News Briefs

Puerto Maldonado, Peru, Jan 19, 2018 / 11:35 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Speaking to kids at a home for orphaned and abandoned children on Friday, Pope Francis said they have much to offer the world by being themselves and sharing their experiences.

“The world needs you, young men and women… and it needs you as you are. Do not be content to be the last car on the train of society, letting yourselves be pulled along and eventually disconnected. We need you to be the engine, always pressing forward,” the Pope said Jan. 19.

“Share what you learn with the world, because the world needs you to be yourselves, who you really are, and not an imitation of someone else. We need you to be authentic, young men and women who are proud to belong to the Amazonian peoples and who can offer humanity an alternative for a true life.”

Francis spoke at the “Hogar Principito” (“Little Prince Home”) in Puerto Maldonado on the second day of his Jan. 18-21 visit to Peru. The children’s home was founded in 1996 to help deal with with the high rate of neglect and child exploitation that occur in the city.

It currently houses around 40 children and adolescents, who have come from orphanages, at-risk families, or illegal mining camps. Some have been abandoned or been victims of physical, sexual, or psychological abuse.

Pope Francis met with the children and their caretakers on the basketball court of the home.

Before his speech he was greeted by the director of the home, Fr. Xavier Arbex, and listened to the testimony of Dirsey Irarica Piña, a woman who was raised in the home. He also watched performances by the children of songs and a choreographed dance.

Irarica described having been orphaned at the age of 11, and being welcomed into the Hogar Principito a couple of years later, saying the home “was ready immediately to give me the fullness of support and love … I thank my teachers and the ‘little father’ for filling this void in me. Thank you for this unconditional love which makes us feel at home.”

She now lives in Tacna, where she works and studies psychology.

In his address after listening to Irarica, the Pope referenced the recent celebration of Christmas, where our hearts were touched by the coming of the Child Jesus.

“He is our treasure. You children are his reflection, and you too are a treasure for all of us, the most precious treasure that we have, and one that we are called to guard,” Francis said.

He asked forgiveness for the times that adults have neglected to care for them and protect them as they deserve, saying how their lives demand a greater commitment and effort on the part of everyone – that we do not remain indifferent to children who suffer and are in need.

“Without a doubt, you are the greatest treasure that is ours to care for,” he underlined.

Speaking to Irarica, who gave a testimony before his speech, he said she was brave to share that sometimes she feels very hurt, and misses her father and mother.

“You told me; ‘I hope my message may be a light of hope,’” the Pope referenced. “But let me tell you something. Your life, your words, and the lives of all of you, are a light of hope.”

He said a wonderful witness “is offered by all of you young people who have travelled this road, who found love in this home and now are able to shape your own future! You demonstrate to all of us the enormous potential of each person. For these boys and girls, you are the best example to follow, a sign of hope that they will be able to do the same. We all need good role models: children need to look to the future and have positive role models.”

“Everything that you young people can do, like coming here to be with them, to play and spend time together, is important,” Pope Francis said. “Be for them, as the Little Prince says: the little stars that light up the night,” referring to the Antoine de Saint-Exupéry character for whom the children’s home is named.

The Pope went on to note how the children who came from indigenous communities may have been witness to the destruction of their home, saying: “today those woodlands have been laid waste by the intoxication of a misguided notion of progress.”

“Young people, do not be resigned to what is happening! Do not renounce the legacy you have received from your elders, or your lives and dreams.”

He also encouraged them to study and to take advantage of the educational opportunities available to them.

“Listen to your elders; value their traditions; do not curb your curiosity. Get in touch with your roots, but at the same time open your eyes to new things; bring the old and the new together in your own way,” he encouraged.

Society often needs correction and you, young people, can help greatly with this “by teaching us a way of life based on protection and care, not on the destruction of everything that stands in the way of our greed,” he said.

[…]

Puerto Maldonado, Peru, Jan 19, 2018 / 10:34 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Pope Francis visited one of Peru’s most biodiverse regions Friday, telling its inhabitants that while remote, their land is not forgotten and must be cared for.

He also stressed the importance of fighting such scourges as corruption and human trafficking.

“’We are not a no man’s land.’ It is something that needs to be emphasized. You are not a no man’s land. This land has names. It has faces. It has you,” the Pope said Jan. 19 to the people of Puerto Maldonado, the capital of the Madre de Dios Region in the Amazon basin.

He was responding to comment made by a local couple, Margarita Martínez Núñez Valer and her husband Arturo, who while sharing their testimony said their land is one “that is mostly forgotten, wounded and marginalized…but we are not a no man’s land.”

Pope Francis noted that Mary also came from Nazareth, a remote and isolated village that many also considered “a no man’s land.”

Mary, he said, is not only an example but a mother, and when we have a mother, “we don’t have that terrible feeling of belonging to no one, that takes hold when our sense of belonging to a family, to a people, to a land, to our God, begins to fade.”

The Madre de Dios Region, then, “is not a land of orphans, but a land that has a Mother! And if it has a mother, it has sons and daughters, a family, a community.” While the problems might not disappear, when there is a mother, a family and a community “we certainly find the strength to confront them differently.”

He visited Puerto Maldonado on the first full day of his Jan. 18-21 visit to Peru, after spending three days in Chile. The Amazonian region is of special interest to the Pope, considering his 2015 encyclical on care for our common home, Laudato si’, and his decision to hold a Pan-Amazonian synod in 2019 to discuss the challenges the area faces.

Before meeting with the inhabitants of Puerto Maldonado, he met with members of the Amazonian community, and distributed copies of Laudato si’ which had been translated into the local languages.

Held in the city’s Jorge Basadre Institute, the encounter with the people of Puerto Maldonado began with a greeting from Bishop David Martinez de Aguirre Guinea, Vicar Apostolic of Puerto Maldonado, and the testimony of a catechist.

Francis said it is painful for him to see how some people seek to exploit the territory and therefore make Madre de Dios “a nameless land, without children, a barren land.”

Referring to what he has often dubbed the “throwaway culture,” he said this is a mentality which isn’t satisfied with simple exclusion, but continues to advance “by silencing, ignoring and throwing out everything that does not serve its interests; as if the alienating consumerism of some is completely unaware of the desperate suffering of others.”

“It is an anonymous culture, without bonds, without faces,” and which only wants to consume, he said, adding that both land and people are treated according to the same logic: “forests, rivers and streams are exploited mercilessly, then left barren and unusable,” while people are “used until someone gets tired of them, then abandoned.”

He then spoke out against the temptation of corruption and the practice of human trafficking, saying forcefully that the term slavery should be used instead: “We have become accustomed to using the term ‘human trafficking’, but in truth we should speak of slavery: slavery for work, sexual slavery, slavery for profit.”

“It is painful to see how in this land … so many women are devalued, denigrated and exposed to endless violence. Violence against women cannot be treated as ‘normal’, maintaining a culture of machismo blind to the leading role that women play in our communities. It is not right for us to look the other way and let the dignity of so many women, especially young women, be trampled upon.”

He noted that many people, desperate to escape poverty, come to the area to work in the gold mines, but he cautioned that gold can quickly turn into “a false god that demands human sacrifices.”

“False gods, the idols of avarice, money and power, corrupt everything. They corrupt people and institutions, and they ruin the forest,” he said, adding that Christ called these “demons that require much prayer to expel.”

The Pope then urged the community to continue forming movements and organizations aimed at overcoming the plagues of corruption and trafficking. “I likewise encourage you to gather, as people of faith and vibrant ecclesial communities, around the person of Jesus,” he said.

“Through heartfelt prayer and hope-filled encounter with Christ, we will be able to attain the conversion that leads us to true life. Jesus promised us true life, authentic life, eternal life. Not a make-believe life, like the one offered by all those dazzling false promises; they promise life but lead us to death.”

Salvation, he said, “is not something generic or abstract. Our Father looks at real people, with real faces and histories. Every Christian community must be a reflection of this gaze, this presence that creates bonds and generates family and community. It is a way of making visible the kingdom of heaven, in communities where everyone feels a part of the whole, where they feel called by name and encouraged to be a builder of life for others.”

Pope Francis closes his speech telling the people they live in one of “the most exuberant explosions of life on our planet,” and urged them love the land and to “realize that it belongs to you. Breathe it in, listen to it, marvel at it.”

“Fall in love with this land called ‘Madre de Dios,’ commit yourself to it and care for it,” he said, and “do not use this land as a mere disposable object, but as a genuine treasure to be enjoyed, cultivated and entrusted to your children.”

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Santiago, Chile, Jan 19, 2018 / 09:58 am (CNA/EWTN News).- At the end of his three-day visit to Chile, Pope Francis came to the defense of a controversial bishop, saying accusations that he helped cover up abuse are unproven and amount to “calumny.”

Responding to a Chilean journalist who asked about the issue, Pope Francis said “the day they bring me proof against Bishop Barros, I’ll speak. There is not one shred of proof against him. It’s all calumny. Is that clear?”

The 2015 appointment of Bishop Juan Barros Madrid to lead the Diocese Osorno, continues to draw harsh criticism from activists and abuse victims who accuse the bishop of covering up the crimes of his longtime friend, Father Fernando Karadima.

Karadima, who once led a lay movement from his parish in El Bosque, was convicted of sexually abusing minors in a 2011 Vatican trial, and at the age of 84, he was sentenced to a life of prayer and solitude.

Barros has repeatedly insisted that he knew nothing of the abuse, at one point telling the Associated Press that “I never knew anything about, nor ever imagined the serious abuses which that priest committed against the victims.”

“I have never approved of nor participated in such serious dishonest acts and I have never been convicted by any tribunal of such things.”
 
In January 2015 Francis named Barros to head the Diocese of Osorno in southern Chile, setting off a wave of objections and calls for his resignation from several priests. Dozens of protesters, including non-Catholics, attempted to disrupt his March 21, 2015 installation Mass at the Osorno cathedral.

Days later, Archbishop Fernando Chomali Garib of Concepcion said that Pope Francis had told him that there was “no objective reason at all” that the bishop should not be installed. The pontiff had been kept up-to-date on the situation.

On March 31, 2015, the Vatican’s Congregation for Bishops also released a statement, saying that the office had “carefully examined the prelate’s candidature and did not find objective reasons to preclude the appointment.”
 
The then-apostolic nuncio to Chile, Archbishop Ivo Scapolo, said that all information about Barros was passed on to Pope Francis. Most of the people in the church, he said, were not protesters, but “people who love their bishop.”

On May 6, 2015, five months after Barros was appointed to lead the Diocese of Osorno, Deacon Jaime Coiro, general secretary of the Chilean episcopal conference, told Pope Francis that the Church in Osorno “is praying and suffering for you.”

“Osorno suffers, yes,” Pope Francis said, “for silliness.” According to a video of the conversation released by Chile’s Ahora Noticias, the Pope had told Coiro that “the only accusation against that bishop was discredited by the judicial court.”

“Think with your head, and do not be carried away by the noses of the leftists, who are the ones who put this thing together,” the Pope added.

In his first speech after landing in Chile Jan. 15 Pope Francis acknowledged the pain and distress the scandal has caused to the local Church and to the wider Chilean society, telling the country’s civil authorities he feels “pain and shame at the irreparable damage caused to children by some ministers of the Church.”

Asking for pardon, he said “I am one with my brother bishops, for it is right to ask for forgiveness and make every effort to support the victims, even as we commit ourselves to ensuring that such things do not happen again.”

However, in response to the Pope’s comment Jan. 18, Juan Carlos Cruz – one of Barros’ most outspoken accusers and one of Karadima’s victims – tweeted: “As if I could have taken a selfie or a photo while Karadima abused me and others and Juan Barros stood by watching it all…These people are truly crazy, and the pontiff talks about atonement to the victims. Nothing has changed, and his plea for forgiveness is empty.”

[…]

Puerto Maldonado, Peru, Jan 19, 2018 / 09:16 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Speaking to members of Peru’s indigenous Amazonian communities Friday, Pope Francis said that contrary to the consumerist mentality that places material objects above the good of the people, protecting the Amazon also means taking into account the best interests of those who live there.

“Allow me to state that if, for some, you are viewed as an obstacle or a hindrance, the fact is your lives cry out against a style of life that is oblivious to its own real cost,” the Pope told indigenous Peruvians Jan. 19.

“We have to break with the historical paradigm that views Amazonia as an inexhaustible source of supplies for other countries without concern for its inhabitants,” he continued, emphasizing that Amazonians are “a living memory of the mission that God has entrusted to us all: the protection of our common home.”

Pope Francis is visiting Peru from Jan. 18-21. During his first full day in the country, he met with indigenous people of the Amazon region in the city of Puerto Maldonado. The city lies in the Madre de Dios region in southeast Peru, and is considered the gateway to the southern Amazon jungle.

There are about 332,000 indigenous Peruvians living in the country’s Amazon region, of which 29,000 are within the Apostolic Vicariate of Puerto Maldonado.

The encounter included a performance of songs and dances by the ancient Arambut and an address by the Apostolic Vicar of Puerto Maldonado, Bishop David Martinez de Aguirre Guinea, O.P.

Before speaking, Francis also heard the testimonies of three Amazonian people. Copies of his 2015 encyclical, Laudato Si, translated into the local languages, were also distributed. Later in the day, he will have lunch with representatives of the Amazon.

In his speech, the Pope listed the different native groups which live in the Peruvian Amazon, thanking them for their attendance, and for giving him the opportunity to see, “closer up, in your faces, the reflection of this land.”

“It is a diverse face, one of infinite variety and enormous biological, cultural and spiritual richness,” he said.

The Pope also drew attention to the threats native Amazonians face on their own land, stating that at present they are probably some of the worst they’ve experienced.

He listed the different challenges they currently face, including “neo-extractivism,” which is when large businesses try to take possession of the petroleum, gas, lumber, and gold in the region.

There are also other movements that, “under the guise of preserving the forest, hoard great expanses of woodland and negotiate with them,” leading to situations of oppression for native people, who lose access to the land and its resources, he said.

Pointing to human trafficking, which he called a “devastating assault on life,” Francis strongly condemned, in particular, slave labor and sexual abuse, which are often linked with illegal mining, saying “the defense of the earth has no other purpose than the defense of life.”

He said that we cannot forget the words of St. Turibius, who at the Third Council of Lima in the 1500s said, “that not only in times past were great wrongs and acts of coercion done to these poor people, but in our own time many seek to do the same.”

“Sadly, five centuries later, these words remain timely,” he noted. “That prophecy must remain alive in our Church, which will never stop pleading for the outcast and those who suffer.”

Francis also focused on the good work of the Church in the Amazon, and the many missionaries throughout history who have devoted themselves to the region, defending its people and their cultures.

“Each culture and each worldview that receives the Gospel enriches the Church by showing a new aspect of Christ’s face,” he said. “Do not yield to those attempts to uproot the Catholic faith from your peoples.”

“The Church is not alien to your problems and your lives, she does not want to be aloof from your way of life and organization. We need the native peoples to shape the culture of the local churches in Amazonia,” he said.

He encouraged people to help their bishops and missionaries to be one with them, so that through inclusive dialogue they can help to shape the face of the Church.

It was in this spirit, Francis explained, that he decided to convoke an upcoming Synod of Bishops on the Amazon, which will take place in 2019.

The Pope also voiced his encouragement for those who use art, literature, craftsmanship and music to share their worldview and cultural richness with the world.

Much has been written and said about you by others, he said, but “it is good that you are now the ones to define yourselves and show us your identity. We need to listen to you.”

This is the reason I wanted to visit you and listen to you, he explained. “So that we can stand together, in the heart of the Church, and share your challenges and reaffirm with you a whole-hearted option for the defense of life, the defense of the earth and the defense of cultures.”

[…]

Iquique, Chile, Jan 18, 2018 / 05:27 pm (ACI Prensa).- Pope Francis stopped the ‘popemobile’ today in the streets of Iquique, Chile today, after seeing a police officer thrown from her horse as the vehicle passed her by.

#FranciscoEnChile… […]