Year: 2017

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Five things to look for during Francis’ trip to Burma, Bangladesh

November 27, 2017 CNA Daily News 1

Yangon, Burma, Nov 27, 2017 / 11:15 am (CNA/EWTN News).- On Monday Pope Francis touched down in Yangon for what will likely be a politically charged and religiously significant six-day trip bringing him to both Burma and Bangladesh as the two countries face an escalating refugee crisis.

Pope Francis is in Burma and Bangladesh Nov. 27-Dec. 2, in what is now his third tour of Asia since his election in 2013. It is the first papal visit to Burma, the Holy See having established formal diplomatic relations with the country only last year.

His visit to Bangladesh, however, is the second time a Pope has visited, the first being St. John Paul II in 1986. Bl. Pope Paul VI made a brief stop in the territory in 1970, when it was still East Pakistan.

Throughout his six-day visit, Pope Francis will give 11 speeches total: five in Burma, consisting of three formal speeches and two homilies, and six in Bangladesh, counting five official speeches and one homily.

On the plane ride over, Francis told journalists he hopes it will be a fruitful visit. Here are a few key things for which to keep an eye out as things move forward.

The Pope’s meetings with Burmese civil and military authorities

This trip is one of the most diplomatically complicated international voyages Pope Francis taken so far, so much so that Vatican Spokesman Greg Burke described the trip to journalists as being “very interesting diplomatically” in last week’s briefing on the visit.

Aside from the very small Catholic population in each country, political circumstances in Burma have been precarious for years, as they are in the midst of a transition from military leadership to diplomacy.

The country is also called Myanmar, and while the Vatican uses this name in their official diplomatic correspondence, ‘Myanmar’ is considered by the U.S. government and many democracy activists to have been illegally imposed on the country by its military dictatorship.

Burma functioned as a military dictatorship for more than 50 years, until democratic reforms began taking root in 2011. In November 2015, Aung San Suu Kyi and her party, the National League for Democracy, were elected by an overwhelming majority, putting an end to a five-decade military dictatorship.

Aung San Suu Kyi and her party had also won the election in 1990, but the results weren’t recognized by the military government, and she was put under house arrest. However, despite her success in 2015, she is still barred from officially becoming president, and holds the title of “State Counsellor” and Foreign Minister, while a close associate is acting as president.

Despite emerging signs of democratic reform in Burma, the military still wields considerable political authority, including the appointment of cabinet ministers, and one-quarter of the nation’s legislature.

A key element of the Pope’s visit to watch for, then, is his formal meetings with both Aung San Suu Kyi Nov. 28, and his meeting with Min Aung Hlaing, commander-in-chief of the country’s armed forces.

The meeting with Min Aung Hlaing wasn’t initially on the Pope’s schedule; however, during a recent visit to Rome Cardinal Charles Maung Bo of Yangon recommended that a meeting with the military leader be added.

Pope Francis took the cardinal’s advice and scheduled the meeting for Nov. 30 at the archbishop’s house in Yangon, where he is staying while in Burma. However, the meeting was bumped up, and took place on the first day of Francis’ visit, shortly after he landed.

Lasting a total of 15 minutes, including conversation via interpreters and an exchange of gifts, the private encounter was the Pope’s first official meeting of the trip. Several of Min Aung Hlaing’s deputies were present.

According to Burke, the two spoke of “the great responsibility of the country’s authorities in this moment of transition.”

Min Aung Hlaing said on Twitter that he told Pope Francis, “there’s no religious discrimination” in the country, and “there is the freedom of religion.”

That Francis bumped the trip to the first day of his visit, when nothing else was scheduled, is noteworthy, and will be important to keep in mind as he meets with  Aung San Suu Kyi, the president,  and civil authorities Nov. 28. His words during the meeting are sure to carry a weighty significance.

The term ‘Rohingya’

With this political backdrop in mind, another thing to look out for is whether or not Pope Francis will use the term Rohingya to describe the largely Muslim ethnic group who reside in Burma’s Rakhine State.

His visit comes amid an uptick in state-supported violence against the Rohingya, which in recent months has reached staggering levels, causing the United Nations to declare the situation “a textbook example of ethnic cleansing.”

With an increase in persecution in their home country, many of the Rohingya have fled to neighboring Bangladesh, with millions camping along the border as refugees. More than 600,000 Rohingya have fled Burma for Bangladesh in recent months.

However, despite widespread use of the term Rohingya in the international community, the term is controversial within Burma.

The Burmese government refuses to use the term, and considers them illegal immigrants from Bangladesh. They have been denied citizenship since Burma gained independence in 1948.

Because of the touchy nature of the term, Cardinal Bo also suggested to the Pope that he refrain from using the word on the ground, arguing that extremists in the area are trying to rouse the population by using the term, making the risk of a new interreligious conflict ever-more present, with Christians in the crossfire.

According to Bo, the correct term to use is “Muslims of the Rakhine State.” He also stressed that other minorities in Burmese territory face persecution and displacement, including the Kachin, Kahn, and Shahn peoples, yet their plight often goes unreported.

Burke said the recent worsening of the humanitarian situation in Burma will be a strong element of the Pope’s visit, and that Francis is coming “at a key time” in this sense.

However, while the situation of the Rohingya has escalated in over the past few months, Burke said it wasn’t the primary reason for the Pope’s visit. “The trip was going to happen anyway,” he said. Recent developments have now “drawn attention to it, but it was going to happen anyway.”

Burke himself used term “Rohingya” to describe the persecuted Muslim minority, saying “it’s not a forbidden term” in the Vatican, and the Pope himself has used it before. But Cardinal Bo made a suggestion that Francis “took into account,” he said, adding, “we’ll see together” whether or not Pope Francis uses the term during his visit.  

Interreligious encounters

Throughout his visit, Pope Francis will have several moments of interreligious encounter, with Rohingya Muslims also participating. Combine this with that fact that Burma is a majority Buddhist country and Bangladesh majority Muslim, and these meetings will be of special interest.

Of importance is a private meeting of interreligious leaders scheduled to take place Nov. 28 at the archbishop’s residence in Yangon, which wasn’t initially on the Pope’s slate, but was also added upon the suggestion of Cardinal Bo.

Though there is not yet a list of who will participate, Bo said around 15 leaders will be present representing Christians, Buddhists, Hindus, and Muslims, including the likely presence of a member of the Rohingya community.

On the same day Francis will also meet with members of the “Sangha,” the Supreme Council of Buddhist clergy in the country. Catholics in Burma are a small minority, making up just 1.3 percent of a population of nearly 52 million.

Pope Francis will also meet with Rohingya Muslims during a Dec. 1 interreligious encounter in Bangladesh where five testimonies are expected to be given. Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, and Christians will all be present for the gathering.

In Bangladesh, 86 percent of the population practices Islam. The 375,000 Catholics there represent less than 0.2 of the total population.

Words to the Catholic community

As is by now well-known, Pope Francis has a special affinity for the peripheries. Both Burma and Bangladesh fall into this category ecclesiastically speaking, as well as economically. Bangladesh is among the poorest countries in the world, with nearly 30 percent of the population living under the poverty line.

Francis already boosted the profile of these nations by appointing the first-ever cardinals, giving Cardinal Bo a red hat in 2015, and elevating Cardinal Patrick D’Rozario of Dhaka in November 2016.

With Christians being a small minority in both Burma and Bangladesh, the Pope’s appointments were considered an encouragement for the small Catholic populations, and his visit is seen as a further sign of his closeness to a demographic that also faces discrimination in the area.

Christians in Burma also face blatant persecution, which some fear could increase if the Pope offends the government regarding the Rohingya.

Last year the United States Commission on Religious Freedom issued two separate reports on Burma, one of which focused on the plight of the Rohingya, and the second, titled “Hidden Plight: Christian Minorities in Burma,” highlighted the discrimination and persecution Christians face.

Encounters with youth

The Pope’s visits to both Burma and Bangladesh will be closed with meetings with the countries’ youth.

According to Burke, this was a decision the Pope himself made in order to show that they are an essential part of the Church, and that in each country, it is “a young Church with hope.”

In his meetings with youth, the Pope typically tosses his prepared remarks after listening to testimonies and speaks more freely and casually to the youth as he tries to enter into the raw reality faced by the local population, giving them a message of hope and some instructions for the future.

In messages sent to both countries ahead of his visit, Pope Francis said he was coming to spread the Gospel and to bring a message of peace, forgiveness, and reconciliation.

Though he will likely offer paternal advice to priests and religious, the meeting with youth is where his more pastoral side is most likely to come out stronger, and where he will likely go beyond the politics in order to offer a message of hope, peace and reconciliation for youth to carry forward into the future.

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The original Image of Divine Mercy: It’s not where you might think

November 26, 2017 CNA Daily News 3

Vilnius, Lithuania, Nov 26, 2017 / 04:33 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Among Catholic devotions, the Divine Mercy message is well-known: the iconic image of Christ, with rays of red and white pouring from his heart; St. Faustina, called the “Apostle of Divine Mercy;” and the Basilica of Divine Mercy in Krakow, Poland.

But what you might not know is that more than 450 miles north of Krakow, in the small town of Vilnius in Lithuania, there is another Sanctuary of Divine Mercy, one which houses the first image of the merciful Jesus created, and the only Image of Divine Mercy St. Faustina herself ever saw.

Archbishop Gintaras Grusas of Vilnius told CNA that the capital of Lithuania, often called the “City of Mercy,” is not only “a place of the Divine Mercy revelations, but also a place that is in need of mercy, throughout history, and a place that in the last couple decades has been a place where we need to show mercy.”

Since long before St. Faustina and the Divine Mercy revelations, the Mother of Mercy has been the patroness of Vilnius, Grusas said.

In fact, in the 1600s, a painting of Our Lady of the Gate of Dawn was created and placed in a niche above one of the prominent city gates. Many miracles are attributed to the image, which was canonically crowned Mother of Mercy by Pope Pius XI in 1927.

It was in this small chapel of the Mother of Mercy, above the gate, that the Image of Divine Mercy was first displayed. So Vilnius has had “mercy upon mercy,” Grusas noted.

The story of St. Faustina and Divine Mercy

St. Faustina Kowalska was a young Polish nun born at the beginning of the 20th century. Over the course of several years she had visions of Jesus, whereby she was directed to create an image and to share with the world revelations of Jesus’ love and mercy.

St. Faustina received her first revelation of the merciful Jesus in Plock, Poland in February 1931. At the time, she had made her first vows as one of the Sisters of Our Lady of Mercy.

In 1933, after she made her perpetual vows, her superior directed her to move to the convent house in Vilnius. She stayed there for three years and this is where she received many more visions of Jesus. Vilnius is also where she found a priest to be her spiritual director, the now-Bl. Michael Sopocko.

With the help of Fr. Sopocko, St. Faustina found a painter to fulfill the request Jesus had made to her in one of the visions – to “paint an image according to the pattern you see, with the signature: Jesus, I trust in You” – and in 1934 the painter Eugene Kazimierowski created the original Divine Mercy painting under St. Faustina’s direction.

In its creation, St. Faustina “was instrumental in making all the adjustments with the painter,” Archbishop Grusas said.

The image shows Christ with his right hand raised as if giving a blessing, and the left touching his chest. Two rays, one pale, one red – which Jesus said are to signify water and blood – are descending from his heart.

St. Faustina recorded all of her visions and conversations with Jesus in her diary, called Divine Mercy in My Soul. Here she wrote the words of Jesus about the graces that would pour out on anyone who prayed before the image:

“I promise that the soul that will venerate this image will not perish. I also promise victory over [its] enemies already here on earth, especially at the hour of death. I Myself will defend [that soul] as My own glory.”

When the image was completed, it was first kept in the corridor of the convent of the Bernardine Sisters, which was beside the Church of St. Michael where Fr. Sopocko was rector.

In March 1936 St. Faustina became sick, with what is believed to have been tuberculosis, and was transferred back to Poland by her superiors. She died near Krakow in October 1938, at the age of 33.

“St. Faustina, because of her illness, was brought back to Krakow by her superiors. But she left the painting in Vilnius because it was the property of her spiritual director, who paid for the painting,” Grusas explained.

Jesus, in one of St. Faustina’s visions, had expressed his wish that the image be put in a place of honor, above the main altar of the church. And so, though St. Faustina had already returned to Poland, on the first Sunday after Easter in 1937, they hung the image of Merciful Jesus next to the main altar in the Church of St. Michael.

The history of the image

Archbishop Grusas explained that many people have only recently learned about the image because it was hidden for many years, and it was only rediscovered and restored within the last 15 years.

During World War II, Lithuania was under Soviet occupation and in 1948, the communist government closed the Church of St. Michael and abolished the convent. Many of the sacred objects and artworks were moved to another church to be saved from Soviet hands, but the Divine Mercy image was left undisturbed in St. Michael’s for several years.

In 1951, two women were able to pay the keeper of St. Michael’s church and save the image. Since it couldn’t be taken across the border to Poland, they gave it to the priest in charge of the Church of the Holy Spirit for safekeeping.

Five years later it was moved to a church in Belarus, where it remained for over a decade. In 1970 this church too was shut down by the government and looted, but miraculously, again the Image of Divine Mercy was untouched.

Eventually it was brought back to Lithuania in secret and again given to the Church of the Holy Spirit. In the early 2000s its significance was rediscovered and after a professional restoration it was rehung in the nearby Church of the Holy Trinity in 2005, which is now the Shrine of Divine Mercy.

So though it is a more recent arrival on the international scene, the painting “is also probably the most profound of the Divine Mercy paintings,” Grusas said. “It has a very deep theology, very closely tied with St. Faustina’s diary.”

The Shrine of Divine Mercy

Today in Vilnius the archdiocese has begun to set up a guide for pilgrims who come and wish to visit the holy sites, such as the place where St. Faustina lived, the room where the image was painted, and the several churches which all held the painting at different points.

The Shrine of Divine Mercy itself is not a large place, since it’s only a converted parish church, but its sacramental life “is really quite something,” said Justin Gough, an American seminarian studying in Rome who spent a summer working in the Archdiocese’s pilgrim office in Vilnius.

He said that “between Mass, the Divine Mercy chaplet every day in Lithuanian and Polish, adoration 24/7… vespers every Sunday night led by the youth of Vilnius,” the rosary and the sacrament of Confession, there is always some sort of prayer or sacrament taking place.

Of course the original Image of Divine Mercy is also there, he pointed out, and yet the shrine is not just about the image, but about connecting the image and what it represents to prayer and the reception of God’s mercy through the sacraments.

“I think it’s ironic in a certain sense that God teaches us about his mercy through a holy woman who died at the age of 33,” he said. “She lived a very devout life, endured great sufferings for the sake of Christ, and yet it’s through people like her that we’re taught, great sinners that we are, how to actually receive God’s mercy and to be merciful to others.”

In Vilnius, it’s a great blessing “to know a saint of the 20th century walked here, prayed here, and experienced Christ here, and that we can do that as well.”

 

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Pope Francis: What matters in the end is how well we loved

November 26, 2017 CNA Daily News 3

Vatican City, Nov 26, 2017 / 06:07 am (CNA/EWTN News).- On Sunday Pope Francis said that when the Final Judgment comes, what will matter most is how much we loved God and others, especially through daily, concrete acts of charity toward those most in need.

“At the end of our life we will be judged on love, that is, on our concrete commitment to love and serve Jesus in the least of our brothers and the needy,” the Pope said Nov. 26.

“Jesus will come at the end of time to judge all the nations, but he (also) comes to us every day, in so many ways, and asks us to welcome him.”

Pope Francis spoke to around 30,000 people gathered in St. Peter’s Square before leading the Angelus prayer. Celebrating the Solemnity of Christ the King, the Pope offered a reflection on the Last Judgment and Jesus’ “criteria” for entering the Kingdom of Heaven.  

He explained how at the second coming, when Jesus appears “in divine glory,” he will summon all of humanity to him, separating the righteous from the unrighteous. And to the righteous he will say: “Come, blessed of my Father, receive as inheritance the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world.”

This is because: “I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, naked and you dressed me, sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to see me.”

Francis noted how when Jesus speaks about the Final Judgment to his disciples, the men are surprised by his words, because they don’t remember meeting Jesus, let alone helping him in this way. So Jesus explains what he meant: “All you did to one of these the least of my brothers, you did to me.”

“This word never ceases to hit us,” Pope Francis said, “because it reveals to what extent God’s love comes to us: to the point of being identified with us, but not when we are well, when we are healthy and happy, no, but when we are in need.”

In this way Jesus reveals “the decisive criterion of his judgment,” the Pope said, which is “concrete love for the neighbor in distress.”

We should ask the Virgin Mary to help us to not only meet Jesus in his Word and in the Eucharist, he continued, but “at the same time in the brothers and sisters suffering from hunger, illness, oppression, and injustice.”

“May our hearts welcome him into our life today, for we are welcomed by him into the eternity of his Kingdom of Light and Peace.”

After the Angelus Pope Francis expressed his sorrow for the attack on a mosque in Sinai, Egypt on Nov. 24 which killed more than 230 people and wounded hundreds more.

“I continue to pray for the many victims, for the wounded and for the whole community, so severely affected. God frees us from these tragedies and sustains the efforts of all those who work for peace, concord, and coexistence,” he said.

Just as those people were praying at the time of the attack, he then asked for a moment of silent prayer for those affected by the attack.

The Pope also recalled the beatification of Bl. Catalina de María Rodríguez, founder of the Congregation of Hermanas Esclavas of Corazón de Jesús, in Argentina on Saturday.

She lived in the 19th century and was first married. But when she became widowed she decided to consecrate herself to God and dedicate herself “to the spiritual and material care of the poorest and most vulnerable women.”

“We praise the Lord for this ‘passionate woman of the Heart of Jesus and of humanity,’” he said.

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