In the consistory of November 2016, among the 17 men Pope Francis elevated to the rank of cardinal was an 88-year-old priest who was neither a bishop nor of the eligible age to vote in […]
Buenos Aires, Argentina, Jul 19, 2017 / 01:53 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Maximiliano Acuña is a garbage collector in Buenos Aires who earlier this year was injured in a serious accident that left him without legs.
On Tuesday, he was surprised to receive an unexpected phone call from Pope Francis.
The Pope offered words of encouragement, 33-year-old Acuña told the Argentine Morfi Television program.
On March 22, the father of five children had been collecting garbage in a Buenos Aires neighborhood when he was struck by a car going some 80 miles an hour.
As a result of the accident, both of his legs had to be amputated.
A Buenos Aires legislator, Gustavo Vera, decided to tell Pope Francis what happened in an e-mail, in which he explained that the “doctors’ prognosis was for the worst.”
“In the best case scenario, he was expected to be in a vegetative state or to have serious neuronal damage, and in the worst case it was going to be the end for him,” Vera told the Holy Father.
However, Acuña surprised doctors when he came out of the coma on the third day. Two days later, he was moved from intensive care to a regular hospital room. “In a few weeks he was already home with his five children,” Vera related in his message to the Pope.
This July 18, Acuña was getting ready to be honored at a ceremony at the Buenos Aires Legislature when he got a special call.
“I’m Pope Francis. A friend (Vera) sent me a letter, and I was moved and struck by how much strength you have,” the voice said on the other end of the line. “Always go forward, because you’re an example.”
Acuña recounted these words with emotion at a ceremony in front of hundreds of other garbage collectors.
Now, Vera is working with the general secretary of the Truckers Union, Pablo Moyano, to propose that March 22 be declared “Waste Collectors’ Day,” in tribute to this young collector.
“God gave me my life back, because they removed both legs, but everything that is happening to me is beautiful,” Acuña said.
“I always believed in God, I always went to church, praying everyday asking him for work, and that he take care of me day by day.”
“God exists,” Acuña continued. “I want to give everyone this message, that God exists and that he has given me a new opportunity.”
Fuzhou, China, Jul 19, 2017 / 12:08 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- As the Catholic Church in China journeys toward a normalized relationship with the Holy See, one priest in dialogue with Chinese bishops has seen vast improvement in openness and dialogue on the part of leaders, both in the patriotic and underground Churches.
“That’s one very significant point, a growth in openness, a growth in the Christian churches. I think a second key change has been an openness of the Chinese to receive visitors to indeed dialogue with the Church here in Rome,” said Msgr. Anthony Figueiredo, who has been in personal contact with many Chinese bishops over the last decade.
“We know that in the last year there’s been an official delegation that has gone to Beijing, and members have come here to Rome to talk about this openness in reaching some sort of accord.”
“And certainly that is the wish of the Chinese bishops; they wish openness, they wish dialogue, they wish help to come from the Church in Rome, the Church in the United States, to help them particularly in the area of formation,” he said.
Msgr. Figueiredo holds a doctoral degree in theology and is a spiritual director at the Pontifical North American College in Rome. He was formerly a staff member of the Pontifical Council Cor Unum.
At the invitation of the bishops in mainland China, he has been part of a small team helping to lead theological forums for the Chinese Catholic Bishops’ Conference in China for the last seven years.
The team, from the organization Caritas in Veritate International, includes Henry Cappello, the organization’s president, and Professor John Cavadini, director of the McGrath-Cavadini Institute for Church Life at Notre Dame University.
The 7th Theological Forum is taking place July 13-20 in Fuzhou. In 2016 the meetings included 24 bishops, apostolic administrators, rectors, and spiritual directors of seminaries.
One day was devoted to the theological and spiritual formation of about 120 lay faithful from both the patriotic and underground Churches.
Another day was a group lecture at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, a government think tank.
During the week they also met with lay Catholic leaders, such as those organizing various small group faith-based communities, doing missionary and charity work in Beijing, and one community that just opened a center for senior citizens.
“We’re surprised when we go there that in our meetings, we’re not simply meeting with members of the official Church, but also the underground Church,” Msgr. Figueiredo said.
According to the report on the 2016 meetings, the bishops said they took great encouragement from Pope Francis and from the Year of Mercy.
They also expressed “great hope” for the normalization of relations between the Church in China and the Holy See. “It was notable to observe the deep desire of the bishops for this normal relationship, and their sadness caused by the difficulties in the past,” the report stated.
Other observations noted in the report were the “great strides” of evangelical communities in mainland China, while the Catholic Church in the country appears to be growing much more slowly.
Part of the reason for this could be the visible disunity of the Church in China between the patriotic and underground Churches, as well as the struggle between the Vatican and the Chinese government over control of bishop appointments.
China and the Vatican have been in the midst of talks for some time now to reach an agreement on the appointment of bishops, which would be the first major step toward normalizing relations between the two.
It would also hopefully lead to the eventual unification of the patriotic Church and the underground Church, whose bishops are not recognized by the state.
This unity would be major for the impact of evangelization in China, Msgr. Figueiredo noted.
“It is certainly the wish of Jesus Christ that we all be one. He prayed for that at the Last Supper, so disunity is always a scandal. It’s a scandal to those who do not believe. And certainly the underground Church coming together with the official Church – there are many, many things already happening.”
“There’s so much that can be done; there’s a thirst to hear the Christian message, there’s a thirst for Jesus Christ. And the evangelization efforts of the Roman Catholic Church can certainly be helped by this unity.”
China, with 1.4 billion people, isn’t just a huge country, he said, it’s also “a country that needs to be evangelized.”
He noted that we usually think of China as a country of Buddhists or of Taoists, as it has been historically, but in recent years there has been a huge growth in Christianity, mainly in evangelical ecclesial communities. Numbers of Catholics are growing as well, but at a much slower rate.
There are currently around 100 million Christians in China, he explained, and about 12 million Catholics, half of whom belong to the patriotic Church and half to the underground Church.
The bishops who participated in the 2016 forum, according to the report, identified the main underlying problems of the Church in China as a rapid decrease in priestly vocations and the lack of adequate formation for priests, seminary rectors, spiritual directors, and bishops.
The lack of adequate preparation for marriage and the lack of ongoing spiritual support and formation material for young married couples were also considered to be ongoing difficulties for the Church.
“Imagine if we got Catholics (in China) to unite in formation, and providing that formation to even one Church our evangelization efforts would be much, much greater,” Msgr. Figueiredo said.
The reason the group goes to China each year is to communicate with the bishops about what has been happening in the Vatican, “and really, to answer their questions, what they specifically need.”
He wanted to emphasize that the Chinese bishops want outside help from the Vatican and the U.S., “they desire for us to help them.”
He concluded by quoting Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican Secretary of State: “We wish the good of Chinese Catholics, both of the underground and the official Church, we wish the good of Chinese society, and we wish the good of the whole of society, particularly as we look for peace.’”
“Unity can only help those three different levels.”
Alexey Gotovskiy contributed to this report.
The claim that “the Cold War is over” and that the West needs a “new paradigm” for relations with Russia has become an antiphon in some conservative political circles – not least conservative Christian circles. […]
Philadelphia, Pa., Jul 19, 2017 / 10:15 am (CNA/EWTN News).- A prominent Catholic journal’s critique of American religion and politics got quite a bit wrong, Philadelphia’s Archbishop Charles J. Chaput said yesterday.
Archbishop Chaput sai… […]
Denver, Colo., Jul 19, 2017 / 08:10 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Facebook has restored more than twenty Catholic pages in Portuguese and English that were blocked yesterday for unknown reasons.
Between the night of 17 and the morning of July 18, Facebook unpublished at least 25 pages – 21 in Portuguese and 4 in English – without giving an explanation to page administrators.
The blocked Catholic pages each had between hundreds of thousands and 6 million followers.
Hours after CNA and other media published a story about the blocked pages, around 1 a.m. in the morning July 19, all blocked pages had been returned to normal.
In statements collected by ChurchPop.com, Carlos René, administrator of the page “Papa Francisco Brazil”, said that the page was available again “without notification. I just realized that it was already on the air. “
So far, Facebook has not given any explanation of the blocking or restoration of the page. The owners and administrators of sites such as Father Rocky, Catholic and Proud, and Jesus and said they simply realized that their pages had returned to work after seeing their accounts were back online.
Some administrators of the previously blocked pages told ChurchPop.com that they had sent lawyers to the Facebook offices in Brazil to demand that the pages be restored, although it is unclear if this was a decisive factor in the restorations.
New York City, N.Y., Jul 19, 2017 / 06:01 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Religious leaders, not secularists, are often in the best position to persuade violent religious extremists towards peace, the papal nuncio to the United Nations has said in response to an … […]
El Paso, Texas, Jul 19, 2017 / 03:05 am (CNA/EWTN News).- A U.S. bishop on the border of Mexico hopes his new pastoral letter on migration will turn the hearts of Catholics to encounter their migrant brothers and sisters in a concrete way.
“It i… […]
Butembo, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Jul 19, 2017 / 12:01 am (CNA).- Gunmen have abducted two Catholic priests in the Democratic Republic of Congo, prompting the country’s bishops to plead that the captives not be harmed.
“Priests are men of God who devote their lives to the good of the population without a political agenda. To hurt them is to harm the community they serve,” said the National Episcopal Conference of Congo.
The bishops called on security forces to do everything they could to free the two priests.
Fathers Charles Kipasa and Jean-Pierre Akilimali were abducted at Our Lady of the Angels parish in Bunyuka just before 10 p.m. Sunday, Reuters reports. About 10 assailants were involved in their abduction.
Bunyuka is in North Kivu province in the country’s east, fewer than 10 miles northeast of Butembo and near the border with Uganda.
The Congolese bishops’ statement noted that three other priests abducted in the same area in October 2012 still have not been released.
The border region, whose lands are rich in minerals, suffers from ethnic tensions and has been the site of wars and rebellions for two decades.
The nearby city of Beni has suffered major violence in the last two years. A series of nighttime massacres took place there beginning in October 2014. Unidentified attackers, mostly using hatchets and machetes, have killed hundreds in the city of 230,000 people.
In June an attack on Beni’s prison killed 11 people and freed over 930 prisoners. Another 12 people were killed in a raid on the city center by the Mai Mai militia coalition.
In December 2016, a nun in Bukavu, in neighboring South Kivu province, was murdered in an apparent robbery.
And that March, Fr. Vincent Machozi Karunzu was murdered by armed militants in North Kivu. He had documented human rights abuses in the country.
Denver, Colo., Jul 18, 2017 / 05:09 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- In the last 24 hours more than twenty Catholic pages, some with millions of followers, have been blocked by Facebook for unknown reasons.
Of the known affected pages, 21 are based in Brazil, and four are English-language pages, with administrators in the U.S. and Africa. Most of the blocked pages had significant followings – between hundreds of thousands and up to 6 million followers each.
One of the blocked English-language fanpages was “Jesus and Mary”, which had 1.7 million followers. The page’s main cover photo was of the sacred hearts of Jesus and Mary.
Page administrator Godwin Delali Adadzie, a Ghanaian, told CNA he was on Facebook around 8 p.m. Central July 17 when he was asked to upload a photo of himself because his personal account had been “suspected of suspicious activities,” he said.
After several minutes, he was allowed back into his personal account, which had notifications informing him that his “Jesus and Mary” page had been disabled. He said every person who was approved as an editor on his page had to go through the same process.
Adadzie said he reviewed Facebook’s policies “and, honestly, I do not see any that I have violated in order for my page to be withdrawn.”
He has sent two appeals to Facebook but has yet to get a response.
Another blocked English-language page is “Catholic and Proud”, which had 6 million followers. Page administrator Kenneth Alimba of Nigeria told CNA his page was also blocked without explanation.
He has sent appeals to Facebook but is “not optimistic” about a response. He also told CNA that he noticed other Catholic Facebook pages that he runs, with fewer followers, are still online.
Another blocked English-language page is “Fr. Rocky,” belonging to U.S. priest Fr. Francis J. Hoffman, executive director of Relevant Radio, whose page had 3.5 million likes. Fr. Hoffman could not be reached for comment by press time.
Facebook has yet to respond to requests for comment on the blocked pages. Facebook is the largest social network in the world, having recently reached more than 2 billion users.
While it remains unknown why these pages were blocked, some of the page administrators have said they wonder whether they are being censored.
In 2016, Facebook came under fire for allegedly censoring trends to news deemed “conservative.”
On that occasion, Mark Zuckerberg rejected the allegations of censorship, and met with conservative U.S. leaders to assure them Facebook’s neutrality.
In the past, user accounts have also been inadvertently blocked on Facebook due to system glitches, or numerous complaints against the page in a short time period. In these cases, Facebook restored the accounts after reviewing their content.
Brantly Millegan contributed to this report.
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