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Vatican City, Oct 20, 2017 / 02:43 pm (CNA).- Pope Francis met Friday with leaders in business and civil society, telling them not to get carried away by wealth and the demands of the global market, but rather to promote justice by eliminating the root causes of inequality.

“We must ask the market not only to be efficient in the production of wealth and in the assurance of sustainable growth, but also to be at the service of integral human development,” the Pope said Oct. 20.

“We cannot sacrifice on the altar of efficiency – the ‘golden calf’ of our times – fundamental values such as democracy, justice, freedom, the family, and creation,” he said, explaining that instead, “we must seek to ‘civilize the market’ with a view to an ethic friendly to man and his environment.”

Pope Francis spoke to members of the Pontifical Academy for Social Sciences, who are gathered in Rome for an Oct. 19-21 conference on “Changing Relations Among Market, State and Civil Society.”

In his speech, the Pope spoke on the need to develop “new models of cooperation” among the market, the state, and civil society that more accurately respond to the challenges of our time.

Pointing to two primary causes which he said “nourish the exclusion of the existential peripheries,” Francis said the sharp levels of inequality today are caused in large part by the exploitation of the planet and the lack of opportunity for dignified work.

The first cause, he said, “is the endemic and systemic increase of inequalities and of the exploitation of the planet, which is greater than the increase in income and wealth.”

Both inequality and exploitation depend, aside from individual behaviors, on the economic rules “that a society decides to give themselves,” he said, and pointed to energy production, the labor market, the banking system, the welfare system, the tax system, and the school sector as examples.

The more these are projected, the more they have consequences “on the way in which income and wealth are divided among those who have competed to produce them,” he said. “If the aim of profit prevails, democracy tends to become a plutocracy in which inequalities and the exploitation of the planet grow.”

Neither of these phenomena are inevitable or a historic constant, he said, asserting that “there are periods in which, in some countries, inequalities diminish and the environment is better protected.”

Turning to what he said is another key cause of exclusion, the Pope focused on work “unworthy of the human person.”

“Yesteryear, in the age of Rerum novarum, ‘just wages for workers’ were demanded. Today, beyond this sacrosanct exigency, we also ask ourselves why it has not yet been possible to translate into practice what is written in the Constitution Gaudium et spes: ‘The entire process of productive work, therefore, must be adapted to the needs of the person and to his way of life’.”

To this can be added, he said, respect for creation, referring to his 2015 encyclical Laudato si’.

In creating new opportunities for work “open and enterprising people, people of fraternal relations, of research and investment in the development of clean energy to resolve the challenges of climate change” are needed, he said, adding that this is concretely possible today.

He said it’s also necessary “to get rid of the pressures of public and private lobbyists that defend sectoral interests,” and stressed the need to “overcome forms of spiritual laziness.”

“It is necessary for political action to be placed truly at the service of the human person, of the common good and of respect for nature.”

The explained that the challenge to meet “is to strive with courage to go beyond the prevailing model of social order prevalent today, transforming it from within,” such that the market will serve integral human development, as well as the production of wealth.

He also addressed “the rethinking of the figure and the role of the nation-state in a new context which is that of globalization, which has profoundly modified the previous international order,” the Pope said, explaining that the state “cannot understand itself as the sole and exclusive holder of the common good by not allowing intermediate bodies of society to express, in freedom, their full potential.”

To do this, he added, “would be a violation of the principle of subsidiarity which, combined with solidarity, is a cornerstone of the Church’s social doctrine.”

The role of society, then, can be summed up with an image used by French poet Charles Peguy, who described the virtue of hope as the “younger sister” in the middle of the other theological virtues: faith and charity.

“Hope then moves, taking them by the hand and pulling them forward. This is how the position of civil society seems to me: ‘pulling’ the state and the market forward so that they can rethink their reason for being and how they operate.”

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Vatican City, Dec 19, 2017 / 04:06 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Pope Francis on Tuesday recognized the heroic virtue of Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski, the former Metropolitan Archbishop of Warsaw, as well as Patrick Peyton, an Irish priest known for his promotion of the Rosary.

The Pope recognized the heroic virtue Dec. 19 of six other people on the path to canonization, as well as the martyrdom of Teodoro Illera Del Olmo, priest of the Congregation of St. Peter in Chains, and 15 companions, who were killed ‘in hatred of the faith’ during the religious persecution in Spain in 1936 and 1937.

Miracles attributed to the intercession of diocesan priest Giovanni Battista Fouque (1851-1926) and Jesuit priest Tiburzio Arnaiz Nunoz, founder of the Misioneras de las Doctrinas Rurales (1903-1977), were also approved, paving the way for their beatification.

Francis met Dec. 18 with the prefect of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, Cardinal Angelo Amato, giving his approval for the causes to move forward.

He recognized the heroic virtue of Cardinal Stefan Wyszynksi, now called ‘Venerable,’ who was born in the village of Zuzela in eastern Mazovia (at the time, part of the Russian Empire) on Aug. 3, 1901.

Wyszynski was ordained a priest on Aug. 3, 1924, his 24th birthday, celebrating his first Solemn High Mass of Thanksgiving at the Jasna Gora Shrine in Czestochowa, where the image of the Black Madonna resides.

In 1946 he was appointed Bishop of Lublin and then in 1948 named Metropolitan Archbishop of Gniezno and Warsaw, thus becoming the “Primate of Poland.”

Often called the “Primate of the Millennium,” he is known for his heroic resistance to Nazism and Communism. He was also instrumental in the approval of Karol Wojtyla (Pope John Paul II) as bishop of Krakow, and later, in urging him to accept his election as pope.

He is also credited with helping to conserve Christianity in Poland during the persecution by the Communist regime, which ruled from 1945-1989. At one point he imprisoned with other Catholic priests during a wave of anti-Catholic persecution, where he witnessed brutal torture and mistreatment of prisoners.

In 1953 he was made a cardinal by Pope Pius XII. He died of abdominal cancer on May 28, 1981, at the age of 79, and is buried in St. John’s Arch-cathedral in Warsaw.

Another cause moving forward is that of Patrick Peyton, now called ‘Venerable,’ who was born in County Mayo, Ireland on Jan. 9, 1909. In 1928 he and an older brother sailed to the U.S. to join his elder sisters who had already emigrated and were living and working in Pennsylvania.

Peyton worked as a sort-of janitor at St. Stanislaus Cathedral for several years before deciding to pursue the priesthood with his brother Thomas.

In 1938, while still a seminarian, he fell gravely ill with tuberculosis. Thinking he might die, his older sister brought him Marian novenas and reminded him of the Blessed Mother and the power of the Holy Rosary.

Encouraged by his sister and a Catholic priest, he gave himself over to God through the Blessed Virgin Mary. Soon doctors discovered that the spots in his lungs had disappeared and in 1941 he and his brother were ordained priests of the Congregation of the Holy Cross.

He was one of the first pioneers of evangelism via mass media, using radio, film, advertising and eventually television, utilizing the help of Hollywood celebrities and artists. He is most known for his public rallies to encourage families to make pledges to pray the Rosary together, which were attended by thousands of people.

He founded the “Family Rosary Crusade” and popularized the phrase: “The family that prays together stays together.” In addition to working in the US, he also led missions in Latin America and in the Philippines.

Peyton died on June 3, 1992 in San Pedro, California, and is buried on the grounds of Stonehill College in Easton, Mass.

The other people declared ‘Venerable’ are: Jesuit priest Alfonso Barzana (1530-1597); Paolo Smolikowski, priest of the Congregation of the Resurrection of Our Lord Jesus Christ (1849-1926); Maria Anna of St. Joseph, founder of the Monastery of the Augustinian Recollect Sisters (1568-1638); Luisa Maria Langstroth Figuera De Sousa Vadre Santa Marta Mesquita and Melo, founder of the Congregation of the Ancelle of Our Lady of Fatima (1877-1973); Anna del Salvatore, sister of the Congregation of the Daughters of St. Anne (1842-1885); Maria Antonia Sama, lay woman (1875-1953).

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Rome, Italy, Sep 23, 2017 / 08:50 pm (CNA).- A letter presenting itself as a filial correction of Pope Francis for reputed errors and heresies has been signed by over 60 Catholic clergy and scholars, including most prominently Bishop Bernard Fellay, th… […]