null / Credit: Screenshot of Pontifical University of Comillas website
ACI Prensa Staff, Mar 2, 2023 / 17:00 pm (CNA).
The Pontifical University of Comillas in Spain has sent a survey to its former students asking them to specify their “gender” as male, female, or “other,” in contradiction with Christian anthropology.
The alumni department of the Comillas Pontifical University sent out the survey in order to improve its service.
The survey collects information on different aspects such as age, place of residence, degree, employment situation, or areas of interest of Comillas alumni.
The second question asks: “What is your gender?” Three response options are then offered: male, female, or “other.”
The use of this language appears to be a statement contradicting Christian anthropology and the institution’s Identity and Mission Declaration, which says that it is “a university established by the Holy See, whose governance has been entrusted to the Society of Jesus. This reality is essential to our mission and confers on it a specific profile.”
The institution “assumes, with all its consequences, the Christian conception” of the human being. Thus “there can be no university formation that succeeds in being integral and establishes authentic values, if it is not governed by a certain conception of man.”
Pope Francis has affirmed that gender ideology “presents a society without gender differences and voids the anthropological foundation of the family.”
In his apostolic exhortation Amoris Laetitia, the pope states in section 286 that the biological nature of the human being cannot be evaded. “It is true that we cannot separate the masculine and the feminine from God’s work of creation, which is prior to all our decisions and experiences, and where biological elements exist which are impossible to ignore,” the pope asserted.
In a written request, ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner, asked the Pontifical University of Comillas yesterday afternoon local time if it is an official position of the university to accept that there is a plurality of “genders.”
Information has also been requested on whether they consider the “other” category incorrect or inappropriate and if the form in question will be changed.
As of press time, no response had been received from the university.
Comillas University
The Pontifical University of Comillas has its origins in the seminary erected in 1890 by Leo XIII in that town, which is located on Spain’s northern coast.
It was entrusted to the Jesuits and its initial purpose was the formation of candidates for the priesthood from Spanish, Latin American, and Filipino dioceses. The Philippines were under Spanish rule at that time.
In 1904, St. Pius X conferred on the institution the power to grant academic degrees in philosophy, theology, and canon law.
In the late 1960s, the institution was transferred to Madrid, authorized by St. Paul VI. Then their classrooms were also opened to the laity. Since the 1970s, both ecclesiastical and secular courses have been available there.
The Catholic Institute of Arts and Industries, also run by the Jesuits, underwent a similar process. Both institutions merged canonically in 1978.
This story was first published by ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.
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Mother Elvira, the founder of the Comunità Cenacolo, based her efforts to help young people struggling with addiction around the concept of radical trust in God’s mercy and providence. / Courtesy of the Comunità Cenacolo
National Catholic Register, Aug 5, 2023 / 13:00 pm (CNA).
Mother Elvira Petrozzi, who founded Comunità Cenacolo in 1983 to provide hope and healing to those suffering from addiction, died on Aug. 3 in the formation house and residence of her congregation in Saluzzo, Italy. She was 86.
Her death, following a long illness, came just weeks after thousands of people gathered in Saluzzo, a hilltop town in Italy’s northwest Piedmont region about an hour’s drive south of Turin, to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Cenacolo Community’s founding there in an abandoned home on July 16, 1983.
In the decades since, the community has grown to encompass 72 Cenacolo houses in 20 countries, including four in the United States.
Mother Elvira called the Cenacolo a “School of Life” because it took people off the streets and gave them a “rebirth” that was “based on a simple, family-oriented, orderly life” with the foundation of prayer, physical labor, discipline, and fraternal sharing.
“How could I invent a story like this? Everything happened without me even realizing it,” she once remarked.
“I dove into God’s mercy and I rolled up my sleeves to love, love, love … and serve!” she said. “I am the first to surprise myself with what has happened and what is happening in the life of the Cenacolo Community. It’s a work of God, the Holy Spirit, and of Mary.”
Bishop Robert Baker, bishop emeritus of Birmingham, Alabama, first met Mother Elvira in 1991. The two developed a close friendship and together they co-founded four Comunità Cenacolos in the U.S. Southwest, including one near Hanceville, Alabama.
Baker was among Mother Elvira’s many friends, supporters, and community members who were able to visit with her in her final days.
“I had the blessing of being invited to come to be at her bedside,” he told the National Catholic Register, CNA’s partner news outlet. “I was with her and I was able to give her a blessing.”
Humble beginnings
Born Rita Petrozzi, Mother Elvira was born in Sora, Italy, in 1937 and grew up in a poor family, taking the name Elvira upon entering the Sisters of Charity of St. Jeanne Antide Thouret as a teenager.
It wasn’t until 27 years later that she felt inspired to help young addicts and other youth to change their lives. Rooted in her Catholic faith and God’s love for every person, her methods were so effective that they led to others wanting a Comunità Cenacolo established in their region.
Prior to meeting her, Baker founded a drug addiction center called Our Lady of Hope Community in St. Augustine, Florida. Then visiting Rome when he was rector of the Cathedral Basilica of St. Augustine, he learned of Mother Elvira, spoke with her, and at his invitation agreed to establish a Cenacolo community with her entire program at Our Lady of Hope in 1992. The two friends went on to co-found two other houses in the St. Augustine area and a fourth house in Alabama.
Baker celebrated one of the Masses for the thousands of people attending the 40th anniversary celebration in Saluzzo. In his homily, he reflected on the time when he arranged to use an ornamental nursery to raise funds for the Cenacolo program in Florida, but when community members arrived from Italy they explained that Mother Elvira had instructed them to rely instead on divine providence.
“It was the result of her own closeness to the Lord in the Eucharist, which enabled her to see the immensity of God’s love. And if God loves us so immensely, he will provide for us,” he said.
After 30 years, no one has gone hungry in that Florida house or any of the community’s houses. “The point being, she was right,” Baker said.
Mother Elvira, who died on Aug. 3, 2023, at age 86, was beloved for her infectious trust in God’s providence, her devotion to the Eucharist, and her burning desire to share God’s boundless love with those struggling in life. Courtesy of the Comunità Cenacolo
The daily schedule at these houses includes Mass, eucharistic adoration, Marian devotion with three rosaries minimum a day, and devotion to St. Joseph. Every day members pray simply: “St. Joseph, provide for us.”
“The heart of it is, of course, the Eucharist,” Baker explained.
“Part of Elvira’s training is to divest to get rid of the stuff you don’t need,” he said. “So, the divesting, the trust in divine providence, and then … the Eucharist, praying before the Lord. That’s where her greatest strength was — the Eucharist, where she had all these insights. [You] have to have the sense of God’s immense love, which she had from praying before the Eucharist. And then because you know God loves you immensely, he will provide for you.”
When Baker visited Mother Elvira shortly before her death, he noted upon entering the house a mosaic on the floor that spells out the words “Dio Provvede” (God Provides).
‘Consumed with God’s love’
Florida residents Sean and Elaine Corrigan, who met Mother Elvira in 2000, lived in her community for some time and served in its missions in Brazil.
The couple credits her for saving their marriage.
“She had an extraordinary impact on our lives and on our marriage,” Elaine Corrigan told the Register. “Mother Elvira was a person fully in love with her Savior. She knew, she accepted, and she believed completely in his merciful love, and her great desire was to share him with others.
“I wanted to run after her and soak up all that she had,” she continued. “When we met Mother Elvira, we knew we had encountered a woman completely consumed with the love of God. She knew in the core of her being that he could and would heal people. She shared this hope and mercy with everyone she met.”
Albino Aragno, who started with the Cenacolo more than 30 years ago and today is the director of Comunità Cenacolo America, said Mother Elvira taught him many valuable lessons.
“Mother Elvira always encouraged me. She reminded me that life is precious and that life needs to be lived fully … to never be afraid to do God’s will, and always trust in him,” he said.
“Because of this, I can say that in all these years I can see that our community has kept on going even through so many difficulties, because good always prevails!”
Albino’s wife, Joyce, said Mother Elvira had a profound effect on her from the very beginning.
“Mother Elvira said, ‘Lord, let me know your will in the moment you want me to do it.’ This pierced my heart the first time I heard it and moved me to try to live every moment of my life in surrender and abandonment to his will, as Jesus reveals it at that moment,” she explained.
“It’s so radically opposed to control and trusting ‘in my own understanding,’ as the Psalmist says — my own intellect, perception, and analysis. Jesus calls me to live totally in the moment, not depending on myself.”
Pope Francis paid tribute to the Comunità Cenacolo on its 40th anniversary following his July 16 Angelus reflection.
“I send my heartfelt greeting to the Cenacolo Community, which has been a place of hospitality and human promotion for 40 years,” the pope said. “I bless Mother Elvira, the bishop of Saluzzo, and all the fraternity and friends. What you do is good, and it is good that you exist! Thank you!”
Baker said he observed during a recent Mass how “in periods of the Church there are great saints that get us through the eras in which we live.”
He pointed to St. Benedict in the fourth century, the Dominicans and Franciscans in the 13th century during the Albigensian heresy, and St. Ignatius and the Jesuits in the 16th century at the time of the Reformation.
Largely because of their involvement in politics, the Jesuits were suppressed in 1773 by Pope Clement XIV. They were distrusted by too many because of their connection to the papacy. One wonders now whether the suppression was simply ahead of its time…
The issue now is not in the political domain, but the much more septic premise that everything is merely political. Marxism in a new suit…and Der Synodale Weg is the revolutionary vanguard: The male priesthood is a social construct (the Marxist “superstructure”). Sexual morality is a social construct. Binary marriage is a social construct. Sex (“gender”!) is a literary convention and social construct. The apostolic succession is a social construct. The Church, lacking a Germanic “new way,” is a social construct. Moral absolutes (as in Veritatis Splendor) are a social construct and the concept/reality of anything permanent is a social construct.
Only a decade ago in October of 2012, the Year of Faith (permanence?) was opened with this remark: “It is as if a tsunami of secular [and Marxist] influence has swept across the cultural landscape, taking with it such societal markers as marriage, family, the concept of the common good and objective right and wrong.”
Are we to believe that the self-compromised Cardinal Hollerich–a Jesuit! who opines that sexual morality/natural law and therefore the Catechism, should be washed away–will reconstruct the deconstruction?
So-called “experts,” Continental Drift, and the Synod on Synodality? Let us pray that the center holds, if there is a center.
I don’t keep up with every event going on in Spain, but it surely seems as though they have a demographic death wish. And for a Catholic institution to also be enabling that sort of demise seems especially tragic.
As the world becomes mentally unbalanced, our Church hastens to be just as crazy. “[It is true] we cannot separate the masculine and the feminine from God’s work of creation, which is prior to all our decisions and are impossible to ignore”. Here, Francis in Amoris 286, if we were to linguistically analyze is not saying anything more than biological difference cannot be ignored, he is not confirming that this fact cannot be subject to revision [why I bracket It is true, which anticipates ‘While’ it is true and the prospect of change].
For example, His Holiness has designed a platform, the Synod, in which persons who have ‘revised’ their gender, those called trans or transgender may be included within the Church’s sacramental life as is. What Pope Francis hasn’t condemned is one’s denial of their biological gender identity. Consequently, Synod relator Card Hollerich SJ, Card McElroy promote Church acceptance of a decision to trans and inclusion absent of repentance.
Card McElroy in his recent letter published in Jesuit mag America [addressed by Bishop Paprocki] speaks of a new moral approach in which the pastoral dimension is not excluded by the doctrinal [that they apparently coexist in some unspecified form]. This may appear merciful, a realistic approach to ‘the wounded’. Nonetheless it brackets repentance leaving the impression that metanoia and repentance are not required. Primary examples are Pres Biden and Nancy Pelosi.
Spain’s Pontifical University of Comillas reflects this ‘transition’ of morality centered on pastoral circumstances to the exclusion of doctrine.
Zechariah 4:6 Then he said to me, “This is the word of the Lord to Zerubbabel: Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, says the Lord of hosts.
Hebrews 4:2 For good news came to us just as to them, but the message they heard did not benefit them, because they were not united by faith with those who listened.
Ephesians 3:20-21 Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen.
Romans 5:5 And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.
John 14:26 But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you.
Today some wonder if Papa is in concordance with these verses! Others are more candid, questioning whether the Pope is Catholic! Whatever, God is in control and the church will prevail. Prayers for Papa.
Other???? Really?? Its a total disgrace for ANY catholic institution to offer “other” as a possible answer when asked to define one’s sex. The more we kow-tow to these insane liberal notions the more acceptance and normality they gain.
This is a puzzling state of affairs.
Until you find out that the school is run by the Jesuiticals. Once you realize that, it means perfect sense.
Largely because of their involvement in politics, the Jesuits were suppressed in 1773 by Pope Clement XIV. They were distrusted by too many because of their connection to the papacy. One wonders now whether the suppression was simply ahead of its time…
The issue now is not in the political domain, but the much more septic premise that everything is merely political. Marxism in a new suit…and Der Synodale Weg is the revolutionary vanguard: The male priesthood is a social construct (the Marxist “superstructure”). Sexual morality is a social construct. Binary marriage is a social construct. Sex (“gender”!) is a literary convention and social construct. The apostolic succession is a social construct. The Church, lacking a Germanic “new way,” is a social construct. Moral absolutes (as in Veritatis Splendor) are a social construct and the concept/reality of anything permanent is a social construct.
Only a decade ago in October of 2012, the Year of Faith (permanence?) was opened with this remark: “It is as if a tsunami of secular [and Marxist] influence has swept across the cultural landscape, taking with it such societal markers as marriage, family, the concept of the common good and objective right and wrong.”
Are we to believe that the self-compromised Cardinal Hollerich–a Jesuit! who opines that sexual morality/natural law and therefore the Catechism, should be washed away–will reconstruct the deconstruction?
So-called “experts,” Continental Drift, and the Synod on Synodality? Let us pray that the center holds, if there is a center.
I don’t keep up with every event going on in Spain, but it surely seems as though they have a demographic death wish. And for a Catholic institution to also be enabling that sort of demise seems especially tragic.
As the world becomes mentally unbalanced, our Church hastens to be just as crazy. “[It is true] we cannot separate the masculine and the feminine from God’s work of creation, which is prior to all our decisions and are impossible to ignore”. Here, Francis in Amoris 286, if we were to linguistically analyze is not saying anything more than biological difference cannot be ignored, he is not confirming that this fact cannot be subject to revision [why I bracket It is true, which anticipates ‘While’ it is true and the prospect of change].
For example, His Holiness has designed a platform, the Synod, in which persons who have ‘revised’ their gender, those called trans or transgender may be included within the Church’s sacramental life as is. What Pope Francis hasn’t condemned is one’s denial of their biological gender identity. Consequently, Synod relator Card Hollerich SJ, Card McElroy promote Church acceptance of a decision to trans and inclusion absent of repentance.
Card McElroy in his recent letter published in Jesuit mag America [addressed by Bishop Paprocki] speaks of a new moral approach in which the pastoral dimension is not excluded by the doctrinal [that they apparently coexist in some unspecified form]. This may appear merciful, a realistic approach to ‘the wounded’. Nonetheless it brackets repentance leaving the impression that metanoia and repentance are not required. Primary examples are Pres Biden and Nancy Pelosi.
Spain’s Pontifical University of Comillas reflects this ‘transition’ of morality centered on pastoral circumstances to the exclusion of doctrine.
Zechariah 4:6 Then he said to me, “This is the word of the Lord to Zerubbabel: Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, says the Lord of hosts.
Hebrews 4:2 For good news came to us just as to them, but the message they heard did not benefit them, because they were not united by faith with those who listened.
Ephesians 3:20-21 Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen.
Romans 5:5 And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.
John 14:26 But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you.
Today some wonder if Papa is in concordance with these verses! Others are more candid, questioning whether the Pope is Catholic! Whatever, God is in control and the church will prevail. Prayers for Papa.
Other???? Really?? Its a total disgrace for ANY catholic institution to offer “other” as a possible answer when asked to define one’s sex. The more we kow-tow to these insane liberal notions the more acceptance and normality they gain.