Rome, Italy, Apr 13, 2017 / 11:24 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Pope Francis spent Holy Thursday washing the feet of inmates, telling them in a brief homily that God is someone who loves until the end. He urged them to imitate this love even while in prison.
&… […]
Vatican City, Apr 13, 2017 / 06:22 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Pope Francis has given an interview ahead of his Holy Thursday visit to a prison, warning, among other things, against the hypocrisy of viewing inmates only as criminals beyond hope who deserve to… […]
Vatican City, Apr 13, 2017 / 03:00 am (CNA/EWTN News).- During his annual Chrism Mass for Holy Week Pope Francis told priests to always convey the truth and mercy of the Gospel with joy, saying the “Good News” brought by Jesus can never be … […]
Vatican City, Apr 12, 2017 / 07:21 am (CNA/EWTN News).- As the Church this week reflects on Jesus’ crucifixion and death, Pope Francis said that it is the cross that gives us hope, and urged faithful to enter into the mystery of Christ’s death by contemplating the joy that comes from sacrifice.
“During these days, days of love, let us be enveloped by the mystery of Jesus who, like a grain of wheat, in dying gives us life. He is the seed of our hope,” the Pope said April 12.
“Let us contemplate the Crucified Christ, the source of hope. Little by little we realize that hope with Jesus is learning to see, indeed right now, the plant in the seed, Easter in the cross, life in death.”
Speaking during his weekly general audience in St. Peter’s Square, Francis told pilgrims he was giving them some homework. He instructed them when they get home to stop in front the crucifix, look at Jesus and tell him: “With you, I can always hope. You are my hope.”
“Now imagine the crucifix,” he told the crowd, “and all together say to Jesus Crucified, three times: ‘You are my hope.’” When the crowd said, Francis wasn’t convinced, and had them repeat it again even louder.
“We we really believe that in the Crucified Christ our hope is reborn,” he said, but cautioned that “it is a different hope from that of the world. What hope is this? The hope that is born of the cross.”
Love and hope come together on the cross of Christ, he said, explaining that this is a cross everyone must carry at different points in their lives.
“But it’s beautiful to help others, to serve others,” he said, noting that this can get tiring at times, “but life is like that…This is love and hope together: to serve and give.”
“Of course, this love comes from the cross, from sacrifice, as it did for Jesus,” he said, stressing that the cross in itself is not the goal, but rather “a necessary step” to the ultimate goal, which is “glory, as Easter shows us,” he said.
It is in laying down one’s life, not holding onto it, that we find true joy, the Pope said, and pointed to the sacrifice of a mother, which he said is “another beautiful image that Jesus left to his disciples during the Last Supper.”
Jesus says in John 16:21 that “the woman, when giving birth, is in pain, because her hour has come; but, when she has given birth to the child, she no longer remembers the suffering, because of the joy that a child has come into the world.”
This is what mothers do, Francis said, noting that they give life to another through suffering, but then they are “joyful and happy (because) love gives birth to life and even gives meaning to pain.”
Love is the “engine” that fuels our hope, he said, and encouraged pilgrims to ask themselves: “Do I love? Have I learned to love? Am I learning every day to love more?”
“There is no other way to overcome evil and to give hope to the world,” he said, except by serving with humility and love.
“Have you thought about this?” he asked. No one likes to lose power and the logic of the seed that must die before bearing fruit is difficult to understand, he said, but stressed that this is the way of God.
He pointed to how many times in life we move forward with the mentality that the more we have the more we want. However, Jesus clearly says the opposite: “He who loves his life will lose it.”
This is why our hope is born from Christ’s transformation of death into life, he said, explaining that in the same way Jesus transforms our own sin into forgiveness, “our death into the resurrection, our fear into confidence.”
“That’s why there on the Cross, our hope is born and is always born again; that’s why with Jesus all our darkness can be transformed into light, every defeat into victory, every disappointment into hope. Every? Yes, every.”
Vatican City, Apr 12, 2017 / 04:22 am (CNA/EWTN News).- On Wednesday the Vatican announced that EWTN’s Chairman of the Board Michael Warsaw has been named by Pope Francis a consultor of the Vatican Secretariat for Communications.
The announcement of Warsaw’s appointment was made in an April 12 communique from the Vatican, along with the names of 13 other new consultors.
Warsaw was promoted to Chairman of the Board for EWTN in 2013. He has worked for EWTN since 1991, and had been named president in 2000, and CEO in 2009. He also serves as publisher of the National Catholic Register since the paper’s acquisition by EWTN in 2011.
He has worked for more than 35 years in media, and has overseen EWTN’s television, radio, and internet programming and production, as well as hosting the program “Bookmark.” He had been appointed COO in 2009.
EWTN was founded in 1981 by Mother Angelica, of the Poor Clares of Perpetual Adoration. The network today transmits programming to more than 264 million homes in 144 countries. What began with approximately 20 employees has now grown to nearly 400.
The religious network broadcasts terrestrial and shortwave radio around the world, operates a religious goods catalog and publishes the National Catholic Register and Catholic News Agency, among other publishing ventures.
In addition to Warsaw, other new consultors to the Secretariat are: Fr. Ivan Maffeis, Undersecretary of the Italian Bishops Conference; Fr. José María La Porte, Dean of the Faculty of Institutional Social Communications of the Pontifical University of Santa Croce; Fr. Peter Gonsalves, S.B.D., Dean of the Faculty of the Science of Social Communications at the Pontifical Salesian University; Fr Eric Salobir, O.P., Promoter General for Social Communications of the Order of Preachers; Fr. James Martin S.J. of America Magazine; Fr. Jacquineau Azétsop S.J., Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences at the Pontifical Gregorian University; Paolo Peverini, Professor of Semiotics at Luiss Guido Carli University; Fernando Giménez Barriocanal, President and Managing Director of Radio Popular-Cadena COPE; Ann Carter of Rasky Baerlein Strategic Communications; Graham Ellis, Vice Director of BBC Radio; Dino Cataldo Dell’Accio, Chief ICT Auditor at the United Nations and Michael Paul Unland, Executive Director of the Catholic Media Council.
Vatican City, Apr 12, 2017 / 12:29 am (CNA).- A new initiative in Italy will allow blood donors to receive a free ticket to the Vatican Museums.
“Without blood, there is no life. Without art, life would be empty and sad,” said Barbara Jatt… […]
Vatican City, Apr 11, 2017 / 03:33 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Pope Francis chose French biblical scholar, Anne-Marie Pelletier, to write the meditations for this year’s annual Good Friday Stations of the Cross at the Colosseum.
A recipient of the Ratzinger Prize in 2014, as well as a wife and mother, Pelletier’s meditations follow her own scripturally-based Stations of the Cross, or Via Crucis, based on the 14 biblical stations used by St. John Paul II in 1991.
Because the Stations of the Cross do not have a “binding form,” Pelletier told Vatican Radio, “I chose those moments that seemed particularly significant.”
Her stations are not significantly different from the traditional 14 stations followed by pilgrims walking the Via Dolorosa in Jerusalem, though the biblical stations don’t include the three falls of Jesus or Veronica wiping the face of Jesus as in the traditional devotion.
She also begins with Jesus’ condemnation, rather than his prayer in the garden of Gethsemane.
Using more than just the accounts of Christ’s Passion in the Gospels, Pelletier’s reflection weaves in Scripture and biblical references from both the Old and New Testaments as she reflects on how the entire life of Christ has been leading him, and us, to his ultimate sacrifice.
Pelletier’s meditations also reflect significantly on the perspective of the women along Jesus’ path, especially his mother, Mary.
An important scholar of contemporary French Catholicism, Pelletier has taught biblical studies at the European Institute of Religious Sciences and served as vice-president of the Jewish-Christian Documentation Information Service in Paris. She is the first woman to win the Ratzinger Prize.
The Ratzinger Prize was begun in 2011 to recognize scholars whose work demonstrates a meaningful contribution to theology in the spirit of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the Bavarian theologian who became Benedict XVI.
The prize is awarded by the Ratzinger Foundation, which was founded in 2010 with Benedict XVI’s approval to study and promote his writings as a theologian, as a cardinal in charge of the Vatican’s Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, and as Pope.
Pelletier opens the stations with Jesus’ condemnation before the members of the Sanhedrin, who “did not need a lengthy discussion to come to a decision,” she wrote. “The matter had long been settled. Jesus must die!”
Showing how at each point of his life Jesus faced enemies, she wrote that “our recollection must go back even further,” to Bethlehem, to Jesus’ very birth, when “Herod had decreed that he must die.”
Jesus escaped that time, but “already his life hung in the balance. In the sobbing of Rachel mourning her children who are no more, we hear a prophecy of the sorrow that Simeon will foretell to Mary (cf. Mt 2:16-18; Lk 2:34-35),” she writes.
In the fourth station, when Jesus is crowned with a crown of thorns, draped in a purple cloth and mocked with the words, “Hail, King of the Jews!” the paradox of Jesus’ kingship is revealed to us “as a love that seeks only the will of his Father and his desire that all should be saved.”
In this station she prays, “Lord our God, on this holy day that brings your revelation to fulfillment, we ask you to tear down every idol in us and in our world. You know the sway they have over our minds and our hearts. Tear down in us every deceitful illusion of success and of glory.”
When Jesus meets the mourning women of the daughters of Jerusalem, at the seventh station, Pelletier reflects on the gift of tears Jesus bestows upon them, asking them not to weep for him, but for the world.
The tears “fall silently down their cheeks. And undoubtedly, even more often, they fall unseen in the heart, like the tears of blood spoken of by Catherine of Siena,” she writes. “Not that women alone should weep…” she emphasizes, though it is their grief that “embraces all those tears shed quietly and without fanfare in a world where there is much to weep for.”
The eleventh station is devoted to Jesus and his mother Mary. Throughout her son’s life, Pelletier writes, Mary had entrusted each event “to the great patience of her faith” and today, the day of his crucifixion “is the day of fulfilment.”
“The sword that pierced her Son’s side pierces her own heart. Mary too plunges into that bottomless trust whereby Jesus lives to the full his obedience to the Father. Standing there, she does not desert him. Stabat Mater. In the darkness, but with certainty, she knows that God keeps his promises.”
The reflection on the tender faithfulness of women continues in the final station, as Jesus is laid in the tomb and the women prepare to anoint his body the following morning at daybreak, after the Sabbath has ended.
“Grant too that we, who have accompanied you along this path of love to the very end, together with the women of the Gospel, may remain in expectant prayer,” Pelletier concludes.
“For we know that our prayers will be answered by the resurrection of Jesus, which your Church now prepares to celebrate in the joy of Easter night.”
Vatican City, Apr 11, 2017 / 10:59 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Pope Francis will hold an ordinary public consistory on April 20, where the cardinals of the Church are expected to pave the way for the canonization of the Fatima visionaries.
There are five causes of canonization waiting for approval by the cardinals. Most prominent is the cause of Francesco and Jacinto Marto, two of the shepherd children who witnessed the 1917 Marian apparitions at Fatima.
The cardinals’ approval at the consistory is the final step in the process leading up to canonization. Pope Francis has already given approval for the causes to move forward. Following the consistory, canonization dates will be set.
It has been widely speculated that Pope Francis will canonize the Fatima visionaries during his trip to Fatima for the 100th anniversary of the Marian apparitions there. That trip will take place May 12-13.
Francisco, 11, and Jacinta, 10, were the youngest non-martyrs to be beatified in the history of the Church.
The brother and sister, who tended to their family’s sheep with their cousin Lucia Santo in the fields of Fatima, Portugal, witnessed the apparitions of Mary, now commonly known as Our Lady of Fatima.
During the first apparition, which took place May 13, 1917, Our Lady asked the three children to say the Rosary and to make sacrifices, offering them for the conversion of sinners. The children did, praying often, giving their lunch to beggars and going without food themselves. They offered up their daily crosses and even refrained from drinking water on hot days.
In October 1918, Francisco and Jacinta became seriously ill with the Spanish flu. Our Lady appeared to them and said she would to take them to heaven soon.
Francisco died April 4, 1919. Jacinta died the following year, Feb. 20, 1920.
Pope John Paul II beatified Francisco and Jacinta May 13, 2000, on the 83rd anniversary of the first apparition of Our Lady at Fatima.
The canonization cause for Sister Lucia Santo – the third Fatima visionary – is currently underway. Sr. Lucia lived to the age of 97, much longer than the other two visionaries, and the Vatican is currently examining information about her life that has been collected over the past eight years since her cause was officially opened.
In addition to the Fatima children, other causes of canonization set for approval at next week’s consistory are Cristóbal, Antonio, and Juan, young martyrs of Mexico in 1529; Fr. Faustino Míguez, the Spanish priest who founded the Calasanzian Institute of the Daughters of the Divine Shepherdess; Fr. Angelo da Acri, an Italian Capuchin priest who died in October 1739; and Fr. Andrea de Soveral, Fr. Ambrogio Francesco Ferro, Matteo Moreira, and their 27 companions, martyrs of Natal, Brazil in 1645.
Vatican City, Apr 11, 2017 / 10:56 am (CNA/EWTN News).- The caresses born of love are the most important medicine, Pope Francis told a group of patients, families, and doctors from Rome’s Bambino Gesu Pediatric Hospital on Monday.
“There is the danger, the risk of forgetting the most important medicine that only a family can give: caresses! It is a form of medicine that is too costly, because to have it, to be able to do this, you must give everything, you must give all your heart, all your love,” Pope Francis said April 10. “And you give them this affection, the caresses of the doctors, the nurses, the director, everyone.”
The patients, ages 5-18, met with Pope Francis at the Vatican, where he told them that “Each of you is a story. Not only the sick children, but also the doctors, the nurses, those who visit, the families.”
He recalled his Dec. 15, 2016 meeting with the group, saying that on that occasion the physicians “introduced the people to me. They all knew everyone’s names: ‘This one is fighting this disease…’.”
“They also knew what was happening in their lives. And I perceived … that more than a hospital this is a family, that is one of the words you said. The most important thing was the name, the person, and only at the end was the disease mentioned, but almost incidentally, a secondary matter. It is a family, isn’t it?”
The Pope also recalled that “you were a bit ashamed of getting up and not looking good in front of the camera, and the director, who is a bit like a mother, came up to you and said, ‘Come’, and she encouraged you. This is the beauty of a family, this is beautiful.”
“Entering in a hospital always makes us afraid, and I see this when I come up to some children, not all, but some very little ones, and they see me in white, and they begin to cry; they think it is a doctor who has come to give them a vaccine, and they cry and are afraid. I stroke them a few times and they calm down. Because there is always the function of the hospital … one must do this …”
He said Bambino Jesu “has grown a lot lately, and has become a family. … The child, the patient finds a family there. Family and community, two words that you have said and repeated, and I wish to thank you for this, because Bambin Gesù offers witness, human witness. Human.”
“It is a Catholic hospital, and to be Catholic, first you must be human, and you give human witness today. Please, continue always on this path, grow in this way.”
Bambino Gesu (which translates to the child Jesus) is the largest pediatric hospital and research center in Europe. Owned by the Holy See and known as the Pope’s hospital, Bambino Gesu also serves children from all over the world.
The Holy Father is a popular figure at the hospital, where children write him letters and know many details of his life, including words from his homilies and facts about his home country and favorite soccer team.
Pope Francis has visited the facility several times, as did Blessed Paul VI, St. John Paul II, and Benedict XVI.
Mainz, Germany, Apr 11, 2017 / 06:02 am (CNA/EWTN News).- In August 2013, a group of 20 police officers and social workers stormed the home of Petra and Dirk Wunderlich and took away their children.
Their offense: homeschooling.
The Wunderlich’s children were returned to them, but their legal situation remains precarious, as the German government continues to criminally punish families who homeschool with fines or even imprisonment.
Homeschooling has been illegal in Germany since 1918, though in recent years the policy has raised questions and concerns with human rights groups who say it is an infringement on the right to family life.
The European Court of Human Rights has agreed to review the Wunderlichs’ case and to look at whether Germany’s actions breached the right to family life, which is protected under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights. The court ruled in 2006 that there is no right to homeschooling.
“I sincerely hope the European Court of Human Rights will reaffirm that the state has no right to abduct children from their family just because they are being home-schooled,” Dirk Wunderlich, the father of the family, told legal group Alliance Defending Freedom.
“Our youngest daughter was only four years old when the authorities broke into our home and took our children without warning. She couldn’t stop crying for 11 days. Her older sister hasn’t laughed since this incident. We chose to educate our children at home, because we believe this to be the best environment for them to learn and thrive,” he said.
Alliance Defending Freedom International, an Arizona-based legal group, finalized written submissions to the European Court of Human Rights last week on behalf of the Wunderlich family, asking the high court to protect the freedom of parents to homeschool their children.
“The eventual judgment in the case will have wide implications regarding parental rights for the 800 million Europeans who are subject to the rulings of the court,” the group said in a statement.
“Children deserve the loving care and protection of their parents. It is a serious thing for a country to interfere with the parent-child bond, so it should only do so where there is a real risk of serious harm,” said ADF International Director of European Advocacy Robert Clarke, lead counsel for the family in Wunderlich v. Germany.
“Petra and Dirk Wunderlich simply exercised their parental right to raise their children in line with their philosophical and religious convictions – something they believe they can do better in the home environment. The right of parents to direct the upbringing of their children is a fundamental right protected in all of the major human rights treaties. Germany has signed on to these treaties and yet continues to ignore its obligations with devastating consequences.”
Several German families who wish to homeschool – many of them Christian – have sought refuge in the United States, transplanting their lives in order to have the right to educate their children at home. Others have fled to countries like France or Austria, which have more lax policies.
In 2014, Germany’s Constitutional Court ruled that restrictions on homeschooling were justified, because the government has a compelling interest in preventing the formation of religious or ideological parallel societies. The court also argued that requiring children to attend school allows them the good of interacting with other children who may think differently than themselves.
© Catholic World Report