Vatican

No Picture
News Briefs

Pope Francis calls faithful married love ‘revolutionary’

October 31, 2018 CNA Daily News 0

Vatican City, Oct 31, 2018 / 04:48 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Faithful married love, in which a husband loves his wife like Christ loves the Church, is “revolutionary,” Pope Francis said Wednesday.

The pope focused his remarks at the general audience on spousal fidelity in every vocation.

“A call to love … manifests itself in fidelity,” Pope Francis said Oct. 31 in St. Peter’s Square.

“This letter of St. Paul is revolutionary to say a husband should love like Christ loves the Church,” the pope continued, in a departure from his prepared remarks. “It’s a revolution. Always on the way of love.”
 
Pope Francis’ comments came as a part of a weekly catechesis on the Ten Commandments. This Wednesday, the pope reflected on the Sixth Commandment, “Do not commit adultery.”

“Who then is the adulterer, the lustful, the unfaithful?” asked the pope. “He is an immature person, who … interprets situations based on his own well-being and satisfaction.”

“The human body is not an instrument of pleasure, but the place of our call to love, and in authentic love there is no room for lust and for its superficiality. Men and women deserve more!” he continued.

“This command is for everyone, it is a paternal Word of God addressed to every man and woman,” the pope said.

“Let us remember that the path of human maturity is the path itself of love that goes from receiving care to the ability to offer care, from receiving life to the ability to give life,” he added

The Holy Father stated twice, “every Christian vocation is spousal.”

“In the priesthood one loves God’s people with all the paternity, tenderness and strength of a husband and a father,” the pope explained.

“The Church does not need aspirants to the role of priests, but men to whom the Holy Spirit touches the heart with unconditional love for the Bride of Christ,” he said.

We start from Christ’s “fidelity, his tenderness, his generosity,” Pope Francis said, and from there “we look with faith at marriage and every vocation, and we understand the full meaning of sexuality.”

[…]

No Picture
News Briefs

Vatican cites immunity in refusal to send French court summons to CDF prefect

October 30, 2018 CNA Daily News 4

Vatican City, Oct 30, 2018 / 10:06 am (CNA/EWTN News).- The Vatican has invoked diplomatic immunity in refusing to deliver a French court summons to the prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Cardinal Luis Francisco Ladaria Ferrer, in a case against a French cardinal.

The Holy See informed the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs in September that it would not notify Cardinal Ladaria of an order to testify before the Lyon court regarding a letter he sent while secretary of the CDF.

A Vatican court ruled that the summons was not valid, since the letter was sent in Ladaria’s capacity as a minister of Vatican City State and is protected under international law.

The Spanish cardinal was first called to testify last spring in a case against Cardinal Philippe Barbarin of Lyon and six other officials of the Archdiocese of Lyon, who are being prosecuted for allegedly failing to report accusations of abuse by a priest to the police.

The accused abuser, Fr. Bernard Preynat, was charged with having committed sexual abuse against minors from 1986 to 1991, though prosecutors dropped his case in 2016. Preynat was removed from ministry by Cardinal Barbarin in 2015.

Victims of Preynat are the plaintiffs in the trial, which is scheduled to begin in January 2019, after two postponements after a lack of response from Ladaria. The court decided last month to continue without his testimony.

In Ladaria’s letter to the Archbishop of Lyon, which was found in a police search of the archdiocesan offices, he advised Barbarin to take disciplinary action against Preynat, “while avoiding public scandal.”

The plaintiffs’ lawyers want Ladaria to testify as to whether the direction to prevent scandal was intended as an injunction to avoid going to court, in which case they accuse the CDF prefect of being complicit in failing to report the allegedly abusive priest to authorities.

Cardinal Barbarin has maintained his innocence of the charges brought against him, though he acknowledges the action he took, after learning of abuse allegations in 2007, was “belated.”

[…]