Vatican

Vatican City, May 29, 2018 / 01:33 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- A month after the death of UK toddler Alfie Evans, the Vatican’s Bambino Gesu children’s hospital issued a new charter on the “rights of the incurable child,” outlining basic rights for both parents and children.

Among other things, the charter says children with terminal diseases have the right to second opinions and better diagnostic and palliative care, as well as the right to better experimental treatments and to be moved across international borders.

The charter was presented May 29 as part of a seminar course titled “Are there incurable children?” It took place a month after the April 28 death of Alfie Evans, a gravely ill toddler who passed away just before his second birthday after being removed from life support during an intense legal battle over his treatment.

Consisting of 10 articles, the hospital’s new charter draws on previous national and international charters for the rights of hospitalized children, and affirms that proper medical care does not involve just looking for a cure, but also includes palliative care, as well as spiritual and psychological support for the family.

A summary of the charter posted to Bambino Gesu’s website refers to the case of Alfie Evans, as well as that of British infant Charlie Gard, who died at 11 months old in 2017 after a similar legal battle over his treatment and transfer.

Both children suffered from either unidentified or rare degenerative diseases and were denied the right both to further experimental treatment and international transfer, despite the fact that doctors outside of the UK were willing to provide experimental treatments.

In both cases, Bambino Gesu offered to take the children and provide for their palliative care, and in both cases the request to transfer was denied by British courts and hospitals, despite the fact that in Evans’ case, the child was granted Italian citizenship.

Article 5 of the new charter says children “have the right to use experimental diagnostic-therapeutic protocols approved by ethics committees that avail themselves of specific pediatric skills,” and that risk factors must naturally be reduced as much as possible.

The charter notes that in the cases of Evans and Gard, the most controversial point was the decision of hospitals and judges not to authorize the transfer of the children abroad, despite their parents’ wishes.

To this end, it notes in the charter that European citizens have the right to receive care in every country that is part of the European Union, choosing whichever healthcare facility they wish for either planned or unplanned care.

Also highlighted is the child’s right to take advantage of cross-border healthcare. In article 6, the charter stresses that the right of the family to “the choice of a doctor, medical team and healthcare facility of their trust, even if they move to a country other than their own” must be respected by the facility where the child is hospitalized.

In article 7, which touches on palliative care, the charter also emphasizes that whenever possible, the child has the right “to stay in their own home for their health needs, even complex ones.”

Likewise, the child also has a right “to receive adequate pain treatment, both physical and psychological.” Symptoms and suffering, the document says, “must be possibly prevented and always alleviated.”

Palliative care, the charter emphasizes, “must be integrated early in treatment planning as a complement to curative and rehabilitative measures.”

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Vatican City, May 29, 2018 / 10:35 am (CNA/EWTN News).- In September Pope Francis will visit the neighborhood and parish connected with a Sicilian priest killed by the Mafia in 1993, commemorating the 25th anniversary of the death of the “First Martyr of the Mafia.”

After quietly fighting the Mafia through the education of young people, Bl. Giuseppe “Pino” Puglisi was assassinated by hitmen on Sept. 15, 1993, his 53rd birthday.

Pope Francis will fly Sept. 15 to Piazza Armerina where he will greet authorities and the local bishop and meet with the faithful.

Transferring to Palermo by helicopter, he will celebrate Mass in memory of Puglisi and visit the Mission of Hope and Charity to eat lunch with guests of the mission and a group of prisoners and immigrants.

Francis will also make private stops at Bl. Puglisi’s home and parish, San Gaetano, in the Brancaccio neighborhood of Palermo. He will then meet with priests, religious, and seminarians and later with youth, before returning to Rome.

Puglisi was born Sept. 15, 1937 to a modest, working-class family in Palermo. He entered the seminary at the age of 16 and was ordained a priest in 1960 at the age of 22.

Throughout his priesthood, he was known for being outspoken against injustices – including communism, the Mafia, and problems within the Church.

He was also passionately involved in youth ministry and in promoting vocations. In 1990, Puglisi was transferred to the parish of San Gaetano, in a mob-ridden neighborhood. His approach was the same: to win over the youth and be a pastor to his flock.

“Father Puglisi was not a typical anti-Mafia priest. He did not organize rallies or make public condemnation of Mafia,” Archbishop Michele Pennisi of Monreale told the National Catholic Register in 2013. “[The] Mafia does not see that kind of priest as dangerous.”

Puglisi was considered more dangerous “because he educated young people,” Archbishop Pennisi said. He would convince youth not to steal or quit school, and encouraged them away from the Mafia, who would often use children to help them traffic drugs and other illicit materials.

Puglisi preached against the Mafia, ignored their threats, banned them from leading religious processions and even stealthily gave clues to the authorities about their latest activities in his homilies. Consequently, his life was threatened by the mob numerous times, unbeknownst even to those closest to him until after his death.

He would also urge parishioners to give the police leads on the Mafia’s criminal activity, his frequent catchphrase: “And what if somebody did something?”

On September 15, 1993, having received numerous warnings and death threats, Fr. Puglisi was shot in the neck at point-blank range by hitmen under the direction of local Mafia bosses, Filippo and Giuseppe Graviano.

Although he was taken to the hospital, Puglisi was unable to be revived and died of his injuries.

“This is a Mafia crime,” Lorenzo Matassa, an investigating magistrate with broad anti-Mafia experience, told the New York Times in 1993. “Cosa Nostra could not stand that priest’s teaching the kids in the neighborhood about an anti-Mafia culture.”

One of Puglisi’s hitmen, Salvatore Grigoli, later confessed, revealing that the martyr’s final words were “I’ve been expecting you.”

His martyrdom further galvanized the Catholic Church in Sicily to act and speak out against the mob and five years after his death four Mafia members received life sentences for their involvement in the murder.
   
Declared a martyr by Benedict XVI in 2012 and beatified in 2013, he is buried in the cemetery of Sant’Orsola in Palermo.

Pope Francis spoke about Puglisi the day after his beatification during his Angelus address, calling him a “martyr” and an “exemplary priest.”

By teaching boys about the Gospel of Christ, Puglisi saved them from the “criminal underworld,” which retaliated by killing him, Francis said. Though in fact, it was Puglisi “who won, with the Risen Christ.”

Francis criticized the Mafia for its exploitation of men, women, and children through prostitution, social pressure, and forced jobs. “Let us pray to the Lord to convert the heart of these people,” he said. “They cannot do this! They cannot make slaves of us, brothers and sisters!”

“We must pray that these members of the Mafia be converted to God and let us praise God for the luminous witness borne by Fr. Giuseppe Puglisi.”

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Vatican City, May 28, 2018 / 10:05 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Ideologies which do not acknowledge and uphold the dignity of human life must be resisted and the Catholic Church’s teaching on life affirmed, Pope Francis told a group of Catholic doctors Monday.

“The Church is for life, and her concern is that nothing is against life in the reality of a concrete existence, however weak or defenseless, even if not developed or not advanced,” the pope said May 28 in the Vatican’s papal hall.

He noted the “hardships and difficulties” physicians may face when they are faithful to the teachings of the Catholic Church, particularly when they promote and defend human life “from its conception to its natural end.”

Doctors “are called to affirm the centrality of the patient as a person and his dignity with his inalienable rights, primarily the right to life,” he said.

“The tendency to debase the sick man as a machine to be repaired, without respect for moral principles, and to exploit the weakest by discarding what does not correspond to the ideology of efficiency and profit must be resisted.”

Pope Francis spoke with members of the International Federation of Associations of Catholic Physicians ahead of a congress on the theme of “Holiness of life and the medical profession, from Humanae vitae to Laudato si’” in Zagreb, Croatia May 30-June 2.

Addressing the group, he praised the fidelity of their associations to the directives of the Magisterium and encouraged them to “continue with serenity and determination on this path.”

To be a Catholic doctor means to feel driven by “faith and from communion with the Church” to grow in Christian and professional formation and to know the laws of nature in order “to better serve life,” he said, stressing that the participation of Catholic physicians in the life and mission of the Church is “so necessary.”

Francis noted that the health and medical fields are a part of the advance of the “technocratic cultural paradigm,” which adores human power without limits and makes everything irrelevant if it does not serve a person’s own interests.

“Be more and more aware that today it is necessary and urgent that the action of the Catholic physician presents itself with an unmistakable clarity on the level of personal and associative testimony,” he urged.

He also encouraged working together with professionals of other religious convictions who also recognize the dignity of the human person, and with priests and religious who work in the healthcare field.

Continue the journey “with joy and generosity,” he said, “in collaboration with all the people and institutions that share the love of life and endeavor to serve it in its dignity and sacredness.”

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Vatican City, May 28, 2018 / 07:17 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Every Christian is called to be a missionary through prayer, working in collaboration with the Holy Spirit, who gives prayer efficacy, Pope Francis said in a video message to the Pontifical Missio… […]

Vatican City, May 27, 2018 / 05:04 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Pope Francis marked the feast of the Holy Trinity stressing the personal love and interest God has in each one of his children, saying the Lord is not ever far away, but is an attentive and loving Father to all.

“God does not want so much to reveal to us that he exists, but rather that he is the ‘God with us,’ that he loves us, is interested in our personal story and cares for each person, from the smallest to the greatest,” the pope said May 27.

Even though God is in heaven, he is also on earth, Francis said, adding that because of this, “we don’t believe in a distant, indifferent entity.”

“On the contrary, in the love that created the universe and generated a people, became flesh, died and rose for us, and as the Holy Spirit transforms everything and brings it to fullness.”

Pope Francis spoke to the nearly 25,000 pilgrims present in St. Peter’s Square for his Sunday Angelus address. In his speech, he focused on the day’s feast of the Holy Trinity, and the readings from the Book of Romans, as well as the Gospel reading from Matthew.

The feast of the Trinity, Francis said, is not only an invitation to contemplate and praise Jesus Christ, but it is also an opportunity to celebrate “with ever-new wonder the God of love, who freely offers his life to us and asks us to spread it in the world.”

He then turned to the second reading from the Letter of St. Paul to the Romans, in which the apostle speaks of how Christians are sons of God, and are able call him “abba,” meaning “father.”

St. Paul, the pope said, experienced first-hand the deep transformation of the God of love, who allows us to not only call him “Father,” but more personally, “dad,” and who gives us the ability to call on him “with the total confidence of a child who abandons themselves in the arms of the one who gave them live.”

Through his action in each person, the Holy Spirit “makes it so that Jesus Christ is not reduced to a person of the past, but that we feel close to him, our contemporary, and that we experience the joy of being beloved children of God,” Francis said.

He noted that Christians are not alone, he said, because the Holy Spirit was sent to guide and accompany them.

And thanks to both the presence of the Spirit and the strength he offers, “we can realize with serenity the mission that he entrusted to us: to announce and bear witness to his Gospel to everyone and so dilate communion with him and the joy that comes from it.”

Pope Francis closed his address saying the feast of the Holy Trinity “makes us contemplate the mystery of a God who incessantly creates, redeems and sanctifies, always with love and for love, and to every creature that welcomes him, he gives the gift of reflecting a ray of his beauty, goodness and truth.”

He prayed that Mary would help each person to “fulfill with joy the mission of bearing witness to the world, thirsty for love, that the meaning of life is precisely infinite love, the concrete love of the Father, of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.”

After leading pilgrims in praying the traditional Marian prayer, Francis voiced gratitude for the recent beatification of Sister Leonella Sborbati, a nun with the Consolata Missionaries who was killed in Somalia in 2006.

He asked pilgrims to join him in praying for Africa, “so that there is peace there,” and led faithful in praying a Hail Mary for the continent.

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Vatican City, May 26, 2018 / 04:24 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Pope Francis Saturday criticized what he said is a “tragic” and false dichotomy that has been created between religious ethics and the economic-financial sector of society, telling bus… […]

Vatican City, May 25, 2018 / 05:54 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Next week the poor, homeless, refugees, migrants and needy around Rome will be offered free tickets to the city’s Golden Gala, an international track and field event that happens annually in the Eternal City.

Set to take place in Rome’s Olympic stadium May 31, the gala will begin at 2p.m., with the last event starting at 10:25p.m. Events slated for the gala include a discus throw, relay races, pole vault jumps, hurdles and Paralympic courses for both men and women.

The gala was established in 1980 by Italian sports official and then-president of the Italian Athletics Federation (FIDAL) Primo Nebiolo as a way to gather athletes and individuals from the United States and NATO countries who boycotted the Moscow Olympics in wake of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

Francis’ guests will enter the event free of charge thanks to FIDAL, and they will be accompanied by volunteers from the Community of Sant’Egidio, the Cooperativa Auxilium – an Italian co-op that offers welfare services to the disadvantaged – and Athletica Vaticana, the running association for employees of the Holy See.

The goal of the event, according to the papal almoner’s office, is to offer the poor “an evening of celebration and friendship through the beauty of [sports]” and to place greater emphasis on the importance of hospitality and solidarity.
 
In addition to their free entry, those who come with the papal almoner will be offered a sack dinner.

Such initiatives on the part of the pope are not uncommon. He frequently invites the poor, homeless, migrants and refugees to special events such as concerts, tours of the Vatican Museums and days at the beach. Showers and haircuts are also available inside St. Peter’s Square courtesy of the papal almoner.

The man who heads the papal charity office, Archbishop Konrad Krajewski, was recent tapped by Francis to become a cardinal. He will get his red hat from the pope during a June 29 consistory, showing the importance Pope Francis places on service to the poor.

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Vatican City, May 24, 2018 / 11:08 am (CNA/EWTN News).- In a closed-door speech to Italian bishops on Monday, Pope Francis reportedly spoke about the number and quality of seminary candidates, including concerns about their sexual orientation.

At the start of his May 21 audience with Italian bishops, Pope Francis voiced three areas of concern for the Church in Italy, the first of which was the lack of vocations.

Francis’ brief remarks on his concerns, which also touched on evangelical poverty and transparency and the incorporation of Italian dioceses, were televised; however, his discussion with the bishops afterward was not.

In his public remarks on vocations, Pope Francis lamented the culture of the provisional, of relativism, and of the dictatorship of money, which hinder young people from discerning consecrated life. He also proposed that Italian dioceses with an abundance of vocations lend some of their priests to those Italian dioceses lacking in priests.

But according to Italian media sites, in the discussion that followed the pope was more direct, telling the bishops to care more for the quality of seminary candidates than the quantity.

He reportedly touched on the topic of homosexuality, particularly when it comes to individuals with “deep-seated tendencies” or who practice “homosexual acts”, yet who want to enter the seminary.

In these cases, “if you have even the slightest doubt it’s better not to let them enter,” Francis said, because these acts or deep-seated tendencies can lead to scandals and can compromise the life of the seminary, as well as the man himself and his future priesthood.

Pope Francis’ comments were allegedly made during the opening May 21 session of the 71st general assembly of the Italian bishops’ conference. Several Italian news sites have reported on the pope’s comments, but they have not been confirmed by the Vatican or by the Italian bishops.

However, the pope’s statements on the issue of homosexuality and the seminary reflect the Church’s teaching on the topic.

In the 2016 edition of the Congregation for Clergy’s ratio on priestly formation, the dicastery had written that “in relation to people with homosexual tendencies who approach seminaries, or who discover this situation in the course of formation, in coherence with her own magisterium, ‘the Church, while profoundly respecting the persons in question, cannot admit to the seminary or to holy orders those who practise homosexuality, present deep-seated homosexual tendencies or support the so-called “gay culture”.’”

The ratio quoted from the Congregation for Catholic Education’s 2005 instruction “Concerning the Criteria for the Discernment of Vocations with regard to Persons with Homosexual Tendencies in view of their Admission to the Seminary and to Holy Orders.”

The instruction noted that those who practise homosexuality, present deep-seated homosexual tendencies, or support the gay culture “find themselves in a situation that gravely hinders them from relating correctly to men and women. One must in no way overlook the negative consequences that can derive from the ordination of persons with deep-seated homosexual tendencies.”

It distinguished those with deep-seated homosexual tendencies from those “with homosexual tendencies that were only the expression of a transitory problem – for example, that of an adolescence not yet superseded.”

Men with transitory homosexual tendencies could be admitted to seminary, the congregation wrote, though “such tendencies must be clearly overcome at least three years before ordination to the diaconate.”

The instruction drew, in turn, from the Catechism of the Catholic Church, a 1985 memo from the Congregation for Catholic Education, and a 2002 letter from the Congregation for Divine Worship.

Though Pope Francis has not addressed the topic publicly, he alluded to problems of homosexuality in seminary formation during a recent meeting with Chilean bishops.

In a letter written to the bishops which was leaked to Chilean media, the pope issued a sharp correction of his brother prelates for a systematic cover-up of clerical abuse in the country.

One footnote in the letter noted how abuses were not limited to just one person or group, but was rather the result of a fractured seminary process.

In the case of many abusers in Chile, Francis noted how problems had been detected while they were in seminary or the novitiate, but rather than expelling these individuals, some bishops or superiors “sent priests suspected of active homosexuality to these educational institutions.”

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Vatican City, May 24, 2018 / 05:29 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Speaking about St. Pope John XXIII’s encyclical on establishing universal peace, Pacem in terris, Pope Francis said that even 55 years after its publication, the document still stands as &ld… […]

Vatican City, May 23, 2018 / 02:00 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- The professor who chaired a Vatican study group on Humanae Vitae stressed that the Bl. Paul VI’s encyclical “needs no updating.”
 
Professor Gilfredo Marengo, of the Pontifical Theological Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family, spoke with CNA at the presentation of his latest book, “Chiesa senza storia, storia senza Chiesa” (Church without history, history without the Church), which explores the implications and consequences of Gaudium et Spes, the Second Vatican Council’s pastoral constitution on the Church in the modern world.
 
Professor Marengo told CNA that, according to his studies, “one of the biggest knots in drafting Humanae Vitae was really that of going beyond the polarization between doctrine and pastoral issues.”
 
Professor Marengo added that Blessed Pope Paul VI “focused on this knowledge, and worked a lot to take the encyclical out of that polarization.”
 
Unfortunately, he said, polarization has increased in recent years, but, added that “the question cannot be solved by imagining a new doctrine or a new pastoral activity, but by going beyond the polarization.”
 
Professor Marengo stressed that “Humanae Vitae is an authoritative document of the Catholic Church, and it is part of the tradition. We are called to welcome it as it is, and to apply it with an intelligent pastoral plan.”
 
However, despite being “the most discussed encyclical in the last 50 years,” there is “no need to update it,” Professor Marengo stressed.
 
In the end, all that discussion might be framed into a general debate that took place after the Second Vatican Council, he said.

Professor Marengo heads a study group undertaking a historical-critical investigation into the drafting of Humanae Vitae. The aim is to reconstruct, as well as possible, the whole process of drafting the document.
 
As is widely known, the drafting of Humanae Vitae endured several pressures before its publication and even after its publication.

Beyond Professor Marengo, the study group on Humanae Vitae is reportedly composed of Msgr. Pierangelo Sequeri, head of the John Paul II Institute, Philippe Chenaux, a professor of Church history at the Pontifical Lateran University, and Msgr. Angelo Maffeis, head of the Paul VI Institute in Brescia.

In 2017, Professor Marengo told reporters that the group was given access to the Vatican Secret Archives for mid-1960s, the time of Humanae Vitae’s drafting.
 
Professor Marengo told CNA that “the Second Vatican Council has facilitated the resolution of polarization between pastoral and doctrinal issues.”
 
He added that Pope Francis “is investing a lot in this resolution,” as “one of the most meaningful aspects of Pope Francis’ biography is that he is the first post-conciliar pope: all the [recent] previous popes participated to the Council, but this pope did not, and so he can look at the Council with a less emotional viewpoint.”

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