings to these commandments is that he puts them together, revealing that they are inseparable and complimentary, “(like) two sides of the same coin.” One of the most visible signs of God’s love that a Christian can give is to love one’s neighbor, he said, noting how Jesus doesn’t put love of God at the top of the list of commandments, but rather “at the center, because it's from the heart that everything begins and to which it must come back.” In the Old Testament, to live in the image of God who is holy included caring for the most vulnerable, such as the orphan and the widow, the Pope observed, explaining that Jesus completes the law by uniting in himself the human and the divine, which now become a single mystery of love. “In light of the word of Jesus, love is the measure of the faith, and faith is the spirit of love,” he said. “No longer can we separate a religious life from service to our brothers, to those concrete brothers we meet.” “No longer can we divide prayer, the encounter with God in the sacraments, from listening to others, from closeness to their lives, especially to their wounds.” The Roman Pontiff concluded his address by pointing that what Jesus gives us in the day’s Gospel passage are the fundamental criterion on which to base our lives. Jesus also and above all gives us his Spirit, the Pope noted, who teaches us to love God and our neighbors “with a free and generous heart” as the Lord did. “With the intercession of Mary, our mother, let us open ourselves to receive this gift, (and) to walk in the law of love.” After leading faithful in the Marian prayer, Pope Francis drew attention to the example of Blessed Mother Assunta Marchetti, who was beatified yesterday in Brazil, and praised her for her tireless work in helping Italian immigrants. He closed by offering personal greetings to various communities present, giving an affectionate blessing, and asking for prayers. Read more

Vatican City, Oct 26, 2014 / 04:41 am (CNA).- Chaldean patriarch Louis Sako I has suspended a group of monks and priests who fled Iraq without consulting their superiors, saying a priest’s primary duty is to serve his flock wherever he is asked. ... Read more

Vatican City, Oct 25, 2014 / 06:42 pm (CNA).- In a rare move, the Vatican has officially recognized the public communications organization SIGNIS as a Catholic association, which, according to a Vatican official, happens less than once a year. &ldqu... Read more