CNA Staff, Mar 11, 2021 / 02:00 pm (CNA).- Poland’s Catholic bishops strengthened their child protection system on Thursday with an agreement with the country’s male religious orders.
During the bishops’ plenary meeting in Warsaw on March 11, Archbishop Stanisław Gądecki and Fr. Janusz Sok, C.Ss.R., signed a declaration committing men’s religious orders to cooperation with the St. Joseph Foundation, which the bishops established in 2019 to support abuse survivors.
Gądecki is the president of the Polish bishops’ conference and Sok is chairman of the Conference of Major Superiors of Men’s Orders in Poland.
During the plenary assembly, the bishops were updated on the Church’s safeguarding efforts by Archbishop Wojciech Polak, their delegate for the protection of children and youth.
A March 11 statement on the bishops’ conference website said: “The development and strengthening of this system are to be served by the declaration adopted by the plenary assembly on cooperation between the Polish bishops’ conference and the Conference of Major Superiors of Men’s Orders in Poland as part of the activities of the St. Joseph Foundation.”
“It will enable the Church to act in solidarity for the benefit of the wronged and the protection of minors.”
In 2019, the Polish bishops’ conference issued a report which concluded that 382 clergy sexually abused a total of 624 victims between 1990 and 2018.
At Thursday’s meeting, bishops were presented with a new report, titled “Protection of minors and assistance to victims of sexual abuse in the Church in Poland,” reviewing the Church’s actions in 2020.
In its first year of operation, the St. Joseph Foundation allocated around $187,000 to projects, including financing individual therapies for 13 people from nine dioceses. It also supported the activities of the Child Protection Center, which worked on a preventive program for people with disabilities, a prevention system in Catholic schools, and an e-learning program for youth leaders.
The Foundation and the Office of the Delegate of the Polish Bishops’ Conference oversaw the creation of two websites: zgloskrzywde.pl, for abuse survivors and people with knowledge of harm or neglect in the Church, and wspolnotazezranionymi.pl, supporting pastoral activities.
At the day-long meeting, the bishops also discussed catechesis in schools, family life, the role of lay people, and a document on the formation of priests in Poland.
The bishops adopted the amendments introduced in the general decree “The Way of Formation of Priests in Poland” (Ratio institutionis sacerdotalis pro Polonia), which sets out new rules for priestly formation in Poland. The decree will come into force subject to Vatican approval.
They also reflected on the Year “Amoris Laetitia Family,” which begins on March 19 and marks the fifth anniversary of the publication of Pope Francis’ 2016 exhortation on the family.
At the beginning of their meeting, the bishops wrote to Pope Francis in honor of the eighth anniversary of his election on March 13, thanking him “for the many and precious fruits of his pontificate, restoring hope to the Church and to the world.”
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Pilgrims pray in front of St. Peter’s Basilica / Hannah Brockhaus/CNA
Rome, Italy, May 26, 2022 / 08:37 am (CNA).
When St. Philip Neri came to Rome from Florence in 1533, he encountered a city in upheaval. The Sack of Rome six years prior had left famine and plague in its wake. The Protestant Reformation was in full swing and the Church was rife with corruption.
The young Philip, who would spend around 16 years in Rome as a layman before becoming a priest, soon dedicated himself to caring for the city’s sick and poor.
The saint, whose feast day falls on May 26, also realized that Rome’s people were suffering from a spiritual sickness and tiredness as well, and so he set out to reinvigorate Catholics with the joy of the faith through song and dance — and jokes.
Part of St. Philip’s outreach was the revival of the Seven Churches visit. He may not be the originator of the idea of the pilgrimage to some of Rome’s most important churches, but he is credited with renewing its popularity.
After it fell out of use once again, St. Philip’s congregation of secular priests, the Oratory, revived it in the 1960s, including holding the walk one night each year, as close as possible to the way the saint would have done it.
After a two-year pause, on the evening of May 13 into the morning of May 14, around 800 people walked 15 and a half miles in the footsteps of the saint and his followers.
Police officers in cruisers drove ahead of the urban pilgrimage to block traffic as a sea of Catholics from around Italy crossed busy intersections and passed Friday night diners while praying the rosary in unison and singing the Taizé chant “Laudate Dominum,” whose words say in Latin, “Praise the Lord, all people, Alleluia.”
The rosary was prayed four times during the pilgrimage, which took almost 10 hours to complete, including stops for a sack dinner at midnight and short lessons on the virtues led by priests of the Oratory.
The seven basilicas were chosen by the saint for their importance to Christianity, and the walk on May 13-14 followed the path laid out in a 16th-century document almost certainly seen and used by St. Philip — and likely even written by him.
This document, recreated and printed into a booklet for use on the annual pilgrimage today, gives St. Philip’s guidance for those making the Seven Churches visit.
“Before setting out to make this holy Pilgrimage, each of the Brethren must lift up his mind to God, offering him the sincerity of his heart, with the purpose of desiring the sole glory of his divine Majesty in all actions, and especially in this one,” it says.
Those participating can also earn an indulgence under the usual conditions, and are asked to pray for specific intentions. These include praying for the penance of sins, the amendment of lukewarmness and negligence in the service of God, in thanksgiving for the forgiveness of sins, for the pope and the Church, for sinners still in the darkness of an evil life, for the conversion of heretics, schismatics, and infidels, and for the holy souls in purgatory.
The pilgrimage began at Chiesa Nuova, the church built by St. Philip for the Oratory, and proceeded to St. Peter’s Basilica, reaching the site of St. Peter’s martyrdom at sunset.
Each of the seven churches is associated with a moment of Christ’s Passion and Crucifixion. At each stop, an Oratory priest preached on a virtue and its opposing vice, before everyone joined in a prayer for an increase in that virtue and for the gifts of the Holy Spirit.
The virtues and vices were abstinence against gluttony, patience against ire, chastity against lust, generosity against avarice, fervor of spirit against acedia, charity against envy, and humility against pride.
After the Basilica of St. Paul, the pilgrimage followed an ancient street still called Seven Churches Way to arrive at the catacombs and the Basilica of St. Sebastian, a third-century Christian martyr.
As a layman in Rome, St. Philip Neri used to visit the catacombs of St. Sebastian to pray. One night in the catacombs, about 10 years after moving to Rome, as he prayed, a mystical ball of fire entered his mouth and went down into his chest, exploding his ribs and doubling the size of his heart with love of God.
St. Philip was changed, both physically and spiritually, by this event, which he only revealed shortly before his death.
Pilgrims next arrived at the Domine Quo Vadis Church after a silent, moonlit walk through the ancient Appian Way Park, flanked by the silhouettes of Italian cypress trees.
The small church of medieval origin marks the spot where, according to tradition, Jesus appeared to St. Peter as he was fleeing Rome to avoid martyrdom.
Peter asked Jesus, “Domine quo vadis?” (“Lord, where are you going?”), to which Christ said, “Venio Romam iterum crucifigi,” (“I am coming to Rome to be crucified again.”) This rebuke caused Peter to turn around and face his own martyrdom.
The Basilica of St. Lawrence Outside the Walls was the penultimate stop. The church, which has the tomb of St. Lawrence, is located next to Rome’s Verano Monumental Cemetery, and was included among the Seven Churches by St. Philip Neri, Father Botta said, as a reminder of mortality.
Almost 2 weeks ago I went on St. Philip Neri’s 7 Churches Walk in Rome.
800 people walked over 15 miles during the 10-hour night pilgrimage.
During the last stretch, at 5:15am, we passed through Termini train station, and Francesco caught this video of the moment. pic.twitter.com/C2SPHn5yoR
— Hannah Brockhaus (@HannahBrockhaus) May 26, 2022
The final stretch of the walk passed through Rome’s main train station, Termini, where pilgrims sang the Marian antiphon “Salve Regina.”
The pilgrimage finished shortly before 6:00 a.m. at the Basilica of St. Mary Major, the traditional end of the walk, where the “Salve Regina” hymn was sung again in honor of the Virgin Mary.
Szombathely, Hungary, May 1, 2018 / 12:46 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Fr. János Brenner, a Cistercian Hungarian priest who was martyred in the 1950s, was beatified May 1. The beatification took place in Szombathely, Hungary, the same location where the Communist government had tried to prevent the faithful from attending Brenner’s funeral 60 years ago.
Brenner was born on Dec. 27, 1931 in Szombathely, Hungary. He attended Catholic schools run by the Cistercian order for several years until the nationalization of schools by the communist government which came to power after World War II as part of the Eastern Bloc.
He was accepted as a novice to the Cistercian order in Zirc in 1950, and took the name Br. Anastasius (Anasztáz).
However, only a few months after Brenner began formation, the communist government began suppressing religious houses. To protect the men in formation, the novice master moved the young brothers from the abbey to private apartments, where they hoped to continue formation in secret.
It was around this time that Brenner, along with a few other novices, moved to the local seminary to begin studying to become a priest, while continuing with his Cistercian formation through correspondence.
Despite the dangers and religious oppression going on around him, journal entries from Brenner at the time display a deep trust in God and a strong desire to do his will.
“There is no greater joy than when man, who is nothing, can be even more annihilated in Christ and immerse himself into the infinite world of His soul, filled with wonderful riches which are forever given over to us,” he wrote in 1950.
“Even if the road is rough, I look at your pain-ridden face and follow you. I ask you only one thing: May I always fulfill most precisely what you give to me as my vocation.”
Brenner took vows with the Cistercian order and then was ordained a priest in 1955.
Throughout his ministry, he was known for his willingness and readiness to serve and to sacrifice, and took as his priestly motto the verse Romans 8:28: “We know that all things work for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose.”
Brenner was especially talented at working with youth, which made him a greater target of the communist government.
Even when he was made aware of personal threats against his life, and his bishop offered to transfer him elsewhere for his own safety, Brenner responded: “I’m not afraid, I’m happy to stay.”
On the night of Dec. 14, 1957, Brenner was falsely called to give last rites to a sick person in a neighboring town, amid the reprisals for the Hungarian Revolution of 1956.
He left his home, carrying his anointing oils and the Eucharist, but was ambushed in the woods outside Rabakethely and stabbed 32 times. He was found dead the next day, still clutching the Eucharist in his hands, which has earned him the title of the “Hungarian Tarcisius” – a reference to the young third century martyr who was also killed while carrying and protecting the Eucharist.
While the communists had hoped that Brenner’s death would intimidate the faithful in the area, they could not stop devotion to Brenner’s memory. The Chapel of the Good Pastor was built in 1989 on the spot where he died, and is a popular place of pilgrimage for people throughout the country. The dirty and bloodied surplice Brenner wore when he was killed has been preserved as a relic.
Brenner’s martyrdom was acknowledged by Pope Francis in November 2017.
Birmingham, England, Feb 10, 2020 / 02:30 pm (CNA).- A first-class relic of St. John Henry Newman was stolen from the Birmingham Oratory sometime in late January, the Oratory announced in its weekly newsletter.
“Sadly, the only piece of bone thought to have been St John Henry’s was stolen from its casket in the Newman Shrine. If anyone has seen any suspicious activity, please inform one of the Fathers or Brothers,” read a notice in the Oratory’s Feb. 2 newsletter.
The though reported at the beginning of the month, the most recent edition of the Oratory’s newsletter does not include any further mention of the theft, and the West Midlands Police told CNA that they were “unable to find a report of theft from Birmingham Oratory.”
The Birmingham Oratory did not respond to CNA’s request for comment.
News of the theft was first reported on Saturday, Feb. 8, in The Catholic Herald.
The bone fragment is one of very few existing first-class relics of St. John Henry Newman, who was canonized last October.
A first-class relic is part of the physical body of a saint. A second-class relic is an item that was owned or used by a saint, such as an article of clothing or a rosary bead, and third-class relics are things that have been put into contact with first- and second-class relics. The bone fragment belonging to St. John Henry Newman was discovered in 2008, when his gravesite was excavated as part of the canonization process.
Due to accelerated decomposition in the Birmingham graveyard where Newman was buried, and the nearly 120 years between his death and disinterment, very few relics were recovered from the site.
“The oratory cemetery is extremely damp, on the side of the Lickey hills and with a stream running through it,” said Peter Jennings of the Archdiocese of Birmingham in 2008, when Newman’s cause was under examination. “The undertakers hadn’t been digging for long when they warned us that we’d be lucky to find any recognizable remains at all.”
Newman was a 19th century theologian, poet, Catholic priest and cardinal. Born in 1801, before his conversion he was a well-known and much-respected Oxford academic, Anglican preacher, and public intellectual.
His conversion to the Catholic faith in 1845 was controversial in England, and resulted in the loss of many friends, including his own sister, who never spoke to him again.
He became a priest in 1847 and founded the Oratory of St. Philip Neri in England. He was particularly dedicated to education, founding two schools for boys and the Catholic University of Ireland. His “Idea is a University” became a foundational text on Catholic higher education. He was a prolific author and letter writer. Newman died in Birmingham in 1890 at the age of 89.
At the time of his canonization last year, St. John Henry Newman became Britain’s first new saint since the canonization of St. John Ogilvie in 1976.
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