News Briefs

Lourdes, France, May 16, 2019 / 12:00 pm (CNA).- Over 12,000 soldiers from over 40 countries are set to arrive in Lourdes, France on Friday as part of the 61st Annual International Military Pilgrimage. The pilgrimage goes throughout the weekend before concluding on Sunday.

The International Military Pilgrimage, known as the PMI [Pèlerinage Militaire International] first began in 1958, the 100th anniversary of the Marian apparition at Lourdes. The theme of this year’s pilgrimage is Cherche la Paix et poursuis-la, “seek peace and pursue it.”

The pilgrimage programme includes Masses in a variety of languages, sporting programs for military members, and a candlelit Marian procession. Pilgrims will also visit the baths near the Lourdes Grotto.

Throughout the weekend, military bands parade through the streets of Lourdes, and the soldiers from different nations are encouraged to interact and get to know one another.

A total of 220 pilgrims, including 51 battle-wounded soldiers and veterans, and 72 “warrior pilgrims,” are part of the U.S. delegation, sponsored by the Knights of Columbus and the Archdiocese for the Military Services. This is the sixth year the Knights of Columbus has conducted the “Warriors to Lourdes” program.

Fr. Jeff Laible, a chaplain of the U.S. Air Force, has joined the Knights of Columbus pilgrimage for five of those years. This year, he is serving as the group’s spiritual director.

“The pilgrimage really is an opportunity for our wounded warriors to receive healing, and healing really comes in a lot of ways,” Laible said.

The chaplain said the pilgrimage gives him the chance to share in the “experience the peace and the grace of healing that comes here at Lourdes” alongside the servicemen and women.

“It’s a special place for me. Like the warriors who come here, I myself have served on deployment. So I’ve experienced the grace and peace of healing–not only myself personally, but working with our wounded warriors over the course of the past four years, and certainly this year as well.”

Bishop Joseph L. Coffey, auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese for the Military Services, is also part of this year’s Warriors to Lourdes pilgrimage.

Coffey told CNA that while has been to Lourdes twice before, they were quick trips and not an extended pilgrimage. He said he is looking forward to “really, truly living the pilgrim experience here.”

Part of the pilgrim experience includes healing in different ways.

While Lourdes is famous for its numerous miraculous physical cures, Coffey explained to CNA that even more important is the spiritual health of the pilgrims, especially military pilgrims, many of whom have experienced mental or moral wounds during their time in service.

“Of course, some of [the pilgrims] have been injured, wounded, and this is a great place to seek healing–not only physical healing, which is what always people probably think of first, but what’s so much more important is the spiritual healing,” said Coffey.

“Because we all get old and sick and die some day, whereas our souls will live forever. So we want to be making sure that we have any good spiritual healing that we might need.”

The still newly-consecrated Coffey – he was made a bishop in March –  describes himself as a “baby bishop.” Shortly after Coffey’s appointment was announced, Archbishop Timothy Broglio of the Archdiocese of the Military Services, asked him to go to Lourdes in his place. Coffey said he was overjoyed to start his episcopal ministry with such a trip.

“I was absolutely thrilled and honored that he would ask me to do that.”

As a Navy chaplain on active duty for the past 18 and a half years, Coffey told CNA that he had hoped to attend this pilgrimage in past years, but had been unable to do so as he had been stationed overseas. He thinks that the PMI is an opportunity to seek the graces necessary to serve the military flock.

“This is really a wonderful way for me to begin this new period of my life, this new way of serving the Lord as a bishop,” sadi Coffey. “I couldn’t ask for better timing, to be able to come here just as I’m getting started as a bishop, to give me strength and courage to be a good bishop.”

[…]

Madrid, Spain, May 16, 2019 / 09:58 am (CNA).- On May 18 in Madrid, Guadalupe Ortiz de Landazuri, a laywoman, will become the first numerary of Opus Dei to be beatified. A chemist, university teacher, and close associate of St. Josemaría Escrivá, she was known for her strong character, big heart, and cheerfulness.

According to Beatriz Gaytan, a historian who knew Ortiz: “Whenever I think of her, despite the time that has elapsed, what I hear is her laugh. Guadalupe had a permanent smile. She was welcoming, affable, straightforward.”

Opus Dei was made a personal prelature by St. John Paul II in 1982. It was founded by St. Josemaría Escrivá in 1928 and teaches that everyone is called to personal holiness in and through their ordinary lives.

There are various ways of being associated with the prelature. A numerary is someone who makes him or herself fully available to the work of the prelature.

Ortiz was born in Madrid Dec. 12, 1916, whence she was named “Guadalupe.”

She had a reputation for being a bold and courageous child. At age 10, because of her father’s military service, her family moved to Tetouan, North Africa. They returned to Spain six years later and Ortiz completed her high school studies, enrolling in university to study chemistry. She was one of five women in a class of 70.

Known to be a serious, though friendly, student, Ortiz put her studies on hold during the Spanish Civil War, which broke out in 1936. During the war, her father, a colonel in the army, was arrested for treason and condemned to death by shooting by a people’s trial.

Though he was given the opportunity of a pardon, Manuel Ortiz de Landazuri renounced it for the sake of his men, who had all been shot dead. Ortiz was just 20 years old when she, a brother, and her mother said their final goodbyes to Manuel in the hours before his death. She forgave those who condemned and killed her father.

For a period during the war, Ortiz and her mother and brothers moved to another part of Spain. When the civil war ended in 1939, they returned to Madrid, where Ortiz taught in two schools.

It was several years later that Ortiz had a powerful experience of God’s grace while at Mass. When she met a family friend shortly after, she said she wanted to meet a priest. That friend put her in contact with Fr. Josemaría Escrivá, who had founded Opus Dei about 15 years before.

Ortiz met Escrivá Jan. 25, 1944. She later said, “I had the very clear idea that God was speaking to me through that priest.” From that point she felt a calling to serve Christ through her life and work, and several months later, at the age of 27, she became a numerary of Opus Dei.

During the following years, still the beginning of Opus Dei, she managed the administration of Opus Dei student residences in Madrid, continuing to study chemistry in her spare time.

She made friends easily, especially with the university students, who appreciated her humor, patience, and affection.

In 1950, Escrivá asked her to bring Opus Dei to Mexico. While there, she enrolled in a doctoral program in chemical sciences. At the university residences in Mexico, Ortiz and her associates emphasized concern for the poor and service to the Church and society.

Among the initiatives they spearheaded was a mobile medical clinic which went home-to-home in the poorest neighborhoods providing free care and medicine. She also promoted education among poor, indigenous Mexicans.

Six years later she was asked to assist Escrivá in Rome in the central government of Opus Dei, but not long after arriving she began to suffer conditions of a heart condition which meant she had to return to Spain. Despite the symptoms of the condition, including tiredness from walking and climbing stairs, she never complained.

In Madrid she continued her academic work, eventually completing and defending her doctorate in July 1965, at the age of 48.

She was the recipient of the Juan de la Cierva prize for her research work and was a chemistry teacher at an institute and at the Women’s School for Industrial Studies, of which she became deputy head, for 10 years. She also set up the Center of Studies and Research of Domestic Sciences.

Ortiz was known to make frequent visits to the Blessed Sacrament to speak with Christ; she was also devoted to friends and students and those with whom she lived.

In 1975, doctors decided to operate on her heart. The operation, at the university clinic in Navarra, was successful, but several days afterward she suffered sudden respiratory failure.

In describing the moments before her death, Ortiz’s brother said, “this was Guadalupe’s great ‘secret:’ to always accept as good whatever happened to her. Around her, in those last hours of mortal anguish, all were lost in admiration: that same unforgettable smile.”

She died on July 16, 1975, the feast of Our Lady Mount Carmel, in Pamplona.

Ortiz will be beatified by Cardinal Angelo Becciu, prefect of the Congregation for Saints, in Madrid May 18. For those who cannot attend in person, Opus Dei has created a mobile app called “Beatification Guadalupe Ortiz de Landazuri,” which allows people to learn about her life and beatification in an interactive way.

The Vatican confirmed the miraculous healing, through Ortiz’s intercession, of an elderly Spanish man with a small cancerous tumor next to his eye. This miracle paved the way for her beatification.

A widower, Antonio Jesus Sedano Madrid, 76, contracted basal cell carcinoma in 2002. The cancer diagnosis gave Sedano a lot of anxiety. Before the surgery could take place, he found a prayer card for private devotion to Servant of God Guadalupe Ortiz de Landazuri.

He began to feel a personal and spiritual closeness to her and prayed for her intercession for his healing. His friends and three children began to do the same.

Sedano was particularly nervous before the operation to remove the tumor, and one night made a fervent request to Ortiz to intercede for his total cure, without the need for surgery. The following morning, when he awoke, the tumor was gone, without leaving a mark.

Doctors examined Sedano and could find no natural cause to explain the tumor’s total and sudden healing. He remained cancer free for the rest of his life, living 14 more years until his death in 2014, at the age of 88, from heart disease.

[…]

Munich, Germany, May 15, 2019 / 02:15 pm (CNA).- At least one bishop has offered his support for a week-long “Church strike” organized by German Catholic women, during which participants organize their own prayer services rather than attending Mass.

Calling itself “Mary 2.0” the initiative issued an open letter to Pope Francis, which called for the ordination of women, and claimed “men of the Church only tolerate one woman in their midst: Mary.”

“We want to take Mary off her pedestal and into our midst, as a sister facing our direction,” the letter said.

The website features paintings of Mary and other women with their mouths taped over.

The campaign has met with considerable criticism from German Catholics, some of when even launched of a “Maria 1.0” website, which says that the Mother of God “does not require any updates and should not be instrumentalized.”

But several Church representatives have gone public in support of “Mary 2.0.”

The official news portal of the Catholic Church in Germany provided broad coverage of the call for a strike, taking place May 11-18. It also reported that Bishop Franz-Josef Bode of Osnabrück supports the campaign.

Bode, who leads the Commission on Women in the German bishops’ conference, told press agency EPD that while he regrets the strikes will not attend Mass, he believes it important to acknowledge the impatience of “many women in the Catholic Church” and their feelings of “deep hurt” for not being adequately appreciated for their contribution.

Bode said that while he does not believe women will be ordained priests in the near future, the Church could soon ordain them as deacons.

Participants in the “Church strike” are refusing to step into a church from the week of May 11 to 18 and will not attend Mass. Instead, services such as a “Liturgy of the Word” are held throughout the week. According to the campaign’s Facebook page, these services have garnered between 18 and 155 registered attendees.

Referencing the abuse crisis as a reason for the urgent need for change, the group’s letter to Pope Francis makes a range of demands, from the abolition of “mandatory celibacy” to an “updating” of the Church’s teaching on sexual morality and the ordination of women to “all ministries” – including the orders of deacon, priest and bishop.

In an interview published on the official website of the Archdiocese of Paderborn, vicar general Fr. Alfons Hardt praised the organizers of the campaign as women who are “concerned about the sustainability of their church.”

Hardt said “this is a motivation that I value highly,” even though the campaign might also create division.

Whether women can be ordained to the priesthood is an open question, Hardt asserted, saying, “on the one hand we have a definitive decision by Pope John Paul II on the question of the ordination of women and on the other hand we still do not have a final answer. At least in Germany this question is discussed very openly, especially among theologians. It is clear that there is a need for a global ecclesial consensus for this which currently is not the case.”

Pope St. John Paul II, Pope Benedict XVI, and Pope Francis have all taught that the sacrament of ordination is reserved to men by divine institution, and that, while the role of female “deacons” in the early Church can be studied, such study does not imply that women can be ordained sacramentally.

Despite its demands and – initially – very small numbers, “Mary 2.0” has not only received support from several German prelates but also sustained coverage in Germany, where many Catholics are turning their back on a church in crisis in the wake of the abuse scandals and other controversies, with a recent prognosis predicting the number of Catholics in the country will halve by 2060, and Church attendance in constant decline, hovering at the 10 percent mark on average according to most recent official figure.

In March, Cardinal Reinhard Marx of Munich and Freising announced that the church in Germany would embark on a “binding synodal process” to tackle what he described as the three key issues arising from the clerical abuse crisis: priestly celibacy, the Church’s teaching on sexual morality, and a reduction of clerical power.

More recently, another German bishop, Franz-Josef Overbeck of Essen, voiced similar expectations for the “Pan-Amazonian Synod” in October.

Overbeck, who also leads the influential Catholic Latin America relief organization Adveniat, predicted that “nothing will be as it was before” after that synod.

Speaking to journalists on May 2, he said that the role of women in the Church would be reconsidered at the meeting, and so would sexual morality, the role of the priesthood and the overall hierarchical structure of the Church. The synod will take place from October 6 to 27.
 

This story was originally published by CNA Deutsch, CNA’s German-language news partner. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.

[…]