Everything having to do with the current politics of “sexual minorities” revolves around the lie that homosexuality is completely normal and only “unhealthy” if it’s […]
Vatican City, Sep 5, 2018 / 04:04 am (CNA/EWTN News).- The commandment to rest on Sundays is an invitation to be centered on Christ and to give praise and thanksgiving for the gift of life, not to waste the day in distraction, Pope Francis said Wednesd… […]
Vatican City, Sep 3, 2018 / 05:15 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Pope Francis said Monday that to division and scandal the answer should be silence and prayer; and asked the Lord for the grace to discern when it is better to speak or to remain quiet.
“Wit… […]
Vatican City, Sep 2, 2018 / 06:28 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Catholics should listen to the scripture readings at Mass with an open heart, so that the Word of God can take root in their lives and bear good fruit, Pope Francis said Sunday.
“Let’s do an examination of conscience to see how we welcome the Word of God. On Sunday we listen to it in the Mass. If we listen to it in a distracted or superficial way, it will not help us much,” the pope said Sept. 2.
“Instead, we must welcome the Word with open mind and heart, as a good ground, so that it is assimilated and bears fruit in concrete life.”
Speaking before the Angelus, Francis reflected on when Jesus said that the Word of God is like a grain of wheat: “it is a seed that must grow in concrete works. Thus the Word itself purifies our heart and our actions and our relationship with God and with others [and it] is freed from hypocrisy.”
In the day’s Gospel, Jesus addresses authenticity of obedience to the Word of God and hypocrisy, which he said, “is one of the strongest adjectives that Jesus uses in the Gospel.”
The Gospel passage opens with the scribes and Pharisees objecting to Jesus that his disciples do not follow the ritual precepts. But Jesus replies to them, saying, “This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines human precepts.”
With these words, Jesus is trying to “shake” the scribes and Pharisees from the mistake of neglecting God’s commandments in favor of observing human traditions. If his reaction seems severe, it is because something important is at stake, Francis said: “The truth of the relationship between man and God.”
The pope said the Lord invites each person today to “flee the danger of giving more importance to form than to substance.”
“He calls us to recognize, again and again, what is the true center of the experience of faith, that is, the love of God and love of neighbor, purifying it from the hypocrisy of legalism and ritualism,” he said.
By telling Christians to visit orphans and widows, the Lord is saying to practice charity beginning with the neediest, with the most fragile, Francis said.
“‘Do not let yourself be contaminated by this world’ does not mean isolating oneself and closing oneself to reality,” he continued. “No. Here too it should not be an external but interior attitude, of substance: it means to be vigilant so that our way of thinking and acting is not polluted by the worldly mentality, that is, by vanity, greed, pride.”
He concluded by asking for the intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary to help people to always honor the Lord with their heart, “bearing witness to our love for him in concrete choices for the good of our brothers and sisters.”
After reciting the Angelus, the pope noted Saturday’s beatification of Bl. Anna Kolesárová, virgin and martyr, who was killed “for resisting those who wanted to violate her dignity and her chastity.”
Comparing her to St. Maria Goretti, he said the courageous girl “helps young Christians to remain steadfast in fidelity to the Gospel, even when it requires going against the current.”
Francis also renewed his prayers for Syria and asked those in leadership in the country to use “diplomacy, dialogue and negotiations,” to safeguard human lives.
Vatican City, Sep 1, 2018 / 04:10 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Contemplating the grandeur of the ocean is also an opportunity to reflect on the goodness of God the Creator, Pope Francis said in a message for a day of prayer for the care of creation.
“It… […]
Vatican City, Aug 30, 2018 / 01:21 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- A group of lay Catholic women have written an open letter to Pope Francis, demanding that he answer the questions raised by the recent allegations in the letter from former U.S. nuncio Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò.
In the opening of their letter, the women recall a quote from Pope Francis on the role of women in the Church: “You have said that you seek ‘a more incisive female presence in the Church,’ and that ‘women are capable of seeing things with a different angle from [men], with a different eye. Women are able to pose questions that we men are not able to understand.’”
“We write to you, Holy Father, to pose questions that need answers,” the letter notes.
Specifically, they are seeking answers to the questions raised in Vigano’s recent letter, which accused Pope Francis and other members of the Church hierarchy for covering up sexual abuse allegations against former cardinal Theodore McCarrick.
The women’s questions for Pope Francis include if or when he was made aware of any sanctions allegedly placed on then-cardinal Theodore McCarrick by Pope Benedict XVI, and whether he brought McCarrick back into public ministry despite knowing about these sanctions and accusations.
Asked these questions by journalists on his return flight from the recent World Meeting of Families in Ireland, Pope Francis responded by saying he “will not say a single word on this” and instead encouraged journalists to study the statement themselves and draw their own conclusions.
“To your hurting flock, Pope Francis, your words are inadequate,” the signers of the letter say, addressing the Pope’s response. “They sting, reminiscent of the clericalism you so recently condemned. We need leadership, truth, and transparency. We, your flock, deserve your answers now.”
“Please do not turn from us,” they ask in the letter. “You’ve committed yourself to changing clerical ways in the Church. That a cardinal would prey on seminarians is abhorrent. We need to know we can trust you to be honest with us about what happened. The victims who have suffered so greatly need to know they can trust you. Families, who will be the source of the Church’s renewal, need to know we can trust you, and thus trust the Church.”
The women who have signed the letter serve in a variety of positions and vocations within the Church, in both private and public life. They describe themselves as “deeply committed to our faith and profoundly grateful for Church teachings, the Sacraments, and the many good bishops and priests who have blessed our lives.”
They are “wives, mothers, single women, consecrated women, and religious sisters. We are the mothers and sisters of your priests, seminarians, future priests and religious. We are the Church’s lay leaders, and the mothers of the next generation. We are professors in your seminaries, and leaders in Catholic chanceries and institutions. We are theologians, evangelists, missionaries and founders of Catholic apostolates.”
“In short, we are the Church, every bit as much as the cardinals and bishops around you,” they say. The letter is signed, “With love for Christ and the Church.”
Some prominent signers of the letter include Mary Rice Hasson, the Kate O’Beirne Fellow in Catholic Studies at the Ethics and Public Policy Center; Professor Janet E. Smith, the Father Michael J. McGivney Chair of Life Ethics at Sacred Heart Major Seminary; Leah Darrow, a Catholic speaker, author and evangelist; Ashley McGuire, a senior fellow at The Catholic Association; Kathryn Jean Lopez with the National Review Institute; and Obianuju Ekeocha, the founder and president of Culture of Life Africa.
Other signers include professors and faculty from Catholic institutions including Notre Dame, The Catholic University of America, and the University of St. Thomas, as well as women who are mothers of seminarians, homeschooling mothers, business owners, philosophers and psychologists.
The letter, dated August 30, 2018, is described as the personal initiative of the original signatories and was not organized or sponsored by any group or organization. It had 5,300 signatures as of press time.
Vatican City, Aug 29, 2018 / 04:57 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Divorce and separation may be common, but the model families should strive after is unity, and people should not forget those husbands and wives who, even amid difficulties, continue to be faithfu… […]
Washington D.C., Aug 28, 2018 / 05:44 pm (CNA).- Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò has released a statement responding to accusations that he had curtailed an investigation in 2014 into the sexual misconduct of Archbishop John C. Nienstedt.
“… […]
Vatican City, Aug 28, 2018 / 05:10 pm (CNA).- Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI’s personal secretary said Tuesday that the former pope has not commented on a testimony released Saturday by a former Vatican ambassador, and that he has no plans to do so.
Archbishop Georg Gänswein told German newspaper Die Tagepost Aug. 28 that accounts Benedict had “confirmed” Vigano’s testimony were “fake news.”
On Aug. 25, Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, 77, who served as apostolic nuncio in Washington D.C. from 2011 to 2016, published an 11-page document which called for the resignation of Pope Francis and several cardinals and bishops, whom he accused of covering-up of sexual misconduct allegations against former cardinal Theodore McCarrick.
In the testimony, Viganò wrote that Benedict had “imposed on Cardinal McCarrick sanctions similar to those now imposed on him by Pope Francis” and that Viganò personally told Pope Francis about those sanctions in 2013.
Edward Pentin, a National Catholic Register correspondent, reported Aug. 25 that the Register had “independently confirmed that the allegations against McCarrick were certainly known to Benedict, and the Pope Emeritus remembers instructing Cardinal Bertone to impose measures but cannot recall their exact nature.”
In a blog post published Tuesday, Pentin wrote that that the Register’s sources confirmed only Vigano’s statement that sanctions had been issued against McCarrick by Pope Benedict. Gänswein’s report, Pentin said, did not deny the Register’s reporting.
Pentin also mentioned a New York Times interview with Tim Busch, a board member of EWTN, in which Busch is reported to have told the Times that “leaders of the publication [the Register] had personally assured him that the former pope, Benedict XVI, had confirmed Archbishop Viganò’s account.”
“What Archbishop Gänswein said is entirely accurate,” Pentin wrote. “Any assertion that the Pope Emeritus had seen the entire testimony, and confirmed it, is untrue.”
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Vatican City, Aug 28, 2018 / 05:03 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Pope Francis is personally considering the appeal of Guam Archbishop Anthony Apuron, who was found guilty of certain unspecified accusations back in March.
On Sunday, during the press conference on the papal plane, Pope Francis was asked a question from an Irish journalist seeking for clarification on reports that he was “not favorable” to changing the Vatican tribunal inquiry process in abuse cases.
The question was in response to abuse survivor Marie Collins claiming that Pope Francis was opposed to the creation of a tribunal of inquiry on bishops and their accountability. Earlier in the week, Collins had called for changes to canon law that would permit zero-tolerance policies for those accused of abuse.
Pope Francis said that this was not exactly true, and that it was a complicated issue due to the “different cultures of the bishops that had to be judged.”
As an example of how he was open to changes, he brought up Apuron’s case. Apuron was accused of a multitude of offenses, including raping his nephew in 1989 or 1990. In March, Apuron was found guilty of “certain” charges and sentenced to be removed from office and forbidden from living in the archdiocese. He immediately filed an appeal.
The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith did not state the charges for which the archbishop was found guilty. Sources close to the case told CNA at the time that the archbishop was found guilty of a minority of the allegations leveled against him.
If the archbishop has been found guilty of sexual abuse of minors, the penalty leveled against him is unusual – often a cleric found guilty of such crimes would be “laicized,” or removed from the clerical state, sources said.
Sources also noted that the archbishop has seemingly maintained his ecclesiastical faculties, and though restricted from residence in Guam, is apparently able to exercise ministry as a priest.
One expert suggested to CNA that the five-judge panel may have been divided on the archbishop’s guilt, which could explain the disparity between a guilty verdict and an unusually light sanction.
One source questioned whether pressure to quickly resolve the matter might have influenced the sentence.
The pope explained that in considering Apuron’s appeal, he is bypassing the traditional “giuria”–the council of bishops that make up a tribunal–and will be considering the appeal himself. This is because Apuron’s situation is a “very difficult case.”
Instead, Pope Francis said he “took it upon myself” and created a commission of canonists who will assist him with the case. This group will make a recommendation within the next month, in order for the pontiff to make a judgement.
“It is a complicated case, on one hand, but not difficult because the evidence is clear,” said Pope Francis.
“I cannot pre-judge, I await the report and then I will judge. I say that the evidence is clear because there is this evidence which led the first tribunal to the condemnation.”
After he was found guilty, Apuron released a statement insisting on his innocence and announcing his appeal.
“I have been informed of the conclusion of the first instance canonical trial against me. While I am relieved that the tribunal dismissed the majority of the accusations against me, I have appealed the verdict,” he said.
“God is my witness; I am innocent and I look forward to proving my innocence in the appeals process,” the statement read.
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