More than 400,000 pro-life signatures presented to Argentine legislature

Maracaibo, Venezuela, Aug 22, 2018 / 12:23 am (ACI Prensa).- When Juan Pablo Hernandez returns to his home in the Archdiocese of Maracaibo, Venezuela next year, he will face a country suffering from a years-long economic crisis. But the 23-year-old seminarian is not afraid.

“I’m happy to go back home and to be able to help the people,” said Hernandez, who is currently studying in Spain.

“Giving them hope is essential. I want to bring them the joy and hope of Jesus Christ so that they can keep their heads above water,” he told ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish language sister agency.

Venezuela is in the midst of an ongoing economic crisis, as poor economic policies, including strict price controls, coupled with high inflation rates, have resulted in a severe lack of basic necessities such as toilet paper, milk, flour, diapers and medicines.

Added to shortages in food, healthcare supplies, and public services such as water and electricity are problems with personal safety, employment, the circulation and sale of cash, and insufficient public transport.

The city of Maracaibo, where Hernandez is from, has seen power outages lasting nearly three days, leaving food to spoil and the elderly to suffer in the summer heat.

The economic crisis has led 1.2 million refugees to flee Venezuela in the past two years, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).

“The Church is suffering from this whole precarious situation right along with the people of Venezuela,” Hernandez said. “The government is asphyxiating us bit-by-bit, they want the people to lose hope and settle for the destitution they are given.”

But despite the devastating situation, “trust in God and in the Church has grown” throughout the country, he said.

Many people who did not formerly attend Mass are now “looking for God in the midst of the precariousness,” he said, and to these people, “the Church always extends a hand.”

Additionally, the lack of material goods “brings out people’s generosity, and groups are formed to help children and the sick.”

Something very common is the “mercy cooking pot” which is organized in the parishes where “people bring what they have – not what’s left over, because no one has any food left over – and with what there is, they cook it up and distribute some 300 servings,” Hernandez said.

It was precisely the desire “to be close to God and to help the people” that drew the seminarian to consider a vocation to the priesthood.

Hernandez said he first heard a call to the priesthood at a friend’s ordination Mass. At the time, he was 19 years old.

“During the celebration of the ordination…I felt something burning inside and that thing stayed with me. I was truly amazed that there are those who are capable of leaving everything to give themselves to God,” he said.

“I didn’t understand what was in the hearts of these people that were leaving everything and answering ‘Here I am Lord, your will be done’,” he recalled.

Although the experience was powerful, Hernandez did not initially consider pursuing the same path for himself. At the time, he had a girlfriend and was studying electrical engineering.

“I didn’t want to leave everything for something I would have no control over,” he said.

But a few years later, Hernandez could not shake the feeling “that there was something more I was missing, something greater.”

One day during Mass at his local parish, the priest asked if someone could assist as an altar server. Although Hernandez was above the typical age of altar servers, he volunteered.

“I saw that it was my opportunity to be close to everything that so much drew my attention a few years prior,” he said. “To be so close to the altar, the consecration, the Lord…All that stirred up in me what I had experienced at the ordination of my friend.”

From then on, he became more deeply involved in the parish – teaching catechism, organizing retreats, and joining the pastor in visits to the sick.

“I became impassioned with the priestly life, with being close to God in order to help people…it was a great joy,” he said.

“It wasn’t a commitment or a burden, it was something that came from within and made me very happy.”

It has now been seven years since Hernandez decided to become a priest. He is currently taking his final course of Ecclesiastical Studies at the University of Navarre in Spain. Looking back at the past seven years – and ahead to a priestly vocation – he has no regrets.

“I don’t know how the Lord does it, but every year surprises me more, and always with something better,” he said. “If I had not responded to his call, I wouldn’t be as happy as I am now.”
 
 

This article was originally published by our sister agency, ACI Prensa. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.

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Villahermosa, Mexico, Dec 9, 2017 / 06:08 am (ACI Prensa).- A diocese in one of Mexico’s most violence-ridden states has indicated it will avoid scheduling Masses for Christmas and its octave at “high risk” times. It has also asked the state’s police to protect parishioners.

“With respect to the problem of insecurity, for the most part the established schedule has been kept, but we are trying to avoid scheduling certain times that could be high risk,” Fr. José Luis Compeán Rueda, vicar general of the Diocese of Tabasco, said at a Dec. 3 press conference in Villahermosa, capital of the Mexican state of Tabasco.

El Heraldo de Tabasco reported that Fr. Compean said he had met with the head of Tabasco’s Department of Public Safety, Jorge Aguirre Carbajal, to talk about the problem of the lack of public safety and said that “they will take appropriate steps as needed.”

“We hope the different state or municipal authorities will take corresponding measures to provide protection, not exclusively to the Church, but to all of society,” he said.

Fr. Compeán noted that during the year end festivities crime increases because people are getting paid Christmas bonuses and buying Christmas presents.

A September report prepared by the Tabasco Citizens’ Observatory revealed that in 2017 Tabasco occupied first place in the nation in kidnappings per capita.

“The State of Tabasco held first place in five categories of crime: kidnapping, aggravated robbery, robbery of businesses, holdups of passersby and livestock rustling” the director of Analysis and Statistics of the Tabasco Citizens’ Observatory, Julia Arrivillaga, told Televisa.

The Catholic Multimedia Center released a report in August showing that Tabasco is one of the most dangerous states for priests, and that Mexico is the most violent country for priests in Latin America.

This article was originally published by our sister agency, ACI Prensa. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.

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Pope Francis meets with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau at the Vatican on May 29, 2017. / © L’Osservatore Romano.

Denver Newsroom, Jul 27, 2022 / 16:28 pm (CNA).

Pope Francis met with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau this afternoon, July 27, in Quebec City, as part of his weeklong “penitential pilgrimage” to Canada. 

Today’s encounter wasn’t Pope Francis’ first meeting with Trudeau; the Prime Minister welcomed the pope when he arrived at Edmonton International Airport on Sunday. And Trudeau and Pope Francis have had one face-to-face meeting before, at the Vatican in 2017. 

In their 36-minute 2017 meeting, which the Vatican described as “cordial,” the pope gave Trudeau a medallion symbolizing forgiveness, joy, and mutual acceptance. The medallion also references Matthew 5:7: “Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.”

During that meeting, their conversation focused on religious freedom as well as reconciliation with native people of Canada. Trudeau at that time reiterated his open invitation to the pope to come to Canada and for “reconciliation” with the indigenous communities. 

That trip to Canada has now come to fruition and has included a public apology from Pope Francis for the Catholic Church’s role in running much of Canada’s government-sponsored residential school system. During more than a century of operation, the system worked to stamp out aspects of native culture, language, and religious practice. Former students at the schools have described mistreatment and even abuse within their walls, along with broad criticisms of the quality of education they received, psychological damage, and other problems such as malnutrition and unsanitary conditions. 

The meeting between the two leaders in 2017 was not Trudeau’s first visit to the Vatican. A Catholic, he met St. John Paul II in 1980 during the meeting of his father, former Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, with the pope.

Trudeau has been criticized during his tenure as prime minister for pushing policies that are at odds with his Catholic faith, including strongly pushing for the continuation of legal abortion in Canada, as well as assisted suicide. 

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