News Briefs

Pope Francis apologizes for losing patience with woman who grabbed him

January 1, 2020 CNA Daily News 7

Vatican City, Jan 1, 2020 / 06:00 am (CNA).- Pope Francis apologized Wednesday for losing his patience with a woman who grabbed his arm in St. Peter’s Square on New Year’s Eve.

“Many times we lose our patience; me too. I apologize for yesterday’s bad example,” Pope Francis in a departure from his prepared remarks for the Angelus prayer Jan. 1.

While greeting the crowd in front of the Vatican nativity scene Dec. 31, a woman yanked the pope’s arm. Visibly upset, Pope Francis slapped her hand and walked away frustrated.

After his impromptu apology, the pope said that contemplating the nativity scene helps one to see with the eyes of faith a vision of “the renewed world, freed from the dominion of evil and placed under the royal lordship of Christ, the Child who lies in the manger.”

Christ’s salvation involves the “patience of love,” he said. “Love makes us patient.”

“Dear brothers and sisters, let us descend from the pedestals of our pride – we all have the temptation of pride – and ask the blessing of the Holy Mother of God, the humble Mother of God,” Pope Francis said in his Angelus address.

Earlier on Jan. 1, the pope celebrated Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica for the Solemnity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Mother of God, a holy day of obligation in the Church.

Pope Francis said in his homily that the Church finds its unity in the Blessed Virgin Mary. He prayed, asking the Mother of God to bring unity among Catholics.

“The enemy of our human nature, the devil, seeks instead to divide, to highlight differences, ideologies, partisan thinking and parties,” he said.

“As her sons and daughters, invoke today the Mother of God, who gathers us together as a people of believers. O Mother, give birth to hope within us and bring us unity,” the pope prayed.

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Pope Francis: Honor the dignity of women for a better world in 2020

January 1, 2020 CNA Daily News 2

Vatican City, Jan 1, 2020 / 05:15 am (CNA).- Pope Francis began the new year with a call for the dignity of women to be honored — not exploited for profit and pornography — in 2020.

“How many times is the woman’s body sacrificed on the profane altars of advertising, profit, pornography, exploited as a surface to be used,” Pope Francis said in St. Peter’s Basilica Jan. 1.

“If we want a better world, which is a house of peace and not a war zone, we have to care for the dignity of every woman,” the pope said.

Pope Francis said that our level of humanity can be judged by how we treat a woman’s body, “the most noble flesh in the world” and “the culmination of creation.”

“Women are sources of life. Yet they are continually offended, beaten, raped, coaxed into prostitution and to kill the life that occurs in their womb. Any violence inflicted on women is a profanation of God, born of a woman,” the pope said.

In his homily for the Solemnity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Mother of God, Pope Francis said that women must be honored and respected.

He said that today’s world humiliates motherhood by only valuing economic productivity, when women embody the “purpose of creation itself — the generation and custody of life.”

“When women can transmit their gifts, the world finds itself more united and more peaceful. Therefore, an achievement for women is an achievement for all humanity,” Pope Francis said.

“So let’s start the year in the sign of Our Lady, a woman who has woven the humanity of God,” he urged.

Pope Francis said that the Church rediscovers her unity in Mary as “the enemy of human nature, the devil, instead tries to divide it, putting differences, ideologies, and partisan thoughts and camps in the foreground.”

The pope asked everyone in St. Peter’s Basilica to pray together acclaiming “Holy Mother of God” three times.

“We children today invoke the Mother of God, who unites us as a believing people. O Mother, generate hope in us, bring unity to us. Woman of salvation, we entrust you this year, keep it in your heart,” he said.

 

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Pope appoints new archbishop for booming African diocese

December 30, 2019 CNA Daily News 2

Bamenda, Cameroon, Dec 30, 2019 / 08:00 am (CNA).- Pope Francis has promoted an African bishop known for his emphasis on family, community, and traditional values. In an announcement released on Monday, the Holy See Press Office confirmed that the pope has named Bishop Andrew Nkea Fuanya as the new Archbishop of Bamenda in Cameroon.

Bishop Fuanya, 54, has served as the Bishop of Mamfe, also in Cameroon, since 2014. He came to international attention during the 2018 meeting of the Synod of Bishops on young people, faith, and vocational discernment.

In contrast to the situation in many European countries, Fuanya said during the synod, the Church in Cameroon and in many parts of Africa is growing – including among young peoples.

“My churches are all bursting, and I don’t have space to keep the young people,” Fuanya during a Vatican press conference in October last year. “And my shortest Mass would be about two and a half hours.”

A 2018 study by Pew Research found that church attendance and prayer frequency was highest in sub-Saharan Africa and lowest in Western Europe. Four out of five Christians in Cameroon said that they pray every day.

Bishop Fuanya was born in 1965 and ordained a priest for the Diocese of Buéa, Cameroon, in 1992, at the age of 26. In 2013, he was appointed as coadjutor bishop of the Diocese of Mamfe, becoming the diocesan bishop the following year.

Fuanya’s new see, Bamenda, was erected as a diocese in 1970 and elevated to a metropolitan archdiocese by St. John Paul II in 1982. In recent years, the archdiocese has shown clear signs of growth and evalgelization. While the population of the archdiocese remained stable at 1.4 million people between 2015 and 2018, the percentage of Catholics rose from 29% to 42% during the same period.

During the Synod on young people, Fuanya credited the Church’s growth in Cameroon to the alignment between Church teaching and the values of wider society, and the strength of the family as a cultural institution.

“People ask me, ‘Why are your churches full?’” Fuanya said in 2018. “Coming from Africa, the family is a very, very strong institution.”

“We come from a culture in which tradition normally is handed from one generation to the other.”

Fuanya has also spoken about the need for the Church to teach unambiguously on issues of morals and sexuality, remarking during the 2018 synod that he would not accept any usage of so-called LGBT terminology in Church documents because “99.9 percent” of the young people in his diocese would “stand at my door and say, ‘What’s this?’”

“Our traditional values still equate to the values of the Church, and so we hand over the tradition to our young people undiluted and uncontaminated,” he continued, noting that a strong sense of community in the Church is something “very important that Europe can learn from Africa.”

In Africa, the newly-named Archbishop said, “there’s still a lot of things we do as community. That is the difference..”

“What we are trying to do in these small Christian communities is to fight the in-creeping of individualism,” he said.

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Cardinal Dolan: Antisemitic attacks ‘sickening’ and must be ‘condemned completely’

December 29, 2019 CNA Daily News 2

New York City, N.Y., Dec 29, 2019 / 04:02 pm (CNA).- On Sunday, Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York condemned the recent spate of attacks against Jewish people in New York, following a stabbing that left five people injured during a Hanukkah celebration at a rabbi’s home on Saturday night.

“The news of last night’s attack at the home of a Jewish family in Monsey, New York, is the latest in a series of sickening acts of violence against our Jewish brothers and sisters,” Dolan said in a statement.  

“Such acts must be condemned completely and without reservation as totally contrary to everything that people of faith stand for,” he added.

More than 100 people were gathered at Rabbi Chaim Rottenberg’s home in the New York suburb of Monsey to celebrate the seventh night of Hanukkah when suspect Grafton Thomas, 38, reportedly broke into the home around 10 p.m. with a knife that looked “almost like a broomstick,” a witness told CNN.

Of the five people wounded in the attack, two were critically injured. One of the victims is reportedly the rabbi’s son. According to the New York Times, one of the critically injured victims suffered a skull fracture.

The suspect was arrested shortly after midnight Sunday after his car was tracked to Harlem. He was charged with five counts of attempted murder and one count of first-degree burglary. Authorities reported that Thomas has no criminal history and is believed to have acted alone.

“An attack on any individual or group because of his or her religious beliefs is an attack on us all. This hatred has no place in our city, state, or nation, or anywhere else on our planet,” Dolan said in his statement.

“At my Sunday Mass this morning, I prayed in a special way in solidarity with the victims of these heinous acts of violence, and urge all people to come together in a spirit of unity to reject such hatred and bigotry wherever it occurs,” he said.

The Monsey stabbing is the latest in a series of antisemitic attacks throughout New York. According to CNN, at least one antisemitic attack has been reported every day this week. The incidents are being investigated as hate crimes. It also comes two weeks after two gunmen opened fire at a kosher market in Jersey City shot and killed four people on December 13.

The Monsey stabbing and other attacks have been widely condemned by community leaders and advocates for the Jewish community.

U.S. President Donald Trump urged Americans to “come together to fight, confront, and eradicate the evil scourge of antisemitism” after the stabbing, he said in a tweet on Sunday. “Melania and I wish the victims a quick and full recovery,” he added.

On Sunday, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo condemned the attack as an act of “domestic terrorism.”

“They’re trying to inflict fear. They’re motivated by hate. They are doing mass attacks,” Cuomo said. “These are terrorists in our country perpetrating terrorism on other Americans, and that’s how we should treat it and that’s how I want the laws in this state to treat it.”

Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the Anti-Defamation League, said in a statement that he was “saddened, disturbed, and outraged” by the “senseless” attack on Saturday.

“We are calling for increased protection for the Jewish community now and for those in positions of power and leadership to guarantee that the full force of the law is brought down on those who perpetrate these horrific crimes.”

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