New York City, N.Y., Oct 12, 2017 / 12:08 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Armed conflicts brings out “the most vicious forms of violence against children” and the world must act to aid the young victims of violence and all unaccompanied children world… […]
Charlotte, N.C., Oct 11, 2017 / 03:59 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- It has been six years since Belmont Abbey College, a Catholic liberal arts school near Charlotte, North Carolina, filed the first lawsuit challenging the federal contraception mandate.
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Ruteng, Indonesia, Oct 11, 2017 / 02:39 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- An Indonesian prelate resigned Wednesday as Bishop of Ruteng amid mounting concerns surrounding an alleged mistress and reportedly stolen funds.
Bishop Hubertus Leteng, 58, was accused of borrowing $94,000 from the Indonesian bishops’ conference, as well as $30,000 from the Diocese of Ruteng.
Leteng said the money was being used to fund a poor youth’s education, although he failed to give any further details or information, according to Ucanews. He was additionally criticized for reportedly taking a mistress – an allegation which Leteng called “slanderous.”
In June, more than 60 priests of the diocese resigned from their assignments in protest of Leteng’s administration of the diocese.
A year earlier, 112 of the diocese’s 167 priests had signed a letter of no confidence in Leteng, citing their suspicions of financial mismanagement and incontinence.
The Vatican has been investigating the accusations brought against Leteng since April, and Pope Francis accepted Leteng’s resignation Oct. 11.
Following Leteng’s departure, Bishop Sylvester San of Denpasar will serve as apostolic administrator of Ruteng until a bishop is named.
Leteng was ordained a priest of the Ruteng diocese in 1988, and was appointed its bishop in 2009. He was consecrated a bishop April 14, 2010.
Though Indonesia is a heavily majority-Muslim country, the island of Flores, on which Ruteng is located, is largely Catholic. Flores was colonized by Portugal, and nearly 89 percent of the population of the Ruteng diocese is Catholic.
Washington D.C., Oct 11, 2017 / 12:04 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- After the Trump administration announced a repeal of emissions standards, Catholic leaders warned it could hurt poor communities and thwart long-term efforts to fight climate change.
“Pope Francis’ encyclical, Laudato si’, calls us to action in caring for our common home. A national carbon standard is a critical step for the U.S. at this time,” Bishop Frank Dewane of Venice, chair of the U.S. bishops’ domestic justice and human development committee, stated Oct. 10 after the Environmental Protection Agency announced a planned repeal of the Clean Power Plan.
Scott Pruitt, head of the Environmental Protection Agency, announced the repeal on Monday.
The Clean Power Plan, finalized in 2015 under the Obama administration, set goals for states to reduce carbon emissions from the utility sector, ultimately aiming to cut emissions by 32 percent by 2030.
President Obama announced the plan in August 2015, citing the need to curb pollution amid climate change and to reduce domestic health concerns such as asthma rates.
“By some estimates, a fully implemented Clean Power Plan could have prevented: 2,700 to 6,600 premature deaths; 140,000 to 150,000 asthma attacks in children; and 2,700 to 2,800 hospital admissions,” the Catholic Climate Covenant, a national partnership that seeks to educate Catholics about Church teaching on the environment, said.
The plan was “an important step forward to protect the health of all people,” then-chair of the U.S. bishops’ domestic justice and human development committee, Archbishop Thomas Wenski of Miami, stated.
However, in February 2016, the U.S. Supreme Court halted the plan being put into effect. President Trump ordered a review of it with the possibility of rescinding the plan in his executive order on energy independence in March, and Bishop Dewane warned that the order “effectively dismantles the Clean Power Plan.”
Pruitt, in a March 30 letter to state governors, told them that in light of the Supreme Court’s stay on the plan, they did not have to abide by the goals and standards set by the plan.
“It is the policy of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) that States have no obligation to spend resources to comply with a Rule that has been stayed by the Supreme Court of the United States,” Pruitt wrote. “The days of coercive federalism are over.”
On Monday, Pruitt announced the plan would be repealed, to the disappointment of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and the Catholic Climate Covenant.
The chief fault of Tuesday’s announcement was that there is no sufficient replacement plan, Catholic Climate Covenant said.
Furthermore, coming on the heels of the U.S. pulling out of the international Paris climate agreement, where participating countries pledged to cut pollution and contribute to the Green Climate Fund, the repeal “solidifies the already troubling approach of our nation in addressing climate change,” Bishop Dewane said.
Recent Popes along with bishops from all over the globe “have all accepted the reality of human-forced climate change,” Dan Misleh, executive director of the Catholic Climate Covenant, stated on Tuesday. “And we know that our burning of fossil fuels is among the biggest contributors to this moral dilemma.”
The Clean Power Plan offered “flexibility to allow states to meet carbon reduction targets in meaningful ways,” he said. “This repeal now throws all of these potential gains into question.”
Pope Francis’ 2015 encyclical Laudato si’, on care for our common home, specifically called for policies to reduce carbon emissions, he added.
In paragraph 26 of the encyclical, Pope Francis warned that “some of the negative impacts of climate change … will continue to worsen if we continue with current models of production and consumption.”
“There is an urgent need to develop policies so that, in the next few years, the emission of carbon dioxide and other highly polluting gases can be drastically reduced, for example, substituting for fossil fuels and developing sources of renewable energy,” the encyclical stated.
Vatican City, Oct 11, 2017 / 10:41 am (CNA/EWTN News).- In an Oct. 11 speech to members of the Pontifical Council for the Promotion of the New Evangelization, Francis said the topic of the death penalty should have “a more adequate and coherent s… […]
Vatican City, Oct 11, 2017 / 06:19 am (CNA/EWTN News).- On Wednesday Pope Francis said Christians are never bored or hopeless, but know how to wait patiently – even when life is hard, monotonous or unclear – with the knowledge that after the darkness, there is always light.
“The Christian was not made for boredom, but for patience,” the Pope said Oct. 11. This, he said, is because “they know that even in the monotony of days that are always the same a mysterious grace is hidden.”
There are people people “who with the perseverance of their love become like wells that irrigate the desert,” he said, adding that “nothing happens in vain, no situation in which a Christian finds themselves immersed is completely refractory to love.”
“No night is so long that the joy of dawn is forgotten. And the darker the night, the closer it is to dawn,” he said.
And if we stay united to Jesus, “the cold of difficult moments does not paralyze us; and if even the whole world preaches against hope, if it says that the future will only bring obscure clouds, the Christian knows that in that same future there is the return of Christ.”
In the end, “everything will be redeemed. Everything,” he said, noting that there will be suffering and times when “anger and indignation come out.” However, “the sweet and powerful memory of Christ will dispel the temptation to think that this life is wrong.”
Pope Francis spoke to pilgrims during his Oct. 11 general audience in St. Peter’s square, continuing his catechesis on Christian hope. In this week’s speech, he focused on an aspect of hope he called “vigilant waiting.”
Vigilance “is one of the wires of the New Testament,” he said, and pointed to a passage in the Gospel of Luke, in which Jesus tells his disciples: “Let your loins be girded and your lamps burning, and be like men who are waiting for their master to come home from the marriage feast, so that they may open to him at once when he comes and knocks.”
After Jesus’ resurrection, moments of serenity and anguish seemed to “continually alternate,” he said, but noted that despite times of confusion and uncertainty, “Christians never gave up.”
Today too, the world “demands our responsibility, and we take it all and with love,” Pope Francis said. “Jesus wants our existence to be laborious, that we never let our guard down, to welcome with gratitude and wonder every new day given to us by God.”
Every morning is like “a blank page,” he said, which Christians must write with “good works.”
When Jesus returns, “we need to be ready for salvation when it arrives, ready for the encounter” with the Lord, he said, and asked pilgrims in off-the-cuff remarks: “have you thought what that encounter with Jesus will be like, when he comes?”
This encounter, he said, “will be an embrace, an enormous joy, a great joy! We must live in anticipation of this encounter!”
And after having an encounter with Jesus, “we cannot do anything but scrutinize history with trust and hope,” he said.
Using the image of a house, Francis said Jesus is the structure of the house and we are inside, looking at the world from the windows. Because of this, “we do not close in on ourselves, we do not regret with melancholy a past presumed to be golden,” he said.
Instead, “we always look forward, to a future which is not only the work of our hands, but which above all is a constant concern of God’s providence,” he said, adding that “everything that is opaque one day will become light.”
God does not go back on his word, and he “never disappoints,” the Pope said. Rather, the Lord’s will for us “is never nebulous, but is a well-outlined project of salvation.”
“Because of this we do not abandon ourselves to the flow of events with pessimism, as if history were a train that has lost control,” he said, stressing that “resignation is not a Christian virtue.
Nor is it the task of Christians to shrug their shoulders or “bend their backs” in front of a future that seems “inevitable.”
“Those who bring hope to the world are never never remorseful people,” he said, explaining that no one can build peace with “our arms folded.”
‘”There is no builder of peace who in the final count has not compromised their personal peace, taking on the problems of others,” he said, adding that “the remorseful person is not a builder of peace but is lazy, is one who wants to be comfortable.”
Christians, on the other hand, build peace “when it’s risky, when they have the courage to take risks in order to bring good, the good that Jesus has given to us, has given to us as a treasure.”
Pope Francis closed his audience saying the “refrain” of every Christian existence is that “in our world we need nothing but the caress of Christ.”
“What a grace if, in prayer, in the hard days of this life, we hear his voice responding reassuring us: ‘Behold, I will come soon.’”
Vatican City, Oct 11, 2017 / 03:18 am (CNA/EWTN News).- The life of Pope John XXIII shows the saint’s deep spiritual nature, as well as his great kindness towards others, said a cardinal who knew him well.
“If in John Paul II the key word is courage of the faith, in John XXIII the key word is the strength of goodness,” Cardinal Comastri told CNA.
Cardinal Comastri is the President of the Fabric of Saint Peter, Archpriest of St. Peter’s Basilica, and Vicar General for the Vatican City State. He worked alongside both Pope John XXIII and Pope John Paul II for many years as a member of the Roman Curia.
Recounting the day when John XXIII was elected Pope, the cardinal recalled that when the new pontiff appeared on the main balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica to greet the crowds, he could hear their voices but could not see them due to the brightness of the lights.
The cardinal said that “He gave a blessing but when he returned to the doorway he said: ‘I heard the voices but I couldn’t see anyone.’”
“It was a lesson for me, if I want to see the faces of my brothers, I have to turn off the lights of my pride.”
“Right away it was a wise reading of the fact of how John XXIII was,” Cardinal Comastri noted, emphasizing that the new Supreme Pontiff “immediately… communicated with acts of kindness.”
Giving an example to illustrate this point, the cardinal brought to mind a conversation that John XXIII had with his secretary, Msgr. Loris Capovilla, a few days before his first Christmas as Pope in 1958.
During the conversation, the cardinal continued, the Pope told Msgr. Capovilla “Listen, Fr. Loris, my mother taught me that for the holidays we must not only go to Mass, but we must also do works of mercy.”
When the secretary asked what he wanted to do, John XXIII replied that “The day of Christmas I will go to the children in Bambino Gesu hospital. And December 26, I’m going to visit the prisoners of the Regina Coeli prison.”
Noting that it was the first time a Pope had traveled to the hospital, Cardinal Comastri explained that there was “great excitement” and that when he arrived, “the children all jumped from their beds to go and meet the Pope and the Pope greeted them all good-naturedly as Jesus with the children.”
However, seeing that there was one child who remained in his bed, the cardinal revealed that the Pope “was the one to approach the child,” who, when he sensed someone close, stretched out and touched the pontiff, asking, “Are you the Pope?”
When John XXIII replied with a “yes,” Cardinal Comastri recalled that the child told him “I am happy but I can’t see you because I am blind,” to which the Pope responded by “lowering his eyes” and calling the child by his name, saying “Carmine, we are all a little blind; we pray to the Lord to give us the sight of the heart to recognize ourselves as brothers.”
The cardinal continued the narrative, explaining that the next day when Pope John XXIII went to the Roman prison Regina Coeli, he discarded his prepared speech and spoke to the inmates “with the heart.”
Reflecting on how a member of his own family had been imprisoned when he was a child, the pontiff expressed that it had been a difficult and emotional situation, and that although he could keep the experience to himself, he shared it in order to put the prisoners “more at ease,” the cardinal explained.
Quoting the Pope’s words to the inmates, Cardinal Comastri remembered how he told them that “now you need to rebuild your lives and you need to do one thing: eliminate the word despair and prepare yourselves to spend your lives doing good because this is also the Father’s house and you are also sons of God.”
Upon hearing this, the cardinal recounted that one of the prisoners broke through the security barrier, running and throwing himself on his knees at the Pope’s feet, asking, “Holy Father, I am a delinquent, is there also hope for me?”
Pope John XXIII replied by affirming that “there is hope for all, there is also hope for you,” and telling him “do not worry.”
On the way back to the Vatican, Cardinal Comastri said, the Pope once again turned to his secretary, Msgr. Capovilla, and said, “Fr. Loris, these are the true joys of being Pope, these are the joys of the believer.”
“That’s the life of Pope John,” the cardinal observed, adding that “it’s full of these small flowers, strength and goodness.”
This article was originally published on CNA March 18, 2014.
Washington D.C., Oct 10, 2017 / 04:41 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- After US President Donald Trump asked Congress to pass stricter immigration laws if they plan to grant legal status to certain undocumented immigrants, one bishop said Trump’s proposals would hurt the vulnerable.
“The Administration’s Immigration Principles and Policies do not provide the way forward for comprehensive immigration reform rooted in respect for human life and dignity, and for the security of our citizens,” Bishop Joe Vasquez of Austin, chair of the migration committee at the U.S. bishops’ conference, stated Oct. 10.
In an Oct. 8 letter to House and Senate leaders, President Trump pushed for the passage of stricter immigration laws and tougher enforcement, as part of Congress passing a version of the Dream Act.
The latest version of the Dream Act was introduced this summer by Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Dick Durbin (D-Ill.). It would grant permanent legal status to young immigrants who came to the U.S. illegally as children, who do not have a criminal record, who have lived in the U.S. for at least four years, and who meet other requirements.
When Congress failed to pass such a bill several years ago, the Obama administration announced in 2012 a program, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), to delay the deportation of eligible immigrants who were brought to the U.S. illegally as children, giving them time to apply for a continued stay in the U.S.
However, on Sept. 5, Trump ended the DACA program, saying it was the duty of Congress to address the matter. Any DACA-related legislation that would address the issue of Dreamers residing in the U.S., he said in Sunday’s letter, must be accompanied by stricter immigration policies in the name of national security.
In the letter to Congress, Trump cited an investigation of U.S. immigration laws which he ordered and which recently concluded. That investigation, he said, discovered weaknesses in the immigration system that needed addressing in the name of national security.
Trump called for the completion of a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. The House in July approved a spending bill with $1.6 billion in border wall funding, but the Senate did not act on it. Currently, around 700 miles of the approximately 2,000 mile-long U.S.-Mexico border have a border fence.
Trump also supported stricter laws on the handling of unaccompanied minors who arrive at the U.S.-Mexico border. The number of unaccompanied minors coming from Central America rose sharply in recent years, peaking at over 50,000 in the 2014 fiscal year, falling in 2015 and rising once again to 47,000 in FY 2016. There have been around 38,500 unaccompanied children apprehended at the border in 2017, the administration said.
The administration in August ended a parole program for minors who were not eligible for refugee status to enter the U.S. Parents of such minors could have been eligible to apply for their child’s acceptance in the program, where they would have been vetted, if accepted, and granted legal entry into the U.S.
Also in Trump’s policy proposals to Congress were stricter standards for granting asylum, speeding up the removal of those denied asylum, hiring more immigration enforcement officials, attorneys, and judges, and requiring an E-Verify system for employers.
Bishop Vasquez said that the proposals for stricter immigration standards would hurt vulnerable populations such as refugees and unaccompanied minors.
The proposals “are not reflective of our country’s immigrant past, and they attack the most vulnerable, notably unaccompanied children and many others who flee persecution,” Bishop Vasquez said. “Most unfortunately, the principles fail to recognize that the family is the fundamental building block of our immigration system, our society, and our Church.”
Furthermore, he said, Congress should pass a version of the Dream Act immediately, regardless of whether other policy goals are fulfilled. Time is of the essence here, he said, because DACA protections will soon expire and young immigrants who benefitted from the program could lose their legal work permits in March 2018, being vulnerable to deportation and family separation.
However, Alfonso Aguilar, president of the Latino Partnership for Conservative Principles, said Trump’s proposals are more of a “wish list to be in negotiations” rather than a hard set of demands that must be met for any Dream Act to be signed into law.
“I don’t think that President Trump expects that Congress include every single of those 70 proposals in an immigration bill,” he told CNA.
Aguilar at one point during the 2016 campaign supported Trump as a candidate, but withdrew his support in September during the campaign because of Trump’s “restrictionist” immigration speech and plan to deport undocumented immigrants without criminal records.
Aguilar also noted that in his letter to Congress, Trump proposed “allowing, basically, an immigration officer at the border to remove any unaccompanied minor back to their home country.”
The passage of the Dream Act is still on the table and has its supporters in both parties, Aguilar said.
“From my conversations in Congress and with some in the White House, I think there’s a general understanding that the consensus has to be based on legislation that provides relief to Dreamers, and then resources for some interior enforcement and some border security,” he said. Trump, he said, is “committed” to the passage of “legislation that provides relief to Dreamers.”
In other immigration policies Trump called for on Sunday, the President is not taking the extreme positions that some make him out to be taking, Aguilar said.
For instance, he said Trump is not calling for an end to green cards for family members of citizens or lawful permanent residents, but just wants them limited to immediate family members and not extended family.
Calling for an E-Verify system is “a way for employers to know that the person applying for the job has legal status,” Aguilar said.
The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has already been outspoken about some issues that Trump addressed in his policy proposals.
Regarding the border wall proposal, Bishop Vasquez said in January that the construction of a wall “will put immigrant lives needlessly in harm’s way,” making them “more susceptible to traffickers and smugglers.”
Bishops have also advocated for the U.S. to accept unaccompanied children coming to the U.S.-Mexico border from Central America, saying that many are fleeing violence in their home countries and that sending them back home could be akin to sending a child back into a “burning building.”
There is “abuse” within the system when it comes to asylum requests, Aguilar said, but “that doesn’t mean we have to reduce the limits of refugees.”
Rather, he said, policy should focus on accepting those who should be coming to the U.S., and securing the country against the entry of those who shouldn’t be entering.
“Making those rules more strict, making it harder, doesn’t mean that we’re not going to be a compassionate country and grant asylum to people who really deserve it,” he said of Trump’s proposal of stricter laws on the entry of unaccompanied minors.
“The idea is to ensure that those people who are getting asylum are people who really deserve it.”
Vatican City, Oct 10, 2017 / 04:02 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- On Monday Pope Francis advanced eight causes for sainthood, including a Capuchin priest who ministered underground across the Soviet Union for nearly 40 years.
Fr. Serafin Kaszuba, OFM Cap., was born June 17, 1910 in Zamarstynów, near Lviv, in what was then part of Austria-Hungary. Pope Francis recognized his heroic virtues Oct. 9, meaning the priest can now be referred to as “Venerable.”
Born Alojzy Kazimierz, Fr. Serafin entered the Capuchin novitiate in Poland at the age of 18. He made perpetual vows in 1932, and was ordained a priest the following year. He studied at the Jagiellonian University in Krakow.
In 1940 he began ministering in Lviv and Volhynia, which was occupied by the Soviet Union. The region was later occupied by Nazi Germany, until Soviet forces returned in 1944.
During the ethnic cleansing of Poles in Volhynia by the Ukrainian Insurgent Army during World War II he refused to leave his parishioners, moving from one village to another as the settlements were razed. He escaped attacks on his rectory.
Under the Soviet government he was able to legally register in 1945 as a priest in Rivne, in what is now Ukraine. He centered his ministry in Volhynia, while also travelling to the Latvian and Lithuanian territories of the Soviet Union.
In 1958 Soviet authorities stripped him of the right to publicly perform priestly functions, and he began ministering secretly in Ukraine, Belarus, Lithuania, and Estonia. In 1963 he went to Kazakhstan, where the Soviets had deported tens of thousands of Poles. He continued to minister in secret, while publicly working at a bookbinders’.
He was arrested in 1966 and sentenced to prison, but he escaped the following year and continued working as a priest in Kazakhstan.
Suffering from tuberculosis and progressing deafness, Fr. Serafin was able to return to Poland, then a Soviet satellite state, for hospital treatment in 1968. He had lung surgery in Wroclaw, and returned to Kazakhstan in June 1970.
The priest then ministered primarily in Kazakhstan and Ukraine until his Sept. 20, 1977 death, while reciting the breviary, in Lviv.
Although his cause for sainthood is in still at an early phase, Fr. Serafin is honored by the families of those he served in Ukraine and in Kazakhstan, many of whom have preserved the private altars where the priest would celebrated Mass in their homes.
Pope Francis gave the green light for Fr. Serafin’s cause to move forward during an Oct. 9 meeting with Cardinal Angelo Amato, Prefect of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints.
Other causes the Pope advanced include the martyrdom cause for Franciscan priest Fr. Tullio Maruzzo and Third Order Franciscan layman Luis Obdulio Navarro, who were killed in hatred of the faith July 1, 1981, near Los Amates, Guatemala.
Formerly Servants of God, the approval of Maruzzo and Navarro’s martyrdom has opened the door for their beatification, which would allow them to be called “blessed.”
In addition to the martyrs and Fr. Serafin, Pope Francis recognized the heroic virtue of six other causes: those of layman Francesco Paolo Gravina, founder of the Congregation of the Sisters of Charity of Saint Vincent (Italy); diocesan priest Fr. Donizetti Tavares de Lima (Brazil); Sr. Magín Morera y Feixas of the Congregation of the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary and Joseph (Spain); María Lorenza Requenses de Longo, founder of the Hospital of the Incurables in Naples and of the Capuchin Nuns (Italy); Françoise du Saint Esprit, founder of the Third Order of Saint Francis in Montpellier (France); and El?bieta Ró?a Czacka, founder of the Congregation of the Franciscan Sisters Servants of the Cross (Poland).
Denver, Colo., Oct 10, 2017 / 03:01 pm (CNA).- Fifty-five years ago, on October 11, 1962, Pope St. John XXIII began the Second Vatican Council at St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome.
The council was not called to resolve a dispute about doctrine or dog… […]
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