Vatican City, Oct 20, 2018 / 08:47 am (CNA/EWTN News).- As the youth synod wrapped up its third week, the bishops and auditors discussed the sexual abuse crisis in parts of the world and how to respond to young people experiencing same-sex attraction.
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Vatican City, Oct 19, 2018 / 09:44 am (CNA/EWTN News).- As the Church prepares to celebrate World Mission Day on Sunday, the head of the Vatican’s evangelization congregation said the timing of the day with the youth synod provides an opportunity… […]
Vatican City, Oct 19, 2018 / 08:22 am (CNA/EWTN News).- In a new testimony Friday, Archbishop Carlo Vigano charged that Pope Francis has been negligent in his responsibilities to the Church, and responded to efforts to refute allegations he has made in recent months about Archbishop Theodore McCarrick and other ecclesiastical leaders.
Vigano also denied charges that he is in rebellion against Pope Francis.
Responding to an Oct. 7 letter from the Vatican’s prefect for the Congregation for Bishops, Cardinal Marc Ouellet, Vigano said he is not urging anyone to “topple the papacy,” and that he prays for Pope Francis daily — more than he has for any other pope — urging the pontiff to “admit his errors, repent.”
However, Vigano’s Oct. 19 statement also defended his decision to “bear witness to corruption in the hierarchy of the Catholic Church,” which he called a painful decision. He said he believes his further silence would cause damage to souls and “certainly damn” his own.
Responding to the charge that he has created confusion and division in the Church with his testimony, Vigano said “impartial observers” know there was already an excess of both, a situation which he blames at least partially on Pope Francis.
Confusion and division, he said, “is inevitable when the successor of Peter is negligent in exercising his principal mission, which is to confirm the brothers in the faith and in sound moral doctrine. When he then exacerbates the crisis by contradictory or perplexing statements about these doctrines, the confusion is worsened.”
“Therefore I spoke. For it is the conspiracy of silence that has wrought and continues to wreak great harm in the Church — harm to so many innocent souls, to young priestly vocations, to the faithful at large.”
Vigano’s statement outlines the principal claims he made in his original Aug. 25 testimony about Archbishop Theodore McCarrick and the knowledge he says the Vatican and Pope Francis had regarding of the ex-cardinal’s sexual abuse of seminarians.
Vigano’s latest testimony also summarizes what he considers Ouellet’s main arguments.
“In brief, Cardinal Ouellet concedes the important claims that I did and do make, and disputes claims I don’t make and never made.”
Refuting a claim by Ouellet, that the Holy See was only aware of “rumors” about Archbishop McCarrick and nothing further, Vigano said that “to the contrary, that the Holy See was aware of a variety of concrete facts,” and has documentary proof in the appropriate archives, where “no extraordinary investigation is needed to recover them.”
“The crimes reported were very serious, including those of attempting to give sacramental absolution to accomplices in perverse acts, with subsequent sacrilegious celebration of Mass.”
The attempted sacramental absolution of an accomplice in a sin of sexual immorality is a “grave delict” in the Church’s canon law, for which a priest can be punished with excommunication.
Vigano conceded a statement from Ouellet’s letter that there were not canonical “sanctions” against Archbishop McCarrick (as claimed by Vigano in his original testimony) but that there were “conditions and restrictions” against him.
He said that he believes “to quibble whether they were sanctions or provisions or something else is pure legalism. From a pastoral point of view they are exactly the same thing.”
The archbishop argued that the public criticism against him following his August testimony was silent on two topics: the situation of the victims and the “corrupting influence of homosexuality in the priesthood and in the hierarchy.” It is not a matter of politics or “settling scores,” he said, but “about souls.”
He said it is “an enormous hypocrisy” to condemn abuse and feel sorrow for victims, but not denounce the “root cause” of much sexual abuse: homosexuality within the clergy. He also accused homosexual clergy of “collusion,” and called clericalism an instrument of abusers, but not the “main motive.”
“I am not surprised that in calling attention to these plagues I am charged with disloyalty to the Holy Father and with fomenting an open and scandalous rebellion,” for calling attention to “homosexual corruption,” he said.
Vigano ended his testimony by asking any priests or bishops who have access to documents, or who have other knowledge, to testify to the truth of his statements.
“You too are faced with a choice,” he charged. “You can choose to withdraw from the battle, to prop up the conspiracy of silence and avert your eyes from the spreading of corruption” or choose to speak, he said.
Vatican City, Oct 18, 2018 / 03:56 pm (CNA).- The 2018 Synod of Bishops has elected a group of eight participants to begin drafting a message from the synod to the youth of the world.
The text will be put to the entire assembly for approval before it … […]
Vatican City, Oct 18, 2018 / 11:52 am (CNA).- An Italian magazine has raised new questions about a Vatican official mentioned in the August “testimony” of Archbishop Carlo Vigano. The report from L’Espresso, an Italian newsweekly, could be seen to provide support for at least one claim made in Vigano’s controversial testimony.
L’Espresso, an Italian newsweekly, reported Oct. 12 that Venezuelan Archbishop Edgar Peña Parra, 58, who began serving Oct. 15 as “sostituto” of the Vatican’s Secretariat of State, might have been dismissed from a seminary where he studied because he was thought by seminary administrators to have a homosexual orientation.
As ‘sostituto’, the archbishop is tasked with overseeing much of the day-to-day business of the Vatican’s Curial offices.
The magazine published a February 1985 letter from Archbishop Domingo Perez, then Archbishop of Maracaibo, the archdiocese in which Parra was later ordained. The letter was written to the rector of the St. Thomas Aquinas Seminary, at which Parra did the first part of his seminary studies before being dismissed.
In the letter, Perez said that he had received negative reports about Parra from the St. Thomas Aquinas Seminary, and acknowledged that Parra had been dismissed from studies there. Perez said that he had subsequently sent the student to another seminary in Caracas, and had received positive reports about him there.
However, Perez wrote that he had received an anonymous letter alleging that Parra had been expelled from his first seminary because he had a homosexual orientation and was, he wrote “a sexually sick person.”
Perez asked the seminary rector to make inquiries into those allegations. L’Espresso did not report any additional communications between the archbishop and the seminary rector. Parra was ordained six months after Perez sent his letter him.
Parra is among the bishops mentioned in Vigano’s Aug. 25 “testimony” regarding Archbishop Theodore McCarrick. In that document, Vigano claimed that while he oversaw personnel for Vatican diplomatic offices, he had received “worrisome information” about Parra, who worked at that time in the Vatican diplomatic corps.
Vigano did not specify what “worrisome information” he had received, but the questions raised about Parra’s seminary formation could seem to fit with the tenor of Vigano’s testimony.
The archbishop’s testimony made claims about the sexuality of other Vatican officials, while arguing that “the virtue of chastity must be recovered in the clergy and in seminaries. Corruption in the misuse of the Church’s resources and of the offerings of the faithful must be fought against. The seriousness of homosexual behavior must be denounced. The homosexual networks present in the Church must be eradicated.”
The credibility of Vigano’s claims has come under fire lately, as some Vatican officials have denounced his testimony as an attack on Pope Francis.
Nevertheless, an Oct. 7 letter from Cardinal Marc Oullet, prefect of the Vatican Congregation for Bishops, corroborated Vigano’s central claim, that McCarrick had been directed by the Vatican to withdraw from public life because of reports about his alleged sexually abusive behavior toward priests and seminarians.
On the other hand, Oullet’s letter refuted the notion that the measures against McCarrick were formal “canonical sanctions,” a claim initially made by Vigano that seems to mostly have been disproven.
A September report from Catholic News Service corroborated Vigano’s claim that the Vatican had received at least some reports about McCarrick as early as 2000.
CNA independently confirmed another Vigano claim, that McCarrick had been ordered by a Vatican official to move out of the Washington, DC seminary where he had been living after his retirement.
On Oct. 18, L’Espresso added to its report, noting that Parra had a longtime close relationship with Cardinal Oscar Maradiaga, the coordinator of the pope’s C9 Council of Cardinals. Vigano had also noted their friendship.
The magazine also claimed that the archbishop had developed a friendship with Bishop Juan Jose Pineda, former auxiliary bishop of Maradiaga’s Archdiocese of Tegucigalpa, who in recent months had been accused of sexual misconduct involving seminarians and other adult men.
L’Espresso reported Oct. 18 that the Vatican declined to respond to its questions about Parra.
Denver, Colo., Oct 18, 2018 / 04:00 am (CNA).- Tonia Borsellino knows she’s a part of the “one percent” in the U.S. It doesn’t bother her. In fact, she seems proud.
She’s actually Sister Tonia Borsellino. And as a newly-veiled, 23 year-old novice with the Mercederian Sisters, she is among the one percent of religious sisters in the United States under the age of 40.
While her life, and the lives other young religious, may look different from those of their lay counterparts, Borsellino and other young religious say they are looking for similar things from the bishops participating in the Vatican’s synod of bishops on young people, taking part in Rome this month.
CNA spoke with several young consecrated religious sisters and brothers about their hopes for the synod.
Chief among their concerns is authenticity – they want leaders who are honest and holy; they want their bishops to be unafraid to speak the full truth of the Gospel to young people, even when it’s hard.
Brother Lawrence Johnson, 29, is a friar with the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal in Bronx, New York.
Johnson, who participated in a pre-synod meeting in Rome with other young people, told CNA that authenticity was one of the key concerns of the delegates at that meeting. The words “authentic” or “authenticity” appear seven times in the 14-page document from that meeting.
“We talked at the pre-synod meeting about the power of testimony and personal witness as something that really resonates with young people, and so I think to see Church leaders…give their own testimony to the power of their encounter with Christ is something youth need to hear,” he said.
It’s particularly important at this specific time in the Church, he said – the months just after the so-called “summer of hell”, when sexual abuse scandals continued to break throughout the Church in the United States and other countries throughout the world.
Young people need an answer from their leaders as to why they are still Catholic even in difficult times, Johnson said, “because even religious and priests can have a temptation to discouragement.”
“So I think we need to talk about what’s happened, to speak credibly and authentically, but at the same time with joy and fervor…centered on the center of our faith, on the reality of God’s love manifested in Jesus Christ.”
Sister Benedicta Turner of the Daughters of St. Paul is another young sister – “yes, we exist!” – who hopes that the synod fathers recognize young people’s desire for clarity and truth, even when it is difficult.
“It is a generation that strongly values clarity and authenticity, perhaps to a fault. Slick, expensive presentations go ignored while raw, sincere testimony is held with reverence,” she said.
Turner said that Church leaders need to return to an authentic presentation of the totality of the Gospel, and to challenge rather than compromise with the current culture.
“I think we need leaders who are willing to answer the hard questions young people are asking, who are more inclined to engage the culture than to make excuses for it, and who are willing to admit mistakes and failure with honesty and humility,” she said.
“We need leaders who are unafraid to give us the Gospel in its most intense, undiluted form; the Gospel for which the martyrs offered their lives and whose beauty has inspired countless works of art over the centuries,” she added.
Only this kind of engagement with the Gospel and the hearts of young people will be effective in calling them out of complacency and into relationship with Christ, she said.
Br. Neil Conlisk, a 30 year-old Carmelite brother, told CNA that he feared the synod’s bishops would not listen to young people’s desire for authenticity and truth and that they would continue on with “business as usual” and talk past young people.
“No one wants a worldly Church,” he said. “I fear that the Synod Fathers will try to change the Church in the name of the youth, but this ‘change-the-church’ fever is a symptom of the illness that has caused the long decline, and we simply cannot afford to destroy the Church any more.”
“We are hearing, from many bishops, moralistic therapeutic deism, but we want the fullness of the faith within the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church,” he added.
In addition to speaking the truth, Johnson said that what he hopes arises from the synod is a greater recognition throughout the Church of the need to live lives of holiness, so that young people have examples to follow in the Christian life.
“Young people need to see examples of holiness so that they know that Christianity is true, it’s beautiful and its attainable,” he said.
When young people need to see that there are Christians who “weren’t born perfect, but there are people who admit their weaknesses and rely on the Lord’s strength and are able to lead lives of holiness,” whether that person is a bishop or a priest or a lay member of the Church, he said.
This need for examples of Christian holiness is not new, Borsellino told CNA, but it is a constant need throughout the history of the Church.
“Young people need radical, authentic witnesses of the Gospel in this world that are willing to speak to their hearts,” she said. “It has always been and will always be a need. Jesus knew that well when he formed those intimate relationships with his disciples.”
Vocational discernment is another point of focus for the youth synod. As young people who have discerned at least the first few steps of a religious vocation, many of the young religious CNA spoke to said they hoped the synod bishops would emphasize the importance of a relationship with Jesus through prayer and the sacraments as key to discernment.
“Discernment is about listening to God’s voice and one cannot do that without having a relationship with Jesus,” said Sr. Kathryne of the Holy Trinity, a 26-year old with the Mercederian Sisters. “Then once that relationship is established, it cannot remain stagnant.”
Johnson said he was surprised by the strong desire for increased access to the sacraments and Eucharistic adoration expressed by the delegates at the pre-synod meeting – something that has been echoed in synod’s working document.
“When it comes to questions of discernment and being disposed to discern God’s will, I think focusing on silence and being in the presence of Christ (particularly) in the Eucharist” are important, he said.
Another desire of young people expressed in the pre-synod document was for more formation in the faith. Borsellino said she was surprised by how many basic things about the faith she did not know until she began religious life, and emphasized the need for ongoing formation even after young people are confirmed.
“…it is important for the Church to educate the faithful because the desire will then grow in them to continue pursuing that truth,” she said.
“Especially ministering to young people, post-confirmation, when the sense of ‘obligation’ to continue practicing the faith is lost if there is not an understanding of the faith or deep love for Christ in their hearts.”
Overall, Borsellino said she is encouraged that the bishops are trying to listen to the young people of the Church, and encouraged Catholics not to be too discouraged by the growing number of young people who are religiously unaffiliated.
“I think the messages from the youth synod so far are proof of a desire that young people have for Truth, who is Jesus Christ,” she said. “There might not be many young people filling the pews right away but souls are being transformed. Look at the attendance at World Youth Days or FOCUS conferences,” she said.
“Young people might just go for fun at first, but then something clicks because we encounter Christ’s real presence in our lives.”
She added that parishes and the whole Church community need to support each other in the journey to sainthood.
“We must all, young and old, pray for each other!”
Vatican City, Oct 17, 2018 / 06:00 pm (CNA).- Smartphone apps and Skype have transformed the way at least one synod bishop conducts his pastoral ministry with young people.
Bishop David Bartimej Tencer of Reykjavík said Wednesday that digital technologies help him to overcome the geographical challenges that come from shepherding a diocese spread over 40,000 square miles in Iceland.
“The church is moving forward thanks to the digital world,” Bishop Tencer said at a Vatican press conference Oct. 17.
Bishops have discussed how the Church can better extend missionary outreach and pastoral care to young people online during the 2018 Synod of Bishops, which is focused on young people, the faith, and vocational discernment.
“‘Digital pastoral care’ — how the church can be active in the world of social media,” was an important conversation topic in the synod hall Wednesday, according to Paolo Ruffini, head of the Vatican Dicastery for Communications.
This included “being a missionary in the digital world,” he said.
Bishop Tencer, who has used Skype to catechise his diocese, said that in his experience, the “contact was very real with these kids.”
The Reykjavík bishop also said that the young people responded positively to his Android app Bible challenges.
“I said, ‘You know, guys, next week, you all have to download using your Android phone or whatever,” continued Bishop Tencer, “and they all downloaded it.”
“Then I asked the kids, ‘Find in the Bible where God is whistling to the bees,” the bishop went on. “My kids found this, no problem.”
Bishop Tencer said he was surprised to find that conversations surrounding technology in the synod hall have been very positive, despite the fact that the average age of the synod fathers is above 60.
The internet is “a neutral medium,” Tencer concluded.
Prior to the 2018 synod, youth around the globe submitted 150,000 online surveys answering questions regarding morality, faith and life. These responses were analyzed by an Italian university using an algorithm.
The discussion of technology in the youth synod’s Instrumentum Laboris included both enthusiasm for technology’s potential, as well as caution for its unintended consequences.
“Technology can be detrimental to human dignity if not used with conscience and caution and if human dignity is not at the center of its usage,” the document says, making particular reference to the fields of bioethics and artificial intelligence.
The pre-synod document also warns against the “isolation, laziness, desolation and boredom” that can come from young people’s obsessive consumption of media, in addition to the long-term risks of a “loss of creativity” and concentration.
“While technology has, for some, augmented our relationships, for many others it has taken the form of an addiction, becoming a replacement for human relationship and even God.”
Vatican City, Oct 17, 2018 / 05:00 pm (CNA).- The synod of bishops on young people, the faith, and vocational discernment is being held at the Vatican Oct. 3-28.
CNA plans to provide a brief daily summary of the sessions, provided by the synodal fathers from Poland.
Please find below the Polish fathers’ summary of the Oct. 17 session:
The social context of young Catholics living in multicultural and multi-denominational societies was at the center of the Synod assembly on October 17th. The Synod Fathers also stressed the importance of the World Youth Day, including the meeting in Cracow in 2016.
During the morning session, many voices from Africa and Asia were heard. “People from Africa emphasized the poverty there and the lack of educational opportunities. This has led to vast emigration either inside their own homeland, from the countryside to the cities, or outside their homelands. Every emigration of this kind is a challenge for young people because, lacking education, they do not have the possibility to shape their own identity. On the other hand, Asian voices stressed the need for interreligious dialogue, because many young people from Asia belong to minority churches. Therefore, the young must engage in interreligious dialogue against a variety of dangerous fundamentalisms,” said Msgr. Grzegorz Ryś, Metropolitan Archbishop of Lodz.
During the deliberations, various social contexts in which young people are living were evoked. “In today’s discussions, I was positively surprised by the voices that emphasized the importance of widening reflection on the social context in which young people live, that is, school, universities, politics. Representatives from different countries spoke about these contexts. Some young Catholics living in a context of multiculturalism and multi-denominationalism must face the fact that they are a minority and are sometimes persecuted for that reason,” said Bishop Marian Florczyk.
Attention was also paid to the value and the importance of the World Youth Days. “
“Evoking the origins of the World Youth Days and, so, John Paul II, the great good that flows from these meetings was emphasized. Cracow, which hosted the World Youth Day in 2016, was also put into the spotlight. This meeting has largely contributed to the integration of young people,” said Bishop Florczyk.
Vatican City, Oct 17, 2018 / 12:30 pm (CNA).- Pope Francis told a group of Italian seminarians to report immediately to their bishop if they ever see or suspect any kind abuse, sexual or otherwise, on the part of a priest.
“On this point… […]
Vatican City, Oct 17, 2018 / 08:40 am (CNA).- While Chinese Bishop Joseph Guo Jincai is new to the Vatican’s Synod of Bishops, he has served three terms as a deputy to the National People’s Congress in Beijing.
As a member of China’s legislative body, Bishop Guo publicly supported an amendment to eliminate presidential term limits and enshrine “Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era” in the Chinese Constitution in March 2018.
Weeks after his excommunication was lifted last month as a part of an agreement between China and the Holy See, Bishop Guo garnered attention in Rome as one of the first Chinese bishops to ever participate in an ecclesial synod, along with Bishop Yang Xiaoting of Yan’an.
Pope Francis opened the synod with a greeting for the two Chinese arrivals, saying that “the communion of the entire episcopate with the Successor of Peter is yet more visible thanks to their presence.”
The two Chinese bishops took part in the synod on young people, the faith, and vocation.
Young people in China face unique challenges in relation to faith. For example, due to a change in the Chinese government’s religious oversight earlier this year, it is now illegal for anyone under 18 years old to enter a church or religious building.
Bishop Guo told Chinese state media that he did not see any conflict between his role as a legislator and a bishop as the National People’s Congress convened last March.
“My position as a national legislator will not and cannot affect my religious service, as China implements the principle of separation of church and State,” Guo told the state-sponsored newspaper Global Times.
The Global Times reported that Guo went on to say that Catholics must adapt to socialist society in order to survive and develop in China, and a fundamental requirement for this is to be patriotic.
This echoes President Xi Jinping’s repeated comments that all religion in China must “Sinicize” or adapt to Chinese culture and society as defined by the state. In 2016, Xi told Chinese Communist Party leaders that they must “resolutely guard against overseas infiltrations via religious means.”
For decades, China’s 12 million Catholics have been split between an underground Catholic Church in full communion with the Holy See, sometimes subject to government persecution, and the government-run Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association, whose bishops are appointed by the Communist government and have sometimes been ordained without papal approval.
Bishop Guo serves as secretary-general for the Bishops’ Conference of the Catholic Church in China (BCCCC). Bishop Yang, the other Chinese synod delegate, serves as its vice-president.
This Chinese “episcopal conference” was deemed illegitimate in Pope Benedict XVI’s 2007 letter to Catholics in China because it is “governed by statutes that contain elements incompatible with Catholic doctrine.” It is unclear whether the Sept. 22 agreement between the Holy See and China recognized the Chinese government’s bishops’ conference as legitimate.
Vatican spokesman Greg Burke said the objective of the September accord is “not political but pastoral” and will allow “the faithful to have bishops who are in communion with Rome but at the same time recognized by Chinese authorities.”
Yang was ordained a bishop with both papal approval and government recognition in July 2010. The Yan’an bishop studied theology in Rome, obtaining a doctorate in 1999.
“As the family made up of husband and wife is always united, so is the Church, which is one, holy, catholic and apostolic. In Italy, in China or in other countries, the love of Christ is always the same. Pope Francis, who knows very well our situation in the Catholic Church in China, does not want to leave us, does not want to separate us from the universal Church,” Yang said at a Roman parish on Oct. 7, SIR, a news agency sustained by the Italian bishops’ conference, reported.
“I still ask you for help for this Church in China. Our Church is like a child, it is not very mature, so we need your accompaniment, your help and your prayer, always in the love of the Lord,” Yang continued after celebrating Mass at Santa Maria ai Monti.
Before leaving the synod early on Oct. 15 without explanation, the two Chinese bishops had the opportunity to speak with Pope Francis and invite him to visit China.
Guo and Yang stayed in Vatican City’s Santa Marta guesthouse, where “we could live together in daily life with the pope,” Bishop Guo told Avvenire, the newspaper of the Italian bishops conference, in an interview published Oct. 16.
“We could speak with familiarity as children with their father. He told us that he loves us, loves our country and always prays a lot to Christians in China,” Guo continued.
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