Readings: Neh 8:2-4a, 5-6, 8-10 Ps 19:8, 9, 10, 15 1 Cor 12:12-30 or 12:12-14, 27 Lk 1:1-4; 4:14-21 The books of Ezra and Nehemiah tell the story of the restoration of the Jews to […]
Salt Lake City, Utah, Jan 26, 2019 / 03:07 am (CNA).- Proposed legislation in Utah would require the sex listed on birth certificates to reflect the sex of the person at birth, banning people from later requesting to change the sex listed on the docume… […]
Santa Fe, N.M., Jan 25, 2019 / 06:00 pm (CNA).- Archbishop John C. Wester of the Archdiocese of Santa Fe issued a statement on Wednesday clarifying that signatories to a letter in support of abortion “are not affiliated with the Roman Catholic Ch… […]
Panama City, Panama, Jan 25, 2019 / 05:28 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- At the Stations of the Cross for World Youth Day on Friday, Pope Francis encouraged the young pilgrims to embrace the cross and to walk with those who are suffering.
Christ “walks and suffers in all those faces hurt by the complacent and anesthetizing indifference of our society that consumes and is consumed, that ignores and is ignorant, blind to the pain of our brothers and sisters,” he said Jan. 25 at Panama City’s Campo Santa Maria la Antigua. The city is hosting World Youth Day Jan. 22-27.
The Pope said the Way of the Cross is the path of love, and contrasted it to the common routes of indifference and complacency. He said it is easier to ignore the vulnerable and even add to their inflictions.
“All too often, we have ended up going along with the crowd, and this has paralyzed us,” he said. “We have looked away in order not to see; we have taken refuge in noise in order not to hear; we have covered our mouths in order not to cry out.”
“The temptation is always the same. It is easier and ‘it pays’ to be friends in triumphs and in glory, in success and applause; it is easier to be around someone who is considered popular and a winner. How easy it is to fall into a culture of bullying, harassment and intimidation.”
This is the opposite of how Christ interacts with humanity, said Pope Francis, noting that at Calvary he united himself with all who suffer.
Christ’s Way of the Cross continues today, the pope said, “in the muffled cry of children kept from being born and of so many others denied the right to a childhood, a family, an education.”
It continues also in “women who are mistreated, exploited and abandoned,” in young people who “lack education and dignified work,” and in those ensnared by exploitation and criminal activity.”
“Your Son’s way of the cross continues in all those young people and families who, caught up in a spiral of death as a result of drugs, alcohol, prostitution and human trafficking, are deprived not only of a future but also of a present. Just as they divided your garments, Lord, their dignity is divided and mistreated,” he said.
He further added that Christ’s cross also continues in the abuse of nature: “profoundly wounded by the pollution of her skies, the barrenness of her fields, the contamination of her waters, trampled underfoot by disregard and a fury of consumption beyond all reason.”
The Pope then raised the question: how should Christians respond to these sufferings?
He said Catholics must replicate the response of the Virgin Mother, who stood with conviction beneath her son at the cross, sharing in the suffering of Christ but not being overwhelmed by it.
“From her let us learn how to stand beneath the cross with her same determination and courage, without evasions or illusions. She accompanied the suffering of her Son, your Son; she supported him by her gaze and protected him with her heart,” he said.
He said that as Mary responded to God with a “yes,” the Catholic Church should replicate this obedience to those in need. He said that in Mary, the Christian is able to say “yes” to the immigrant, the family, and the homeless.
“Like Mary, we want to be a Church that fosters a culture that welcomes, protects, promotes and integrates; that does not stigmatize, much less indulge in a senseless and irresponsible condemnation of every immigrant as a threat to society,” Pope Francis said.
“From her we want to learn to stand beneath the cross, not with hearts tightly shut, but with hearts that can accompany, that feel tenderness and devotion, that show mercy and treat others with respect, sensitivity and understanding.”
Covington, Ky., Jan 25, 2019 / 03:54 pm (CNA).- Bishop Roger Foys of Covington issued an apology Friday for a Jan. 19 diocesan statement that condemned the actions of some Covington Catholic High School students, […]
Milan, Italy, Jan 25, 2019 / 03:44 pm (CNA).- The body of Venerable Carlo Acutis, an Italian teenager and computer programmer, was exhumed this week according to Canon Law, as a part of the process of investigation for canonization.
“On Wednesday, 23 January, the mortal remains of the Venerable Carlo Acutis, were exhumed in accord with Canon Law and transferred to a suitable location in preparation for their translation to the Shrine of the Renunciation in Assisi, scheduled for 5-6 April,” Nicola Gori, the postulator of Acutis’ cause of beatification and canonization, announced online.
Gori also cautioned against pre-emptive reports that declared that Acutis had been found to be incorrupt.
“Any judgement on the state of the body’s preservation is premature as the necessary examinations by medical personnel are currently underway,” he said.
The cautionary announcement came after Father Marcelo Tenorio, a priest of São Paulo, Brazil, who said he was a vice postulator for the cause, announced on his Facebook page that the body of Acutis had been found to be incorrupt.
While the original post was taken down, Tenorio posted a second post for clarification on Thursday. “The body was in a good state of repair,” he said.
He said that he had made the announcement that the body was “intact, but without any authority, of course, because who will say if it is a miracle or not will be the experts.”
In his post, he also explained that he had been named a vice postulator of the cause by the Vatican, while a tribunal court examines a possible miracle for the cause that took place in his diocese in Brazil. This is a position that will be short-lived, he noted, and will end after the tribunal closes the case.
“In giving the news of the exhumation and the condition of the body, I did it in my own name, without any canonical or scientific authority” except for “devotional authority,” he said in his post. He added that there is strong devotion to the teen in Brazil.
Acutis was born in London May 3, 1991, to Italian parents who soon returned to Milan, and is remembered for his great love for God at a young age. As a child, he attended daily Mass, frequently prayed the rosary and made weekly confessions.
He was also gifted with computers, and developed a website cataloguing Eucharistic miracles, which he had a passion for researching. This website was the genesis of The Eucharistic Miracles of the World, an international exhibition which highlights such occurrences.
Acutis died of leukemia in Monza, near Milan, Oct. 12, 2006. His heroic virtues were recognized by the Congregation for the Causes of Saints in July 2018, which advanced his cause for canonization and added the title “Venerable” to his name.
The next step in the process would be for Acutis to be beatified and named “Blessed”, which comes before he could be canonized and pronounced an official saint of the Catholic Church. Because he is not a martyr, this requires that a miracle through his intercession to be approved by the Vatican. A second miracle would then be needed for his canonization.
Exhumation of the body is a normal part of the canonization process, and often takes place before a beatification. The Church requires that postulators of causes seek permission of civil authorities and of any living family that might have rights to remains before exhuming them.
Archbishop Paul Coakley, who oversaw the exhumation of Blessed Stanley Rother’s body in 2017, told CNA at the time that the Vatican also requires a team of witnesses and medical experts be present for the exhumation, which is done in order to assess the condition of a body, and to gather possible relics that will be venerated once a person has been beatified.
“They had expertise that would be helpful in describing what would be found when his tomb was opened, because we didn’t know what we could find,” Archbishop Coakley said at the time. A report on the exhumed body was then prepared and sent to the Vatican.
Both the exhumation and examination are done “with great dignity and reverence, and there is a process by which we exhumed his body from the family plot at the parish cemetery in Okarche,” the archbishop added.
Incorruption, even partially so, is thought to be a sign of holiness, but the Church also recognizes that there may be natural causes of partial or whole bodily preservation that are not yet understood.
As a result, incorruptibility is not enough, on its own, to have the person in question declared a saint by the Pope, according to relic researcher Heather Pringle.
Moreover, the Vatican looks for virtue of person’s life and works before officially declaring them a saint.
According to the publishers of a biography on Acutis, he “was a teen of our times, like many others. He tried hard in school, with his friends, [and] he loved computers. At the same time he was a great friend of Jesus Christ, he was a daily communicant and he trusted in the Virgin Mary. Succumbing to leukemia at the age of 15, he offered his life for the Pope and for the Church. Those who have read about his life are moved to profound admiration.”
One of the quotes Acutis is best remembered for is: “To always be close to Jesus, that’s my life plan. I’m happy to die because I’ve lived my life without wasting even a minute of it doing things that wouldn’t have pleased God.”
He also said that “our aim has to be the infinite and not the finite. The Infinite is our homeland. We have always been expected in Heaven,” and he called the Eucharist “my highway to heaven.”
Panama City, Panama, Jan 25, 2019 / 03:19 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- The 15th International World Youth Day is underway in Panama City, with large contingents of Spanish-speaking pilgrims from countries such as Mexico, Colombia, and, of course, Panama, dominating most events with a joyful exuberance.
For those pilgrims who do not primarily speak Spanish, there are catechesis sessions and special events taking place throughout the city held in other languages.
An event for English-speaking pilgrims, “Fiat,” took place Jan. 23 at Figali Convention Center, sponsored by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, the Fellowship of Catholic University Students (FOCUS), and the Knights of Columbus. Speakers included FOCUS founder Curtis Martin, Auxiliary Bishop Robert Barron of Los Angeles, and Sister Bethany Madonna of the Sisters of Life.
In addition to American pilgrims from almost every state, the event attracted many Asian, British, Australian, Indian, and Brazilian young people.
One group of 77 young people from the United States came to Panama from Alaska, representing the three Alaskan dioceses of Anchorage, Fairbanks, and Juneau. Fairbanks is the northernmost diocese in the United States, covering a vast, sparsely populated area of the state.
Theresa Austin, chaperone for the Alaskan group, told CNA that leaving the Alaskan winter for Central American summer was quite a change for the young pilgrims, and that it was difficult to prepare for the physical challenges of being a pilgrim at World Youth Day. Temperatures have stayed around 90 degrees Fahrenheit all week in Panama City, and the Alaskan group, lacking a bus for transport, has been walking 8-9 miles a day.
“[The temperature] was in the single digits when we left [Alaska],” she said.
“In the middle of winter, it’s very difficult to get the kids trained up. Especially for the heat.”
The Alaskan students cited the physical challenges of being a pilgrim, but several said being from such an outdoors-focused state has helped.
“Being from Alaska, you get a lot of opportunities to do outdoor stuff like that, and so I’m a bit more used to walking around a lot because we literally walk everywhere,” Antonia Duran, 18, told CNA.
Austin said the Alaskan pilgrims were in Costa Rica the week before World Youth Day, participating in a short mission and service trip, before embarking on a 25-hour bus ride to Panama City. She said the mission trip was a wonderful opportunity for the pilgrims to get to know each other before WYD.
Many of the other pilgrims in attendance bonded over their common knowledge of English, even if they came from different countries. A group of four pilgrims, all of whom were originally from Vietnam, met and became friends at World Youth Day and attended the Fiat event. Nearly all are expats: Two now live in France, while another now lives in Australia and hopes soon to be ordained a priest after studying for nearly eight years.
“We had a very surprising meeting,” Francisco Ndoc, a Vietnamese pilgrim, told CNA.
“Some Vietnamese from France, one from Australia, and myself, from Vietnam,” he said.
Anthony Diep, a Vietnamese seminarian who now lives in Australia, just finished his pastoral year and has about two years remaining before becoming a priest. He said he faced many challenges to his faith when he lived in Vietnam, including occasional harassment by the police.
“Today, a lot of people have inspired me greatly because they share in the experience of encountering Christ, so that inspires me,” Diep told CNA.
The event included addresses from several U.S. bishops, including Bishop Edward Burns of Dallas and Bishop Frank Caggiano of Bridgeport. In his speech Caggiano did not shy away from speaking about the sexual abuse crisis and a need for reform for the Church, telling young people that they will be the ones responsible for helping to purify the Church going forward.
“I think it’s a twofold message: first to be encouraged in their own pursuit of holiness, that the families of those around them should not deter them from asking what He wants me to do,” Caggiano told CNA after the event.
“And the second is to be encouraged by all these young people that feel the same way…The Church needs to be in some ways purified and renewed, but they are going to be at the front lines of doing that. They just need to be mentored and guided. And that’s what we’re here to do.”
“What I’m hoping is that this will be a celebration of joy,” the bishop said.
“Joy is that sense that God will take care of us even when we’re troubled, even when we’re tempted to be discouraged and even to despair. We can’t do that; that’s not an option for a believer…My pilgrims, they leave school, they sacrifice to come here- this is not a nonchalant decision, it really takes a lot of effort and a lot of commitment. So my hope is that they realize that if they can do this small thing, then they can do a big thing, which is to accept the invitation to live a real life of holiness.”
Sister Bethany Madonna of the Sisters of Life told CNA that the conversations she’s had with young people so far have been very encouraging.
“The conversations I’ve had so far have been so beautiful, because the young people from every country that I’ve encountered – Malaysia, Uruguay, here in Panama itself, and also in the United States, Australia – the ends of the earth are coming,” she said.
She said she recently fielded questions from two young female pilgrims who were asking for advice on how to make a good confession: “These questions of the heart of: Who am I? Who is the Lord? How do I go deeper in my relationship with Him?”
She said for those youth who were not able to attend World Youth Day, they can still pray to unite their heart to the graces being poured out in Panama.
“I can trust that the grace to say yes, to persevere, will be there because [God is] faithful,” she said.
Cardinal Sean O’Malley of Boston was also in attendance. He told CNA that in his experience, World Youth Day is a great source of vocations for the Church.
“Something like 40 percent of our seminarians in the United States were ‘made’ in World Youth Day,” he said.
“That just speaks volumes on the spiritual impact that this experience has on people’s lives.”
He also noted that many of the young people at this World Youth Day may not have been able to come had it not been held in Panama.
“I’m delighted that so many kids from Central America who wouldn’t have the possibility of going to another part of the world are able to come here and experience the great grace of seeing the universality of the Church,” O’Malley said.
“We are a Church of over a billion Catholics, coming in every size, shape, and color, speaking every language imaginable, all part of the same family. Celebrating the sacraments…uniting in the Eucharist.”
Washington D.C., Jan 25, 2019 / 02:00 pm (CNA).- New York’s newly-signed abortion law permits abortion for any reason up until the 24th week of a pregnancy, and then afterwards in cases to protect the “life and health” of the mother, … […]
Hobart, Australia, Jan 25, 2019 / 01:46 pm (CNA).- The wind blows in great gusts over snow-capped mountains on the other side of the world, across the island of Tasmania. Whipped up by the Southern Ocean’s infamous Roaring Forties, wave upon wave of wind buffets the Australian state on the very peripheries of the world.
“Separated from the Australian mainland by 140 miles of the treacherous pitch and toss of Bass Strait, Tasmania is a byword for remoteness…it is like outer space on earth and invoked by those at the ‘centre’ to stand for all that is far-flung, strange and unverifiable,” Nicholas Shakespeare aptly writes in his book “In Tasmania.”
If you seek out the peripheries, in other words, whether from Rome, London or Washington, it is hard to get any further away than Tasmania. And yet there, on the other side of the world, on a heart-shaped island the size of West Virginia, a new Jerusalem is emerging.
The Monks
Tasmania’s first Benedictine monastery is gradually taking shape on over 3,000 acres of green pastureland, felicitously named Jerusalem Estate and abutting an eponymous creek in the island’s idyllic Midlands. On a visit in late August 2018 – in the middle of Australia’s winter, drawing in an Antarctic chill – the monks were still living in trailers and sheds fashioned from corrugated iron on a rented paddock at Rhyndaston, several miles down the road from their future home.
Once a day they travel to the neighboring town of Colebrook, to pray and celebrate Mass in the local church. They have decorated the altar and put out fresh flowers for Our Lady. Though they live like beggars, their liturgical prayer is dignified, and their Gregorian chant nothing short of divine.
Soon, thanks to the archdiocese, an old church will be brought in by truck from the north of the island, the monks tell CNA. Then the young Benedictines – their average age is less than 30, and most of them, with the exception of one monk and the American prior, hail from mainland Australia – will at last have a first church of their own in which to sing, pray and celebrate.
Notre Dame Priory is led by Father Pius Mary Noonan, a monk from Kentucky who lived previously as a monk in a French monastery in Flavigny-sur-Ozerain.
One day an Australian couple knocked on the door, asking the abbot to help organize a retreat in their country. That was almost 10 years ago, and Father Pius – one of the few fluent English speakers at the French abbey – became a regular pilgrim to Australia.
The retreats – which are still going strong, and are now run from Notre Dame Priory – were so successful that a permanent presence was increasingly the only feasible proposition.
The Archbishop
So how did Prior Pius and his young band of monks end up in Tasmania? The answer is the Archbishop of Hobart, Julian Porteous.
The monastery is under the direct supervision of the 69-year-old prelate who, like a skilled gardener, has devoted himself to helping Catholic life flourish in the fertile – though, many say, spiritually barren – soil of the island that is his diocese. The Benedictines are but one of several seeds Porteous is sowing and planting. Each plant serves a different purpose, and each, is designed to serve strengthen and enrich the garden.
The archbishop and his team face a challenge of Biblical proportions. Even compared to rest of Australia – where the percentage of Catholics attending Mass is in the single digits – – Tasmania trails behind. Today, only about 16 percent of Tasmania’s population is Catholic – about 80,000 of roughly 530,000 Tasmanians — the lowest proportion of any Australian state or territory. And, like everywhere in the West, the number of Australians professing to be agnostics or atheists is on the rise.
(What is more, Tasmania did not experience the influx of Catholic migrants from continental Europe that since the 1950s has contributed – in many ways – to a more diverse Australia. Catholics have constituted the largest Christian denomination in the country since 1986, when their population overtook the number of Australian Anglicans).
To tackle this situation, Porteous says, over a cup of coffee in his unpretentious office, “we have to find a way of strengthening Catholic life, Catholic identity, Catholic spirituality. And at the same time, we mustn’t withdraw from society.”
Paradoxical though it might seem, that is why the Benedictine monks play an important role, the archbishop tells CNA.
“I think it’s very important at this moment when there are strong secularizing tendencies in society that do permeate through the Church, that we have, if you like, some pockets of strong Catholic Life that firstly can be a source of encouragement to many in the Church but secondly, can become a witness to the society.”
Striking a balance
Referring to Rod Dreher’s influential 2017 book “The Benedict Option,” the archbishop tells CNA: “One of the possible implications behind the Benedict Option would be a certain withdrawal in to a safer environment, a more consistently Catholic kind of life that the people were kind of close in.”
But just like Benedictines did in Europe over centuries, Porteous says that his work is about striking a balance – and cultivating the beauty and richness of Catholicism by using the different charisms to strengthen, rather than compete with, parish life.
For that reason, the archbishop invited the South American movement Palavra Viva – the Living Word – to establish a community of consecrated lay members in the town of Launceston.
And when visiting Sunday Mass in the picturesque Huon Valley, where forestry workers, organic farmers and artists live, one can see young religious sisters in a striking blue habit usher a youth group of missionary school attendees into their seats. These are the Sisters of the Immaculata, who were formed in Sydney in the December of 2008 and moved to Tasmania in 2014.
The sisters came, as foundress Mother Mary Therese explains “with the desire for spiritual renewal in parishes, through Adoration and faith formation.”
Porteous is “very happy” with the Sisters: “They’ve got a dozen young people doing four to five month mission school at the moment. In this summer, they’ll probably have 150 young people come through the nine day program they run here in Tasmania. So they will be representative of what I believe is a new flowering of Catholic life in the Church.”
Equally, there is no lack of interest in the young Benedictines from Notre Dame Priory. “I get a fair bit of email”, Prior Pius tells CNA, huddled into an ancient armchair next to a woodfire heater struggling to warm up the rickety farmhouse they use to receive guests.
“There is a lot of interest in what we are doing.”
And what about the Tasmanians they meet in everyday life? How do they react to the troop of young men with white habits and distinct hairstyles? The prior laughs.
“People are curious. We get asked a lot of questions. They want to know: Who are you? They’re usually very happy to hear that we’re monks”, he says and adds with a laugh, “although some have been disappointed that we’re not Buddhists.”
The Catholics of this new Jerusalem have their work cut out for them.
Panama City, Panama, Jan 25, 2019 / 01:43 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Pilgrims from 150 countries are in Panama this week for World Youth Day, including 400 from Venezuela, who are urging their fellow pilgrims to pray for their country amid escalating unrest … […]
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