Narni, Italy, Dec 7, 2017 / 03:04 am (CNA/EWTN News).- The magical realm of Narnia is the setting of C. S. Lewis’ beloved children’s book The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. There, four children discover a land of talking animals, mytholo… […]
Rome, Italy, Dec 6, 2017 / 09:42 am (CNA/EWTN News).- After he was kidnapped in Nigeria in October, Italian missionary priest Fr. Maurizio Pallù has returned to the country, attributing his kidnapping to the work of the devil and crediting the V… […]
Liverpool, England, Dec 6, 2017 / 02:43 am (CNA).- Scientists at a university in Liverpool have unveiled what they say is the most realistic portrait ever created of St. Nicholas of Myra, the popular 4th century bishop best known as the inspiration for the modern-day figure of Santa Claus.
Researchers at Liverpool John Moores University’s Face Lab used a facial reconstruction system and 3D interactive technology to create the portrait, which was unveiled last year on Dec. 6, the feast day of St. Nicholas.
It’s #StNicholas day. Check out the facial depiction of St Nicholas we produced @LJMU @LSAD_2016 https://t.co/EQfjjHmRis #stnicholasday pic.twitter.com/MW1GpWhBWW
— Face Lab Liverpool (@FaceLabLJMU) December 6, 2016
University Professor Caroline Wilkinson said the reconstruction relied on “all the skeletal and historical material” available, the BBC reports. A university spokeswoman said the new image uses “the most up-to-date anatomical standards, Turkish tissue depth data and CGI techniques.”
Among the features depicted in the saint’s image is a broken nose, which Wilkinson said had “healed asymmetrically, giving him a characteristic nose and rugged facial appearance.”
St. Nicholas lived 270-343 A.D. He was the bishop of Myra, in southern Turkey.
During his years as bishop, he was imprisoned during the Diocletian persecution, then later released when Constantine came to power.
He was known for his staunch defense of the faith, as well as his often anonymous generosity toward those in need.
Stories surrounding the saint abound. He is believed to have once rescued three sisters from being sold into slavery by throwing bags of gold through an open window into their house to pay their family’s debts.
Another popular story holds that he became so enraged by the heretic Arius – who claimed that Christ was not truly God – that he punched him during a heated debate at the Council of Nicea in 325 A.D.
Based on the broken nose in the saint’s facial reconstruction, maybe Arius punched him back.
This article was originally published on CNA Dec. 11, 2016.
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http://t.co/VK50acdOtj Is this what Saint Rose of Lima looked like? #History #Catholic
— Catholic News Agency (@cnalive) August 28, 2015
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.
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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