Rome, Italy, Jan 25, 2021 / 12:19 pm (CNA).- Papal almoner Cardinal Konrad Krajewski offered a funeral Mass Monday for a 64-year-old homeless man who died in Rome.
Roberto Mantovani died in a homeless shelter near Rome’s Termini train station after contracting pneumonia.
Cardinal George Pell concelebrated the funeral Mass Jan. 25 at the parish of St. Pius X with Archbishop Arthur Roche, Secretary of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, and a dozen priests, according to Vatican News.
Cardinal Krajewski, who knew Mantovani, said that he chose the reading from the Gospel of Luke in which Christ recounts the parable of Lazarus and the rich man, for the funeral Mass because “Robert always slept in front of a closed door.”
“He was a cheerful, sunny person, at the lunches we had he made everyone laugh,” Cardinal Krajewski said.
Mantovani will be buried next to his parents in his hometown of Oppeano in northern Italy. He had formerly been a professional soccer player with Hellas Verona F.C. but an injury ended his career.
His funeral took place one day after Pope Francis prayed for another homeless man, a 46-year-old Nigerian man named Edwin, who was found dead near St. Peter’s Square last week.
“Last Jan. 20, a few meters from St. Peter’s Square, a 46-year-old Nigerian homeless man named Edwin was found dead because of the cold,” the pope said Jan. 24.
“His story was added to that of many other homeless people who recently died in Rome in the same dramatic circumstances. Let us pray for Edwin.”
According to the news website RomaToday, Edwin was the fourth homeless person to die this year in Rome, where there are an estimated 8,000 homeless people. Many sleep in tents along the edge of Bernini’s colonnade, the semi-circular columns enclosing St. Peter’s Square.
“Let us think about Edwin,” Pope Francis said. “Let us think of how this man, 46 years old, felt in the cold, ignored by all, abandoned, even by us. Let us pray for him.”
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Rome, Italy, Apr 13, 2018 / 01:20 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- The Legion of Christ has issued a renewed apology for abuses committed by the institute’s founder, and pledged to reach out to victims individually to respond to requests for compensation.
“We apologize to all the victims throughout our history who have suffered some form of abuse, knowing that this request for forgiveness will never be sufficient to heal the deep wounds that were left,” the Congregation of the Legionaries of Christ said in an April 13 statement.
The statement comes in response to a March 26 letter from eight men who say they were sexually abused by the institute’s founder, Fr. Marcial Maciel, and suffered psychological damage from the institute’s failure to believe their allegations.
The Associated Press reported on the letter April 12, saying that the men were among those who raised initial accusations against Maciel in the late 1990s.
The Legion of Christ was long the subject of critical reports and rumors before it was rocked by Vatican acknowledgment that its founder lived a double life, sexually abused seminarians, and fathered children.
The Legion initially denied allegations against Maciel, until the Vatican determined that the accusations were accurate, and the organization issued an apology in 2014.
The eight signatories of the March 26 letter called on the Legion to recognize openly that they had suffered abuse from Maciel, and that the organization’s response after they initially publicized their allegations had caused “moral, psychological and spiritual harm” to them “in a continued, consistent and prolonged way,” the AP reported. They asked the Legion to formally recognize that victims’ reports about being abused were acts of service to the Church, not betrayals of the Legion.
In 2006 the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, with the approval of Pope Benedict XVI, removed Maciel from public ministry and ordered him to spend the rest of his life in prayer and penance. The congregation decided not to subject him to a canonical process because of his advanced age. Maciel died in 2008.
Benedict began a process of reform for the Legion of Christ, a process continued under Pope Francis. Included in that reform process was the establishment of a compensation commission, which was active from 2011-2014 and gave an undisclosed sum to 12 people, the AP reports.
The eight signatories in their letter ask for this commission to be re-formed to hear their cases. Signatory Jose Barna said he did not approach the original commission because he did not trust it, but that he now believes the effort “is worthwhile, because we have suffered for a quarter-century many humiliations, many defamations nationally and internationally,” according to the Associated Press.
In its response, the Legion pointed to its 2014 apology, which condemned Maciel’s abuses and said, “We are grieved that many victims and other affected persons have waited so long in vain for an apology and an act of reconciliation on the part of Father Maciel.”
“[W]e acknowledge with sadness the initial incapability of believing the testimonies of the persons who had been victims of Father Maciel, the long institutional silence and, later on, the hesitations and errors of judgment when setting out to inform the members of the congregation and others. We apologize for these shortcomings, which have increased the suffering and confusion of many,” the Legion said in its 2014 statement.
The institute said it would reach out individually to the signatories to discuss their requests and reiterated its commitment to seek reconciliation and implement safe environment policies moving forward.
The Legion of Christ was founded in 1941 in Mexico. As of 2016, the it had 963 priests, 1,650 male religious, and 121 parishes. Its associated lay movement is Regnum Christi.
Father Patrick Hughes shows how to make a traditional St. Brigid’s Cross in County Cavan, Ireland. / Credit; Courtney Mares/CNA
Rome Newsroom, Feb 1, 2024 / 06:00 am (CNA).
Ireland on Thursday is celebrating the 1,500th anniversary of the death of St. Brigid of Kildare, the Emerald Isle’s female patron saint.
St. Brigid (c. 453–524 A.D.) is credited with pioneering female monastic life in Ireland. Her feast is celebrated on Feb. 1, which became an annual public bank holiday across Ireland last year in her honor.
“St. Brigid was a huge figure of authority in the early Church, baptized by St. Patrick, professed by St. Mel, spiritual adviser to St. Conleth,” Bishop Denis Nulty of Kildare and Leighlin said at a Mass ahead of her feast.
Ireland’s Kildare County has organized lectures, pilgrimages, and many activities in its Brigid 1500 Program to mark the anniversary, including a workshop on how to weave a St. Brigid’s Cross — St. Brigid’s most enduring symbol.
A St. Brigid’s cross is traditionally made out of rushes or reeds freshly pulled from the ground.
Father Patrick Joseph Hughes, a country priest in County Cavan, can make a St. Brigid’s cross from rushes in a matter of minutes.
Hughes told CNA that the story that has been handed down over the years is that St. Brigid was trying to explain to the local chieftain, who did not believe in God, that Jesus was his savior and died on a cross for him. The chieftain did not understand, so she made a cross out of rushes from the ground and presented it to him: “‘Look,’ she said, ‘that’s a cross, and Jesus was stretched out on that for the world.’”
On the eve of the Feast of Saint Brigid, it is tradition in Ireland to make a St. Brigid’s Cross out of rushes.
Last year while we were filming in Ireland, Father Patrick Hughes gave us a quick demonstration of how to make one.
St. Brigid’s Catholic Church in Kildare will kick off the feast day on Feb. 1 with a Mass at 9:15 a.m. offered by Bishop Nulty.
The bishop recently installed St. Brigid’s relics in St. Brigid’s Catholic Church on Jan. 29 as part of the 1,500th anniversary celebrations.
The relics were taken from the bone fragment of St. Brigid’s head, which has been kept in St. John the Baptist Church in Lumiar, Portugal, since three Irish knights brought it there in 1273. The Portuguese church gave the relic to the Brigidine Sisters in Tullow, Ireland, in the 1930s, and they recently gifted it to St. Brigid’s in Kildare.
“Today we have brought her home,” Nulty said. “Obtaining the relic of a saint like Brigid is no easy feat. I visited Lumiar in October 2021 with the singular intention of securing a relic for St. Brigid’s Church. I was privileged then to hold the relic of her head, which is contained in a splendid brass casket. Sadly, I couldn’t squeeze it into my Ryan Air flight bag!”
Notably, the Catholic bishop and female Anglican leaders will also come together for an ecumenical service at 11 a.m. on the feast day at the historic St. Brigid’s Cathedral, built on the site of the ancient hilltop where St. Brigid founded her monastery in the year 480 A.D. The previously Catholic cathedral, consecrated in 1230, is now an Anglican cathedral.
The service will be followed by a “pause for peace,” a minute of silent prayer for peace. St. Brigid was known as a peacemaker. Among the many stories told about St. Brigid, local tradition holds that Brigid gave away her father’s sword in exchange for food for a family suffering from hunger.
The fifth-century abbess St. Brigid is one of Ireland’s three patron saints, along with St. Patrick and St. Columba. Most historians place her birth around the year 450, near the end of St. Patrick’s evangelistic mission.
St. Brigid. Credit: Octave 444, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
It is notoriously hard to establish the historical details of Brigid’s life, but according to one of the more credible biographies of Brigid — Hugh de Blacam’s essay in “The Saints of Ireland” — Brigid was born out of wedlock to a pagan chieftain named Dubthach and a Christian slave woman named Broicsech. The chieftain sold the child’s pregnant mother to a new master but contracted for Brigid to be returned to him eventually.
Brigid was likely baptized as an infant and raised as a Catholic by her mother. Thus, she was well formed in the faith before leaving Broicsech’s slave quarters at around age 10 to live with Dubthach and his wife.
After this, Brigid’s faith grew immensely. She gave generously to the poor and tended to the sick. One story says Brigid once gave away her mother’s entire store of butter, which was later replenished after Brigid prayed.
Once she was released from servitude, she was expected to marry. However, Brigid had no interest in marrying. She went so far as to disfigure her own face and prayed that her beauty be taken from her so no one would want to marry her. Because she refused to change her mind about marriage, she received permission to enter religious life.
Brigid, along with seven friends, is credited with organizing communal consecrated religious life for women in Ireland.
In 480, Brigid founded her monastery in Kildare, which was called “Church of the Oak.” The monastery sat on top of a shrine to a Celtic goddess. Throughout the rest of her life, she established several monasteries across Ireland.
Brigid rooted her life as a nun in prayer, but she also performed substantial manual labor: cloth making, dairy farming, and raising sheep. She also spent time traveling across Ireland founding new houses and building up a uniquely Irish form of monasticism. When she was not traveling, pilgrims made their way to Kildare, seeking the advice of the abbess.
“What were the character traits that defined St. Brigid of Kildare? To mention just a few, she was hospitable, she was a peacemaker, she was a strong woman of faith,” Nulty said.
Portsmouth, England, Aug 22, 2018 / 02:44 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Bishop Philip Egan of the Diocese of Portsmouth, in southern England, has written to the pope asking him to convene an extraordinary meeting of the Synod of Bishops in the wake of recent sc… […]
1 Comment
Respectful farewell to Roberto Mantovani. Eternal rest grant unto him O Lord and let your perpetual light shine upon Roberto, Edwin, and other souls of the homeless gone ahead.
Respectful farewell to Roberto Mantovani. Eternal rest grant unto him O Lord and let your perpetual light shine upon Roberto, Edwin, and other souls of the homeless gone ahead.