Europe

Sofia, Bulgaria, May 5, 2019 / 10:06 am (CNA).- The Lord works with imperfect situations and imperfect people, so persevere in holiness, Pope Francis encouraged Catholics in Bulgaria Sunday.

“The Lord does not wait for perfect situations or frames of mind: he creates them. He does not expect to encounter people without problems, disappointments, sins or limitations,” the pope said at Mass May 5.

Jesus “himself confronted sin and disappointment in order to encourage all men and women to persevere,” he continued. “In Jesus, God always offers us another chance. He calls us day by day to deepen our love for him and to be revived by his eternal newness. Every morning, he comes to find us where we are.”

Pope Francis celebrated Mass in Sofia, Bulgaria, on the first day of a May 5-7 trip to Bulgaria and North Macedonia. Catholics are a minority in the country; they are estimated to be fewer than 50,000 in a population of over 7 million.

According to organizers, there were an estimated 7,000 people at Mass with Pope Francis.

In his homily, the pope reflected on the day’s Gospel reading, when the resurrected Jesus appears to a group of his disciples while they are fishing in the Sea of Galilee.

Peter had returned to his old life as a fisherman, he said. “The weight of suffering, disappointment, and of betrayal had become like a stone blocking the hearts of the disciples. They were still burdened with pain and guilt, and the good news of the resurrection had not taken root in their hearts.”

In the face of failure, hurt, or even the fact that at times things do not go the way we want, there always comes a subtle and dangerous temptation to become disheartened and to give up. This is the tomb psychology that tinges everything with dejection and leads us to indulge in a soothing sense of self-pity that, like a moth, eats away at all our hope.

He emphasized that God is love, and that “love is his language,” which is why “he asks Peter, and us, to learn that language.”

Peter’s answer to the Lord’s question — “Simon, son of John, do you love me?” — reveals that Peter recognizes his own weakness. “He realizes that he cannot make progress on his own. And he takes his stand on the Lord and on the strength of his love, to the very end.”

One of the greatest difficulties today is people who know God is love, but who do not witness to this in the world, so that “for many people, this is not his name,” the pope said.

God makes our lives works of art, “if only we let ourselves be led by his love,” he said. “Many of the witnesses of Easter in this blessed land created magnificent masterpieces, inspired by simple faith and great love.”

He encouraged Bulgarian Catholics to not be afraid of holiness and to not be afraid to become the saints their country needs.

“Today we are called to lift up our eyes and acknowledge what the Lord has done in the past, and to walk with him towards the future, knowing that, whether we succeed or fail, he will always be there to keep telling us to cast our nets,” he concluded.

[…]

Sofia, Bulgaria, May 5, 2019 / 08:54 am (CNA).- In Bulgaria Sunday, Pope Francis said Catholics and Orthodox are united by the blood of the martyrs and the Christians who continue to suffer for the faith even today.

“How many Christians in this … […]

Sofia, Bulgaria, May 3, 2019 / 12:01 pm (CNA).- Pope Francis said Friday that his visit to Bulgaria next week will be a pilgrimage of faith, unity, and peace, with an ecumenical focus.

“My pilgrimage will be all in the memory of St. Pope John XX… […]

Rome, Italy, May 3, 2019 / 12:43 am (CNA).- The partial destruction of Notre Dame basilica in a fire last month elicited mourning from Catholics and non-Catholic alike. But it is not the first time an iconic basilica has endured flames – and been … […]

Dublin, Ireland, May 2, 2019 / 03:01 am (CNA).- The leader of a new political party that spans both Ireland and Northern Ireland promised to uphold the right to life as a key value at the party’s launch on Tuesday.

The new party, Aontú, is headed by Peadar Toibin, an Irish politician who was suspended from the Sinn Fein party two times for breaking with the party line on legalized abortion, which it favored.

“It is unbelievable that Aontú is the only party that stands up for the human right to life,” Tóibín said at the launch of his party’s manifesto, according to the BBC.

Abortion was legalized in the Republic of Ireland just last year. Abortion remains illegal in Northern Ireland, which is a part of the UK, except in cases where a mother’s life is in danger.

“Aontú want to make sure that there is a real voice and a real alternative for many people who feel that they have no-one to vote for,” Tóibín added at the launch. “We are simply saying that this is a core value for ourselves, and we won’t let you down on this issue.”

“Aontú” roughly translates in English to “unification” or “agreement.”

The party will have 16 candidates on ballots this week during Northern Ireland’s local council elections, the BBC reports.

At the party launch, Tóibín said that he wanted to offer an alternative option from the mainstream parties, and that Aontú was more in touch with the people of Ireland at the grassroots level.

Toibin told reporters in November that he wanted to give a voice to the 34% of people who voted to keep abortion illegal in the Republic of Ireland, and to make sure that pro-life people were not marginalized.  

Michael Kelly, editor of the newspaper The Irish Catholic, told CNA in November that Ireland was “crying out” for a new political movement that would protect the right to life.

Toibin added at the launch of the party’s manifesto that Aontú supports a unified Ireland, and a “strong all-Ireland economy” as a solution to problems that could arise due to Brexit, the UK’s withdrawal from the European Union.

[…]

Glasgow, Scotland, Apr 30, 2019 / 03:01 pm (CNA).- Police in Glasgow are investigating vandalism committed Monday at St. Simon’s parish, an attack the archdiocese has called ‘shameful’.

Local police announced on Twitter “significant vandalism was carried out” in the church April 29 between 1:30 and 4 pm.

The Archdiocee of Glasgow called it “a shameful attack on a much loved church,” adding: “Let’s find those responsible and send out the message loud and clear that this kind of action is unacceptable”.

Statues were smashed, religious displays and flowers strewn about, and the sanctuary violated.

The vandalization comes just a few days after anti-Catholic graffiti was sprayed at a bus stop outside Holy Family parish in Mossend, just a few miles north of Motherwell. Windows at the parish school were smashed in last month.

Scotland has experienced significant sectarian division since the Scottish Reformation of the 16th century, which led to the formation of the Church of Scotland, an ecclesial community in the Calvinist and Presbyterian tradition which is the country’s largest religious community.

Sectarianism and crimes motivated by anti-Catholicism have been on the rise in Scotland in recent years.

In Glasgow, Protestant marches have faced rising opposition after a priest was assaulted while one passed by his parish last summer.

An April 2018 poll of Catholics in Scotland found that 20 percent reported personally experiencing abuse of prejudice toward their faith; and a government report on religiously-motivated crime in 2016 and 2017 found a concentration of incidents in Glasgow.

[…]

Aberdeen, Scotland, Apr 29, 2019 / 03:47 pm (CNA).- With the University of Aberdeen’s student association meeting one person short of a quorum last week, it will be at least five months before a pro-life group will have another chance to overturn a pro-choice policy it calls discriminatory.

In October the Aberdeen University Students’ Association prevented the affiliation of the Aberdeen Life Ethics Society, citing its own pro-choice policy. The move limits Ale’s access to funds and venues at the university.

After failing to have the policy changed, Ales filed a lawsuit April 12 against Ausa and the university, “alleging unlawful discrimination against the society and the violation of rights protected by UK law.”

According to Aberdeen daily The Press and Journal, Ales put a motion before Ausa to re-word the pro-choice policy at its April 23 meeting. “But while it required 38 members to form a quorum, only 37 attended – forcing the meeting to adjourn without any decisions made,” wrote James Wyllie.

Ausa will not meet again before September.

An Ales spokesman said that “while it is frustrating that student political engagement at Aberdeen is so anaemic that a minimum quorum can’t even be reached, the students don’t bear the sole blame here,” The Press and Journal reported. The pro-life group charged that had the student association’s board of trustees repealed the policy, “no lawsuit would have been necessary and the discriminatory policy would have been relegated to the dustbin where it belongs.”

Ales announced the rejection of its application for affiliation Oct. 19, 2018, saying: “We were rejected because the Student Council passed a policy in November 2017 declaring AUSA to be ‘pro-choice’ and pledging to ‘no-platform’ any society that opposes abortion. Since our proposed society is unashamedly pro-life, we have been banned from affiliating.”

The pro-life group said that the pro-choice policy is “being used as political cover to ban student speech on campus, it also treats the student body as undivided on the issue of abortion.”

Ausa has cited its pro-choice policy, adopted in November 2017, as the basis for its decision. The policy says, in part, that “Ausa should oppose the unreasonable display of pro-life material within campus and at Ausa events.”

Ales’ suit charged that Ausa’s no platform policy violates the Equality Act 2010 and the Human Rights Act 1998 by restricting “the freedoms of association and belief for certain students on the basis of an ideological litmus test.”

In an April 19 statement on its Facebook page, Ausa noted it had been “served with a writ” and that “we are not able to comment on the content of the lawsuit in any detail as we are in the process of seeking legal advice. However, we would like to reassure our students that we firmly remain a pro-choice institution and strongly support the values that this idea represents.”

The Press and Journal reported April 25 that an Ausa spokeswoman said its pro-choice policy “remains suspended until the necessary amendments have been made to bring the policy in line with the relevant legislation” and that “there is therefore no barrier to the proposed Aberdeen Life Ethics Society affiliating to Ausa and any application will be treated in the same manner as any other application to affiliate.”

Ausa’s board of trustees has recommended that the student council repeal the pro-choice policy.

Earlier this month Ales said it has twice submitted motions to the student body to allow its affiliation, but “on both occasions … our motions were decisively defeated by the students in attendance.”

“It was disconcerting to watch our fellow students affirm and uphold our legal disenfranchisement, but it serves as proof that student democracy at Aberdeen is broken, serving only to insulate students from dissenting opinions.”

Pro-life groups at other Scottish universities have faced similar problems.

Last year the the University of Strathclyde (in Glasgow) lifted a similar ban on pro-life groups, following legal pressure. Strathclyde Sudents for Life argued that the student associaton’s no platforming policy violated the Equality Act 2010 “by directly discriminating against a group of students based on their beliefs.”

Glasgow Students for Life were barred from affiliation by the Glasgow University’s Students’ Representative Council last November.

In March 2018 a joint committee on human rights of the UK parliament noted troubling barriers to free speech at the nation’s universities, writing: “Whilst the original intention behind safe space policies may have been to ensure that minority or vulnerable groups can feel secure, in practice the concept of safe spaces has proved problematic, often marginalising the views of minority groups.”

[…]

Paris, France, Apr 28, 2019 / 04:34 pm (CNA).- As fire ravaged the roof of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris earlier this month, one artist from Ecuador used her skills to express the grief that she and so many people throughout the world felt as the beautiful building burned.

In a pencil sketch posted to Instagram that quickly went viral, artist Cristina Correa Freile depicted Disney’s version of Quasimodo, the famous fictional “Hunchback of Notre Dame”, crying and hugging the beloved church where he was the bellringer.

Quasimodo was the hero of a novel by Victor Hugo, written at another time when Notre Dame needed saving, from years of destruction and disrepair. Given the emotional reaction to the sketch from thousands who saw it, the beloved character may be at least part of the reason that people once more rally behind the restoration of Notre Dame de Paris.  

Because the name “Quasimodo” is most frequently associated with an ugly but lovable character from a fictional story, some may be surprised to learn that the hunchback’s name is actually liturgical.

In Hugo’s novel, Quasimodo, rejected by his parents for his deformities, is abandoned inside Notre Dame Cathedral, at a place where orphans and unwanted children were dropped off.

Monseigneur Claude Frollo finds the child on “Quasimodo Sunday” and “called him Quasimodo; whether it was that he chose thereby to commemorate the day when he had found him, or that he meant to mark by that name how incomplete and imperfectly molded the poor little creature was,” Hugo wrote.

Quasimodo is the Latin name for the Sunday following Easter. It is drawn from the first words of the entrance antiphon for the day, which is the chant sung as the priest approaches the altar for Mass. The entrance antiphon (also called the Introit) for Quasimodo Sunday begins with: “Like newborn infants,” or, in Latin, “quasi modo geniti infantes.”

The full chant, drawn from 1 Peter 2:2, is as follows: “As newborn babes, desire the rational milk without guile, that thereby you may grow unto salvation: If so be you have tasted that the Lord is sweet.”

On this Sunday, also known as Low Sunday, Catholics are called to remember the newest members of the Church.

“It counsels the first communicant or the convert, likened to a newborn child, to desire the milk of the mother, to receive that nourishment and grow. Properly disposed, the new communicant doesn’t need to be told this. But the rest of us sing about this as a reminder that there are children among us who need to be cared for, and that we all should preserve the spirit of the children of God and remain humble and submissive to the Divine Will,” according to an explanation from the New Liturgical Movement website.

Today, the Sunday following Easter is typically remembered as “Divine Mercy Sunday,” a feast day established by Pope John Paul II which honors the divine mercy of Jesus, as called for in the diary of St. Faustina Kowalska, a Polish nun who received revelations of Jesus, and wrote down his words in her diary. St. Faustina was canonized by Pope John Paul II in 2000.

[…]

Vilnius, Lithuania, Apr 28, 2019 / 03:03 am (CNA).- Among Catholic devotions, the Divine Mercy message is well-known: the iconic image of Christ, with rays of red and white pouring from his heart; St. Faustina, called the “Apostle of Divine Mercy;” and the Basilica of Divine Mercy in Krakow, Poland.

But what you might not know is that more than 450 miles north of Krakow, in the Lithuanian capital Vilnius, there is another Sanctuary of Divine Mercy, one which houses the first image of the merciful Jesus created, and the only Image of Divine Mercy St. Faustina herself ever saw.

Archbishop Gintaras Grusas of Vilnius told CNA that the city, often called the “City of Mercy,” is not only “a place of the Divine Mercy revelations, but also a place that is in need of mercy, throughout history, and a place that in the last couple decades has been a place where we need to show mercy.”

Since long before St. Faustina and the Divine Mercy revelations, the Mother of Mercy has been the patroness of Vilnius, Grusas said.

In fact, in the 1600s, a painting of Our Lady of the Gate of Dawn was created and placed in a niche above one of the prominent city gates. Many miracles are attributed to the image, which was canonically crowned Mother of Mercy by Pope Pius XI in 1927.

It was in this small chapel of the Mother of Mercy, above the gate, that the Image of Divine Mercy was first displayed. So Vilnius has had “mercy upon mercy,” Grusas noted.

The story of St. Faustina and Divine Mercy

St. Faustina Kowalska was a young Polish nun born at the beginning of the 20th century. Over the course of several years she had visions of Jesus, whereby she was directed to create an image and to share with the world revelations of Jesus’ love and mercy.

St. Faustina received her first revelation of the merciful Jesus in Plock, Poland in February 1931. At the time, she had made her first vows as one of the Sisters of Our Lady of Mercy.

In 1933, after she made her perpetual vows, her superior directed her to move to the convent house in Vilnius. She stayed there for three years and this is where she received many more visions of Jesus. Vilnius is also where she found a priest to be her spiritual director, the now-Bl. Michael Sopocko.

With the help of Fr. Sopocko, St. Faustina found a painter to fulfill the request Jesus had made to her in one of the visions – to “paint an image according to the pattern you see, with the signature: Jesus, I trust in You” – and in 1934 the painter Eugene Kazimierowski created the original Divine Mercy painting under St. Faustina’s direction.

In its creation, St. Faustina “was instrumental in making all the adjustments with the painter,” Archbishop Grusas said.

The image shows Christ with his right hand raised as if giving a blessing, and the left touching his chest. Two rays, one pale, one red – which Jesus said are to signify water and blood – are descending from his heart.

St. Faustina recorded all of her visions and conversations with Jesus in her diary, called Divine Mercy in My Soul. Here she wrote the words of Jesus about the graces that would pour out on anyone who prayed before the image:

“I promise that the soul that will venerate this image will not perish. I also promise victory over [its] enemies already here on earth, especially at the hour of death. I Myself will defend [that soul] as My own glory.”

When the image was completed, it was first kept in the corridor of the convent of the Bernardine Sisters, which was beside the Church of St. Michael where Fr. Sopocko was rector.

In March 1936 St. Faustina became sick, with what is believed to have been tuberculosis, and was transferred back to Poland by her superiors. She died near Krakow in October 1938, at the age of 33.

“St. Faustina, because of her illness, was brought back to Krakow by her superiors. But she left the painting in Vilnius because it was the property of her spiritual director, who paid for the painting,” Grusas explained.

Jesus, in one of St. Faustina’s visions, had expressed his wish that the image be put in a place of honor, above the main altar of the church. And so, though St. Faustina had already returned to Poland, on the first Sunday after Easter in 1937, they hung the image of Merciful Jesus next to the main altar in the Church of St. Michael.

The history of the image

Archbishop Grusas explained that many people have only recently learned about the image because it was hidden for many years, and it was only rediscovered and restored within the last 15 years.

During World War II, Lithuania was under Soviet occupation and in 1948, the communist government closed the Church of St. Michael and abolished the convent. Many of the sacred objects and artworks were moved to another church to be saved from Soviet hands, but the Divine Mercy image was left undisturbed in St. Michael’s for several years.

In 1951, two women were able to pay the keeper of St. Michael’s church and save the image. Since it couldn’t be taken across the border to Poland, they gave it to the priest in charge of the Church of the Holy Spirit for safekeeping.

Five years later it was moved to a church in Belarus, where it remained for over a decade. In 1970 this church too was shut down by the government and looted, but miraculously, again the Image of Divine Mercy was untouched.

Eventually it was brought back to Lithuania in secret and again given to the Church of the Holy Spirit. In the early 2000s its significance was rediscovered and after a professional restoration it was rehung in the nearby Church of the Holy Trinity in 2005, which is now the Shrine of Divine Mercy.

So though it is a more recent arrival on the international scene, the painting “is also probably the most profound of the Divine Mercy paintings,” Grusas said. “It has a very deep theology, very closely tied with St. Faustina’s diary.”

The Shrine of Divine Mercy

Today in Vilnius the archdiocese has begun to set up a guide for pilgrims who come and wish to visit the holy sites, such as the place where St. Faustina lived, the room where the image was painted, and the several churches which all held the painting at different points.

The Shrine of Divine Mercy itself is not a large place, since it’s only a converted parish church, but its sacramental life “is really quite something,” said Justin Gough, an American seminarian studying in Rome who spent a summer working in the Archdiocese’s pilgrim office in Vilnius.

He said that “between Mass, the Divine Mercy chaplet every day in Lithuanian and Polish, adoration 24/7… vespers every Sunday night led by the youth of Vilnius,” the rosary and the sacrament of Confession, there is always some sort of prayer or sacrament taking place.

Of course the original Image of Divine Mercy is also there, he pointed out, and yet the shrine is not just about the image, but about connecting the image and what it represents to prayer and the reception of God’s mercy through the sacraments.

“I think it’s ironic in a certain sense that God teaches us about his mercy through a holy woman who died at the age of 33,” he said. “She lived a very devout life, endured great sufferings for the sake of Christ, and yet it’s through people like her that we’re taught, great sinners that we are, how to actually receive God’s mercy and to be merciful to others.”

In Vilnius, it’s a great blessing “to know a saint of the 20th century walked here, prayed here, and experienced Christ here, and that we can do that as well.”
 

This article was originally published on CNA Nov. 26, 2017.

[…]

Paris, France, Apr 26, 2019 / 11:00 am (CNA).- The bishops of France have published a new document offering a summary of the Church’s teaching on the dignity of human nature and the importance of natural law in society.

The document, titled “What is man that you keep him in mind? Elements of Catholic anthropology,” was published April 23 by the permanent council of the Bishops’ Conference of France. It is intended to articulate a framework for discussion of the Church’s moral teachings and how they should be applied to wider human society.

In a foreword to the text, Archbishop Michel Aupetit of Paris said that the Church’s voice and wisdom were essential to preserving human dignity in society.

“To those seeing her from outside, the Church appears in the West as an old and shaken institution of scandals,” Aupetit said, while warning against the “myth of progress” in Western society “that is invoked without knowing exactly where it leads.” 

“But the Church is beautiful – in the face of her saints, in the immense mantle of tenderness which she spreads over the world, especially over the most neglected of men. She is the ‘expert in humanity’ because her faith is based on God’s Covenant with His people, fulfilled in the Incarnation of Christ and Salvation by the Cross, open to the multitude of men ‘of every race, language, people and nation.'”

The Bishop of Blois, Jean-Pierre Batut, said at the document’s release that moral discussion had been distorted by relativism, and that without an understanding of the common dignity of human nature it was impossible to present the Church’s teaching in its fullness.

“There is a great need today, not for a moral discussion, but for one that is anthropological,” Batut said.

The bishop, who authored the afterword to the document, said that the spiritual crisis in France – illustrated by declining Mass attendance and vocations to the priesthood – was itself rooted in an “anthropological and civilizational” crisis through a loss of understanding of the natural law.

Natural law must be understood as the moral framework for all humanity, the bishops wrote, and not confused with the “law of nature,” which would place mankind on the same moral level as animals.

“From the point of view of humans, there is no point in learning whether monogamy or homosexuality exists among the animals. Animals do not even understand the prohibition against incest,” the bishops wrote.

Chad Pecknold, associate professor of systematic theology at The Catholic University of America, told CNA that the concept of natural law is essential to human dignity.

“The French bishops are exactly right that our moral disputes need to be rooted in shared premises about human nature,” Pecknold said. “We need to start with the understanding of the human person as a rational, relational, and religious creature made for happiness.

Pecknold said that the French bishops were also right to avoid being drawn into “moralizing discussions” about a law of nature which, he said, are “so often rooted in reductionist and materialist conceptions of human nature.”

The French bishops wrote that “natural law is a law of human nature, which explains what is right for human beings to do in order to achieve happiness.”

This, Pecknold said was a crucial distinction to make, since true happiness comes from the free choice to pursue the good in imitation of God.

“If we want to propose a true understanding of natural law as an ordinance of reason for the common good and flourishing of people, then we have work to do in helping our neighbors understand the reality of the human person as created in God’s image for a higher happiness than physical pleasure.”

[…]