Washington D.C., Feb 13, 2018 / 03:35 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- As the US Senate begins a debate on immigration, Archbishop Jose Gomez of Los Angeles said that “Dreamers” should not be used as “bargaining chips” in the political proc… […]
Philadelphia, Pa., Feb 13, 2018 / 03:00 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Archbishop Charles Chaput of Philadelphia has encouraged Catholics to learn from history this Lent: to refuse to negotiate with evil, and to pursue the “difficult but always liberating&… […]
Denver, Colo., Feb 13, 2018 / 02:00 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Last week, a priest wrote to me. He said that as he surveyed the difficulties facing the Church, he was starting to wonder if it had been a mistake to convert to Catholicism.
I felt terrible. At… […]
Mobile, Ala., Feb 13, 2018 / 01:48 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- The U.S. Supreme Court has delayed the execution of an Alabama man who killed a police officer in 1985, on the grounds that the inmate reportedly suffers from dementia.
Vernon Madison, now 67 yea… […]
The Best Picture–nominated film seeks to evoke a world of pre-Christian sexual mores, one often cited for its relatively permissive attitudes toward pederasty. […]
Washington D.C., Feb 13, 2018 / 12:08 pm (CNA).- The federal budget proposal released by the Trump administration on Monday has been met with worry from U.S. bishops who stressed the need to protect the poor.
“Budget decisions ought to be guided… […]
Vatican City, Feb 13, 2018 / 06:55 am (CNA/EWTN News).- At Mass at Santa Marta Tuesday, Pope Francis concelebrated Mass with the patriarch of the Melkite Greek Catholic Church, Youssef Absi, saying that offering the liturgy together is like an embrace between the two Churches.
“This is what the ceremony of today means: the embrace of the father of a Church with Peter. A rich Church, with its own theology within the Catholic theology, with its own wonderful liturgy, and with a people,” the Pope said Feb. 13.
Speaking in place of a homily, Francis noted how a great number of the people of the Melkite Greek Catholic Church are being “crucified, like Jesus.”
He also said that the Mass was being offered “for the people that suffer, for persecuted Christians in the Middle East, who give their lives, give their goods, their properties, because they are driven away. And we also offer Mass for the ministry of our brother Youssef.”
At the end of the Mass, Patriarch Youssef, who concelebrated, offered his own words to the Pope, saying that he was moved by “his fraternal charity, by the gestures of fraternity, of solidarity that he has shown to our Church during this Mass.”
“We promise to keep it always in our hearts, in the heart of all of us, clergy and faithful, and we will always remember this event, these historical moments, this moment that I cannot describe for how beautiful it is: this fraternity, this communion that binds all disciples of Christ.”
The Melkite Greek Catholic Church is an Eastern Catholic Church of the Byzantine rite in full communion with Rome. It consists of some 1.5 million members and is based in Syria and Lebanon, with most of its eparchies in the Arab world. It also has structures to serve the Melkite diaspora in Australia, Turkey, Canada, Mexico, the United States, Argentina, Brazil, and Venezuela.
On Feb. 12, Pope Francis met with bishops of the Greek-Melkite synod, assuring the patriarch and bishops of his closeness in prayer.
In his speech, the Pope remarked on the presence of their Church in the Middle East, in particular Syria, where their Church “is deeply rooted and performs a precious service for the good of the People of God.”
He also extended his prayer for all the people and priests of the Church throughout the world. “In this difficult historical period, many Christian communities in the Middle East are called to live their faith in the Lord Jesus in the midst of many trials,” he said.
“I sincerely hope that with their testimony of life, the Greek-Melkite bishops and priests can encourage the faithful to remain in the land where Divine Providence has wanted them to be born.”
Francis said that on Feb. 23 he has called for a special day of prayer and fasting for peace, and that on that occasion he would not fail to make special mention of Syria, which has been hit in recent years “by unspeakable suffering.”
Referencing the most recent assembly of the synod of the Melkite Greek Catholic Church, which took place in Lebanon earlier this month, he said that those meetings are both an important moment of communion and when important decisions are made for the faithful.
Among these decisions is the election of new bishops, which Francis said are called to be shepherds, accompanying their people and helping them to seek the things of Christ, not of the world.
“We need so many Pastors to embrace life with the breadth of God’s heart, without settling on earthly satisfactions, without being content to carry forward what is already there, but always aiming high,” he said.
He also asked the bishops and the patriarch, when they return to their offices, to remind the faithful, and the men and women religious, that they are “in the heart and in the prayer of the Pope,” and gave his apostolic blessing.
Seoul, South Korea, Feb 13, 2018 / 05:00 am (CNA/EWTN News).- As the 2018 Winter Olympic Games continue in Pyeongchang, the world is watching Korea for more than just sports.
The sister of North Korean dictator, Kim Jong Un, was present at the games’ opening ceremony where athletes from both Koreas marched together under an inter-Korean flag.
Vice President Mike Pence stated that U.S. policy will remain unchanged after his trip to the region. Pence said, “new strong sanctions are coming very soon and the maximum pressure campaign will only intensify until North Korea abandons its nuclear program” in a post on Twitter on Feb. 12.
As tensions on the Korean peninsula remain high, Catholics there are likely remembering the witness of Korea’s first native-born priest, the martyred Saint Andrew Kim Taegon.
“St. Andrew Kim Taegon exhorted believers to draw from divine love the strength to remain united and to resist evil,” said Pope St. John Paul II on his third and final papal trip to South Korea, in 2001.
Korea’s first priest, Andrew Kim Taegon, was born 1821 into an aristocratic Korean family that eventually included three generations of Catholic martyrs.
Kim’s great-grandfather died for his Catholic faith in 1814, decades before the first Catholic missionary priests arrived on the peninsula from France.
“The first Christian community in Korea [is] a community unique in the history of the Church by reason of the fact that it was founded entirely by lay people,” said John Paul II at the canonization of 103 Korean martyrs, including Andrew Kim Taegon, in 1984.
Andrew Kim traveled over 1,000 miles to attend seminary in Macau. While Kim was away at seminary, his father, Ignatius Kim Chae-jun, was martyred for his faith in 1839.
After Kim was ordained in Shanghai in 1845, he returned to his homeland to begin catechising Koreans in secret. Only 13 months later, he was arrested.
In his final letter from prison before he was tortured and beheaded, Kim wrote to Korean Christians:
“Dearest brothers and sisters: when he was in the world, the Lord Jesus bore countless sorrows and by his own passion and death founded his Church; now he gives it increase through the sufferings of his faithful. No matter how fiercely the powers of this world oppress and oppose the Church, they will never bring it down. Ever since his ascension and from the time of the apostles to the present, the Lord Jesus has made his Church grow even in the midst of tribulations…I urge you to remain steadfast in faith, so that at last we will all reach heaven and there rejoice together. I embrace you all in love.”
During a century in which an estimated 10,000 Christians were martyred in Korea during waves of persecution by the Chosun Dynasty, Christianity continued to grow.
“The splendid flowering of the Church in Korea today is indeed the fruit of the heroic witness of the martyrs. Even today, their undying spirit sustains the Christians in the Church of silence in the North of this tragically divided land,” said John Paul II at the martyrs’ 1984 canonization.
In 1989, at South Korea’s Olympic Gymnastics Hall, Saint John Paul II again pointed young people to look to those martyrs, as the Korean people continued to grapple with the peninsula’s division.
“Your martyrs, many of them of your own age, were much stronger in their suffering and death than their persecutors in their hatred and violence. Violence destroys; love transforms and builds up. This is the challenge which Christ offers to you, young people of Korea, who wish to be instruments of true progress in the history of your country. Christ calls you, not to tear down and destroy, but to transform and build up!” the Pope said.
“The Korean nation is symbolic of a world divided and not yet able to become one in peace and justice,” the Pontiff said on the same papal trip, “yet there is a way forward. True peace – the shalom which the world urgently needs – springs eternally from the infinitely rich mystery of God’s love.”
“As Christians we are convinced that Christ’s Paschal Mystery makes present and available the force of life and love which overcomes all evil and all separation,” St. John Paul II continued. “the Eucharist is the sacrament of Christ’s “peace” because it is the memorial of the salvific redemptive sacrifice of the Cross.”
When speaking of peace on the Korean peninsula, Pope St. John Paul II had the following reminder:
“We must listen carefully to Christ’s words: ‘I do not give (peace) as the world gives (it).’ Christ’s peace is not merely the absence of war, the silencing of weapons. It is nothing less than the communication of ‘God’s love that has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit which has been given to us.’”
Sydney, Australia, Feb 13, 2018 / 12:16 am (CNA/EWTN News).- The bishops of Australia have called on the faithful of the country to begin the season of Lent with four days of fasting and reparation for victims of sexual abuse within the Church.
One su… […]
Among the several theologians to present at the upcoming seminars is a former national board member of Call to Action and an advocate for the […]
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