Vatican City, May 31, 2020 / 02:10 am (CNA).- Pope Francis said Sunday that he prays that Christians will be “more deeply united as witnesses of mercy” in the aftermath of the coronavirus pandemic.
The pope made the comment in a vide… […]
Vatican City, May 30, 2020 / 03:15 pm (CNA).- Our suffering during the coronavirus crisis will have been in vain if we fail to build “a more just, more equitable, more Christian society,” Pope Francis said May 30.
In a video message released Saturday, on the eve of Pentecost, the pope urged Catholics to seize the opportunity for change presented by the pandemic.
He said: “When we come out of this pandemic, we will no longer be able to do what we have been doing, and how we have been doing it. No, everything will be different.”
“All the suffering will have been useless if we do not build together a more just, more equitable, more Christian society, not in name, but in reality, a reality that leads us to a Christian behavior.”
“If we do not work to end the pandemic of poverty in the world, with the pandemic of poverty in the country of each one of us, in the city where each of us lives, this time will have been in vain.”
The pope made the comments in a message to members of the Catholic Charismatic Renewal International Service (CHARIS). The body was established in December 2018 by the Dicastery for Laity, Family, and Life to bring together the different branches of the Charismatic Renewal worldwide. Its statutes came into force on the Solemnity of Pentecost 2019.
The pope told CHARIS members, who were taking part in an online Pentecost vigil, that “Today more than ever we need the Father to send us the Holy Spirit.”
The world is suffering, he said, and it needs the witness of Catholics to the Gospel of Jesus, which can only be given through the power of the Holy Spirit.
“We need the Spirit to give us new eyes, open our minds and hearts to face this moment and the future with the lesson we have learned: we are one humanity. We are not saved alone,” the pope explained, speaking in his native Spanish.
He said that the pandemic had underlined that, despite their differences, Christians are one, united by the power of the Holy Spirit.
“We have before us the duty to build a new reality,” he said. “The Lord will do it; we can collaborate.”
He continued: “From the great trials of humanity, and among them the pandemic, one comes out either better or worse. It is not the same.”
“I ask you: How do you want to come out? Better or worse? And that’s why today we open ourselves up to the Holy Spirit so that He may change our hearts and help us to come out better.”
“If we do not live to be judged according to what Jesus tells us: ‘For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was in prison and you visited me, a stranger and you welcomed me’ (cf. Matthew 25:35-36), we will not come out better.”
The Pope urged members of CHARIS to be guided by a text called Charismatic Renewal and the Service of Man by the Belgian Cardinal Leo Joseph Suenens and the Brazilian Archbishop Hélder Câmara.
He also encouraged them to reflect on “the prophetic words” of St. John XXIII announcing the Second Vatican Council, in which he spoke of a “new Pentecost.”
Pope Francis concluded: “To all of you, I wish on this vigil the consolation of the Holy Spirit. And the strength of the Holy Spirit to come out of this moment of pain, sadness and trial that is the pandemic; to come out better. May the Lord bless you and may the Virgin Mother take care of you.”
Vatican City, May 30, 2020 / 11:15 am (CNA).- Pope Francis asked the Virgin Mary to intercede for an end to “this terrible pandemic” as he recited the rosary with Marian shrines worldwide via videolink May 30.
The pope was joined Saturday … […]
Vatican City, May 30, 2020 / 09:30 am (CNA).- Pope Francis has praised Rome’s priests for remaining close to their flocks as the coronavirus pandemic ravaged Italy.
In a 3,000-word letter dated May 31 and marking Pentecost Sunday, the pope expre… […]
Vatican City, May 30, 2020 / 09:00 am (CNA).- After weeks stuck indoors, the children of Vatican employees will be able to stretch their legs, and grow in their faith, at a sports camp hosted inside the Vatican this summer.
“Estate Ragazzi in Va… […]
CNA Staff, May 29, 2020 / 02:30 pm (CNA).- Tens of millions of euros have been frozen in Swiss banks as part of the investigation into a Vatican property investment, according to a Swiss media report. Swiss authorities have also forwarded documents to Vatican prosecutors, as part of an investigation into investments made by the Holy See Secretariat of State.
On May 23, NZZ am Sonntag reported that Holy See prosecutors sent Swiss authorities a formal request for help examining the Holy See Secretariat of State’s investment of more than $300 million in a luxury London property development.
“The Federal Office of Justice received a request for legal assistance in this matter,” spokesman Raphael Frei told NZZ. “With a diplomatic note dated April 30, 2020, the Federal Office sent the Vatican a first part of the requested documents.”
The newspaper also reported that its sources had confirmed tens of millions of euros have been frozen in several Swiss banks as part of the investigation.
Vatican investigators are examining the Secretariat of State’s purchase of the building at 60 Sloane Avenue, London. In October 2019, four officials at the department were suspended following a raid by Vatican gendarmes in which they seized files and computers. A further raid on a former senior official at the secretariat was conducted in February.
CNA has reported that that deal was at least partially financed with loans from several Swiss banks, including Credit Suisse and BSI.
BSI was the subject of a damning report by Swiss banking authorities in 2016, which found that the bank was in “serious breaches of the statutory due diligence requirements in relation to money laundering and serious violations of the principles of adequate risk management and appropriate organization.” The bank was ordered into an extinctive merger with EFG Group in 2017, on condition that no BSI officer retain a management role.
Credit Suisse acknowledged to NZZ that it was involved in the investigation, but said that it was not the subject of any accusation by either Swiss or Vatican authorities.
“Credit Suisse is not the subject of the Vatican’s investigation, but is working with the authorities in compliance with the applicable regulations,” said bank spokeswoman Anitta Tuure.
The London building was purchased by the Secretariat of State in stages, over a period of years, from Italian businessman Raffaele Mincione, who at the time was managing hundreds of millions of euros of secretariat funds.
When it sold to the secretariat 30,000 of 31,000 shares in the project, Minicone’s holding company retained the 1,000 voting shares needed to control the holding company which owned the building. Mincione eventually offered to part with those, at greatly inflated prices.
To complete the sale, in 2018 the Secretariat of State enlisted the help of another businessman, Gianluigi Torzi, who acted as a commission-earning middleman for the purchase of the remaining shares. Torzi earned 10 million euros for his role in the deal.
Earlier this month, CNA reported that one of the five suspended employees, Fabrizio Tirabassi, who was charged with managing the secretariat’s investments, was made a director of a Luxembourg-registered holding company belonging to Torzi.
Sources close to the Prefecture for the Economy told CNA that Tirabassi has been involved in managing several financial transactions at the secretariat that are now being examined by financial investigators at the Vatican.
Vatican City, May 29, 2020 / 07:10 am (CNA).- The Vatican has published a free book online that can be a resource for parents facing a difficult or fatal diagnosis for their unborn child during pregnancy.
The nearly 300-page ebook is a compilation of speeches given at a Vatican conference held last year dedicated to the medical care and ministries that support families who receive a prenatal diagnosis indicating that their baby will likely die before or just after birth.
“Yes to Life: Caring for the precious gift of life in its frailness,” a conference organized by the Vatican Dicastery for Laity, Family, and Life in May 2019, brought together medical professionals, bioethicists, ministry providers, and families from 70 countries to discuss how best to provide medical, psychological, and emotional support for parents expecting a child with a life-limiting illness.
“Sometimes people ask me, what does perinatal hospice look like? And I answer, ‘It looks like love,’” author and mother Amy Kuebelbeck shared at the conference.
Kuebelbeck was 25 weeks pregnant when she received the diagnosis that her unborn son had an incurable heart defect. She carried her pregnancy to term and had a little more than two hours with her son, Gabriel, before he died after birth.
“It was one of the most profound experiences of my life,” Kuebelbeck said. She wrote a memoir of her experience of grief, loss, and love called Waiting with Gabriel: A Story of Cherishing a Baby’s Brief Life.
“I know that some people assume that continuing a pregnancy with a baby who will die is all for nothing. But it isn’t all for nothing. Parents can wait with their baby, protect their baby, and love their baby for as long as that baby is able to live. They can give that baby a peaceful life — and a peaceful goodbye. That’s not nothing. That is a gift,” Kuebelbeck wrote in Waiting with Gabriel.
Kuebelbeck’s testimony at the conference is included in the ebook in English, as is a transcript of the presentation provided by Dr. Byron Calhoun, a medical professor of obstetrics and gynecology, who first coined the term “perinatal hospice.”
Calhoun’s research has found that allowing parents of newborns with a terminal prenatal diagnosis the chance to be parents can result in less distress for the mother than pregnancy termination.
Other speeches from the conference are also published in Italian and Spanish, such Sister Giustina Olha Holubets’ Italian presentation. The Ukrainian religious sister, who works as a geneticist at the University of Lviv, helped to found “Imprint of Life,” a perinatal palliative care center in Ukraine.
“Imprint of Life” offers grief accompaniment, individualized birth plans, the sacrament of baptism, and burial, as well as respectful photos, footprints, and memory books to help families cherish their brief moments with their child. Their motto is “I cannot give more days to your life, but I can give more life to your days.”
There are now more than 300 hospitals, hospices, and ministries providing perinatal palliative care around the world.
Many families facing these diagnoses have to decide if they will seek extraordinary or disproportionate medical care for their child after birth.
According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, “Discontinuing medical procedures that are burdensome, dangerous, extraordinary, or disproportionate to the expected outcome can be legitimate; it is the refusal of ‘overzealous’ treatment. Here one does not will to cause death; one’s inability to impede it is merely accepted.”
Ministries like Alexandra’s House, a perinatal hospice in Kansas City, Missouri, provide counsel and grief support to parents as they face these difficult medical decisions. They also connect families with a network of other parents who have had a terminal prenatal diagnosis.
“Most of the families stay in contact indefinitely,” said MaryCarroll Sullivan, nurse and bioethics adviser for the ministry.
The book, published by the Vatican’s Publishing House, includes Pope Francis’ speech from his meeting with the conference participants in the Vatican’s Apostolic Palace.
In this speech, Pope Francis said that selective abortion of the disabled is the “expression of an inhumane eugenic mentality that deprives families of the chance to accept, embrace and love the weakest of their children.”
“Fear and hostility towards disability often lead to the choice of abortion, presenting it as a practice of ‘prevention,’” the pope said on May 25, 2019.
Pope Francis also thanked the perinatal hospice providers for creating “networks of love” to which couples can turn to receive accompaniment with the undeniable practical, human, and spiritual difficulties they face.
“Your witness of love is a gift to the world,” he said.
“Caring for these children helps parents to process their mourning and to understand it not only as loss, but also as a stage in a journey travelled together. They will have had the opportunity to love their child, and that child will remain in their memory forever,” Pope Francis said.
“Those few hours in which a mother can cradle her child in her arms leave an unforgettable trace in her heart.”
Vatican City, May 28, 2020 / 10:00 am (CNA).- The Vatican Apostolic Archive will reopen to researchers June 1 after closing for 12 weeks due to Italy’s coronavirus lockdown.
The archive was forced to close to scholars the second week of March, just days after the highly anticipated March 2 opening of the files on the pontificate of Venerable Pius XII.
According to a notice on the archive’s website, the records office will reopen to researchers for four weeks, after which they will again close for the summer break until after Aug. 30.
The archives will be open only during the morning until further notice and the number of researchers allowed in at a time will be limited to 15 as a safety measure.
The online notice said previous reservations to work in the archives are considered canceled and scholars will have to submit new requests for the four-week opening.
The Vatican Apostolic Archive, formerly called the “secret archive,” is an office which preserves documents and books of historical and cultural importance to the Church and to the world. Since 1881 the archive has been open to qualified researchers on request.
March 2, with Pope Francis’ decree, access was extended to include the archives of the pontificate of Venerable Pius XII, which spanned March 1939 to October 1958, and it is the first time scholars had been granted access to the approximately 16 million documents they contain.
The opening of the Pius XII archives was highly anticipated, and researchers hoped study of the files could bring to light new information about Venerable Pope Pius XII’s actions during World War II, which have been hotly debated.
Some historians criticize the pope for not making a more explicit denunciation of Hitler and the Nazis. Others point to his role in drafting “Mit brennender Sorge,” the 1937 encyclical to the Church in Germany, and the limits imposed on him by the Lateran Treaty.
Shortly before its opening, the Vatican apostolic archive had received requests for access from more than 150 scholars from around the world. At the time, a maximum of 60 people were permitted to enter per day.
After August 30, the archive said it will allow 25 people to enter at one time.
Pius XII died in 1958. His cause for canonization was opened by Pope Paul VI in November 1965, during the final session of the Second Vatican Council. On December 19, 2009, Pope Benedict XVI declared him “venerable,” meaning the Church has determined that he led a life of heroic virtue.
As Italy begins to loosen its coronavirus lockdown restrictions, the Vatican has reopened certain areas to the public, including St. Peter’s Basilica, though Rome remains without tourists due to closed international borders.
While it is rumored that Italy will open its borders with the rest of Europe and the Schengen area countries starting June 3, nothing has yet been made official. It is still unknown when Italy will reopen to countries outside Europe.
Vatican City, May 27, 2020 / 08:30 am (CNA).- The Vatican announced Wednesday that Pope Francis has advanced the sainthood causes of 14 men and women, including Bl. Charles de Foucauld, a French missionary killed in Algeria in 1916.
De Foucauld, also … […]
Vatican City, May 27, 2020 / 06:15 am (CNA).- Prayer is a refuge and protection against the evil of the world, Pope Francis said in his general audience address Wednesday.
Speaking via livestream from his library in the apostolic palace, the pope illu… […]
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