NHS National Health Service sign UK. / TK Kurikawa/Shutterstock
Washington D.C., Apr 4, 2023 / 11:54 am (CNA).
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Rome Newsroom, Apr 1, 2023 / 09:00 am (CNA).
French bishops have voted to open the sainthood cause of 20th-century theologian Henri de Lubac.The French bishops’ conference announced on March 31 that the opening… […]
A mosaic designed by Father Marko Rupnik’s studio, at Lourdes / Pixabay|domakono
ACI Prensa Staff, Mar 31, 2023 / 15:07 pm (CNA).
Mosaic art created by Father Marko Rupnik could be removed from the Basilica of the Sanctuary of Lourdes, France, out of consideration for victims of abuse who come to the sanctuary in search of consolation, the bishop of Tarbes and Lourdes said.
“Lourdes is a place where many victims turn to the Immaculate Conception for comfort and healing. Their anguish is great before the mosaics of Father Rupnik in this very place: We cannot ignore it,” Bishop Jean-Marc Micas said in a statement released Friday.
Rupnik, a Jesuit priest and artist, founded the Aletti Center, an art school in Rome dedicated to religious art. He has been accused of sexually and psychologically abusing consecrated women from the Loyola Community in Slovenia who were associated with the Aletti Center.
As the National Catholic Register reported earlier this year, Rupnik’s art decorates more than 200 churches and shrines around the world, including at Lourdes, Fatima, and the Vatican.
The Jesuit order has received accusations against Rupnik that span from 1985 to 2018 and include claims of spiritual, psychological, and sexual abuse, and abuse of conscience.
According to current restrictions imposed by the Jesuit order, Rupnik is prohibited “from any public ministerial and sacramental activity,” banned from public communication, ordered not to leave Lazio, and “may not engage in any public artistic activity, especially in relation to religious structures (such as churches, institutions, oratories and chapels, exercise or spirituality houses).”
In April, the bishop of Lourdes said, a decision will be made regarding what to do about the mosaics by Rupnik that decorate the Shrine at Lourdes.
The work was commissioned in 2008 for the facade of the Basilica of the Rosary at the Sanctuary of Lourdes on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of the apparitions of the Blessed Mother.
The bishop of Lourdes said in his statement: “Like all works of art, they are appreciated by some, less by others, but the vast majority of pilgrims and visitors to Lourdes highlight their beauty.”
He then noted that “for several months, Father Rupnik has been in the news following various accusations of sexual abuse of adults in the framework of his ministry in various parts of the world.”
He noted that because Rupnik “has been sanctioned by his religious superiors and by the Holy See …the question of the status of his works and his future is being raised.”
“Given the specific nature of the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Lourdes,” the bishop said, “the general question of the status of the works of artists involved in situations of abuse is much more delicate here.”
Millions of pilgrims travel to Lourdes every year to receive healing at the site where, in 1858, the Virgin Mary appeared to a 14-year-old girl named Bernadette Soubirous.
The bishop reported that on March 27, together with the rector of the shrine, Father Michel Daubanes: “We brought this matter to the attention of the Guidance Council of the Shrine.”
“The issue was discussed with great seriousness: We know that the victims must be at the center of our reflections, and any decision will have serious consequences,” he said.
He said that a “reflection group” has been established, made up of the bishop, the rector, a victim of abuse, an expert in sacred art, and a psychotherapist, whose objective is to reach a determination in April.
During this time, they intend to “develop the necessary elements to make the best decision, carry out this reflection in the most serene way possible and not reject any decision hypothesis a priori.”
Finally, Bishop Micas said that he was entrusting this process and the decision to be made “to the intercession of Mary, Our Lady of Lourdes, and to the mercy of God.”
“I also count on the prayers and support of the faithful of the diocese and of those who love the Sanctuary of Lourdes,” he concluded.
This story was first published by ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.
Cardinal Juan José Omella, the archbishop of Barcelona, Spain, and Spain’s Ombudsman Ángel Gabilondo. / Credit: CEE
ACI Prensa Staff, Mar 30, 2023 / 14:30 pm (CNA).
The president of the Spanish Bishops’ Conference (CEE), Cardinal Juan José Omella, has handed over to the people’s ombudsman, Ángel Gabilondo, a total of six volumes of data on cases of sexual abuse of minors.
In Spain, the role of the ombudsman is to defend the fundamental rights and public liberties of citizens by watching over the activities of local and national governments as well as the administration of justice.
Speaking to Radio Nacional de España, Omella explained that all the data on cases collected by the Spanish dioceses has been turned in.
In total, the ombudsman has received “six volumes of reflection with all the data that we have up to now.” He stressed the Spanish prelates commitment to “put in place all means to eradicate” the abuse of minors.
The cardinal also said that these situations cause “great harm, not only to the Church but [also] to society.”
A year ago, the Congress of Deputies (the lower house of the national Legislature) entrusted the ombudsman with setting up an independent commission to report on complaints of sexual abuse within the Catholic Church.
A month earlier, the Spanish Bishops’ Conference made public that it had hired the law firm Cremades & Calvo Sotelo to conduct an external audit on the matter. The work was expected to take one year. Conclusions from the audit have have not yet been released.
In Spain there are more than 200 offices dedicated to the protection of minors and the prevention of abuse run by dioceses, religious congregations, and lay movements. The CEE reported that during 2022, the diocesan offices have trained more than 150,000 people, especially children and adolescents.
Throughout 2022, the CEE has received testimony on 186 new cases of abuse that occurred since 1950. The allegations involve include 74 religious order clergy, 36 diocesan clergy, 49 non-ordained consecrated persons, and 27 laymen, all male. Of them, 90 have died, 69 are alive, and in 27 cases their situation has not been confirmed, the CEE reported.
Regarding the victims, 179 were minors at the time the abuse occurred.
According to a very detailed study by the ANAR Foundation (Aid to At-Risk Chidren and Adolescents) published in 2021, priests represent a total of 0.2% of those responsible for child abuse in Spain between 2008 and 2019. Most of these situations occurred with adolescents aged 16 and over.
This story was first published by ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.
Archbishop Arthur Roche at a Vatican press conference on Feb. 10, 2015. / Bohumil Petrik/CNA.
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Bishop Erik Varden O.C.S.O, of the Catholic Territorial Prelature of Trondheim, Norway, at the vespers at Santa Maria dell’Anima in Rome. / Daniel Ibáñez / CNA
Rome Newsroom, Mar 25, 2023 / 14:40 pm (CNA).
Bishops from the five Nordic countries have released a letter on the traditional Christian teaching on sexuality, upholding the “embodied integrity of personhood” against modern transgender ideologies.
“Now, notions of what it is to be a human, and so a sexual being, are in flux. What is taken for granted today may be rejected tomorrow. Anyone who stakes much on passing theories risks being terribly hurt. We need deep roots,” the eight members of the Nordic bishops’ conference say in the letter, which was released Saturday.
“Let us, then, try to appropriate the fundamental principles of Christian anthropology while reaching out in friendship, with respect, to those who feel estranged by them,” they continue. “We owe it to the Lord, to ourselves, and to our world, to give an account of what we believe, and of why we believe it to be true.”
The pastoral letter is being read aloud at Masses this weekend at Catholic churches in Sweden, Norway, Finland, Denmark, and Iceland. EWTN Norway provided CNA with a copy of the letter.
Cardinal Anders Arborelius, the bishop of Stockholm, Sweden, is among the document’s eight signers.
The others are: from Norway, Bishop Erik Varden of Trondheim, Bishop Berislav Grgić of Tromsø, and Bishop Bernt Eidsvig of Oslo; from Denmark, Bishop Czeslaw Kozon of Copenhagen; from Iceland, Bishop Dávid Tencer of Reykjavik and Bishop emeritus Pierre Bürcher of Reykjavik, and from Finland, Father Marco Pasinato, apostolic administrator of Helsinki.
“Our mission and task as bishops is to point towards the peaceful, life-giving path of Christ’s commandments, narrow at the outset but growing broader as we advance,” the bishops state in the letter.
“We would let you down if we offered less,” the bishops say, adding, “we were not ordained to preach little notions of our own.”
The bishops explain that there is room for everyone in the Church, which, according to a 4th-century text, is “the mercy of God descending on mankind.”
“This mercy excludes no one. But it sets a high ideal,” the letter states.
The pastoral letter begins by recalling the 40 days and nights of rain which flooded the earth in the days of Noah.
It says that when Noah and his relatives stepped back onto the cleansed earth, God made his first covenant with man, promising that a flood would never again destroy the earth.
God asked mankind, instead, to revere God, to construct peace, and to be fruitful, the bishops said. To ratify the covenant, God created a sign: a rainbow.
“This covenantal sign, the rainbow, is claimed in our time as the symbol of a movement that is at once political and cultural,” the bishops note. “We recognize all that is noble in this movement’s aspirations. In so far as these speak of the dignity of all human beings and of their longing to be seen, we share them.”
“The Church,” the letter continues, “condemns unjust discrimination of any kind, also on the basis of gender or orientation. We declare dissent, however, when the movement puts forward a view of human nature that abstracts from the embodied integrity of personhood, as if physical gender were accidental.”
The bishops also say in the letter they protest that such a view is imposed on children as “not a daring hypothesis but a proven truth.”
Transgenderism is “imposed on minors as a heavy burden of self-determination for which they are not ready,” the bishops lament, calling it “curious” that in an intensely body-conscious society, the body is in fact taken too lightly.
People now refuse to see the body “as significant of identity, supposing that the only selfhood of consequence is the one produced by subjective self-perception, as we construct ourselves in our own image,” they observe.
The bishops explain that we are, instead, created in the image and likeness of God, in both body and soul.
“The image of God in human nature manifests itself in the complementarity of male and female,” the letter states. “Man and woman are created for one another: The commandment to be fruitful depends on this mutuality, sanctified in nuptial union.”
The letter goes on to say that the union of a man and a woman, as an image of God’s communion with mankind, is not always easy or painless.
“For some it seems an impossible option,” the bishops acknowledge. “More intimately, the integration within ourselves of masculine and feminine characteristics can be hard. The Church recognizes this. She wishes to embrace and console all who experience hardship.”
The Nordic bishops say they recognize that “the yearning for love and the search for sexual wholeness touch human beings intimately” and they want to be there to accompany everyone as they gradually grow in wisdom and virtue.
“We are called to become new women and men,” they say in the letter. “In all of us there are elements of chaos that need to be ordered. Sacramental communion presupposes coherently lived consent to the terms of the covenant sealed in Christ’s Blood.”
They point out that circumstances may mean, therefore, that a Catholic is unable to receive the sacraments for a time. But “he or she does not therefore cease to be a member of the Church. Experience of internal exile embraced in faith can lead to a deeper sense of belonging. Exiles often turn out that way in Scripture. Each of us has an exodus journey to make, but we do not walk alone.
The bishops’ letter also offers some advice to those who are perplexed by the traditional Christian teaching on sexuality.
“First: Try to acquaint yourself with Christ’s call and promise, to know him better through the Scriptures and in prayer, through the liturgy and study of the Church’s full teaching, not just of snippets here and there. Take part in the Church’s life,” the bishops counsel.
“Secondly,” they add, “consider the limitations of a purely secular discourse on sexuality. It needs to be enriched. We need adequate terms to speak of these important things.”
The Church, they say, “shall have a precious contribution to make if we recover the sacramental nature of sexuality in God’s plan, the beauty of Christian chastity, and the joy of friendship, which lets us see that great, freeing intimacy can be found also in non-sexual relationships.”
You can read the full text of the bishops’ letter and watch a video of the letter being read below.
© Catholic World Report