Vatican City, Feb 18, 2017 / 11:52 am (CNA/EWTN News).- The Christian mission today means facing new challenges with simplicity, holiness, and openness to God, Pope Francis told an audience with the Marian Fathers on Saturday.
“Many still await … […]
Richmond, Va., Feb 18, 2017 / 03:02 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Virginia could become the third state to officially recognize the harmful effects of pornography.
By a vote of 82-8, the Virginia House of Delegates on Feb. 2 passed a resolution recognizing tha… […]
Stockton, Calif., Feb 17, 2017 / 05:12 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Pope Francis on Friday sent a message of encouragement to the hundreds of religious and community leaders participating in a meeting of popular movements being held this week in California.
“It is the Church, the Christian community, people of compassion and solidarity, social organizations. It is us, it is you, to whom the Lord Jesus daily entrusts those who are afflicted in body and spirit, so that we can continue pouring out all of his immeasurable mercy and salvation upon them,” Pope Francis said in his Feb. 17 message to a regional meeting of popular movements being held in California.
“Here are the roots of the authentic humanity that resists the dehumanization that wears the livery of indifference, hypocrisy, or intolerance.”
The Feb. 16-18 conference being held in Modesto, about 30 miles southeast of Stockton, was organized with the support of the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development, the Catholic Campaign for Human Development, and the PICO National Network.
The PICO network was a recipient of part of a $650,000 grant from George Soros’ Open Society Foundations. Documents from the foundations posted to DCLeaks.com claimed the grant was part of a strategy to use Pope Francis’ U.S. visit to shift the priorities of the Catholic Church in the United States “to be a voice on behalf of the poor and communities of color.”
“PICO and FPL have been able to use their engagement in the opportunity of the Pope’s visit to seed their position in the long-term project of shifting the priorities of the U.S. Catholic Church to focus on issues of injustice and oppression,” the memo said.
The conference aims to promote the structural changes for greater justice in racial, social, and economic areas.
“It makes me very happy to see you working together towards social justice,” Pope Francis said in his message to the meeting. “How I wish that such constructive energy would spread to all dioceses, because it builds bridges between peoples and individuals. These are bridges that can overcome the walls of exclusion, indifference, racism, and intolerance.”
The Pope confronted the “invisible tyranny of money” as a disability and restriction to human dignity and the common good. He also discouraged corrupt acts which leads to the benefit of a few and to the ruin of many families.
“The economic system that has the god of money at its center, and that sometimes acts with the brutality of the robbers in the [Samaritan] parable, inflicts injuries that to a criminal degree have remained neglected. Globalized society frequently looks the other way with the pretense of innocence. Under the guise of what is politically correct or ideologically fashionable, one looks at those who suffer without touching them.”
Pope Francis said we must instead respond with change to a system that better reflects loving our neighbor as ourselves. Emphasizing the need for immediate action, he said it is our responsibility to pay attention to present realities, which if unchecked may develop a dehumanizing system that is harder to reverse.
“These are signs of the times that we need to recognize in order to act. We have lost valuable time: time when we did not pay enough attention to these processes, time when we did not resolve these destructive realities. The direction taken beyond this historic turning-point … will depend on people’s involvement and participation and, largely, on yourselves, the popular movements.”
The call for action comes at a time of immigration reform and a refugee crisis.
Pope Francis reiterated the question of the lawyer to Christ in the Gospel of Luke: “Who is my neighbor? … My relatives? My compatriots? My co-religionists?” He recognized that the lawyer’s hope may have been for Christ to label neighbors and non-neighbors.
“Do not classify others in order to see who is a neighbor and who is not,” the Pope exhorted. “You can become neighbor to whomever you meet in need, and you will do so if you have compassion in your heart. That is to say, if you have that capacity to suffer with someone else. You must become a Samaritan.”
Recalling that those at the conference have a commitment “to fight for social justice, to defend our Sister Mother Earth and to stand alongside migrants,” Pope Francis affirmed this choice and shared reflections on “the ecological crisis” and that “no people is criminal and no religion is terrorist.”
“The ecological crisis is real,” he emphasized first. “Science is not the only form of knowledge, it is true. It is also true that science is not necessarily ‘neutral’ — many times it conceals ideological views or economic interests. However, we also know what happens when we deny science and disregard the voice of Nature. I make my own everything that concerns us as Catholics. Let us not fall into denial. Time is running out. Let us act. I ask you again – all of you, people of all backgrounds including native people, pastors, political leaders – to defend Creation.”
“No people is criminal and no religion is terrorist,” Pope Francis then said. “Christian terrorism does not exist, Jewish terrorism does not exist, and Muslim terrorism does not exist. They do not exist. No people is criminal or drug-trafficking or violent.”
He recognized, however, that “there are fundamentalist and violent individuals in all peoples and religions – and with intolerant generalizations they become stronger because they feed on hate and xenophobia.”
“The wounds are there, they are a reality. The unemployment is real, the violence is real, the corruption is real, the identity crisis is real, the gutting of democracies is real,” he continued, identifying the world’s suffering as a “gangrene” whose stench has become unbearable, leading to more hate, quarrels, and even a “justified indignation.”
In the face of this crisis, he said Christians have an opportunity to impact the world: “We also find an opportunity: that the light of the love of neighbor may illuminate the Earth with its stunning brightness like a lightning bolt in the dark.”
He ended his message in reference to the prayer of Saint Francis of Assisi: “let us give everything of ourselves: where there is hatred, let us sow love; where there is injury, let us sow pardon; where there is discord, let us sow unity; where there is error, let us sow truth.”
In the course of his message, he thanked Bishop Stephen Blaire of Stockton, Bishop Armando Ochoa of Fresno, Bishop Jaime Soto of Sacramento, Bishop David Talley of Alexandria, and Cardinal Peter Turkson, prefect of the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development.
“I would also like to highlight the work done by the PICO National Network and the organizations promoting this meeting,” Pope Francis also said. “I learned that PICO stands for ‘People Improving Communities through Organizing’. What a great synthesis of the mission of popular movements: to work locally, side by side with your neighbors, organizing among yourselves, to make your communities thrive.”
Vatican City, Feb 17, 2017 / 04:02 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Nur Essa, a Muslim Syrian woman whose family was brought to Rome from Lesbos by Pope Francis last April, said that the openness he has shown to those of different faiths has deeply impressed her.
“For me, I was surprised,” she told CNA. “(He is) very open to all of the cultures, all of the religions, and he sets an example for all the religious people in the world, because he uses religion to serve the human being.”
Essa, 31, has met the Pope on several occasions, most recently during the Pope’s visit Feb. 17th to Roma Tre University, a public research university in Rome where she currently studies.
She was one of four students of the university to ask the Pope a question, which he answered during his visit.
Essa’s question was about the integration of immigrants in Italy: what they must do to integrate into their host country, but also what the rights of the immigrant are.
Before this, Essa and her husband and their little boy met Pope Francis when he brought them to Rome April 16th, 2016, along with two other Syrian refugee families who had been staying in a camp on the Island of Lesbos. She said that the Pope greeted them and blessed her son.
Essa also had an opportunity to speak with him at length when they were invited to be guests at a lunch Aug. 11th at the Vatican, which Essa said was an “honor.”
“He’s very, very modest, a very simple man, a very real human being,” she said.
Essa has both an undergraduate degree and a master’s in microbiology, and is studying biology at Roma Tre.
She said that she and her husband are both from the city of Damascus in Syria and chose to flee the country because her husband had been asked to join the military service there.
They went from Damascus to Turkey, and then from Turkey to Greece, where they stayed in a refugee camp for one month before they were fortunate enough to be chosen as one of the families the Pope brought back to Rome.
Pope Francis visited Roma Tre University at the request of the Dean of the university, who wanted to invite a public figure for the university’s 25th anniversary.
According to Fr. John D’Orazio, who is a Catholic chaplain assigned to the university by the Diocese of Rome, the last pope to make a formal visit was St. John Paul II for the university’s 10th anniversary in 2002.
The chaplaincy just finished constructing its first Catholic chapel for students nearby to the university, something they’ve been wanting to do for a long time, Fr. D’Orazio said.
He said that although students don’t live on campus, they still try “to create opportunities for students to meet together” and to reflect on their Catholic faith and “what it means for them in their own studies and in being citizens in today’s world and in society.”
It’s a very diverse campus, he said, with students of no faith or of different religions, including Muslim students. “I think it’s very interesting and beautiful to be a chaplain inside of a state university,” he said, “because it means creating dialogue, creating collaboration.”
“It’s almost like mission work, because you’re working in a place where there are all kinds of different people, different backgrounds, different points of view. So it’s a good place to create bridges,” he said.
“Pope Francis talks a lot about creating bridges and not walls. And I think that also the chaplaincy in a state university is all about creating bridges of dialogue and collaboration.”
Washington D.C., Feb 17, 2017 / 02:38 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- The theologian, philosopher and Catholic commentator Michael Novak died Friday, drawing remembrances for his insights and influence on religion in public life.
“We are immensely grateful that he could end his academic life as he began it, as a member of our community,” Catholic University of America president John Garvey said, calling Novak a man of “great intellectual honesty.”
“Unlike some scholars, Michael Novak made it a point to reflect on new and different topics, always with a fresh and dynamic perspective,” Garvey said.
Novak died Feb. 17 at the age of 83.
He was a student at Catholic University of America in 1958 and 1959. In 2016 he was named a visiting fellow at the university’s The Arthur and Carlyse Ciocca Center for Principled Entrepreneurship. He taught special topics in management and lectured on human ecology.
The center’s director, Andreas Widmer, stressed Novak’s pioneering role in considering the intersection of faith and economics. He said he and his colleagues were touched by Novak’s “kindness and humility,” his generosity with his time, and his encouragement for others.
“You would never have known from working with him that this was a man who had counseled popes and changed the course of history,” Widmer said.
St. John Paul II, President Ronald Reagan, and U.K. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher considered Novak a friend, Catholic University of America said.
Novak was the author of numerous books, most prominently the 1982 work The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism. He contended that democratic capitalism is “neither the Kingdom of God nor without sin,” but better than all other known systems of political economy.
“Such hope as we have for alleviating poverty and for removing oppressive tyranny — perhaps our last, best hope — lies in this much despised system,” he said.
The book was published around the world and had a particular impact among anti-communist dissidents in Eastern Europe. The book was illegally distributed in Poland by the Solidarity movement, the Washington Post reports.
His other books include Tell Me Why: A Father Answers His Daughter’s Questions About God, a 1998 work he co-authored with his daughter Jana.
Novak wrote on human rights, economic systems, the history of labor unions, U.S. ethnic history, and the role of churches in the modern world.
He was born to a Slovak-American family in Johnstown, Pa. on Sept. 9, 1933. His studies for the priesthood took him to the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome and he was ordained for the Congregation of Holy Cross in 1960. Within months of his ordination, he left the priesthood and was later laicized.
He received a bachelor’s degree in philosophy from Stonehill College, a Bachelor of Theology from the Pontifical Gregorian University, and a master’s degree in history and the philosophy of religion from Harvard.
Novak worked as a journalist in the early 1960s, writing for the National Catholic Reporter and Commonweal before working for Time Magazine in Rome during the Second Vatican Council. He would go on to serve as an editor at Commonweal and Christian Century magazines, religion editor for National Review, a contributing editor for First Things magazine and editor-in-chief of Crisis Magazine.
According to Novak’s website, his political work included the 1968 campaigns of Eugene McCarthy and Robert F. Kennedy and speechwriting for Democratic vice presidential nominee Sargent Shriver during Sen. George McGovern’s unsuccessful 1972 presidential campaign. He became an opponent of the Vietnam War after initially supporting intervention.
He would turn away from left-wing politics and the Democratic Party to join the Republican-trending neoconservative school of thought. Under President Ronald Reagan, he was named as U.S. Ambassador to the Human Rights Commission of the United Nations and served on the Board of International Broadcasting that oversaw Radio Free Europe and Radio Free Liberty.
He served in multiple academic positions, teaching at Harvard, Stanford, Notre Dame, and Ave Maria University. In the early 1970s, he helped design a new humanities program for the Rockefeller Foundation of New York.
He joined the American Enterprise Institute think tank in 1978, where he worked as a scholar until his retirement in 2010.
Among Novak’s many achievements were his work to launch many academic institutes and seminars, including the Tertio Millennio Seminar that aimed to bring together North American and Eastern European students to discuss Catholic social teaching.
George Weigel, one of Novak’s collaborators, wrote in the National Review that “both Church and nation have lost one of their most imaginative and accomplished sons.”
Weigel remembered Novak “first and foremost” as a teacher, who “offered a model of patient counseling and courteous listening that our students will long remember.”
Novak’s honors include the Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion.
Ahead of the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, Novak went to the Vatican to argue that the war would be justified on the grounds of self-defense against Iraq’s then-leader Saddam Hussein. His remarks tried to counter some high-level Vatican critics of a war on Iraq.
Though Novak was careful not to criticize him personally, opponents of the war included St. John Paul II.
At the time, the Los Angeles Times reported that U.S. Ambassador to the Holy See Jim Nicholson had brought Novak to Rome for an embassy-sponsored lecture series, but Nicholson stressed that Novak did not represent the U.S. government or its embassies.
Novak is survived by three children and four grandchildren. He was preceded in death by his wife Karen Laub-Novak.
Hyderabad, Pakistan, Feb 17, 2017 / 11:46 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Pakistanis are mourning those killed and wounded in a series of terrorist attacks which have taken place this week in the country, including one on a Sufi shrine that left more than 80 people dead.
“People in Pakistan are above all sad; they are also angry with the institutions that are not able to protect citizens. Finally they feel fragile, vulnerable, helpless in the face of [a] terrorist threat that spares no one,” Fr. Inayat Bernard, director of Santa Maria Seminary in Lahore, told Fides.
“We condemn this senseless violence against innocent human beings. Before any ethnic, cultural or religious connotation, the victims are human beings,” he continued.
A suicide bomber reportedly loyal to the Islamic State attacked devotees at a Sufi shrine in Sehwan, more than 90 miles northwest of Hyderabad, on Thursday. In addition to the more than 80 killed in the attack, some 250 were wounded. Sufism is a form of Islamic mysticism which the Islamic State opposes, in part because it reveres individuals it regards as saints. The shrine in Sehwan which was attacked is devoted to Lal Shahbaz Qalandar, a Sufi poet and philosopher of the 13th century.
Since Monday, there have also been terrorist attacks or attempts in Lahore, Quetta, Peshawar, Mohmand, and Arawan.
In a security crackdown in response to the attacks, Pakistani forces have killed more than 100 militants. It has closed border crossings with Afghanistan, whence it claims the militants were based.
“Today we know that we are all potential targets,” Fr. Bernard commented. “Even us Christians – no one is excluded. The victims of these latest attacks are all Muslims, tomorrow it could be the turn of a Christian, a Hindu or a Sikh. This indiscriminate violence hits places of worship, such as the Sufi mosque in Karachi, or churches in the past.”
He lamented that “religious communities are forced to adopt their own security measures and cannot rely on the government. There should be more control, but it is very difficult when there is a great influx of faithful.”
“This violence profanes the name of God, profanes Islam and uses religion to try to overthrow the state. Public opinion strongly calls on the government to urgently implement the national action plan against terrorism, already outlined, but there is some hesitation on behalf of the government and this gives rise to many questions on the possible existing connections even in the institutional apparatus. We are in an impasse”.
Catholics in Pakistan are called to “pray and show deep empathy and solidarity” to the Sufi victims in Sehwan, he said.
“We brought our condolences to the police, after the massacre in Lahore; we go to hospitals to offer assistance and solidarity to the injured,” he said.
He added that interreligious meetings are being organized “to reject, in the name of God, [the] terrorism that has bloodied our beloved nation, and say yes to peace and respect for life.”
Vatican City, Feb 17, 2017 / 08:20 am (CNA/EWTN News).- On Friday Pope Francis paid a visit to Rome’s “Roma Tre” university, stressing to students the importance of dialogue, listening and integration in putting an end to the fear tha… […]
Rome, Italy, Feb 17, 2017 / 06:01 am (CNA/EWTN News).- The Catholic Church puts a lot of effort into having excellent schools and hospitals, but what about its orphanages? For Caroline Boudreaux, conditions in orphanages are too often overlooked – something we all have the ability and opportunity to help change.
The Miracle Foundation, founded by Boudreaux, is a nonprofit which operates on the principle that orphaned children have the same fundamental rights as every other child, and that we help them the most when we help and support the institutions they live in.
One way the organization does this is through teaching those who run orphanages the “best practices” for facilitating the mental, physical, and spiritual well-being of the children in their care.
“The idea is to get a model in every single Catholic orphanage around the world. To give every single Catholic orphanage the support that we would be giving our churches and our schools and our hospitals. That’s what I’m trying to do,” Boudreaux told CNA.
Compared to most of our Catholic hospitals and schools, the conditions in orphanages around the world, even those run by religious orders, are appalling, she explained.
We’ve left the religious sisters running these institutions “out to dry: We leave them with not enough resources, overcrowded orphanages, underfunded…”
But Boudreaux is optimistic that this is something people can change.
“I want to stop short of saying we should be ashamed, but you have a Catholic school or you have a Catholic hospital and you know that they’re going to be pretty excellent … and you can’t say that for our orphanages,” she said.
Part of the Miracle Foundation’s method is also based on the belief that, if possible, it is always best for a child to be in a family setting, so they strive to facilitate this as much as possible.
“Growing up without your family is a tough, tough, tough way to grow up,” Boudreaux said. “It scars more than just your stomach and your mind, it scars your heart, which is really the tough part.”
“We help orphanages reunite children with their families, we help orphanages put children in the adoption stream, and for the children that have to be there, until they have a family, we make the standards solid, so that they can thrive in real time.”
Boudreaux was first inspired with the idea for the Miracle Foundation after she went to India with a friend and witnessed the poor living conditions of orphanages there. The place was “like a concentration camp for kids,” she said, “very gray, very dark.”
The beds were wooden slats with no mattresses and the children, “bald and filthy,” were starved for attention. “I just decided somebody better help them, somebody needs to step in here, and that was it – that was the beginning – almost 17 years ago on Mother’s Day,” she said.
Inspired by the 1989 United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, the Miracle Foundation created its own list of 12 Fundamental Rights of a Child, focusing specifically on the rights of orphaned children, such as the right to a “stable, loving and nurturing environment.”
In addition to practical issues, such as proper nutrition, clean water, electricity and a clean environment, the Miracle Foundation trains caregivers in the areas they can improve themselves, and for others, helps them to bring in qualified experts, like counselors and doctors.
The children in these institutions are often suffering from grief, trauma, or other psychological issues, Boudreaux said, but the religious sisters who watch over them aren’t prepared to deal with the significant psychological problems they have, let alone “watch them go to bed hungry every night” because of the lack of resources.
The Miracle Foundation isn’t a religious organization and will serve anyone in need of help, she said, but they’ve also found that working with specific religious orders who run multiple orphanages throughout a country, or around the world, is one way to make a large impact and quickly.
The Miracle Foundation has been following their current model since 2011, and has experienced great success, with religious orders asking for their help in all of their institutions. For this, the organization’s principle to “train the trainer” has helped them reach even more children.
For the moment they are mostly based at orphanages in India, but are also helping some in Ethiopia, Sierra Leone, and Uganda.
Nivedita DasGupta, head of their operations in India, gave an overview of a typical day in one of the children’s homes in which they’ve helped implement these “best practices.”
In general, the goal is to make the environment as home- and family-like as possible.
For this reason, there is usually one “house mother” for about every 20 children, who drops them off and picks them up from the bus stop on their way to and from school, who eats dinner with them, and generally spends the day supervising them all.
The organization made it mandatory for a healthy snack to be served after school and for there to be a period of physical activity and playtime. They also implemented different monthly sessions for the children focused on life skills with topics appropriate for different ages, such as career counseling, goal-setting, how to deal with peer pressure, and responsible sexual behavior.
As a way for the kids to have a say in the community, they also have children’s committees (run with supervision by an adult, of course) that are responsible for things like planning meals and organizing sports.
One thing the Miracle Foundation does when they come in to an orphanage is to chart the health of the children, Boudreaux said, which they then train the house mothers to measure and record monthly, so that they have real knowledge about the health of the children and their progress on growth charts.
“We help orphans reach their full potential, that’s what we’re all about,” she said.
A Catholic, Boudreaux said she grew up hearing about the importance of being pro-life, but that after going to these orphanages and seeing the children, you realize that maybe we’ve “succeeded” in one way, so-to-speak, but are failing in another.
These children have all been born, but, she said, you have to ask: “Now what? Now they’re just going to be hungry? We’ve got to step up here.”
“We have an opportunity,” she said. “This is something right here, right now!”
Boudreaux explained that this isn’t something we have to go looking for: It’s easy “because they’re right there, and our nuns are right there, waiting for our help, ready to accept our help.”
“We’re not pro-orphanage, we’re not pro-institution,” she said. “We wish that every child in the world had a family.”
“But the real question is, what happens if we’re not there?”
“Between now and when they can find a family, we must support children, we must support them,” she said.
Elise Harris contributed to this article.
Rome, Italy, Feb 17, 2017 / 02:50 am (CNA/EWTN News).- While many in different sectors of the Church are pulling out their hair trying to resolve the Amoris Laetitia communion debate, Papua New Guinea’s new cardinal said his country has a much more immediate problem.
“For us, Amoris Laetitia will always be there,” Cardinal John Ribat told CNA Feb. 11.
“You can have time to talk about this,” he said, but stressed his country is facing one major problem that can’t wait for a solution: climate change.
“It is really the biggest issue for us. We cannot keep quiet about it. We have to come out with it,” he said, noting that the “king tides, king waves” and rough winds “belting” the island nation are already forcing many people from their homes.
These are the things “we cannot stop. They continue to come, and they are more powerful than us,” the cardinal said, explaining that while temporary sea walls have been set up, “they won’t hold.”
“Our situation, it’s timely, you either talk about it or you see these people finished…There’s not timing for it. The time is either now or never.”
Cardinal Ribat, a member of the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, was one of the 19 prelates that got a red hat from Pope Francis in November’s consistory, and is a prime example of the Pope’s affinity toward the global peripheries.
Not only does Ribat come from a small island nation with an equally small Catholic population, he is the first prelate from the country to ever be named cardinal, giving voice to a sector of the Church whose concerns might otherwise go unheard.
The cardinal said he didn’t know that he had been named a cardinal until the country’s nuncio came and told him.
“For me it was absolutely unexpected. I never dreamt about it, never, I never wrote for this. It just came. So it was really a shocking news for us,” he said, explaining that the appointment sent “a great message” to Papua New Guinea.
Not only did he get congratulations from the country’s Catholics, but he also received celebratory calls and messages from other Christian denominations as well as the nation’s small Muslim minority. Prime Minister Peter O’Neill also offered his congratulations in local papers and on TV.
For the cardinal, his appointment is “timely and it gives us a chance to come to the center and hear our voice, to listen to our voice.”
“It’s really looking at the small Church, the small area, and bringing it to the center. So the periphery, bringing us to the center where we are listened to, we are recognized, where we are appreciated, where our situation is also understood.”
Ribat said his red hat was timely above all because it allows him to have more heft when voicing the country’s concerns, particularly on the issue of climate change.
The phenomena is something new that most islanders have found themselves entirely unprepared for, he said, explaining that “we were happily living and it was not a concern for us. But at this time we cannot be quiet.”
“It’s happening at this time and we don’t know where it is coming from and why it is happening…we have islands disappearing, being washed because of the high-rise sea level and people there, they have to move,” he said, noting that many of the smaller islands “are not able to sustain themselves” for much longer.
Papua New Guinea is among the nations considered most at risk for the effects of climate change. For several years the country has been affected by rising sea levels and changes in temperature, rainfall patters and the frequency of tropical storms.
According to the Australian Government’s 2011 Pacific Climate Change Science Program report, temperatures in the capital city of Port Moresby have increased since at a rate of 0.11 degrees Celsius per decade since 1950, causing sea levels to rise at a rate of 7mm per year since 1993, since water expands as it gets warmer.
Predictions for the future look grim, anticipating that the trends will carry forward as temperatures continue to increase, leading to hotter days and more volatile rainy days, with sea levels continuing to rise.
Islands such as Carteret and Tuvalu have reportedly already begun to feel the sting, with rising sea levels leaving food gardens flooded while homeowners seek to transfer to higher ground. Coconut farms – the country’s primary agricultural product – have so far been most heavily affected.
The report also states that inconsistent weather and rain patterns have already led to more frequent onsets of malaria and the common flu, and will soon start to have an impact on the economy, since the country’s agricultural production is being affected.
In his comments to CNA, Cardinal Ribat, who met with Pope Francis right before coming to the interview, said he brought the issue up with the Pope during their meeting, and that Francis was sympathetic to their plight.
“His response was that the nations are not listening, that’s what he said,” Ribat explained, recalling how the Pope told him that while “we do our best, we try to voice our concerns,” the answer ultimately depends on other nations.
Pope Francis has often spoken out about the need to make more firm commitments in trying to find solutions to climate change, focusing on the issue at length in his 2015 environmental encyclical Laudato Si.
He also issued several strong statements on the issue ahead of the 2015 COP21 climate summit in Paris, which was attended by Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin.
Speaking of Laudato Si, Cardinal Ribat said the encyclical helped the world to see “the importance” of the problems they face not just in Papua New Guinea, but “in the whole Pacific.”
Ribat called on nations to take greater action, specifically asking “powerful” countries in the West “to respond in a positive way to help us, because this high-rise sea level, we’ve never experienced it before (and) we are wondering what is happening to us, why all this is happening.”
For those who doubt the effects of climate change or think that it’s a myth, the cardinal said his response would be to “come and see” if they “really want to be sure about what is happening.”
“This is where you really see the effect of what is happening,” he said. “So when you talk about climate change, maybe here because you have a big land mass you are talking about it and waiting for it to come in the future. For us, it is right now.”
Vatican City, Feb 17, 2017 / 01:01 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Pope Francis received a delegation from the Special Olympics on Thursday, reflecting on the power of the event to spread joy and hope.
The Pope suggested that joy is at the heart of all sports: &… […]
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