Vatican City, Apr 3, 2019 / 06:33 am (CNA).- Reflecting upon his recent apostolic journey to Morocco, Pope Francis said Wednesday that God desires a greater sense of fraternity among Catholics and Muslims as “brother children of Abraham.”
“Some may ask, ‘But why does the pope visit the Muslims and not only the Catholics?’” Pope Francis said in St. Peter’s Square April 3.
“With Muslims, we are descendants of the same father, Abraham,” he said. “What God wants is fraternity between us in a special way,” he added, noting that this was the motive behind his travels.
Pope Francis offered thanks to God that his trip to the Moroccan capital of Rabat March 30-31 was “another step on the path of dialogue and encounter with our Muslim brothers and sisters.”
“My pilgrimage has followed in the footsteps of two saints: Francis of Assisi and John Paul II,” he explained.
“Eight hundred years ago Francis brought the message of peace and fraternity to the Sultan al-Malik al-Kamil, and in 1985 Pope Wojtyła made his memorable visit to Morocco, having received at the Vatican – first among the Muslim heads of state – King Hassan II,” he said.
On his first day in Morocco, Pope Francis signed an “Appeal for Jerusalem,” with the Moroccan King Mohammed VI. The joint-declaration called for Jerusalem to be preserved as a “peaceful place of meeting for the three monotheistic religions,” the pope explained.
Religions have the essential role of “defending human dignity and promoting peace, justice and care for creation, that is our home common,” Francis said.
The pope also visited a training institute for imams and Muslim leaders in during his trip. The institute “promotes an Islam that is respectful of other religions and rejects violence and fundamentalism,” Francis said.
Morocco is more than 99% Sunni Muslim with Catholics amounting to less than 0.1% of the 35.74 million population, according to the State Department.
“Why does God allow so many religions?” Pope Francis asked at his general audience following the trip.“Scholastic theologians referred to the ‘permissive will’ of God. He willed to permit this reality: that there are many religions,” he said.
Pope Francis said that Catholics and Muslims must not be afraid of differences because God has allowed this, but “we must be frightened if we do not work in fraternity, to walk together in life.”
“Serving hope, in a time like ours, means first of all building bridges between civilizations,” he said.
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Vatican City, Aug 4, 2019 / 04:35 am (CNA).- Pope Francis Sunday remembered the victims, and the families of the victims, of recent shootings in Texas, California, and Ohio, asking for prayers.
“I am spiritually close to the victims of the episo… […]
Vatican City, Mar 8, 2017 / 06:13 am (CNA/EWTN News).- On Wednesday the Vatican announced Pope Francis’ appointment of Fr. Roy Edward Campbell, Jr., a former vice-president for Bank of America, as an auxiliary bishop for the Archdiocese of Washington.
“All of us in the Archdiocese are deeply grateful that our Holy Father, Pope Francis, has named Father Roy Campbell to be an auxiliary bishop in our Church of Washington,” Cardinal Donald Wuerl, Archbishop of Washington, said in a statement March 8.
Father Campbell, who was born, raised and who has worked and served in the archdiocese, “brings to his new ministry recognized talent and demonstrated ability. He also bears witness to the great cultural and ethnic richness of the Church of Washington reflected in all of the faithful, lay, religious and clergy.”
“Personally I look forward to continuing to work closely with our new auxiliary bishop, who over the years has made significant contributions to the pastoral life of this archdiocese,” he said.
Fr. Campbell, 69, had a 33-year long career with Bank of America, beginning as a teller and working his way up to vice president and “Project Manager” before taking an early retirement in 2002 to follow a priestly vocation.
Born on Nov. 19, 1947, in southern Maryland, the Campbell was raised in D.C. and was interested in the priesthood as a child, but never committed to entering the seminary.
After high school he attended and graduated from Howard University in 1969 and later received a master’s degree in banking from the University of Virginia, working in the retail banking industry in the Washington-Baltimore area until taking an early retirement in 2002.
He was an active Catholic both in parishes and the broader Washington-area community, serving as a lector and usher and as a member on the Pastoral and Finance Councils at the Shrine of the Sacred Heart.
An encounter with a homeless man in December 1995, prompted him to reflect on his relationship with Jesus, and as a result he entered the archdiocese’s permanent diaconate program in 1999. He entered the seminary in January 2002, and was ordained a priest May 26, 2007.
Since his ordination, bishop-elect Campbell has been parochial vicar and pastor at several parishes. He said in a video interview for the Archdiocese of Washington that “the Lord himself has bestowed upon me through the Holy Father,” a great honor by the appointment.
“The only thing I was looking forward to doing in answering our Lord’s call is to be a priest for his people. To love and serve those who he’s called me to,” he continued.
“And if he’s calling me to serve on a larger scale than a parish, as a bishop, then I know I will have his grace, his direction, and his love to help me do so. So, outside of that, what it will entail, I will find out.”
Statuary sits before imagery of the recently canonized saints in St. Peter’s Square at the Vatican, Sunday, Oct. 20, 2024 / Credit: Daniel Ibáñez/CNA
Vatican City, Oct 20, 2024 / 11:00 am (CNA).
Pope Francis canonized 14 new saints on Sunday, including a father of eight and Franciscan friars killed in Syria for refusing to renounce their faith and convert to Islam.
In a Mass in St. Peter’s Square on Oct. 20, the pope declared three nineteenth-century founders of religious orders and the eleven “Martyrs of Damascus” as saints to be venerated by the global Catholic Church, commending their lives of sacrifice, missionary zeal, and service to the Church.
“These new saints lived Jesus’ way: service,” Pope Francis said. “They made themselves servants of their brothers and sisters, creative in doing good, steadfast in difficulties, and generous to the end.”
Pope Francis speaks at a Mass and canonization of 14 new saints in St. Peter’s Square on Sunday, Oct. 20, 2024. Credit: Daniel Ibáñez/CNA
The newly canonized include St. Giuseppe Allamano, a diocesan priest from Italy who founded the Consolata missionary orders, and St. Marie-Léonie Paradis, a Canadian nun from Montreal known for founding an order dedicated to the service of priests.
Also among the saints are St. Elena Guerra, hailed as an “apostle of the Holy Spirit,” and St. Manuel Ruiz López and his seven Franciscan companions, all martyred in Damascus in 1860 for refusing to renounce their Christian faith.
The final three canonized are siblings, Sts. Francis, Mooti, and Raphael Massabki, lay Maronite Catholics martyred in Syria along with the Franciscans.
Thousands of pilgrims prayed the Litany of the Saints together in St. Peter’s Square before Pope Francis declared the 14 as enrolled among the saints “for the honor of the Blessed Trinity, the exaltation of the Catholic faith and the increase of the Christian life, by the authority of our Lord Jesus Christ, and of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul.”
“We confidently ask for their intercession so that we too can follow Christ, follow him in service and become witnesses of hope for the world,” the pope said.
In his homily, Pope Francis highlighted how service embodied the lives of each of the new saints. “When we learn to serve,” he said, “our every gesture of attention and care, every expression of tenderness, every work of mercy becomes a reflection of God’s love. And so we continue Jesus’ work in the world.”
The Gospel for the Mass was chanted in Greek in addition to Latin in honor of the 11 Martyrs of Damascus.
Pilgrims gather in St. Peter’s Square for a Mass and canonization of 14 new saints on Sunday, Oct. 20, 2024. Credit: Daniel Ibáñez/CNA
Father Marwan Dadas, a Franciscan friar from Jerusalem, was among those who attended the canonization. He said that the testimony of the martyrs from the Franciscan Custody of the Holy Land is especially meaningful to people who are suffering due to the ongoing war and violence in the region today.
“This is a good message to say that even though we have challenges — and it seems we have death continuously — we still have the light of God that is helping us and guiding us through these difficult periods,” Dadas told CNA.
“It’s an important message for me, and I hope it will be the message for all the people of the Holy Land, not only the Holy Land, but for everybody. It is a message from God saying that He is always with us.”
St. Giuseppe Allamano: A missionary heart
One of the most celebrated figures among the new saints is St. Giuseppe Allamano (1851–1926), an Italian diocesan priest who founded the Consolata Missionaries and the Consolata Missionary Sisters. Allamano, though he spent his entire life in Italy, left a global legacy by training missionaries who carried the Gospel to remote corners of Africa, Asia, and South America.
Allamano told the missionaries in the order he founded in northern Italy in 1901 that they needed to be “first saints, then missionaries.”
The medical miracle that led to Allamano’s canonization involved the healing of a man who was attacked by a jaguar in the Amazon rainforest. In 1996, a man named Sorino Yanomami, a member of the indigenous Yanomami tribe in the Amazon, was mauled by a jaguar and left with life-threatening injuries.
As doctors treated his skull fractures, Consolata missionaries prayed in the hospital with a relic of Allamano, seeking his intercession. Miraculously, Yanomami recovered without any long-term damage, according to the Vatican’s Dicastery for the Causes of Saints.
Allamano, whose spiritual director was St. John Bosco, emphasized the importance of holiness in priestly life, telling his priests, “You must not only be holy, but extraordinarily holy.” His influence has endured through the orders he founded, present today in 30 countries across the globe.
St. Marie-Léonie Paradis: “Humble among the humble”
St. Marie-Léonie Paradis (1840–1912), a Canadian religious sister, also took her place among the new saints. She founded the Little Sisters of the Holy Family, an order whose spirituality and charism is the support of priests through both prayer and by taking care of the cooking, cleaning, and laundry in rectories in “humble and joyful service” in imitation of “Christ the Servant.”
During his homily, Pope Francis praised Paradis’ faith and underlined that “those who follow Christ, if they wish to be great, must serve by learning from Him” who made himself “a servant to reach everyone with his love.”
Born in the Acadian region of Quebec, Paradis also spent eight years in New York serving in the St. Vincent de Paul Orphanage in the 1860s and taught French at St. Mary’s Academy in Indiana, before founding her religious order in New Brunswick, Canada.
Paradis’ canonization was supported by the miraculous healing of a newborn in Canada, attributed to her intercession.
St. Elena Guerra: An “apostle of the Holy Spirit”
Among the canonized was St. Elena Guerra (1835–1914), known for her ardent devotion to the Holy Spirit. Guerra, who founded the Oblates of the Holy Spirit, was instrumental in promoting the first-ever novena to the Holy Spirit under Pope Leo XIII in 1895. Her writings and spiritual leadership inspired many, including St. Gemma Galgani, a mystic and saint who was her student.
For much of her 20s, Guerra was bedridden with a serious illness, a challenge that turned out to be transformational for her as she dedicated herself to meditating on Scripture and the writings of the Church Fathers. She felt the call to consecrate herself to God during a pilgrimage to Rome with her father after her recovery and went on to form the religious community dedicated to education.
During her correspondence with Pope Leo XIII, Guerra composed prayers to the Holy Spirit, including a Holy Spirit Chaplet, asking the Lord to “send forth your spirit and renew the world.
“Pentecost is not over,” Guerra wrote. “In fact, it is continually going on in every time and in every place, because the Holy Spirit desired to give himself to all men and all who want him can always receive him, so we do not have to envy the apostles and the first believers; we only have to dispose ourselves like them to receive him well, and he will come to us as he did to them.”
The Martyrs of Damascus: Courageous witnesses of faith
The solemnity of the ceremony was heightened as Pope Francis canonized the Martyrs of Damascus, a group of 11 men killed in 1860 for refusing to renounce their Christian faith and convert to Islam. The martyrs, including eight Franciscan friars and three laymen, were attacked in a church in the Christian quarter of Damascus during a wave of religious violence.
The canonized Franciscan friars include six priests and two professed religious — all missionaries from Spain except for Father Engelbert Kolland, who was from Salzburg, Austria.
Franciscan Father Manuel Ruiz, Father Carmelo Bolta, Father Nicanor Ascanio, Father Nicolás M. Alberca y Torres, Father Pedro Soler, Kolland, Brother Francisco Pinazo Peñalver, and Brother Juan S. Fernández were all declared saints.
The three laymen were brothers — Francis, Abdel Mooti, and Raphael Massabki — known for their deep piety and devotion to the Christian faith. Francis Massabki, the oldest of the brothers, was a father of eight children. Mooti was a father of five who visited the Church of St. Paul daily for prayer and to teach catechism lessons. The youngest brother, Raphael, was single and was known to spend long periods of time praying in the church and helping the friars.
According to witnesses, the brothers were offered the chance to live if they renounced their faith, but they refused. “We are Christians, and we want to live and die as Christians,” Francis Massabki reportedly said. All 11 were brutally killed that night, some beheaded, others stabbed to death.
“They remained faithful servants,” Pope Francis said. “[They] served in martyrdom and in joy.”
A global celebration
The canonization ceremony was attended by pilgrims from around the world, including Catholics from Kenya, Canada, Uganda, Spain, Italy, and the Middle East. More than 1,000 members of the Consolata order traveled to Rome to witness the canonization of their founder.
And bagpipers from Galicia in northern Spain played traditional music at the end of the Mass to honor the Spanish Franciscans canonized among the Damascus martyrs.
Bagpipers play to honor the Spanish Franciscans canonized among the Damascus martyrs at the Vatican on Sunday, Oct. 20, 2024. Credit: Courtney Mares
“I thank all of you who have come to honor the new saints,” Pope Francis said. “I greet the cardinals, the bishops, the consecrated men and women, especially the Friars Minor and the Maronite faithful, the Consolata Missionaries, the Little Sisters of the Holy Family and the Oblates of the Holy Spirit, as well as the other groups of pilgrims who have come from various places.”
Pope Francis led the crowd in the Angelus prayer at the end of the Mass and asked people to pray in particular for the gift of peace for “populations who are suffering as a result of war – tormented Palestine, Israel, Lebanon, tormented Ukraine, Sudan, Myanmar and all the others.”
The pope also greeted a group of Ugandan pilgrims who traveled from Rome to mark the 60th anniversary of the canonization of the Ugandan Martyrs and urged people to pray for missionaries on World Mission Sunday.
“Let us support, with our prayer and our aid, all the missionaries who, often at great sacrifice, bring the shining proclamation of the Gospel to every part of the world,” he said.
“May the Virgin Mary help us to be like her and like the Saints courageous and joyful witnesses of the Gospel.”
Yes, of course and sincerely, to solidarity, encounter,and dialogue…but fraternity between street-level Muslims (the followers of Islam) and individual Christians (the witnesses to Christ) is one thing, but isn’t it still another–any pluralist(?) and one-world equivalence between the religious belief of Islam and faith in the person of Christ?
The Koran is held to be timeless, from before time and the very essence of Allah. There is only the oneness of Allah, and Mohammed is his prophet. The distant God is the one and all-engulfing “autonomy.”
To consider a civilization tuned-in to the Triune nature of this one God, or to admit to any other “autonomy” such as the gifted and fully human “person” is blasphemy. Likewise, the distinction between mosque and state (Shari’a). Adjustments around the edges, maybe, as Pope Francis detects in Morocco and hopes to expand. But that’s a side story. The unmentioned Pope Benedict had the same hope for Turkey back in 2007.
The whole thing about history and growth and flourishing through time–the fully human mystery as revealed in the Incarnation (two natures in the one “person” of Christ)—is simply off the table, ultimately, as an apostasy from the original, non-historical, monotheistic (monolithic !) and engulfing Islam.
The Aquinas of Faith-and-Reason, for example, is nothing to Islam. And so too is the Western affirmation of elevated mankind and of his history, even when not so betrayed and decadent as now in the secular West.
If even Christianity decides to go chameleon in these chaotic and syncretic times (melded civilizations?), then are we not on the front edge of a new and long ice age in human history? Europe–rooted very much in the historical and incarnate “encounter” (!) between God and Man–fades as a flash in the pan.
Fraternity, yes, even under the wraparound global ethic of “creation”, but as for the perennial Church which is distinctly more than Abrahamic alone, quo vadis? May the intended bridge between civilizations be well-lighted.
“Why does God allow so many religions?” Pope Francis asked at his general audience following the trip.“Scholastic theologians referred to the ‘permissive will’ of God. He willed to permit this reality: that there are many religions,” he said.
That is not exactly an explanation, unless the pope is admitting that the plurality of religions is actually an evil that is counter to His active will.
Yes, of course and sincerely, to solidarity, encounter,and dialogue…but fraternity between street-level Muslims (the followers of Islam) and individual Christians (the witnesses to Christ) is one thing, but isn’t it still another–any pluralist(?) and one-world equivalence between the religious belief of Islam and faith in the person of Christ?
The Koran is held to be timeless, from before time and the very essence of Allah. There is only the oneness of Allah, and Mohammed is his prophet. The distant God is the one and all-engulfing “autonomy.”
To consider a civilization tuned-in to the Triune nature of this one God, or to admit to any other “autonomy” such as the gifted and fully human “person” is blasphemy. Likewise, the distinction between mosque and state (Shari’a). Adjustments around the edges, maybe, as Pope Francis detects in Morocco and hopes to expand. But that’s a side story. The unmentioned Pope Benedict had the same hope for Turkey back in 2007.
The whole thing about history and growth and flourishing through time–the fully human mystery as revealed in the Incarnation (two natures in the one “person” of Christ)—is simply off the table, ultimately, as an apostasy from the original, non-historical, monotheistic (monolithic !) and engulfing Islam.
The Aquinas of Faith-and-Reason, for example, is nothing to Islam. And so too is the Western affirmation of elevated mankind and of his history, even when not so betrayed and decadent as now in the secular West.
If even Christianity decides to go chameleon in these chaotic and syncretic times (melded civilizations?), then are we not on the front edge of a new and long ice age in human history? Europe–rooted very much in the historical and incarnate “encounter” (!) between God and Man–fades as a flash in the pan.
Fraternity, yes, even under the wraparound global ethic of “creation”, but as for the perennial Church which is distinctly more than Abrahamic alone, quo vadis? May the intended bridge between civilizations be well-lighted.
For an accurate summary of what Islam/the Koran teaches and believes feel free to Google the various essays of Fr. James Schall, S.J..
“Why does God allow so many religions?” Pope Francis asked at his general audience following the trip.“Scholastic theologians referred to the ‘permissive will’ of God. He willed to permit this reality: that there are many religions,” he said.
That is not exactly an explanation, unless the pope is admitting that the plurality of religions is actually an evil that is counter to His active will.