Washington D.C., Apr 30, 2018 / 03:32 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- The U.S. State Department has removed the term “reproductive rights” from its annual human rights report, drawing praise from pro-life leaders who say that the phrase had become a t… […]
Denver, Colo., Apr 30, 2018 / 01:12 pm (CNA).- Monsignor Thomas Green, a priest of the Diocese of Bridgeport, Conn., died peacefully on Saturday morning. He was 79 years old.
Monsignor Green was the Stephen Kuttner Distinguished Professor of Can… […]
Munich, Germany, Apr 30, 2018 / 01:00 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- A recent decision by the government of Bavaria to mandate that a cross be displayed in all state buildings has garnered global attention, while prompting both criticism and praise from local Catholic bishops.
The requirement that every entrance to state buildings display up a Christian cross – though not necessarily in the form of a crucifix – was announced by the office of Markus Söder, Bavaria’s premier. The directive to hang the crosses by 1 June has sparked a public debate in Germany, tapping into deeper angst about culture, values and Christian roots in a country divided by questions of heritage, religion and identity.
The move has come under criticism from Cardinal Reinhard Marx, Archbishop of Munich and Freising, while being welcomed by Bishop Rudolf Voderholzer of Bavaria’s Regensburg diocese.
Cardinal Reinhard Marx, who as recently as 2015 asserted that crosses should be displayed in classrooms and courtrooms, roundly criticized the April decision to display them in public entranceways.
Speaking to Munich’s Süddeutsche Zeitung newspaper, the archbishop said that the cross is “a sign of opposition to violence, injustice, sin and death, but not a sign [of exclusion] against other people.” The cross can be misunderstood as purely a cultural symbol, he said, and thus misused by the state.
It is not up to the state to explain what a cross means, the Cardinal emphasized, saying that Bavaria’s government has triggered “division, unrest and adversity” with the move.
Bavarian Premier Markus Söder and other politicians of the state’s governing CSU party disagreed with Cardinal Marx’s interpretation of the government’s decision.
The accusation that the government would attempt to misappropriate the cross or designate it as a purely cultural symbol was flatly rejected by Söder, a Lutheran who hails from the Protestant region of Franconia in northern Bavaria. “Of course, the cross is primarily a religious symbol,” Söder told German news media. However, the premier continued, the cross, in the wider sense, also carries with it basic foundations of a secular state.
This aspect was also emphasized by Catholic commentator Birgit Kelle in an editorial for the newspaper Die Welt: “Every Muslim, every atheist, and every other believer can feel safe under this cross, which does not constitute a claim to power, but a commitment to treat each person equally and decently, regardless of their background, faith, ability, or gender.”
In a similar vein, Bishop Voderholzer of the Bavarian diocese of Regensburg asserted that: “the cross is the epitome of Western culture. It is the expression of a culture of love, compassion and affirmation of life. It belongs to the foundations of Europe.” Its public presence – which in traditionally Catholic Bavaria is near ubiquitous – should be seen as such, welcomed and appreciated, he said.
This is the reason, Voderholzer said, Christians have placed crosses atop the peaks of Bavarian mountains: “Not the national flag or other symbols of human rule, as others might have liked to see at other times, but the cross. It should be widely visible, the cross, the sign of salvation and life in which Christ is heaven and earth, God and reconciled people, victims and perpetrators.”
Mexico City, Mexico, Apr 30, 2018 / 11:20 am (ACI Prensa).- An 84-year-old priest of the Archdiocese of Mexico City was found dead in Cuernavaca, the capital of Mexico’s Morelos state, April 25.
Fr. Moisés Fabila Reyes had been kidnapped April 3. According to local media, his family had decided not to publicize the kidnapping, and to keep the Church out of the negotiations to free him.
Test showed that the priest died from a heart attack. He had health issues before the kidnapping, reports said, which were likely exacerbated by the conditions of his captivity.
Fr. Fabila entered the Conciliar Minor Seminary of Mexico at age 12. He was ordained a priest on June 29, 1961 in the Mexico City cathedral. Since 2001, he served as chaplain of the choir at the Guadalupe Basilica.
In a statement released April 26, the Archdiocese of Mexico City announced that Fr. Fabila’s body had been recovered the previous day.
The archdiocese said it shares in“the overwhelming pain of the relatives and friends of Father Moisés Fabila.”
“We lift up our prayers to God for the eternal rest of his soul, and that Our Lady of Guadalupe console them.”
The Mexican Bishops’ Conference also expressed “our profound solidarity with his relatives, parishioners, fellow canons of the basilica, as well as with the Archbishop of Mexico City, Cardinal Aguiar Retes and the Rector of the National Basilica of Guadalupe, Msgr. Enrique Glennie Graue.”
“We implore the intercession of Our Lady of Guadalupe that, like her, we may always be faithful sowers of faith, hope and charity,” the conference concluded.
The announcement comes amid a wave of violence against priests in Mexico. Fr. Rubén Alcántara Díaz was found murdered April 18, and Fr. Juan Miguel Contreras was shot to death in his church April 20.
Another priest, Fr. Lucino Flores Sánchez of the Archdiocese of Puebla, died April 16 after being struck by a car on the Mexico-Puebla highway. However, officials said they believed the incident to be accidental, as the priest, who was in his late 60s and no longer in active ministry, had been sick and showing signs of significant memory loss.
This article was originally published by our sister agency, ACI Prensa. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.
Vatican City, Apr 30, 2018 / 07:16 am (CNA/EWTN News).- The Vatican confirmed Monday that a delegation of six German bishops and one priest will meet with Vatican officials, including the head of the CDF, later this week to discuss the issue of the reception of the Eucharist by non-Catholic spouses of Catholics.
The meeting will take place May 3 with Archbishop Luis Ladaria Ferrer, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and Fr. Hermann Geissler, head of the department’s doctrinal section.
The German delegation, which includes Cardinal Reinhard Marx of Munich and Freising and Cardinal Rainer Maria Woelki of Cologne, will also meet with Cardinal Kurt Koch, president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity and Fr. Markus Graulich, under-secretary of the Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts.
The meeting takes place following reports, later denied by the German bishops’ conference, that the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith had rejected a planned proposal by the conference to publish guidelines permitting non-Catholic spouses of Catholics to receive the Eucharist in some limited circumstances.
In February, Cardinal Marx, announced that the conference would publish a pastoral handout for married couples that allows Protestant spouses of Catholics “in individual cases” and “under certain conditions” to receive Holy Communion, provided they “affirm the Catholic faith in the Eucharist.”
The announcement concerned a draft version of the guidelines, which were adopted “after intensive debate” during a Feb. 19-22 general assembly of the German bishops’ conference under the leadership of Cardinal Marx, who is the conference chairman.
The German delegation will also include Bishop Felix Genn of Munster, as well as both the president and vice-president of the conference’s doctrinal commission, Bishop Karl-Heinz Wiesemann of Speyer and Bishop Rudolf Voderholzer of Regensburg.
Bishop Gerhard Feige of Magdeburg, president of the commission for ecumenism of the German bishops’ conference and Fr. Hans Langendorfer, general secretary of the conference will also take part.
It was reported April 18 by CNA and other media that the CDF had raised objections about the German bishops’ proposal; sources close to the congregation had confirmed this to CNA.
It is unclear whether the Vatican has asked the bishops’ conference to modify the contents of the draft guidelines, whether they have suspended the development of a draft while the matter is considered further, or whether it has been entirely rejected.
Last month, seven German bishops, led by Cardinal Woelki, sent a letter to the CDF and to the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity asking for clarification on the matter, appending a copy of the drafted guidelines. The signatories did not consult beforehand with Cardinal Marx.
The seven bishops reportedly asked whether the question of Holy Communion for Protestant spouses in interdenominational marriages can be decided on the level of a national bishops’ conference, or if rather, “a decision of the Universal Church” is required in the matter.
The letter was also signed by Archbishop Ludwig Schick of Bamberg, Bishop Gregor Hanke of Eichstätt, Bishop Konrad Zdarsa of Augsburg, Bishop Stefan Oster of Passau, Bishop Rudolf Voderholzer of Regensburg, and Bishop Wolfgang Ipolt of Görlitz.
The Code of Canon Law already provides that in the danger of death or if “some other grave necessity urges it,” Catholic ministers licitly administer penance, Eucharist, and anointing of the sick to Protestants “who cannot approach a minister of their own community and who seek such on their own accord, provided that they manifest Catholic faith in respect to these sacraments and are properly disposed.”
Vatican City, Apr 29, 2018 / 04:16 am (CNA/EWTN News).- On Sunday Pope Francis praised the recent agreement signed by North and South Korean leaders aimed at reconciliation and denuclearization, praying that the peace process on the peninsula would continue undeterred.
“I accompany with prayer the positive success of the Inter-Korean summit last Friday and the courageous commitment assumed by the leaders of the two parts to carry out a path of sincere dialogue for a Korean Peninsula free of nuclear weapons,” the pope said April 29.
On Friday leaders of both and South Korea signed a revolutionary peace agreement aimed at eradicating nuclear weapons and increasing exchanges, visits, and cooperation between the two Koreas in order to promote a sense of unity and the eventual reunion of families separated during the Korean War.
In a historic first, North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un crossed the military demarcation line within the Demilitarized Zone that has divided the Korean peninsula since 1953 to meet with South Korean President Moon Jae-In on southern soil.
Both leaders signed the Panmunjeom Declaration stating that “there will be no more war on the Korean Peninsula and thus a new era of peace has begun.”
In the statement, the leaders agreed to “the common goal of realizing, through complete denuclearization, a nuclear-free Korean Peninsula” and to actively pursue further meetings with the United States, and possibly China, to establish a more permanent peace.
Though some have criticized the accord for lack of a specific plan on denuclearization, Francis prayed that steps toward peace on the peninsula would continue, voicing hope that “a future of peace and more fraternal friendship will not be disappointed, and that collaboration may continue to bring fruits of good for the beloved Korean people and for the entire world.”
The pope spoke during his Sunday Regina Coeli address, which he prays during Easter instead of the Angelus.
In his address, Francis focused on the day’s Gospel from John in which Jesus says he is the true vine and his disciples are the branches, which cannot have life unless they remain attached to the vine.
“This relationship is the secret to Christian life,” he said, noting how John in this specific scene uses the word “remain,” which is repeated seven times throughout the passage.
This, he said, means “remaining with the Lord in order to find the courage to go out of ourselves, of our comfort, of our tight and protected spaces, in order to go into the open sea of others’ needs and to give a wider breadth to our Christian witness in the world.”
This courage, the pope continued, is born from faith in the Risen Lord and from the certainty that his spirit is accompanying us throughout our lives.
One of the “most mature fruits which springs from communion with Christ” is showing charity toward the other, he said, adding that this means to love one another “with self-denial, until the final consequences, just as Jesus loved us.”
However, this charity “is not the fruit of strategies, it is not born from external solicitations, from social or ideological requests,” Francis said. Rather, it comes from an encounter with Jesus and from remaining with him in that encounter.
Jesus, he said, “is for is the vine from which we absorb the sap, that is, the life needed in order to bring to society a different way of living and spending oneself which puts the last ones first.”
When a person is intimately united to the Lord like the branches are to the vine, only then can they bring the fruits of new life, mercy, justice and peace, which come from the Lord’s resurrection, he said.
The saints, he said, were the ones who were able to life the Christian life to the fullest, bearing witness to charity because they were united with the Lord.
However, quoting his new apostolic exhortation Gaudete et Exsultate, Francis stressed that “to be holy does not require being a bishop, a priest or a religious…We are all called to be holy by living our lives with love and by bearing witness in everything we do, wherever we find ourselves.”
“Every activity – work and rest, family and social life, the exercise of political, cultural and economic responsibility – every activity, if it is lived in union with Jesus and with an attitude of love and service, is an occasion for living baptism and evangelic holiness to the full.”
Francis closed his address praying that Mary would teach Christians to remain in Jesus, and to never separate themselves from his love. “We can do nothing without him,” he said, “because our live is the living Christ, present in the Church and in the world.”
After his address, the pope also offered prayer for the 19 people, including two priests, who were killed in a fresh attack on a church in Nigeria’s Middle Belt earlier this week.
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Vatican City, Apr 28, 2018 / 04:06 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Last night Pope Francis began individual meetings with three survivors of clerical sexual abuse from Chile following a major apology earlier this month. The encounters, which have no time limit, will go on throughout the weekend and on Monday.
The survivors – Juan Carlos Cruz, James Hamilton and Andres Murillo – were invited by the pope to stay at the Vatican’s Saint Martha guesthouse, where he has lived since his election in 2013.
In an April 27 statement from the Vatican, spokesman Greg Burke said there will be no official communique on the encounters, as Francis’ primary intention is “to listen to the victims, ask them for forgiveness and respect the confidentiality of these meetings.”
“In this climate of trust and of reparation for suffering,” Bruke said, “the desire of Pope Francis is to allow those invited to speak for as long as needed, such that there are no fixed schedules or predetermined content.”
Cruz, Hamilton and Murillo were each victims of abuse carried out by Chilean priest Fernando Karadima, who in 2011 was found guilty by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith of sexually abusing several minors during the 1980s and 1990s, and sentenced to a life of prayer and solitude.
The pope invited the three men to come to the Vatican after receiving a 2,300 page report from Maltese Archbishop Charles Scicluna, who is highly regarded as the Vatican’s top abuse investigator and who traveled to the United States and Chile in February to investigate allegations of cover-up.
Initially the investigation was centered around Bishop Juan Barros of Osorno, who was appointed to the diocese in 2015 and who has been accused by Cruz and several others of not only covering up Karadima’s abuses, but at times also participating.
Allegations were also made against three other bishops – Andrés Arteaga, Tomislav Koljatic and Horacio Valenzuela – who Karadima’s victims accuse of also covering the abuser’s crimes.
While on the ground Scicluna interviewed some 64 people, most of whom were victims, but the scale of the investigation went beyond Barros. It is said to be much more extensive, including details from other cases, such as the Marist Brothers, who are currently under canonical investigation after allegations of sexual abuse by some of the members surfaced in August 2017.
Pope Francis had previous defended Barros, saying he had received no evidence of the bishop’s guilt, and called accusations against him “calumny” during a trip to Chile in January.
However, after receiving Scicluna’s report, Francis issued a major “mea culpa” April 11, saying he had made “serious errors in the judgment and perception of the situation, especially due to a lack of truthful and balanced information.”
He invited Cruz, Hamilton and Murillo to meet with him privately at the Vatican, and summoned all of Chile’s 32 bishops to Rome in the third week of May, where they will discuss the conclusions of Scicluna’s report as well the pope’s own conclusions on the matter.
In recent comments made to the New York Times, Cruz, who will meet with Francis Sunday, said he is looking forward to speaking with the pope with “an open heart” and hearing what the pontiff has to say.
Above all, Cruz said he wants to convey “the pain and suffering of so many people,” many of whom, he said, suffered more than he has, and “I’ve suffered a lot.”
Cruz said at times he has been made at Pope Francis, but does not want to be. Though understands that “people make mistakes,” Cruz said he still grapples with the fact that the pope didn’t act sooner, and that for him, the meeting will be a waste “if it doesn’t result in concrete actions.”
“And firing a few bishops won’t do the trick,” he said, voicing hope that Barros will be relieved from his post in Osorno.
But despite the disappointment and “shattered” vision of the pope that he has going into the meting, Cruz said the pope is still the pope, and “I hope we all get some kind of healing out of this, for ourselves.”
Liverpool, England, Apr 28, 2018 / 12:07 am (ACI Prensa).- Ailing toddler Alfie Evans, whose plight has tugged at the world’s heartstrings throughout the past week, died in the early hours of Saturday morning after being removed from life support.
In an April 28 Facebook post, Alfie’s father, Tom Evans, said: “My gladiator lay down his shield and gained his wings at 02:30…absolutely heartbroken. I love you my guy.”
Just shy of two years old, Alfie had been in what physicians described as a “semi-vegetative state” due to a mysterious degenerative neurological condition that doctors at Alder Hey Children’s Hospital in Liverpool, England have not been able to properly diagnose. He had been hospitalized since December of 2016.
Although Italian officials earlier this week granted Alfie citizenship and a Vatican-linked hospital offered to take the toddler for further diagnosis and treatment, UK courts repeatedly refused to allow the transfer, ruling that it is not in the child’s best interest.
With permission of the court, but against the will of Alfie’s parents, Tom Evans and Kate James, the hospital earlier this week removed Alfie’s ventilator and withheld food and water from the child.
Although the toddler was only expected to live for a few minutes, he was able to breathe on his own for a number of hours, until doctors administered oxygen and hydration. They later administered nutrition as well, after the boy went almost 24 hours without food, according to Alfie’s father.
Life support was again removed from Alfie after a last-minute appeal by his parents was struck down Wednesday. After the ruling, the toddler’s parents released a statement thanking the doctors and hospital staff who cared for their son, saying they wanted to “build bridges” with Alder Hey.
Rallies in support of Alfie’s parents have been held throughout the week in London, Washington, D.C., New York and the Vatican, with pilgrims gathering to pray the rosary in St. Peter’s Square each night leading up to the toddler’s death.
Pope Francis has also been outspoken about supporting the child’s parents.
The pope, who met with Alfie’s father last week, has offered public prayers for Alfie and his family several times, including at a general audience and in several Twitter posts.
“Moved by the prayers and immense solidarity shown little Alfie Evans, I renew my appeal that the suffering of his parents may be heard and that their desire to seek new forms of treatment may be granted,” he said on Twitter Monday.
© Catholic World Report