Pro-life roundup: Here’s what happened with abortion at the state level this week

Washington D.C., Sep 9, 2020 / 05:54 pm (CNA).- On the feast of St. Peter Claver, bishops in the U.S. preached on overcoming the sin of racism through God’s grace.

On August 27, the chair of the U.S. bishops’ anti-racism committee, Bishop … […]

Washington D.C., Sep 3, 2017 / 03:01 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Which Christians face the most persecution around the globe, and how do they respond to it?

The Religious Freedom Institute teamed up with the University of Notre Dame and Georgetown University’s Religious Freedom Project to find out.

And what they ended up conducting was the world’s first systematic global investigation of the Christian response to persecution, called Under Caesar’s Sword.

This report, funded by the Templeton Religion Trust, was researched over the course of three years by a team of 14 scholars who analyzed more than 30 of the most threatened countries around the world. They examined the patterns of religious persecution, the varieties of responses to persecution, and made recommendations for action against persecution.

“’Under Caesar’s Sword’ is an effort to discover and draw attention to the ways in which Christian communities around the world respond to the severe violation of their religious freedom,” the project’s website said.

“One of the project’s signature features is its extensive efforts to disseminate its findings. This is part and parcel of its efforts to raise awareness of and be in solidarity with persecuted Christians.”

The study’s major findings were turned into a number of difference resources, including two different educational courses now offered online for free through the Satellite Theological Education Program (STEP) at the University of Notre Dame.

“We are now working to put the findings from the Under Caesar’s Sword project (produced together with Dan Philpott at Notre Dame) into the hands of churches and leaders to help them equip their people to understand and respond to persecution of Christians around the world,” Kent Hill, the executive director of the Religious Freedom Institute, said in a press release.

The first program is called Christians Confronting Persecution, which is intended for educators, minister, pastors and adults who are interested in actively encountering “the reality of persecution through the lens of faith.”

The six-week course includes lectures from experts such as Tom Farr, Tim Shah, Daniel Philpott and Kristen Haas, and takes about 3-4 hours of study each week. Those who complete the course will receive certificates of completion which will also prepare them to facilitate the course with others.

The second program is called We Respond, a seven-session lecture series for adult groups, high school students, parishes, and churches who “wish to engage both intellectually and reflectively with the reality of religious persecution today.”

Both of these resources explore how Christian communities respond to persecution, and include videos, Scripture passages, stories and information on how to cultivate solidarity.

According to the project’s website, 76 percent of the world’s population lived in a religiously oppressed country in 2012. Christians were reported to have been harassed in 102 countries in 2013.

“We at the Religious Freedom Institute are seeking to be very concrete in providing very specific ways for our churches, our Christian schools, and the members of our churches to both learn about the plight of Christians in harm’s way and to become aware of what they can do to be of help,” Hill said.

The programs will start online on Sept. 4 and are now open for registration.

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Four men carry a statue of St. Bonaventure during a candlelight procession on July 14, 2023, in Bagnoregio, Italy, his birthplace, on the vigil of the saint’s feast day. / Patrick Leonard/CNA

Bagnoregio, Italy, Jul 15, 2023 / 12:15 pm (CNA).

The birthplace of St. Bonaventure, a 13th-century intellectual giant now revered as a doctor of the Church and the “second founder” of the Franciscans, paid homage to its patron Friday night on the vigil of his feast day with music, prayers, and a candlelight procession.

For the citizens of Bagnoregio, an idyllic town nestled in Italy’s Lazio region about a 1½ drive north of Rome, the July 15 feast is both a solemn holy day and a wellspring of civic pride. Bonaventure’s “braccio santo,” or holy arm — the only surviving relic of the saint — is kept in a silver, arm-shaped reliquary housed in a side chapel of Bagnoregio’s Cathedral of San Nicola and San Donato.

Friday’s procession, which commenced at the cathedral, was led by the town’s confraternities of the Most Blessed Sacrament, St. Francis, and St. Peter. Following them were a brass band, a statue of the saint adorned with flowers and carried by four men, and a priest carrying the holy arm. Then came Cardinal Fortunato Frezza, numerous priests, and this year’s first communicants, followed by other religious and residents.

As the participants made their way down the candlelit Via Roma, onlookers watched from windows, balconies, and restaurants bustling with patrons on a warm summer evening.

Arriving at the piazza Sant’Agostino, Cardinal Frezza, standing beneath a monument of Bonaventure, offered a brief reflection on the importance of the saint and of procession as a form of popular devotion.

The relic “gives us strength to sustain our weakness … It is a relic that is alive and active,” observed the cardinal, a noted biblical scholar. It is “an arm that teaches,” he said, the very right arm that “wrote his works of great intellect and wisdom.”

The cardinal closed his brief catechesis by saying “our life is a holy procession, an itinerary of the mind towards God.” Here he was playing on the title of one of Bonaventure’s most important theological works, Itinerarium Mentis in Deum, “The Journey of the Mind to God.” Following a benediction with the relic, the procession continued down Via Fidanza, looping around the main gate and then back up Via Roma to the cathedral. The faithful entered and Cardinal Frezza imparted the final blessing, again with the relic.

The Franciscans’ ‘second founder’

Born in 1217 (or 1221, according to some accounts) as Giovanni Fidanza in Civita di Bagnoregio (then in the territory of the Papal States), he displayed great acumen and intellectual curiosity. He was, however, plagued by ill health in his youth. His mother called upon the intercession of St. Francis of Assisi, and he was, according to the legend, miraculously cured.

The young Bonaventure studied at the nearby Franciscan convent. Given his great talent, at 18 he left Bagnoregio to study in Paris, then the intellectual capital of Europe.

He joined the Franciscan Order of Friars Minor in 1243. At the University of Paris, he studied under the renowned Franciscan theologian Alexander de Hales; in 1257 he earned his teaching license (magister cathedratus) in theology there. Bonaventure was a contemporary of St. Thomas Aquinas, whom he met as they were both teaching at the university. The two future doctors of the Church were united in defending the then-nascent Franciscan and Dominican orders, whose orthodoxy was called into question by the secular clergy.

Bonaventure’s teaching career was cut short; in 1257 when he was appointed minister general of the Franciscan order, which was then plagued by internal factionalism due to divergent understandings of Francis’ spirituality following his death.

To rectify this, Bonaventure spent much time traveling around Europe to help maintain the unity of the order. In 1260 went to Narbonne, France, to solidify the rule of the order and that same year he started writing (which was completed three years later in 1263) the Legenda Maior, “The Major Legend,” considered the definitive biography of St. Francis. For Bonaventure, the key to righting the order lie in Francis’ ideals of obedience, chastity, and poverty, which he re-established as the Franciscans’ guiding principles.

Enduring influence

In addition to his contributions as the “second founder” of the Franciscans, Bonaventure had a profound impact on the papacy. Following the chaos of the three-year conclave in Viterbo that elected Gregory X in 1271 (the longest papal election in the history of the Church), the new pontiff, also a Franciscan, entrusted Bonaventure with preparing many of the key documents for the Second Council of Lyon (1272-1274) which sought to unify the Latin and Greek Churches.

He was made a cardinal in the consistory of May 28, 1273. He did not, however, see the end of the council, as he died on July 15, 1274. He was canonized in 1482 by Pope Sixtus IV and proclaimed Doctor of the Church by Pope Sixtus V in 1588.

In 2009, Pope Benedict XVI, who was a great admirer of Bonaventure, visited the saint’s birthplace to venerate the relic and address the faithful. In 2010 he dedicated three consecutive Wednesday audiences on the saint, outlining the importance of his governance of the Franciscans and his theological, philosophical, and mystical works. Bonaventure’s writings, Benedict observed, demonstrate that “Christ’s works do not go backwards, they do not fail but progress.”

“For St. Bonaventure, Christ was no longer the end of history, as he was for the Fathers of the Church, but rather its center; history does not end with Christ but begins a new period,” Benedict said.

“The following is another consequence: Until that moment the idea that the Fathers of the Church were the absolute summit of theology predominated, all successive generations could only be their disciples,” Pope Benedict explained.

“St. Bonaventure also recognized the Fathers as teachers forever, but the phenomenon of St. Francis assured him that the riches of Christ’s word are inexhaustible and that new light could also appear to the new generations,” he said. “The oneness of Christ also guarantees newness and renewal in all the periods of history.”

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