Month: November 2017

Vatican City, Nov 9, 2017 / 04:29 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Archbishop Protase Rugambwa was appointed secretary of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples on Thursday. He had previously served as the congregation’s adjunct secretary and president of the Pontifical Mission Societies.

The Nov. 9 appointment makes Archbishop Rugambwa, 57, second in the congregation, behind Cardinal Fernando Filoni, who is 71.

Archbishop Rugambwa was born in Bunena, Tanzania, in 1960. He studied at Kibosho Senior Seminary and St. Charles Lwanga Segerea Senior Seminary, and was ordained a priest of the Diocese of Rulenge in 1990.

He served as a parochial vicar, a teacher at a minor seminary, and a hospital chaplain. He obtained a doctorate in pastoral theology from the Pontifical Lateran University in 1998, and then served as vocations director and vicar general of his diocese.

In 2008 he was consecrated Bishop of Kigoma, where he served until he was transferred to the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples in 2012.

Pope Francis on Thursday also appointed Father Giovanni Pietro Dal Toso to fill the vacancy left by Archbishop Rugambwa’s appointment. He was also appointed Titular Archbishop of Foratiana.

A priest of the Bolzano-Bressanone diocese, Fr. Dal Toso had worked at the Pontifical Council Cor Unum from 1996 until it was suppressed Jan. 1.

Previously known as Propaganda Fidei, the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples is responsible for the work of spreading the Gospel in mission territories.

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Vatican City, Nov 9, 2017 / 02:54 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Former trafficking victim Rani Hong, who was kidnapped and sold into slavery at seven years old, is speaking out, saying we’ve raised awareness, but now it’s time to put our knowledge into action to help victims.

“As we all learn together, we need to move forward, beyond just raising awareness,” she said. “Now it’s time to act on behalf of children around the world.”

Kidnapped from her village in southern India, she said that when she first started telling her story as an adult, people didn’t always believe her, “because they couldn’t believe that the issue of slavery still exists today.”

But now, several years later, she said people have become much more educated on the issue, and after education should come action. “I want people all around the world to be able to take concrete action to make a difference in a child’s life.”

Hong’s story begins in India when she was a young child. A well-respected woman in the community approached her mother offering to clothe, feed, shelter, and educate her daughter during a difficult time. So she went down the street to live with the woman, her mother and family visiting every day.

But one day, Hong said, she was gone. The woman was in fact recruiting children in the streets of India and had sold her across the border into another state.

Held in a cage to teach her submission, she said in a Vatican press conference Nov. 6: “I did not know the language, I did not know anybody. I was disoriented and afraid and alone. I was crying for my mother and nobody came to rescue me.”

“We’re talking about a human being, myself, being captive. This is what the industry of human trafficking does,” she told journalists. By the time she was eight years old she had become sick and near death from the beatings and starvation she had endured to get her to submit to her trafficker.

Since she was no longer considered valuable for forced labor and her trafficker wanted “one more profit,” Hong was sold into illegal international adoption.

Statistics tell us that today human slavery is a 150-billion-dollar industry, Hong said, with around 40 million people enslaved around the world. And “no country is exempt.”

“We’re talking about buying and selling people,” she emphasized.

From there she was adopted by a woman in the United States and this is where she was able to start to heal and slowly start building her life again, she said. Amazingly, through what she terms “a miracle of God,” she was also able to find her birth mother and family in India in 1999.

It was finding her birth family, she noted, that inspired her to do something to help, with her faith in God giving her the strength to heal and to be able to share her story.

“My faith helped me to get stronger. And every day it’s a challenge. Every day I have to make a choice to do something and to have faith” that we can make a change, she said.

Now she and her husband, also a survivor of child slavery, have a non-profit organization called the Tronie Foundation, which works with business partners to help ensure supply chains do not use slavery and forced labor.

One practical initiative they’ve developed is the “Freedom Seal,” which helps consumers identify products from manufacturers independently audited to ensure fair labor practices.

Hong also speaks to lawmakers about creating and implementing laws to protect victims, help survivors, and prosecute traffickers. In 2011 she was appointed UN special advisor to the global initiative to fight human trafficking.

She was also invited to the Vatican to participate in a Nov. 5-6 workshop centered on helping former victims and run by the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences. She said being at the Vatican was a “huge step forward,” and hopefully inspired the academy and others to take on the issue with even more force.

“Because today, I speak for those without a voice,” she underlined. “The millions of children around the world who are not here and able to tell their story.”

Material from EWTN News Nightly and Vaticano was used in this article.

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Vatican City, Nov 9, 2017 / 11:16 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Meeting with the community of a Ukrainian Greek Catholic seminary in Rome on Thursday, Pope Francis encouraged them build up justice and peace in their homeland.

“Today the world is wounded by wars and violence,” the Pope reflected Nov. 9 during his meeting at the Vatican’s Clementine Hall with the community of the Ukrainian Pontifical College of Saint Josaphat.

“In particular, your beloved Ukrainian nation, whence you came and where you will return at the end of your Roman studies, is experiencing the drama of war, which generates great suffering.”

He added that “strong is the aspiration to justice and to peace, which bars any form of prevarication, social or political corruption, realities for which the poor always pay the price. God sustains and encourages those who are committed to realizing a society characterized ever more by justice and solidarity.”

Pope Francis’ meeting with the college, which serves seminarians and priests of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, comes 85 years after its present building as opened on Rome’s Janiculum Hill, at the request of Pius XI.

Francis recalled his predecessor’s particular concern for the faithful living in areas of suffering and persecution; at the time of the college’s founding, Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union.

“In the years of his pontificate, Pius XI always and firmly raised his voice in defending the faith, the freedom of the Church, and the transcendent dignity of every human person,” Francis said. “He clearly condemned, through speeches and letters, the atheistic and inhumane ideologies that bloodied the twentieth century. He brought to light their contradictions by indicating the Church as the high road of the Gospel, and also putting into practice the search for social justice, an indispensable dimension of the fully human redemption of peoples and nations.”

He invited the seminarians “to study the social doctrine of the Church, so as to mature in discernment and judgement of the social realities in which you are called to operate.”

While the call to peace may seem unreachable, Pope Francis said that “by loving and anouncing the Word, you will become true pastors of the communities entrusted to you, and it will be the lamp that illuminates your heart and your home, whether you prepare for the celibate or married priesthood, according to tradition of your Church.”

Considering the war, corruption, and strife among Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches which Ukraine is facing, Francis told the seminarians “to ensure your heart lies always in wide horizons, which have the measure of the whole world … love and care for your traditions, but avoid any form of sectarianism.”

He recalled the rainbow as a sign of God’s covenant with humanity which calls man “to learn to love and respect each other, to abandon their weapons, to reject war and all kinds of abuse.”

“If you walk this way and teach others to do the same, especially in the fundamental ecumenical dialogue, I am certain that from the heavenly homeland all the bishops and priests – some formed at your college – who have given their lives or have suffered persecution because of their fidelity to Christ and to the Apostolic See will smile at you and support you.”

Pope Francis also recalled his relationship with Fr. Stefan Czmil, from whom he came to appreciate the Divine Liturgy of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church.

Fr. Czmil was born in Sudova Vyshnia in what was then Austria-Hungary in 1914 and grew up in the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church.

Drawn to the example of St. John Bosco and his work, he decided to join the Salesians in order to educate poor young people in Ukriaine.

In 1930 Pope Pius XI granted permission for Eastern rite candidates to the Salesians to retain their rite and Church traditions and Fr. Czmil was sent to northern Italy for formation. He was professed as a member of the Salesians in 1935.

He studied for the priesthood in Italy during World War II and was ordained a priest of the order in 1945. While in Italy he helpd many Ukrainian refugees to find new homes.

In 1948 he was sent to Argentina to serve Ukrainian immigrants, where he met a young Jorge Bergoglio.

“This was good for me, because the man spoke of persecutions, of sufferings, of ideologies that were persecuting Christians,” Pope Francis told the seminarians. “And he taught me to open myself to a different liturgy, which I keep always in my heart for its beauty.”

Fr. Czmil was later sent back to Rome, where he was secretly consecrated a bishop in 1977. He died the following year.

Francis recalled that while he was in Buenos Aires, Major Archbishop Shevchuk had asked him for testimonies with which to open the cause for canonization of Fr. Czmil.

“I wanted to remember him today because it is just to give thanks before you for the good he did me,” the Pope told the seminarians.

“I accompany you with my blessing, invoking peace and ecumenical harmony for Ukraine.”

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