Europe

Limburg, Germany, Sep 19, 2019 / 12:06 pm (CNA).- The ‘secret preacher of block 17’ who witnessed to Christ in a Nazi concentration camp was beatified this week in Limburg, Germany.

Blessed Father Richard Henkes was a German Pallottine priest denounced by the Nazis for his outspoken preaching. He died in Dachau concentration camp in 1945 while caring for prisoners sick with typhus.

“The real reformers of the Church are the blessed and the saints,” said Cardinal Kurt Koch at Henkes’ beatification on Sept. 19. “For we can only achieve the utmost externally, in structural terms, when we are also prepared to strive to achieve our utmost internally, in faith.”

“Love is not without sacrifice,” Koch said. “The Christian martyrdom is only real if it is realized as the supreme act of love for God and for one’s brothers and sisters.”

From the pulpit and the classroom, Fr. Henkes spoke out against the Nazi ideology and condemned the regime’s crimes against human dignity, focusing one homily on their killing of the disabled. Henkes was first denounced in 1937 for one of his homilies, for which he had to stand trial.

In the following years of World War II, Henkes was interrogated and threatened by the Gestapo again and again as he continued to work as a youth chaplain and retreat master.

“In the face of this neo-pagan ideology, Father Henkes surmised that wherever God is reduced to insignificance and pushed out of the public eye, man is also reduced to insignificance,” Koch said.

“Only when God is exalted through us human beings, when we do what Mary did in the Magnificat – Magnificat anima mea: Let God be exalted through my soul – wherever that takes place, there man is not reduced to insignificance, but is given a share in the greatness of God’s love,” the cardinal said.

Fr. Henkes was finally arrested by the Gestapo in May 1943 because of the content of one of his homilies in Branitz. He was then imprisoned in the Dachau concentration camp, where he lived in the priests’ barracks, did compulsory labor, and secretly studied Czech with the future archbishop of Prague, Servant of God Cardinal Josef Beran.

Henkes had begun studying the Czech language before his imprisonment, and said that he hoped to continue serving the Czech people as a priest after the war. He secretly preached in block 17 of Dachau, where there were many Czech people.

In late 1944, a typhus epidemic overtook block 17. Fr. Henkes volunteered to be locked up with the sick prisoners, so that he could continue to minister to them and care for the dying.

He described the situation in Dachau in a letter smuggled out of the camp through a middleman: “People are dying in masses because they are completely starving. There are only skeletons. A gruesome picture. I have been vaccinated against typhus fever and I hope that the Lord God protects me … However, one thinks of how this will end up here. We can do nothing, we can only rely on the Lord God.”

After eight weeks in the quarantined barracks, Fr. Henkes became infected with typhus. He died within a week, on Feb. 22, 1945. Allied forces liberated Dachau concentration camp on April 29, 1945.

Shortly after the end of World War II, Catholics in the Czech Republic began calling for Henkes’ cause for sainthood to be opened.

Last Sunday, Henkes joined the ranks of the saints and beatified priests and religious who died witnessing to Christ amid the inhumanity and horror of the Nazi concentration camps. This includes not only St. Maximilian Kolbe and St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, who both were killed in Auschwitz, but also Henkes’ fellow prisoners in the priest barracks of Dachau, several of whom have already been beatified.

More than 2,500 Catholic priests and seminarians were imprisoned in Dachau concentration camp under the Nazi regime, of which 1,034 died in the camp.

Blessed Michal Kozal — a Polish bishop killed by lethal injection in Dachau in 1943 — was beatified by St. John Paul II in Warsaw in 1987.

Blessed Karl Leisner was secretly ordained a priest while imprisoned in Dachau in 1944 by a French bishop also held within the concentration camp. (Bishop Gabriel Piguet was able to obtain clandestine authorization from Leisner’s bishop before the ordination.) Leisner died of tuberculosis shortly after celebrating his first Mass.

Fr. Leisner was beatified, along with Fr. Provost Lichtenberg, by St. John Paul II during his visit to Berlin in 1996.

Blessed Fr. Engelmar Unzeitig, who also died in Dachau while caring for sick prisoners infected with typhus in 1945, was beatified in Germany in 2016. Fr. Unzeitig wrote in a letter from the concentration camp: “God’s almighty grace helps us overcome obstacles … love doubles our strength, makes us inventive, makes us feel content and inwardly free. If people would only realize what God has in store for those who love him!”

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Rome, Italy, Sep 17, 2019 / 03:18 pm (CNA).- St. Robert Bellarmine, whose feast is celebrated Sept. 17 on the General Roman Calendar, was a Jesuit and a cardinal who used his incredible intellect to defend Catholic teaching, largely through responses t… […]

Munich, Germany, Sep 16, 2019 / 11:45 am (CNA).- The head of the German bishops’ conference told Vatican officials last week that addressing controversial theological topics during the German bishops’ proposed “binding synodal path&rd… […]

Budapest, Hungary, Sep 12, 2019 / 12:02 am (CNA).- A European Union official who played a role in working for the release of Pakistani death row inmate Asia Bibi said the outcome shows the potential of international cooperation to promote religious fre… […]

The Hague, The Netherlands, Sep 11, 2019 / 04:29 pm (CNA).- A Netherlands court acquitted a doctor involved in a controversial euthanasia case who had been accused of breaching the consent requirements for ending a woman’s life.

A district court in The Hague issued a decision on Wednesday. Judge Mariette Renckens said the now-retired doctor – whose name was not given – did not need a final consent for the euthanasia of a 74-year-old woman because of the severity of the patient’s dementia. The doctor instead relied upon a desire for euthanasia expressed four years earlier.

“We conclude that all requirements of the euthanasia legislation had been met. Therefore the suspect is acquitted of all charges,” said Renckens, who presided over the case.

“We believe that given the deeply demented condition of the patient the doctor did not need to verify her wish for euthanasia,” she said, according to the Guardian.

Euthanasia was legalized in the Netherlands in 2002, The procedure is available for terminally ill patients who experience unbearable suffering and face no foreseeable improvement. Under the Termination of Life on Request and Assisted Suicide Act, patients are required to give consent in writing and persistently over time.

The patient in question suffered from Alzheimer’s disease and was euthanized in 2016. When she was diagnosed with the disease four years prior, she requested the procedure occur at a time she deemed appropriate and before she was placed in a nursing home.

“I want to be able to decide (when to die) while still in my senses and when I think the time is right,” she told the public broadcaster NOS, according to Courthouse News.

Before the patient was moved to a nursing home, the Dutch doctor initiated the euthanasia process. The doctor confirmed her decision with two other medical professionals.

On the day of the patient’s euthanasia, the doctor gave her a sedative to put her to sleep. However, the patient woke up, and her daughter and husband had to restrain her while the procedure was completed.

Prosecutors said the doctor violated the Netherlands’ law by not ensuring the consent of the patient, who might have changed her mind, the BBC reported. They said that a more in-depth discussion should have taken place.

“A crucial question to this case is how long a doctor should continue consulting a patient with dementia, if the patient in an earlier stage already requested euthanasia,” said Sanna van der Harg, a spokeswoman for the prosecution.

According to the BBC, the court said it was impossible to further identify the patient’s consent, since the elderly patient no longer understood the definition of “euthanasia.” The court ruled that a decision made during a time of sound judgment is valid even after the patient loses their mental capacities.

Religious freedom and pro-life advocates decried the court’s decision and emphasized that legal euthanasia has dangerous consequences for society, the National Catholic Register reported.

“With regulators and euthanasia campaigners closely intermingled, this case shines a spotlight on the weakness of safeguards and review procedures, as well as, frighteningly, on the whole culture around attitudes to end-of-life care in the Netherlands,” said Gordon Macdonald, CEO of Care Not Killing.

“The case in the Netherlands exposes the threat that legalizing euthanasia poses to individuals and the society as a whole,” said Andreas Thonhauser, spokesman for Alliance Defending Freedom International. “Once a country allows euthanasia, as in the Netherlands, there is no logical stopping point.”

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San Sebastian, Spain, Sep 10, 2019 / 03:26 pm (CNA).- The Bishop of San Sebastián wrote Sunday of the problems facing Spain as its birthrate is well below replacement level, and called on society to consider the implications of this situation.

Bishop José Ignacio Munilla Aguirre wrote Sept. 8 in El Diario Vasco, a San Sebastián daily.

He referred to the data published in June by Spain’s National Institute for Statistics, which he said show a “desolate panorama in terms of the birthrate.”

According to the article “fertility stands at 1.25 children, and births have fallen 6% compared to the previous year. We have accumulated a decrease of 30% in the last decade; if we had not benefited from the birthrate of immigrants, this decrease in Spain would have reached 44%.”

And so, in Spain “more people are dying than are being born, and while the over-65 population exceeds 9 million people, those under 15 are not more than 7 million,” data which “is further aggravated if we refer to the Basque Country.”

Munilla explained that “it seems we’re getting used to periodically hearing this kind of data without sufficiently taking into account what it implies.”

He therefore said that the publication of these figures raises the logical concern “for the sustainability of the pension system.”

He also said that there are those who “exhibit a certain fear for the future of our civilization since the migratory flow is accelerating because of the demographic dearth.”

The bishop did note that there are a few voices who bring up the need for “implementing measures to foster the birthrate, such as balancing one’s work and personal life, the fight against speculation in the price of housing, direct incentives, etc.”

The Bishop of San Sebastián also explained that “we’re not facing a new phenomenon in the history of humanity,” since this “crisis in the birthrate has accompanied almost all cultural declines.”

He noted for example the testimony of Polybius, a Greek historian of the second century BC, who wrote: “The peoples of this country have yielded to vanity and attachment to material goods; they have become fond of the easy life and don’t want to get married or, if they do get married, they refuse to keep the newborns with them, or only raise one or two at the most, in order to provide them with the best kind of life and later leave them a considerable fortune.”

Munilla noted that Polybius’ Histories ends with the conquest of “decadent Greece” by the Roman Republic, and that “centuries later the decline of the Roman Empire arrives, again accompanied by a profound crisis in the birthrate.”

Given this situation, the Bishop of San Sebastián said that “it would be very sad if our concern for the demographic crisis were limited to the fear of the weakening our pensions or the fear of the arrival of foreigners.”

He said that “likewise it would be very naive to suppose that government is going to be able to reverse this trend with the mere passage of incentives to give birth, however necessary they may be.”

In fact, he underscored that the “wealthiest social classes” do not have a higher than average fertility rate, while “the immigrants in Spain have a much greater number of children than the natives, even though their economic level is lower and their  objective difficulties to balance work and personal life are greater.”

Consequently “our birthrate crisis is one of the most obvious signs of the crisis of values the West is suffering,” the bishop explained.

“In the context of a society in which quality of life is identified with mere well-being, the challenge of motherhood and fatherhood is perceived as too demanding … it’s undeniable that the education of children demands a full and unconditional commitment, I would dare to say heroic, which is not easily compatible with the culture of the weekend, the digital invasion, compulsive consumerism, widespread disordered lives, the existential crisis.”

 “Certainly motherhood and fatherhood require ‘giving your life’ in the broadest sense of the term” since “the demographic crisis hides a crisis of hope,”  Munilla noted.

 “To address the question it’s important for us to understand that the low birthrate not only compromises the future of a culture but affects to a great extent its present,” since “the dearth of children in our families and in our society impoverishes much more than we suppose.”

The bishop emphasized that “on not a few occasions we have found that only the innocence of children is capable of jolting us out of our comfort zone, of our becoming bourgeois, leading us to give the best of ourselves until we reach the height of maturity, which often coincides with self-forgetfulness” and so he stressed that “our culture urgently needs children because there are few things so false as joy without innocence.”

Munilla also recalled that it is important not “to deprive children of the experience of having brothers and sisters” since its deficit “translates in education, in the notable difficulty in socialization, besides the tendency to developt a narcissistic wound.”

“If the filial experience helps us to become conscious of our dignity, that we are unique and irrepeatable, the experience of fraternity teaches us to be one among all; something absolutely necessary,” he reflected.

He explained that “fatherhood and motherhood require ‘giving your life.’ But life is something that is greater than us. It’s a ‘miracle’ that we have received gratis and we are called to transmit it generously” and that is why “we believers do not usually speak of reproduction but of procreation” and that “the parents cooperate with God the creator to give life to the world.”

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Berlin, Germany, Sep 10, 2019 / 01:40 pm (CNA).- The German bishops have rejected an alternative proposal for a synodal process centered on the “priority of evangelization” called for by Pope Francis.

The proposal was voted down in an Augu… […]

Belfast, Northern Ireland, Sep 9, 2019 / 12:35 pm (CNA).- Tens of thousands of people took to the streets of Belfast on Saturday to protest against the impending legalization of abortion in Northern Ireland. Pro-life advocates told CNA that they fear t… […]

Tuam, Ireland, Sep 5, 2019 / 04:24 pm (CNA).- The Catholic Church in Ireland has for the first time recognized a miracle attached to the Knock Shrine, where a woman was cured of multiple sclerosis thirty years ago.

Marion Carroll had been bedridden for years until she was healed in 1989 during a blessing with a monstrance at the shrine.

“I recognise that Marion was healed from her long-standing illness while on pilgrimage in this sacred place,” Bishop Francis Duffy of Ardagh and Clonmacnois said in his homily during a Sept. 1 Mass at the shrine, located in Knock, about 20 miles north of Tuam.

“Many have attested to the dramatic change that came about in Marion here and on her return to Athlone in 1989. Without doubt there was a healing, a cure of the illness that beset Marion for several years. Marion was liberated from sickness and its impact on her and on her family. It is also a healing for which there is no medical explanation at present, it is definite and yet defies medical explanation.”

Bishop Duffy was leading a diocesan pilgrimage to the shrine, in which Marion and her family participated.

Archbishop Michael Neary of Tuam also spoke at the Mass, saying, “today the Church formally acknowledges that this healing does not admit of any medical explanation and joins in prayer, praise and thanksgiving to God. In these situations, the Church must always be very cautious. This is illustrated by the fact that thirty years have elapsed since this took place, during which time the examination by the Medical Bureau testifies that there is no medical explanation for this healing.”

While many visitors to the shrine have claimed cures or favors, this is the first cure which the Church in Ireland has recognized as miraculous.

Carroll was cured in 1989, when Bishop Colm O’Reilly, then Bishop of Ardagh and Clonmacnois, blessed her with a monstrance.

She had been taken to the shrine on a stretcher, as she was paralyzed. Her eyesight was also impaired, and she was epileptic.

After the Mass, she was taken to a rest and care centre, where she asked that her stretcher be opened; when it was, she stood up and was well.

Since her cure, Carroll has volunteered at the shrine, assisting pilgrims.

The Knock Shrine is built on the site of an 1879 apparition of the Virgin Mary, St. Joseph, St. John the Evangelist, angels, and the Lamb of God on the south gable of the town church. For a period of about two hours, a crowd gathered to adore the apparition and to pray the rosary. Despite a rainstorm, the ground around the gable did not get wet.

Unlike most other Marian apparitions, the Virgin Mary was silent the entire time and did not offer any sort of message or prophesy.

Vatican officials found the apparition at Knock to be “trustworthy and satisfactory” after two separate commissions, in 1879 and in 1936.

Shortly after the apparition, Knock became a sight of pilgrimage. Pilgrims chipped away the original wall by taking away pieces of cement as relics.

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Rome, Italy, Sep 5, 2019 / 11:24 am (CNA).- More than 20 years ago, Ann Pollak traveled to Calcutta, hoping to volunteer alongside Mother Teresa. The experience would spark a years-long process that would eventually lead her to adopt a severely handicapped child from one of the care centers run by the Missionaries of Charity. 

“It has not been easy, at all, but the blessings have far, far outweighed the sacrifices,” Pollak told CNA. “Oddly, in adopting a blind child, I began seeing the world through my own eyes from a different perspective.”

Nearly 18 years ago, Pollak adopted a child from one of Mother Teresa’s orphanages. But adoption was not initially her intent. 

In 1995, Pollak travelled to India in order to meet Mother Teresa. She spent two weeks doing volunteer work and was impressed with Mother Teresa’s constant smile, and the fact that despite winning a Nobel Prize and being globally famous, the religious sister was very approachable.

Pollak would return to do volunteer work numerous times in the years that followed. In 1997, about a month before Mother Teresa’s death, she was working with handicapped children. She was assigned to feed one little girl, Rekha, who was blind, autistic and mentally delayed. 

“She had the sweetest smile on her face,” Pollak recalled of Rekha. “I just fell in love with her.” She also believed that the child had potential to develop and grow, if she was able to get the proper care and attention from a family.

A year later, Pollak returned to India to see if the little girl was still there. She was. 

Pollak said that she wanted to find the young girl a family, or at least a school, somewhere that would be able to offer the proper care for someone with her particular needs.

But as time went on, she became frustrated with her inability to find anyone to care for the girl. She began praying every day, asking God for a solution. Although she had not previously considered adoption, she began to feel an inner call to adopt Rekha.

“I couldn’t find any other solution,” she reflected.

It took almost a year to prepare and get everything in order. Numerous complications arose. Pollak recalled praying what Mother Teresa had termed her “Little Novena” – a series of 9 Memorare prayers offered consecutively. 

Within days, the complications had been resolved and the adoption process was complete. “I attribute that to the intercession of Mother Teresa and also the Blessed Virgin Mary,” Pollak said.

Rekha was seven-and-a-half years old at the time of her adoption. Now, almost 18 years later, Pollak said that her daughter has come a long way. While some of her conditions can never be cured – for example, she was born without eyes, and therefore has no chance of ever being able to see – there are other areas in which she has developed significantly. 

Despite autism and mental delays, Rekha was able to start speaking at age 15. Once she started speaking, she began picking up more and more words, and now has a basic vocabulary.

But the transition was not easy. For years after she was taken away from India, Rehka had frequent, violent fits. 

“During these fits, she would bite herself, rip off her clothes, throw herself on the floor…and she also physically hurt me,” Pollak said, recalling times that her daughter would bite her or tear out her hair.

Pollak believes that these fits were caused by Rekha’s inability to communicate her needs, combined with insecurity at being transported to a new and unknown life, as well as hormonal changes as she went through puberty.

Thanks to medication and a great deal of devotion and time, Pollak said that “Rekha is today a much calmer individual – the fits still occur but they are much less intense and much less frequent.”

“Rekha has helped me to become a more patient person!” she added. 

Many of Pollak’s friends and family were not initially supportive, with some of them believing that she was making a serious mistake. A dear friend told her that she was ruining her life.

Her younger sister was married to an adoptee and was sympathetic and supportive, she recalled. But her older sister made it clear that she wanted nothing to do with the adoption, including assuming any responsibility if anything were to happen Pollak. 

But over time, Pollak said she seen how her daughter has brought out the best in humanity.

“Over the…years that she’s been with me, I have witnessed the graciousness, kindness and love of other human beings, from people whom we’ve met maybe only on a bus ride to people who have become a part of our life,” she said, pointing specifically to the caregivers they had worked with over the years.

“People frequently stare at us in public because we are sort of an ‘odd couple’ and because Rekha is often very boisterous, but those stares are so often accompanied by smiles.”

On Sept. 4, 2016, Pollak and Rehka were both able to attend Mother Teresa’s canonization, an opportunity that Pollak considers incredibly special. 

“Today, I believe that my mission to meet Mother Teresa indirectly led me to Rekha,” she said, reflecting on her own journey to adoption. While there were many factors in her decision, which unfolded over several years, she said that watching the saint’s work more than 20 years ago was part of the inspiration that led to her become more deeply involved in the life of the girl she would go on to adopt.

“Seeing Mother Teresa’s work in Calcutta and in other places in the word has a strong impact, and can turn a casual observer into a protagonist,” she said. 

An earlier version of this story was originally published on CNA Sept. 5, 2017.

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