Austin, Texas, Aug 15, 2017 / 02:45 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- A new law in Texas removes elective abortion coverage from the standard package of health insurance benefits offered in many plans, a move that pro-life advocates hailed as a victory for those wh… […]
Indianapolis, Ind., Aug 15, 2017 / 06:04 am (National Catholic Register).- Medication abortions are on their way to becoming the dominant method of abortion in the U.S. But lawmakers are starting to look at whether to change their state’s informe… […]
Washington D.C., Aug 15, 2017 / 12:03 am (CNA/EWTN News).- A Mass and a documentary premiere are among the events marking the 50th anniversary of the death of Servant of God Father Vincent R. Capodanno, the decorated Navy chaplain who was killed seekin… […]
Washington D.C., Aug 15, 2017 / 12:01 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Today, Catholics around the world mark the Feast of the Assumption of Mary, commemorating the end of her earthly life and assumption into Heaven. But while the feast day is a relatively new one… […]
Doylestown, Pa., Aug 14, 2017 / 08:02 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- In an effort to draw the ‘selfie generation’ to Marian spirituality, the Pauline Fathers of Doylestown, Pennsylvania collected photos from dozens of countries around the world for a mosaic of Our Lady of Czestochowa.
“In history of Our Lady of Czestochowa, it was a tradition to offer to her new crowns and dresses, made of precious stones and jewels,” said Father Timothy Tarnacki, the coordinator for the Living Crown of Mary Project.
“But today, the world is changing, and we have to find new ways how to reach people, how they can make their faith and their relationship with Jesus and Mary more personal,” he told CNA.
The project was started almost a year ago and the priests will collect photos until Aug. 20 to build a large mosaic of the Marian image, also known as the Black Madonna. It will be revealed on Sept. 10 in the main church in celebration of the 300 anniversary of Poland’s coronation of Our Lady of Czestochowa.
Along with a photo, the Living Crown of Mary project requires the participant to offer a spiritual gift to Mary, which may be an additional Marian prayer or sacrifice.
Fr. Tarnacki said the project originated from the orders’ members in Poland as means to honor Mary and spread Marian spirituality especially among the youth, but also to offer pilgrims the opportunity to participate in a spiritual offering to Mary.
“They offered to the Blessed Mother their entire life, families, difficult situations, unemployment, illnesses. I remember one couple who offered to Mary their resolution to live in chastity before they get married.”
The priests do not have an exact number of the photos sent so far but Fr. Tarnacki estimates the amount to be around 2,000, ranging from cellphone selfies to old black and white photos. All of the photos will be digitalized then a computer software program will arrange the pictures into the image of Our Lady of Czestochowa.
The Pauline Fathers, or the Order of Saint Paul the First Hermit, are the original protectors of the image of the Black Madonna, first established in Poland in 1382 at the Shrine of Jasna Gora. Having a large portion of the Polish immigrant community dedicated to Czestochowa in the U.S., a copy of Mary’s icon blessed by Pope Saint John XXIII was brought to America in 1951 and a shrine was later established in Doylestown in 1955.
The Marian center is a significant piece of history for the Polish-American community, Fr. Tarnacki said, noting his surprise that a project which started off slowly received a large portion of its participates from countries facing political difficulties.
“We were thinking that our project will only cover USA, but it became an international version of the project from Poland, bringing people from every continent into it from about 60 countries.”
Washington D.C., Aug 14, 2017 / 10:59 am (CNA/EWTN News).- With deadly violence following a rally of white supremacists this past weekend in Charlottesville, Va., bishops throughout the nation denounced racism and racist ideologies.
Cardinal Daniel DiNardo of Galveston-Houston, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, and domestic justice chairman Bishop Frank Dewane of Venice, Fla., issued a statement on Sunday condemning “the evil of racism, white supremacy and neo-nazism.”
They also prayed for peaceful counter-protesters, saying that “our prayer turns today, on the Lord’s Day, to the people of Charlottesville who offered a counter example to the hate marching in the streets.”
“Let us especially remember those who lost their lives. Let us join their witness and stand against every form of oppression,” they said.
This past weekend, a planned “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Va., to protest the city’s removal of a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee drew white supremacists including neo-Nazis and Ku Klux Klan members. A counter-protest, including a diverse coalition of religious leaders and members of the Antifa and Black Lives Matter movements, was formed.
On Saturday, a man drove a car into the counter-protest, injuring 19 and killing one, 32 year-old Heather Heyer of Charlottesville, the AP reported. Attorney General Jeff Sessions said the incident “does meet the definition of domestic terrorism in our statute,” and promised to “protect the right of people, like Heather Heyer, to protest against racism and bigotry.”
Two Virginia State troopers also lost their lives near Charlottesville as they responded to the situation there, when their helicopter crashed in Albemarle County.
Catholic bishops denounced the violence but also explicitly condemned the racist ideology amidst the “Unite the Right” gathering.
Archbishop Charles Chaput of Philadelphia stated on Sunday that “the wave of public anger about white nationalist events in Charlottesville this weekend is well warranted.”
“Racism is a poison of the soul. It’s the ugly, original sin of our country, an illness that has never fully healed. Blending it with the Nazi salute, the relic of a regime that murdered millions, compounds the obscenity,” he said.
Bishop Martin Holley of Memphis called the racist rallies and the violence “appalling.”
“May this shocking incident and display of evil ignite a commitment among all people to end the racism, violence, bigotry and hatred that we have seen too often in our nation and throughout the world,” he said.
Other bishops on Twitter explicitly condemned racism over the weekend as well, in response to the unrest.
“Racism is a grave sin rooted in pride, envy and hatred. It suffocates the soul by means of expelling from it the charity of Christ,” Bishop Daniel Flores of Brownsville, Texas tweeted on Saturday night.
“Pray for an end to the evil of racism. And pray, especially today, for its victims. Pray for justice and mercy in our nation,” Bishop James Conley of Lincoln tweeted on Saturday afternoon.
However, Americans cannot only condemn racism in statements, but must also pray and work for a collective conversion of heart, Archbishop Chaput said.
“If our anger today is just another mental virus displaced tomorrow by the next distraction or outrage we find in the media, nothing will change,” he said.
“Charlottesville matters. It’s a snapshot of our public unraveling into real hatreds brutally expressed; a collapse of restraint and mutual respect now taking place across the country.”
“If we want a different kind of country in the future, we need to start today with a conversion in our own hearts, and an insistence on the same in others,” he said. “That may sound simple. But the history of our nation and its tortured attitudes toward race proves exactly the opposite.”
Cardinal Donald Wuerl of Washington, D.C. also called for “soul searching” in the wake of the unrest.
“We must always identify hate for what it is, but the inevitable pointing of fingers of blame after the fact only entrenches division,” he said on his blog.
“We as a nation must also engage in soul searching about how it is that there is so much social unrest and violence in our communities. After years of seeing the flames of resentment and division fanned by incitement to bitterness and distrust, should we not now be actively seeking reconciliation and a return to civility?” he asked.
“At this time, as Christians, as disciples of Jesus, we must redouble our efforts to bear a witness for peace and the common good,” he said.
President Donald Trump condemned the “egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides – on many sides. It’s been going on for a long time in our country.”
Vice President Mike Pence, in a joint press conference on Sunday with Colombia University President Juan Manuel Santos, expressed condolences to the families of Hyer and the two state troopers.
“We have no tolerance for hate and violence, from white supremacists, neo-Nazis, or the KKK. These dangerous fringe groups have no place in American public life and in the American debate, and we condemn them in the strongest possible terms,” he said.
“Our administration is bringing the full resources of the Department of Justice to investigate and prosecute those responsible for the violence that ensued yesterday in Charlottesville. And we will hold them to account, under the law,” he said.
Washington D.C., Aug 12, 2017 / 03:46 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- The head of the U.S. bishops conference called for prayers after one person was killed and over a dozen injured during a white nationalist protest in Charlottesville, Virginia.
“The abhorrent acts of hatred on display in Charlottesville are an attack on the unity of our nation and therefore summon us all to fervent prayer and peaceful action,” Cardinal Daniel DiNardo said in a statement Aug. 11.
“We offer our prayers for the family and loved ones of the person who was killed and for all those who have been injured. We join our voices to all those calling for calm.”
After violent clashes between hundreds of white nationalists and counter-protestors in Charlottesville’s Emancipation city park, a car plowed into the crowd, killing one and injuring 19, reported the New York Times.
The white nationalist gathering aimed to protest the proposed removal of a statue of Confederate general Robert E. Lee from a local park. The group, which began its demonstration on Friday night, waved Confederate flags and chanted phrases such as “You will not replace us” and “Jew will not replace us.”
By the next morning, hundreds of counter-protestors, from religious leaders to Black Lives Matter activists had gathered and eventually convened with the white nationalists at Emancipation park. While the morning was relatively peaceful, violence began to escalate, with the National Guard arriving to disperse the crowds.
President Donald Trump spoke out against the violence in a statement Saturday, saying he condemned in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry, and violence on many sides.”
Dallas, Texas, Aug 11, 2017 / 12:54 pm (CNA).- A Texas Catholic priest has countered the claim of Texas Baptist pastor and adviser to Trump, Pastor Robert Jeffress, who claimed on Thursday that the president has been given “authority by God” to use nuclear force against North Korea.
In a statement to CBN News Tuesday, Jeffress said that Scripture endowed “rulers full power to use whatever means necessary – including war – to stop evil.”
“In the case of North Korea, God has given Trump authority to take out Kim Jong-Un,” Jeffress said. “I’m heartened to see that our president…will not tolerate any threat against the American people.”
However, this is a gross misunderstanding of Scripture, countered Catholic priest Fr. Joshua Whitfield.
“No, God did not anoint Trump to nuke North Korea” Fr. Whitfield responded in the title of his opinion piece for The Dallas Morning News.
Catholic leaders, including the U.S. bishops and Pope Francis, have been outspoken about the need to eliminate all nuclear weapons in the pursuit of peace, particularly at this time of escalating tensions. Numerous other Catholic leaders in the recent past, including Pope Benedict XVI, Pope John Paul II, Pope John XXIII and Pope Paul VI, all opposed the development of nuclear weapons.
In Gaudium Et Spes, a Vatican II document released by Pope Paul VI in 1965, the authority of the Church reiterated its opposition to the arms race, calling it “an utterly treacherous trap for humanity, and one which ensnares the poor to an intolerable degree. It is much to be feared that if this race persists, it will eventually spawn all the lethal ruin whose path it is now making ready.”
The idea that God has given political powers such as President Donald Trump authority to “take out” evil authorities such as North Korea’s Kim Jong Un often stems from a misreading of Chapter 13 of St. Paul’s letter to the Romans, Fr. Whitfield noted.
“Particularly, it’s based upon those verses that call upon Christians to subject themselves to governing authorities because they serve the Lord as an ‘avenger who carries out God’s wrath on the wrongdoer,’” he said.
But it’s important to understand the context under which St. Paul was writing, he added. St. Paul was writing to people living under “arbitrary and often anti-Semitic pagan rule, offering fellow believers a moral strategy for survival, on how to abide by Jesus’ ethic of love until his coming again in glory.”
It is not meant to be read as “a theology of politics, not a charter for Christian participation in the affairs of state, not a proof text for subservience,” he said.
“For Paul, it would have been unthinkable to consider a political ruler some sort of anointed Christian prince or president waging war on behalf of believers. We should remember that Paul was biblical, not Constantinian. He saw political authority as something ordered by God rather than ordained by him. Governments, wars, rulers, the innumerable fools of history: All of it, both good and evil, God mysteriously ultimately arranges according to his will,” he said.
Christians are called to imitate Jesus’ way of peace, Fr. Whitfield noted.
“That’s what’s biblical, not any sort of sacralizing of national leaders,” he said.
“…we shouldn’t be so quick to assume God’s bellicose blessing (on aggressive use of force). It’s why we should pray for peace.”
Houston, Texas, Aug 11, 2017 / 03:32 am (CNA/EWTN News).- “We are many parts, but we are all one body,” says the refrain of a popular ’80s Church hymn, based on the words of 1 Cor. 12:12.
While we are one body in Christ, if you happen to be a Catholic saint, the many parts of your own body might be spread out all over the world.
Take, for example, St. Catherine of Siena.
A young and renowned third-order Dominican during the Middle Ages, she led an intense life of prayer and penance and is said to have single-handedly ended the Avignon exile of the successors of Peter in the 14th century.
When she died in Rome, her hometown of Siena, Italy, wanted her body. Realizing they would probably get caught if they took her whole corpse, the Siena thieves decided that it would be safer if they just took her head.
When they were stopped on their way out by guards outside of Rome, they said a quick prayer, asking for St. Catherine of Siena’s intercession. The guards opened the bag and did not find the dead head of St. Catherine, but a bag full of rose petals. Once the thieves were back in Siena, Catherine’s head re-materialized, one of the many miracles attributed to the saint.
The head of St. Catherine of Siena was placed in a reliquary in the Basilica of St. Dominic in Siena, where it can still be venerated today, along with her thumb. Her body remains in Rome, her foot is venerated in Venice.
From the Shroud of Turin, or the finger of St. Thomas, to the miraculous blood of St. Januarius, or the brain of St. John Bosco, the Catholic Church keeps and venerates many curious but nevertheless holy artifacts, known as relics, from Jesus and the saints.
To the outsider, the tradition of venerating relics (particularly of the corporeal persuasion) may seem like an outlandishly morbid practice.
But the roots of the tradition pre-date Jesus, and the practice is based in Scripture and centuries of Church teaching.
While it’s one of the most fascinating traditions of the Church, it can also be one of the most misunderstood.
Father Carlos Martins, CC, is a Custos Reliquiarum, which is an ecclesiastically appointed Curate of Relics with the authority to issue relics.
He is a member of Companions of the Cross, and the head of Treasures of the Church, a ministry that aims to give people an experience of the living God through an encounter with the relics of his saints in the form of an exposition. The ministry brings expositions of various relics throughout North America by invitation.
In the following interview with CNA, Fr. Martins answers questions and dispels some common misunderstandings about the tradition of relics.
First of all, what is a relic?
Relics are physical objects that have a direct association with the saints or with Our Lord. They are usually broken down into three classes:
First class relics are the body or fragments of the body of a saint, such as pieces of bone or flesh.
Second class relics are something that a saint personally owned, such as a shirt or book (or fragments of those items).
Third class relics are those items that a saint touched or that have been touched to a first, second, or another third class relic of a saint.
The word relic means “a fragment” or “remnant of a thing that once was by now is no longer.” Thus, we find in antique shops “Civil War relics” or “Relics of the French Revolution.” Obviously, we are not talking about these kinds of relics but rather sacred relics.
Where did the Catholic tradition of venerating saints’ relics come from?
Scripture teaches that God acts through relics, especially in terms of healing. In fact, when surveying what Scripture has to say about sacred relics, one is left with the idea that healing is what relics “do.”
When the corpse of a man was touched to the bones of the prophet Elisha the man came back to life and rose to his feet (2 Kings 13:20-21).
A woman was healed of her hemorrhage simply by touching the hem of Jesus’ cloak (Matthew 9:20-22).
The signs and wonders worked by the Apostles were so great that people would line the streets with the sick so that when Peter walked by at least his shadow might ‘touch’ them (Acts 5:12-15).
When handkerchiefs or aprons that had been touched to Paul were applied to the sick, the people were healed and evil spirits were driven out of them (Acts 19:11-12).
In each of these instances God has brought about a healing using a material object. The vehicle for the healing was the touching of that object. It is very important to note, however, that the cause of the healing is God; the relics are a means through which He acts. In other words, relics are not magic. They do not contain a power that is their own; a power separate from God.
Any good that comes about through a relic is God’s doing. But the fact that God chooses to use the relics of saints to work healing and miracles tells us that He wants to draw our attention to the saints as “models and intercessors” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 828).
When did the veneration of relics begin?
It was present from the earliest days of Christianity, during the Apostolic age itself. The following is an account written by the Church in Smyrna (modern day Izmir, Turkey) when its bishop, St. Polycarp was burned alive:
“We adore Christ, because He is the Son of God, but the martyrs we love as disciples and imitators of the Lord. So we buried in a becoming place Polycarp’s remains, which are more precious to us than the costliest diamonds, and which we esteem more highly than gold.”
(Acts of St. Polycarp, composed approx. 156 AD)
Polycarp was a significant figure. He was converted by John the Apostle, who had baptized him and subsequently ordained him a bishop. Thus we see that from its outset the Church practiced devotion to the remains of the martyrs.
What is the spiritual significance of relics?
I think that St. Jerome puts it best when he said:
“We do not worship relics, we do not adore them, for fear that we should bow down to the creature rather than to the creator. But we venerate the relics of the martyrs in order the better to adore him whose martyrs they are.” (Ad Riparium, i, P.L., XXII, 907).
We venerate relics only for the sake of worshipping God.
When we collect relics from the body of a saint, what part of the body do we use?
Any part of the saint’s body is sacred and can be placed in a reliquary. Any and every bone may be used. In addition, flesh, hair, and sometimes blood, are also used. Sometimes everything from the tomb is dispersed from it. Sometimes a tomb is preserved.
At what point in the canonization process are items or body parts considered official relics by the Church?
Before the beatification takes place, there is a formal rite whereby the relics are identified and moved (the official word is “translated”) into a church, a chapel, or an oratory. Put simply, the grave is exhumed and the mortal remains are retrieved.
Only the Church has the juridical power to formally recognize the sanctity of an individual. When the Church does this – through beatification and canonization – their relics receive the canonical recognition as being sacred relics.
There is an importance difference between beatification and canonization. Beatification is the declaration by the Church that there is strong evidence that the person in question is among the blessed in heaven. Nevertheless, beatification permits only local devotion. That is, devotion in the country in which the individual lived and died. When Mother Teresa was beatified, for instance, only in India and in her native Albania was her devotion permitted. Her Mass could not be celebrated, for example, in the United States, nor could her relics be placed within its altars.
Whereas beatification permits local devotion, canonization, on the other hand, mandates universal devotion. It grants to the canonized individual the rights of devotion throughout the universal Church.
The Church allows saints’ body parts to be scattered for relics, but forbids the scattering of ashes of the deceased who are cremated. Why is that?
Every person has a right to a burial. This means that the community has a duty to bury the dead.
Every human society and culture throughout time has felt this duty. The dead have always been buried, and archaeology has never discovered a human community that did not practice this. One could rightly say, therefore, that burying the dead forms part of our human cultural DNA.
The theological term for this instinct natural law. Nature has imprinted a law within the human heart that manifests itself in the practice of burying the dead as a final act of love and devotion, or at least an act of respect and propriety.
It should be no surprise, then, that the Church lists as one of the corporal works of mercy burying the dead. Grace does not destroy nature but perfects it.
There is flexibility in the kind of burial. Remains may be buried in the ground, in the sea, or above ground within, for example, a cave or columbarium. The point is that a burial occurs within a single place, such that it can be said that the person “occupies” the place as a final location of rest. The human heart longs for this. We see people arriving at graves and speaking to the grave as if they were speaking to the deceased. And they do so differently than they might speak to the dead at home. At the grave, they speak to the dead as if they are in a place.
For this reason, among others, the Church has always taught not only that it is completely beneath the dignity of human body to have its remains “scattered,” but also completely beneath basic human sensibilities. People need a place to encounter and meet the dead in their physicality.
Nevertheless, the saints, as members of the body of Christ, have a right to have their remains venerated. And this right, flowing from their dignity as members of the Body of Christ, supersedes their right to have their remains remain in burial.
What is the proper way to keep relics? Are lay Catholics allowed to have first class relics in their homes?
Relics are very precious. They are not something that was alive at one time and is now dead. In the case of first class relics, we are talking about flesh that is awaiting the general resurrection, where the soul of a saint will be reunited with his physical remains.
As such, the way we treat relics is of the utmost importance. Ideally, relics should be kept in a Church or chapel where they can be made available for public veneration.
The highest honor the Church can give to a relic is to place it within an altar, where the Mass may be celebrated over it. This practice dates from the earliest centuries of the Church. In fact, the sepulchers of the martyrs were the most prized altars for the liturgy.
As an alternative to encasing them within altars, they may be installed within a devotional niche where people may venerate them. Such shrines are important as they afford people a deeper experience of intimacy with the saint.
The Church does not forbid the possession of relics by lay persons. They may even keep them in their homes. However, because of the many abuses that have been committed concerning relics, the Church will no longer issue relics to individuals – not even to clergy.
These abuses included failing to give them proper devotion (neglect), careless mistreatment of them, discarding them, and in some cases, even selling them. The abuses were not necessarily committed by the person to whom the Church had originally bequeathed the relics. But when such persons became deceased, and the relics were passed on by inheritance, they were often subject to great vulnerability. With the eclipse of the Christian culture in the western world, faith can no longer be taken for granted, even among the children of the most devout people.
Thus, to protect relics, the Church only issues them to Churches, chapels, and oratories.
How important is the authenticity of the relic? How does the Church go about determining authenticity of very old relics from the beginning of the Church?
The authenticity is critically important.
But for the ancient saints, determining identity is much easier than you might think. It was tradition to build a church over top of a saint’s grave. That is why St. Peter’s Basilica is where it is, or why St. Paul Outside the Walls is there. Both encompass the tomb for the saint, which is located directly beneath the altar.
Modern archaeology has only affirmed what the ancient tradition has believed.
Washington D.C., Aug 10, 2017 / 11:08 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Dialogue and prudent actions to uphold international resolutions are key to maintaining peace amid rising tensions between North Korea and the international community, one theologian said.
“Dialogue is critical to resolving this particular issue,” Dr. Joseph Capizzi, a moral theologian at the Catholic University of America, told CNA. “We have kicked the can down the road for 50-plus years, with regard to Korea.”
“And the further we kick the can down the road, the more difficult the situation becomes, the less solvable it becomes by the use of force. So dialogue is more essential now than it ever was before.”
The Vatican has shown concern over the developing situation and has also expressed the need for dialogue between countries. Archbishop Silvano Tomasi, former Permanent Observer of the Holy See to the United Nations in Geneva, said on Wednesday that the “way of conflict is always the wrong way.”
“The way forward is not that of having the latest military technology, but of having an approach of inclusion,” the archbishop said, as reported by Vatican Radio.
In July, North Korea successfully tested ballistic missiles that had the capability of reaching the U.S. mainland, following a series of launches of medium-range and intercontinental ballistic missiles earlier this year.
Then on Tuesday, the Washington Post reported that North Korea had produced a small-enough nuclear warhead that could be placed inside a missile, according to intelligence analysts. North Korea reportedly has as many as 60 nuclear weapons, according to one United States estimate.
On Wednesday, DPRK state media reported that the Kim Jong-Un regime was considering a strike against the island of Guam in the West Pacific, the westernmost U.S. territory and one from which B-1 bombers have flown over the Korean peninsula in military exercises. The AP followed up on Thursday by reporting that a plan for North Korea to launch four missiles aimed to land in the ocean within 25 miles of Guam, as an exercise of its threat to the U.S. territory, had been hatched and could be submitted for approval in the next week to Kim Jong Un.
Because of North Korea’s continued nuclear buildup and its ballistic missile tests, the UN Security Council unanimously voted last weekend to impose more sanctions on the Communist dictatorship.
President Donald Trump vowed on Tuesday that if North Korea continued to threaten the United States, they would “face fire and fury like the world has never seen.”
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said at a Wednesday press conference that “what the President is doing is sending a strong message to North Korea in language that Kim Jong-un can understand, because he doesn’t seem to understand diplomatic language.”
“I think the President just wanted to be clear to the North Korean regime on the U.S. unquestionable ability to defend itself, will defend itself and its allies,” he said.
The need for dialogue carries with it the importance of prudence and “sobriety” in the rhetoric of U.S. and world leaders, Capizzi said.
“We do want to engage them,” he said. “We’re trying to pull back some of the incendiary nature of the rhetoric. And then to have the President immediately follow that up with the ‘fire and fury’ comment, it makes us seem erratic. It makes us seem inconsistent,” he said.
Yet, he added, “action is much more important here than rhetoric.” The international sanctions, and the unanimous vote of UN Security Council members – including even Russia and China — to impose them, were an important step to take, he said, “to induce North Korea to stop testing missiles.”
Also, the actions that have not been taken are important, he said, like an overly aggressive mobilization of U.S. military forces. “You don’t see our military or our navy sort of ratcheting up right now,” he said.
“That’s what we really need to keep our eyes on, is what is our military doing? Where are our ships going in that part of the world? What is Japan doing?” he said. “And so far I think everybody recognizes there’s nothing to gain by pushing this further. What we really want to do is sit down and see if we can negotiate out of this.”
Pope Francis, in an April 29 in-flight press conference during his return from Egypt, said that regarding the escalating international tensions with North Korea, “the path is the path of negotiation, the path of diplomatic solutions.”
“This world war in pieces of which I’ve been talking about for two years, more or less, it’s in pieces, but the pieces have gotten bigger, they are concentrated, they are focused on points that are already hot,” he said.
“Things are already hot, as the issue of missiles in North Korea has been there for more than a year, now it seems that the thing has gotten too hot.”
Archbishop Bernardito Auza, Apostolic Nuncio and Permanent Observer of the Holy See to the United Nations, told UN News this summer “general disarmament — that is a priority this year.”
“There is no doubt that the Catholic Church, Pope Francis now in particular, is very much against not only the use but also the possession of nuclear weapons,” he said.
Leaders for the U.S. and European bishops also called for nuclear disarmament in a July 6 statement “Nuclear Disarmament: Seeking Human Security.” Bishop Oscar Cantu, chair of the U.S. bishops’ international justice and peace committee, signed the statement along with Archbishop Jean-Claude Hollerich, president of the Conference of European Justice and Peace Commissions.
“For many, the horror of a potential nuclear war receded from consciousness with the end of the Cold War, but recent geopolitical developments remind us that our world remains in grave danger,” the bishops stated.
“Even a limited nuclear exchange would have devastating consequences for people and the planet. Tragically, human error or miscalculation could lead to a humanitarian catastrophe.”
While the United Nations conference to negotiate the multi-lateral and legally-binding Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons was wrapping up in July, the bishops said, the U.S. and “most European nations” were noticeably absent.
122 countries present voted in favor of the treaty, with one, the Netherlands, voting against it and Singapore abstaining, the UN reported.
“Nuclear states are making significant new investments to modernize nuclear arsenals. These costly programs will divert enormous resources from other pressing needs that build security, including achieving the Sustainable Development Goals,” the bishops stated.
“The indiscriminate and disproportionate nature of nuclear weapons, compel the world to move beyond nuclear deterrence. We call upon the United States and European nations to work with other nations to map out a credible, verifiable and enforceable strategy for the total elimination of nuclear weapons.”
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