CNA Staff, Jun 30, 2020 / 09:30 am (CNA).- A total of 6,666 abortions were performed in Ireland in the first year following the repeal of the country’s pro-life Eighth Amendment, according to official figures released Tuesday.
In its first annua… […]
CNA Staff, Jun 27, 2020 / 03:00 am (CNA).- An Italian prisoner, sentenced to 30 years for murder, will make vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience on Saturday, in the presence of his bishop.
Luigi*, 40, wanted to be a priest when he was young, according to Avvenire, the newspaper of the Italian bishops’ conference. Kids called him “Father Luigi” when he was growing up. But alcohol, drugs, and violence changed the path of his life. In fact, he was under the influence of alcohol and cocaine when, getting into a fist fight, he took a life.
He was sentenced to prison. There, he became a lector for Mass. He began to study. He started to pray again. He prayed, especially, “for the salvation of the man I killed,” he wrote in a letter.
That letter was to Bishop Massimo Camisasca of Reggio Emilia-Guastalla. The two began a correspondence last year. By then, Luigi had grown close with two priests who acted as chaplains to the prison in Reggio Emilia- Fr. Matteo Mioni and Fr. Daniele Simonazzi.
Bishop Camisasca told Avvenire that in 2016 he decided to spend time in prison ministry. “I didn’t know much about the reality of prison, I confess. But since then a path of presence, celebration and sharing has started that has enriched me greatly,” the bishop said.
Through that ministry, his correspondence with Luigi began. Speaking of his letters, the bishop said that “a passage that greatly touched me is the one in which Luidi says that ‘real life imprisonment is not lived inside a prison but outside, when the light of Christ is missing.” Luigi’s June 26 vows will not be part of joining a religious order or other organization. They are instead a promise to God to live poverty, chastity, and obedience, commonly called the evangelical counsels, exactly where he is — in prison.
The idea emerged from his conversation with prison chaplains.
“Initially he wanted to wait for his release from prison. It was Fr Daniele who suggested a different path, which would allow him to make these solemn vows now,” Camisasca told Avvenire.
“None of us are masters of our own future, the bishops said, “and this is all the more true for a person deprived of his freedom. This is why I wanted Luigi to think first of all what these vows mean in his present condition.” “In the end I convinced myself that in his gesture of self-giving there is something luminous for him, for the other prisoners and for the Church itself,” the bishop said.
In reflections on his vows, Luigi wrote that chastity will allow him to “mortify what is external, so that what is most important about us may emerge.”
Poverty offers him the possibility of settling for “the perfection of Christ, who has become poor” by making poverty itself “go from misfortune to bliss,” he wrote.
Luigi wrote that poverty is also the ability to share life generously with other prisoners like him. Obedience, he said, is obedience is the willingness to listen, even while knowing that “God also speaks through the mouth of the ‘fools.'”
Bishop Camisasca told Avvenire that “with the [coronavirus] pandemic we are all experiencing a time of combat and sacrifice. Luigi’s experience can really be a collective sign of hope: not to escape difficulties but to face them with strength and conscience. I did not know prison, I repeat, and also for me the impact was very hard at the beginning.”
“It seemed to me a world of despair in which the prospect of resurrection was continually contradicted and denied. This story, like others I have known, shows that this is not the case,” said the bishop.
Bishop Camisasca stressed that the merit of this vocation is “of the action of the priests, the extraordinary work of the prison police and of all health personnel, without a doubt.”
“But on the other hand there is the mystery that I can’t help but think about when I look up at the crucifix in my study. It’s from the prison workshop, it prevents me from forgetting the prisoners. Their sufferings and hopes are always with me. And they concern each of us,” he concluded.
*A pseudonym has been used in the reporting of this story.
Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Jun 26, 2020 / 11:30 am (CNA).- Ireland received its lowest rating ever by the U.S. State Department for its efforts to combat human trafficking, in the agency’s annual trafficking report released on Thursday.
The 2020… […]
Rome, Italy, Jun 26, 2020 / 10:30 am (CNA).- The Vatican’s apostolic archives reopened to researchers in June after a nearly three-month closure because of the pandemic.
Italy’s lockdown beginning in early March has impacted scholars&rsquo… […]
CNA Staff, Jun 26, 2020 / 10:00 am (CNA).- Churches and other places of worship in Ireland will be permitted to open to more than 50 people, following a new exception to the country’s Phase Three coronavirus reopening. The exception was announced… […]
Rome Newsroom, Jun 26, 2020 / 08:30 am (CNA).- Scientists confirmed this month that a crucifix in the Italian city of Lucca is the oldest wooden statue in Europe.
A radiocarbon dating study conducted by the National Institute for Nuclear Physics in Florence dated the 8-foot wooden crucifix to between 770 to 880 AD.
The study was commissioned by the Cathedral of Lucca to coincide with the 950-year anniversary of the cathedral’s consecration, which took place in the late 12th century.
Devotion to the crucifix, known as the “Holy Face of Lucca,” spread throughout Europe in the Middle Ages, as pilgrims stopped in the walled Tuscan city on their way along the Via Francigena pilgrimage route from Canterbury to Rome.
Dante mentions the Holy Face of Lucca in his “Inferno,” and English King William II took a solemn vow in the name of the Holy Face in 1087.
The scientific study confirmed the local Catholic tradition based on a historical document stating that the crucifix arrived in Lucca in the late 8th century, according to the Archdiocese of Lucca. However, it does not lend evidence to the legend that it was carved from life by Nicodemus, a contemporary of Christ.
“For centuries much has been written of the Holy Face, but always in terms of faith and piety,”
Annamaria Giusti, scientific consultant for the Lucca Cathedral, said in a statement issued by the Italian National Institute for Nuclear Physics.
“Only in the 20th century did a large critical debate begin around its dating and style. The prevailing opinion was that it was a work to be dated in the second half of the 12th century. Finally the assessment of this antique has closed this age-old controversial problem,” Giusti said.
“We can now consider [it] the oldest wooden statue in the West that has been passed down to us.”
In the carbon-14 study, three samples of the wood were taken from different parts of the crucifix and one of the linen fabric to be evaluated. Each piece dated to between the last decades of the eighth century and beginning of the ninth century.
Archbishop Paolo Giulietti of Lucca hailed the study’s results as a timely “message of salvation that comes from Jesus of Nazareth, crucified for love and risen in the power of God.”
“The Holy Face is not only one of the many crucifixes within our Italy and our Europe,” he said. “It is … a ‘living memory’ of the crucified and risen Christ.”
“It is a memorial that has its origins in antiquity, as today’s announcement confirms for us, and that has left indelible traces in the culture, spirituality of Lucca and the entire continent.”
Due to the coronavirus pandemic, the Cathedral of Lucca has postponed planned events celebrating its 950 year anniversary to the fall. It is unclear whether the city’s annual September 13 candlelight procession honoring the Holy Face will take place this year as many similar processions in Italy have been cancelled.
The at least 1,140-year-old crucifix can be viewed inside of the Lucca Cathedral of St. Martin.
CNA Staff, Jun 26, 2020 / 05:00 am (CNA).- Somewhere between Mars and Jupiter there is a hunk of rock that now bears the name of a living English Catholic priest.
Fr. Christopher Corbally said Wednesday that he was “thoroughly surprised” w… […]
CNA Staff, Jun 25, 2020 / 12:01 pm (CNA).- The parliament of the Channel Island of Guernsey voted Wednesday to approve a bill expanding abortion time limits, and removing time limits altogether on the abortion of unborn children with disabilities.
Votes held June 24 on 12 propositions made by the health and social care committee of the States of Guernsey carried each of them.
Under the new law meant to ‘modernize’ the territory’s abortion law, the abortion time limit will be increased to 24 weeks, as it is in the UK. The previous law, adopted in 1997, permitted abortion up to 12 weeks. There will be no upper limit on when a child with “significant fetal abnormality” can be aborted. These propositions were approved by a 23-13 vote, with one abstention.
The new law also decriminalizes the procurement of abortion outside the legal framework; drops a requirement that the mother consult with two medical practitioners; allow nurses and midwives to preform medical abortions; and allows medical abortions at home.
It will also force conscientious objectors to make referrals without delay; “make clear that health practitioners may not refuse to participate in care required to save the life or prevent serious injury to the physical or mental health of a woman”; and “create a power in the Law for the Committee for Health & Social Care to make regulations making further provision in relation to the circumstances in which the right of health practitioners to conscientiously object to the provision of care in relation to abortions may be exercised.”
Guernsey is a self-governing Crown Dependency for which the UK is responsible, located off the coast of Normandy. The new law will extend to Guernsey and its associated islands, but not Alderney and Sark, which are also part of the Bailiwick of Guernsey.
During debate on the propositions, according to the Guernsey Press, Deputy Richard Graham commented that “I regret that Health & Social Care have identified the UK as the gold standard to be followed, instead I would urge them to look to those countries that have low abortion rates, and seek to learn lessons from them, they are no less civilised, no less compassionate than we are, and they strike me as a far better abortion role model than the UK.”
The Bailiwick Express reported that Deputy Emilie McSwiggan, a member of the health and social care committee, said: “What we are trying to do is find a way through that is as compassionate as it can be, which is as fair as it can be, which balances and reflects the choices that people have to make and allows people to make those choices safely and within the context of a legal framework that is clear and modern and fair.”
Several amendments to the new law, which sought to reduce the proposed time limit on abortions or to maintain limits on the abortion of unborn children with disabilities, had been defeated June 19. The amendments would have retained the same time limits for the abortion of children with disabilies as of all unborn children; made clear that non-fatal conditions such as Down syndrome or cleft palate are not considered fatal foetal abnormalities; and changed the time limit for abortions to 16 or 22 weeks, rather than 24.
Earlier, a sursis motivé to stay the deliberation of the draft law and allow for broader public consultation had been defeated.
According to official figures, 113 abortions were performed in Guernsey in 2018, with a further three involving Guernsey residents performed in England and Wales.
The Catholic Church on the island held an all night prayer vigil at St. Joseph’s Church in St. Peter Port ahead of debate last week.
Bishop Egan of Portsmouth, the diocese which includes Guernsey, urged Catholics earlier this month to resist the “fundamentally detestable” efforts to liberalize the island’s abortion law.
In a June 7 message he argued the changes would violate the commandment “Thou shalt not kill” and the injunction “Love thy neighbor as thyself”, which formed the basis of laws in civilized societies.
“This is why abortion and the current proposal to ‘modernize’ — that is, to increase — its availability in Guernsey is fundamentally detestable,” he said. “Under the bogus word ‘modernization,’ an attempt is being made to further liberalize abortion, to make it a lot easier and a lot more common.”
Egan said: “They want to allow abortions much later in pregnancy, abortions to be carried out with less red tape, abortions to take place at home and outside hospitals, and, grimly, abortions right up to birth for a disabled child, a child unwell, or a child with Downs syndrome. How must a person with Downs syndrome feel about this?”
“They refer to abortion euphemistically as a ‘procedure,’ a ‘termination’ with help from ‘the professionals.’ But what procedure can justify any professional terminating the life of an innocent baby? The more you see what an abortion is, the more you can see it is anti-life, anti-human and anti-woman.”
In a joint letter, John P. Ogier, pastor of Spurgeon Baptist Church, and Fr. Bruce Barnes, the Catholic Dean of the Bailiwick of Guernsey, criticized the timing of the debate amid the coronavirus pandemic.
They wrote: “We believe this is an entirely inappropriate time to be considering such a sensitive and morally important issue, in the midst of the current COVID-19 pandemic and with such a truncated timescale for public debate and consideration.”
CNA Staff, Jun 25, 2020 / 09:30 am (CNA).- England’s metropolitan archbishops urged Catholics Thursday to consider going to Mass during the week rather than on Sunday after public liturgies resume July 4.
In a message to the Catholic commu… […]
CNA Staff, Jun 25, 2020 / 07:00 am (CNA).- Pope Francis appointed Thursday an apostolic administrator to take charge of a Polish diocese whose bishop is under investigation over his handling of an abuse case.
The Vatican announced June 25 that the pop… […]
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