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Pope makes renewed plea on behalf of persecuted Rohingya minority

February 8, 2017 CNA Daily News 0

Vatican City, Feb 8, 2017 / 05:16 am (CNA/EWTN News).- On Wednesday Pope Francis made an urgent appeal for prayer on behalf for all suffering due to slavery and exploitation, pointing specifically to the minority Rohingya population of Myanmar, who have undergone violent persecution for years.

“I would like pray with you today in a special way for our brother and sister Rohingya. They were driven out of Myanmar, they go from one place to another and no one wants them,” the Pope said Feb. 8.

“They are good people, peaceful people, they aren’t Christians, but they are good. They are our brothers and sisters. And they have suffered for years,” he said, noting that often times members of the ethnic minority have been “tortured and killed” simply for carrying forward their traditions and Muslim faith.

He spoke to pilgrims gathered for his general audience in the Vatican’s Paul VI Hall, leading them in praying an “Our Father” for the Rohingya people, and asking St. Josephine Bakhita, herself a former salve, to intercede.

Rohingya people are an Indo-Aryan ethnic group largely from the Rakhine state of Burma, in west Myanmar. Since clashes began in 2012 between the state’s Buddhist community and the long-oppressed Rohingya Muslim minority, some 125,000 Rohingya have been displaced, while more than 100,000 have fled Myanmar by sea.

In order to escape forced segregation from the rest of the population inside rural ghettos, many of the Rohingya – who are not recognized by the government as a legitimate ethnic group or as citizens of Myanmar – have made the perilous journey at sea in hopes of evading persecution.

In 2015 a number of Rohingya people – estimated to be in the thousands – were stranded at sea in boats with dwindling supplies while Southeastern nations such as Thailand, Indonesia and Malaysia refuse to take them in.

However, in recent months tens of thousands have fled to Bangladesh amid a military crackdown on insurgents in Myanmar’s western Rakhine state. The horrifying stories recounted by the Rohingya include harrowing tales of rapes, killings and the burning of their houses.

According to BBC News, despite claims of a genocide, a special government-appointed committee in Myanmar formed in January has investigated the situation, but found no evidence to support the allegations.

In Bangladesh, however, the Rohingya have had little relief, since they are not recognized as refugees in the country. Since October, many who fled to Bangladesh have been detained and forced to return to the neighboring Rakhine state.

In his audience appeal, Pope Francis also pointed out that Feb. 8 marks both the feast of St. Josephine Bakhita, as well as the third International day of prayer and reflection against human trafficking. This year the day focuses on the plight of children, with the theme: “We are children! Not slaves!”

Kidnapped and sold into slavery at the age of 7, St. Josephine is the event’s patron. After being bought and sold several times during her adolescence, often undergoing immense suffering, she eventually discovered the faith in her early 20s. She was then baptized, and after being freed entered the Canossian Sisters in Italy.

Pope Francis noted that like modern trafficking victims, St. Josephine was “enslaved in Africa, exploited, humiliated,” but she never lost hope.

“She carried hope forward, and ended up as a migrant in Europe,” he said, noting that it was there that she felt God’s call and became a religious sister.

“Let us pray to St. Josephine Bakhita for all, for all migrants, refugees and exploited, who suffer so much,” he said, and led pilgrims in a round of applause in honor of the Saint.

In his audience speech, Francis continued his ongoing catechesis on the virtue of hope, focusing particularly on its communitarian and ecclesial dimension.

He noted how in St. Paul’s First Letter to the Thessalonians, the apostle’s gaze was “widened” to all the different realities that formed part of the Christian community at the time. In seeing them, Paul asked them “to pray for one another and to support one another.”

This doesn’t just mean helping people in the practical things of everyday life, he said, but also means “helping each other in hope, sustaining each other in hope.”

“It’s not a coincidence that he begins by referencing those who have been entrusted with pastoral responsibility and guidance,” because they are “the first to be called to nourish hope,” the Pope said, noting that this isn’t because they better than others, but because of the divine ministry entrusted to them which “goes well beyond their own strength.”

Francis then pointed to those risk losing hope and falling into desperation, noting that the news always seems to be full of the bad things people do when they become desperate.

“Desperation leads to many bad things,” he said, explaining that when it comes to those who are discouraged, weak and feel downcast due to life’s heaviness, the Church in these cases must make her “closeness and warmth” even closer and more loving, showing even greater compassion.

Compassion, he cautioned, doesn’t mean “to have pity” on someone, but rather to “to suffer with the other, to draw near to the one who suffers. A word, a caress, but which comes from the heart. This is compassion.”

This witness, the Pope said, doesn’t stay closed in the confines of the Christian community, but rather “resounds in all its vigor” even to social and civil context outside as an appeal “not to create walls, but bridges, to not exchange evil with evil, (but) to overcome evil with good, offense with forgiveness.”

A Christian, Francis said, can never tell someone “’you will pay!’ Never. This is not a Christian act.”

Instead, offenses must be overcome with forgiveness so as to live in peace with everyone, he said, adding that “this is the Church! And this is operates Christian hope, when it takes the strong features but at the same time the tenderness of love.”

In learning to have this kind of hope, “it’s not possible” to do it alone, he said, adding that in ourder to be nourished, hope “needs a body in when the various members sustain and revitalize each other.

“This means that, if we hope, it’s because many of our brothers and sisters have taught us to hope and have kept our hope alive,” he said, noting that among these people are “the small, the poor, the simple and the marginalized.”

This is the case, he said, because “those who close in their own wellbeing, in their own contentment, who always feel in place, don’t know hope.

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With an excess of bad news, Pope tells media to offer a message of hope

January 24, 2017 CNA Daily News 0

Vatican City, Jan 24, 2017 / 03:52 am (CNA/EWTN News).- In his annual message to communicators around the world, Pope Francis again condemned the tendency for media to focus on the “bad news,” saying journalists, while being accurate, must also offer a message of hope.

“We have to break the vicious circle of anxiety and stem the spiral of fear resulting from a constant focus on ‘bad news,’” such as war, terrorism, scandal and other human failures, the Pope said in his message for the World Day of Social Communications.

It was published Jan. 24 to mark the feast of St. Francis de Sales, patron of writers, journalists and the Catholic press. The actual day of communications will be celebrated May 28, and will focus on the theme of the Pope’s message: “Fear not, for I am with you: Communicating Hope and Trust in our Time.”

In his message, the Pope said steering clear of bad news “has nothing to do with spreading misinformation that would ignore the tragedy of human suffering,” and neither does in involve “a naive optimism blind to the scandal of evil.”

“Rather, I propose that all of us work at overcoming that feeling of growing discontent and resignation that can at times generate apathy, fear or the idea that evil has no limits,” he said.

Pointing to those in the communications industry who operate with the mentality that “good news does not sell,” and where evil and human suffering often become a form “entertainment,” Francis stressed that “there is always the temptation that our consciences can be dulled or slip into pessimism.”

He urged those who work in the field of communications to pursue “an open and creative style of communication that never seeks to glamourize evil,” but rather tries to focus “on solutions and to inspire a positive and responsible approach on the part of its recipients.”

“I ask everyone to offer the people of our time storylines that are at heart ‘good news,’” he said.

Pope Francis’ appeal for a more positive take on the news isn’t the first time he’s made such a request, nor is it the first time he’s condemned journalists who always focus on negativity and scandal.

In an interview with Belgian weekly magazine “Tertio” published Dec. 7, 2016, the Pope gave a stern warning to journalists to steer clear of the temptations of slander, defamation, misinformation and focusing excessively on scandal.

Using vivid language, he compared the latter to the disease of “coprophilia,” a mental illness in which a person has an abnormal interest in feces.

A few months earlier, Francis dedicated his prayer intention for October 2016, to praying for journalists, specifically asking that they be truthful and ethical in their reporting.

In his message for the world day of communications, the Pope noted that thanks to modern technology, media “makes it possible for countless people to share news instantly and spread it widely.”

“That news may be good or bad, true or false,” he said, recalling how early Christians compared the human mind to a “constantly grinding millstone.” In this image, it is up to the miller to decide what grind: “good wheat or worthless weeds.”

For those who are constantly “grinding out information” in their personal and professional lives, it’s important to engage in “constructive forms of communication that reject prejudice toward others and foster a culture of encounter,” he said, adding that this will help everyone “to view the world around us with realism and trust.”

When it comes to reporting the good news rather than always focusing on the bad, Francis said we have to change the lens thought which we view reality. For Christians, he said, this above all means viewing reality through the lens of “the Good News par excellence: the Gospel of Jesus Christ, Son of God.”

“This good news – Jesus himself – is not good because it has nothing to do with suffering, but rather because suffering itself becomes part of a bigger picture,” he said, noting that this suffering is “an integral part of Jesus’ love for the Father and for all mankind.”

With Christ, “even darkness and death become a point of encounter with light and life,” he said, adding that from here a hope “accessible to everyone” is born and “does not disappoint,” since from this hope God’s enters our hearts.

“Seen in this light, every new tragedy that occurs in the world’s history can also become a setting for good news, inasmuch as love can find a way to draw near and to raise up sympathetic hearts, resolute faces and hands ready to build anew,” he said.

Pope Francis then used Jesus’ Ascension into heaven as an example of what our hope is based on, saying that even though the Lord might appear distant at the moment, “the horizons of hope expand all the more.”

With the help and power of the Holy Spirit, we can become both “witnesses and communicators” of a renewed and redeemed humanity throughout the world, he said.

Confidence in “the seed of God’s Kingdom” spread throughout the world ought also shape the way we communicate, he said, adding that this confidence allows everyone in the communications field to carry out their work with the conviction “that it is possible to recognize and highlight the good news present in every story and in the face of each person.”

In a Jan. 24 news briefing for the publication of the Pope’s message, Msgr. Dario Eduardo Vigano, Prefect of the Vatican’s Secretariat for Communications, stressed the importance of having “constructive communication,” that leans neither toward scandal nor optimism, but is realistic.

It’s important to not “make evil the protagonist,” even when reporting on tragic events, he said, and also warned journalists to steer clear of hypocrisy, which he called an “impure gaze” of reality that “impedes charity.”

Also present at the briefing was Delia Gallagher, Vatican correspondent for CNN, who said the Pope’s document was “an opportune message” that’s important for news agencies to keep in mind.

She focused specifically on the need to be accurate when reporting the news, saying one “can’t be a good journalist if they are not certain of the facts.”

Pope Francis’ message provides a path “if not of truth, precision – to give the news accurately,” she said, and used the Pope himself and how he is often reported as an example.

While it’s not always easy to convey his message due to translations and a variety of other challenges, it’s important to stick to the facts and “to give the context when he says something,” rather than just reporting on snippet of what he said without offering the reader the full picture.

“It’s a job that seems easy, but requires experience,” she said, encouraging her colleagues to be accurate and precise, adding that “from the good news can also come from this.”

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