Year: 2017

Mexico City, Mexico, Sep 8, 2017 / 11:42 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Following Mass during his five-day trip to Colombia, Pope Francis on Friday offered prayers for those affected by a major earthquake in Mexico the previous night.

At the end of the Mass, Po… […]

Villavicencio, Colombia, Sep 8, 2017 / 10:39 am (CNA/EWTN News).- During Mass in Colombia on Friday, Pope Francis beatified two martyrs from the country, both of whom were killed in hatred of the faith within the last 60 years.

Bishop Jesús Emilio Jaramillo Monsalve and Fr. Pedro María Ramírez Ramos were declared “blessed” by the Pope, moving them further ahead on the road to canonization.

The two martyrs, Francis said, are a sign of God’s presence in Colombia, as promised at the end of the Gospel of Matthew, where it says: “I will be with you always, to the close of the age.” They are “an expression of a people who wish to rise up out of the swamp of violence and bitterness,” he said.

Bishop Jaramillo, known for his care of the poor, served as bishop of Arauca. He became a target of the National Liberation Army, a Marxist guerrilla group in Colombia, when he spoke out against their kidnappings and involvement in the drug trade. Members of the guerrilla group kidnapped Bishop Jaramillo and killed him on Oct. 2, 1989.

After decades of fighting, the National Liberation Army and the Colombian government arrived at an agreement for a temporary ceasefire earlier this week. It will go into effect Oct. 1.

Born in La Plata in 1899, Fr. Ramirez became priest in 1931. When civil war erupted in Colombia between conservative and liberal groups, he was serving as a pastor in Armero. Local families offered to smuggle him to safety, but the priest refused to abandon his people.

On April 10, 1948, he was dragged out of his church by a group of rebels, who accused him of hiding weapons for conservatives. They lynched him in the town square. He died forgiving his killers.

The Pope spoke about reconciliation to large crowds gathered for an outdoor Mass in the Catama neighborhood of Villavicencio in Colombia.

He pointed to the martyrs as an example of what it means to make reconciliation concrete. The most powerful protagonists in the peace-building process are those people who have been victims of violence themselves, but have overcome the temptation to act with vengeance, he said.

“What is needed is for some to courageously take the first step in that direction, without waiting for others to do so. We need only one good person to have hope! And each of us can be that person!” he emphasized.

This does not mean sugarcoating or ignoring injustice and conflict, he noted. Still, he said, “every effort at peace without a sincere commitment to reconciliation is destined to fail.”

The Holy Family offers an example as well, he said.

“How can we best allow the light in? What are the true paths of reconciliation?” he reflected.

“Like Mary, by saying yes to the whole of history, not just to a part of it. Like Joseph, by putting aside our passions and pride. Like Jesus Christ, by taking hold of that history, assuming it, embracing it.”

“That is who you are, that is who Colombians are, that is where you find your identity. God can do all this if we say yes to truth, to goodness, to reconciliation, if we fill our history of sin, violence and rejection with the light of the Gospel,” he said.

In his homily, the Pope also referenced the day’s Gospel, which tells the long genealogy of Jesus.

This long list helps us to keep a good perspective – it shows us what a small part we play in the vast history of the world and integrates into salvation history “those pages which are the darkest and saddest, moments of desolation and abandonment comparable to exile.”

The people of Colombia have their own genealogies, he continued. “Here too we can write genealogies full of stories, many of love and light; others of disagreement, insults, even of death…How many of you can tell of exile and grief!”

The genealogy of Christ mentions numerous women, he pointed out. In communities still weighed down with “patriarchal and chauvinistic customs, it is good to note that the Gospel begins by highlighting women who were influential and made history.”

Noting that Sept. 8 is the Feast of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Francis particularly highlighted Mary as an example of the light of reconciliation breaking into the world, because she is “the first light who announces night’s end, and above all, the impending day.”

“Her birth helps us to understand the loving, tender, compassionate plan of love in which God reaches down and calls us to a wonderful covenant with him, that nothing and no one will be able to break.”

Mary transmits God’s light, he concluded. And just like Mary, we need to say ‘yes’ to reconciliation, “and sing with her ‘the wonders of the Lord,’ for as he has promised to our fathers, he helps all nations and peoples, he helps Colombia which today wishes to be reconciled; it is a promise made also to its descendants forever.”

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Miami, Fla., Sep 7, 2017 / 05:42 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- As Hurricane Irma moves through the Atlantic – one of the strongest storms ever recorded in that ocean – Catholic groups are offering prayers and helping prepare for the recovery efforts… […]

Bogotá, Colombia, Sep 7, 2017 / 04:26 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Just as Christ called Peter to cast his nest where there seemed to be no fish, Christ is calling Colombians to take risks in order to build a culture of peace and life, Pope Francis said in the capital Bogota on Thursday.

“…the word of Jesus has something special that leaves no-one indifferent; his word has the power to convert hearts, to change plans and projects. It is a word demonstrated by action, not academic findings, cold agreements, removed from people’s pain; for his is a word valid both for the safety of the shore and the fragility of the sea,” Pope Francis said Sept. 7 during his homily at a Mass in Simón Bolívar Park.

The Pope is on a 6-day trip to the South American country, which has just recently established a peace accord between the government and the guerilla group FARC. His trip is centering on peace and reconciliation, with the overarching theme “Let us take the first step”.

Pope Francis reflected on the Gospel of Luke and the calling of Simon Peter the fishermen, one of the first disciples called to follow Christ, during the homily on the first full day of his trip.

“Jesus scatters and destroys all this darkness with the command he gives to Peter in the boat: ‘Put out into the deep sea,’” the Holy Father noted. Despite his doubts, Peter follows the command of Christ and is able to bring into his boat a huge haul of fish.

Colombia itself has known its fair share of darkness, he added, including war, political division and corruption, and a disrespect for human life.

But like Peter, Colombia is called to respond to the call of Christ to take the first step out of darkness and toward peace, he said.

“In Bogotá and in Colombia a vast community journeys forwards, called to conversion in a healthy net that gathers everyone into unity, working for the defense and care of human life, especially when it is most fragile and vulnerable: in a mother’s womb, in infancy, in old age, in conditions of incapacity and in situations of social marginalization. Great multitudes of people in Bogotá and in Colombia can also become truly vibrant, just and fraternal communities, if they hear and welcome the Word of God,” the Pope said.

Evangelizing men and women with the Word of God will raise up a generation of people ready to hear the call of the Lord and able to foster peace and a culture of life, he added. He urged Colombians to work together and rely on each other in this common cause.

“He calls everyone, so that no one is left to the mercy of the storms; to go into the boat of every family, that sanctuary of life; to make space for the common good above any selfish or personal interests; to carry the most fragile and promote their rights,” he said.

He urged Colombians to remember to follow the Lord on the path of peace, even when it may seem difficult or they may be afraid.

“…in the same way as Simon, Jesus invites us to put out into the deep, he prompts us to take shared risks, to leave behind our selfishness and to follow him; to give up our fears which do not come from God, which paralyze us and prevent us becoming artisans of peace, promoters of life.”

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Bogotá, Colombia, Sep 7, 2017 / 03:09 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- What is likely one of the most important speeches of Pope Francis’ visit to Colombia, political processes aside, and one which can offer key insights into his thinking, is his Thursday meeting with representatives of Latin America’s bishops.

Francis’ meeting with the continent-wide ecclesial body outlined not only vision for the Church in Latin America specifically, but his reflections also offer his key priorities for the universal Church.

In his Sept. 7 speech, the Pope said that since its foundation, the Episcopal Conferences of Latin America (CELAM) has become “a vital point of reference for the development of a deeper understanding of Latin American Catholicism.”

At the same time, he praised the entity for its efforts at becoming “a home at the service of communion and the mission of the Church in Latin America, as well as a center for fostering a sense of discipleship and missionary spirit.”

Given that he is himself Latin American, Francis obviously has strong ties to the ecclesial body, and in 2007, while Archbishop of Buenos Aires, he was charged with drafting the concluding document of their 5th General Conference in Aparecida, Brazil.

That document was taken by many as a compass of-sorts for Francis’ pontificate after he was elected, and with good reason.  

However, far beyond Latin America and the current Vicar of Christ, himself the first-ever South American Pope, CELAM has left a much bigger mark on the universal Church.

CELAM

The entity, which is composed of the 22 bishops’ conferences of Latin America and the Caribbean, was established by Venerable Pius XII in 1955 as the first continent-wide bishops’ conference.

The seven cardinals and 90 bishops who originally composed CELAM had met for their own conference during the Eucharistic Congress held in Rio de Janiero in 1955. The meeting was prompted by the Holy See itself, and Ven. Pius XII sent his own Cardinal legate, Adeodato Piazza, to attend the discussion.

One of the main reasons for the gathering was to create a new pastoral program for the region which addressed four major topics at the time: the shortage of priests, religious education, social problems, and the plight of Amerindian population.

Conclusions from the meeting were drafted and sent to Rome for approval before being published. Since then, CELAM members have met every few years to continue discussing major issues affecting the region, and theirs was a key voice on social issues during the Second Vatican Council.

However, though it was a novelty at the time, CELAM set the stage for the eventual creation of other continent-wide bishops conferences, all of which were established after Vatican II in a bid to foster greater unity and to encourage collegiality among local Churches.

Though still active, CELAM took a step back during the 1980s and ’90s under St. John Paul II, who preferred a greater emphasis on bishops as shepherds of their local Church.

The last major conference CELAM held before the 2007 gathering in Aparecida was their 4th General Conference in Santo Domingo of the Dominican Republic in 1992.

However, when Benedict XVI was elected, he offered his full support and empowerment to CELAM, and personally inaugurated the 2007 gathering in Aparecida.

When asked on the flight there how Brazil had impacted his  personal formation, Benedict said that while he was no expert, “I am convinced that it is here, at least in part – and a fundamental part – that the future of the Catholic Church is being decided. This has always been evident to me.”

And indeed it was during that gathering for CELAM in Aparecida that Cardinal Bergoglio would take the lead role in drafting a document that has become one of the most quoted and footnoted in his magisterial publications as Pope Francis.

Pope Francis and Aparecida

During his first international appointment as Pope, attending the 2013 World Youth Day in Rio de Janeiro, Francis made headlines for his vibrant style of communicating, his closeness to the people, and for dropping lines like the famous appeal for Argentine youth to get on the streets and “make a mess” with their love for Christ in spreading the Gospel.

But in addition to his official WYD commitments, he also met with CELAM leaders, telling them to embrace a “missionary spirit,” and referred them back to the 2007 concluding document from Aparecida, which he said launched a continent-wide mission aimed at Christ-centered service.

The document itself was a regional preview of what have become Francis’ top priorities for the universal Church. Among other things, it places strong emphasis on popular religiosity and included an introduction on how to approach contemporary reality as “missionary disciples.”

It also focuses on giving thanks, and the “joy of being disciples and missionaries” of God, and places a strong emphasis on the Church’s mission to evangelize.

The document is read through the lens of what it means to be a “missionary disciple” and how this should be the lens through which we read reality and its current challenges, including cultural trends and threats to the family and the environment.

Other topics mentioned that have come up frequently in Francis’ pontificate are: indigenous peoples, technology, the role and dignity of women, the importance of fostering community amid the diversity of the Church’s various charisms and spiritualities, interreligious dialogue, the role of the Holy Spirit, human dignity, and the need to go out of ourselves.

The document also dwells on marriage, the elderly, migrants, the poor, the need for solidarity and issues of social justice, emphasizing the Beatitudes, as Francis often does, as a road-map for how the Church’s social teaching out to be lived out.

In his speech to CELAM leaders in Colombia this week, Pope Francis again referred back to the “pastoral legacy” of the 2007 Aparecida document, telling them it is “a treasure yet to be fully exploited.”

“I am certain that each of you has seen how its richness has taken root in the Churches you hold in your hearts,” he said, and outlined the signs of hope found in the region. Namely, he said hope in Latin America is found primarily in the youth, in women – who “keep patiently kindling the flame of faith” – and in the laity.

These are all issues brought up at some point in the Aparecida document, and which that have become familiar to the eyes of Vatican-watchers throughout the world.

While the Pope certainly doesn’t shy away from these topics when conversing in other forums and with other demographics, he understandably feels more at home among his fellow Latin Americans, especially since he understands their reality so well.

That being said, we can expect to continue hearing the same messages from Pope Francis even from Rome. But if there’s one thing we can take away from his audiences with CELAM, it’s that they have played a significant role in his own life and pontificate, and will undoubtedly continue to do so. If we want to keep tabs on his vision for the universal Church, his meetings with them are a good place to start.

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Bogotá, Colombia, Sep 7, 2017 / 02:55 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- The Catholic Church must avoid a sense of superiority and clericalism and instead teach forgiveness, reconciliation, and justice, Pope Francis said in forceful comments Thursday to a gathering of Latin American bishops.

“The Church is not present in Latin America with her suitcases in hand, ready, like so many others over time, to abandon it after having plundered it,” he said Sept. 7.

“Such people look with a sense of superiority and scorn on its mestizo face; they want to colonize its soul with the same failed and recycled visions of man and life; they repeat the same old recipes that kill the patient while lining the pockets of the doctors. They ignore the deepest concerns present in the heart of its people, the visions and the myths that give strength in spite of frequent disappointments and failures.”

He warned against those who “manipulate politics and betray hopes, leaving behind scorched land and a terrain ready for more of the same, albeit under a new guise.”

“Powerful figures and utopian dreams have promised magic solutions, instant answers, immediate effects,” he said.

The Pope spoke to the executive committee of the Latin American Episcopal Conference, known also by its Spanish acronym CELAM. He spoke at the apostolic nunciature in Bogota during his visit to Colombia.

“The Church, without human pretensions, respects the varied face of the continent, which she sees not as an impediment but rather a perennial source of wealth. She must continue working quietly to serve the true good of the men and women of Latin America,” Pope Francis said. “She must work tirelessly to build bridges, to tear down walls, to integrate diversity, to promote the culture of encounter and dialogue, to teach forgiveness and reconciliation, the sense of justice, the rejection of violence. No lasting construction in Latin America can do without this invisible, yet essential, foundation.”

“The Church appreciates like few others the deep-rooted shared wisdom that is the basis of every reality in Latin America,” the Pope continued. “She lives daily with that reserve of moral values on which the life of the continent rests.”

He advocated continued dialogue with this reality. The Church cannot lose contact with this moral foundation, this “vital humus which resides in the heart of our people.” In this soil, he said, “we see the subtle yet eloquent elements that make up its mestizo face – not merely indigenous, Hispanic, Portuguese or African, but mestizo: Latin American.”

He warned against the habitual traps this part of the world faces: a lack of focus, the squandering of the continent’s diversity, and “a constant process of disintegration.”

“To speak to this deepest soul, to speak to the most profound reality of Latin America, the Church must continually learn from Jesus. The Gospel tells us that Jesus spoke only in parables. He used images that engaged those who heard his word and made them characters in his divine stories. God’s holy and faithful people in Latin America understand no other way of speaking about him,” he said. “We are called to set out on mission not with cold and abstract concepts, but with images that keep multiplying and unfolding their power in human hearts, making them grain sown on good ground, yeast that makes the bread rise from the dough, and seed with the power to become a fruitful tree.”

The Pope warned of a “deficit of hope” in Latin America, but also pointed to Christians’ supernatural hope.

“Once you think hope is gone, it returns where you least expect it,” he said. “Our people have learned that no disappointment can crush it. It follows Christ in his meekness, even under the scourge. It knows how to rest and wait for the dawn, trusting in victory, because – deep down – it knows that it does not belong completely to this world.”

In Latin America, hope has a youthful face, he said. Some people point to young people’s alleged shortcomings and lack of motivation, and others see them as potential customers or seek to enlist them in violence and trafficking.

“Pay no attention to these caricatures of young people. Look them in the eye and seek in them the courage of hope,” Pope Francis said. “Look them in the eye and seek in them the courage of hope.”

“It is not true that they want to return to the past,” he claimed.

“It is our task us to present the young with lofty ideals and to encourage them to stake their lives on God, in imitation of the openness shown by Our Lady.”

Hope in Latin America also has a woman’s face, the Roman Pontiff reflected.

“From their lips we learned the faith, and with their milk we took on the features of our mestizo soul and our immunity to despair,” he explained. “I think of indigenous or black mothers, I think of mothers in our cities working three jobs, I think of elderly women who serve as catechists, and I think of consecrated woman and those who quietly go about doing so much good. Without women, the Church of this continent would lose its power to be continually reborn. It is women who keep patiently kindling the flame of faith.”

He stressed the grave obligation to understand, respect, appreciate, and promote women’s impact on society and the Church. He invoked the example of the women who accompanied Christ and did not abandon him at the foot of the cross.

“Please, do not let them be reduced to servants of our recalcitrant clericalism,” he said, declaring that women are on “the front lines” of the Church.

He stressed that hope must pass through the hearts, minds, and arms of the laity. He challenged a clericalism that treats the laity as children and impoverishes the identity of clerics.

Hope must also look at the world with “the eyes of the poor.”

“Hope is poor, like the grain of wheat that dies, yet has the power to disseminate God’s plans,” said the Pope.

Wealth frequently blinds us to “both the reality of the desert and the oases hidden therein,” and offers “textbook answers and repeats platitudes,” he said.

“It babbles about its own empty ideas and concerns, without even coming close to reality. I am certain that in this difficult and confused, yet provisional moment that we are experiencing, we will find the solutions to the complex problems we face in that Christian simplicity hidden to the powerful yet revealed to the lowly. The simplicity of straightforward faith in the risen Lord, the warmth of communion with him, fraternity, generosity, and the concrete solidarity that likewise wells up from our friendship with him.

The Pope stressed that God does not speak to us as if we were strangers or as if he were a solicitor delivering a personal summons, nor does he “lay down rules to be followed like certain functionaries of the sacred.”

Rather, “God speaks with the unmistakable voice of the Father to his children; he respects the mystery of man because he formed us with his own hands and gave us a meaningful purpose.”

“Our great challenge as a Church is to speak to men and women about this closeness of God, who considers us his sons and daughters, even when we reject his fatherhood,” the Pope told the bishops. “For him, we are always children to be encountered anew.”

The Gospel cannot be reduced to “a programme at the service of a trendy gnosticism, a project of social improvement, or the Church conceived as a comfortable bureaucracy, any more than she can be reduced to an organization run according to modern business models by a clerical caste.”

“The Church is the community of Jesus’ disciples. The Church is a Mystery and a People. Better yet, the Church the Mystery becomes present through God’s People,” he said.

Missionary discipleship is “a call from God for today’s busy and complicated world.”  In this discipleship, the Christian is constantly setting out with Christ “in order to know how and where the Master lives.”

“Only a Church which is Bride, Mother and Servant, one that has renounced the claim to control what is not her own work but God’s, can remain with Jesus, even when the only place he can lay his head is the cross,” he said.

Closeness and encounter are the means that God uses, with the mystery of the Church being “the perennial place of this encounter.”

He told the bishops that the most essential and urgent activities are to pray and foster their relationship with the living Christ, where unity is always found: “How greatly we need to be alone with the Lord in order to encounter anew the heart of the Church’s mission … How greatly we need to be recollected, within and without! Our crowded schedules, the fragmentation of reality, the rapid pace of our lives: all these things might make us lose our focus and end up in a vacuum. Recovering unity is imperative.”

“If we do not we set out with [Christ] on our mission, we quickly become lost and risk confusing our vain needs with his cause. If our reason for setting out is not Jesus, it becomes easy to grow discouraged by the fatigue of the journey, or the resistance we meet, by constantly changing scenarios or by the weariness brought on by subtle but persistent ploys of the enemy,” he said.

Yielding to discouragement is not part of the Christian mission, and Christ “does not feed our fears.”

“The Gospel is always concrete, and never an exercise in sterile speculations. We know well the recurring temptation temptation to get lost in the byzantinism of the doctors of the law, to wonder how far we can go without losing control over our own demarcated territory or our petty portion of power.”

He stressed the importance of Christ’s encounter with persons, and how he draws near to them, talks to them, touches them, and brings them healing and salvation.

“His aim in constantly setting out is to lead the people he meets to the Father,” the Pope said. “We must never stop reflecting on this. The Church has to re-appropriate the verbs that the Word of God conjugates as he carries out his divine mission. To go forth to meet without keeping a safe distance; to take rest without being idle; to touch others without fear … We cannot let ourselves be paralyzed by our air-conditioned offices, our statistics and our strategies. We have to speak to men and women in their concrete situations.”

He summed up his message by saying the bishops must serve with passion: We need to have the passion of young lovers and of wise elders, a passion that turns ideas into viable utopias, a passion for the work of our hands, a passion that makes us constant pilgrims in our Churches … My brothers, please, I ask you for passion, the passion of evangelization.”

He commended the bishops, their local Churches, and all the people of Latin America and the Caribbean to Our Lady of Guadalupe and to Our Lady of Aparecida, the patron saint of Brazil.

“I do so, in the serene certainty that God who spoke to this continent with the mestizo and black features of his Mother, will surely make his kindly light shine in the lives of all.”

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