Pope Francis met with an interreligious delegation including leaders of Buddhism in Mongolia on May 28, 2022 / Vatican Media. See CNA article for full slideshow.
Vatican City, May 28, 2022 / 07:10 am (CNA).
Pope Francis invited Catholics and Buddhists to work together for peace and nonviolence, during a Vatican meeting with Buddhist leaders from Mongolia on Saturday.
“Peace is the ardent yearning of humanity today. Therefore, through dialogue at all levels, it is urgent to promote a culture of peace and nonviolence and to work for it,” the pope said on May 28, speaking from a wheelchair in his study.
“This dialogue must call on everyone to reject violence in all its forms, including violence against the environment,” he stated. “Unfortunately, there are those who continue to abuse religion by using it to justify acts of violence and hatred.”
The leaders of Mongolian Buddhism met with Pope Francis in the Vatican’s apostolic palace, together with Bishop Giorgio Marengo, apostolic prefect of Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. Cardinal Miguel Ayuso Giuxot, president of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue was also present.
The Mongolian Buddhist authorities are in Rome to mark the 30th anniversary of the presence of the Catholic Church in Mongolia and the 30th anniversary of diplomatic relations between the East Asian country and the Holy See.
In Mongolia, around 53% of the population is Buddhist. There are an estimated 1,300 Catholics out of a total population of 3.2 million.
The visit of the Mongolian Buddhist delegation to the Vatican “is intended to deepen your friendly relations with the Catholic Church, to promote mutual understanding and cooperation in order to build a peaceful society,” Pope Francis noted.
He noted that both Jesus and Buddha were peacemakers, and said, “in a world ravaged by conflict and war, as religious leaders, deeply rooted in our respective religious doctrines, we have a duty to arouse in humanity the will to renounce violence and build a culture of peace.”
Despite the small number of Catholics in Mongolia, “the Church is fully committed to promoting a culture of encounter, following her Master and Founder who said, ‘Love one another as I have loved you,’” Pope Francis said.
“Let us strengthen our friendship for the good of all,” he urged. “Mongolia has a long tradition of peaceful coexistence of different religions. My hope is that this ancient history of harmony in diversity can continue today through the effective implementation of religious freedom and the promotion of joint initiatives for the common good.”
“Your presence here today is in itself a sign of hope. With these sentiments, I invite you to continue your fraternal dialogue and good relations with the Catholic Church in your country, for the cause of peace and harmony,” he stated.
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Michael Stucchi poses in front of the restored statue of Jesus with children at St. Mel’s Church in Woodland Hills, California. / Photo credit: Tom Hoffarth
Woodland Hills, California, Nov 5, 2022 / 08:00 am (CNA).
In the darkness of an early Saturday morning last March 19, Father Steve Davoren and his golden lab, Blue, came out the back exit of the rectory at St. Mel’s Church in Woodland Hills, California, for a pre-dawn run.
But before he could start, the priest’s heart sank when he saw what the floodlights pointing at the church’s iconic statue cluster of Jesus and three children revealed.
Grainy security footage only captured the arm of a person repeatedly swinging an unidentified weapon at the statues. Pieces fell from what has been a longtime centerpiece of the parish, in a highly visible spot off of busy Ventura Boulevard.
Chunks of the marbled concrete that came off the twisted, exposed rebar were everywhere: in the raised flower bed flanked by white rose bushes, in the parking lot, on the sidewalk next to the parish office.
Davoren immediately called the church’s business manager, Lisa Feliciano, who threw on a hoodie and came right over.
“It was horrific,” Feliciano said. “But now we were putting pieces in a box, crying. I couldn’t believe anyone could have this much hate to do this.”
Feliciano filed a police report along with the surveillance video, which she described as “two minutes of torture.”
“I see it and it still makes me cry,” she said.
Details of the damaged statues of Jesus at St. Mel’s Church in Woodland Hills, California. Photo credit: Michael Stucchi
It fell to Davoren to explain the attack to parishioners the next day at Sunday Masses, preaching understanding and forgiveness in the place of anger and frustration.
“To me, the irony of this was the person who did this had to be a broken person himself,” said Davoren, pastor at St. Mel’s since 2018. “Through Scripture we know we need to pray for people who feel they have to destroy.”
Michael Stucchi heard Davoren’s message loud and clear that weekend. A systems software engineer by trade, Stucchi has found satisfaction working for the parish to restore four in-church statues in the past as well as Nativity scene statues.
He has been their humble go-to, fix-it man. But this was something bigger.
“When I spoke to Father Steve about it a few days after it happened, I admit, I was angry, mad, indignant because the statues were special to me and my family,” said Stucchi, whose son works in the parish office. “But then I heard his sadness and concern for the mental state of the person who damaged the statues. That’s so much like him. This really altered my paradigm from reactive to proactive — to ask if I could look into ways of repairing them.
“Father Steve’s compassion is what Jesus would want us to have. All the people who work here are in the same mindset of love and forgiveness. We have no idea what terrible things are in that person’s life.”
Stucchi and Feliciano started the reconstruction by collecting and studying photographs of the statues to examine all their features. The depiction of Jesus is about 6 feet tall and weighs about 1,000 pounds; each child on its own concrete base weighs about 300 pounds.
The collection dates to the 1950s, when the parish was first built. It had once been part of a fountain display in front of the school office and later relocated near the church’s west doors in the 1990s when the new parish center was built.
Feliciano had contacted the Los Angeles Archdiocese about filing an insurance claim and was told it might cost as much as $30,000 to repair.
Stucchi said he could take care of it, with no charge to the parish.
That didn’t surprise Feliciano, who calls Stucchi “a true angel.”
“Look at the difference between someone filled with hate and destruction … and then someone like Michael who spends his time showing pure love and joy putting it back together,” Feliciano said. “Both are our neighbors, they live among us. How can there be such a vast difference in someone’s heart and soul?”
Michael Stucchi has pieced together the statues at St. Mel’s Church in Woodland Hills, California, to where they may even be in better condition when finished. Photo credit: Michael Stucchi
Stucchi experimented with different combinations of compounds — crushed marble, white Portland cement, and waterproof exterior grout. Most of the work had to be done on site, with some pieces taken to his home garage.
“I was super cautious about not making anything worse,” said Stucchi, noting the materials often dried too quickly in the summer heat, causing more delays. “The saddest part to me was the damage to Jesus. We know enough about the pain and suffering Jesus went through in his life, but to see an image of him obliterated, that’s too much.”
Slowly and meticulously, Stucchi has pieced together the statues to where they may even be in better condition now because of the ways weather and age already caused cracks and decay before the vandalism.
Seven months later, Stucchi has a few finishing touches — and plenty of gratitude — still left.
“As a priest’s sacrifice and commitment are beyond my comprehension or capabilities, having seen their dedication and that of the other volunteers and staff, I felt it’s the least I can do,” Stucchi said. “Notwithstanding, the Catholic Church was always there for me when I was a child and young adult.”
From a business perspective, Feliciano said the experience has taught her about the need for better security. The statues also were previously vandalized in 2021 when someone painted the faces a green color, but they were easy enough to repaint white.
“As a parishioner, the kindness of Michael reminds me that there is goodness in the world,” said Feliciano, who noted the 100-degree days Stucchi spent with the statue last summer. “I am reminded to pray for the person who was filled with enough hate to do the damage and thank God for blessing us with Michael.”
Father Davoren believes that “to some degree, we’re all broken and damaged, but our faith in the love of God allows people like Michael the tenderness to painstakingly put those pieces of the statue back together.
“It’s about giving people the right amount of grace to rebound in their lives.”
Vatican City, Feb 11, 2018 / 05:30 am (CNA/EWTN News).- After the Angelus Sunday, with the help of a tablet and two young people, Pope Francis signed up for World Youth Day 2019 in Panama, announcing that registration for the international event has opened.
“I too, now, with two young people, sign up by means of the internet,” the Pope said Feb. 11, clicking “register” on a tablet. “There, I have enrolled as a pilgrim to World Youth Day,” he announced.
“We have to prepare ourselves. I invite all the young people of the world to live with faith and enthusiasm this event of grace and fraternity, both [those] going to Panama and [those] participating in their communities.”
Pope Francis chose Panama to be the host of the next World Youth Day, an international gathering of youth which was started in 1985 by Pope St. John Paul II. Ordinarily held sometime in the summer months, in 2019 it will take place Jan. 22-27, to avoid Panama’s rainy season.
Before the Angelus, Pope Francis spoke about the day’s Gospel, which tells of Jesus’ healing of a leper, noting that “in this context the World Day of the Sick is well placed.”
In the Old Testament, having leprosy made you unclean, and you would be separated from the community, Francis explained. Therefore, the leper in the Gospel of Mark would have felt unclean not only before other people, but also before God.
But Jesus is the true physician, and heals both our bodies and our souls, he said. Christ’s compassion and mercy move him to reach out to the man suffering from leprosy, to touch him and to say: “I will it, be cleansed!” the Pope said.
Jesus’ act of touching the leper, which was forbidden by Mosaic law, makes the leper clean, he said. “In this healing we admire, in addition to compassion and mercy, also the audacity of Jesus, who is not concerned with contagion nor the rules, but is moved only by the will to free that man from the curse that oppresses him.”
Francis said that in fact, it is not illness that makes us unclean, or that we should fear, but our sins. And that we all need healing from selfishness, pride and corruption, which are the “diseases of the heart from which we need to be cleansed.”
The Pope then asked everyone present to take a moment of silence to look inside themselves, and to search out the impurities and the sins in their hearts. He also encouraged everyone to pray to God with the same words of the leper: “If you want, you can purify me.”
“Every time we approach the Sacrament of Reconciliation with a repentant heart, the Lord also repeats to us: ‘I will it, be cleansed!’” Francis continued. “Thus the leprosy of sin disappears, we return to live with joy our filial relationship with God and we are readmitted fully into the community.”
“Peace is the tranquility of order,” which begins with proper worship of God. This trope, “Jesus was a peacemaker” is nonsense, when Our Lord said specifically that he came to bring a sword—and that even families would be divided over belief in him as Saviour.
“Peace is the tranquility of order,” which begins with proper worship of God. This trope, “Jesus was a peacemaker” is nonsense, when Our Lord said specifically that he came to bring a sword—and that even families would be divided over belief in him as Saviour.
Working together for peace is a mission second to none. Peace and non-violence are powerful tools of mass construction.