Vatican City, May 3, 2018 / 01:38 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- The Vatican issued guidelines and norms Thursday for calling for new courses in canon law, designed to respond to a worldwide, “urgent need” for more people with adequate training on th… […]
Vatican City, May 3, 2018 / 08:53 am (CNA/EWTN News).- In his prayer video for the month of May, Pope Francis said laypeople are on the “front lines” of the Church’s life and activities, and asked Catholics of all states and vocations to pray for the laity and their mission.
“Laypeople are on the front line of the life of the Church,” the pope said in the video, published May 3, urging the Church to be thankful for the laity “who take risks, who are not afraid and who offer reasons for hope to the poorest, to the excluded, to the marginalized.”
As Francis speaks in his native Spanish, the video shows lay people in different professional and familial states, including a doctor embracing a patient, a mother holding her child, a newlywed couple leaving a church and rescue workers bringing a boat of migrants ashore.
The video then shows scenes of families, scenes of people jumping up and down and hugging during a sports competition, people hiking and a couple working in a greenhouse.
“Let us pray together this month that the lay faithful may fulfill their specific mission, the mission that they received in Baptism, putting their creativity at the service of the challenges of today’s world,” he said, adding that “we need their testimony regarding the truth of the Gospel and their example of expressing their faith by practicing solidarity.”
An initiative of the Jesuit-run global prayer network Apostleship of Prayer, the pope’s prayer videos are filmed in collaboration with the Vatican Television Center and mark the first time the Roman Pontiff’s monthly prayer intentions have been featured on video.
The Apostleship of Prayer, which produces the monthly videos on the pope’s intentions, was founded by Jesuit seminarians in France in 1884 to encourage Christians to serve God and others through prayer, particularly for the needs of the Church.
Since the late 1800s, the organization has received a monthly, universal intention from the pope. In 1929, an additional missionary intention was added by the Holy Father, aimed at the faithful in particular.
However, as of last year, rather than including a missionary intention, Pope Francis opted to have only one prepared prayer intention – the universal intention featured in the prayer video – and will add a second intention for an urgent or immediate need should one arise.
In comments in a May 3 press release on the video, Fr. Frédéric Fornos, SJ, international director of the Pope’s Worldwide Prayer Network and the Eucharistic Youth Movement, noted that often people think priests are the only ones responsible for carrying forward the Church’s mission.
However, lay people “are the ones who are at the heart of the world, and the ones who have a key role in transforming society,” he said, adding that “it is in families, in classrooms, in offices, in factories, in the fields, in daily life, where we find the opportunity to be salt and light of God’s Kingdom, the flavor of the Gospel.”
Pope Francis himself has been a frequent critic of clericalism, saying that for many, the Church is reduced to just priests and the hierarchy, and encouraging lay Catholics to be more active in evangelizing. He has also made incorporating more space for laity within the ranks of the Curia a goal of his reform.
In an April 2016 letter to the Pontifical Commission for Latin America, Pope Francis called clericalism “one of the greatest distortions” facing the local Church on the continent.
“[We’d] do well to recall that the Church is not an elite [of] priests, of consecrated people, of bishops but all of us make up the faithful and Holy People of God,” he said, noting that everyone begins their life as a layperson.
Clericalism, he said, is the result of “a mistaken way of living out the ecclesiology proposed by the Second Vatican Council,” which “forgets that the visibility and the sacramentality of the Church belong to all the people of God and not just to an illuminated and elected few.”
He discouraged clergy from relying on trite phrases about their flock such as “it’s time for the laity.”
While well-intentioned, the phrase has little meaning when stacked against actions, he said, explaining that clergy should focus on encouraging the laity to be active, but “it is not the job of the pastor to tell the laypeople what they must do and say.”
“It is illogical and even impossible for us as pastors to believe that we have the monopoly on solutions for the numerous challenges thrown up by contemporary life.”
In an interview given to El Sembrador Nueva Evangelización – ESNE TV and Radio station the same year but published in 2017, Francis said he believes laity need to “come out of the caves.”
“Sometimes I think the best business we can do with many Christians, is to sell them mothballs so that they put them in their clothes and in their lives and aren’t eaten by moths,” he said, explaining that in order to fulfill their mission, lay Catholics “have to go out, they have to go and bring the message of Jesus” to others.
Similarly, in a speech to Bangladeshi bishops during his visit to the nation in December 2017, the pope told them to “show ever greater pastoral closeness to the lay faithful, and to “recognize and value the charisms of lay men and women, and encourage them to put their gifts at the service of the Church and of society as a whole.”
Vatican City, May 2, 2018 / 11:13 am (CNA/EWTN News).- After meeting with Pope Francis over the weekend, Chilean survivors of clerical sexual abuse said the pontiff was open, sympathetic and deeply impacted by the situation, at one point voicing sorrow for having been “part of the problem.”
Juan Carlos Cruz, a victim of Chilean abuser Fr. Fernando Karadima who met with Pope Francis privately Saturday, said he spoke to the pontiff for at least three hours, and found him “sincere, attentive and deeply apologetic for the situation.”
“For me, the pope was contrite, he was truly sorry,” Cruz said. “I felt also that he was hurting, which for me was very solemn…because it’s not often that the pope says sorry to you…he said, ‘I was part of the problem, I caused this and I am apologize.’”
Cruz was joined by fellow abuse survivors James Hamilton and Jose Andres Murillo, each of whom suffered abuse at the hands Chilean priest Fernando Karadima, who in 2011 was found guilty by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith of sexually abusing several minors during the 1980s and 1990s, and subsequently sentenced to a life of prayer and solitude.
Chilean civil authorities investigated Karadima but ultimately dropped charges since his crimes were beyond the statute of limitations.
Hamilton, Cruz and Murillo were invited to come to the Vatican after the pope received a 2,300-page report from Maltese Archbishop Charles Scicluna, highly regarded as the Vatican’s top abuse investigator, who had traveled to the United States and Chile in February to investigate allegations of cover-up in the Chile case.
Initially the investigation centered on Bishop Juan Barros of Osorno, who was appointed to the diocese in 2015 and who has been accused by Cruz and several others of not only covering up Karadima’s abuses, but at times also participating.
Allegations were also made against three other bishops – Andrés Arteaga, Tomislav Koljatic and Horacio Valenzuela – whom Karadima’s victims accuse of also covering the abuser’s crimes.
While on the ground, Scicluna interviewed some 64 people, most of whom were victims, but the scale of the investigation went beyond Barros. The final report is said to be much more extensive, including details from other cases.
Pope Francis had previous defended Bishop Barros, saying he had received no evidence of the bishop’s guilt, and called accusations against him “calumny” during a trip to Chile in January. However, just days after he made the comments, news broke that Cruz in 2015 had sent the pope an 8-page letter through the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors with his testimony detailing Barros’ presence and involvement in the abuse.
After receiving Archbishop Scicluna’s report, Francis issued a major “mea culpa” April 11, saying he had made “serious errors in the judgment and perception of the situation, especially due to a lack of truthful and balanced information.”
He invited Cruz, Hamilton and Murillo to meet with him privately at the Vatican, and summoned all of Chile’s 32 bishops to Rome in the third week of May, where they will discuss the conclusions of Scicluna’s report as well the pope’s own conclusions on the matter.
Each of the three men met with Pope Francis individually with no time limit over the weekend, and then again as a group on Monday.
In a joint statement issued May 2, the survivors said they have been treated as “enemies” of the Church for nearly 10 years for their outspoken criticism of abuse and cover-up in the Church, but that this weekend’s meetings allowed them to meet “the friendly face of the Church, completely different form the one we had seen before.”
Pope Francis, they said, asked for forgiveness in his name and on behalf of the entire universal Church.
“We were able to speak frankly and respectfully with the pope,” they said, explaining that major themes brought up included not only sexual abuse, but also cover-up and abuse of power, which they said are not isolated to Chile, but are “an epidemic” that has affected thousands of people throughout the global Church.
Despite their abuse, the survivors said they have met many priests and men and women religious who are fighting for justice, and called them “courageous” people who have made progress in the fight against abuse and cover-up.
Pope Francis, they said, was “very attentive, receptive and very empathetic during the intense and long hours of conversation.”
During the audiences, the pope also asked the men for their opinion on both “specific and theoretical” aspects of the issue, and asked to stay in touch with them to hear their thoughts and recommendations for the future.
The victims also called for action, saying that the Church “has the duty to become an ally and a guide in the global fight against abuse, and a refuge for the victims,” something that they said is not sufficiently happening today.
“We hope that Pope Francis transforms his loving words of forgiveness into exemplary actions. Otherwise, all this will be in vain.”
In comments to the press during a May 2 news briefing on their meetings, the survivors unanimously said they believed the pope had been grossly misinformed about the situation by those around him, and was truly repentant for the mistakes he made.
Cruz said he didn’t ask about whether Francis had read his letter from 2015, but said he was able to communicate everything he had wanted during their face-to-face meeting.
“We spoke very frankly and very directly,” he said, adding that “it was clear that the pope was misinformed.”
Cruz said he told the pope that “it hurt tremendously” when he said their accusations against Barros were “calumny,” and told him to watch out for “these toxic people that surround him.”
In his comments to the press, Hamilton pinned a large part of the blame on Archbishop Ivo Scapolo, nuncio to Chile since 2011, and Chilean Cardinal Francisco Javier Errazuriz, Archbishop Emeritus of Santiago and a member of Pope Francis’ council of cardinal advisors.
Hamilton said that Errazuriz failed to act upon the abuse reports he raised, despite being told by the Chilean Promoter of Justice that they were credible and should be followed up with canonical prosecution.
“So Cardinal Errazuriz was covering up for more than 5 years the criminal of Karadima and all of his acts,” Hamilton said.
After their conversations, Hamilton said he believes Francis is now well informed on the situation, which is why he asked for the visit. “Everybody deserves a second chance, especially in this case,” he said.
However, all three men stressed the importance of following up with action after the meetings.
Murillo told journalists that he does not see the trip as “a triumph,” but rather as “a step further in a process.”
“Even if we saw the forgiveness that Pope Francis asked of us,” he said, “we are waiting for actions. We are not here for public relations, we are here for actions.”
He described the trip as long and tiring, “because I constantly work with children who were victims of abuse [and] during this trip I thought of them, but not only – I thought of all minors and adolescents who suffer abuse…also from professors, at home, in athletic training…I continue to think of all of them and I have to say, I am truly tired.”
Murillo said he hopes to that legal action will be taken against the bishops guilty of cover-up in the Chile case.
“I hope the governments of the rest of the world begin to think first of the victims…so that these events don’t repeat themselves.”
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Vatican City, May 1, 2018 / 03:06 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Pope Francis made a rosary pilgrimage May 1 to invoke intercession from the Blessed Virgin Mary for peace in Syria.
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Vatican City, May 1, 2018 / 10:03 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Cardinal George Pell will remain on a leave of absence from his Vatican position as he faces charges of “historic sexual offenses” in his home country of Australia, the Vatican has announced.
The full detail and nature of the charges has not been publicly revealed, and it’s unknown when the trial will begin. The decision to go to trial came after a month-long preliminary hearing in Melbourne.
Pell is accused of misconduct dating back decades, during his first years as a priest until he became the Archbishop of Melbourne. He has been accused of groping two boys at a swimming pool in the city of Ballarat during the 1970s, as well as assaulting two members of a choir at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Melbourne during the 1990s. More precise details about the charges were not made public.
The majority of the charges against the cardinal were dismissed during the preliminary hearing.
The cardinal pleaded not guilty to the charges of historical sexual offense and surrendered his passport. The charge of “historical sexual offense” indicates that the alleged crimes happened decades ago. Australian law prohibits details of the charges from being publicly disclosed.
Pell was appointed by Pope Francis to be the Prefect of the Secretariat for the Economy in 2014. He has been on leave of absence from this position since 2017, when he returned to Australia to face the accusations against him. Pell was the Archbishop of Sydney from 2001-2014, and Archbishop of Melbourne from 1996-2001.
Pell was first accused of sexual misconduct in 2002, but no charges were filed at that time. In 2013, police in Australia began an investigation into him, before filing charges last year.
Pell is reported to be the first cardinal to face a criminal trial for sexual misconduct. In 2013, Scottish Cardinal Keith O’Brien resigned from his position as Archbishop of St. Andrews and Edinburgh following allegations of predatory sexual misconduct. The Vatican subsequently announced that O’Brien would not exercise the rights and duties of a cardinal. He did not participate in the 2013 conclave that elected Pope Francis. The allegations against O’Brien were not reported to involve minors, and he did not face criminal charges. O’Brien died March 19.
Lawyers representing Pell insist that the charges against him are “impossible” and that he is innocent. Pell himself has repeatedly proclaimed his innocence, saying that he finds sexual abuse to be “abhorrent.”
“I’m looking forward, finally, to having my day in court,” said Pell in June 2017. “I’m innocent of these charges. They are false.”
It is unclear whether Pell will resign from his position in the Vatican when the case goes to trial, or whether his resignation will be accepted.
Vatican City, Apr 30, 2018 / 07:16 am (CNA/EWTN News).- The Vatican confirmed Monday that a delegation of six German bishops and one priest will meet with Vatican officials, including the head of the CDF, later this week to discuss the issue of the reception of the Eucharist by non-Catholic spouses of Catholics.
The meeting will take place May 3 with Archbishop Luis Ladaria Ferrer, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and Fr. Hermann Geissler, head of the department’s doctrinal section.
The German delegation, which includes Cardinal Reinhard Marx of Munich and Freising and Cardinal Rainer Maria Woelki of Cologne, will also meet with Cardinal Kurt Koch, president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity and Fr. Markus Graulich, under-secretary of the Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts.
The meeting takes place following reports, later denied by the German bishops’ conference, that the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith had rejected a planned proposal by the conference to publish guidelines permitting non-Catholic spouses of Catholics to receive the Eucharist in some limited circumstances.
In February, Cardinal Marx, announced that the conference would publish a pastoral handout for married couples that allows Protestant spouses of Catholics “in individual cases” and “under certain conditions” to receive Holy Communion, provided they “affirm the Catholic faith in the Eucharist.”
The announcement concerned a draft version of the guidelines, which were adopted “after intensive debate” during a Feb. 19-22 general assembly of the German bishops’ conference under the leadership of Cardinal Marx, who is the conference chairman.
The German delegation will also include Bishop Felix Genn of Munster, as well as both the president and vice-president of the conference’s doctrinal commission, Bishop Karl-Heinz Wiesemann of Speyer and Bishop Rudolf Voderholzer of Regensburg.
Bishop Gerhard Feige of Magdeburg, president of the commission for ecumenism of the German bishops’ conference and Fr. Hans Langendorfer, general secretary of the conference will also take part.
It was reported April 18 by CNA and other media that the CDF had raised objections about the German bishops’ proposal; sources close to the congregation had confirmed this to CNA.
It is unclear whether the Vatican has asked the bishops’ conference to modify the contents of the draft guidelines, whether they have suspended the development of a draft while the matter is considered further, or whether it has been entirely rejected.
Last month, seven German bishops, led by Cardinal Woelki, sent a letter to the CDF and to the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity asking for clarification on the matter, appending a copy of the drafted guidelines. The signatories did not consult beforehand with Cardinal Marx.
The seven bishops reportedly asked whether the question of Holy Communion for Protestant spouses in interdenominational marriages can be decided on the level of a national bishops’ conference, or if rather, “a decision of the Universal Church” is required in the matter.
The letter was also signed by Archbishop Ludwig Schick of Bamberg, Bishop Gregor Hanke of Eichstätt, Bishop Konrad Zdarsa of Augsburg, Bishop Stefan Oster of Passau, Bishop Rudolf Voderholzer of Regensburg, and Bishop Wolfgang Ipolt of Görlitz.
The Code of Canon Law already provides that in the danger of death or if “some other grave necessity urges it,” Catholic ministers licitly administer penance, Eucharist, and anointing of the sick to Protestants “who cannot approach a minister of their own community and who seek such on their own accord, provided that they manifest Catholic faith in respect to these sacraments and are properly disposed.”
Vatican City, Apr 29, 2018 / 04:16 am (CNA/EWTN News).- On Sunday Pope Francis praised the recent agreement signed by North and South Korean leaders aimed at reconciliation and denuclearization, praying that the peace process on the peninsula would continue undeterred.
“I accompany with prayer the positive success of the Inter-Korean summit last Friday and the courageous commitment assumed by the leaders of the two parts to carry out a path of sincere dialogue for a Korean Peninsula free of nuclear weapons,” the pope said April 29.
On Friday leaders of both and South Korea signed a revolutionary peace agreement aimed at eradicating nuclear weapons and increasing exchanges, visits, and cooperation between the two Koreas in order to promote a sense of unity and the eventual reunion of families separated during the Korean War.
In a historic first, North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un crossed the military demarcation line within the Demilitarized Zone that has divided the Korean peninsula since 1953 to meet with South Korean President Moon Jae-In on southern soil.
Both leaders signed the Panmunjeom Declaration stating that “there will be no more war on the Korean Peninsula and thus a new era of peace has begun.”
In the statement, the leaders agreed to “the common goal of realizing, through complete denuclearization, a nuclear-free Korean Peninsula” and to actively pursue further meetings with the United States, and possibly China, to establish a more permanent peace.
Though some have criticized the accord for lack of a specific plan on denuclearization, Francis prayed that steps toward peace on the peninsula would continue, voicing hope that “a future of peace and more fraternal friendship will not be disappointed, and that collaboration may continue to bring fruits of good for the beloved Korean people and for the entire world.”
The pope spoke during his Sunday Regina Coeli address, which he prays during Easter instead of the Angelus.
In his address, Francis focused on the day’s Gospel from John in which Jesus says he is the true vine and his disciples are the branches, which cannot have life unless they remain attached to the vine.
“This relationship is the secret to Christian life,” he said, noting how John in this specific scene uses the word “remain,” which is repeated seven times throughout the passage.
This, he said, means “remaining with the Lord in order to find the courage to go out of ourselves, of our comfort, of our tight and protected spaces, in order to go into the open sea of others’ needs and to give a wider breadth to our Christian witness in the world.”
This courage, the pope continued, is born from faith in the Risen Lord and from the certainty that his spirit is accompanying us throughout our lives.
One of the “most mature fruits which springs from communion with Christ” is showing charity toward the other, he said, adding that this means to love one another “with self-denial, until the final consequences, just as Jesus loved us.”
However, this charity “is not the fruit of strategies, it is not born from external solicitations, from social or ideological requests,” Francis said. Rather, it comes from an encounter with Jesus and from remaining with him in that encounter.
Jesus, he said, “is for is the vine from which we absorb the sap, that is, the life needed in order to bring to society a different way of living and spending oneself which puts the last ones first.”
When a person is intimately united to the Lord like the branches are to the vine, only then can they bring the fruits of new life, mercy, justice and peace, which come from the Lord’s resurrection, he said.
The saints, he said, were the ones who were able to life the Christian life to the fullest, bearing witness to charity because they were united with the Lord.
However, quoting his new apostolic exhortation Gaudete et Exsultate, Francis stressed that “to be holy does not require being a bishop, a priest or a religious…We are all called to be holy by living our lives with love and by bearing witness in everything we do, wherever we find ourselves.”
“Every activity – work and rest, family and social life, the exercise of political, cultural and economic responsibility – every activity, if it is lived in union with Jesus and with an attitude of love and service, is an occasion for living baptism and evangelic holiness to the full.”
Francis closed his address praying that Mary would teach Christians to remain in Jesus, and to never separate themselves from his love. “We can do nothing without him,” he said, “because our live is the living Christ, present in the Church and in the world.”
After his address, the pope also offered prayer for the 19 people, including two priests, who were killed in a fresh attack on a church in Nigeria’s Middle Belt earlier this week.
Vatican City, Apr 28, 2018 / 04:06 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Last night Pope Francis began individual meetings with three survivors of clerical sexual abuse from Chile following a major apology earlier this month. The encounters, which have no time limit, will go on throughout the weekend and on Monday.
The survivors – Juan Carlos Cruz, James Hamilton and Andres Murillo – were invited by the pope to stay at the Vatican’s Saint Martha guesthouse, where he has lived since his election in 2013.
In an April 27 statement from the Vatican, spokesman Greg Burke said there will be no official communique on the encounters, as Francis’ primary intention is “to listen to the victims, ask them for forgiveness and respect the confidentiality of these meetings.”
“In this climate of trust and of reparation for suffering,” Bruke said, “the desire of Pope Francis is to allow those invited to speak for as long as needed, such that there are no fixed schedules or predetermined content.”
Cruz, Hamilton and Murillo were each victims of abuse carried out by Chilean priest Fernando Karadima, who in 2011 was found guilty by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith of sexually abusing several minors during the 1980s and 1990s, and sentenced to a life of prayer and solitude.
The pope invited the three men to come to the Vatican after receiving a 2,300 page report from Maltese Archbishop Charles Scicluna, who is highly regarded as the Vatican’s top abuse investigator and who traveled to the United States and Chile in February to investigate allegations of cover-up.
Initially the investigation was centered around Bishop Juan Barros of Osorno, who was appointed to the diocese in 2015 and who has been accused by Cruz and several others of not only covering up Karadima’s abuses, but at times also participating.
Allegations were also made against three other bishops – Andrés Arteaga, Tomislav Koljatic and Horacio Valenzuela – who Karadima’s victims accuse of also covering the abuser’s crimes.
While on the ground Scicluna interviewed some 64 people, most of whom were victims, but the scale of the investigation went beyond Barros. It is said to be much more extensive, including details from other cases, such as the Marist Brothers, who are currently under canonical investigation after allegations of sexual abuse by some of the members surfaced in August 2017.
Pope Francis had previous defended Barros, saying he had received no evidence of the bishop’s guilt, and called accusations against him “calumny” during a trip to Chile in January.
However, after receiving Scicluna’s report, Francis issued a major “mea culpa” April 11, saying he had made “serious errors in the judgment and perception of the situation, especially due to a lack of truthful and balanced information.”
He invited Cruz, Hamilton and Murillo to meet with him privately at the Vatican, and summoned all of Chile’s 32 bishops to Rome in the third week of May, where they will discuss the conclusions of Scicluna’s report as well the pope’s own conclusions on the matter.
In recent comments made to the New York Times, Cruz, who will meet with Francis Sunday, said he is looking forward to speaking with the pope with “an open heart” and hearing what the pontiff has to say.
Above all, Cruz said he wants to convey “the pain and suffering of so many people,” many of whom, he said, suffered more than he has, and “I’ve suffered a lot.”
Cruz said at times he has been made at Pope Francis, but does not want to be. Though understands that “people make mistakes,” Cruz said he still grapples with the fact that the pope didn’t act sooner, and that for him, the meeting will be a waste “if it doesn’t result in concrete actions.”
“And firing a few bishops won’t do the trick,” he said, voicing hope that Barros will be relieved from his post in Osorno.
But despite the disappointment and “shattered” vision of the pope that he has going into the meting, Cruz said the pope is still the pope, and “I hope we all get some kind of healing out of this, for ourselves.”
© Catholic World Report