Europe

Rome, Italy, Dec 5, 2017 / 11:40 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Ahead of Pope Francis’ trip to Chile and Peru, the Archbishop of Lima has said that the Bishop of Rome will encounter a lively faith in the countries, where there are “great expression of popular religiosity.”

Cardinal Juan Luis Cipriani Thorne spoke to CNA ahead of Pope Francis’ trip to Chile and Peru, which he will make Jan. 15-21, 2018.

The cardinal is visiting Rome, and met with Pope Francis Monday for a conversation that largely focused on the Pope’s upcoming visit to his country.

In his comments to CNA, the cardinal said Latin America, and Peru in particular, maintain a staunchly Christian culture where traditional values on marriage and family issues specifically are widely upheld.

Peru itself is a largely Catholic nation, and while traditional forms of marriage and family life are threatened by the same secular ideologies growing throughout the U.S. and many countries in Europe, the defense of marriage is much stronger.

The country is also traditional when it comes to the abortion issue, with roughly 89 percent of the population defending life, he said.  

Because of this, Cipriani said he believes the Pope’s visit is an opportunity for the world to look at Latin America and learn from their example of faith.

This faith is largely expressed in Peru through various and colorful forms of popular piety such as processions, vigils, and public prayer. Among the biggest of these are the processions on the feasts of Corpus Christi and the Lord of Miracles.

“The popular piety is going to move [Francis] a lot because he is going to see it in all corners” of the country, the cardinal said, explaining that this show of faith is part of the ‘cultural DNA’ in Peru, and will play a big role in the Pope’s visit.

“I think that the Holy Father will meet the population with a great expressions of popular religiosity that will be very near to his heart,” he said.

The visit to Peru, which holds the theme “United by Hope,” will also be key in terms of helping the Peruvian bishops’ conference become more unified, he said, noting the country is composed of a variety of backgrounds, which at times makes it difficult to be on the same page.

“The country is very diverse, geographically, ethnically, so the reality that the bishops have on the coast, in the mountains, or in the jungle is very different,” the cardinal said. With 50 bishops representing these different areas, trying to combine everything into one cohesive conference “isn’t easy.”

In Peru, there are dioceses that have 100,000 inhabitants, while others, such as Lima, have 10 million. Some are areas more advanced in terms of development while in other areas people live “in absolute poverty.”

With all this in mind, Cipriani said he believes the Pope will encourage the Peruvian bishops “to say: ‘in seeking holiness you have to come together in a vision that brings Christ to all’.”

Another key theme of the trip, the cardinal said, will be the role of Peruvian saints, which the Pope brought up in their meeting yesterday, and which he mentioned in a short videomessage he released for the trip in August.

“In a few words he told me that Peru has many saints and great saints, and I think that this is something that moves me and that I hope will be developed in this trip,” the cardinal said.

Among the most well-known Peruvian saints are Rose of Lima, Martin de Porres, and and Toribio de Mogroviejo.

According to Cipriani, the Pope’s favorite is Martin de Porres, who was the son of a Spanish nobleman and a black slave woman. The saint had wanted to enter the Dominican order, but was initially prevented from becoming a brother due to a law at the time that prevented people of mixed race from joining religious orders.

Instead, he lived with the community and did manual work, earning the nickname “the saint of the broom” for his diligence and care in cleaning the friars’ quarters. Eventually, he was permitted to join the order despite the law, and he worked with the sick in the infirmary.

On Martin de Porres, Francis says “he likes him more than anyone because of the broom, because he had to clean many things so that the Church was better,” Cipriani said.

Other big themes for the trip, the cardinal said, will be environmental issues, particularly related to the Amazon region, and the youth.

The highlight will be the Pope’s visit to Puerto Maldonado, an area of the Amazon affected by extreme poverty and which has a wide variety of wildlife. During his visit there, Pope Francis is going to see “a lot of poverty, a lot of (the) force of nature.”

When it comes to the nation’s youth, Cipriani said Francis is going to see a lot of young people “very excited for the coming of the Pope.”

Pope Francis’ visit, he said, is important above all because “the Vicar of Christ is coming … it’s a wonderful occasion in which God blesses the Peruvian people.”

Peru, he said, “needs the presence of a man that sows peace, unity and joy among us, and who strengthens us in the faith. Because of this we are awaiting him with enthusiasm.”

Above all, Peru will greet the Pope with “great joy, with a lot of noise, with the streets full,” he said, adding that the Pope “is going to have a great time.”

Alvaro de Juana contributed to this report.

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Madrid, Spain, Dec 1, 2017 / 04:07 pm (ACI Prensa).- December 1 is World AIDS Day and Basida, Spain’s largest home for AIDS patients, has been serving them for more than 25 years, opening its first home in 1990.

It is situated on a 30 acre compo… […]

London, England, Nov 29, 2017 / 04:52 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- In 1936, when British King Edward VIII declared that he was intended to marry Wallis Simpson, he abdicated the throne.

Opposition to the union was strong – Simpson was doubly-divorced, and many thought she was only after Edward for his money.

Besides general disapproval from the elite, a more definite obstacle stood in the couple’s way – as King, Edward VIII was the head of the Church of England, which at the time did not allow divorced persons to remarry if their first spouse was still alive. In order to marry Simpson in a civil ceremony, he abdicated the throne in December, and was succeeded by his brother, George VI.

Earlier this week, another royal engagement was announced. On Monday, Kensington Palace announced that Prince Harry, who is fifth in line for the throne, is engaged to Meghan Markle. Like Simpson, Markle is an American and divorced. Furthermore, Markle has Catholic ties in her family, and is possibly a baptized Catholic herself.

Obstacles which just a few years ago might have disqualified the couple from ascending to the crown – divorce, Catholic ties – no longer require the Prince to abdicate his place in the line of succession to the British throne.

What has changed?

Father James Bradley, a Catholic priest in the U.K. and a former Anglican, told CNA that because of the previous rules of the Anglican Church, Edward was essentially obligated to abdicate because “he would have been in a relationship which the Church of which he was Supreme Governor did not approve,” he said.

In 2002, a synod of Anglican bishops officially changed Anglican doctrine regarding divorce, declaring that while “marriage should always be undertaken as a ‘solemn, public and lifelong covenant between a man and a woman’…some marriages regrettably do fail and that the Church’s care for couples in that situation should be of paramount importance…there are exceptional circumstances in which a divorced person may be married in church during the lifetime of a former spouse.”

The Anglican Church does not define exactly what qualifies as exceptional circumstances; this is primarily left up to the presiding minister to determine whether a second church wedding can be allowed.

One instance in which the Anglican Church forbids a second church wedding for divorced persons is if the new relationship contributed to the breakdown of the first marriage, Ed Condon, a Catholic canon lawyer in the U.K., told CNA. This was what prevented a church wedding for Prince Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles in 2005.

“If there’s been no openly scandalous reasons or contributing factors, that would allow the Anglican authorities to say well, you can have a church wedding,” Condon said. Harry and Markle are expected to be married at St. George’s Chapel at Windsor Castle.

But accepting attitudes about divorced monarchs is indicative of a broader breakdown of marriage that can be seen, particularly in the West, Bradley noted.

“The opposition to Edward VIII was, first of all, that society didn’t recognize divorce as something that was good at the time, and now it does, unfortunately,” he said.

Currently, “(the) new head of the [British] Supreme Court is pushing for no-fault divorce. We’ve gone from a situation where divorce was such a social issue that you couldn’t remain monarch and be married to a divorced person, and now we’re in a situation where the Supreme Court is pushing for no-fault divorce,” he said. “So it’s the complete collapse of marriage as we see in America and the rest of the West.”

Royals marrying Catholics

While Markle attended an all-girls Catholic school in L.A., it is unclear whether she was baptized as a Catholic, and she told Vanity Fair earlier this year that she was not raised as one.

Numerous British sources report that Markle has identified as a Protestant for some time before the engagement, and plans to be baptized and confirmed in the Church of England before marrying Harry.

However, if she were a Catholic, this too would have been an obstacle to her marrying into the royal family until very recently. Opposition to Catholics ascending to the throne dates back to King Henry VIII, who broke from the Catholic Church in the 1500s in order to divorce his wife, Catherine of Aragon, and marry another, because he blamed Catherine for failing to produce a son who could succeed to the throne.

The Succession to the Crown Act 2013 allowed heirs to the throne to marry Catholics, among other changes. However, the law still stipulates that the acting British sovereign mustn’t be a Catholic.

Catholics and the indissolubility of marriage

The Catholic Church teaches “that marriage is indissoluble, it is literally black and white,” Bradley noted.

“It’s a bond that cannot be broken, because God respects the promises that the husband and wife make to each other, and he does what’s asked. He binds together these two people who are asking to be bound together, it’s a respecting of the free will of the individuals,” he added.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church, in paragraph 1614, states that: “In his preaching Jesus unequivocally taught the original meaning of the union of man and woman as the Creator willed it from the beginning permission given by Moses to divorce one’s wife was a concession to the hardness of hearts.The matrimonial union of man and woman is indissoluble: God himself has determined it “what therefore God has joined together, let no man put asunder.”

The Catholic Church recognizes as sacramental the marriages between two baptized persons of any Christian community, Bradley noted.

“If there are two baptized Anglicans marrying, the Catholic Church would recognize that as a sacramental marriage,” he said, because the Catholic Church recognizes all Christian baptisms as valid.

“If both parties are baptized it’s a sacramental marriage, and non-Catholics are not bound by canonical form, so they’re quite at liberty to be married in the Church of England, and we recognize that they’re being married according to the rights of their ecclesial communities.”

However, if Markle’s first-marriage were valid, she would not be free to validly marry Harry.  An annulment, or declaration of nullity, of her first marriage, would establish that her previous marriage was invalid, Bradley said.

Condon noted that the Catholic Church also presumes the indissolubility of all marriages, whether those be marriages of Catholics, Christians, believers, or nonbelievers.

“The life-long partnership of one man and one woman is part of the natural law and God’s plan for all humanity. The Church’s presumption of validity pertains to all marriages, including Ms. Markle’s,” he said.

“That having been said, we don’t know any of the details of that union, or if a canonical process is underway regarding it. Catholics should, I would suggest, understand the royal engagement the same way they would the marriage of any two people they don’t know personally: be happy for them.”

Bradley added that the fact that royal engagements are always met with a resounding reaction of “joy and happiness,” which “shows that even when, in some sense, the marriage isn’t everything we would want it to be, society as a whole has a natural inclination towards the good and towards what marriage represents.”

“So people see the goodness of marriage, even people who are opposed to the institution of marriage will cheer when a couple like this get married, or get engaged, because it takes a very hardened heart not to be happy that two people are seeking this good.”

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Madrid, Spain, Nov 29, 2017 / 12:00 am (ACI Prensa).- Spain’s National Court has ruled that the Family Planning Federation, a subsidiary of Planned Parenthood International, can no longer be designated as a “public service organization&rdqu… […]

Armagh, Northern Ireland, Nov 28, 2017 / 05:00 pm (CNA).- Archbishop Eamon Martin of Armagh, Northern Ireland, and Primate of All Ireland, has launched a 2017 virtual Advent calendar, saying that the online prayers and reflections will help parishioner… […]

Dublin, Ireland, Nov 28, 2017 / 12:03 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Hundreds of groups of Catholics gathered across the island of Ireland on Sunday to pray the Rosary for the preservation of the Catholic faith and for the defense of life against the threat of a… […]

London, England, Nov 27, 2017 / 04:50 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Lawyers in the United Kingdom have recommended that mandatory reporting laws apply to priests in the confessional, in order to curb incidents of child sexual abuse.

The recommendation came during an investigation of Benedictine abbeys and their associated schools, after numerous victims came forward alleging clergy at the schools had committed acts of child sexual abuse.

Richard Scorer, a representative with the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA), said during a hearing that mandatory reporting laws should apply even to information bound by the seal of confession.  

“A mandatory reporting law would have changed their behaviour,” Scorer said, according to The Guardian. “At Downside Abbey, abuse was discovered but not reported, and abusers were left to free to abuse again and great harm was done to victims.”

“The Catholic Church purports to be a moral beacon for others around it yet these clerical sex abuse cases profoundly undermine it … Why has the temptation to cover up abuse been particularly acute in organisations forming part of the Roman Catholic church?”

David Enright, a lawyer representing numerous victims in the investigation, echoed Scorer’s sentiments.

“Matters revealed in confession, including child abuse, cannot be used in governance,” Enright told The Guardian. “One can’t think of a more serious obstacle embedded in the law of the Catholic church to achieving child protection.”

The seal of confession often arises during cases of the abuse of minors in the Church.

According to Church law, a priest is under the gravest obligation not to reveal the contents of a confession, or even whether a confession took place. He cannot do so even under threat of imprisonment or civil penalty, and can incur a latae sententiae excommunication if he breaks the seal of confession.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraph 1467, explains the Church’s view on the seal of confession:

“Given the delicacy and greatness of this ministry and the respect due to persons, the Church declares that every priest who hears confessions is bound under very severe penalties to keep absolute secrecy regarding the sins that his penitents have confessed to him. He can make no use of knowledge that confession gives him about penitents’ lives.”

The Church has long taught that allowing violations of the seal of confession would discourage the confession of sins, and prevent penitents from seeking forgiveness and rectifying their lives.

According to the Code of Canon Law, “a confessor who directly violates the sacramental seal incurs a latae sententiae excommunication reserved to the Apostolic See; one who does so only indirectly is to be punished according to the gravity of the delict.”

In 2016, the Supreme Court of Louisiana heard a similar case, in which a priest was asked to reveal the contents of a confession of a minor, which he was alleged to have heard. The court upheld the priest’s right to the seal of confession. Louisiana’s law makes an exemption for priests as mandatory reporters in cases of abuse of minors  if he “under the discipline or tenets of the church, denomination, or organization has a duty to keep such communication confidential.”

Earlier this year, the bishops of Australia indicated that they would resist the Royal Commission’s proposal to criminally punish priests who do not break the seal of confession in cases involving the abuse of minors. The proposal was made in response to a widespread clerical sex abuse scandal that broke in the country in recent years.

While the Catholic Church upholds the seal of confession, it also recognizes clerical abuse of minors as criminal and gravely sinful.

In recent years, the Vatican has expanded its efforts to protect children from sexual abuse. In 2001, the Church issued norms strengthening its approach to prosecuting crimes committed against children, requiring that allegations of abuse be forwarded to civil authorities and to the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF).  

In March 2012, Pope Benedict XVI issued guidelines to prevent abuse of minors and to involve the faithful in abuse prevention.

Pope Francis has continued these efforts during his pontificate, creating a special group within the CDF to hear the cases of high-ranking clerics charged with the most serious crimes. He has also begun to study the possibility of introducing to canon law the crime of “abuse of office” for bishops who fail to fulfill their responsibilities to prosecute sex abuse.

In addition to disciplinary measures against abusers, the Church has also worked at the highest level to reach out to victims and provide them with counseling and support.

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Warsaw, Poland, Nov 27, 2017 / 03:00 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Poland could gradually end Sunday shopping in the next three years, if lawmakers approve a bill under consideration in the national legislature.

Backers of the legislation want to make it possi… […]

Vilnius, Lithuania, Nov 26, 2017 / 04:33 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- 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 small town of Vilnius in Lithuania, 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 capital of Lithuania, 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.”

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