Former President Bill Clinton and Pope Francis. / Credit: Vatican Dicastery for Communication
Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Sep 14, 2023 / 09:56 am (CNA).
Pope Francis and former President Bill Clinton will discuss pressing issues facing the world next week at the annual meeting of the Clinton Foundation’s global humanitarian effort, the Clinton Foundation revealed on Thursday.
The foundation said in a press release that the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) 2023 meeting would open on Monday, Sept. 18, with “a special conversation between President Clinton and His Holiness Pope Francis” via remote link.
The discussion is expected to focus on “what it takes to keep going on the most pressing global challenges of our time,” the release said, including “climate change, the refugee crisis, the welfare of children, and the mission and projects of the Bambino Gesù Children’s Hospital.”
Bambino Gesù is a Vatican-owned pediatric hospital located in the extraterritorial jurisdiction of the Holy See. Pope Francis has visited the hospital several times and spoken warmly of it, calling it a “family” that offers “human witness” through its medical services.
The hospital said in its press release on Thursday that representatives of the facility would also be “tak[ing] part” in the symposium. The hospital said it requires “great financial support” to run its medical undertakings; it said it would “bring these needs to the attention of the international audience” at the initiative meeting.
Two years ago Chelsea Clinton — the vice chair of the Clinton Foundation — appeared at a virtual Vatican symposium on health.
On its website, the Clinton Foundation touts its global initiative as “creating a community of doers who are taking action on the world’s most pressing challenges, together.”
Among the other guests at the symposium next week will be U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, California Gov. Gavin Newsom, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, and Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.
The Clinton Foundation says the Global Initiative has helped “more than 9,000 organizations [launch] more than 3,900 Commitments to Action,” which it described as “new, specific, and measurable projects and programs.”
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Pope Francis delivers a video message to the conference “100 Years Since the ‘Concilium Sinense’” at the Pontifical Urban University in Rome on Tuesday, May 21, 2024. / Credit: Fabio Gonnella/EWTN
Rome Newsroom, May 21, 2024 / 13:57 pm (CNA).
Pope Francis has praised the Catholic Church’s first council in China 100 years ago as “an authentic synodal journey” that opened the way for the Church in China “to increasingly have a Chinese face.”
In a video message to a conference in Rome on the Catholic Church in China, the pope noted that Chinese Catholics have endured “times of patience and trial” in the past century.
“The Lord in China has safeguarded the faith of the people of God along the way. And the faith of God’s people has been the compass that has shown the way throughout this time,” Pope Francis said in the May 21 address.
Pope Francis delivers a video message to the conference “100 Years Since the ‘Concilium Sinense’” at the Pontifical Urban University in Rome on Tuesday, May 21, 2024. Credit: Fabio Gonnella/EWTN
The pope pointed to a Church council that took place in Shanghai 25 years before the Chinese Communist Revolution as an example of a moment when “the communion between the Holy See and the Church in China manifested its fruits, fruits of good for all the Chinese people.”
The 1924 council, called the Primum Concilium Sinense, brought together 105 Catholic missionaries, bishops, and Chinese Catholics to establish a framework for a native Chinese hierarchy.
“The Fathers gathered in the Concilium Sinense lived an authentically synodal experience and made important decisions together,” Pope Francis said.
“Remembering the Council of Shanghai can also suggest today new paths to the entire Church and open paths to be undertaken with boldness to proclaim and bear witness to the Gospel in the present,” he added.
Among the crowd listening to the pope’s video message were representatives from the People’s Republic of China, including Bishop Shen Bin of Shanghai, who was unilaterally installed by Chinese authorities as bishop of Shanghai in April 2023 without a papal mandate, thereby breaking the terms of the Vatican-China deal. Pope Francis confirmed his appointment in July 2023.
The Holy See first entered into a provisional two-year agreement with Beijing on the appointment of bishops in 2018, which has since been renewed twice and is again up for renewal this fall.
Pope Francis opted not to speak of the Vatican’s diplomatic efforts with Beijing or religious freedom in China in his message but said that Chinese Catholics today “bear witness to their faith through works of mercy and charity, and in their witness they give a real contribution to the harmony of social coexistence.”
A large statue of Our Lady of Sheshan stood on the pope’s desk as he spoke. The pope noted that during the month of May many Chinese Catholics usually go on pilgrimage to the Marian Shrine of Sheshan, located near Shanghai.
“I too ideally climb the hill of Sheshan, and let us all together entrust to Mary, Help of Christians, our brothers and sisters in the faith who are in China, all the Chinese people, and all our poor world, asking for her intercession, so that peace may always win everywhere,” Pope Francis said.
Following the pope’s message, Shen Bin delivered a 15-minute speech in Chinese to the packed auditorium of the Pontifical Urban University on the Janiculum Hill overlooking St. Peter’s Basilica.
The Chinese bishop offered a different interpretation of the 1924 council from the pope in his speech, saying that “the Council of Shanghai did not lead to an immediate and radical change in the Church in China,” adding that by the 1949 Communist Revolution “only 29 of China’s 137 dioceses had Chinese bishops, and only three of 20 archbishops were Chinese.”
“The Catholic Church in China had not really freed itself from foreign powers to become a work led by Chinese Christians and had not yet managed to shed the label of ‘foreign religion,’” he said.
Shen Bin, who has held leadership positions in the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association established by the Chinese Communist Party and under the control of the United Front Work Department, went on to defend Beijing’s religious freedom record and underlined the need for the Church in China to “follow a path of sinicization.”
“The policy of religious freedom implemented by the Chinese government has no interest in changing the Catholic faith but only hopes that the Catholic clergy and faithful will defend the interests of the Chinese people and free themselves from the control of foreign powers,” Shen Bin said in his speech.
“Today the Chinese people are carrying out the great rebirth of the Chinese nation in a global way with Chinese-style modernization, and the Catholic Church in China must move in the same direction, following a path of sinicization that is in line with Chinese society and culture today,” the Shanghai bishop added.
The conference, titled “100 Years Since the ‘Concilium Sinense’: Between History and the Present,” was held in Chinese and Italian in the Great Hall of the Pontifical Urban University. The Pastoral Commission for China and Agenzia Fides, the information service of the Pontifical Mission Societies, organized the conference, which featured Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin and Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle as speakers.
Speaking to journalists on the sidelines of the conference, Parolin said the Holy See would like to increase and deepen its contacts in China.
“We have been hoping for a long time now to have a stable presence in China, even if initially it may not have the form of a papal representation of an apostolic nunciature,” Parolin said.
Pope Francis gives his Christmas ‘Urbi et Orbi’ blessing Dec. 25, 2021. / Vatican Media
Vatican City, Dec 25, 2021 / 04:26 am (CNA).
Giving his traditional Christmas “Urbi et Orbi” blessing on Saturday, Pope Francis urged leaders to be open to … […]
Vatican City, Sep 22, 2020 / 07:00 am (CNA).- The prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) said Tuesday that the Vatican had “done everything possible to dialogue” with an Irish priest barred from public ministry for … […]
3 Comments
(Sigh.)
This Bergoglian clown show of a papacy is wearing me down.
Our poor Lord and Savior Jesus is being sold out for a photo op.
Bergoglio excoriates Catholics who are drawn to the Latin Mass, but happily socializes with this rapist and child killer whose party is responsible for more than one BILLION children’s murders worldwide over the past fifty years.
Note to Larry Chapp: You’re far more learned than I. So I’m prepared to concede that this Bergoglio character is not an “anti-pope.”
But tell me this. If he *were* the anti-pope, how much worse could his papacy possibly be?
The July get together had all this in it. Pope Francis wants to “reach out” to sinners via decriminalizing abortion? Or is he decriminalizing abortion hoping to convert sinners incidentally?
‘ Pope Francis met with former U.S. President Bill Clinton in a private audience at the Casa Santa Marta papal residence on Wednesday. Clinton’s delegation included several prominent Americans, including Alex Soros of the Open Society Foundations.
…
After the meeting, Pope Francis greeted the delegation accompanying Clinton. The group included the president’s son-in-law Marc Mezvinsky and Clinton’s one-time Oxford roommate Strobe Talbot, who served as deputy secretary of state in the Clinton administration. The current U.S. ambassador to the Holy See, Joe Donnelly, was not present, Clinton’s office said.
CNA sought comment from the Open Society Foundations but did not receive a response by publication.
As CNA previously reported, Open Society Foundations and its aligned groups have funded efforts to legalize abortion in Ireland, Poland, Mexico, and other traditionally Catholic countries. The Soros network has also funded efforts to change the political priorities of American Catholics and to pass strongly pro-abortion legislation, such as a Michigan ballot measure to declare abortion a constitutional right. ‘
(Sigh.)
This Bergoglian clown show of a papacy is wearing me down.
Our poor Lord and Savior Jesus is being sold out for a photo op.
This is so wrong, so sickening.
Bergoglio excoriates Catholics who are drawn to the Latin Mass, but happily socializes with this rapist and child killer whose party is responsible for more than one BILLION children’s murders worldwide over the past fifty years.
Note to Larry Chapp: You’re far more learned than I. So I’m prepared to concede that this Bergoglio character is not an “anti-pope.”
But tell me this. If he *were* the anti-pope, how much worse could his papacy possibly be?
The July get together had all this in it. Pope Francis wants to “reach out” to sinners via decriminalizing abortion? Or is he decriminalizing abortion hoping to convert sinners incidentally?
‘ Pope Francis met with former U.S. President Bill Clinton in a private audience at the Casa Santa Marta papal residence on Wednesday. Clinton’s delegation included several prominent Americans, including Alex Soros of the Open Society Foundations.
…
After the meeting, Pope Francis greeted the delegation accompanying Clinton. The group included the president’s son-in-law Marc Mezvinsky and Clinton’s one-time Oxford roommate Strobe Talbot, who served as deputy secretary of state in the Clinton administration. The current U.S. ambassador to the Holy See, Joe Donnelly, was not present, Clinton’s office said.
CNA sought comment from the Open Society Foundations but did not receive a response by publication.
As CNA previously reported, Open Society Foundations and its aligned groups have funded efforts to legalize abortion in Ireland, Poland, Mexico, and other traditionally Catholic countries. The Soros network has also funded efforts to change the political priorities of American Catholics and to pass strongly pro-abortion legislation, such as a Michigan ballot measure to declare abortion a constitutional right. ‘
https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/254737/pope-francis-hosts-bill-clinton-foundation-head-alex-soros