Vatican

Vatican City, Jan 30, 2020 / 06:00 am (CNA).- Warning of the modern tendency to judge human life on the basis of utility rather than dignity, Pope Francis Thursday urged the need to protect the lives of the smallest and most vulnerable.

“A society deserves the title of ‘civilized’ … if it recognizes the intangible value of human life,” Pope Francis said Jan. 30 in a meeting with the Vatican Congregation of the Doctrine of Faith (CDF).

“The current socio-cultural context is progressively eroding awareness of what makes human life precious. In fact, it is increasingly evaluated on the basis of its efficiency and usefulness, to the point of considering ‘rejected lives’ or ‘unworthy lives’ as those which do not meet this criterion,” the pope warned.

Pope Francis applauded the CDF for dedicating its plenary assembly to the topic of care for the terminally and critically ill.

“Around the patient it is necessary to create a real platform of human relationships while promoting medical treatment, open to hope, especially in those borderline situations,” he said.

The dignity of each person “imposes a duty to never abandon anyone,” Francis said.

“Human life, because of its eternal destination, retains all its value and dignity in all conditions, including precariousness and fragility, and as such is always worthy of the utmost consideration,” he said.

“When illness knocks on the door of our life, the need to have someone looking us in the eye, holding our hand, showing his tenderness and taking care of us, like the Good Samaritan of the Gospel parable,” Pope Francis said.

Hospices can be places where terminally ill people are accompanied by qualified medical, psychological, and spiritual support to live with dignity, comforted by the closeness of their loved ones, the pope said.

“I hope that these centers will continue to be places where ‘therapy of dignity’ is practiced with commitment, thus nurturing love and respect for life,” he added.

The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith is the Vatican department responsible for protecting and promulgating the doctrine of the Catholic Church. It is headed by Cardinal Luis Ladaria Ferrer, S.J., and consultors include cardinals, bishops, priests, canon lawyers, and lay theologians.

Pope Francis congratulated the CDF for its publication of the document “What is Man? An Itinerary of Biblical Anthropology” by the Pontifical Biblical Commission last December.

The CDF is currently reviewing the rules for delicta graviora (the most serious crimes) outlined in the “Sacramentorum sanctitatis tutelage”, a motu proprio issued by John Paul II in 2001 on safeguarding the sanctity of the sacraments, particularly the Eucharist and confession.

“I urge you to continue firmly in this task, to offer a valid contribution in an area in which the Church is directly involved in proceeding with rigor and transparency in protecting the sanctity of the sacraments and the human dignity violated, especially of the little ones,” the pope told the CDF.

“Christian doctrine is not a rigid and closed system in itself, but neither is it an ideology that changes with the passing of the seasons; it is a dynamic reality which, remaining faithful to its foundation, is renewed from generation to generation and is summed up in a face, a body and a name: the Risen Jesus Christ,” Pope Francis said.

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Vatican City, Jan 29, 2020 / 04:45 am (CNA).- The beatitudes should be a defining feature of a Christian’s identity because they reveal the way that Jesus lived his life, Pope Francis said Wednesday.

“The beatitudes always bring joy; they are the way to joy,” Pope Francis said Jan. 29.

“It will do us good to take the Gospel of Matthew today, chapter five verses one to eleven, and read the beatitudes — perhaps a few more times during the week — to understand this road so beautiful, so sure of the happiness that the Lord offers us,” he said in the Vatican’s Paul VI Hall.

Pope Francis said that the beatitudes should be considered “a Christian’s identity card”  because they reveal “the face of Jesus himself.”

“There are eight beatitudes,” he said. “It would be nice to learn them by heart to repeat them, to have precisely in mind and heart, this law that Jesus gave us.”

Pope Francis began a new series of catechesis on the eight beatitudes from Matthew’s Gospel. In this series, the pope will reflect on one beatitude per week over the next two months in his Wednesday general audiences.

The pope said that the beatitudes are a message for all of humanity. 

“It’s hard not to be touched by these words of Jesus, and it is a just desire to want to understand them and to welcome them more fully,” he said.

Francis clarified that the beatitudes bring one the true joy of being “blessed,” which is different from worldly happiness.

“It is the Easter joy,” the pope said.

In giving himself to us, God often chooses “unthinkable paths” that test our limits, bringing tears or defeat, the pope said. It is the joy of one who “has the stigmata, but is alive, one who has died to himself and experienced the power of God.”

“But what does the word ‘blessed’ mean? The original Greek term makarios does not indicate one who has a full belly or is doing well, but is a person who is in a condition of grace, who progresses in the grace of God,” he said.

The pope noted that Jesus taught the Beatitudes as a part of his “Sermon on the Mount,” adding that the mountain is an allusion to Sinai, where God gave Moses the Ten Commandments.

“Jesus begins to teach a new law: to be poor, to be meek, to be merciful. These ‘new commandments’ are much more than norms. In fact, Jesus does not impose anything, but reveals the way of happiness,” Pope Francis said.

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Vatican City, Jan 27, 2020 / 02:05 pm (CNA).- Advocates and survivors of abuse perpetrated by priests of the Legionaries of Christ say that the religious order has no hope of authentic reform without wholesale replacement of the Legion’s leadership figures.

“As long as the same people are in power, there will continue to be manipulation, authoritarianism and cover up,” Adriana Lozano, a consecrated lay woman in the Legion’s Regnum Christi apostolate, told ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner. 

She told ACI Prensa that although she reported for years to Legionaries leadership abuse allegations about a now laicized priest, Fernando Martínez, her allegations went unheard, even by current leaders of the religious institute.

“Nevertheless, I continued to inform each director in turn about the case, without getting a response,” she said.

“As for the Legion. most of the time they ignored my messages or told me ‘thanks, we’ll take action on the matter,’ because I began to inform them about other cases or situations that I saw,” she added.

Martinez abused at least six girls, ages 6 to 11, between 1991 and 1993 when he directed the Cumbres Institute in Cancún, Mexico. He is also accused of other acts of abuse, including that of a boy between the ages of 4 and 6 at the Cumbres Lomas Institute in Mexico City in 1969.

The priest was dismissed from the clerical state earlier this month. While the Legion of Christ had received allegations against him at least as early as 2014, it did not act to investigate them until May 2019, after Ana Lucía Salazar, a Mexican television personality, went public with accusations of sexual abuse and cover-up involving the now-laiciized priest.

One woman abused by the priest when she was a child, Belén Márquez, told ACI Prensa that the Legionaries of Christ neglected their responsibilities for years.

In particular she said that one priest in the religious order, Fr. Eloy Bedia, knew about abuse allegations against Martinez Suarez as early as 1993, and did nothing.

Marquez also criticized the current superior of the religious community, Fr. Eduardo Robles-Gil, noting “he acknowledged that in 2014 he knew about it and did nothing.”

“There hardly can be a renewal of the congregation with the same people” in leadership, she said.

Asked by ACI Prensa why allegations against Martinez were seemingly ignored until 2019, a spokesman for the order referred to a letter written to victims by Robles-Gil.

‘The inadequate attention given when your parents presented their complaints also pains me…I could have remedied it, beginning in 2014, but I followed the decisions that had been made in past decades and we did not re-examine the case. Today I am sorry I did not do it,’’ Robles-Gil wrote in that letter.

In 2014, Robles-Gil was directed to implement changes in the group’s formation process and to implement safe environment policies for the care and protection of minors.

The spokesman explained that recent reforms to the Legionaries of Christ religious order are intended to build a structure of accountability, and avoid the centralization of authority that characterized the Legion’s early years, although those reforms did not lead to a change in the way allegations against Martinez were handled.

The Legion of Christ, founded in 1941 by Marcial Macial, was the subject of controversy in the Church long before it was rocked by the Vatican’s acknowledgment that its charismatic founder lived a double life, sexually abused seminarians, and fathered children.

In 2006 the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith removed Maciel from public ministry and ordered him to spend the rest of his life in prayer and penance. The congregation decided not to subject him to a canonical process because of his advanced age.

In 2010, Pope Benedict appointed then-Archbishop Velasio de Paolis as the papal delegate to the Legion of Christ to oversee its reform. De Paolis, who died in 2017, has been accused of refusing to punish or even investigate Martinez or the superiors who covered up his crimes, according to reporting from the Associated Press.

Martinez had himself been abused by Fr. Marcial Maciel, founder of the Legion of Christ, in Ontaneda and Rome in 1954, when Martinez was 15.

The Legionaries of Christ order is now meeting in its general chapter. The meeting is the first such chapter since Pope Francis approved new constitutions for the troubled congregation in Nov. 2014, following an extraordinary general chapter earlier that year. At that meeting, Robles-Gil was entrusted with implementing reform measures. The priest has since admitted initiating no new no process to recieve or review allegations of abuse.

In addition to assessing the last six years, the 2020 General Chapter will elect the new general director, six councilors, and a general administrator.

A version of this story was first published by ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.

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Vatican City, Jan 27, 2020 / 10:51 am (CNA).- The Vatican announced Sunday that Pope Francis has a new personal secretary, Fr. Gonzalo Aemilius, a priest from Uruguay known for his ministry with children on the streets.

Pope Francis first met Aemilius… […]

Vatican City, Jan 27, 2020 / 04:30 am (CNA).- Pope Francis has asked for people to spend a moment in prayer and recollection on Monday for International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

January 27 marks the 75th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwit… […]

Vatican City, Jan 26, 2020 / 06:30 am (CNA).- Pope Francis prayed Sunday for people infected by the coronavirus, which has killed 56 people in China.

“May the Lord welcome the deceased in his peace, comfort families and support the great commitment of the Chinese community, already put in place to fight the epidemic,” Pope Francis said in his Angelus address Jan. 26.

Originating in the Chinese city of Wuhan, the virus has spread to nine countries with 1,975 confirmed cases.

The World Health Organization’s latest report Jan. 25 stated that among the confirmed cases, 237 people have been reported as severely ill.

The number of people with coronavirus has increased by 655 cases in the 24-hours since the WHO report’s release, the Chinese government reported Jan. 26, one day after Lunar New Year. Hundreds of millions of people travel for the holiday, which is the biggest celebration of the year in China.

Wuhan, a city around the size of London, has been on lockdown since Jan. 23 with restrictions on travel by trains, planes, ferries, and cars. The United States Embassy is working to evacuate all American citizens in Wuhan.

A third U.S. case of coronavirus was confirmed in California on Jan. 26.

Outside of China, coronavirus cases have been confirmed in Thailand, Japan, Singapore, Australia, France, South Korea, Vietnam, Nepal, and the United States in Chicago, Seattle, and Orange Country. There are currently suspected cases among recent travelers from China in Canada, Portugal, and the Ivory Coast.

Before his Angelus prayer, Pope Francis gave thanks for the Church’s first Sunday of the Word of God being celebrated throughout the world on the Third Sunday of Ordinary Time.

“It is this – the Word of Jesus … the Gospel – which changes the world and hearts! We are therefore called to trust the word of Christ, to open ourselves to the Father’s mercy and allow ourselves to be transformed by the grace of the Holy Spirit,” he said.

The pope also prayed for people affected by Hansen’s disease, also known as leprosy, and spent a moment in silence in remembrance of the 75th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. He invited everyone to spend time in prayer on the anniversary, Jan. 27, and to repeat in their hearts: “Never again!”

The coronavirus was first reported to the World Health Organization on Dec. 31. Bishops in the Philippines have urged residents to be vigilant and to quickly check into a hospital if they believe they have been infected with the illness.

Bishop Ruperto Santos of Balanga released a special prayer for the prevention of a global outbreak:

“We pray that you control and prevent a global epidemic of coronavirus. We fervently ask that you display your power and stop the rapid spread of this deadly virus. Manifest your presence to those who have already been infected. Give them hope and courage and may your miraculous healing hands be upon them.”

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Vatican City, Jan 26, 2020 / 04:30 am (CNA).- Pope Francis preached Sunday about the life-changing power of God’s word in Scripture, encouraging everyone to keep a Bible close for daily inspiration.

“Let us make room in our lives for the w… […]

Vatican City, Jan 25, 2020 / 11:15 am (CNA).- Pope Francis prayed at the tomb of St. Paul with Orthodox and Anglican leaders Saturday to conclude the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity.

“God’s priority is the salvation of all,” Pope … […]

Vatican City, Jan 25, 2020 / 09:00 am (CNA).- Pope Francis met Saturday with Iraqi President Barham Salih, and discussed the need to secure the future of Iraq’s deep-rooted Christian population.

The president and the pontiff spoke privately for … […]

Vatican City, Jan 25, 2020 / 05:30 am (CNA).- Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re has been elected the new dean of the College of Cardinals with Cardinal Leonardo Sandri as vice-dean.

Re, 85, will serve a five-year term under the new term limits created by … […]