London, England, Nov 7, 2019 / 12:00 am (CNA).- In the face of a foster parent shortage in the UK, the Catholic Church in England and Wales will launch a campaign to encourage adoption and foster care.
The campaign will launch Nov. 13 at the annual gathering of the nation’s diocesan marriage and family life coordinators.
The campaign is a partnership between the Marriage and Family Life Coordinators and Home for Good, an adoption charity that works with faith-based groups in the UK.
The organizers of the Nov. 13 conference said the campaign will promote adoption among parishes and encourage parishioners to become foster parents.
According to Catholic Ireland, Kristy Wordsworth, head of engagement for Home for Good, and Church officials expressed excitement for the future partnership.
“Together we will be exploring how Catholic parishes can renew awareness of the need and continue to play their part in both finding a home for every child who needs one and ensuring families who foster and adopt are supported by their church community,” Wordsworth told Catholic Ireland.
“It is something that has been close to the heart of our Catholic mission over many years. Adoption and fostering [are] part of our Catholic DNA, our Christian story and experience,” a conference spokesperson said.
Last month, the UK’s Adoption and Special Guardianship Leadership Board released British foster care data from 2018. The numbers showed a dramatic deficiency of available foster families compared to those in need of a home.
There are currently only 1,700 approved families available for the 4,140 foster children in England. A placement order has been made for 2,760 children who have yet to be placed in a home.
The Fostering Network said that in 2019 alone, there is a need for 8,600 more foster families, according to the agency’s “Recruitment Target” listed on its website.
Sue Armstrong Brown, chief executive of Adoption UK, described foster children as some of the “most complex and vulnerable” people in society.
“They have often suffered serious neglect or abuse in their early lives,” Brown told The Guardian.
“But adoption can have a transformative effect on these children and the testimony of adoptive parents is proof that you can successfully parent children who are deemed harder to place, if the right support is in place,” she added.
Pope Francis has also spoken on the importance of adoption. In May, the Pope spoke to the patients and employees of a hospital in Italy for abandoned children. There, he emphasized the Christian’s responsibility to care for foster children.
“We need to reflect and make people understand that we are responsible for [these children] and help make today another ‘home of the innocents,’ more global, with the attitude of adoption,” he said.
“Go forward, to create a culture of adoption, because there are so many abandoned children, alone, victims of war and so on,” the pope added.
If you value the news and views Catholic World Report provides, please consider donating to support our efforts. Your contribution will help us continue to make CWR available to all readers worldwide for free, without a subscription. Thank you for your generosity!
Click here for more information on donating to CWR. Click here to sign up for our newsletter.
Szczecin, Poland, Jul 29, 2019 / 11:03 am (CNA).- A Catholic priest was severely beaten in an attack by three men in the sacristy of St. John the Baptist church in Szczecin on Sunday, in what was reportedly an attempted robbery.
London, England, Jun 25, 2019 / 11:02 am (CNA).- Following a decision by the Court of Appeals in England to overturn an order for a forced abortion on a disabled woman, new details have emerged about the case.
Lawyers told the appeal court Monday that doctors had prepared the woman for the enforced abortion by promising her a new doll after the procedure.
Fiona Paterson, the barrister representing the National Health Service (NHS) hospital trust that cares for the woman, told the appeal court on Monday that doctors had informed the woman that “she would go to sleep” and that “she would have an operation and when she woke up the baby would no longer be in her tummy.”
To try to placate the woman, who did not wish to undergo the procedure, doctors told her that she would be given a new doll to play with after undergoing the abortion.
Observing that the woman had previously been given a doll, Paterson said that doctors thought “the prospect of a new [doll] might be very appealing to her.”
The woman reportedly has a mental age between six and nine years old, as well as a mood disorder. She was 22 weeks pregnant at the time the case was decided at the Court of Protection on June 21.
Both the woman, who cannot be named because of privacy restrictions, and her mother are described as being of Nigerian descent, Catholic, and opposed to abortion.
On Friday, Mrs Justice Nathalie Lieven ruled that an abortion would be the “best interest” of the woman, despite the her own objections and those of her mother (a former midwife) and her social worker. Doctors said they were concerned that the woman would be unable to physically or emotionally handle labor, or the recovery from a cesarean section.
The court-ordered abortion was overturned on June 24, after the pregnant woman’s mother petitioned the Court of Appeal. The three appeal justices–Justices Richard McCombe, Eleanor King, and Peter Jackson, said they would explain their reasoning for their decision in the future.
“I have to operate in [her] best interests, not on society’s views of termination,” Lieven said at the time of her original ruling. Lieven had previsouly acted as a legal repreetative for the British Pregnancy Advisory Service, the UK abortion provider, and argued in court that abortion restrictions in Northern Ireland were analogous to “torture.”
The woman’s mother made clear that she would care for her grandchild, but Lieven rejected this argument as she said it would be too complicated and risky for the child, and the potential removal of the child from the woman’s custody would be more traumatic than if she underwent an abortion.
In her ruling, Lieven said that she did not believe the woman had the ability to understand what being pregnant meant.
“I think she would like to have a baby in the same way she would like to have a nice doll,” she said.
The case’s handling has proved controversial. Over 75,000 people signed a petition requesting that the UK’s health secretary intervene.
A spokesperson for the pro-life group Right To Life UK, Clare McCarthy, welcomed the decision by the appeal court but cautioned that the decision would not protect mothers or children in similar circumstances.
“Unfortunately, we fear that this is not a one-off case,” McCarthy said.
“We are calling on the Department of Health to urgently reveal how many women have been forced to have an abortion in the UK over the last 10 years and make it clear how they will ensure it will not happen again.”
A close-up of the copy of Michelangelo’s Vatican Pietà, usually kept at the Vatican Museums. / Ela Bialkowska/OKNO studio.
Rome Newsroom, Mar 7, 2022 / 04:00 am (CNA).
As war rages in Ukraine and the pandemic lingers, Michelangelo’s celebrated Vatican Pietà — and two lesser-known figures he also sculpted — can be deeply meaningful to a pain-wracked world, says a priest and art historian.
Michelangelo Buonarotti’s Pietà depicts a larger-than-life Virgin Mary as she mourns her crucified Son, Jesus, lying limp in her lap. The masterpiece, carved out of Carrara marble, was finished before the Italian artist’s 25th birthday.
Over the course of more than 60 years, Michelangelo created two more sculptures on the same theme — and a new exhibit in the Italian city of Florence brings the three works together for the first time.
The Three Pietà of Michelangelo exhibit at Museo dell’Opera del Duomo in Florence, Italy. Museo dell’Opera del Duomo
The exhibit opened at the Museo dell’Opera del Duomo on Feb. 24, and includes the Florentine Pietà, also called the Deposition, which Michelangelo worked on from 1547 to 1555, and exact casts, or copies, of the Vatican Pietà and Milan Pietà — which could not be moved from their locations.
Msgr. Timothy Verdon, the director of the Museo dell’Opera del Duomo, told CNA by phone that the gallery wanted to do something to show its solidarity with a Feb. 23-27 meeting of mayors and Catholic bishops.
“The images of suffering that the Pietà always implies I think will deeply touch people. I think that visitors will be moved to see these works,” he said. The image of the Pietà evokes “the personal suffering of mothers who hold their children not knowing if their children will survive.”
A close-up of the copy of Michelangelo’s Vatican Pietà, usually kept at the Vatican Museums. Ela Bialkowska/OKNO studio.
The 75-year-old Verdon is an expert in art history and sacred art. He was born in Hoboken, New Jersey, but has lived in Italy for more than 50 years.
“So many of the issues that face the Mediterranean world today are forms of suffering,” he said, “and so this ideal series of images of the God who becomes man [and] accepts suffering, and whose Mother receives his tortured body into her arms, these are deeply meaningful.”
“All human situations of suffering and exclusion invite a comparison with the suffering of Christ, the death of Christ. And [the Pietà] condenses and concentrates a devout reflection on that,” the priest said.
The lesser-known Pietàs
Many years after Michelangelo completed the Pietà displayed in St. Peter’s Basilica, he began his Florentine Pietà, which depicts Nicodemus, Mary Magdalene, and the Virgin Mary receiving the body of Christ as it is removed from the Cross.
The 72-year-old Michelangelo worked on the sculpture for eight years before eventually abandoning it in 1555.
Michelangelo’s Florentine Pietà, part of the permanent collection at the Museo dell’Opera del Duomo in Florence, Italy. Museo dell’Opera del Duomo in Florence, Italy.
He probably began the Rondanini Pietà, which is in Milan, in 1553. Michelangelo continued to work on the piece until just days before his death in 1564.
According to a press release from the city of Florence, “near his own death, Michelangelo meditated deeply on the Passion of Christ.”
One way this is known is because shortly before his death, Michelangelo gave a drawing of the Pietà to Vittoria Colonna, the Marquess of Pescara, on which he wrote: “They think not there how much of blood it costs.”
The line, from Canto 29 of Paradiso, one of the books of Dante’s “Divine Comedy”, is also the subtitle of the Florence exhibition.
A perfect cast of Michelangelo’s unfinished Rondanini Pietà, on display at the Museo dell’Opera del Duomo in Florence, Italy. Museo dell’Opera del Duomo
Bringing the three Pietàs together into one exhibit gives the viewer the chance to see “the full range of Michelangelo’s reflection on this subject across 60-some years,” Verdon explained.
Not only is the Renaissance artist’s stylistic evolution on display, but also his spiritual development.
“We know that [Michelangelo] was a religious man,” Verdon said. “His interpretation of religious subjects, even in his youth, is particularly sensitive and well informed.”
According to the priest, Michelangelo seems to have had a range of theological influences.
“His older brother was a Dominican friar and in Michelangelo’s old age we’re told that he could still remember the preaching of Savonarola,” Verdon said.
Girolamo Savonarola was a popular Dominican friar, preacher, and reformer active in Renaissance Florence. He spoke against the ruling Medici family and the excesses of the time, and in 1498 he was hanged and his body burned after a trial by Church and civil authorities.
According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, “In the beginning Savonarola was filled with zeal, piety, and self-sacrifice for the regeneration of religious life. He was led to offend against these virtues by his fanaticism, obstinacy, and disobedience. He was not a heretic in matters of faith.”
“That’s an interesting page in cultural history,” Verdon said, “because the early Pietà is done in effect shortly after the Savonarola period, or in the Savonarola period.”
“So we’re talking about an artist to whom this subject means a great deal, and which he is also equipped to treat.”
The Three Pietà of Michelangelo exhibit at Museo dell’Opera del Duomo in Florence, Italy. Museo dell’Opera del Duomo
The artist’s last Pietàs were created, instead, in the context of the Counter-Reformation.
The council, he explained, “had to rebut the heretical ideas of Protestant reformers, and so it insists, in a decree on the Eucharist published in 1551, that indeed in the bread and wine, Christ’s Body and Blood are truly present.”
“So Michelangelo, who was personally religious, and who, especially in his later period, worked exclusively for the Vatican, was therefore very close to the changes occurring in Catholic thought, Catholic theology, Catholic devotion,” Verdon said.
The exhibit “really gives us the opportunity to gauge the evolution of a theme from one time to a very different one, from the end of the 15th, to the mid- 16th century.”
The St. Peter’s Basilica Pietà
Verdon said that the Vatican Pietà is the only one of the three to remain in the place it was intended for — above an altar in St. Peter’s Basilica.
The sculpture was originally created for the 4th-century Constantinian basilica, the “Old St. Peter’s Basilica,” which was replaced by the Renaissance basilica standing today.
In Michelangelo’s Pietà, the Virgin Mary holds her Son as she did at his birth. . Paweesit via Flickr.
Viewing art in a church is not the same as viewing it in a museum, the art historian noted.
“Obviously it is different, especially for the fact that the Vatican Pietà has remained on an altar, above an altar, and so the body of Christ depicted by Michelangelo would have been seen in relation to the sacramental body of Christ in the Eucharist.”
“This was true of the first situation in the Old St. Peter’s, the work was on an altar, and it’s true of the present collocazione [position],” he said.
“And actually,” the priest continued, “the same thing was true of both of the other Pietàs. They were intended by Michelangelo to go on an altar in a chapel in a Roman church where he expected to be buried. We think the church was Santa Maria Maggiore.”
“So the relationship of the image of Christ’s body with the Eucharistic Corpus Christi is very important,” he said.
The Three Pietà of Michelangelo exhibit at Museo dell’Opera del Duomo in Florence, Italy. Museo dell’Opera del Duomo
The copies of the Vatican and Milan Pietàs are on loan from the Vatican Museums, and will be in Florence for the Three Pietàs exhibit through Aug. 1.
“And in our museum, in the Florence Opera del Duomo Museum, we have put the Pietà, our Pietà, on a base that evokes an altar, as the very specific Church meaning [of an altar] has to do with the Sacrament,” Verdon said.
Leave a Reply