The Croatian flag flying in Dubrovnik, southern Croatia. / Christine Zenino via Wikimedia (CC BY 2.0).
CNA Staff, Apr 19, 2021 / 04:00 am (CNA).
The Croatian government is offering college scholarships to young Christians at risk of persecution.
The country’s education and foreign ministries have invited Christian students from developing countries to apply for the scholarships by May 17.
The scholarships are the result of an amendment to the state budget proposed by Marijana Petir, an independent member of Croatia’s parliament, and accepted by the government in November.
“The planned funding of 1.5 million kuna ($237,000, 200,000 euros) is intended for scholarships for young people who are persecuted for their faith in a way that allows them to study in Croatia and gain knowledge and then return to their homeland where they will help build their communities and a democratic and tolerant society,” Petir told CNA.
“The money will be intended for their study and accommodation needs during their studies in Croatia.”
Croatia is a country of four million people bordering Slovenia, Hungary, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Montenegro. More than 86% of the population is Catholic.
The introduction of the scholarships marks the first time since the country gained independence in 1991 that it has earmarked money specifically to help individuals outside the European Union persecuted for their Christian faith.
A call for applications issued jointly by the Ministry of Science and Education and Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs explained that the project is part of the Croatian government’s efforts to support persecuted religious communities worldwide.
It said: “Religious minorities, primarily Christians are one of the vulnerable groups in the world. The Republic of Croatia has recognized this negative trend on a global scale, and within its scope of work in the field of the international development cooperation is committed to respect and protect the rights of religious groups, as the vulnerable groups in developing countries.”
Petir underlined that the government was not helping Christians simply on account of their faith, but because they belong to the world’s most persecuted religious group.
According to research by the pontifical foundation Aid to the Church in Need, almost 300 million Christians worldwide face persecution. One in seven of the world’s Christians lives in a country where they are subjected to violence, arrest, and human rights violation because of their faith.
Scholarships for the 2021/22 academic year are open to young Christians from developing countries in the Middle East, Asia, and Africa, coronavirus restrictions permitting.
Undergraduates will study for three to four years and gain a bachelor’s degree. Graduates will study for one to two years, earning a master’s degree.
A scholarship covers full board and lodging, a monthly allowance of around $250, basic health insurance coverage, and a year-long preparatory Croatian language course. The cost of travel to and from Croatia is also included.
The education and foreign ministries said: “After completing their studies, the scholarship holders are obliged to return to their home countries. They are expected to contribute to the development of their communities and to building capacities and strengthening resilience at the local level with their knowledge acquired in Croatia upon return to their homelands.”
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Bishops process into St. Peter’s Basilica for the closing Mass of the first assembly of the Synod on Synodality on Oct. 29, 2023. / Vatican Media
Rome Newsroom, Jul 9, 2024 / 06:00 am (CNA).
The guiding document for the final part of the Synod on Synodality, published Tuesday, focuses on how to implement certain of the synod’s aims, while laying aside some of the more controversial topics from last year’s gathering, like women’s admission to the diaconate.
“Without tangible changes, the vision of a synodal Church will not be credible,” the Instrumentum Laboris, or “working tool,” says.
The six sections of the roughly 30-page document will be the subject of prayer, conversation, and discernment by participants in the second session of the 16th Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops, to be held throughout the month of October in Rome.
Instead of focusing on questions and “convergences,” as in last year’s Instrumentum Laboris, “it is now necessary that … a consensus can be reached,” said a FAQ page from synod organizers, also released July 9, answering a question about why the structure was different from last year’s Instrumentum Laboris.
The guiding document for the first session of the Synod on Synodality in 2023 covered such hot-button topics as women deacons, priestly celibacy, and LGBTQ outreach.
By contrast, this year’s text mostly avoids these subjects, while offering concrete proposals for instituting a listening and accompaniment ministry, greater lay involvement in parish economics and finances, and more powerful parish councils.
“It is difficult to imagine a more effective way to promote a synodal Church than the participation of all in decision-making and taking processes,” it states.
The working tool also refers to the 10 study groups formed late last year to tackle different themes deemed “matters of great relevance” by the Synod’s first session in October 2023. These groups will continue to meet through June 2025 but will provide an update on their progress at the second session in October.
The possibility of the admission of women to the diaconate will not be a topic during the upcoming assembly, the Instrumentum Laboris said.
The new document was presented at a July 9 press conference by Cardinals Mario Grech and Jean-Claude Hollerich, together with the special secretaries of the synodal assembly: Jesuit Father Giacomo Costa and Father Riccardo Battocchio.
“The Synod is already changing our way of being and living the Church regardless of the October assembly,” Hollerich said, pointing to testimonies shared in the most recent reports sent by bishops’ conferences.
The Oct. 2-27 gathering of the Synod on Synodality will mark the end of the discernment phase of the Church’s synodal process, which Pope Francis opened in 2021.
Participants in the fall meeting, including Catholic bishops, priests, religious, and laypeople from around the world, will use the Instrumentum Laboris as a guide for their “conversations in the Spirit,” the method of discussion introduced at the 2023 assembly. They will also prepare and vote on the Synod on Synodality’s advisory final document, which will then be given to the pope, who decides the Church’s next steps and if he wishes to adopt the text as a papal document or to write his own.
The third phase of the synod — after “the consultation of the people of God” and “the discernment of the pastors” — will be “implementation,” according to organizers.
Prominent topics
The 2024 Instrumentum Laboris also addresses the need for transparency to restore the Church’s credibility in the face of sexual abuse of adults and minors and financial scandals.
“If the synodal Church wants to be welcoming,” the document reads, “then accountability and transparency must be at the core of its action at all levels, not only at the level of authority.”
It recommends effective lay involvement in pastoral and economic planning, the publication of annual financial statements certified by external auditors, annual summaries of safeguarding initiatives, the promotion of women to positions of authority, and periodic performance evaluations on those exercising a ministry or holding a position in the Church.
“These are points of great importance and urgency for the credibility of the synodal process and its implementation,” the document says.
The greater participation of women in all levels of the Church, a reform of the education of priests, and greater formation for all Catholics are also included in the text.
Bishops’ conferences, it says, noticed an untapped potential for women’s participation in many areas of Church life. “They also call for further exploration of ministerial and pastoral modalities that better express the charisms and gifts the Spirit pours out on women in response to the pastoral needs of our time,” the document states.
Formation in listening is identified as “an essential initial requirement” for Catholics, as well as how to engage in the practice of “conversation in the Spirit,” which was employed in the first session of the Synod on Synodality.
Pope Francis and delegates at the Synod on Synodality at the conclusion of the assembly on Oct. 28, 2023. Credit: Vatican Media
The document says the need for formation has been one of the most universal and strong themes throughout the synodal process. Interreligious dialogue also is identified as an important aspect of the synodal journey.
On the topic of the liturgy, the Instrumentum Laboris says there was “a call for adequately trained lay men and women to contribute to preaching the Word of God, including during the celebration of the Eucharist.”
“It is necessary that the pastoral proposals and liturgical practices preserve and make ever more evident the link between the journey of Christian initiation and the synodal and missionary life of the Church,” the document says. “The appropriate pastoral and liturgical arrangements must be developed in the plurality of situations and cultures in which the local Churches are immersed …”
How it was drafted
Dubbed the “Instrumentum Laboris 2,” the document released Tuesday has been in preparation since early June when approximately 20 experts in theology, ecclesiology, and canon law held a closed-door meeting to analyze around 200 synod reports from bishops’ conferences and religious communities responding to what the Instrumentum Laboris called “the guiding question” of the next stage of the Synod on Synodality: “How to be a synodal Church in mission?”
After the 10-day gathering, “an initial version” of the text was drafted based on those reports and sent to around 70 people — priests, religious, and laypeople — “from all over the world, of various ecclesial sensitivities and from different theological ‘schools,’” for consultation, according to the synod website.
The XVI Ordinary Council of the General Secretariat of the Synod, together with consultants of the synod secretariat, finalized the document.
According to the working tool, soliciting new reports and feedback after the consultation phase ended is “consistent with the circularity characterizing the whole synodal process.”
“In preparation for the Second Session, and during its work, we continue to address this question: how can the identity of the synodal People of God in mission take concrete form in the relationships, paths and places where the everyday life of the Church takes place?” it says.
The document says “other questions that emerged during the journey are the subject of work that continues in other ways, at the level of the local Churches as well as in the ten Study Groups.”
Expectations for final session
According to the guiding document, the second session of the Synod on Synodality can “expect a further deepening of the shared understanding of synodality, a better focus on the practices of a synodal Church, and the proposal of some changes in canon law (there may be yet more significant and profound developments as the basic proposal is further assimilated and lived.)”
“Nonetheless,” it continues, “we cannot expect the answer to every question. In addition, other proposals will emerge along the way, on the path of conversion and reform that the Second Session will invite the whole Church to undertake.”
The Instrumentum Laboris says, “Synodality is not an end in itself … If the Second Session is to focus on certain aspects of synodal life, it does so with a view to greater effectiveness in mission.”
In its brief conclusion, the text states: “The questions that the Instrumentum Laboris asks are: how to be a synodal Church in mission; how to engage in deep listening and dialogue; how to be co-responsible in the light of the dynamism of our personal and communal baptismal vocation; how to transform structures and processes so that all may participate and share the charisms that the Spirit pours out on each for the common good; how to exercise power and authority as service. Each of these questions is a service to the Church and, through its action, to the possibility of healing the deepest wounds of our time.”
Aboard the papal plane, Mar 8, 2021 / 07:35 am (CNA).- Pope Francis said Monday that the sight of the destroyed churches and ruins in Mosul and the Nineveh Plains in northern Iraq left him speechless.
“When I stopped in front of the destroyed church, I had no words… beyond belief,” Francis said March 8.
Speaking to journalists during an in-flight press conference, the pope said that he had read about and seen pictures of the destruction in northern Iraq, but what he saw in person in Mosul and Qaraqosh was unimaginable.
The pope’s March 5-8 trip to Iraq brought him from Baghdad to the birthplace of Abraham and finally to the rubble-strewn city of Mosul, where the Islamic State declared its caliphate in 2014.
“But then what touched me most was the testimony of a mother in Qaraqosh,” Pope Francis said on his flight back to Rome.
“She is a woman who lost her son in the first Islamic State bombings, and she said a word: ‘forgiveness.’ I was moved.”
Pope Francis met Doha Sabah Abdallah, the mother who lost her son, in the Syriac Catholic Immaculate Conception Church in Bakhdida, also known as Qaraqosh. The town, 20 miles southeast of Mosul, was occupied by ISIS from 2014 to 2016.
Abdallah shared the story with the pope and those gathered in the church of the bombing of the town in August 2014 that killed her son, his cousin, and a young neighbor.
“Our strength undoubtedly comes from our faith in the Resurrection, a source of hope. My faith tells me that my children are in the arms of Jesus Christ our Lord. And we, the survivors, try to forgive the aggressor, because our Master Jesus has forgiven his executioners. By imitating him in our sufferings, we testify that love is stronger than everything,” the Iraqi woman said.
Reflecting on this moment during the in-flight press conference, Pope Francis said: “I forgive. This is a word we have lost. We know how to insult big time. We know how to condemn in a big way … But to forgive, to forgive one’s enemies. This is the pure Gospel. This hit me in Qaraqosh.”
The pope also reflected on his meeting with the father of Alan Kurdi, the three-year-old who died in a shipwreck as his family tried to cross the Aegean Sea with other Syrian war refugees.
The pope said that the image of the deceased young boy “goes beyond a child who died in migration. It is a symbol of dying civilizations, which cannot survive. A symbol of humanity.”
The 84-year-old pope also noted that he had felt more tired during the Iraqi trip than on previous ones.
Recalling the final day of his trip, he said: “Yesterday, as we drove from Qaraqosh to Erbil, there were a lot of young people … many young people. And the question someone asked me was: ‘And these young people, what is their future? Where will they go?’ And many will have to leave the country, many.”
About 60% of Iraqi’s population is under the age of 25. The unemployment rate for young people in Iraq is estimated to be 36%, with low oil prices, government waste, and corruption, and a poor security situation further hindering the country’s potential for economic growth.
The pope emphasized that migration must be “a double right” with a “right to not to emigrate and a right to emigrate.”
“But these people do not have either,” he added.
The Christian population in Iraq has been steadily dwindling for decades, from around 1.4 million in 2003 to around 250,000 Christians in the country.
“Urgent measures are needed to ensure that people have jobs in their place and do not need to emigrate. And also measures to safeguard the right to emigrate,” the pope said.
Pope Francis expressed his gratitude to countries that have welcomed refugees and migrants, mentioning Lebanon and Jordan in particular.
The pope revealed that Cardinal Bechara Boutros Rai, Lebanon’s Maronite Patriarch, had asked him to add a stop in the country’s capital, Beirut, on his Iraq visit.
But Francis said that he had decided not to because he felt the country deserved a more substantial visit.
“I wrote a letter and made a promise to make a trip to Lebanon,” the pope said.
The photos within this story are from Pope Francis’ visit to Mosul March 7, 2021. Credit: Vatican Media.
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