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Vatican City, Mar 8, 2017 / 03:02 am (CNA/EWTN News).- A new advisory group for the Pontifical Council for Culture is being hailed as the beginning of a greater representation of women in leadership at the Vatican.
On March 7 the Council presented their 37-member “Women’s Consultation Group,” which they established in 2015 as a way to give women a voice in places where it can frequently be lacking in the Vatican.
Member Donna Orsuto, director of the Rome-based Lay Center, called the the group “a good start.”
“I think there are many other ways, or in the future there will be many other ways in which women can be more present, more involved in the Church, especially in the Roman Curia,” she told CNA, “but I think this is a very good start.”
Orsuto voiced her hope that as they carry out their work, the group would be able to “work together…as women, but also with the council.”
“This idea of men and women working together for the good of the Church and society” is key, she said, adding that she’s “very pleased that the focus isn’t just on women and women’s issues.”
Council president Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi said that like many other Vatican departments, “inside of my dicastery, I didn’t have any women at the management level. They were only there in an administrative sense as secretaries.”
And while the women who are part of the consultative group aren’t necessarily department managers, the presence of the group serves as a response to “this lack of the presence of women in the Roman Curia.”
Ravasi said he didn’t form the group to recriminate those who were angry about the lack of women, and nor did he want the women to be “a ‘cosmetic’ element in the sense that they were (only) a symbolic presence” or a mere viewpoint on “an only male horizon.”
Instead, the cardinal said he simply wanted “a feminine perspective” over every activity the dicastery does, including official documents.
A woman’s viewpoint, he said, “can see beyond our gaze” and offers a perspective that’s different and at times unexpected.
“It’s a question about interpretation, of prospective, of analysis, of judgment, above all, and also of proposal,” he said, explaining that the group will participate actively in both the preparation and duration of the council’s next plenary meeting.
Cardinal Ravasi stood beside some 20 of the 37 women who are currently part of the group at its official March 7 presentation. Coming from different cultures and professional backgrounds, the women serve a three-year term and meet three times annually to discuss ideas and possible projects.
Initially started in June 2015, the group was born from the Pontifical Council for Culture’s Feb. 5-7 plenary assembly that year, which was dedicated to the theme “La Cultura Femminile,” or, “The Feminine Culture.”
Several women were asked to help prepare for the plenary, and worked in two separate groups with members of the council to organize the event and define specific topics of conversation.
After the plenary, Ravasi decided to establish the group as a permanent entity. He invited the women who prepared the plenary to stay, and reached out to several others from various professions, including ambassadors, journalists, doctors, professors, actresses and teachers, among others.
In their annual meetings, the group focuses their discussion on proposals surrounding the dicastery’s work in the fields of artificial intelligence, neuroscience, sport and human anthropology.
Consuelo Corradi, coordinator of the Women’s Consultation Group and vice rector for research and international relations at the LUMSA University of Rome, told journalists that they waited to present the group because they wanted to be able to show something that was already well established and running.
The theme that links all of the members together, she said, is “the female difference,” because “there’s a perspective from women (and) there’s a way of living human life that’s specific to women.”
“It’s not a theological discourse, what we do inside the group. One can have an ideological discourse on feminine and masculine, but we try to avoid it,” she said. Instead, the women seek to bring their concrete experience as wives, mothers, friends and professionals in order to discuss “universal themes from a feminine perspective.”
Released during the official presentation of the group was their first project – a magazine titled “Cultures and Faith” including contributions from various members of the group in different languages that reflect on a variety of different topics.
Group members from various fields and cultures who attended the presentation – including Irish ambassador to the Holy See Emma Madigan – voiced their hope that the group would provide a platform to generate creative ideas given their professional backgrounds, and to foster greater collaboration with men on important issues.
In her comments to CNA, Orsuto said the variety of backgrounds and expertise of the members is “an enrichment for the Council,” especially given the fact that there were no women in senior positions in the dicastery beforehand.
Since last year’s plenary, the women have had a chance to evaluate various projects of the council and “and give some insight into doing things with a ‘feminine touch,’” she said, explaining that for her, the group is a concrete example of Pope Francis’ call for a more “incisive” feminine presence in the Church.
Italian psychologist and psychotherapist Dr. Laura Bastianelli touched on the necessity of collaboration between men and women as “a creative process.”
“We want to set up a process that is really cooperating” with one another, she said. “This is a way to build together, not trying to compete.”
“Competition is not the key to the resolution of solving problems between women and men. It’s a cooperation, so we want to co-create starting from the group in the dicastery and then to print a model that can be replicated.”
Bastianelli said she also sees the establishment of the group as a direct response to Pope Francis’ call for a greater inclusion of women in the life of the Church, and is hoping to use her background in psychology to help shape the council’s projects.
Currently a professor at Salesian university, Bastianelli trains psychotherapists and specializes in youth psychology. She is the founder of an association dedicated to working with youth and preventing diseases in children and young people.
“It’s a big work, it’s very demanding, because there’s a lot to do,” she said, explaining that the consultation group’s magazine includes an article from her on youth culture in which she reflects on difficulties today’s youth face.
Specifically, she delved into the topic of neuroscience and what it says about “the use and abuse of the internet (and) what the impact of these technologies on our youth is.”
“This is a big problem,” she said, explaining that the result of the current expansion of technologies among youth will start to be visible in the coming years.
But in addition to speaking just about the challenges, Bastianelli said she also explored the “richness” of today’s youth, “because we have young people very rich and full of competencies, but they can’t find space and they can’t develop because of many bad influences.”
She also spoke during the 2015 plenary for the Council for Culture, focusing on the topic of “generativity (procreativity) as a symbolic code,” meaning how we generate life without necessarily giving birth.
Bastianelli said her greatest hope for the consultation group is that it would spread to other realities even outside of the Church so the “richness of this experience can be replicated. It’s like leaven.”
Emma Madigan, Irish Ambassador to the Holy See, told CNA that she also hopes to use her diplomatic experience to help foster dialogue and open channels within the Vatican.
As an ambassador, “you want to understand better your interlocutors,” she said, explaining that for a diplomat, “dialogue is a core value and activity.”
“You’re basically furthering the bonds between the two countries, or in this case with a global religion, and seeing what you can bring to the table from your experience,” she said, noting that she has worked in a number of different fields where she’s had to encounter the problems people face on a daily basis.
When it comes to the Vatican, “you’re interacting with priests, dealing pretty much with the pastoral issue. You can understand some of what they’re going through,” she said, explaining that she also tries to present and discuss issues important to Ireland and to share information in order to foster greater mutual understanding.
Madigan said she was invited to join the group by Cardinal Ravasi around the same time as the 2015 plenary when he was thinking of establishing it, and initially had reservations about joining for fear of appearing to advise the Church on what they were doing.
However, since it was specifically working with one dicastery in particular, she said yes, since it speaks to people from all walks of life, including Catholics, non-Catholics and even non-believers.
“That’s something I’m really interested in,” she said, noting that she’s been invited to join “because of my position, but I’ll be representing my own perspective.”
“I do feel it was courageous in bringing this up,” she said, explaining that to have 37 women gather around the same table can get “a bit chaotic,” as each one brings their own experience and contribution.
Madigan said that when she initially came to Rome, she thought she would be the only woman ambassador, but quickly found out that wasn’t the case, and “already it means you’re not the only woman in the room.”
For the Vatican, “it is a leadership that is male, but it is changing,” she said, noting that especially when working with the Vatican, women “naturally gravitate towards other women to be interlocutors, share experiences.”
There is “still plenty of room for growth in this area,” she said, but recognized the group as “a practical example of saying ‘we want a woman’s perspective.’”
While many say that “we value women and want to bring them into the fold,” the group “is actually a practical sign that that’s happening. It’s a beginning. You have to start somewhere.”
Juba, South Sudan, Mar 8, 2017 / 12:04 am (CNA/EWTN News).- The call by South Sudan’s president for a national day of prayer was met with derision by one of the country’s bishops, who called it a “political prayer” and a mockery.
President Salva Kiir addressed South Sudan via state-owned media last week to announce a day of prayer on March 10. The country has been embroiled in civil war since December 2013, when Kiir accused his former deputy, Riek Machar, of attempting a coup. The war has been fought between their supporters, largely along ethnic lines, and peace agreements have been short-lived.
“I have been praying for South Sudan every day. This morning, I prayed for South Sudan. That prayer called by Salva Kiir; I will never and never understand. Unless they carry me as a corpse but I will never attend that prayer. It is a political prayer. It is a mockery,” Bishop Santo Loku Pio Doggale, Auxiliary Bishop of Juba, told Voice of America, according to the Sudan Tribune.
“Why should I go [to] pray where there is no holiness, where there is no forgiveness? It is a joke to hear the president of the country calling prayers while at the moment, the soldiers are hunting people across South Sudan.”
He cited the government’s army’s displacement of numerous people from their homes. “People are being thrown away from their ancestral land. There have been a lot of robbery of the resources of the people.”
Bishop Doggale also charged that Kiir, who is Catholic, “does not even come to church these days.”
Kiir’s proposed national day of prayer precedes the March 15 launch of a three-day national dialogue.
“Our time … is now ripe to turn to God and ask him for forgiveness and blessings. We have not been that perfect and we need to submit ourselves to the Almighty through prayers,” Kiir said. “It should be the day we all pray to God and ask Him for forgiveness so that we start a new chapter in our relations as citizens of this nation.”
The national dialogue is being directed by Kiir. One of his spokesmen has said that Machar, the former vice-president, may attend once he has denounced violence. Kiir’s direction of the dialogue has been criticized, given his role in the country’s civil war.
In January 2016, Bishop Doggale told CNA that the government of South Sudan, as well as that of Sudan, puts political agendas over its people’s interests.
“We have crossroads of displaced people in both countries suffering from the political elite who don’t take their people in heart,” he said.
The bishops of South Sudan recently called for dialogue between the country’s warring factions, and charged that the forces of both sides are targeting civilians.
“Those who have the ability to make changes for the good of our people have not taken heed of our previous pastoral messages,” the said in their Feb. 23 message. “We need to see action, not just dialogue for the sake of dialogue.”
The bishops said the war has “no moral justification whatsoever,” and expressed concern that some government officials seem to be suspicious of the Church.
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Juarez, Mexico, Mar 7, 2017 / 04:39 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Juarez, located in the state of Chihuahua in northern Mexico, was considered from 2008 to 2010 to be one of the the most dangerous cities in the world, due to drug trafficking violence and the constant struggles for power and territory between the cartels.
However, the city of 1.3 million inhabitants dropped off this list thanks to a significant decrease in the number of homicides: from 3,766 in 2010 to 256 in 2015.
Although this drop can be credited to an improvement in the work of local authorities, for Fr. Patrico Hileman – a priest responsible for establishing Perpetual Adoration chapels in Latin America – there is a much deeper reason: Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament.
“When a parish adores God day and night, the city is transformed,” Fr. Hileman said.
The priest told Radio María Argentina that in 2013 the missionaries opened the first Perpetual Adoration Chapel in Juarez. At that time “40 people a day were dying because two drug gangs were fighting over the city to move drugs into the United States.”
It was the Juarez and Sinaloa cartels, whose former leader Joaquín “el Chapo” Guzmán Loera was recently extradited from Mexico to the United States.
Fr. Hileman recalled that “the parishes were saying that the war wasn’t ending because a group of soldiers were with one gang and the police were with the other one. They were killing people, burning houses down so they would leave, fighting over the city.”
One of the parishes that was “desperate” asked the missionaries to open a Perpetual Adoration chapel because they assured that “only Jesus is going to save us from this, only Jesus can give us security.”
The missionaries only took three days to establish the first Perpetual Adoration chapel in Juarez.
Fr. Hileman told how one day, when the city was under a state of siege, a lady was on her way to the chapel to do her Holy Hour at 3:00 in the morning, when she was intercepted by six soldiers who asked her where she was heading.
When the woman told them that she was going to “the little chapel” the uniformed men asked her what place, because everything was closed at that hour. Then the woman proposed they accompany her to see for themselves.
When they got to the chapel, the soldiers found “six women making the Holy Hour at the 3:00 in the morning,” Fr. Hileman said.
At that moment the lady said to the soldiers: “Do you think you’re protecting us? We’re praying for you 24 hours a day.”
One of the uniformed men fell down holding his weapon,“crying in front of the Blessed Sacrament. The next day at 3:00 in the morning they saw him in civilian clothes doing a Holy Hour, crying oceans of tears,” he said.
Two months after the chapel was opened, the pastor “calls us and says to us: Father, since the chapel was opened there has not been one death in Juarez, it’s been two months since anyone has died.”
“We put up ten little chapels in a year,” Fr. Hileman said.
As if that were not enough, “at that time they were going to close the seminary because there were only eight seminarians and now there are 88. The bishop told me me that these seminarians had participated in the Holy Hours.”
Fr. Hileman pointed out that “that is what Jesus does in a parish” when people understand that “we find security in Christ.”
He also noted that “the greatest miracles occur in the early hours of the morning. “
The early morning “is when you’re most at peace, when you hear God better, your mind, your heart is more tranquil, you’re there alone for God. If you are generous with Jesus, he is a thousand times more generous with you,” Fr. Hileman said.
This article was originally published on CNA Jan. 26, 2017.
Geneva, Switzerland, Mar 7, 2017 / 04:17 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- The Permanent Observer of the Holy See to the United Nations reiterated the Vatican’s defense of all human life in a meeting with UN Human Rights Council on the death penalty.
“… […]
Lima, Peru, Mar 7, 2017 / 04:02 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Under the theme “Don’t Mess With My Children,” more than 1.5 million Peruvians demonstrated on Saturday against gender ideology in the nation’s schools.
Organizers said that total attendance surpassed 1.5 million, at demonstrations throughout the country.
Among those present were Congress members Julio Rosas, Carlos Tubino, Nelly Cuadros, Juan Carlos Gonzales, Marco Miyashiro, Roberto Vieira, Federico Pariona and Edwin Donayre.
<blockquote class=”twitter-tweet” data-lang=”en”><p lang=”es” dir=”ltr”>Los organizadores de <a href=”https://twitter.com/hashtag/conmishijosnotemetas?src=hash”>#conmishijosnotemetas</a> anuncian que más de 1.5 millones marcharon en todo el Perú <a href=”https://twitter.com/hashtag/4M?src=hash”>#4M</a> ????<a href=”https://twitter.com/Calderon_Martha”>@Calderon_Martha</a> / <a href=”https://twitter.com/acamasca”>@acamasca</a> <a href=”https://t.co/351NDByffr”>pic.twitter.com/351NDByffr</a></p>— ACI Prensa (@aciprensa) <a href=”https://twitter.com/aciprensa/status/838175199686164480″>March 4, 2017</a></blockquote>
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“Don’t Mess With My Children” is a campaign against recent attempts to promote a national curriculum of gender ideology, which teaches that one’s ‘gender’ is chosen and has no connection with one’s biological sex.
In January of this year, the Peruvian Bishop’s Conference told the government that it “urges the removal from the new National Curriculum those notions coming from gender ideology.”
At 2 p.m. on March 4, massive crowds gathered to march toward San Martín Plaza in the center of Lima.
The demonstrators, bearing various signs and slogans, marched down the main districts of the Peruvian capital.
Other cities throughout the country, including Arequipa, Trujillo, Iquitos and Cusco, also saw heavily attended demonstrations.
Fr. Luis Gaspar, episcopal vicar of the Family and Life Commission for the Archdiocese of Lima, stressed that “education as the first right of parents concerning their children is not negotiable.”
“We are in a war over morals, a spiritual war, and the battlefield is the minds of their children, and we are going to defend it till the day we die.”
Fr. Gaspar also invited the demonstrators to participate in the March for Life which will be held March 25 in Lima.
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