Pope Leo XIV on Pentecost Sunday: The Holy Spirit inspires us to ‘break down walls’

Vatican City, Nov 10, 2017 / 12:16 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- On Friday, leading Vatican and secular diplomats urged world leaders to freeze investment into nuclear arms production, and to instead fund peace and development initiatives.

“Every day we are bombarded with bad news about the atrocities that we humans can do, harming each other and nature, about the increasing drumbeat of a possible nuclear conflagration and the fact that humanity stands on the precipice of a nuclear holocaust,” Cardinal Peter Turkson said Nov. 10.

Fears over a potential global catastrophe are rising to a level not seen since the days of the Cuban Missile Crisis, he said.

Ongoing discussion about nuclear weapons is “critical,” Turkson said, adding that the decisions made by global leaders about peace and war in the coming months and years “will have profound consequences for the very future of humanity and our planet.”

Head of the Vatican’s dicastery for Integral Human Development, Turkson gave the opening keynote speech at a Nov. 10-11 conference on nuclear disarmament that his department is organizing.

He noted that the conference overlaps with U.S. President Donald Trump’s visit to Asia – which includes stops in South Korea, China, Vietnam and the Philippines – as the U.S. faces heightened tensions with North Korea.

The Vatican conference has been in the works for several years, and was not intentionally planned to overlap with Trump’s Asia visit. The timing, the cardinal jested, is a coincidence that could be seen as an act of “divine providence.”

The two-day symposium on nuclear disarmament is the first global gathering to address the topic since the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons was passed in New York on July 7. Prior to the treaty, nuclear arms were the only weapons of mass destruction not explicitly banned by any international document.

The treaty passed with 122 votes in favor, with Singapore being the only abstention. However, 69 countries – all the nuclear weapon states and NATO members apart from the Netherlands – did not take part in the vote.

In addition to Cardinal Turkson and Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin, who also spoke in the opening panel, other participants in the summit include Masako Wada, one of the last survivors of the Hiroshima nuclear attack, 11 Nobel Peace Laureates, representatives from the U. N. and NATO, diplomats from Russia, the United States, South Korea, and Iran, weapons experts and foundation leaders.

Representatives of bishops’ conferences and other Christian organizations are also attending, including a delegation of professors and students from U.S. and Russian universities.

In comments to journalists on the opening day of the event, Beatrice Fihn, Executive Director of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), said that despite elevated tensions, the signing of the July treaty is a sign of hope, showing that the majority of countries in the world reject nuclear weapons.

In 2017, Fihn’s organization was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in recognition of its work drawing attention to the humanitarian consequences of nuclear weapons, and for its effort to achieve the treaty.

Fihn said she believes it is possible to have a world without nuclear weapons. “We built these weapons (and) we can take them apart,” she said, adding that the world has given up certain chemical and biological weapons in the past.

Izumi Nakamitsu, U.N. High Representative for Disarmament Affairs, said the U.N. is grateful to both Pope Francis and the Holy See for organizing the conference.

“Any gathering of world leaders and civil society actors and governments to discuss ways to pursue a nuclear weapons-free zone will be very helpful for the cause of U.N. disarmament activities,” she said, and voiced eagerness to discuss what can practically be done to eradicate nuclear weapons.

Nakamitsu said the U.N. believes the only solution to the North Korean nuclear crisis is a political one, and that talks on disarmament, arms control and non-proliferation create much-needed “breathing space” for trying to find these political solutions.

“So we’re not giving up at all on disarmament, but quite the contrary, because the situation is very difficult, we think disarmament discussions are more important.”

Cardinals Turkson and Parolin both emphasized the need for an integral development aimed at promoting human dignity and the common good as the solution to current nuclear tensions.

Quoting former U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower’s 1953 speech after the death of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, Turkson said “every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.”

International peace and stability, Cardinal Turkson said, cannot be based on “a false sense of security, on the threat of mutual destruction or total annihilation, or on simply maintaining a balance of power.”

Rather, he said, peace must be built on justice, development, respect for human rights, the care of creation, participation in public life, mutual trust, support of peaceful institutions, access to education and health, dialogue and solidarity.

Cardinal Parolin echoed these ideas, emphasizing the role of education and dialogue in creating “a culture of life and peace based on the dignity of the human being and the primacy of the law.”

He added that “only a concerted effort on the part of all nations will stop these senseless rivalries and promote fruitful, friendly dialogue between nations.”

In a Nov. 10 statement addressed to Pope Francis on the occasion of the conference, five of the 11 Nobel Prize Laureates participating in the conference said they hope the event will help launch “a new international legal regulation and further stigmatize those weapons and the states that so far refuse to give them up.”

They praised the joint role of civil society, religious communities and various international organizations and states in advancing the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, which aims to put an end to weapons “that are capable of obliterating life as we know it in the blink of an eye.”

An “inclusive and equitable” international security system which leaves no country feeling that they must depend on nuclear arms is needed, they said, and stressed the necessity to ask oneself “what ethical and moral human beings can possibly believe that it is fine to give machines the ability to kill humans.”

In order to avoid an “impending third revolution in warfare,” the weapons must be eliminated before they ever make it to battle, they said.

And this requites prioritizing the human person over the creation of wealth and realizing that “real security comes from placing the focus on meeting the needs of individuals and communities – human security and promoting the common good.”

Signatories included Professer Mohamed El Baradei; Mrs. Mairead Maguire; Professor Adolfo Perez Esquivel; Professor Jody Williams, and Professor Muhammad Yunus.

In comments to journalists Nov. 10, Yunus, who is from Bangladesh, said Pope Francis’ message on peace and nuclear disarmament is critical. The Pope’s voice, he said, “is respected all over the world, and when he says something, people listen.”

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Vatican City, Jun 13, 2018 / 07:22 am (CNA/EWTN News).- In their latest round of meetings, Pope Francis’ Council of Cardinals has finished and approved the first draft of what will be a new apostolic constitution outlining the role and functions of the Roman Curia.

The tentative title of the document is “Predicatae Evangelium,” meaning “Preach the Gospel.” The new constitution will eventually replace Pastor Bonus, the apostolic constitution issued by St. John Paul II in 1988, which currently governs the Roman Curia.

In comments to the press, Vatican spokesman Greg Burke said the title of the new constitution is subject to change, as is the rest of the text, a first draft of which was voted on and presented to Pope Francis by his Council of Cardinals during their June 11-13 meeting at the Vatican.

Burke stressed that there is “a lot of work to do still” on the text, and that right now the cardinals “are refining” it. The pope, he said, will make whatever changes he sees fit and “can give it to whoever he wants as an expert” for either opinions or contributions.

The bulk of this week’s round of meetings was dedicated to finalizing the draft of Predicatae Evangelium, though updates were given on the status of both the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors and the Council for the Economy.

British Msgr. Brian Ferme, secretary for the Vatican’s Council of the Economy, gave the group an update on the reform of the financial structures of the Holy See and the Vatican Governorate, which is economically independent from the Holy See and oversees the Vatican museums, the Vatican gardens, and the gendarmerie.

Ferme outlined the goals and fundamental principles of the Vatican’s financial reform, among which are the avoidance of waste, promoting transparency, ensuring that accounting principles are properly applied, and ensuring that international standards and the principle of dual control are followed.

Additionally, Ferme also highlighted several positive aspects of the reform to date, which include a gradual change in mentality on the need for transparency and accountability; a uniform procedure for preparing budgets and final balances; a greater attention to waste and a greater cooperation with and understanding of the financial reform currently in progress.

Each of the nine members of the pope’s advisory body were present for the meeting, apart from Cardinal George Pell, prefect of the Secretariat for the Economy, who is currently in Australia preparing to face trial for charges of historical sexual abuse, to which he has plead “not guilty.”

Established by Pope Francis shortly after his election in 2013, the Council of Cardinals – colloquially known as the “C9” – is an advisory body on Church governance and reform.

Their next round of meetings will take place Sept. 10-12 at the Vatican, shortly before Pope Francis leaves for a Sept. 22-25 trip to the Baltic states. 

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Vatican City, Jul 12, 2017 / 09:01 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Cardinal Gerhard Müller has strenuously denied media reports alleging Pope Francis asked the German prelate five pointed questions before informing him that his term as prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith was not being renewed.

The claims have been widely reported on social media.

Citing an unnamed German source, who in turn claims to have received the information from another person, the US-based news site One Peter Five and Italian Vaticanista Marco Tosatti have reported that Pope Francis, when meeting Cardinal Müller June 30, allegedly asked the then-prefect five questions about his views on a range of topics, including the introduction of a female diaconate and priesthood, the abolition of clerical continence, his stance regarding Amoris laetitia, and his stance on Francis sacking three members of staff in the congregation.

According to these reports, after hearing the German cardinal’s answers, Francis then informed him his mandate was ending and left the room, leaving behind a patiently waiting Cardinal Müller, who was expecting the Holy Father to be retrieving a token of gratitude, until an embarrassed Archbishop Georg Gänswein, prefect of the Papal Household, told the stumped cardinal that the meeting was in fact over.

Now Cardinal Müller has told Vaticanista Guido Horst that none of these claims are true. Writing in a guest editorial published at CNA Deutsch, Horst describes personally meeting the German clergyman the morning of July 11 in Rome.

The journalist, chief correspondent of the “Tagespost” newspaper, describes showing a surprised cardinal a printout of the reports: Müller himself had not seen the reporting on the Internet (his secretary, who provides the 69-year-old with online access, is on leave).

The cardinal was “flabbergasted to read this description of his meeting with the Pope”, Horst writes, quoting Cardinal Müller as stating: “This is incorrect”.

In fact, the whole meeting had run very differently Cardinal Müller asserted, and the claims made by the “anonymous German source” were quite false.

The comments echo a brief email sent by the Director of the Holy See Press Office, to both One Peter Five and Marco Tosatti yesterday. In it, Burke states that the claimed “reconstruction is totally false” and requests that the story be updated.

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