“Those who call themselves ‘Jews’, who are not really Jews, but are in fact Satan: You should learn to call them by their real name, ‘Satan;’ you are coming face-to-face with Satan, the Arch Deceiver, […]
Rome, Italy, May 13, 2019 / 06:08 am (CNA).- Cardinal Konrad Krajewski climbed down a manhole Saturday to restore the power supply to a disused, Italian state-owned property in Rome where many homeless persons have been living.
The building’s po… […]
Medjugorje, Bosnia and Herzegovina, May 12, 2019 / 07:46 am (CNA).- Pope Francis has given the green light for Catholics to organize pilgrimages to Medjugorje, a site of alleged Marian apparitions, though the Church has not yet given a verdict on the apparitions’ authenticity.
The pope’s authorization of pilgrimages to the site is not to be understood as an “authentication” of the alleged apparitions, “which still require an examination by the Church,” papal spokesman Alessandro Gisotti said in a statement May 12.
He added that anyone leading pilgrimages to the site should avoid creating “confusion or ambiguity under the doctrinal aspect,” including priests who intend to celebrate Mass there.
The provision was made as an acknowledgment of the “abundant fruits of grace” that have come from Medjugorje and to promote those “good fruits.” It is also part of the “particular pastoral attention” of Pope Francis to the place, Gisotti said.
The announcement of the papal authorization was made May 12 by the Vatican’s apostolic visitor to the site, Archbishop Henryk Hoser, and Archbishop Luigi Pezzuto, apostolic nuncio to Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Hoser, retired archbishop of Warsaw-Prague, was appointed apostolic visitor to Medjugorje by Pope Francis in May 2018. His directive, which is of an undetermined length, is to oversee the pastoral needs at the site of the alleged Marian apparitions.
Hoser’s appointment as apostolic visitor followed his service as papal envoy to the site in 2017.
In January 2014, a Vatican commission concluded a nearly four-year-long investigation on the doctrinal and disciplinary aspects of the Medjugorje apparitions, and submitted a document to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
When the congregation has analyzed the commission’s findings, it will finalize a document on the site, which will be submitted to the pope, who will make a final decision.
The alleged apparitions began June 24, 1981, when six children in Medjugorje, a town in what is now Bosnia and Herzegovina, began to experience phenomena which they have claimed to be apparitions of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
According to these six “seers,” the apparitions contained a message of peace for the world, a call to conversion, prayer and fasting, as well as certain secrets surrounding events to be fulfilled in the future.
These apparitions are said to have continued almost daily since their first occurrence, with three of the original six children – who are now young adults – continuing to receive apparitions every afternoon because not all the “secrets” intended for them have been revealed.
Since their beginning, the alleged apparitions have been a source of both controversy and conversion, with many flocking to the city for pilgrimage and prayer, and some claiming to have experienced miracles at the site, while many others claim the visions are non-credible.
Pope Francis visited Bosnia and Herzegovina in June 2015 but declined to stop in Medjugorje during his trip. During his return flight to Rome, he indicated that the process of investigation in the apparitions was nearly complete.
On the return flight from a visit to the Marian shrine of Fatima in May 2017, the pope spoke about the final document of the Medjugorje commission, sometimes referred to as the “Ruini report,” after the head of the commission, Cardinal Camillo Ruini, calling it “very, very good,” and noting a distinction between the first Marian apparitions at Medjugorje and the later ones.
“The first apparitions, which were to children, the report more or less says that these need to continue being studied,” he said, but as for “presumed current apparitions, the report has its doubts,” the pope said.
On multiple occasions, the pope has said he is suspicious of the ongoing apparitions, “I prefer the Madonna as Mother, our Mother, and not a woman who’s the head of an office, who every day sends a message at a certain hour. This is not the Mother of Jesus.”
Paris, France, May 7, 2019 / 09:28 pm (CNA).- Jean Vanier died May 7, at the age of 90.
He died at a L’Arche home in Paris, where he had entered palliative care several weeks ago, after a protracted battle with cancer.
Vanier will be mourned by… […]
Salford, England, May 7, 2019 / 11:56 am (CNA).- The English and Welsh bishops’ lead on environmental issues welcomed Thursday the publication of an advisory group’s report encouraging the British government to cut greenhouse gas net emissions to zero by 2050.
“In achieving this target, we must all play our part, and I’m proud that the Catholic community has taken a leading role in showing what can be achieved. Thousands of our churches are running on renewable energy and schools and parishes in dioceses around the country have committed to living simply and sustainably,” Bishop John Arnold of Salford said May 2.
He called ‘net zero’ an “ambitious target which will be welcomed by the thousands of Catholics in this country who have responded to Pope Francis’s call for us to protect our common home.”
Bishop Arnold said that “we look forward to seeing the government embracing its role in delivering this agenda urgently and enthusiastically.”
“The report represents a welcome recognition that as a country we must be a good ‘global’ neighbour and must think about the millions of our brothers and sisters around the world who already face danger and suffering, and the millions more who will increasingly be affected by climate change.”
The Committee on Climate Change, which issued the report, said the 2050 goal is possible to meet through lowered costs of renewable energy.
Net zero emissions would be achieved by reducing, storing, and offsetting emissions.
Skopje, North Macedonia, May 7, 2019 / 04:17 am (CNA).- Following the example of St. Mother Teresa of Kolkata, hunger for Jesus, partake in the Bread of Life, and then feed Jesus hidden in the poor, Pope Francis said in North Macedonia on Tuesday.
&ld… […]
Skopje, North Macedonia, May 7, 2019 / 01:54 am (CNA).- Speaking to North Macedonian authorities Tuesday, Pope Francis commended the country for its tradition of peaceful coexistence among its variety of cultures and religious and ethnic communities.
The country’s patrimony is “the multiethnic and multi-religious countenance of your people, the legacy of a rich and, indeed, complex history of relationships forged over the course of centuries,” he said May 7 at the Mosaique Hall of the presidential palace in Skopje.
Speaking to the authorities, civil society, and the diplomatic corps, Francis noted it is the first time a pope has visited North Macedonia. He pointed to the land’s time under both the Byzantine and Ottoman empires, calling it “a bridge between East and West and a meeting-point for numerous cultural currents.”
“This crucible of cultures and ethnic and religious identities has resulted in a peaceful and enduring coexistence in which those individual identities have found expression and developed without rejecting, dominating or discriminating against others,” he said.
“They have thus given rise to a fabric of relationships and interactions that can serve as an example and a point of reference for a serene and fraternal communal life marked by diversity and reciprocal respect.”
These features are “highly significant for increased integration” with Europe, the pope said. The country has applied to join both the European Union and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Indeed, its name, North Macedonia, was adopted only last year in an agreement with Greece after a dispute over the use of the name Macedonia.
Pope Francis expressed his hope that North Macedonia’s increased intregation with Europe “will develop in a way that is beneficial for the entire region of the Western Balkans, with unfailing respect for diversity and for fundamental rights.”
He said that in North Macedonia “the different religious identities of Orthodox, Catholics, other Christians, Muslims and Jews, and the ethnic differences between Macedonians, Albanians, Serbs, Croats, and persons of other backgrounds, have created a mosaic in which every piece is essential for the uniqueness and beauty of the whole. That beauty will become all the more evident to the extent that you succeed in passing it on and planting it in the hearts of the coming generation.”
“Every effort made to enable the diverse religious expressions and the different ethnic groups to find a common ground of understanding and respect for the dignity of every human person, and consequently the guarantee of fundamental freedoms, will surely prove fruitful,” according to Pope Francis. “Indeed, those efforts will serve as the necessary seedbed for a future of peace and prosperity.”
He welcomed North Macedonia’s “generous efforts … to welcome and provide assistance to the great number of migrants and refugees coming from different Middle Eastern countries” in 2015 and 2016.
“With you, they found a secure haven. The ready solidarity offered to those in such great need … does you honour. It says something about the soul of this people that, having itself experienced great privations, you recognize in solidarity and in the sharing of goods the route to all authentic development.”
The pope also pointed to the example of Mother Teresa, “one of your illustrious fellow-citizens, who, moved by the love of God, made love of neighbour the supreme law of her life.”
“You are rightly proud of this great woman,” he said. “I urge you to continue to work in a spirit of commitment, dedication and hope, so that the sons and daughters of this land, following her example, can recognize, attain and fully develop the vocation that God has envisaged for them.”
Berlin, Germany, May 6, 2019 / 10:43 am (CNA).- The number of Germans who pay a state-administered “Church tax” to the Catholic Church or the country’s largest Protestant group is expected to be halved by 2060, according to researchers at the University of Freiburg.
Researchers say the expected decline can be predicted a dwindling number of baptisms in Germany, the number of Germans who have departed from formal religious enrollment, and a decrease in Germany’s overall population, which is expected by 2060 to be reduced by 21 percent.
In total, the number of Germans who pay the country’s “Church tax” is expected to decrease by 49%. German law collects an income tax on the country’s Church members, which it distributes to Church organizations, among them the Catholic Church and the Evangelical Church of Germany, a federation of Protestant groups, mostly Lutheran, which constitutes the largest Protestant group in Germany.
Taxpayers have the option of opting out of tax payment by notifying state authorities that they have left the religious group in which they are enrolled. In 2017, the Church tax generated $13.5 billion for religious groups in the country. The predicted decline in membership would lead to major budget shortfalls for the Catholic Church in Germany.
Economist Bernd Raffelhüschen, who led the project, told the protestant church portal EKD.de that there is still potential for change, and the prediction should not be read as a “doomsday prophecy.
Instead, Raffelhüschen said, it presents a “generational task,” since for the next two decades Catholic and Protestant Churches will still have “resources for transformation.”
Likewise, Cardinal Reinhard Marx, president of the German bishops’ conference, has said the report represents a “call to evangelize.”
In March, Eichstätter Bishop Gregory Maria Hanke had called the German bishops to discuss the topic.
“We, the German bishops, urgently need to consider how church taxation can and should continue – I miss this discussion because the Catholic as well as the Protestant Church faces a large number of church departures each year,” Hanke said.
“At the latest in ten years, the church tax receipts will collapse.”
A better way for the future is for the Church to rely on voluntary contributions, Hanke suggested.
After the study’s report last week, Cardinal Marx encouraged German Catholics, “in view of this project, do not panic.”
“The church is always about sharing the gospel, even under changed circumstances, and for me the study is also a call for mission.”
A version of this story was originally published on CNA Deutsch, CNA’s German-language sister agency. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.
Rakovski, Bulgaria, May 6, 2019 / 07:55 am (CNA).- The parish should be at the center of the community, a place where God’s presence is felt and hope and love are shared with the world, Pope Francis told Catholics in Bulgaria, Monday.
“The… […]
Rakovski, Bulgaria, May 6, 2019 / 05:39 am (CNA).- Pope Francis Monday gave First Communion to 245 boys and girls in Rakovski, Bulgaria, telling them the Lord wants them to share the joy of the Eucharist with others.
“Making your First Communion shows that you want to be closer to Jesus every day, to grow in friendship with him and to lead other people to share in the joy he wants us to feel,” the pope said May 6.
“The Lord needs you,” he told the first communicants, “because he wants to work the miracle of bringing his joy to many of your friends and family members.”
Pope Francis said Mass at Sacred Heart Church in Rakovski as part of his May 5-7 trip to Bulgaria and North Macedonia. Catholics in Bulgaria are a small minority — estimated to be fewer than 50,000 in a population of more than 7 million. Rakovski, a town of around 20,000 people, is mainly Catholic.
According to local authorities, at Mass there were around 700 people inside the church and another 10,000 outside.
In his homily, Francis addressed the first communicants, pointing out that Jesus’ miracle of the five loaves and two fish began with “one child who offered all he had.”
“Like that child, you too have helped a miracle to take place today. The miracle by which all of us older people have recalled our own first meeting with Jesus in the Eucharist, and are filled with gratitude for that day.”
Always pray with the same enthusiasm and joy you feel today, he urged.
He reminded the youth that this is their “first Communion,” but it is not their last, and to remember that Jesus is always present and waiting for them in the Sacrament.
“I hope that today will be the beginning of many Communions, so that your hearts may always, like today, be festive, full of joy and, above all else, gratitude,” he said.
Pope Francis said he was happy to spend this moment of celebration, friendship, joy, and fraternity with all of them, noting that it is a day of communion with themselves and with the whole Church, which “especially in the Eucharist, expresses the communion that makes all of us brothers and sisters.”
“This,” he continued, “is our identity card: God is our Father, Jesus is our brother, the Church is our family. All of us are brothers and sisters, and our law is love.”
He told the boys and girls he is sure they will always remember this day: their first encounter with Jesus in the sacrament of the Eucharist.
“One of you might ask me: How can we meet Jesus? He lived a long time ago, but then he died and was laid in the tomb!” Francis said. “It is true: Jesus carried out an immense act of love to save human beings of all times.”
But, he explained, after three days, he rose from the dead. “Now Jesus is alive and is here with us. That is why we can encounter him today in the Eucharist. We do not see him with our physical eyes, but we do see him with the eyes of faith.”
Early Monday morning, before traveling to Rakovski, Pope Francis made a visit to the Vrazhdebna Refugee Center on the outskirts of Sofia, Bulgaria, where he greeted about 50 parents and children from Syria and Iraq.
During the visit, some of the children performed a song for Pope Francis and gave him drawings they had made.
The pope thanked the group for their welcome and the children for their beautiful singing. “They bring joy to your journey,” he said. “Your journey is not always beautiful, and then there is the pain of leaving your homeland…”
But, there is always hope, he said, adding that “today, the world of migrants and refugees is a bit of a cross, a cross of humanity; it is the cross that so many people suffer…”
Before parting, Francis asked for their prayers and gave them his apostolic blessing.
© Catholic World Report