No one is a stranger in the Church: no one is a stranger in this world instead.

Eduardo Calvo: "People of other faiths are happy that the Pope is coming."

No one is a stranger in the Church: no one is a stranger in this world instead.

The words of Pope Francis in his meeting with the clergy and pastoral agents of Kazakhstan offered the key to reading this 38th papal trip: No one is a stranger in this world that sometimes appears as a desolate steppe.

Aurora Diaz Soloaga-September 19, 2022-Reading time: 3 minutes

Bishop of Karaganda (Kazakhstan) explains Pope's upcoming trip Related News

Akulina lives in Almaty. She is Orthodox, of Russian origin. On Wednesday she traveled 1,500 km across the steppe to Astana to attend the Pope's Mass at the EXPO. The two nights on the train, in less than 48 hours, and the many hours with other attendees in the parishes of Almaty, have become short after the very positive impression of those few hours with the Pope.

Alisher, in turn, is a young Protestant pastor of Kazakh origin. He was not able to travel, given the scarce affordable possibilities in the last days before the Pope's visit. But his wish was to be able to see the Holy Father up close, which he considered a great honor.

To be with people like Akulina and Alisher, for Catholics from all over Central Asia and neighboring countries, for the delegations of traditional religions present in Astana (the capital of Kazakhstan has regained its primitive name these days) Pope Francis came to Kazakhstan.

Although his trip on this occasion cannot be considered strictly pastoral, but official on the occasion of attending the 7th congress of leaders of traditional and world religions, in the warm meeting of Pope Francis with the clergy and pastoral agents of Kazakhstan on the morning of Thursday, September 15, the Pontiff offered a key reading of his entire trip.

The Pope emphasized on that occasion that "the beauty of the Church is this, that we are one family, in which we are one family. no one is a foreigner".. And somehow this is a statement that, with different nuances, he has wanted to repeat to the different audiences he has met.

He thanked in a special way the presence of faithful from all over Central Asia at the Mass on the 14th, called the participants of the Congress of leaders of traditional and world religions brothers and sisters; and addressed with special affection the representatives of the country's civil society, thanking them for their commitment to universal values (the abolition of the death penalty, the renunciation of nuclear weapons) while with fine delicacy suggesting ways of democracy and social promotion to their authorities.

No one is a stranger in this world that sometimes appears to be a desolate and inhospitable steppe. The Pope has demonstrated this by his closeness to other religious leaders, while at the same time distancing himself from any syncretism, recognizing rather the real seeds of other realities of openness to the Absolute.

That is probably why we have seen a Pope close to each person and accessible to the faithful. His ride in the popemobile along the EXPO esplanade surprised many who did not expect such physical closeness, as suggested by his obvious state of health, which limits many of his movements.

He was also pleasantly surprised, as he reflected on his return trip, by the greatness (not only territorial) of an exemplary welcoming country: "a unique multiethnic, multicultural and multireligious workshop, (...) a country of encounter".

The Pope has discovered a great country, and Kazakhstan has in turn met a Pope who values his multiethnicity and his vocation of openness and welcome as a desirable gift for the whole world, for every country, for every region, for every conflict.

There are many other important themes that the Pope recalled and even demanded: the commitment to peace, the joint responsibility of religions in the construction of a more humane, peaceful and inclusive world, the power of memory, history and gratitude in the ecclesial journey.

Everything has been conveyed with images close to the multi-ethnic people living in Kazakhstan: the references to the poet Abay, the simile of the shadow, the references to the steppe, the flag and the symbols of the country.

So the President, with fine humor, could not but respond to so much affection with a special gift when he bade farewell to the Pope on Thursday the 15th: the Holy Father, who joked about being a musical Pope when describing the shadow, returned to Rome with that instrument, a gift from the Kazakh people.

The authorAurora Diaz Soloaga

Bishop of Karaganda (Kazakhstan) explains Pope's upcoming trip Related News

Eduardo Calvo: "People of other faiths are happy that the Pope is coming."

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The history of the Stations of the Cross in the Roman Colosseum

The mysteries of subway Rome

Rome is a city with many works of art, but the underground of the city hides unique wonders. We take a look at some of them.

Stefano Grossi Gondi-September 19, 2022-Reading time: 5 minutes

Rome is a famous city, frequented throughout the year by tourists who take the classic routes to visit monuments from the time of the Roman Empire, as well as works of art from the centuries when the Church ruled the city. The basilicas, the numerous churches, as well as the famous reminders of Roman life such as the Colosseum, the Forum, the Pantheon, etc., welcome tourists from all over the world on a daily basis; it is estimated that there are more than 4 million visitors a day.

Not only are there places in the sunlight, but the city hides many hidden places with a long history, in some cases little known.

The city has been built in overlapping layers and, thanks to them, there is a visible and an invisible city, which extends under the feet of unwitting tourists, available to those who like to make discoveries in the field of art and archeology.

Catacombs

The best known, with a long history to tell, are the catacombs, which began to develop in the second century and were created in areas loaded with tuff and pozzolana. They are mostly found in the southern part of Rome, especially between Via Appia and Via Ardeatina, and are a unique experience. In the subsoil of Rome, some 40 catacombs that extend along 150 kilometers of tunnels.

Not all of them can be visited, but there are at least two that absolutely deserve the attention of tourists: the Catacombs of St. Callixtus and those of San Sebastiano. In the former were buried no less than 16 Popes, as well as an undetermined number of Christian martyrs, making it the official cemetery of the Church of Rome. The catacomb of San Sebastiano, on the other hand, is artistically more important. It is not only the frescoes and stuccoes contained in the subway burial niches, but also the Upper Basilica, which contains what was perhaps the last work by the great Baroque sculptor Gian Lorenzo Bernini, the Salvator Mundi, which the artist himself wrote that he had sculpted "only for his devotion". In history, in addition to these two catacombs, the catacombs of S. Pancrazio, S. Lorenzo, S. Agnese and S. Valentino have never been abandoned.

Churches of Rome

Four churches in particular are famous for the richness of their subway areas. Starting with San Clemente (near the Colosseum), where, going down the stairs, one passes from the medieval church to the early Christian church, rich in frescoes of incredible polychromy, and from there, further down, to the discovery of the Mithraeum and of an ancient imperial building considered by many scholars to be the ancient Mint of Rome, rebuilt here after the tremendous fire that devastated the Capitoline in 80's. There is no other place in Rome that provides such clear evidence of the great stratification of the Urbe.

S. Cecilia is located in Trastevere, and here, in a tangle of buildings, one passes from an important domus nobiliare to a modest insula popolare, enriched by a subway crypt. The place was probably occupied by the house where the young martyr lived with her husband Valeriano and where she suffered martyrdom. In the church there is a masterpiece of art: the moving sculpture by Stefano Maderno of the martyr Cecilia in the position in which she was found during the Jubilee of 1600.

More wonders of Rome

Also in the Trastevere area is the church of St. ChrysogonusUnderneath, the original church, built in the 5th century A.D., remains. About 8 meters below the road surface, you will enter the ancient nave, where you can admire the remains of frescoes with images of saints and stories from the Old Testament.

S. Lorenzo in Lucina is located along the ancient route of the Via Lata (now Via del Corso); in addition to being one of the oldest churches in the city, it houses a number of works of art and important religious testimonies, such as the relics linked to the martyrdom of the saint after whom the church is named: the famous grill and the prison chains. The excavations carried out have brought to light an archaeological area with an extensive mural stratigraphy that allows us to reconstruct the construction dynamics from the second century AD. Of extraordinary importance was the discovery of the ancient paleochristian baptistery of the 5th century AD.

Palaces of Rome

More difficult to visit are the examples of the most ancient times, which have become known thanks to the use of technology. We are referring, for example, to the Domus Romane of Palazzo Valentini, patrician buildings from the imperial period, belonging to powerful families of the time, with mosaics, decorated walls, etc. - and the Domus AureaThe famous urban villa of Nero, inscribed on the Unesco World Heritage List since 1980. It is a huge construction, which to date is only partially known.

Thanks to multimedia projectors (in the first case) and sophisticated individual viewers (in the second), it is possible, in fact, to bring buildings to life in all their splendor, making it possible for the public to see them come alive around them, giving them the thrill of being able to walk on those floors, between those walls, with those lights.

Museum of the Baths of Caracalla

This museum was inaugurated in December 2012 in the basement of the thermal complex, and with the occasion the mithraeum was also reopened.

The exhibition route runs along two parallel galleries, leading from the access stairs first to the two exhibition islands dedicated to the gymnasium, then to the "frigidarium", and continuing in the second gallery containing the islands of the "natatio" and the library.

Neo-Pythagorean Basilica

Found by chance in 1917, during the construction of the railroad at Porta Maggiore, the oldest pagan basilica in the West was discovered, which still attracts many mysteries due to the lack of reliable information. It is said to be the work of a mystic-esoteric sect, whose function is still uncertain: tomb or funerary basilica, nymphaeum or, more probably, neo-Pythagorean temple.

It is still almost inaccessible, and for some years now some visitors have been able to visit these rooms on Sundays, with prior reservation. This is an example of the enormous potential for discovery of ancient Rome, which has certainly not come to an end.

Maximum Sewer

It is not classified in the list of works of art, but it is undoubtedly an important component of Roman civilization, lasting for centuries and centuries, the oldest sewer in the world that is still fully functional. The system of water management, both incoming and outgoing, allowed Rome to gather a population that had not been reached again until the nineteenth century, and the Cloaca Maxima is one of the foundations of this system. The origins of the artifact date back to the 6th century B.C.; conceived by Tarquinius Priscus and realized by Tarquinius the Superbus, it was designed as a drainage channel to channel the waters coming from the "Spinon" stream that flooded the "Argiletum", the valley of the Roman Forum and the Velabro.

However, probably its most important function was to quickly return to its bed the waters of the Tiber that periodically flooded. Studies have revealed that certainly in imperial times the Cloaca already fulfilled its function as a sewer serving a vast territory that included, in addition to the forensic area and the Velabro, at least the Suburra and the Esquiline.

The Cloaca Maxima has always functioned, although at the time of the Renaissance probably only the section below the Velabro was active. Towards the end of the 19th century, when Roma Capitale was created, an attempt was made to restore the old sewer pipes, re-establishing their operation. Since 2004, Roma Sotterranea has carried out a campaign of works that has extended the exploration of previously unexplored sections. Today, the Cloaca can be visited in the part that begins just outside the Forum of Nerva, near the Tor de 'Conti (today's Via Cavour ).

The authorStefano Grossi Gondi

The history of the Stations of the Cross in the Roman Colosseum

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José García Nieto. "Love me more, Lord, to win you".

Poet of vivid catholic roots, masterful sonneteer, promoter of much of the post-war poetry, he has been considered one of the greatest contemporary lyricists, with a great variety of tones and registers, always in continuous evolution. Returning to his verses is an encounter with the poetic creation of the most acclaimed classical tradition.

Carmelo Guillén-September 19, 2022-Reading time: 5 minutes

On December 10, 1996, it was granted to José García Nieto the Cervantes Prize, the highest award in Hispanic literature. Officially, he was awarded the prize on April 23rd of the following year. Due to his delicate state of health, Joaquín Benito de Lucas from Talavera had to take the chair in the auditorium of the University of Alcalá de Henares for the reading of his speech.

A few words from that text give an idea of the importance that his relationship with God takes on in our Oviedo poet. He writes: "'God is here...' is the beginning of a religious song [García Nieto alludes to a beautiful Catholic text by Cindy Barrera. You can easily listen to it on You Tube]. I would sing: 'God is there...'. It's a matter of distance. I have had a simple, prayerful faith, which changes over time. But this He knows. And I hope that in my weakening His mercy, which I believe to be infinite, will show through.". To which he adds: "Thank you, Lord, for you are / still in my word; / under all my bridges / your waters pass." four verses from his collection of poems Truce (1951), which will premonitory define the last years of the vital and religious trajectory of this man of whom those who knew him, in addition to his great value of friendship and politeness, also pointed to his affirmation of hope over the dark and his uninterrupted presence of God.

Generational traits

Although in García Nieto's poetic production beats his faith in God, which he assimilated since he was a child in his father's house, mainly transmitted by his mother - his father died when he was six years old - and by the education given to him by the Piarists, some lyrical deliveries give him away in particular: Truce, The network, several poems by The eleventh houra large part of The suburb and various isolated compositions that, due to their religious themes, reflect this: especially those that revolve around Christmas or the Corpus Christi in Toledo.

In all of them there is an epochal flavor, extensible to other contemporary poets such as Luis López Anglada, Francisco Garfias, José Luis Prado Nogueira or Leopoldo Panero, who speak, like him, of a particular geographical territory, of the deep sense of friendship or of their closest relatives: wife and children. However, together with this group echo, generational, typical of the time in which they lived, the personal voice, and at the same time in evolution of each one, is easily recognized.

Own voice

In the case of García Nieto, he is the poet who, together with formal perfection - on which so much emphasis has been placed as if his poetry had ceased to be read after 1951 - emphasizes the certainty of divine providence, the support of his life, which invades reality with its mysterious presence.

It is the one he refers to when he writes: "For you are so in everything, and I feel it, / That, more than ever, in the stillness of the day, your hands and your accent are evident." A feeling that will mark his continued lyrical activity. In fact, in The eleventh hour condenses his existential and fervent restlessness in a definitive sonnet -one of those in which he emphatically shows his deepest existential aspirations- in which he leaves a record of the mortal condition of man, saying: if being a man brings with it the encounter with death, I necessarily "demand" to meet you throughout my life.

And so he writes: "Because being a man is little and it ends / soon. To be a man is something that guesses / the look behind any cry / I demand that there be more. Tell me, my God / that there is more behind me; that there is something of mine / that has to be more for wanting it so much." That "something of mine" is his own freedom, as can be read in some composition: "You and your net, enveloping me, / Did I have / A blind sea of freedom, perchance, / To escape to? [...] And yet, free, O God, / How dark / My breast is by thy light wall, / Counting sorrows and hours, / Knowing itself in thy hand. Net, tighten! / Let thy yoke feel more this secret / Freedom that I spend and Thou treasureest!".

Living from freedom

Living from the same freedom that he places in God's hands becomes for José García Nieto an exciting game, subject to the passing of time, where love and death, fire and final snow intertwine; a game -that of his own existence- in which, as if he were a child, he knows who he trusts: his maker, the one who watches over his own steps. He writes: "How peaceful it is to think / that God watches over things; / that if we set our eyes / on the clear, deep water, / he returns our gaze / with his remorseful gaze." a game of preparation for the fact of dying, whose most important incentive is that personal and definitive encounter that will inevitably take place at some point in life and that will require the poet's total acceptance.

He is also subject to pain, from where God calls him unceasingly: "Again [...] Thou hast called me. And it is not the hour, no; but You warn me; / (...) And You call and call, and wound me, / and I ask You still, Lord, what do You want [...]. / Forgive me if I do not have You within me, / if I do not know how to love our mortal encounter, / if I am not prepared for Your coming.".

Religious thought

The religious thought of García Nieto is thus established, a man of faith, with no other pretensions than that of being touched by God so as not to falter in his invariable determination to discover His presence here on earth; a man who makes himself heard from his own identity, from his solitude, from his fears, through the poetic word, in order to unravel the mysteries of life, understood as a preparation for death; whose search is more for the presence of divinity in the world than for Himself.

Thus, in the aforementioned, broad initial composition of The eleventh hour condenses what is longing and repeated search of the poet, who, without the support of God, is nothing more than ruin, abdication, tower without foundation, cloud unraveling, impossible coal towards another fire, drumming of letters in a cracked leather...; however, with his support, everything makes sense: "Tell me that You are there, Lord; that within / my love of things You hide, / and that You will appear one day full / of that same love already transfigured / in love for You, already Yours... [...] Name me, / to know that it is still time! [...]. I am the man, the man, your hope, / the clay that you left in the mystery".

It is worthwhile to make a slight incursion into the best known and most inspired sonnet of his poetic trajectory, the one entitled The game. A crucial poem, in which, imagining his death approaching, García Nieto sees himself playing a game of cards with God himself: "With you, hand in hand. And I do not withdraw / the position, Lord. We play hard / Empeñada game in which death / will be final trump. I bet. I look at / your cards, and you beat me every time. I throw / mine. You hit again. I want to / cheat you. And it's not possible." This is a poem of salvation and full trust in divinity; a poem in which he realizes that, in the face of his rival, he has the odds stacked against him: "I lose a lot, Lord. And there's barely / time left for retribution." Suddenly, prompted by grace, the poem shifts focus and becomes a most beautiful prayer of petition: "Do thou that I may / equal still. If my share / is not enough because it is poor and poorly played, / if of so much wealth there is nothing left, / love me more, Lord, to win you."

In the end, one comes to the conclusion that García Nieto's poetry is an exercise of encounters and misencounters with the love of God, that love that saves if it is accepted; a magnificent opportunity given to Him for "give the lily a chance"that is, to become the master of his own life.

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Initiatives

Christian Art: Meditating on the Gospel through Art

Christian Art is an initiative of Patrick van der Vorst, a former director of Sotheby's London. On his website, he offers a daily Gospel commentary that relates his reflections to a work of art depicting the biblical scene. With more than 40,000 subscribers, this initiative builds a bridge between the art world and the Catholic Church.

Javier García Herrería-September 18, 2022-Reading time: 4 minutes

Entering into prayer through art. This idea, which has multiple possibilities and has been frequently used in the Church since its beginnings, summarizes, in a brief way, the proposal of this British art specialist.

On its website we can find, for example, next to the image of the Transfiguration by Bellini the following commentary: "Today's picture was painted by Giovanni Bellini around 1480. Bellini was described in 1506 by the artist Albrecht Dürer as "the greatest painter of all". He was famous above all for his impressive altarpieces, and this is one of them.

"The Transfiguration of Christ", by Giovanni Bellini. ©Wikipedia Commons

We see Christ in the center, with a brilliant white robe, as a source of light. A cloud above Christ sends rays of light upon him. To his left, we see Moses, his head covered with a Jewish prayer shawl, holding a scroll, and to Christ's right is Elijah, holding a scroll with the words "God will gather my people." The apostles Peter (in the center), James and John are at the bottom, and Ravenna is painted in the background, surrounded by scenes of daily life in Tuscany.

Out of the cloud came a voice saying, "This is my Son, the Chosen One. Listen to him. With these words it was confirmed to Jesus who he was and what his mission was and what we must do: listen to him! Moses and Elijah identified Jesus as the One in whom the Old Testament promises are fulfilled...ultimately on the cross. However, for me, the phrase that stands out today is the one that opens the passage: that Jesus went up the mountain to pray.

This reminds us again how much he prayed. Even though he was the Son of God, and nothing would have changed that, he prayed and prayed, over and over again. It was during this time of prayer that everything happened as described in today's reading.

We can join Jesus in his prayer, so that we too can change. We can, for example, pray the Rosary. In 2002, Pope John Paul II added the luminous mysteries to the Rosary. The Transfiguration is one of them, the moment when Jesus revealed himself as the Son of God.

The Gospel scene of the transfiguration of Christ, in which the three apostles Peter, James and John appear enraptured by the beauty of the Redeemer, can be considered an icon of Christian contemplation," wrote John Paul II in the apostolic letter Rosarium Virginis Mariae.

John Paul II uses the word beauty as a key quality for entering into the mystery of our faith...a beauty that we can find in some of the works of art we look at in our daily reflections, such as the painting here."

This example shows how evangelical details, ascetic reflection and a great pedagogy combine very well so that the reader also enjoys the art.

St. Clare of Assisi or St. Augustine developed a great commitment to the way of beauty -the via pulchritudinis- for the human being to know the Creator. Many modern authors, such as Paul Cludel or Hans Urs von Balthasar, have also stressed the convenience of this mode of access to God.

However, since the world is the way it is, it is necessary to evangelize through the audio-visual media that are connatural to us. For this reason, Cardinal Ratzinguer in the introduction to the Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church already proposed in 2005: "A third characteristic is the presence of some images, which accompany the articulation of the Compendium. They come from the very rich patrimony of Christian iconography.

From the centuries-old conciliar tradition we learn that the image is also evangelical preaching. Artists of all times have offered, for the contemplation and amazement of the faithful, the most outstanding facts of the mystery of salvation, presenting it in the splendor of color and the perfection of beauty. This is an indication of how today more than ever, in the civilization of the image, the sacred image can express much more than the word itself, given the great efficacy of its dynamism of communication and transmission of the Gospel message.".

The proposal of Christian Art has joined the Church's efforts to evangelize through the language of art. Patrick van der Vorst, former director of Sotheby's London, is responsible for this initiative. Patrick worked at the famous auction house from 1995 to 2010. He was auctioneer and head of furniture and then created his own art appraisal company, ValueMyStuff.com.

With over 500,000 clients, he sold the company in 2018 to begin his seminary studies in September 2019. Since then he has been residing at the Pontifical Beda College in Rome for the Diocese of Westminster, London. A few months ago he received the diaconate and next May he will be ordained a priest. At Christian Art offers personal meditations on the daily Gospel, combining his knowledge of art, Sacred Scripture and Christian asceticism.

The website offers the possibility of subscribing to receive daily Gospel commentaries by e-mail. It is also possible to register on the site with a personal user, which allows you to directly save the comments preferred by each reader, interact with other users and access exclusive content.

Social networks, especially instagram y facebookThey also offer content on a daily basis, and have tens of thousands of followers.

Most commentaries on the Gospel are based on pictorial works of art, but the offer is not limited to paintings or frescoes. It also presents sculptures, reliefs or buildings, both ancient and modern. In this way, the reader gains a remarkable insight into the knowledge of artistic works that are not so famous and with which only experts are familiar.

The more than one thousand Gospel commentaries published over the years cover practically every scene in the life of Jesus, so the site offers a search engine by verse that allows you to find any passage. As time goes by, it will be possible to find and link all the images of the Gospel scenes almost as if they were stills from a movie.

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Twentieth Century Theology

Paul Evdokimov and The Art of the Icon

Evdokimov was a great Russian Orthodox lay theologian. Emigrated and trained in Paris; involved in refugee relief work and in the ecumenical movement, and author of a body of theological works of great spiritual breath, of which The art of the icon is the best known.

Juan Luis Lorda-September 16, 2022-Reading time: 8 minutes

Pavlos or, in Paris, Paul Evdokimov (1900-1970) was born in St. Petersburg. From an ennobled family, his father was a brave and esteemed colonel, who was killed by a terrorist while trying to peacefully resolve a mutiny (1907). His mother, a noblewoman, took him to military school, and in the vacations to long retreats in monasteries. With the revolution (1917) the family retired to Kiev. And in 1918 Pavlos wanted to study theology, as a Christian reaction in times of trial, although it was very rare in his milieu (priests came from the lower strata). He participated for two years in the anti-revolutionary White Army. And, faced with imminent defeat, urged by his mother, he fled to Istanbul. There he survived as a cab driver, waiter and cook, a skill he retained.

The Paris years

In 1923, with the clothes on his back, he moved to Paris, like so many Russians. He worked nights at the Citroen and cleaning wagons. But he did a degree in philosophy at the Sorbonne. And when the Institute of Orthodox Theology was founded in Paris Saint Serge (1924) he enrolled for a degree in theology, which he completed in 1928. He dealt very closely with Berdiaev, a great Orthodox Christian thinker, and with Boulgakov, the founder of Saint Serge and dean of theology. His main sources are.

The contact with Western Christianity, its cathedrals, its monasteries, its libraries was an impressive enrichment for all, and in particular for Evdokimov. And it made them develop their Orthodox theology in dialogue with Catholics and also with Protestants and Jews. Saint Serge was a very relevant phenomenon of mutual theological influence and Evdokimov participated with enthusiasm in this exchange. Later, he would be a great promoter of spiritual and "pneumatic" (entrusted to the Holy Spirit) ecumenism. And since its foundation, he participated in the World Council of Churches (1948-1961) and was an observer at the Second Vatican Council.

War, welfare work and theses

He married Natacha Brun, an Italian teacher, half French and half Russian (Caucasian), in 1927 and they had two children. They lived near the Italian border until the Second World War. Again the catastrophe led him to go deeper into Christianity. And although his wife fell ill with cancer (and died in 1945), and he had to take care of everything, he undertook a thesis on the problem of evil in Dostoyevsky, which he published in 1942. The profound mystery of evil, as Boulgakov had transmitted to him, is that God is willing to abase himself (kenosis) and to suffer human freedom up to the redemptive cross. At the same time, inspired by the figure of Alyosha of The Brothers Karamazovdefines a lay spirituality that brings monastic contemplation into the midst of the world.

During the German occupation, he helped refugees (and Jews) with a Protestant organization (CIMADE). And when peace came, to displaced persons, in a shelter home. Then, until 1968, he directed the students' home that Cimade founded near Paris. He was a deeply Christian counselor among so many broken lives, and took a special interest in Orthodox youth. In addition, reflecting as a layman, he published a beautiful book on Marriage, sacrament of love (1944).

An intellectual turn and three final essays

His life changed when, in 1953, he began to teach in Saint Serge and when, in 1954, he remarried the daughter of a Japanese diplomat (half English), who was 25 years old. These are very intense years of spiritual and intellectual maturation. Shortly after his marriage, he published Women and the salvation of the world. And later a wide range of articles, Orthodoxy (1959), and an essay on Gogol and Dostoyevsky and the Descent into Hell (1961). He renews his study on marriage, The sacrament of love (1962). And he brings together many of his spiritual writings and his ideal of monasticism in the world in The ages of spiritual life (1964).

The last three years of his life, with the feeling that his time was running out, are dominated by his courses at the newly founded Higher Institute of Ecumenical Studies at the Institut Catholique de Paris (1967-1970). And by three panoramic essays. First, the most famous, The art of the icon. The theology of beautycompleted in 1967 and published in 1970; later, Christ in Russian thought (1969); y The Holy Spirit in the Orthodox tradition (1970). He dies unexpectedly, at night, on September 16, 1970. He has other minor works. His work is now difficult to find, although it is being republished, and has been quite pirated on the net.

The most remarkable thing about Evdokimov is that he is both a theological and spiritual author, who delves into the traditional themes of Orthodoxy, the contemplation of the glory of God, divinization, but also advances originally in the theology of marriage and priesthood, and in true ecumenism, with a very Eucharistic ecclesiology and linked to the action of the Holy Spirit. But he also advances originally in the theology of marriage and priesthood, and in true ecumenism, with a very eucharistic ecclesiology and linked to the action of the Holy Spirit. His colleague in Saint Serge and great friend, Olivier Clément, has given us the best spiritual portrait, which has been summarized here: Orient et Occident, Deux Passeurs, Vladimir Lossky, Paul Evdokimov (1985). "Passeurs" are border crossers (and smugglers). With their Parisian exile and their work, Lossky and Evdokimov, crossed the spiritual borders between the Christian East and West.

The context of the theology of beauty

The title of the book is The art of the icon, and the subtitle The theology of beauty. And it takes a lot of context to situate oneself in a deeper, more spiritual and transcendent subject than it may seem at first glance. To begin with, beauty is one of the names of God. The same divine essence radiates outwardly in the glory of creation, in the theophanies of the Old Testament (especially at Sinai); and fully, in the Transfiguration and Resurrection of Christ. Moreover, it comes as a reflection in the life of the saints, who, from their divinized soul, radiate the glory and the good odor of Christ; hence the halo that surrounds them in iconography.

Eastern theology, following the Byzantine theologian Gregory Palamas (14th century), has always distinguished (and canonized) the essence of God, incommunicable in itself, and the essence insofar as it is communicated to us, through two great "uncreated energies" (or acts ad extraThe Westerners would say): the creative action of God, which gives being; and the divinizing action (grace), which elevates the human being to the participation of the divine nature. And this is conceived as the eternal light that radiates over everything, which is also the "taboric light" of the Transfiguration, contemplated by the Apostles. This irradiation of the same divine essence is what divinizes us, making it an object of contemplation and a source of elevation and joy for those who love God. Vision of the veiled essence in this life and direct in the next, although always transcendent. It takes a transformation received from God, so that we can contemplate it with our mortal eyes. The contemplation of the Trinitarian essence of God is the most essential and characteristic of holiness, which thus participates in God.

Transmuted matter

God makes himself present in the world because he creates it, maintains it in being and, when he wishes, in history, he acts in it in an extraordinary and spectacular way. On the other hand, in addition to creating it, he makes himself present through grace, in the elevation of the human soul, and eminently in that of Christ.

But the great misfortune is that this world is fallen and broken by human sin. Because God wanted to confront with all its consequences human freedom, capable of sinning and turning away from its Creator. This moral fall produced an impressive cosmic ontological fall, which affects everything and needs divine salvation, which, however, will always respect human freedom. It will save by the attraction and power of redeeming love and not by coercion and violence.

Jesus Christ, made man, is "image of the divine substance" in the flesh, in his body. Subjected in this world to the condition of fallen nature, but announcing in his Transfiguration and anticipating in his Resurrection, the transmutation and salvation of all things to eternal glory, where there will be a "new heaven and a new earth": the universe transformed through the resurrection of Christ. Thus matter itself, which has been made by God and has integrated the Body of Christ, will participate in his glory and beauty.

The four parts of the book

The book is divided into four parts, which also draw on previous articles and lectures. The first describes "Beauty." with its theological sense, which we have advanced, resorting to the biblical and patristic vision of beauty and extending into the religious experience and into cultural and artistic expressions (with some unknowns about modern art).

The second is dedicated to "The sacred"The Church, as the transcendent sphere and presence of God in the world: in all its dimensions, in time, space and, in particular, in the temple.

The third is "The theology of the icon".. With its history in the Eastern tradition, the iconoclastic debates and the sanctions of the councils, the II of Nicaea (787) and the IV of Constantinople (860), which declares: "What the Gospel tells us through the Word, the icon announces through the colors and makes it present to us.".

The fourth is entitled "A Theology of Vision." and reviews and comments on some of the most famous icons and the main motifs or scenes. The chapter is presided over by a commentary on the icon of the Trinity of Roublev. It continues with the icon of Our Lady of Vladimir. And with the scenes of the Birth of the Lord, the Transfiguration, Crucifixion, Resurrection and Ascension. Then, Pentecost. And closes with the icon of Divine Wisdom (another name of God).

The theology of the icon

The theology of beauty as the name of God and divinizing energy (grace) and the theology of matter transmuted by the incarnation and glory of Christ form the framework of icon theology. But there is more.

First of all, a history, which has established, with spiritual experience, the forms of representation. To the uninitiated Westerner, it is surprising that the icons do not seek to be "beautiful". There is a stylization and an intentional austerity and seriousness, a distance, because we are dealing with something transcendent: not with an object of ordinary use, which we dominate, it is a way to enter into God. But, for that, it has to be born from above and not from below. This is also expressed in the "reverse perspective" and in the arrangement and sizes of figures and objects. It is about God's way of doing things, not ours.

An icon does not express the ingenuity of the artist, but the spirituality of the Church with its tradition. The artist can only contribute if he is deeply imbued with its spirit, if he prays and possesses the wisdom of faith. One paints by praying, so that one can pray. Then, in addition to respecting the traditional canons of representation (forms, colors, scenes, models), he can be truly creative, not with his own spirit, but with that of the Church, which is the Holy Spirit. For this reason, the icons are not usually signed. It is especially appreciated in the icon of the monk Roublev, at the same time revolutionary in its representation of the Trinity and traditional in its resources.

In section IV (Theology of presence) of Part III, explains: "For the East, the icon is one of the sacramentals, that of personal presence.". Icons are a holy and significant presence of the supernatural in the world and especially in the temple. A true, though veiled, irradiation of the divine glory and a foretaste of the recapitulation of all things in Christ, through the poor matter of our world, created by God and affected by sin. When it comes to a saint: "The icon bears witness to the presence of the person of the saint and his ministry of intercession and communion.".

"The icon is a simple wooden board, but it bases all its theophanic value on its participation in divine holiness: it contains nothing in itself, but becomes a reality of irradiation [...]. This theology of presence, affirmed in the rite of consecration, clearly distinguishes the icon from a painting with a religious theme, and it treats the dividing line.".

Other references

Much has been written, and happily, about icons. In the Eastern universe, the works of the Russian priest, engineer and thinker (and martyr) Pavel Florensky (1882-1937) are classic, on The inverted perspective and about The iconostasis. A theory of aesthetics.

It is worth mentioning The theology of the iconby Leonid Uspenski (1902-1987), an icon painter and thinker contemporary of Evdokimov, who, like him, was based in Paris, although he was linked to San Dionisiocreated by the Moscow patriarchate, and not to Saint Sergewhich had become independent in order to distance itself from communist rule.

In our Western and Catholic area, the artistic and theoretical work done by the Slovenian Jesuit Marco Ivan Rupník and his Aletti center, and by his mentor, the Czech Cardinal Tomáš Špidlík, should be highlighted.

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Mother María Antonia. A strong and committed woman

On the bicentennial of her birth, the figure of Mother Maria Antonia emerges as an example of a woman committed to her most vulnerable peers.

Marisa Cotolí-September 16, 2022-Reading time: 3 minutes

February 2, 1870, Antonia María de Oviedo y SchönthalWith the wisdom of one who is constantly searching, she chose a new name: Antonia Maria de la Misericordia.

In the stories of the prophets, mercy is an overwhelming characteristic of God, who hears the suffering of those who have been condemned on earth by other human beings, and intervenes out of love.

For Mother Antonia, women become a missionary key and the love given to them becomes the lifeblood of the Congregation. They reveal to us the face of God.

Antonia Maria's life, her identity as a strong and intelligent woman and her identity as a mother, teacher and religious, announce life for the women of today. Antonia Maria was a woman, inhabited by God, who discovered the freedom and humility of being fully present to generously give her life for the benefit of others.

His main desire was to be in God's desire. With a human gaze, she discovered life and, with a humanizing gaze, she enhanced it. A woman passionate about life, she contemplated the beauty and art of Creation. Her artistic skills in literature, music and painting refined her sensitivity. She deeply developed her studies and cultivated her own talent, in the midst of a society in which the sphere of female activity was very restricted.

Antonia Maria knew how to take advantage of the factors of culturization to enter the modern world through culture. She used her intelligence and enthusiasm to learn throughout her life and to teach with courage.

The pain of many women in prostitution did not escape her notice. Surprised and moved, she discovered the call to a dignity-enhancing service.

Her willingness to give her life, by opening the first shelter, brought about an inner transformation, which had a radical impact on her life and that of many women.

Vocation oblate

The vocation we have received makes us especially sensitive to the injustices in which many women are immersed in situations of prostitution, gender violence and trafficking for sexual exploitation.

This leads us to live as contemplatives in action, to pray with women to a God who listens to them and helps them to believe in themselves and to believe that oppression and death do not have the last word.

Called to live in community, we form a family that is an expression of fraternity and a sign of joy, mercy, tenderness and hope in different realities. And this is possible because we believe in a God who offers us every day the possibility of freeing us from what oppresses us and of giving us the strength to stand up and walk looking towards the future with hope.

Back to the essence of charisma

This second centenary of the birth of Antonia Maria de Oviedo y Schönthal is an opportunity to make visible the life of a great woman who, with total trust in God, dared to found and energize a Congregation, with a name of her own, which she herself honored: the Oblates of the Most Holy Redeemer.

A woman, in whose life is revealed gratitude, acceptance, forgiveness, compassion, intelligence, courage, joy and strength combined with fragility, of one who knows that she belongs only to God.

For the congregation, this means the possibility of revitalizing, updating and deploying the charism and mission, inserted in the reality of the world, attentive to social changes and to the situations of greater vulnerability suffered by women.

A propitious time to promote devotion to Venerable Mother Antonia de la Misericordia, whose beatification process is still active, awaiting the recognition of her sanctity by the Church.

We wish to continue to promote the Oblate charism and mission in an innovative way. Attentive and open to what the most vulnerable realities of the world demand, and responding creatively and boldly.

Promoting equality and inclusion and denouncing the trafficking of women and girls for sexual exploitation and all kinds of situations that violate human rights.

We want to let the world know that life can win the pulse of death. That it is possible to live from the fundamental values of welcome, respect, justice, equality and love.

The authorMarisa Cotolí

Vicepostulator for the cause of beatification of Mother Maria Antonia

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Lourdes Perramón: "Something that characterizes us as a Congregation is our permanent dynamism".

Re-elected in 2019 as Superior General of the Oblates, Lourdes Perramón, born in Manresa in 1966, has worked as an educator, social worker and a reference in the work of raising awareness of the world of prostitution, especially through the Congregation's own projects. As she points out: "Among the women in prostitution themselves, there are not only different discourses, but also different experiences" to which the Oblates offer their closeness and help.

Maria José Atienza-September 16, 2022-Reading time: 6 minutes

Interview with the Superior General of the Oblates of the Most Holy Redeemer in Spain, Lourdes Perramón.

"Let all our hearts overflow with charity for the girls whom heaven entrusts to us. May we also be their mothers without any partiality, and with holy love and boundless patience, may we strive to make them abhor vice and love virtue, even more by our examples than by our words.". This is how Antonia María de Oviedo y Schönthal, foundress of the Oblates of the Most Holy Redeemer, whose bicentennial will be celebrated in 2022, conceived her work more than a century ago.

Together with Bishop José María Benito Serra, the young María Antonia, who had been a tutor to the Infantas of Spain, dedicated her life to the reception and liberation of women who had been prostitutes. What today we call "feminine empowerment" was, for this committed and courageous woman, a path to holiness and the materialization of the love of God.

The Oblate charism is a "peripheral" charism. Since it began more than a hundred years ago, what changes have you noticed?

-Since then, the reality of women, and above all the way of understanding and approaching them, as well as the tools we have to intervene, have changed a great deal. However, I would say that the essentials in the way we approach and accompany them remain the same.

It remains in terms of the deep sense of welcome, something that is born from our charism. There remains the attentive and honest listening to reality, letting it speak and welcoming what it tells us, overcoming preconceptions; and there remains something that for us is fundamental, believing in women and believing in their possibilities, accompanying from what we call the pedagogy of love. This has many nuances, but it goes hand in hand with understanding, tenderness, patience, mercy, complicity..., and everything that favors the empowerment of the person.

Perhaps we could summarize it in that ability to see the woman beyond the activity she performs, and seeing her for what she is, walking together.

How has your work adapted to the changing needs of this world?

-In broad terms, I would point to four major changes.

One, perhaps very visible, is from a more inward work, since the congregation was born with what were then called asylums, to a work that, without ruling out residential support, starts from the "outward", from stepping on the reality, from touching the concrete situations where women find themselves, with the approach to clubs, prostitution apartments and other places where they are.

Another relevant change would be the passage from the sisters working practically alone, to a rich dynamism and experience of the sisters. shared missionWe have a team of professionals, volunteers, but also, and more and more, lay people who receive, and with whom we share, the same Oblate charism permeating and shaping their lives. This means that today we could no longer understand our mission if it were not in the context of the Oblate charism. shared mission, nor understand the charism if it is not lived, celebrated and enriched in the joint journey between religious and lay life.

It has also changed from defining projects and offering responses locally and quite autonomously to working in a network, with many other projects or institutions, both public and private. A network of articulations, support, alliances..., where complementarity and addition arise and which allows us to offer a more comprehensive and integrating intervention to women.

And perhaps the last great change would be to combine the accompaniment of women in their vital processes in the work also the dimension of awareness, social transformation and political action, to influence the contexts, go to the causes and defend the rights of women as citizens.

What kind of projects do the Oblates carry out in the world?

-The type of project varies somewhat according to the reality of the city, the country, the culture and, of course, the needs of the women. However, there are some characteristics that are taken care of and remain in the different places where we are.

A first element would be this approach to women in their reality of prostitution. This involves regular visits, either on roads, greenhouses, bars, streets, clubs... where, overcoming the feeling of distance that they experience due to rejection and stigma, a progressive relationship and links are developed through listening and empathy, which makes it possible to know their desires and needs. An individual and personalized welcome to each woman without restrictions that, little by little, in the exchange of information, opens up a world of possibilities usually unknown to them.

This leads to the development of an individualized plan, oriented towards their dream, their life project, addressing health, educational and legal issues and, above all, providing them with assessment and confidence in their possibilities.

In our projects, accompaniment, in which different professionals may intervene, plays a fundamental role, sometimes extending to other members of the family, especially the sons and daughters.

It is also essential to carry out differentiated processes in which, depending on the country or reality of the women we serve, training courses, entrepreneurship, spaces for spirituality or care, shelter and protection for victims of trafficking, job placement or support for their own struggles, building together paths to defend their rights as citizens, depending on the social and political context.

How does one restore an inner and physical life marked by sexual exploitation?

-I would say that each person is different, there is no recipe that can be generalized. It is essential, in all cases, to listen a lot, to help them tell their own story and heal wounds. All this from the reception, understanding and overcoming the feeling of guilt. For this, it is necessary to name and recognize what they feel as a wound, because it does not always go hand in hand with the feeling of exploitation, but it does include in almost all cultures and countries the experience of social rejection and stigma that entails a significant devaluation and, often, shame.

From there, it is fundamental to help women reconnect with their own person and capabilities, with their vital project, their dreams, because only when each woman is able to enter into her essence as a person, as a woman, is it possible for her to move forward.

I find very enlightening the words of a woman who said: "You have been my switch, because I had a light inside and I didn't know it". I think that's what restoring a life is all about: making a woman discover that light inside her.

In a world that looks especially at women, is it not incongruous to accept prostitution?

-Prostitution is a complex, plural reality, and not only in the conditions in which prostitution is exercised and in which women find themselves. From there, we really need a more comprehensive approach that includes, on the one hand, more resources and protocols to detect and protect those who are victims of trafficking, as well as sensitivity and political motivation and police training to prosecute this crime and restore the rights of victims.

On the other hand, faced with the other realities of prostitution, rather than persecution, what should be favored in large part is prevention. A prevention that goes to the real causes, both structural poverty, since in most life stories we discover that it has been the lack of opportunities that has forced women to enter the environment of prostitution, as well as a rethinking of migration flows and restrictive immigration laws, because being in an irregular situation is another great door to prostitution.

Along with prevention, it is necessary to continue increasing social and training resources, encouraging the labor market, small businesses, and offering protection to single or more vulnerable women so that those who are looking for another option from which to rebuild their life projects can do so. Finally, we cannot forget the necessary questioning of stereotypes and social rejection that continues to force all of them to hide and carry the weight of stigma.

In this year that marks the bicentenary of Mother Maria Antonia's birth, what are the challenges for the future of the Congregation?

-I dare to point out three major challenges. The first is to perceive and understand the new codes and emerging realities that are emerging in prostitution and trafficking. From there, to listen and enter into the new frontiers that we are detecting: geographical frontiers, virtual frontiers, a reality that was already happening and that with the pandemic context has been growing and brings us new forms of prostitution, in everything that is being called "Prostitution 2.0"; and also existential borders, those realities that often remain outside of everything, in the margins and peripheries not only of society, but also of the care resources themselves, social policies and ideological discourses and positioning, because they do not fit into the predefined "profiles".

Another challenge would be to encourage more networking at the level of the congregational body. To grow in articulation among the projects in the 15 countries where we are present in order to learn from each other, share good practices and innovative initiatives in the face of new challenges, systematize our own knowledge and offer it, not only to the teams of professionals, but also to society as a whole. To make our efforts profitable in the common cause that mobilizes us.

Finally, to continue taking steps in the shared mission and the journey with the Oblate laity. Perhaps it would be necessary to strengthen and take more steps in delegating responsibilities, working towards greater equality; with the laity, to take care not only to share mission but also to share life, discernment and, among all of us, to assume bolder responses to new challenges, also together with other congregations.

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Images of Pope Francis in Kazakhstan

Rome Reports-September 16, 2022-Reading time: < 1 minute

Pope Francis has returned from his 38th trip, during which he visited Kazakhstan to attend the VII Congress of Leaders of World and Traditional Religions.

Among the highlights was the meeting with the delegation of the Orthodox Patriarch of Moscow.

AhNow you can enjoy a 20% discount on your subscription to Rome Reports Premiumthe international news agency specializing in the activities of the Pope and the Vatican.

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Way of the Cross in Jerusalem. Where the footsteps of Christ resound

The Holy Land of Jesus

Gerardo Ferrara, writer, historian and expert on the history, politics and culture of the Middle East, delves in this article into the characteristics of the land and the socio-political moment that saw the birth of Jesus.

Gerardo Ferrara-September 16, 2022-Reading time: 6 minutes

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Original article in Italian

As we approach the Gospels, we glimpse the social landscape of what we know today as the Holy Land at the time of Jesus. The history of this land and of the peoples who have inhabited it throughout the centuries, frame the life of Christ on earth and provide a valuable framework for interpretation to relive and discover all the richness contained in the scriptures.

A land that has always been complex

At the time of Jesus, the Holy Land was not called Palestine. This name, in fact, was given to it by Emperor Hadrian from 135 AD, at the end of the Third Jewish War. At that time it was not even a single unicumThe Kingdom of Israel, geographically, politically, culturally and religiously, if it had ever been one. In fact, the ancient Kingdom of Israel had long since ceased to be an independent state and was divided between Judea, immediately subject to Rome and ruled by a praefectusand the other two historical regions, Galilee and Samaria.

However, Judea remained the heart of Jewish worship, since there, in Jerusalem, was the Temple, to which all the Jews scattered throughout the world went.

On the other hand, Samaria, the central plateau of what is known today as Palestine or Israel, was inhabited by the Samaritans, a population resulting from the fusion of the settlers brought by the Assyrians in the 5th century B.C., at the time of the conquest of the Kingdom of Israel, and the local proletarians, left by the conquerors, who had deported the notable Israelites to Assyria.

The mixture had given rise to a cult that at first was syncretic, but which was later refined until it became monotheistic, although in contrast to the Jewish one. In practice, both Jews and Samaritans considered themselves the sole and legitimate descendants of the patriarchs and custodians of the Covenant with Yahweh, the Law and the cult. The former, however, had their center of worship in Jerusalem, the latter in a temple on Mount Garizim, near the city of Shechem. We know from the Gospels, but not only, that Jews and Samaritans detested each other.

Galilea

Galilee was an area of mixed population: Jewish towns and cities (e.g., Nazareth, Cana) were found next to cities of Greco-Roman and then pagan culture (e.g., Sepphoris, Tiberias, Caesarea Philippi). The population of the region, although of Jewish faith and culture, was despised by the inhabitants of Judea, who boasted of being purer and more refined. Several times, about Jesus, we hear it said in the Gospels that "nothing good can come out of Nazareth or Galilee". By the way, not only the Gospels tell us, but also the few remaining rabbinical writings of that time, that the Galileans were also mocked for their way of speaking. Hebrew and Aramaic (a lingua franca spoken throughout the Middle East at that time), like all Semitic languages, have many guttural letters and aspirated or laryngeal sounds. And the Galileans pronounced many words in a manner considered funny or vulgar by the Jews. For example, the name יְהוֹשֻׁעַ, Yehoshu‛a, was pronounced Yeshu, hence the Greek transcription Ιησούς (Yesoús), later changed to the Latin Jesus.

Galilee, however, constituted a vassal kingdom of Rome and was ruled by the tetrarch Herod, a king of pagan origin literally put on the throne by Augustus. Herod, known for his cruelty but also for his cunning, had done everything possible to win the sympathy of the Jewish people, including having the Temple of Jerusalem (which had been rebuilt by the people of Israel after their return from the Babylonian captivity) enlarged and embellished. Work to complete the structure was still in progress while Jesus was alive and was completed only a few years before 70 A.D., when the sanctuary itself was razed to the ground during the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans led by Titus.

Next door, further to the northeast, beyond the eastern shore of Lake Galilee, was a confederation of ten cities (the Decapolis), representing a Hellenized cultural island.

The destruction of the Temple and the Diaspora

The Diaspora, that is, the dispersion of the Israelites to the four corners of the planet had already begun between 597 and 587 B.C., with the so-called "Babylonian captivity", that is, the deportation of the inhabitants of the kingdoms of Israel and Judah to Assyria and Babylon, and with the destruction of the Temple built by Solomon, by King Nebuchadnezzar. In the year 538, with the Edict of Cyrus, king of the Persians, part of the Jews were able to rebuild the Temple upon returning to their country, although many Jews remained in Babylon or went to live in other regions, a process that continued in the Hellenistic and Roman era.

However, it was Rome that put an end - and for almost two thousand years - to the national and territorial aspirations of the Jewish people, with the bloody three Jewish Wars.

The first of these (66-73 A.D.) culminated in the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple, as well as other cities and military fortresses such as Masada, and the death, according to the historian of the time, Josephus Flavius, of more than one million Jews and twenty thousand Romans. The second (115-117) took place in the Roman cities of the Diaspora and also claimed thousands of victims. In the third (132-135), also known as the Bar-Kokhba Revolt (after Shimon Bar-Kokhba, the leader of the Jewish rebels, who at first was even proclaimed messiah), the Roman war machine ran like a steamroller over everything it encountered, razing some 50 cities (including what was left of Jerusalem) and 1000 villages. Not only the rioters, but almost the entire Jewish population that had survived the First Jewish War was annihilated (there were approximately 600,000 dead) and the damnatio memoriae led to erase the very idea of a Jewish presence in the region, which was Romanized even in the topography.

The name Palestine, in fact, and more precisely Syria Palæstina (Palestine proper was, until then, a thin strip of land, corresponding more or less to today's Gaza Strip, in which was located the ancient Philistine Pentapolis, a group of five city-states inhabited by an Indo-European speaking population historically hostile to the Jews: the Philistines), was attributed by the emperor Hadrian to the ancient province of Judea in 135 AD.C, after the end of the Third Jewish War. The same emperor had Jerusalem rebuilt as a pagan city, under the name of Aelia Capitolina, placing temples of Greco-Roman gods just above the Jewish and Christian holy places (Jews and Christians were then assimilated).

The Holy Land as a pedagogy of Jesus

The Holy Land has been repeatedly referred to as the Fifth Gospel. The last, in order of time, to refer to it in this sense has been Pope Francis, when receiving the Delegation of the Custody of the Holy Land at the Vatican, in January 2022, he said: "to make known the Holy Land means to transmit the Fifth Gospel, that is, the historical and geographical environment in which the Word of God was revealed and then became flesh in Jesus of Nazareth, for us and for our salvation".

That the Holy Land is a bit like the Fifth Gospel is demonstrated by Jesus' own life and his tireless walk through this land to fulfill his mission there.

We know that this mission of Jesus is the abasement of God toward man, defined in Greek as κένωσις (kénōsis, "emptying"): God lowers himself and empties himself; he divests himself, in practice, of his own divine prerogatives and attributes in order to share them with man, in a movement between heaven and earth. This movement involves, after a descent, also an ascent from earth to heaven: the théosis (θέοσις), the elevation of human nature that becomes divine because, in Christian doctrine, the baptized man is Christ himself. In practice, the lowering of God leads to the apotheosis of man.

We see the abasement of God for the apotheosis of man in various aspects of the human life of Jesus, from his birth to his death on the cross and his resurrection. But we also see it in his preaching of the Gospel to the Land of Israel, from the beginning of his public life, with his baptism in the Jordan River by John the Baptist, to his determined journey to Jerusalem. Curiously, the baptism in the Jordan takes place at the lowest point of the earth (precisely the banks of the Jordan, in the vicinity of Jericho, 423 meters below sea level) and the death and resurrection in what was considered, in the Jewish tradition, the highest point: Jerusalem.

Jesus, therefore, descends, like the Jordan (whose Hebrew name, Yarden, means precisely "he who descends") to the Dead Sea, a deserted, bare and low place that symbolizes the abysses of sin and death. However, he then ascends to Jerusalem, the place where he would be "lifted up" from the earth. And he goes up there, as did all the Jews before him, on pilgrimage. By extension, we find this idea of pilgrimage, of "ascension," in the modern concept of 'aliyah), a term that defines both the pilgrimage to Israel of Jews (but also of Christians) and immigration and settlement (pilgrims and emigrants are called 'olim-from the same root "'al"-meaning 'those who ascend'). Even the name of the Israeli flag carrier El Al means "upward" (and with a double meaning: "high" is the sky, but "high" is also the Land of Israel). An ascent, then, in every sense.

The authorGerardo Ferrara

Writer, historian and expert on Middle Eastern history, politics and culture.

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Selling(selling) the body through the screen

The worrying rise of erotic content on content creation platforms such as Only Fans or Tik Tok is a call to Christians to bring the light of the Gospel and the dignity of every human being into these spaces.

September 16, 2022-Reading time: 2 minutes

"I do porn freely; they take away our freedom of expression.". This was the headline that caught my attention with some cheek. My mind short-circuited when I read in the same sentence "porn" and "freedom of speech", so I had no choice but to read that interview published in the local newspaper about a woman named Eva.

Today, there are many "anonymous" people who have found no other way of earning their living than by creating erotic content for a group of strangers to whom, month after month, they (mis)sell their bodies, their intimacy.

As Christians, it is not for us to judge the decisions of every human being on the planet, but as Christians, as the Church of Christ in the midst of the world, we should be challenged by the reality in which we live. What makes a person proud to have found his or her livelihood in the creation of pornographic videos? Throughout human history, women and men have been forced to trade their bodies, that shrine of God that is every human being, in order to survive from day to day. In the 21st century, how can we allow a person to be happy to make money - regardless of the amount - by trafficking with his or her own body?

Cases like these lead me to think about the urgent need to return to the essence of the first mission to which Christ sent the apostles: "Go into all the world and proclaim the Gospel.". We have crossed the barriers of the physical and the abstract. As Christians, as believers, it is evident the urgency of learning to accompany the forms of poverty that arise in the new digital spaces, in which many people trade with the sacredness of their bodies without even knowing it, or defend as "freedom of expression" what is nothing more than slavery. Be that as it may, frustration and indignation overwhelm me in equal parts knowing that there are people in the world who feel satisfied with this "profession" that, sooner or later, will open new wounds in their hearts.

Without demonizing the new media or the new platforms of content creation, I believe that we are called to discern in the light of the Spirit the spaces of good and evil that arise in a digital world that, although it may not seem so, is entangled in our daily reality and that has come to stay with us. May we, together, be able to accompany all those who fall into the digital shadows and show them the hope of a Jesus who loves every part of their being.

The authorCarol B. Resurrection

Church communicator in the diocese of Tui-Vigo.

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Integral ecology

Being a physician is to seek the patient's health, say professionals

The medical act is not a mere service, it is to seek the patient's health at all times; the essence of the physician's professional work is the care of the patient; conscientious objection is a fundamental right, linked to article 16 of the Constitution. These ideas were defended by professionals at a day of debate at the Madrid College of Physicians.

Francisco Otamendi-September 15, 2022-Reading time: 5 minutes

"The medical act is not a mere service. There is a person who gives it, therefore there is a conscience behind it that is acting, it is the person who is acting, and conscience is what obliges us to act according to what we believe we should do. And in the medical act, this means acts oriented to health, to the restitution of the patient's health at all times".

This was perhaps the first message with which Dr. Rafael del Río Villegas, president of the Deontology Commission of the Medical Association of Madrid (Icomem), summarized the colloquium that had taken place at a Day of Debate from the Ethics and Deontology of the Medical Profession, held at the headquarters of the Association, and which you can see below here in full.

The second idea mentioned by Rafael del Río was the consideration of conscientious objection as "a fundamental right or at least having that status; this is what different rulings of the Constitutional Court are pointing out to us, or the treatment it is given when we speak of it because of its link with article 16 of the Constitution, which includes these rights of the individual in terms of religious, ideological and religious freedom. We will refer to this matter later on.

In the debate, the fifth of this conference on ethical issues of the profession, followed by more than three hundred collegiate, intervened as speakers Dr. Juan José Bestard, specialist in preventive medicine and public health, physician at La Paz, and Vicente Soriano, infectious diseases specialist (UNIR).

Both were preceded by an introduction by Dr. Julio Albisúa, associate chief of Neurosurgery at the Fundación Jiménez Díaz, and moderated by Dr. José Manuel Moreno Villares, director of the Department of Clinical Pediatrics at the University of Navarra.

The essence, the care of the sick

Dr. Vicente Soriano had referred at length to the question of "being a physician". In his intervention, he pointed out that "being a physician, the essence of our professional work, well established since Hippocrates" is "to seek the health of the patient, the good of the patient. This has developed over time," and he cited medical researchers such as Edmund Pellegrino, of Georgetown University Medical Center, and Joel L. Gambel, a Canadian, and philosophers such as Xavier Simons.

"Edmund Pellegrino is a great visionary of what medical work is all about," Dr. Soriano said, "of commitment, of the essence of the physician's professional work, which is to take care of the patient; if we cannot cure him, to alleviate the damage he may have; and if we cannot alleviate it, to accompany him to the end. And we live the medical virtues in their greatness, (...) we want the patient to be able to rest, in our consensual decisions with him".

An asset for the patient and society

Further on, Soriano specified: "the medical act is not a product, it is not a commodity, the medical act is a good for society, which also has the obligation to preserve it as such". And he quoted the Canadian Joel L. Gamble, of the University of British Columbia (Vancouver), when he pointed out that "care is not an intervention, that the medical act is not a service. Patients have the right to care, what the physician can give them, which is not just anything of a sanitary nature, it is the medical act. That the physician must consider beneficial for the patient. In other words, and this is in the Code of Ethics: the medical act is not a health service".

Dr. Soriano would quote his conclusions at the end. First, "the practice of medicine must follow the purpose of the profession, i.e., the pursuit of the patient's health". Second: "The medical act must conform to the medical code of ethics. It was first defined 25 centuries ago by Hippocrates, with the triad of precepts: 'cure, relieve, accompany'".

Since the topic of analysis of the day was 'Conscientious objection in the Medical Profession', Soriano also mentioned, among others, Xavier Symons, an Australian philosopher dedicated to health issues, who has recently referred to conscience.

"Conscience is a faculty of human moral psychology. It is the set of principles of human behavior that we consider to identify us, and which we wish to guide our conduct. Conscience does not provide intuitive moral knowledge, but rather a sense of having a moral obligation. [We physicians do not study much of these in medical school, but rather techniques, diagnostic procedures, medications, etc., commented Soriano.] Acting in conscience implies coherence between our thoughts and actions. The recognition of conscientious objection derives from recognizing the moral significance of conscience and the harm that violating it entails".

Conscientious objection

Conscientious objection as a fundamental right was one of the topics addressed by Dr. Juan José Bestard. In his opinion, "conscientious objection is a constitutional right and an autonomous right. Several rulings of the Constitutional Court qualify it as a fundamental right, and yet the latest one does not," warned the specialist in preventive medicine and public health.

Dr. Bestard referred to "the substantial link" of this right with Article 16 of the Constitution, and also indicated that "the TC ruling 160/1987 opens an interpretative door when it says: "in the hypothesis of considering it fundamental...".

However, Dr. Bestard pointed out that conscientious objection "enjoys features inherent to fundamental rights, and the doctrine attributes to it a status: because of its inexorable link with the Article 16 of the Constitution, it has essential content; by Article 53.2 of the Spanish Constitution, it is protected before the TC; although by STV 160/1997 it does not enjoy the reservation of an organic law, but it does enjoy the reservation of an ordinary law".

Institutional objection

Dr. Bestard also alluded to institutional conscientious objection, and stated that "it makes no sense, since conscientious objection is of an individual nature". He also pointed out that "the Code of Medical Dentistry in Spain understands that institutional conscientious objection is not admissible".

This is not a peaceful issue. Well-known jurists, such as professors Rafael Navarro-Valls and Javier Martínez-Torrón, and professor María José Valero, have published analyses and petitions, which they consider "of special importance, both theoretically and practically". These include "expressly recognizing the possibility of institutional objection to the practice of euthanasia and assisted suicide in the case of private institutions, whether for-profit or not-for-profit, whose ethical ideology is contrary to such actions", as stated by Omnes.

On the other hand, Federico de Montalvo, professor of Law at Comillas Icade and now former president of the Spanish Bioethics Committee, considered last year in an interview with Omnes that denying conscientious objection to the euthanasia law exercised by institutions and communities "is unconstitutional". The jurists cited above add that "it would not be superfluous to recognize as an organic law the entire article 16 of the law, without excluding its first paragraph, since it all refers to the development of the freedom of conscience protected by the Constitution".

Crisis of the environment, of culture

In his summary, the president of the Deontological Commission of the Medical Association of Madrid (Icomem), Rafael del Río, made some reflections. Conscientious objection is an expression that stands the test of time," he said, "because it describes something very essential that wants to be preserved in the actions of each person, but it also suffers the wear and tear of time. The word "object", however, does retain a negative aspect, which unfortunately is negative: it apparently implies not accepting, rejecting, criticizing... That is why we ask ourselves what is the right attitude".

"In this sense, conscientious objection from the point of view of the objector speaks of a certain type of crisis, which is not of the institutions, nor of the structures, nor of the parties in particular, but rather of the environment, of the culture itself, at least from his perspective".

In his opinion, "in this sense, the objection is not an isolated act, nor a mere expression of individual freedom, but could touch the very guarantees of the Rule of Law itself, and in many cases, it is necessary for the restitution of some fundamental good that is at stake, those goods that should not be put under discussion".

The authorFrancisco Otamendi

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ColumnistsAntonio Moreno

Vulnerable, like Jesus

If we are not able to recognize ourselves as vulnerable beings, in need of others throughout all stages of our lives, it will be difficult for us to be happy.

September 15, 2022-Reading time: 3 minutes

From an early age we were taught that you have to grow in order to ascend and gain independence, but they hid from us a fundamental part of the story: that at some point you have to descend again and start depending on others.

This problem manifests itself in many older people to whom the years suddenly come upon them, as if they had never thought it could happen to them. They do not accept their physical and sensory limitations, they do not admit that they are no longer in charge, they become moody, stingy... There are extreme cases that end in depression and even suicide.

You don't have to grow old to go through this process. I have seen similar cases in young people faced with an illness, a family or economic problem. It was not in their plans to ask for help!

However much our world promotes an individualistic, competitive way of life, in which we have to be stronger than others, more beautiful, richer, more intelligent or more astute; the truth is that, as the wise Qoheleth reminds us, all this is vanity! If we are not capable of recognizing ourselves as vulnerable beings, in need of others throughout all the stages of our lives, it will be difficult for us to be happy, because we will be working on a false model of reality that makes the ideal of existence unattainable. The problem of the human being is unsolvable if we do not include his intrinsic vulnerability in the equation.

Our species is part of a community, a people in the most endearing sense of the term: a family of families, a network of mutual support and help. In statements to the newspaper El País on the occasion of the recent discovery of what appears to be the first surgical intervention in history (an amputation 31,000 years ago), the paleoanthropologist María Martinón-Torres stated that "in our species, the survival instinct encompasses the group, not only the individual, and includes premeditated, proactive and organized acts, such as the institutionalization of care". The Spanish scientist recalled on the occasion of the presentation of her book "Homo imperfectus" (Destino) that "our strength is not individual, it is always as a group. This allows us to embrace, compensate for and protect individual weaknesses or fragilities. The weakest is not the one who is physically fragile or sick, but the one who is alone".

In the face of this anthropological evidence, loneliness is becoming a "public health problem" in the Western world, as recognized by a study commissioned by the European Commission. One in four EU citizens reported feeling lonely during the first months of the pandemic. In the United States, loneliness has been described by the authorities as an "epidemic" and in other countries, such as Japan and the United Kingdom, they have even had to create loneliness ministries to try to alleviate the terrible effects on people of the lack of family or social support.

It is striking to see how, despite this evidence, the programmed destruction of the family continues its course, encouraged by delirious ideologies, although very well supported by the economic powers. They will know.

Meanwhile, the Gospel has many answers to this problem. In the first place, Jesus, the perfect man, teaches us to be truly human, and that means feeling vulnerable, not believing we are invincible. He, who is God, emptied himself of his rank to become perfect man and, as such, he needed family, community, people. He needed others to nurse him and change his diapers in Bethlehem, to protect him in Egypt, to help him feel loved, to help him grow and be formed in Nazareth, to leave everything in Galilee to follow him in his mission, to wrap him and take care of him in Bethany, to pray for him in Gethsemane, to accompany him on Golgotha....

Of course He also helped many and as God He saved all mankind, but as man He asked for help and let Himself be helped! He invited us to be like children. And that means feeling vulnerable, discovering that we need help, asking for it and letting ourselves be helped. It is the best recipe for being tired and overwhelmed, and for being authentic men and women.

The authorAntonio Moreno

Journalist. Graduate in Communication Sciences and Bachelor in Religious Sciences. He works in the Diocesan Delegation of Media in Malaga. His numerous "threads" on Twitter about faith and daily life have a great popularity.

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Companies have a life. From generation to generation

"True wealth is sharing," Pope Francis comments in an audience with businessmen.

On Monday, September 12, Pope Francis met with a group of businessmen from the Italian Confederation of Industry. During the meeting he discussed some ideas on the social duties of a good entrepreneur.

Giovanni Tridente-September 15, 2022-Reading time: 3 minutes

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Translation of the article into Italian

A small compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Churchspecifically focused on the understanding of "just" wealth, was delivered by Pope Francis on Monday to the more than 5,000 Italian businessmen received in audience in the Paul VI Hall.

They were there representing more than 5 million employees of small, medium and large manufacturing and service companies on the peninsula, who are members of the association Confindustria, the General Confederation of Italian Industry.

The Pontiff's speech evidently went beyond the Italian sphere, in fact it can be said that the value of the considerations he made involve the whole of human society, especially in this period of great uncertainty and crisis. And it is not by chance that the Italian confederal body itself has representative offices in several countries bordering the Mediterranean, from Eastern Europe to Russia.

In his speech, Pope Francis wanted to characterize the figure of the "good entrepreneur", as opposed to the "mercenaries". The good entrepreneur resembles the "good shepherd" - explained Francis - because he takes on the sufferings of the workers and feels their uncertainties and risks. A real test is the time when the situation is easy after the pandemic and with the ongoing war in Ukraine.

Judas denarii and Good Samaritan denarii

Mentioning some biblical and evangelical episodes, the Pope offered a parallel between "Judas' money" and the money that the Samaritan advances to the innkeeper to attend to the robbed and wounded man he found on the road, showing how "the economy grows and becomes human when the Samaritan's money is more numerous than Judas'," that is, when altruism overcomes personal and selfish interest.

Not in vain, money "can serve, yesterday as today, to betray and sell a friend or to save a victim".

The Pope then wanted to clarify what is the right key for a follower of Christ who is a businessman to "enter the kingdom of heaven", as opposed to the words of Jesus who in the Gospel of Matthew (19:23-24) considers it an almost impossible mission for this category to aspire (see camel and eye of the needle).

The key word is share. Assuming this ability to extend one's wealth for the benefit of others allows the entrepreneur to avoid idolatrous temptation and opens him to the responsibility of making his wealth bear fruit and not dissipate it. So it is not impossible to enter the Kingdom of Heaven, difficult yes, but not impossible, concludes the Pope.

How do you experience sharing? There are many ways "and each entrepreneur can find his own" with creativity and according to his own personality. The Pontiff points out some of them:

Philanthropy: "giving back to the community, in various ways".

The payment of taxes: "a high form of sharing of goods, they are the heart of the social pact". Obviously, they must be fair and equitable, guaranteeing efficient and non-corrupt services.

Job creation: as it could not be otherwise for an entrepreneur, this also means giving opportunities to young people.

Encouraging the birth rate: supporting families and allowing women not to be discriminated against when they are expecting a child, often paying with dismissal.

Promote the integration of the immigrant population through honest employment, which at the same time welcomes, supports and integrates.

Reduce the gap between the salaries of managers and workers: "if the gap between the top and the bottom gets too big, the business community gets sick, and soon society gets sick".

The smell of work

Another valuable piece of advice given by Pope Francis is that the entrepreneur himself should consider himself and live as a "worker". "The good entrepreneur knows the workers because he knows the work", he perceives that smell that makes him be in contact with the life of his company, and furthermore, through that contact and that closeness he imitates "God's style: to be close".

After all, the value created by a company depends not only on the creativity and talent of the entrepreneur, but "also on the cooperation of all", and therefore, the Pontiff concludes, it must rely on the creativity, heart and soul of its workers, its "spiritual capital".

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ColumnistsIgnacio Valduérteles

Left, Right and Brotherhoods

The alternative presented by the brotherhoods is situated on a higher plane than the political dialectic of left and right, it is an alternative to the political dialectic of left and right. worldview based on European cultural roots.

September 14, 2022-Reading time: 3 minutes

It all began in France, in the Constituent Assembly of 1792. To the right of the presidency sat the Girondins, supporters of the maintenance of order and institutions. The left of the Chamber was occupied by the Jacobins, who advocated revolutionary radicalization. In the center was an undifferentiated group of assembly members, with poorly defined objectives. Since then, and to this day, any proposal on social issues has been labeled as right-wing or left-wing by analogy with those groups, an approach as limited as it is impoverishing.

During the 19th century this classification was more or less effective in explaining social reality, but it declined as the revolutionary mystique of the class struggle was exhausted. In 1989 the collapse of the Marxist systems that had begun years before culminated. The most immediate trigger was the failure of the economic model, that is why, after the initial bewilderment, Gramsci's idea of appropriating culture was taken up again. Universities, schools, international organizations, the media and other tribunes were occupied by the left.

Today, groups that recognize themselves as leftist, with no cultural, political or economic proposals to offer, have opted for a new model of social transformation: to take on all the struggles that arise and integrate them into a single discourse (Laclau). This amalgam includes the LGTBI movement, radical feminism, or queerThe dogma of climate change, indigenism, environmentalism, opposition to the culture of effort, to the right to property, to life, the revision of history, the resignification of language and the replacement of people's identity with equality. And whatever comes, this is an open process to which new causes are added every day. All these demands are presented as a block, in a complete package with pretensions of doctrine, which must be assumed in full under penalty of being considered denialist first, to be later cancelled (woke) as a person, toppled as a statue or his remains exhumed if he is deceased.

Any attempt to legally go against this state of affairs is considered to be judicial persecution, o lawfareThe term is fashionable in political parlance to define the alleged judicial persecution of the left by the powerful.

Curiously, this radicalism on social issues is complemented in the economic sphere by a savage global capitalismThe one presented in the much publicized Agenda 2030.

It is impossible to find the common thread of this jumble of ideas, sometimes contradictory, that accumulate without method. An unbearable chaos in which it is impossible to make logical decisions, but with a clear objective: to reorient the laws that supposedly determine History.

Here the brotherhoods have something to say. They are neither right-wing nor left-wing, but their Christian identity and their social profile oblige them to enter the debate, aware that this is not a dialectical struggle between Girondins and Jacobins, between right and left. The alternative presented by the brotherhoods is situated on a higher plane, it is a worldview based on European cultural roots, in which the Judeo-Christian tradition plays a fundamental role. Julián Marías explained that Christianity is primarily a religion, but also a vision of the world, a way of seeing, thinking, projecting and feeling reality and, ultimately, a way of life that is the foundation, to a large extent, of the intellectual, legal and social structures of Western civilization.

It is not a matter of encouraging the brotherhoods to present technical solutions to social problems, nor of encouraging partisan options; but of proclaiming moral principles, also those referring to the social order, as well as giving criteria on any matter insofar as the fundamental rights of the person demand it.

The life of the brotherhood, like that of people, is not exhausted by managing the present (brotherhoods, elections, premieres, itineraries...), it only makes sense in the future, a future that belongs to God, who is eternal, pure present, Lord of History. A History that is not governed by inexorable laws that must be redirected, as proposed by the left; but by the freedom of man, which leads the brotherhood to look at the world with the eyes of Christ, leading all human realities towards Him.

It is urgent for the brotherhoods to develop and apply the necessary intellectual tools to become deeply involved in giving meaning back to history, beyond Marxist proposals, if they do not want to end up being masters of glorious pasts, fleeting presents and uncertain futures.

The authorIgnacio Valduérteles

D. in Business Administration. Director of the Instituto de Investigación Aplicada a la Pyme. Eldest Brother (2017-2020) of the Brotherhood of the Soledad de San Lorenzo, in Seville. He has published several books, monographs and articles on brotherhoods.

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Pope begins visit to Kazakhstan

Rome Reports-September 14, 2022-Reading time: < 1 minute

Pope Francis is already on Kazakh territory. The first of his speeches, the most political of those he expects to give, was a call for unity and respect.

The Pope also praised the Kazakh people's ability to respect different religions.

AhNow you can enjoy a 20% discount on your subscription to Rome Reports Premiumthe international news agency specializing in the activities of the Pope and the Vatican.

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The text of the Consecration of Ukraine and Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary is as follows

Europe prays for peace in Ukraine

On September 14, the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, Catholics in all countries of Europe are called to pray for peace in Ukraine, especially with Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament.

Maria José Atienza-September 14, 2022-Reading time: < 1 minute

"Ukraine suffers and deserves peace," says Pope on Day of Prayer Related News

The President of the Council of European Bishops' Conferences, Archbishop Gintaras Grušas of Vilnius, has called on all European Bishops' Conferences to hold a day of prayer on September 14 to invoke peace for Ukraine.

This petition for peace promoted by the European bishops has centered its gaze on Eucharistic Adoration. The very motto of the day "Kneeling before the Eucharist to invoke peace" is an invitation to parishes and temples to carry out acts of Eucharistic adoration asking for the cessation of war.

The date is not accidental as the Bishops' Conference of the Roman Catholic Rite in Ukraine has declared 2022 as the Year of the Holy Cross. In the letter that the Ukrainian bishops published on the occasion of this year they pointed out the "painful way of the cross", which the Ukrainian nation is going through "in which innocent people suffer. (...) Now more than ever we understand Jesus Christ on his way of the cross, we understand his suffering and death".

This Year of the Holy Cross will end with a solemn Holy Liturgy and Way of the Cross with the participation of all Roman Catholic bishops of Ukraine on September 14, 2022, during the European Day of Prayer for Ukraine.

A few months ago, during Lent 2022, the CCEE coordinated a Eucharistic chain in which each day we prayed both for the victims of the covid pandemic and for the war in Ukraine.

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Sunday Readings

Goods exist to do good. 25th Sunday in Ordinary Time (C)

Andrea Mardegan comments on the readings for the 25th Sunday in Ordinary Time and Luis Herrera offers a short video homily.

Andrea Mardegan / Luis Herrera-September 14, 2022-Reading time: 2 minutes

Jesus tells the parable of the steward accused before his master (in Luke's Greek he is called "kurios", lord, the same name given to God) of squandering his goods. In the end, however, the master himself praises his steward for having distributed his goods among the debtors, squandering them
likewise. The point of the steward's conversion is the master's call to account for his stewardship, for it will be taken from him. The parable of the foolish rich man who hoarded his harvest in the barns, but would lose his life that very night, comes to mind. There is in the steward's action a remarkable haste: "Sit down, write, change the amount of your debt." He is praised by his master, who is not interested in the accumulation of goods, but in their use for good, to alleviate pain and suffering. Before, that steward neglected those goods, or used them for himself, for amusement, for speculation, for selfishness. After his dismissal was announced to him, although driven by the desire to make friends who would then welcome him, he guessed the heart of his master: he wanted his goods to be destined to do good to all.

This is what God wants for the material and spiritual goods created by him and left to men as stewards. It is what he wants for the goods left as an inheritance to his Church: the treasure of his Word, the power of the sacraments, the grace of salvation, the truth that sets us free, the new commandment of love. May these goods not be confiscated and put in the coffers: they serve for the salvation of all, for God wants "all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth," Paul explains to Timothy, and so he wants us to pray for everyone, even for the emperor who puts Christians to death, or for those who enrich themselves dishonestly.

"Make friends with dishonest riches, so that when they fail, they may receive you into the eternal habitations." Dishonest because they have been accumulated by fraud, like that of the recipients of the invective of the prophet Amos, who trample on the poor and do not endure the repose of the new moon and the Sabbath, because it curbs their greed to earn money dishonestly, by false measures, by selling the leftovers, by buying a slave for a pair of sandals. Or dishonest because they deceive men, because they promise happiness they will never give. But if they are used to help, to succor, these riches create friendship and gratitude in all the poor and disinherited of all kinds, who in life will be close to us and at the moment of our death will bear witness that we have given them money, attention, time, science, life, love.

Homily on the readings of the 25th Sunday of the year

The priest Luis Herrera Campo offers its nanomiliaa small one-minute reflection for these readings.

The authorAndrea Mardegan / Luis Herrera

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Evangelization

The impressive life of Cardinal Van Thuan

It has been 20 years since the death of Cardinal Van Thuan. His beatification process continues after being declared venerable and his devotion is growing worldwide.

Pedro Estaún-September 14, 2022-Reading time: 4 minutes

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Francois Xavier Nguyen Van Thuan was born on April 17, 1928 in a small town in Vietnam. He was the eldest of 8 siblings. The Van Thuan family had been Catholic for several generations and lived in an atmosphere of unshakable faith, so it was not surprising that the young Nguyen decided to enter the seminary.

He was ordained a priest in 1953 and, seeing that he had intellectual qualities, his superiors sent him to Rome to broaden his knowledge. After completing his studies, he returned to Vietnam, where he taught at the seminary and later became rector and vicar general of his diocese. His pastoral work was very effective. In 1967 he was appointed bishop of Nha Trang.

A year later, communist troops occupied many cities in North Vietnam. On April 24, 1975, a few days before the regime seized power over the entire country, Paul VI appointed him coadjutor archbishop of Saigon. Three weeks later he was arrested and imprisoned. Thus began a very long period of captivity that lasted thirteen years, without trial or sentence, nine of which he spent incommunicado.

Van Thuan in the face of adversity

He was then isolated and without contact with his people, but he looked for a way to communicate with them. One morning he said to Quang, a seven-year-old boy: "Tell your mother to buy me old calendar pads". In the evening the boy brought him the notebooks, and so "I wrote to my people my message from captivity". The bishop returned the writings to the boy who gave them to his brothers. The latter were in charge of copying and distributing them to the Catholics who had to act clandestinely.

From these brief messages a book was born, "The path of hope". He wrote it quickly - in a month and a half - because he was afraid that he would not be able to finish it if he was transferred to another place. In the same way, new books came out later on.

Masses in captivity

Van Thuan knew that the strength he needed to sustain his soul and his state of mind could only come from an encounter with the Lord. "When I was arrested, I had to leave immediately, empty-handed. The next day I was allowed to write to my people to ask for the most necessary things: clothes, toothpaste... I wrote to them: 'Please send me some wine as medicine for my stomach ache. The faithful understood immediately. They sent me a little bottle of wine from Mass, with the label: 'medicine against stomach ache', and hosts hidden in a torch against humidity. The police asked me:

-Does your stomach hurt?

-Yes.

-Here is some medicine for you.

I will never be able to express my great joy: daily, with three drops of wine and a drop of water in the palm of my hand, I celebrated Mass (...). The Eucharist became for me and for other Christians a hidden and encouraging presence in the midst of all difficulties".

Apostolate with the guards

Then came even more dramatic moments. He was transferred to another place on a grueling boat trip with 1,500 other starving and desperate prisoners. There he was imprisoned again, but now in solitary confinement. A new and long period began, even more painful than that of the previous years. His unusual attitude of respect for the guards in charge of controlling him allowed a relationship that could be described as surprising.

At the beginning, his dealings with them were non-existent; they did not speak to him, they answered only "yes" or "no"; it was impossible to be nice to them. So he started smiling at them, exchanging kind words and telling them stories of his travels, of how they live in other countries: United States, Canada, Japan, Philippines, Singapore, France,...; and he talked to them about economy, freedom, technology, etc., he even taught them languages like French and English: "my guards become my students!" He thus improved relations with them and the atmosphere in the prison, and then took the opportunity to talk to them also about religious topics.

A trip to Lourdes

She had received her love for Our Lady from her family. At home they prayed the rosary daily and lived many Marian devotions. During his seminary years he also lived, with deep unction, many practices directed to the Mother of God. During his stay in Italy he traveled to several European countries; in August 1957 he was in Lourdes and there he felt a strong presence of Our Lady. Kneeling before the cave, where Bernadette had once done the same, he heard in his heart the words that Mary had addressed to that young woman: "I do not promise you joy and consolation on earth, but rather adversity and suffering".

He understood that these words were also addressed to him. It was a premonition of what was to come. During his long captivity, the Virgin Mary played an essential role in his life and, recalling his stay in prison, he wrote: "There are days when, at the limit of fatigue, of illness, I cannot even recite a prayer! Our Lady was for him his constant companion during that painful captivity.

Van Thuan released

His freedom came suddenly on November 21, 1988, and was a great joy for Vietnamese Christians, but he could not stay long in his homeland. He was soon exiled to the West. In the Vatican his presence was immediately appreciated and he was called to participate in different missions. It was during these years that he was healing from the hardships he had suffered for so long, but he continued to lead a sober life until the end of his days.

In 2000 came a poignant moment in his life: he was called to preach the Lenten Spiritual Exercises to John Paul II and the Roman Curia. When the Pope received him to congratulate him and have an endearing conversation with him, Cardinal Van Thuan replied: "24 years ago I was celebrating Mass with three drops of wine and one drop of water in the palm of my hand. I would never have thought that the Holy Father would receive me in this way... How great is our Lord, and how great is his love". In 2001 the Pope named him a cardinal of the Catholic Church. On September 16, 2002, after suffering from cancer for years, he took the definitive step into eternal life.

Five years after his death, Pope Benedict XVI ordered that the process for his beatification be initiated in Rome. Without suffering physical martyrdom, he can be considered a true martyr of Vietnamese Catholicism and, at the same time, a model of fidelity to the Church in difficult and compromising situations.

The authorPedro Estaún

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The XXX Marian Family Day in Torreciudad is approaching

On Saturday, September 17, 2022, the Marian Family Day celebrates its 30th edition and offers families from all latitudes a festive pilgrimage under the protection of the Virgin Mary.

Javier García Herrería-September 13, 2022-Reading time: < 1 minute

On Saturday, September 17, the 30th Marian Family Day will be held at the shrine of Torreciudad (Huesca), a festive event centered on devotion to the Virgin Mary and aimed at families from all over Spain and some other countries.

The rector, Ángel Lasheras, pointed out in a recent interview in OmnesThe event is being organized with great enthusiasm after two years of pandemic.

We see that many people are eager to come and are preparing trips in advance. "We would like Torreciudad to be known as the 'sanctuary of the family' because of this large gathering and because of other family activities.

The Eucharistic concelebration will be presided over by the Bishop of Vitoria, Juan Carlos Elizaldeand will take place at the altar on the esplanade. The Eucharist is the center of the day, in which families go on pilgrimage to pray for their hopes and challenges.

Videomessage from the Bishop of Vitoria encouraging participation in the event

Ángel Lasheras recalls that thousands of families have come to the event since the first one in 1989, with the hope of placing all their needs at the feet of the Blessed Mother. The Rector points out that "the motives and contents of the Days have always gone hand in hand with the Church's convocations, such as the International Years of the Family, the Jubilee of the Third Millennium, the World Meetings of the Family, the Year of the Rosary or various Synods".

"This universality - he adds - has been helped by the Pope's message and the presence over the years of cardinals and bishops who have come to the concelebration with the participation of families, who are the main protagonists".

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Ignacio SaavedraTolkien tried to avoid parallels between his stories and the History of Salvation".

Ignacio Saavedra, professor of Corporate Communication at the CEU San Pablo University, is one of the members of the scientific committee of the congress on Tolkien to be held soon in Madrid under the title "Tolkien: poetics, myth and language.". There have been numerous Tolkien-centric academic events in recent years, but this one will come as the first season of a series based on Tolkien's work that is already the most expensive in history wraps up.

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Although it is unfortunately common to associate J. R. R. R. Tolkien with the "freak" phenomenon, the truth is that Ignacio Saavedra's approach to the English writer's work has always been in the hands of the Academy.

In 1994 he attended a lecture on Tolkien given at the Complutense University by Professor of Greek Carlos García Gual, who ended his presentation by presenting the audience with a recording of the Oxford professor's voice singing in the Elvish language one of the more than one hundred songs that appear in "The Lord of the Rings". This was the inspiration for Professor Saavedra to create, years later, the musical theater group Endor Lindë (the music of Middle-earth).

As a student of Journalism at the University of Navarra, he was pleasantly surprised to find that the professor of Contemporary Literature included "The Lord of the Rings" in the list of required readings, along with authors such as Thomas Mann, Marcel Proust or Franz Kafka. Shortly afterwards he had the opportunity to meet personally the professor of Theology at the same university, José Miguel Odero, author of the first serious study on Tolkien published in Spain.

The most expensive series on television, in which Amazon has invested more than 200 million euros, has just premiered.

ーThere is no exact figure on the cost of the series. A recent article published in The Wall Street Journal puts it at $750 million not including the marketing campaign.

It narrates events well before the famous sagas of "The Hobbit" and "The Lord of the Rings". How is the series being received by the English writer's followers?

ーThere is a wide range of opinions about the series among Tolkien fans. For many it is quite a betrayal of the writer. The problem is that, when reading opinions, it's hard to know how much of it is thoughtful criticism and how much of it is taking advantage of the series to dump all the accumulated hatred against Jeff Bezos and his empire over the last few years. And to complicate matters further, there is the obsession on the part of many people to see a manifestation of the ideology of "woke"everywhere.

There is a sector of deep connoisseurs of Tolkien's work who have decided not to give their opinion until a certain number of chapters have been released, but they have already expressed their liking for certain dialogues that, in their opinion, are a true homage to the deepest and most positive elements of Tolkien's work.

Finally, let's not forget that Amazon has invested heavily in entertaining opinion leaders to try to get them to publish favorable opinions of the series. What everyone agrees on is that the high investment shows: dazzling sets, rapturous music and careful execution down to the smallest detail to provoke an irresistible attraction in the viewer.

Why is Tolkien's work considered Catholic if the characters do not have a religious rite?

ーIt would be a topic for an entire congress, but the question would become quite clear if there were not so many Catholics who are engaged in intellectual work and who still have not read the Letter of St. John Paul II to Artists. Catholicity is not that the stories have a moral so that the story can be a vehicle for catechesis. Catholicity is that Beauty leads us to God as the only possible origin of such ineffable beauty. When an artist is as authentic as Tolkien was, when he is not a simple wordsmith who knows the tricks to turn a story into a best-seller, the work created reflects the whole inner world of the artist, including the Catholic worldview, if any.

It could be said that Tolkien could not avoid being noticed that he was Catholic, but he tried to prevent the public from drawing any parallels between his stories and the History of Salvation. The problem is that there is a fairly large sector of the Catholic public who have some idea of the Biblical Story but know nothing of mythology and, for example, see in Galadriel a reflection of St. Mary but do not see a lot of characters from various mythologies that could also be an inspiration for the character of Galadriel.

This presumed catholicity is noticeable in details that go far beyond whether there are rites or not. It is noticeable, for example, in the conception of human freedom reflected in the behavior of the characters. It is noticeable in how the story conveys, in a mythopoetic way, that we are all obliged to be very careful with Nature because Nature is a gift from God. This idea began to be connatural among Catholics after the promotion of "Laudato Si", but it was revolutionary when "The Lord of the Rings" was published.

The spiritual beings created by Tolkien in "The Silmarillion", Valar and the Maiar, to what extent is the nature of these beings influenced by your Catholic theological vision?

ーIt's hard to say to what extent, and I wouldn't say that they are spiritual beings, just like that. They are beings endowed with special powers, but not exactly spiritual. It is normal that, observing the behavior of Gandalf, turned protector and guide of Frodo in the fulfillment of his mission, believers think of angels or archangels, but that kind of especially powerful beings, who use that power in the service or against mortals, are so well in other religious, mythological and literary sources from which Tolkien was nourished.

The elves devised by Tolkien do not die, and consider death a gift. Gandalf tells Frodo not to kill Gollum. Considering these two facts, what is your opinion of Tolkien's sense of hope?

ーI must clarify that elves do die, and they died at the time when they had to battle against the hosts of Morgoth. These are big questions, which would give not for a doctoral thesis, but for several doctoral theses. In fact, one of the last doctoral theses on Tolkien defended at the Spanish University is centered precisely on this idea: death as a gift.

That conversation in which Gandalf praises Bilbo's compassion, because "not even the wisest knows the end of all roads" has been what has caused many readers to become staunch enemies of the death penalty. Hope is one of the great themes of Tolkien's work. Not for nothing is the journal of the Spanish Tolkien Society called ESTEL, a word from the Elvish language meaning hope.

Many things could be said about what hope is like in Tolkien's work, but a central idea is that, at bottom, there is not such a great difference between elves and humans. The hope would come from the fact that humans have the gift of death, yes, but they also enjoy a spiritual immortality because their works survive. That survival, in many cases, means being present in songs that speak of times past, which for me is a mythical way of expressing that death is not something definitive.

The convert Evelyn Waugh saw the Second Vatican Council as a betrayal of tradition, which is perhaps true of many people in other historical moments as well. What was Tolkien's perception of the Council?

ーAs far as is known, there was only one aspect of Vatican II that he did not like: the decline of Latin. There are several reasons why Tolkien had a special appreciation for this language. One is that it was one of the first languages he studied, under the guidance of his own mother, who taught Greek and Latin to Tolkien and his brother, during a season when she failed to enroll them in any school.

A second reason why he was hurt by what happened to Latin after the council is that Tolkien was convinced that Latin was a great element of unity. We could say that the irruption of the vernacular languages to the detriment of Latin was perceived by Tolkien as a new version of the Tower of Babel. As a good philologist, he was well aware that a change of language implies a change of thought, which implies a diversity of interpretations of doctrine and, therefore, a risk of disunity.

Lewis and Tolkien, two literary greats with different Christian visions.

ーThe relationship between Tolkien and Lewis is a passionate subject. As any connoisseur of the lives of both writers knows, it had a culminating moment in that walk through that part of Magdalen College called Addison's Walk, at Oxford University. Tolkien knew how to use their shared passion, the love of mythology, as a vehicle to show Lewis the way to God. It is a moment beautifully captured in a recent film, "The Most Reluctant Convert"about the life of C. S. Lewis.

But then two things happened. On the one hand, Lewis preferred to remain in the Church of England instead of opting for the "Roman" Catholic Church of his friend and university colleague. On the other hand, driven by his apostolic zeal, he created stories that were clear allegories of the faith, something Tolkien disliked. Also negatively influencing their friendship was Lewis's marriage to Joy Gresham, which Tolkien did not view favorably.

Did Tolkien have any relevant relationships with other Catholic writers?

ーIn the circle of professors and writers who used to meet in various pubs in Oxford - the famous Inklings - there was also Owen Barfield, whose Catholicism is still the subject of debate. He can be considered the founder of the Inklings, which would already be enough to consider him a decisive man in Tolkien's life.

It was at these Inklings meetings that "The Lord of the Rings" began to be read. It may even be that it was there that Tolkien became convinced that the now famous book was worthy of publication. Verlyn Flieger, one of the most renowned scholars of Tolkien's work today, has thoroughly researched Barfield's possible influence on Tolkien's work and is coming to some pretty strong conclusions. And there is no denying that Catholicism may have been a necessary element in that influence.

We Catholics are very much marked by the beginning of the Gospel of St. John, and the primacy of the Word. The Logos is the driving force of Tolkien's work. I do not think there is any case in which a story that is pure philology has ended up being so popular and, above all, so capable of changing the vision of life on the part of its readers.

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Integral ecology

Abortion law reform encourages minors to have abortions

The project The bill on Sexual and Reproductive Health and the Voluntary Interruption of Pregnancy (IVE) sent by the Executive to Parliament this summer raises serious legal problems. The elimination of the three days of reflection and information before performing an abortion on minor adolescents, aged 16 and 17, and the annulment of the requirement of parental consent, has been criticized by jurists consulted by Omnes.

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One of the main arguments of the professors, who belong to universities such as CEU San Pablo, Navarra and Francisco de Vitoria, focuses on the deviation of the legal right to be protected, taking into account that the new draft organic law to be considered by the Cortes modifies the Organic Law of 2010 of the government of Rodríguez Zapatero.

"I remembered when Hannah Arendt, a philosopher of Jewish origin, spoke of the banality of evil in the wake of the Jewish extermination," explains Ana Sánchez-Sierra, professor at Institute of Humanities Angel Ayala of the CEU. "Evil has become so banal that we do not even think about what we are doing. In this law, compared with Zapatero's law of 2010, two very important technical issues disappear legally: the nasciturus, the unborn; and another, a concept that was in Zapatero's law, and is found in sentence 53/1985 of the Constitutional Court, which is conscious self-determination, which we professors of bioethics call autonomy, the principle of autonomy".

In Zapatero's law there are terms such as protection of prenatal life, fetal viability," continues Sánchez-Sierra, who quotes verbatim the position of that law: "That both the autonomy of women and the effective protection of prenatal life as a legal right are adequately guaranteed," which is what the ruling of the Constitutional Court said [...]".Ruling 53/1985]. In short, that the unborn was a legal asset and did not have a right to life under Article 15 of the Constitution, but it was a legal asset that had to be protected.

And how was the unborn child protected? The CEU professor answers: "With the idea of conscious self-determination. That is to say, that the woman should be aware, that she should have a period of information and reflection [of three days], which disappears with the new law. It might seem a bit hypocritical, but those three days were like a stumbling block. And now all this disappears.

What is protected?

Pilar Zambrano, Professor of Philosophy of Law at the Universidad de la University of Navarraexplains that "the history of abortion in Spain began with STC 53/1985 where, interpreting Article 15 of the Constitution ("everyone has the right to life and to physical and moral integrity"), it was determined that the unborn child is not a person and, therefore, does not have the right to life, and at the same time it was affirmed that unborn life is a legal right objective that the State is obliged to protect".

"The next milestone was the establishment of a regulatory framework for public health and education policies on sexual and reproductive health (LO 2/2010), in the framework of which the Penal Code was again amended," adds the jurist, and "the general requirement of express consent of parents or guardians was eliminated, in the case of abortion in minors under 16 and 17 years of age. This last reform was reversed in 2015 (LO 2/2015) in view of the lack of protection it entailed for the minors themselves, whose parents are the ones who, indisputably, are in the best position to assess the psychological impact of undergoing an abortion and, therefore, to advise them".

Now, the reform bill, which has already been sent to Parliament as a draft, "takes the baton in this sort of relay race," says Pilar Zambrano., and among other things, (a) eliminates the three-day reflection period that currently operates for the decriminalization of "abortion on demand"; [...], and (e) commits all public administrations to "promote awareness campaigns (...) aimed at the entire population ... in the area of ... the promotion of reproductive rights with special emphasis on the voluntary termination of pregnancy".

In his opinion, "this last novelty is not trivial: in an indirect but clear way, abortion is included among the set of sexual and reproductive rights; which, incidentally, legitimizes its inclusion not only in health policies, but also in educational policies (which are a sub-category of the "awareness-raising" policies explicitly referred to in the law). In other words, it legitimizes the use of the entire state apparatus (supported by the contribution of all taxpayers) to "educate? reform? change? social opinion, inclining it towards the conviction that abortion in any of its forms (on demand, therapeutic or eugenic) is a legal right".

In conclusion, the legal right to be protected seems to have changed. The professor from Navarra points out: "Abortion thus went from being a freedom that the State tolerated as a lesser evil, in view of the difficult circumstances that often contextualize the decision to abort; to a right to a service that involves the entire public health system (LO 2/2010) and; finally, the focus of cross-cutting public policies, health, education and general awareness in the current draft reform".

And concludes: "the preamble of the LO 2/2010 at least simulated coherence with the doctrine established in the STC 53/1985. The current draft abandons this effort completely. It makes no reference to the value of unborn life in its entire text, and tilts the terrain of the woman's decision, almost crudely, in favor of the choice to abort. What other purpose, other than the instigation of abortion, explains the elimination of the duty to inform the woman about the available resources in case she intends to continue the pregnancy; the very short waiting time of three days between informed consent and the performance of the abortion; and the requirement of parental consent in the case of minors?" ` `.

Constitutional majority, at 18 years of age

Another aspect of capital importance, linked to this one, which the jurists consulted emphasize is that of parental authority and the protection of minors under 18 years of age as established in the Spanish Constitution.

María José Castañón, doctoral professor of Criminal Law at the Faculty of Law, Business and Government of the Francisco de Vitoria University (UFV), states, as noted, that "the new law eliminates the informed consent of the parents in the case of abortion for women under 18 years of age (16 and 17 years old). The objective is "to put an end to the obstacles that women continue to encounter in order to terminate a pregnancy"; "a new advance for women and for democracy in our country", he describes.

"This reform is "especially controversial," assures María José Castañón. "The new modification offers the possibility for 16 and 17 year old women to unilaterally make a drastic decision," she adds. "For other types of rights, parental authorization is fundamental if it is not directly prohibited. According to Article 12 of the Spanish Constitution, the age of majority is set at 18 years old since then "full capacity to perform valid legal acts and be responsible for them" is obtained.

In his opinion, "the new law poses a serious inconsistency in our legal system. It is essential to unify this regulatory disparity and to distinguish between consent and knowledge of everything that could affect not only the physical health but also the psychological health of their children".

And refers to the Article 39.3 of the Spanish Constitution, which states the following: "Parents must provide assistance of all kinds to children born in or out of wedlock, during their minority and in other cases where legally appropriate". "They are the legal guardians of minors and until the current age of majority, they have the obligation to look after them," writes the UFV professor.

Is parental authority in question?

In line with this constitutional norm, CEU professor Ana Sánchez-Sierra recalls what the Civil Code prescribes about the duty to care for minors: "Parental authority is regulated in the Civil Code, article 154and says: "parents or legal guardians must watch over them, keep them in their company, feed them, educate them and provide them with an integral formation". I understand that we parents cannot inhibit ourselves from the sexual and affective education of our children. Therefore, how can we not accompany them in this situation? It does not have the appearance of being constitutional, it is a serious issue, because the wound in society can be very deep".

In addition, Sánchez-Sierra comments: "Regarding the question of whether these articles of the Constitution [articles 12 and 39.3] with the Sexual and Reproductive Health and IVE project, "of course, yes. With this empowerment of adolescent girls, what the public authorities are trying to do is, first, to take away the parental authority of the parents and make what they (the adolescent girl) are going to do trivialized".

"I have a 16 year old daughter and I have to give my consent to put her on brackets

If I am not in the consultation room in person, because I am parking, and I tell her: you go in, she does not enter the consultation room, and they tell her: until your mother is there, you will not go in. And I have an ophthalmologist friend, with whom I have discussed this law, who told me: indeed, when a minor comes in, and her mother is not in the waiting room, she is told: you can go in when your mother comes in. I am very shocked by this issue, and we have to do battle with this issue," adds Ana Sánchez-Sierra, who is a professor of the Expert Degree in the Social Doctrine of the Church at the Ángel Ayala Institute of Humanities, at CEU.

In his opinion, "the message that is being sent to adolescents -because the law talks about contraception and the morning-after pill- is as if abortion were a contraceptive of last resort. In other words, the unborn disappears. And laws have a pedagogical function and are the soul of a people".

Human dignity

On the other hand, Pilar Zambrano emphasizes that "the LO 2/2010 and the current reform bill represent a "Copernican" turn in the order of values that sustains the Spanish legal order.

"Article 10.1 of the EC states, in complete harmony with the preamble of the Statement Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948" -the professor from Navarra- that "the dignity of the person, the inviolable rights that are inherent to him, the free development of the personality, respect for the law and the rights of others are the foundation of political order and social peace".

"What other clearer demonstration of abandonment of the principle of respect for the inherent dignity of every human being," comments the professor, "than a legislator who confers on himself the power to distribute the passport of dignity at will, among different categories of human beings according to what their stage of development is or, worse, according to what their physical or mental capacities are? What clearer sign of the abandonment of the principle of free development of the personality of women, than to spare them information, advice and time for deliberation, three basic conditions of any free choice?"

Minors, unimputable

María José Castañón, for her part, devotes some thought to imputability, and assures that "a minor under 18 years of age for criminal purposes is "unimputable", he/she does not serve a prison sentence. In the worst case scenario, he or she will be sent to a juvenile detention center for the sole purpose of re-education or reinsertion", states the jurist from the Francisco de Vitoria University.

The concept of imputability, clarifies Castañón, "is a legal concept with a psychological basis on which the concepts of responsibility y guilt. Whoever lacks these capacities, either because he lacks sufficient maturity (minors), or because he suffers serious psychic alterations (mentally deranged), cannot be declared guilty nor can he be held criminally responsible for his acts".

The authorFrancisco Otamendi

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Vocations

Message for WYD Lisbon 2023

Pope Francis' message for the 37th World Youth Day to be held in Lisbon from August 1 to 6, 2023.

Javier García Herrería-September 12, 2022-Reading time: 9 minutes

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Dear young people:

The issue of WYD Panama was: "Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord; let it be done to me according to your word" (Lk 1:38). After this event, we set out on the road to a new destiny.Lisbon 2023-Let God's pressing invitation to rise up echo in our hearts. In 2020 we meditate on the words of Jesus: "Young man, I say to you, arise" (Lk. 7:14). Last year we were inspired by the Apostle Paul, to whom the Risen Lord said: "Arise! I make you a witness of the things you have seen" (cf. Acts 26:16). In the stretch that remains before reaching Lisbon, we will walk alongside the Virgin of Nazareth who, immediately after the Annunciation, "rose up and departed without delay" (Lk 1:39) to go and help her cousin Elizabeth. The verb common to all three themes is to rise, an expression that - it is good to remember - also takes on the meaning of "to rise again", "to awaken to life".

In these recent times, which have been so difficult, when humanity, already tested by the trauma of the pandemic, is torn apart by the drama of war, Mary reopens for everyone, and especially for you, who are young like her, the path of closeness and encounter. I hope, and I firmly believe, that the experience that many of you will live in Lisbon next August will represent a new beginning for you, young people, and - with you - for all humanity.

Maria stood up

Mary, after the annunciation, could have concentrated on herself, on the worries and fears due to her new condition. But no; she trusted fully in God. She thought rather of Elizabeth. She got up and went out into the sunlight, where there is life and movement. Although the angel's shocking announcement may have caused an "earthquake" in her plans, the young woman did not allow herself to be paralyzed, because in her was Jesus, the power of the resurrection. Within her was already the Lamb slain, but always alive. She got up and set out, because she was sure that God's plans were the best possible plan for her life. Mary became the temple of God, the image of the Church on the way, the Church that goes out and puts herself at the service, the Church bearer of the Good News.

To experience the presence of the Risen Christ in one's own life, to encounter him "alive", is the greatest spiritual joy, an explosion of light that can leave no one "still". It sets us in motion immediately and impels us to bring this news to others, to bear witness to the joy of this encounter. This is what animated the haste of the first disciples in the days following the resurrection: "The women, fearful but full of joy, went quickly away from the tomb and went to tell the disciples the news" (Mt 28:8).

The resurrection stories often use two verbs: to awaken and to arise. With them, the Lord urges us to go out into the light, to let ourselves be led by Him to cross the threshold of all our closed doors. "It is a significant image for the Church. We too, as disciples of the Lord and as a Christian community, are called to rise up quickly to enter into the dynamism of the resurrection and let ourselves be guided by the Lord on the paths that he wants to show us" (Homily on the Solemnity of Sts. Peter and Paul, June 29, 2022).

The Mother of the Lord is the model of young people in movement, not immobile in front of the mirror.
contemplating her own image or "caught" in the nets. She was totally oriented toward the
exterior. She is the paschal woman, in a permanent state of exodus, of going out of herself towards the great
Another who is God and towards the others, the brothers and sisters, especially the more
needy, as was her cousin Elizabeth.

...and departed without delay

St. Ambrose of Milan, in his commentary on Luke's Gospel, writes that Mary set out for the mountain because "full of joy and without delay [...] she felt impelled by the desire to fulfill a duty of piety, eager to render her services and hastened by the intensity of her joy. Filled already totally with God, where could Mary go in haste if not to the heights? Indeed, the grace of the Holy Spirit ignores slowness". Mary's haste is, therefore, the solicitude of service, of joyful proclamation, of prompt response to the grace of the Holy Spirit.

Mary let herself be challenged by her elderly cousin's need. She did not back down, she did not remain indifferent. She thought more of others than of herself. And this gave dynamism and enthusiasm to her life. Each of you can ask yourself: How do I react to the needs I see around me? Do I immediately think of a justification to disengage myself, or do I take an interest and make myself available? Of course, you cannot solve all the world's problems. But perhaps you can start with the ones closest to you, with the problems in your own area. Mother Teresa was once told, "What you are doing is just a drop in the ocean". And she replied, "But if I didn't do it, the ocean would be one drop less.

How many people in the world are waiting for a visit from someone who cares for them! How many elderly people, how many sick people, prisoners, refugees need our compassionate gaze, our visit, a brother or sister who breaks the barriers of indifference!

Dear young people, what "rush" moves you? What makes you feel the urge to move, so much so that you cannot stand still? Many - affected by realities such as pandemics, war, forced migration, poverty, violence, climatic catastrophes - ask themselves: Why is this happening to me? Why just me? Why now? Therefore, the central question of our existence is: For whom am I? (cf. Apostolic Exhortation Christus vivit, 286).

The haste of the young woman of Nazareth is that of those who have received extraordinary gifts from the Lord and cannot help but share, to make the immense grace they have experienced overflow. It is the haste of those who know how to put the needs of others above their own. Mary is an example of a young person who does not waste time seeking the attention or approval of others - as happens when we depend on "likes" on social networks - but moves to seek the most genuine connection, that which arises from encounter, sharing, love and service.

Since the Annunciation, from the time she went to visit her cousin for the first time, Mary had not
stops crossing time and space to visit her children in need of her solicitous help. Our
If it is inhabited by God, walking leads us directly to the heart of each of our
How many testimonies we receive from people "visited" by Mary, Mother of Jesus Christ.
Jesus and our Mother! In how many remote places of the earth, throughout the centuries -with
apparitions or special graces - Mary has visited her people! There is practically no place in
this earth that has not been visited by her. The Mother of God walks among her people,
moved by a loving tenderness, and assumes its anguish and vicissitudes. And there where there is a sanctuary,
a church, a chapel dedicated to her, her children flocking in great numbers. How many expressions of
popular piety! Pilgrimages, feasts, supplications, the welcoming of images in homes and so many others are concrete examples of the living relationship between the Mother of the Lord and her people, who visit each other.

The "good" rush always pushes us upwards and towards others

The good haste always pushes us upwards and towards others. There is also a rush that is not good, such as the one that leads us to live superficially, to take everything lightly, without commitment or attention, without really participating in the things we do; the rush when we live, study, work, go out with others without putting our heads, much less our hearts, into it. It can happen in interpersonal relationships: in the family, when we do not really listen to others or dedicate time to them; in friendships, when we expect a friend to entertain us and satisfy our needs, but we avoid him immediately and turn to another if we see that he is in crisis and needs us; and even in affective relationships, between boyfriends and girlfriends, few have the patience to know and understand each other thoroughly. We can have this same attitude at school, at work and in other areas of daily life. Well, all these things lived in haste are unlikely to bear fruit. There is a risk that they will remain sterile. This is what we read in the book of Proverbs: "The plans of the industrious man are pure gain; he who is hasty - evil haste - ends in destitution" (21:5).

When Mary finally arrived at the home of Zechariah and Elizabeth, a wonderful encounter took place. Elizabeth had experienced a prodigious intervention of God upon her, who had given her a son in her old age. She would have had reason enough to speak first of herself, but she was not full of herself, but inclined to welcome her young cousin and the fruit of her womb. As soon as she heard her greeting, Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit. These surprises and irruptions of the Spirit occur when we experience true hospitality, when we put the guest at the center, and not ourselves. This is also what we see in the story of Zacchaeus. In Luke 19:5-6 we read: "When Jesus came to the place [where Zacchaeus was], he looked up and said to him, 'Zacchaeus, come down quickly, for today I must stay at your house. Zacchaeus came down quickly and received him joyfully."

It has happened to many of us that, unexpectedly, Jesus came to meet us: for the first time, we experienced in him a closeness, a respect, an absence of prejudice and condemnation, a look of mercy that we had never found in others. Not only that, we also felt that it was not enough for Jesus to look at us from afar, but that he wanted to be with us, he wanted to share his life with us. The joy of this experience awakened in us a rush to welcome Him, an urgency to be with Him and to know Him better. Elizabeth and Zechariah welcomed Mary and Jesus. Let us learn from these two elders the meaning of hospitality! Ask your parents and grandparents, and also the older members of your communities, what it means for them to be hospitable to God and to others. It will do them good to listen to the experience of those who have gone before them.

Dear young people, it is time to set out again without delay on the path of concrete encounters, of a true acceptance of those who are different from us, as happened between the young Mary and the elderly Elizabeth. Only in this way will we overcome distances - between generations, between social classes, between ethnic groups and categories of all kinds - and even wars. Young people are always the hope of a new unity for a fragmented and divided humanity. But only if they have memory, only if they listen to the dramas and dreams of their elders. "It is not by chance that war has returned to Europe at a time when the generation that lived through it in the last century is disappearing" (Message for the Second World Day of Grandparents and the Elderly). An alliance between the young and the old is necessary, so as not to forget the lessons of history, to overcome the polarizations and extremisms of this time.

Writing to the Ephesians, St. Paul announced: 'Now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For Christ is our peace; he has united the two peoples into one, breaking down the wall of enmity that separated them through his own flesh' (2:13-14). Jesus is God's answer to the challenges of humanity in every age. And this response, Mary carried within her when she went to meet Elizabeth. Mary's greatest gift to her elderly relative was to bring Jesus to her. Certainly, concrete help is also invaluable. But nothing else could have filled Zechariah's house with such great joy and meaning as the presence of Jesus in the Virgin's womb, which had become the tabernacle of the living God. In that mountainous region, Jesus, by his presence alone, without saying a word, delivered his first "sermon on the mount": he proclaimed in silence the blessing of the little ones and the humble who entrust themselves to God's mercy.

My message to you, young people, the great message of which the Church is the bearer, is Jesus!

Yes, Himself, His infinite love for each one of us, His salvation and the new life He has given us. And Mary is the model of how to welcome this immense gift into our lives and communicate it to others, making us in turn bearers of Christ, bearers of his compassionate love, of his generous service to suffering humanity.

All together in Lisbon!

Maria was a young woman like many of you. She was one of us. Bishop Tonino Bello wrote about her: "Holy Mary, [...] we well know that you were destined for voyages on the high seas, but if we force you to sail close to the coast, it is not because we want to reduce you to the levels of our small coastline. It is because, seeing you so close to the shores of our discouragement, we can be saved by the awareness that we too have been called to venture, like you, on the oceans of freedom" (Maria, mujer de nuestros días, Paulinas, Madrid 1996, 11).

From Portugal, as I recalled in the first Message of this trilogy, in the 15th and 16th centuries, numerous young people - many of them missionaries - set out for unknown lands, also to share their experience of Jesus with other peoples and nations (cf. WYD 2020 Message). And to this land, at the beginning of the 20th century, Mary wished to make a special visit, when from Fatima she sent to all generations the powerful and admirable message of God's love that calls to conversion, to true freedom. To each and every one of you I renew my warm invitation to participate in the great intercontinental pilgrimage of young people that will culminate in WYD in Lisbon in August of next year; and I remind you that on November 20, the Solemnity of Christ the King, we will celebrate World Youth Day in the particular Churches of the whole world. In this regard, the recent document of the Dicastery for the Laity, the Family and Life - Pastoral Guidelines for the Celebration of World Youth Day in the Particular Churches - can be of great help to all those involved in youth ministry.

Dear young people, I hope that at WYD you will once again experience the joy of encountering God and your brothers and sisters. After long periods of distance and isolation, in Lisbon - with God's help - we will rediscover together the joy of the fraternal embrace between peoples and between generations, the embrace of reconciliation and peace, the embrace of a new missionary fraternity! May the Holy Spirit kindle in your hearts the desire to rise up and the joy of walking together, in synodal style, abandoning false frontiers. The time to rise up is now! Let us rise up without delay! And, like Mary, let us carry Jesus within us to communicate him to all. In this beautiful moment of your lives, go forward, do not postpone what the Spirit can do in you. With all my heart I bless your dreams and your steps.

Rome, St. John Lateran, 15 August 2022, Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

FRANCISCO

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Cardinal CzernyReligion can demonstrate the unity that war tends to destroy".

Papal almoner to return to Ukraine

Rome Reports-September 12, 2022-Reading time: < 1 minute

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The pontifical almoner, Cardinal Konrad Krajewski, will travel to Ukraine for the fourth time on behalf of Pope Francis.

Among the objectives of this fourth visit is to offer concrete help to the various diocesan Caritas organizations on the front lines.

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German synodal journey continues, with controversy and alternative proposals

The German Synodal Path will create a Synodal Commission to prepare a permanent Synodal Council.

Crisis at the beginning of the Assembly due to the refusal of some bishops to approve a document. Unbearable pressure was exerted on those who had voted against it.

José M. García Pelegrín-September 12, 2022-Reading time: 6 minutes

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The German Synodal Path concluded its fourth Assembly on Saturday evening, September 10, after the very beginning - on Thursday, September 8 - a real sensation, a situation that, from the reactions it provoked, was not in the plans of either the leaders of the Synodal Path or of the immense majority: the first of the texts to be put to the vote, entitled "Basic Guidelines for a Renewed Sexual Ethic" - in reality, a radical change of traditional doctrine following the dictates of "sexual diversity" - did not obtain the required majority among the bishops' votes.

According to the statutes of the synodal process, two qualified majorities are required for final approval of a text: two-thirds of all the votes cast in the assembly, and two-thirds of the votes cast by the bishops. Of the 57 votes cast by bishops, 31 voted "yes" and 22 "no"; 3 abstained.

After the first moment of bewilderment, a practically unbearable pressure began to be put on the bishops who had voted against. In tears, the co-president of the synodal path, Irme Stetter-Karp, reproached them for not having taken the floor in the debate to make their position clear; a somewhat fallacious argument, since whoever has attended previous Assemblies knows that whoever dared to express a minority opinion - defending Tradition and the doctrine of the Church - was the object of murmurs of disapproval and even booing. Moreover, as Cardinal Rainer Woelki of Cologne said in a speech, a group of that minority - led by Bishop Rudolf Voderholzer of Regensburg - had time and again presented alternative documents, available on the Internet, which, however, were never taken into account.

Pressure on the synodal path

At the press conference early in the morning of Friday the 9th, Irme Stetter-Karp, who is also president of the Central Committee of German Catholics, further increased the pressure on the "dissident" bishops and accused them of pursuing a "blocking strategy". She even hinted at an ultimatum: if the blockade continued, the Central Committee would leave the Assembly.

In order to get out of the "crisis", several measures were taken: on the one hand, the time for each intervention was increased from one to two minutes, in order to make it easier for those who were against a certain text to express their objections; in addition, the president of the Bishops' Conference and co-chairman of the synodal process, Georg Bätzing, met with the bishops behind closed doors. As a result, a very large number of bishops took part in the discussion of the basic text "Women in Church Services and Ministries" without the expressions of disapproval that had been customary in previous assemblies.

Intimidation

Two other circumstances contributed to the approval of the text, also by the bishops. On the one hand, a measure of intimidation: the requirement that the votes be taken by roll call - with the corresponding publication on the Internet - and, on the other hand, that the tone of the document was somewhat toned down; Thus, this text on women in the Church is now presented not as a demand for priestly ordination for women, but as a "consultation with the supreme authority of the Church (Pope and Council)" as to whether the doctrine of "Ordinatio sacerdotalis" of John Paul II (1994), in which the Pope established as definitive doctrine the impossibility of the ordination of women in the Catholic Church, can be revised.

Thus, the text was approved with only 10 votes against (and 5 abstentions) of the 60 bishops present. Even so, the rest of the document - the tone of which is reflected in the remark with which it was introduced: "what needs to be argued is not why women can be ordained, but why they cannot" - continued to maintain the same literal tenor.

New synod council

Something similar also happened on the morning of Saturday the 10th when an "action" text on the erection of a Synodal Council for the whole of Germany was discussed, with the aim of giving continuity to the synodal journey. According to the text presented, its function would be to coordinate the work of the Bishops' Conference and the Central Committee of German Catholics. This Council would openly confront the note from the Holy See last July, which recalled that the synodal path "is not empowered to oblige the bishops and the faithful to adopt new forms of government".

A compromise formula was then reached: instead of approving the creation of a Synodal Council, it was a matter of voting on a "synodal commission" in charge of preparing it: "we are not making any final decision today"; both the Bishop of Eichstätt, Gregor Maria Hanke, and the Bishop of Görlitz, Wolfgang Ipolt, strongly recommended studying the document of the International Theological Commission on the Synodal Council. synodality and referred to the fact that "what is important, above all, is that we discover the spiritual part of synodality and deepen it". During the vote, the bishops were struck by the high number of abstentions: 10; only 6 voted against, compared to 43 in favor.

Promoting a new sexual ethic

On the other hand, the fact that the fundamental text on renewed sexual ethics was rejected does not seem to have any practical consequences either. Bishop Georg Bätzing announced that - despite the vote against it - he would bring the text, "as a result of the work of the synodal journey," to the "level of the universal Church," namely to the ad limina visit in November in Rome and to the continental meeting of bishops in view of the Synod of Bishops on synodality in January.

He also announced that the Bishops' Conference would discuss this text at its ordinary assembly at the end of September, and also that he would use it in his own diocese, Limburg, which was also announced by the Bishop of Dresden, Bishop Heinrich Timmerevers. However, Bishop Stefan Oster of Passau expressed his surprise and disagreement: "I wonder if you are not anticipating something that was always foreseen in case there were no majorities"; if this were the case, "each diocese would go its own way and we would end up with the division that we wanted to avoid".

In addition, on Saturday, three texts related to the "new sexual morality" were approved - in first reading, so that the final decision is postponed to its presentation, after several modifications, in the following synodal assembly for its second reading - one of them on "Sexual Diversity" that - according to one of the participants in the assembly, Dorothea Schmidt - "questions the doctrine on creation". However, none of the bishops present made a critical intervention on the matter. In approving this text, the synodal assembly urges all dioceses to appoint "LGBTI*" ministers to "sensitize" the faithful to issues of sexual diversity. They also ask the Pope to "open to transsexual persons all ministries linked to ordination".

It should be noted that these "action" texts should not have been voted on, since the basic text from which they emanated - "Basic Guidelines for a Renewed Sexual Ethics" - had been rejected on Thursday afternoon. Although Cardinal Reinhard Marx had warned of this, the Assembly presidency turned a deaf ear to the warning and allowed the vote to proceed.

Homosexual priests

The text "De-tabonization and normalization: on the situation of non-heterosexual priests", also approved in first reading, demands the recognition of non-heterosexual priests and asks the bishops to advocate, at the universal level, the abolition of the ban on the ordination of homosexual priests. Bishop Oster again expressed his skepticism: this text poses a dilemma for the bishops; when they speak about homosexuality and "possibly problematize it" they are exposed to the risk of being seen as an attack on people with a homosexual orientation.

Finally, the Assembly assented, in the first reading, to the text on "Proclamation of the Gospel by women, by word and sacrament," which advocates "opening up" preaching to women, as well as for dioceses to study the possibility of the laity-men and women-administering baptism; the same can be said of marriage.

Before this vote, five participants of the Assembly formally requested that the vote be taken by secret ballot, in accordance with the statute of the synodal way; according to this, in this case, the vote must be by secret ballot. However, the presidency of the Assembly overruled this request, citing an ad hoc "interpretation" of the statute, forcing the vote to be taken by roll call. Marianne Schlosser, Professor of Theology at Vienna and winner of the Ratzinger Prize for Theology, was "outraged" by the authoritarian way in which this decision was made; immediately after the vote, she left the Assembly.

At the end of the Assembly, Irme Stetter-Karp returned to speak about the bishops; with a certain air of smugness, she said: "It is positive that the bishops have understood that the situation was serious; but they could have expressed their opinion earlier". And, looking ahead to the Synodal Council: "We are ready to make difficult decisions together with the German bishops".

The fifth -and foreseeably last- Synodal Assembly will be held in March 2023.

* Text updated at 5:22 pm.

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Two narratives on the evangelization of America

Latin America

Rodrigo GuerraOnly what is assumed is redeemed".

"The social sciences become victims of themselves when they absolutize a fragment and turn it into a supreme hermeneutic criterion," says Rodrigo Guerra, secretary of the Pontifical Commission for Latin America, in this interview.

Maria José Atienza-September 12, 2022-Reading time: 8 minutes

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Rodrigo Guerra holds a doctorate in philosophy from the International Academy of Philosophy in the Principality of Liechtenstein, is founder of the Center for Advanced Social Research (CISAV, Mexico) and Secretary of the Pontifical Commission for Latin America.

A few weeks ago, Guerra was one of the speakers at the I International Hispano-American Congress organized by UNIR and the UFV. At that meeting, Guerra recalled that "Latin American culture has a non-rationalist substratum, based on the Catholic faith, which defends the dignity of the person". In this interview with Omnes, he talks about this basic substratum of Latin American culture.

For some time now, we have been witnessing a vindication of pre-Columbian cultures that accuse the missionaries of eliminating / wiping out a previous culture or social systems in order to impose "the Christian and Europeanist vision". Is this statement true?

- Contemporary historiography is managing to overcome the ideological simplifications of yesteryear. For example, those that were spread around 1992, on the occasion of the V Centenary of the discovery of America. Both the "black legend" and the "pink legend" are the fruit of a univocal rationality that denies the analogical "ethos" of Latin American baroque culture.

Without analogy, there are no fine nuances, there is no analytical and differentiated understanding of a complex process, such as the arrival of European peoples to America.

On the other hand, something that beyond the academic controversies, always helps to look at things with a greater perspective, is the guadalupano event. The rationality introduced by St. Mary of Guadalupe is the one that allows miscegenation, the inculturation of the Gospel and the decisive option for the poorest. This logic, undoubtedly, compensates the military perspective of the conquerors and opens an original way of evangelization for the missionaries, starting in 1531. Pre-Hispanic cultures were undoubtedly harmed. The Spanish crown, for example, had no elements to announce the cross, except through the sword. European diseases also decimated the population. But the experience of the encounter with a motherhood coming from heaven, which announces the "most true God for Whom one lives", generated a sociologically identifiable originality. It generated a new people: Latin America, the "Patria grande", the unique fraternity that allows an Argentine and a Mexican to recognize each other as "brothers", in spite of the distance.

The Church has asked for forgiveness for historical errors committed, not only in Latin America but in other places as well. Would this request for forgiveness be necessary if the facts were contextualized in each period?

- Faith in Jesus Christ unites us all. Not only synchronically but diachronically. For this reason, we are mysteriously in solidarity with the sins committed in the past by some Catholics, and for this reason, today we must all relearn to ask for forgiveness. It is not only the Pope who must do so. It is I, in the first person, who must reconcile myself with my history.

The unity of peoples is not the unity of ideologies, of political power or of the market. The unity of peoples is reconciled plurality, it is an empirical experience of re-encounter and embrace, thanks to which it is possible to continue walking. When a nation does not mourn its mistakes, neither will it find a way to rejoice in its victories. That is why the message of the gospel is so important.

Only from Christ, people and cultures can overcome easy antagonism, fanatical radicalism and social fracture.

Is history betrayed when viewed through the paradigms of the present?

- The science and art of interpreting history is a complex exercise. Every hermeneutic act requires not only fine-tuned theoretical tools -such as analogy- but also the exercise of virtues, especially prudence. Prudence allows us to recognize the finite as finite and the transcendent as transcendent simultaneously on the plane of the practical.

In other words: history is betrayed when it is seen as a mere empirical phenomenon that does not possess a metaphysical horizon. It is the metaphysical horizon that allows a double movement: on the one hand, to recognize the fact in its context, so as not to judge it from categories that may be improper to it, such as those coming from another epoch.

But, on the other hand, the metaphysical understanding of history also makes it possible to judge the fact in its meta-historical perspective. This perspective is not something "exogenous", but the ultimate meaning of the real-concrete that appears as a requirement if the totality of the factors of the real are taken in.

In the school of thought from which yours truly comes, the metahistorical understanding of a fact practically coincides with the perennial demands of an integral anthropology, which, in looking at the person as "the most perfect of nature", also understands him as the most singular, and therefore, as the most "historical".

I understand that it is fashionable to speak of "paradigms". However, the paradigms of the times are not the ultimate horizon of intelligence. If they were, we would be in an insurmountable prison which, among other things, would impede historical progress. The real horizon of human intelligence is reached when the person is educated in non-censorship, in maximum realism, in openness to the possibility of a gift that exceeds our own pre-judgments and surprises us. Nothing more current than Gregory of Nyssa, when he says: "Only amazement knows".

Do we suffer from a kind of fear, on the one hand, or hyperesthesia in the face of any comment that could be labeled "colonialist"? Have we in the Church also fallen into a reductionist attitude with respect to our history of propagating the faith?

- The contemporary denunciation, in certain schools, of a "colonial" thought that imposes itself from the logic of the master and the slave, shows how indebted we are to Hegel today. The "decolonial" perspective, on the other hand, vindicates situated knowledge and the desire to dismantle the dense Eurocentrism that exists in some environments. When these issues are approached without clearly identifying their Hegelian heritage, and therefore their immanentist limitation, they easily become discursive traps. Many premises are accepted from the outset that need to be critically analyzed.

This is not the place to do this exercise. I simply dare to say that the social sciences, on many occasions, become victims of themselves, when they absolutize a fragment and turn it into a supreme hermeneutic criterion. Today we need a more holistic perspective in order not to betray reality. I share the need to think-in-context. I share the need to denounce the perverse instrumental rationality. I agree that there are still subtle and not so subtle mechanisms of colonization, for example, in Latin America. But also, along with all this, I am convinced that we are called to something more.

It is only possible to speak of the strength of the context and the importance of "the situated" from a higher parameter that exceeds them. If we do not do so, even our own affirmation of the importance of the contextual will have to be contextualized, and so on, in an endless process.

In the Church we also easily fall into socio-analytical "fashions", explicitly or covertly. But it is precisely in the experience that we call "Church", not in its concept, not in its theory, but in the "experience" of empirical friendship that is the "Ekklesia" where I learned to love my people, my history, with all its wounds of "colonial" origin, and to discover that the master-slave dialectic does not have the last word. Reality has tensions, some of them very painful, but the true overcoming of them, the true "Aufhebung", is achieved by seeking a superior synthesis under the logic of the extreme gift, that is to say, under the re-encounter with the essential-Christian. This is why it is important to read Romano Guardini and Gaston Fessard. For this reason, among others, we must allow ourselves to be educated by Pope Francis.

Experience shows that the good news of the Gospel, lived in communion, is a source of renewed humanity, that is to say, of true development.
Rodrigo Guerra. Secretary of the Pontifical Commission for Latin America

Did faith really contribute to the development of the peoples of the Americas?

- North America consists of Canada, the United States and Mexico. Central America ranges from Guatemala to Panama. South America ranges from Colombia to Patagonia. In South America, and in general, in the entire Latin American region, since 1531 faith has been the most important factor of liberation and struggle for the dignity of all, especially the last and the excluded.

Those who seek to maintain that faith has not contributed to the development and emancipation of Latin America are heirs of the old enlightenment and the old theories of secularization. The latter, by the way, did not come true in Latin America, as even the most absent-minded observer can attest on any December 12 at Tepeyac.

Those who currently think that faith has not contributed to the development of Latin America would do well to meditate carefully on the "Nican Mopohua"; the work of Vasco de Quiroga; the arguments of Bartolomé de las Casas and Francisco de Vitoria in favor of the equal human dignity of the indigenous people; the very rich viceregal culture; and, very especially, the Latin American baroque, for example, in Puebla, Peru or Ecuador. There is nothing better to break illuminism than to make a pilgrimage on foot for weeks to some Marian shrine with our poor people, to visit the Jesuit reductions in Uruguay, to live the experience of a popular festival in Nicaragua, to read aloud Sister Juana Inés de la Cruz, to kneel at the tomb of Saint Oscar Arnulfo Romero in El Salvador, or to carry the coffins of two elderly Jesuits recently murdered by organized crime in the Sierra Tarahumara.

Beyond theories and discourses, it is in experience that we can see that the good news of the Gospel, lived in communion, is a source of renewed humanity, that is, of true development.

If we look at many of the Ibero-American cultural traditions, we realize that the Christian faith joined previous traditions, contributing to their validity. Is South America an example of inculturation of faith?

- South America, Central America and Mexico are good examples of inculturated evangelization and inculturation of the Gospel. In each country there is a different modulation. But in all of them, some degree of inculturation is recognizable. However, the most adequate word to describe this phenomenon is not "union" between Christian faith and "previous traditions" but "incarnation".

In the mystery of the Incarnation, everything human is assumed, because only what is assumed is redeemed. The "analogy of the Incarnation," as St. John Paul II said, is what guides an adequate relationship between the Christian faith and cultures. Only in this way is there no destruction, but a patient and tender embrace. An embrace that assumes all pre-Hispanic signs and languages, in order to purify and elevate them through grace.

The logic of destruction is not part of the Christian proclamation. Someone once said to me: "but sin must be destroyed". In fact, indigenous sin and European sin must be "destroyed" with the mercy and tenderness that come from the heart of Jesus. It is mercy that "extirpates" sin. Never the annihilation of the other. It is God's mercy that saves. Anything else is violent Pelagianism. To evangelize in a radically inculturated way is at the heart of the message of Our Lady of Guadalupe to St. Juan Diego.

¿How do you experience, from an American and Catholic perspective, the process of de-Christianization that is taking place in many places?

- In small neoconservative circles, de-Christianization is seen in terms of civilizational collapse. At various moments in the history of the Latin American Church, the conservative reduction of Christianity to moral norms has provoked erroneous diagnoses of the cultural crisis. Symmetrically, as in a mirror, the de-Christianization seen from progressive groups is celebrated with joy. The reduction of Christianity to the "ideology of common values" also leads to misdiagnoses about the challenge of the present moment. The identification of the progress of the kingdom of God with the apparent "progress" of contemporary relativistic society ends up affirming that true Christianity is that of secularized, purely "humanist" communities.

De-Christianization exists more because of the weakness of those of us who prefer a bourgeois Christianity, accustomed to exist within a comfort zone, than because of the "perversity" and "strategy" of anti-Christian tendencies.
Rodrigo Guerra. Secretary of the Pontifical Commission for Latin America

Both positions are a serious mistake. Neoconservatives and progressives, apparently opposed, are children of the same illuminist matrix. The theological reading of history made by the Latin American bishops from the II General Conference of the Episcopate (Medellin, 1968) to the V General Conference held in Aparecida (2007), is diverse. The processes of de-Christianization coexist with new searches that mean that the human heart continues to yearn for a fullness of truth, goodness, beauty and justice that only Christ can fulfill and surpass. Let me put it another way: the Latin American Church is the daughter of the Second Vatican Council. In the Council there is full awareness of the drama of our times. But this drama is not faced with fear of the world, nor with naive approval of its "worldly" inertia.

The "de-Christianization" of persons, families and societies is more than an "enemy", it is an "opportunity" to repropose with vitality an empirical, experiential, sacramental Christianity, not reactionary, but communitarian and missionary. For this, it is necessary, curiously, to love the world passionately. Not in order to overlap its deviations. But to embrace it and recognize that in it always dwell and will dwell motions of the Holy Spirit that precede us in the missionary dynamism.

In other words: de-Christianization exists more because of the weakness of those of us who prefer a bourgeois Christianity, accustomed to exist within a comfort zone, than because of the "perversity" and "strategy" of anti-Christian tendencies. This is why it is so opportune to listen to Pope Francis when he speaks to us of the "Church going out", turned to mission, not to reaction. She is turned to the peripheries, that is to say, to the extreme zones, full of risks, but in need of Christ.

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ColumnistsMaria Candela Temes

Polarizing the papacy

The Pope's work has always elicited diverse and even opposing reactions. However, to reduce the figure of the Pope to a merely political level or to consider him from the logic of confrontation is not only erroneous, but also unjust.

September 12, 2022-Reading time: 2 minutes

The logic of polarized discourse tends to employ a contrasting language through which a world divided into two irreconcilable principles is configured: conservative and conservative-conservative. versus progressive, right versus left, traditionalist versus liberal, they versus us. Yes or no. Black or white. No nuances. This opens an impassable gap that makes any attempt at dialogue or understanding between the two sides sterile.

This antagonistic panorama is applied by many analysts who deal with religious information and Vatican news to the papacy of Francis, presenting the Church as two divided factions and placing the Roman Pontiff on one's own side or the opposite, depending on the editorial position of the particular media outlet.

From the beginnings of the Church, the Petrine ministry has been an instrument of union and a guarantee of catholicity. The "shepherd my sheep". (Jn 21:16) of Jesus to Peter has had a constant echo throughout the history of the pontificate, even in its darkest hours. The Pope is a sign of unity for all the baptized, regardless of their origin, ideology or even political orientation.

To apply to Francis this logic of the two opposing poles is not only unjust or inappropriate, but also harmful. The Pope, like every educated man, has his own ideas about the temporal solution to the world's problems, but this personal vision does not impose itself on his role as guide of the universal Church. And it is not right to impose it on him from outside.

The Pope is a pastor, not a politician, no matter how much he governs the Vatican State. His leadership is spiritual. Now that we are in the midst of a reform of the Vatican curia, with the promulgation on March 19 of the apostolic constitution Praedicate EvangeliumThe Pope will meet in Rome on August 29 and 30 with the College of Cardinals to reflect on this legislative text, so perhaps it is worth remembering.

The authorMaria Candela Temes

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Cinema

Cartoons to watch with the family

Ida is a radiant, bright and precocious girl who arrives new at the colorful school at Winterstein Castle. There she finds an unwelcoming atmosphere, except for Benni, a peculiar and shy student who is not very popular.

Patricio Sánchez-Jáuregui-September 12, 2022-Reading time: 2 minutes

The school of magical animals

DirectorGregor Schnitzler

HistoryJohn Chambers, Arne Nolting, Viola Schmidt, Oliver Schütte

Ida is a radiant, bright and precocious girl, who arrives new to the colorful school at Winterstein Castle. There she finds an unwelcoming atmosphere, except for Benni, a peculiar and shy student who is not very popular and takes refuge in his fantasies of pirate adventures. At first, Ida will be attracted to Jo, the school rebel. This relationship will push Benni aside.

The class she is a part of is in for a surprise with the arrival of teacher Cornfield, a quirky teacher who will win the children over with her charm, introducing her brother, the also enigmatic Mortimer Morrison, owner of a "magical pet store". The students will become a "magical community" when they enthusiastically and excitedly welcome two talking animals, a turtle and a fox, who will choose to be Ida and Benni's pets. At the same time, other disturbing events will start to happen: disappearance of things, graffiti and various vandalisms, etc. Ida, Benni and their pets will have to join forces to discover the mischievous vandal and thief.

This imaginative semi-musical proposal in the purest style of the children's novels of The Fivecreates a juvenile detective adventure with all sorts of charms and without many pretensions. A colorful and colorful world with a moral, where the values of friendship, acceptance and honor are highlighted. A fable of real image and animated animals where the voices of these and their unconditional friendship serve to instill important messages to children, strengthen their self-confidence and help them find their role. All without losing sight of the idea of making them laugh and dream.

Eminently familiar, fantastic and adventurous. The film is based on the saga best seller international (7 million copies sold and translated into 25 languages) of German children's books by Margit Auer (writer) and Nina Dulleck (illustrator), which began its run in 2013. A correct, hour-and-a-half-long film, it hits the screens on September 9, with its sequel about to be released in the country of origin, where the first one was a hit with more than one million viewers.

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Synodal process enters continental phase

The General Secretariat of the Synod has received the syntheses of the Bishops' Conferences concerning the first synodal phase of the Synod of Bishops' Conferences. "listening to God's people"which concluded in June. Starting this September, the second phase, the continental phase, will begin, leading to the universal discussion of the bishops in October 2023.

Giovanni Tridente-September 12, 2022-Reading time: 5 minutes

The "local consultation phase" (dioceses, episcopal conferences, synods of the Eastern Church) of the synodal process of the universal Church, which will culminate in October 2023 with the "universal phase," has concluded. Beginning this September, the journey continues with the "continental phase", which provides for a new discernment on the text of the first Instrumentum Laboris -prepared by the General Secretariat of the Synod, this time, however, limited to the cultural specificities of each continent.

The phase that has just ended includes the "syntheses" prepared by each of the Bishops' Conferences, which in turn had collected the contributions of the particular Churches. They have been sent to the General Secretariat of the Synod, integrating a truly capillary consultation and immersed in the territory, as was the intention of Pope Francis. It is not by chance that, opening this extensive journey of spiritual and ecclesial discernment, in October 2021 the Pontiff invited to be "pilgrims in love with the Gospel, open to the surprises of the Holy Spirit."without losing "the graced occasions of encounter, of mutual listening, of discernment.".

Proposals from all countries

From the documents sent to Rome, it is possible to get an idea of what was kept in the heart and mind of the "people of God"The Church has offered it the opportunity to be a protagonist and to express itself freely, following a detailed and programmed path. Certainly, we must not absolutize the "answers" and even less the "proposals" which, as the Holy Father himself recalled, referring in particular to the German synodal path, will have to be examined later within the Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops to be held in Rome in 2023.

Therefore, these syntheses have no "executive" value, but it cannot be ruled out that they represent the true sentiment in the souls of the faithful. They will certainly be a dynamic and a content to be taken into account for the Church's journey in this third millennium.

Without wishing to be exhaustive, let us look at some of the clues that emerge from the contributions sent to the Secretariat of the Synod by the main European Episcopal Conferences: Spain, Italy, France and Germany. Each document includes an introduction on the experience gained, reporting also some figures on the involvement of the working groups of the various ecclesial realities; a list of pre-eminent themes, formally about ten; a concluding part with concrete proposals to continue the path of involvement undertaken.

Spain

In the case of the Spanish Church, 14,000 synodal groups involved more than 215,000 people, mostly lay people, but also consecrated persons, religious, priests and bishops. More than 200 cloistered monasteries and 21 secular institutes participated. As in the case of other countries, the participation was of people already committed to the life of the Church, mostly women; there was little participation of young people and families, and of people who were distant or non-believers. There was no lack of doubts or initial uncertainty about this "listening phase", about whether it really served any purpose.

In terms of the ten points highlighted, the first is the role of women, an issue that is seen "as a concern, necessity and opportunity"The presence in the Church's organs of responsibility and decision making is indispensable. Concerns "the low presence and participation of young people in the life of the Church".The family is considered a priority area for evangelization. There is also an awareness of the question of the "family" as a priority area of evangelization.sexual abuse, abuse of power and abuse of conscience".and the need to institutionalize and strengthen "lay ministries".together with a "qualified presence of the Church in the rural world".The main focus is on popular religiosity, with specific attention to the elderly, the sick, migrants, prisoners and other religious denominations.

"We have been able to listen to each other, we have been free to speak, we have experienced hope, joy, illusion, courage to fulfill our mission, with a strong sense of community to continue on our journey and to do it together. We are deeply grateful for having been able to be protagonists in the process," say the protagonists.

Italy

On the Italian front, 50,000 synodal groups were formed for a total participation of half a million people.

"The synodality was not simply talked about, but lived, also taking into account the inevitable fatigue: in the work of the team, in the discreet and solicitous accompaniment of the parishes and the realities involved, in the pastoral creativity put into action, in the ability to plan, verify, collect and return to the community", the Italian synthesis points out, indicating that "the experience was exciting and generative" for those involved.

As for the "ten cores". around which the reflections that emerged from the diocesan syntheses - collected in about 1,500 pages - were organized, a plurality of themes emerged, priorities that for the Church in Italy represent as many as the following "works" to work on in the coming years.

Part of the need to "listen" to all the actors of social life, from the young to the marginalized, "welcoming" The plurality of situations and living conditions that inhabit a territory is thus brought into close proximity. The importance of the "relationships"of a "celebration" the centrality of the "communication"the strong desire to "share" and the inescapability of "dialogue". Every ecclesial community should be lived as a "home" and not as a club, avoiding self-referentiality and closed-mindedness. Finally, it is necessary to be at the side of the people. "in any state of life". All this must be carried out by means of a "method" based on the principles of spiritual conversation, to continue this listening process.

France

150,000 people participated in the synod process in the national phase in France from October 2021 to April 2022. Once again, their participation was appreciated. In the introduction to the synthesis document, it is stated that the proposals do not have the value of a theological judgment, but are intended to guide subsequent discernment within the Church, with regard to true "challenges that have emerged from this consultation.".

There was no shortage of listening difficulties "the voices of the most fragile, reaching and mobilizing young people". or involve priests in a more capillary way. Given that the work was carried out while the report on sexual abuse by an independent commission was raging in France, which also had a worldwide echo, one of the significant points of the process was to revive "the need to take care of each other".together with the inspiration of "a more fraternal Church"..

Other aspects considered the urgency of putting the Word of God first, as well as the recognition of the equal dignity of all the baptized through the implementation of ministries that are "at the service of the encounter with God and the encounter with people".. Equal dignity must be reserved to men and women, just as the different charisms must be recognized and supported. An important point is dedicated to the liturgy, which should be an expression of "....depth and communion"..

Germany

Lastly, Germany, already immersed in a "synodal journey" of its own starting in 2019 and often at the center of more than a few controversies. In this case, the response was much lower and less enthusiastic, probably precisely because it was a "parallel" experience. The document, in fact, recognizes that the number of believers involved did not even reach 10 % and that, in fact, it was impossible to involve people far from the Church or non-believers.

A number of points highlight critical aspects of the synodal process itself, such as the passive participation of the laity, the widespread doubt that the Church is sincere in its desire to truly listen, the lack of spiritual depth and faith, the self-referential language of the very vademecum proposed by the Synod Secretariat....

What emerges from the report, however, is the desire to give meaning back to the Eucharist, possibly through "an interpretation of the rites, a concrete and understandable language that speaks of the reality of the people".. Reference is made to the possibility of highlighting the charism of women through more active participation. With regard to the Church's dialogue with society, Catholics are divided "between those who want to distance themselves from the world and those who, on the other hand, feel a critical-constructive contemporaneity." with today's world. In this context, "there is a need for ever greater cooperation and a common Christian witness also in ecumenism"..

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Pope Francis: "God excludes no one, he wants everyone to be at his banquet".

This Sunday's parables of mercy were the backdrop for Pope Francis to gloss on one of his favorite themes, God's tenderness towards mankind.

Javier García Herrería-September 11, 2022-Reading time: 2 minutes

One of the highlights of Pope Francis' pontificate is how he has highlighted the mercy of God. The Gospel of the Prodigal Son this Sunday, September 11, was a natural occasion to return once again to this idea. "God is just like that: he excludes no one, he wants everyone to be at his banquet, because he loves everyone as his children."

God's heart is that of a good father, who "comes to look for us whenever we have gone astray". Even if a person possesses an abundance of material goods, he cannot be completely happy if he suffers for a loved one who is going astray. "The one who loves is concerned about what he misses, is nostalgic for the one who is absent, seeks the one who is lost, waits for the one who has wandered away. For he wants no one to be lost. Brothers and sisters, God is like this: he does not remain 'quiet' if we are far from him, he is grieved, he is deeply moved and he begins to search for us, until he takes us back into his arms".

God is father and mother

A true father, a true mother, loves her children unconditionally, without calculation or measure. For this reason, Pope Francis points out that the "Lord does not calculate loss and risks, he has the heart of a father and mother, and he suffers when he misses his beloved children. Yes, God suffers for our remoteness, and when we are lost, he awaits our return. Let us remember: God is always waiting for us with open arms, whatever the situation of life in which we have been lost."

As usual in the preaching of the Holy Father, he ends his words with some questions that serve as an examination of conscience for the faithful. On this occasion, he said: "Do we feel nostalgia for those who are absent, for those who have distanced themselves from the Christian life? Do we carry this inner restlessness, or do we remain serene and unperturbed among ourselves? In other words, do we really miss the one who is missing in our community? Or are we comfortable among ourselves, calm and blissful in our groups, without having compassion for the one who is far away?"

True Christian fraternity includes all people, regardless of how they think or how they like them. For this reason, the Pope launched some final questions underlining the Catholic, universal mentality of the Christian heart: "Do I pray for those who do not believe, for those who are far away? Do we attract those who are far away by means of God's style, which is closeness, compassion and tenderness? The Father asks us to be attentive to the children he misses the most. Let us think of someone we know, who is close to us and who perhaps has never heard anyone say to him or her: 'You know, you are important to God'".

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Eduardo Calvo: "People of other faiths are happy that the Pope is coming."

Bishop of Karaganda (Kazakhstan) explains Pope's upcoming trip

Adelio Dell'Oro, Bishop of Karaganda in Kazakhstan, gave a breakfast briefing for journalists on the Pope's upcoming apostolic journey.

Antonino Piccione-September 11, 2022-Reading time: 4 minutes

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"We Catholics, according to our abilities and sensibilities, seek to cooperate on the path of peace, harmony and development, mainly in three directions: beauty, selfless help and prayer."

With his intervention at the meeting promoted online this morning by the ISCOM Association (about thirty correspondents were present), Msgr. Adelio Dell'OroBishop of Karaganda (Kazakhstan), helped shed light on a number of issues related to Pope Francis' upcoming trip: the origin and intentions of the VII Congress of Leaders of World and Traditional Religions (the event that brings together various religious leaders from around the world) and the presence of the Catholic Church in the former Soviet country.

Born in Milan in 1948, Dell'Oro was curate for 25 years in two parishes of the diocese of the Lombard capital. In 1997, he left as a fidei donum missionary to Kazakhstanwhere he remained until 2009, when he returned to Italy. Pro-rector of the Guastalla College in Monza and resident in the parish of Cambiago, at the end of 2012 he was appointed bishop with the office of apostolic administrator of Atyrau. He has been bishop of Karaganda since January 31, 2015.

Sense of the congress

"Accepting the invitation of the civil and ecclesial authorities, Pope Francis will make the announced apostolic journey to Kazakhstan from September 13 to 15." This is how, at the beginning of August, a communiqué from the director of the Holy See Press Office, Matteo Bruni, formalized the visit of the Holy Father to the city of Nur-Sultan on the occasion of the VII Congress of leaders of world and traditional religions, convened to discuss the socio-spiritual development of humanity in the post-pandemic era and in the context of the convulsive geopolitical situation.

A Congress - explains Dell'Oro - organized for the first time in 2003, coinciding with the second anniversary of the apostolic journey of John Paul II (September 22-27, 2001), by the then President of the Republic Nursultan Abievich Nazarbaev, inspired by Pope Karol Wojtyła, who two years earlier, addressing young Kazakhs, had invited Muslims and Christians to build a "civilization based on love" and to make Kazakhstan "a noble country, without borders, open to encounter and dialogue."

The Assisi meetings

The model? The "Day of Prayer for World Peace" convened in Assisi by John Paul II in January 2002, with the aim of reaffirming the positive contribution of different religious traditions to confrontation and harmony among peoples and nations in the wake of the tensions that followed the attacks of September 11, 2001.

Since then, since 2003, the Congress has been held regularly every three years, with the exception of the seventh edition, which was postponed for a year due to the pandemic, and will be held at the Palace of Peace and Reconciliation. Over time, the initiative has become a catalyst for interfaith and intercultural dialogue around the world to foster the resolution of religious and political conflicts. Four years ago (October 2018), the last Congress was attended by delegations from 45 countries.

"First of all," Dell'Oro reflects, "it is necessary for religious leaders to establish stronger and closer relationships of proximity at a time when religions themselves are being challenged: the great issue of the exclusion of God from modern societies is significantly affecting religions, which must rediscover the ability to be credible in this time. Then there is the question of the interest of the new generations, who are less and less attracted to the religious element and the traditions that religions represent. The question of the credibility of religions therefore arises from the fundamental assumption: how does one experience God? How does one experience faith? How can one appreciate the value of religions? Religions are for peace.

Personal encounters

A peace that is also built through direct and personal encounters between leaders. In this sense, the Bishop of Karaganda does not hide his regret - "it grieves me" - for the non-participation of Patriarch Kirill of Moscow in the Congress of Kazakhstan: "it would have been a remarkable contribution, meeting with Pope Francis", to put an end to what the Pontiff himself has described as "a war of particular gravity, both for the violation of international law, and for the risks of nuclear escalation, and for the strong economic and social consequences. It is a third world war in pieces".

Moreover, in order to consolidate relations between China and the Holy See, "the news that President Xi Jinping will visit Kazakhstan on the same day that Pope Francis will be in the Central Asian country next week is to be welcomed," according to Dell'Oro.

Expectation

The visit of Pope Francis to Kazakhstan arouses great expectation from the point of view of the Catholic community, in a country that is 80% Muslim, given that the Christian faith, in its Catholic form, for some 60 years was communicated with the almost total absence of priests and, therefore, of the sacraments, with the exception of baptism, which was mostly administered clandestinely. "During the Soviet era," Dell'Oro stresses, "there were no ecclesiastical structures.

Then semi-clandestine priests appeared, survivors of concentration camps, among them Blessed Władysław Bukowiński, beatified on September 11, 2016 in Karaganda, or arrivals from Lithuania. After 1991, with the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the emergence of Kazakhstan as an independent state, like the other religions, the Catholic Church was also able to come out of hiding; priests and nuns were invited from Poland, Germany, Slovakia, etc., and ecclesiastical buildings could be constructed."

A dove with an olive branch, its wings depicted as joined wings. The logo for Pope Francis' trip to Kazakhstan looks like this, while the motto is "Messengers of peace and unity".

"I believe that the Pope" - is Dell'Oro's final reflection - "will highlight the origin of peace by underlining the importance of recognizing that we all depend on God and, therefore, that we are all his sons and daughters and, consequently, brothers and sisters among all men, beyond different political visions and ethnic affiliations (in Kazakhstan people belonging to more than 130 ethnic groups live together)."

The authorAntonino Piccione

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Vatican diplomacy in the Ukrainian war

What is the future of ecumenical diplomacy?

The refusal of Patriarch Kirill not to attend the World Congress of Religious Leaders is an important sign of the delicate situation in which ecumenical diplomacy finds itself. In this article we analyze the most important variables to take into account at this moment.

Andrea Gagliarducci-September 10, 2022-Reading time: 5 minutes

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For the time being there will be no second meeting between Pope Francis and Patriarch Kirill of Moscow. The Patriarch has abruptly withdrawn his presence from the World Meeting of Religious LeadersThe meeting, to be held in Nur Sultan (Kazakhstan) on September 14-15, will also be attended by Pope Francis. Ecumenical diplomacy is in a particularly delicate phase.

Patriarch Kirill had confirmed his participation some time ago, and it could be said that one of the reasons Pope Francis wanted to go to Kazakhstan was precisely because of the possibility of a second meeting with the Patriarch.

This second meeting had taken on incredible importance at a time when the conflict in Ukraine had broken out. The Moscow Patriarchate had not only supported Russian decisions, but had found itself hopelessly isolated in the midst of Orthodoxy. Even Metropolitan Onufry, who led the Kiev Orthodox flock linked to the Moscow Patriarchate, had effectively severed ties with his mother house. While from the Serbian Patriarchate, traditionally allied with Russia, aid came directly to Onufry, bypassing Moscow's mediation.

They were minor clashes in an Orthodox world that, with the Russian aggression in Ukraine, was beginning to change its attitude and even its line of force. Because on one side there is always Moscow, the largest Orthodox Church, the one linked to the most powerful state. But on the other side there are the other "autocephalies" (the Orthodox Churches are national), which in the face of Russian aggression have slightly changed their attitude. Encouraged, it is true, by the example of Ukraine, which already in 2018 had asked and obtained to become an autocephalous Church, detaching itself from the secular administration of Moscow granted to it by Constantinople in the 17th century.

Ukrainian autocephaly has been on the verge of leading to an Orthodox schism, with Moscow on one side and the rest of the Orthodox world on the other, or simply watching. And it is perhaps to that autocephaly that one must look to really understand Moscow's fears, those of a Ukraine ever further away from its Russian brethren, ever closer to Europe.

What will happen in Kazakhstan?

There will be no meeting with Patriarch Kirill, but that does not mean that Pope Francis' trip will have no significance or impact. The Pope will meet with other religious leaders, have personal conversations with each of them, trying to build bridges of dialogue.

In general, the protocol caused some perplexity. The Pope does not participate in meetings organized by other governments, but rather organizes the meeting or is the chief guest. Mere participation runs the risk of belittling him, and this is something the Holy See has always been wary of.

Likewise, the World Meeting of Religious Leaders held in Nur Sultan is, to say the least, an extraordinary opportunity to establish accounts.

Since 2019, the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue has established a memorandum of understanding with the organization of the World Meeting of Religious Leaders, in the culmination of very good relations established since the Holy See attended the Expo in the country with its pavilion in 2017.

Now, it will be Pope Francis who will exploit this mine of encounters, accompanied by Cardinal Miguel Angel Ayuso Guixot, president of the dicastery and now practically at home in Kazakhstan,

And who knows if the Pope will not take advantage of his presence in Nur Sultan to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping, who will be in Kazakhstan during the same days. It would be an extraordinary coup for the Kazakh president, but even more so for Russia, which would not hesitate to show the meeting as a sign of the Pope's openness also towards countries marginalized by the West.

Chances of meeting Kirill

As has been said, Patriarch Kirill will not be present, but Metropolitan Antonij, the new head of the Moscow Patriarchate's Department of External Relations.

Kirill's absence is explained in a very concrete way: the Patriarch of Moscow does not want the Pope to receive him "on the sidelines" of another event, but wants this meeting to have dignity, to produce a document, to represent a milestone.

And the fact is that, faced with a possible isolation even in the Orthodox world, the Moscow Patriarchate needs to demonstrate that there is at least one leader, and among the most respected, who gives credence to its work. And this despite the fact that the Pope did not hesitate to call Kirill "Putin's altar boy" in the videoconference of last March 16 - Pope Francis himself admitted it in an interview - and despite the fact that Cardinal Kurt Koch, president of the Dicastery for Promoting Christian Unity, defined as "heresy" certain Orthodox theological positions on Russkyi Mir, Greater Russia.

What's new now?

The presence of the Pope, who did not meet with Kirill, represents for Kazakhstan not only an opportunity to celebrate 30 years of diplomatic relations with the Holy See, but also to strengthen a role in the interreligious dialogue it has been trying to develop since 2003, when the World Meeting of Religious Leaders was held for the first time.

At the end of the meeting a joint statement will be made, which - Kazakh officials explained - will be "distributed as an official UN document", and it will "reflect on the most topical problems of the world, global conflicts, geopolitical tensions, social problems, including the spread of moral and ethical values".

It should be noted that the theme of the conference was also pointed out by Kazakhstan to the UAE authorities, to the point that the Kazakh ambassador to Abu Dhabi held a press conference on the subject in recent days. And the final declaration will likely have two models: the Abu Dhabi Declaration on Human Fraternity signed by Pope Francis during his 2019 trip to the UAE together with the Grand Imam of al Azhar Ahmed al Tayyb; and the final declaration of the meeting between Pope Francis and Kirill in Havana in 2016.

This would take the best of the latest models of dialogue developed by Pope Francis, continuing in that wake along a path acceptable to the Holy See.

A trip to Moscow or Kiev?

There has been much talk of the trip to Kazakhstan as a consequence, or anticipation, of a trip by Pope Francis to Moscow or Kiev, or both. As things stand, neither a trip to Moscow nor to Kiev seems likely. Pope Francis has long maintained that it is for medical reasons, and that he would like to go at least to Kiev, where there is an urgent invitation, but that he cannot because his condition does not allow it.

This is true, but it is only a partial explanation. A trip to Kiev made after the trip to Kazakhstan and a possible meeting with Patriarch Kirill would probably have exacerbated Ukrainian tempers, already very upset by the war. Now, a trip to Kiev after the meeting in Kazakhstan would have more opportunities, but at the same time would be seen as secondary.

Moscow's situation is different, because that requires an invitation, and there has not yet been one. These are very difficult and delicate diplomatic situations, which are based on balances yet to be deciphered.

Certainly, the trip to Kazakhstan has no connection with the other two trips that the Pope could undertake. But it has an ideal link with the passage to Jerusalem that the pope would have wanted to make on June 14, after two days in the Lebanonwhere he would meet with Patriarch Kirill.

Everything was ready for the meeting, which was then postponed for "reasons of convenience", leaving the Moscow Patriarchate not a little puzzled. Perhaps this is also the practical reason why Kirill decided not to go to Nur Sultan.

European reconciliation can only be achieved through ecumenical dialogue. This is well known in Ukraine, where the All-Ukrainian Council of Churches and Religious Organizations, which has been bringing together the religious denominations of Ukraine for 25 years, is making specific appeals.

The Catholic Church can play an important role in this ecumenical reconciliation. But, to use the words of His Beatitude Sviatoslav Shevchuk, Major Archbishop of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, "we can reconcile with our brothers. We cannot reconcile with geopolitics".

The authorAndrea Gagliarducci

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ColumnistsJaqui Lin

Medjugorje Youth Festival, a call to conversion

During the summer, there have been two numerous youth gatherings, the European Youth Pilgrimage and the Medjugorje Fest, which was attended by more than 50,000 people. We offer the testimony of a participant in the latter event.

September 10, 2022-Reading time: 3 minutes

Three weeks have passed since the best trip of my life. No beach, no pool. No big dinners and meals either. Let alone sleeping in until 12 noon. However, it has been the best vacation ever.

On July 31, 2022, I traveled to Medjugorje, a village in Bosnia and Herzegovina, where the Virgin Mary has been appearing, under the title of the Queen of Peace, since 1981. I took a plane from Barcelona (El Prat) to Croatia (Split), and from there a bus to Medjugorje. I went with a group of young people from Effetá Valencia, and our pilgrimage was To Jesus through Mary, organized by Blanca Llantada and Emilio Ferrando.

I had heard a lot about Medjugorje, I had even seen several videos of the visionary Mirjana. I always said that one day I would go, since it is a sacred place where many graces are received, but it would have to come with time, since I am not one to plan trips far in advance. And it wasn't until this year that Our Lady called me to go. And you may ask, "and how did she call you?". In my particular case it was a birthday present. Every pilgrim feels called in a different way. It is something inexplicable. It seems that you are not organizing the trip, but that you are being called to go. And the Virgin, our Mother, has something to tell you when you get there.

Something that they warn you as soon as you get on the bus, on the way to the inn, and that I also want to transmit to future pilgrims, is that to enjoy this trip and to take advantage of it, you have to go with an open heart. This is the main motto. Open your heart to everything you can see and everything you can be told. Try to find out what God wants from you, what plan He is asking of you. And for this, it is important to be prepared. Because if you had a plan a priori, such as continuing in "x" job, going around the world or traveling to the Greek islands, it could be totally modified. "Fiat voluntas tua.

These events will measure the thermometer of our faith. How much do we trust our Heavenly Father?

Every day we had a Youth Festival program: Holy Rosary, Angelus, Holy Mass, testimonies, catechesis, Eucharistic adoration, and other evening activities such as the procession with the image of Our Lady or the candlelight meditation and prayer before the cross. On the other hand, each pilgrimage organized outings to the most emblematic places: Apparition Hill, Cross Mountain, the cemetery of Mostar, etc.

It was a week of much activity and in order to get everything done, some hours of rest were disturbed, but it was well worth it. More than 500 priests, confessors, religious, converts, and tens of thousands of young people from all continents gathered there to pray for peace in the world and commend our intentions.

I experienced incredible homilies, firm, without lukewarmness, of those that seem to be nailing the words in your heart. I would especially like to mention that of Friar Marinko Sakota.

The sacrament of confession was my great gift. I lived a personal and unique experience. A Franciscan priest confessed me and what we experienced, both he and I, was a gift from heaven. The Holy Spirit interceded between us and we could both see the reflection of Jesus in our eyes. He spoke to me very clearly and gave me spiritual guidance on what I should do from now on. That moment changed part of my life and the rest of the days of my trip. If I did not accept his words with an open heart, nothing made sense. So I listened to him.

That moment marked the beginning of a deeper conversion of my faith. Now I spend an hour or more every day in front of the Blessed Sacrament, I pray the Holy Rosary every day, I also pray the Chaplet of Divine Mercy, and I meditate on a page of the Holy Bible at random. I try to fulfill the 5 stones that Mary asks of us: prayer, fasting, reading the Holy Bible, confession and the Eucharist.

I have fallen in love with prayer and adoring Our Lord Jesus Christ. It is my favorite time of the day. I speak to Him and He, through the intercession of the Holy Spirit, whispers to me.

Medjugorje calls for conversion, even of Christians themselves. The journey of faith never ends, it is a long-distance race that must be run daily to get to know the heart of Jesus and that of his Mother, Mary. There I felt that God needs us, each and every one of us. And we must respond to his call.

I take many things from this trip. I am going to mention the ones that have touched me the most: the great merciful love that God and our Mother, the Virgin Mary, feel for each one of us; the manifestation of peace in every corner of the village of Medjugorje; the graces that are granted during the trip and afterwards, and not only on a personal level, but also in your family circle; having seen that the presence of evil also exists; the power of prayer; and the number of people who accompany you on this journey. We are not alone.

Now I would shout a Viva Cristo Rey!

The authorJaqui Lin

Singer and attendee of Medjugorje Fest.

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Testo originale del articolo in inglese qui

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Santi nella vita familiare, un insegnamento centrale nel messaggio di san Josemaría Escrivá

Opus Dei, founded by St. Josemaría Escrivá, is rooted in the need to live contemplation in the midst of the world. Consequently, the vocation and mission of marriage are sanctified.

Rafael de Mosteyrín Gordillo-September 9, 2022-Reading time: 2 minutes

At the conclusion of the Year of the Family entitled Amoris laetitiaThe key points of this central nucleus of St. Josemaría's teaching are resumed, coinciding with the saint's feast day.

With regard to this curious coincidence, which we can regard as accidental or providential, we would like to recall some of St. Josemaría's advice on marriage and family life.

L'esempio della Sacra Famiglia

The path of sanctity, proper to marriage, has several parts in which the Christian's response develops. St. Josemaría Escrivá explains the means by which identification with Christ is achieved. The absolute answer, how to walk the path of life and reach the goal, is Christ.

The most important and continuous reference is that of the imitation of Christ in ordinary life. The example to follow is that of the Holy Family, so that God is always present in our lives.
St. Josemaría thus shows the need to live contemplation in the midst of the world. Consequently, the vocation and mission of marriage are sanctified.

In his writings a distinction is made between the sanctification of temporal activities, the sanctification of ordinary work and sanctification through family life, procreation and the education of children. In this way the vocation of the layperson, according to the Christian spirit, in the development of the professional, social or marital competencies that make up his or her life.

Sanctify and sanctify

Starting from the grace of the sacrament of marriage, St. Josemaría Escrivá insisted on the education of his children, the sanctification of the family, the care of the family, the dedication to the profession, etc.

Sono ambititi in cui allo stesso tempo è necessario l'aiuto soprannaturale, che ci viene dalla preghiera e dai sacramenti. Both at home and in the various places in which it operates, the Christian family can gradually develop the specific vocation foreseen by God for each of its members.

Attention to the good of the spouse and children is in marriage a necessary element for the sanctification of both spouses.

The main challenge that St. Josemaría presents to the genitors is that of forming authentic Christians, people who strive to attain and transmit sanctity.

The path of every ordinary Christian is therefore the sanctification of professional work and family and social relationships, attainable with the means of sanctification and apostolate provided by the Church. As means we always refer to participation in the sacraments, prayer and Christian formation.

Marriage and family life are paths of happiness and holiness through sacrificial and generous dedication to the will of God and others.

The teachings of the Rivelazione on the vocation to marriage are seen by St. Josemaría under a new light. This light, derived from the charism that God has given him, is, according to us, his greatest characteristic of originality.

Ora spetta a ciascun battezzato riconoscere la dignità della vocazione matrimoniale e collaborare nel mondo, ciascuno dal proprio posto.

The teaching of St. Josemaría, and his correspondence to the grace of God, has been highlighted by the Church, also with the canonization, which took place in Rome on October 6, 2002.

Analyzing his preaching, we can conclude that the divine call to strive to be holy through marriage and family life is a central message of St. Josemaría Escrivá.

The authorRafael de Mosteyrín Gordillo

Priest.

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Eduardo Calvo: "People of other faiths are happy that the Pope is coming."

Eduardo Calvo Sedano, originally from Palencia, is pastor of the parish of St. Joseph in Almaty (Kazakhstan) and Director of Diocesan Caritas. We spoke with him about the upcoming visit of Pope Francis to the country.

Aurora Diaz Soloaga-September 9, 2022-Reading time: 4 minutes

Pope Francis has accepted the invitation of the country's president, Kasym-Jomart Tokaev to attend the VII World and Traditional Religions Congresss, in the city of Nur-Sultan. We interviewed Eduardo Calvo, a Spanish priest working in the Asian country.

Kazakhstan awaits the second visit of a Pope: after the experience of John Paul II's visit in 2001, how is the young Church preparing now?

-With joy and enthusiasm. It is a stimulus for all of us in our faith. We live in an environment of great religious indifference, where the Christian religion is a minority. The majority of Christians are of Orthodox tradition and many people hardly know what it means to be Catholic. The Pope's visit helps us all to see that our faith is alive, that it is "catholic" (international). It also reminds us that the Catholic faith is part of the religious roots of this land, where there have been Catholics since the first centuries of the Church's history, before the appearance of Islam.

Is the visit of a religious leader such as the Pope well accepted in a multicultural society?

-Totally. Moreover, I dare to say that, in general terms, it is not only accepted, but also loved and desired. There are many people of other faiths who are happy that a person of the Pope's worldwide transcendence is coming to the country.

Kazakhstan is a very tolerant and diverse country. People are used, since childhood, to coexist and relate very naturally with people of other nationalities and other faiths. Here it is normal that people from different cultures are friends and are not even aware that this diversity could have been an obstacle in their lives to be united and relate with cordiality. After all, we are human beings... in substance we are the same: we seek to love and to be loved, we like to walk and laugh, we have similar problems, we live in the same environment...

How is the country recovering after the unrest in its main city, Almaty, in January of this year? Could the climate of insecurity that prevailed at that time affect the Pope's visit?

-The feeling of those of us who are here is that "the page has been turned". Those incidents endangered our coexistence and, I would dare say, also our democracy. They are part of the past and we have returned to ordinary life, with its lights and shadows. Every country has its pluses and minuses. It hurts me to hear sometimes in Spain comments made with an air of superiority, looking at Central Asian countries (such as Kazakhstan), as if they were "second class" countries, inferior not only economically or politically, but also morally or socially... I think it is deeply unfair and far from the truth.

The current situation is peaceful. The Pope's visit is also a gift for non-Catholics, an encouragement. His visit reminds us that he loves us and takes us into consideration.

The Pope has canceled other recent trips for health reasons, yet he wanted to keep this trip, which he described as "calm" on his return trip from Canada. Do you see other reasons why the Pope has been able to keep this trip on his schedule?

-The reason, I believe, is your desire to dialogue with other Christian confessions and with people of other faiths, to deepen the much we have in common and the need to live together as brothers and sisters, belonging to the same family. In this sense, your intention to participate in this world meeting of religious leaders is understandable. Today, it seems to me that it is vitally important to join forces to combat religious radicalism and promote peace.

What vision of the Church in Asia can the Kazakhstan community bring to the Pope?

-I think the Pope is quite aware of the situation we live in. He knows about our difficulties and our dreams. We can bring him our affection, with a greater physical closeness. We can share with him our prayers and our desire for this Church in minority to grow, to proclaim the Gospel, to be devoted to others, to prosper not only economically but also spiritually... The Catholic Church here is alive and growing. Thanks be to God, many Christians here are not foreigners, but local people and many of them have come to the faith through the witness of other Catholics and not through family tradition.

There has been talk of the strategic importance of this visit of the Pope to Kazakhstan at this time, considering the country's links with the Slavic world and the significant presence of Russian and Ukrainian populations living there. Do you think that this trip could contribute something to the process of pacification of the nearby conflict in Ukraine?

-The Holy Father wants to be very close to those who suffer. The conflict in Ukraine is of a global order. I have no doubt that he is doing what he can to defuse the situation. Kazakhstan, because it is situated on neutral territory, because of its open character and because of the presence in the country of people of all nations, I think it is a good place for the Catholic Church, with the Pope at its head, ask the whole world to reign in peace and love.

The authorAurora Diaz Soloaga

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ColumnistsJavier Segura

Hand in hand with Maria, with an eye on Lisbon

The journey of the Virgin Mary to Aim-Karim to help her cousin Elizabeth is the background of the next Youth Day in Lisbon 2023. From this proposal we can draw some items that can help us when designing a pastoral and educational project for this course.

September 9, 2022-Reading time: 3 minutes

This academic year will undoubtedly be marked ecclesially by the celebration of World Youth Day, convoked by Pope Francis in Lisbon. The motto chosen by the successor of Peter on this occasion is "Mary arose and departed without delay" (Lk 1:39). With this, Francis proposes to the young people the attitude of the Virgin Mary as a model to follow when, upon learning that her cousin Elizabeth was pregnant, she hurried to the mountain to help her.

This ecclesial event that we will live from August 1 to 6, 2023, we have to prepare it as well as possible if we want it to bear maximum fruit. We have a whole year to do so. And the Pope points out a path to follow for all the educators who accompany the young people on this pilgrimage to the Portuguese capital: to propose the model of the young Mary on her journey to Ain-Karim, the village where her relative lived.

There are several milestones that we can take into account when planning an educational journey that prepares the hearts of young people for the great experience of the summer. The model of that girl who has just received the news that she would be the mother of God and her vital attitudes will undoubtedly be the best reference that we can propose and cultivate among our young people. I would like to point out some items that can help us when designing a pastoral and educational project for this course.

Self-forgetfulness

Mary receives the angel's announcement that she was the woman chosen to be the mother of the messiah, but she does not remain self-absorbed, but forgets herself and is attentive to what her cousin needs. This self-forgetfulness is a great proposal, clearly against the current, boldly revolutionary. It will be like background music all year long. Forget ourselves, stop navel-gazing, look up and discover the needs of others.

Left in a hurry

Without delay, Maria goes to help her cousin. She doesn't dwell on abstract approaches, on ethereal or sentimental commitments, but gets down to work. We must encourage young people to jump off the couch, to detach themselves from the screen, to seriously engage with reality. And to do so by overcoming the laziness that always drags us to the most comfortable things. The road to Lisbon must be concretized in actions of help to others that take us out of our comfort and laziness. We must help our young people to concretize and put into action their desire to give themselves to others.

The revolution of joy

As soon as Mary entered Elizabeth's house, the child she carried in her womb leaped for joy. Elizabeth intones a praise to Mary, whose unexpected visit fills the whole house with joy and gladness. And Mary herself breaks into song singing the Magnificat. Mary carries the revolution of joy wherever she goes. Our journey to Lisbon must be marked by that joy that is born of giving oneself to others. And it must materialize in a culture that brings a smile to our lips, that banishes complaint from our hearts, that becomes welcome and tenderness. Joy must be a hallmark of the Christian, as Pope Francis has been asking us since the beginning of his pontificate.

With Jesus in the womb

And a final milestone on this journey is to actualize the presence of Jesus in our lives. Mary carried him in her womb all this time. That is the motor of her life, that is the cause of the joy that overflows. With her, along the roads of Palestine, the first Corpus Christi procession takes place. To live from Christ, especially in the sacrament of the Eucharist, and to bring him to others, are also two milestones that we can set on our way to WYD. Taking care of our Eucharistic celebrations and carrying out in group some evangelizing action that helps others to meet Jesus will make us enter the school of Mary.

May we prepare well for this transcendental event and take advantage of this opportunity so propitious for evangelization that Pope Francis is offering us. And, by the way, it is so close to us this time, what a gift!

The authorJavier Segura

Teaching Delegate in the Diocese of Getafe since the 2010-2011 academic year, he has previously exercised this service in the Archbishopric of Pamplona and Tudela, for seven years (2003-2009). He currently combines this work with his dedication to youth ministry directing the Public Association of the Faithful 'Milicia de Santa Maria' and the educational association 'VEN Y VERÁS. EDUCATION', of which he is President.

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Pope's teachings

On the meaning and value of old age

In August, the Pope concluded his eighteen catecheses on old age, begun on February 23, after the catechesis on St. Joseph. Francis offers us lessons in humanity and Christian anthropology.

Ramiro Pellitero-September 9, 2022-Reading time: 8 minutes

In these catecheses, the Pope presents old age as a gift that is important to protect and educate, so that we know how to welcome and care for it, so that the human and Christian mission of the elderly may shine forth.

Old age as a gift and a blessing

He began by placing old age in the unitary framework of the protagonist ages of life. Today, the elderly are more numerous than at other times in history, and at the same time they have been at greater risk of being discarded since the last century: "The exaltation of youth as the only age worthy of embodying the human ideal, combined with contempt for old age seen as frailty, degradation or invalidity, was the dominant mark of the totalitarianisms of the 20th century." (General Audience, 23-II-2022). Today, in the dominant culture, the elderly are undervalued in their spiritual quality, their sense of community, their maturity and wisdom. And this, in the eyes of the Pope, implies a "emptiness of thought, imagination, creativity".

"With these catecheses on old age." -she declared- "I would like to encourage everyone to invest thoughts and affections in the gifts she brings with her and for the other ages of life." (ibid.) The elderly are like the roots of the tree: the juice, if this "trickle" - so to speak - does not come from the roots, there will be no flowers or fruit (cf. ibid.).

Opportunity to make the world more humane

The Bible shows that human maturation and its spiritual quality requires a long time of initiation, of support between generations, of transmission of experiences, like a long "fermentation", of a dialogue between grandparents and children, which mark the extremes of the ages. But "the modern city tends to be hostile to the elderly (and not coincidentally to children as well)" (General Audience, 2-III-2022). Therefore, without dialogue between generations we have "a sterile society, with no future, a society that does not look at the horizon, but looks at itself." (ibid).

Old age, says Francis, can save the world, because it comes before the day of destruction. Let us recall the story of Noah and the flood, and the considerations of Jesus (cf. Lk 17:26-27). This can happen to us without being saved by robots. Jesus warns that, if we are concerned only with eating and drinking, and not with the fundamental questions of our life - spiritual quality, care for the common home, justice and love - we can become accustomed to corruption.

This is why Francis tells the elderly: "You have the responsibility to denounce the human corruption in which we live and in which continues that way of life of relativism, totally relative, as if everything were lawful. Go ahead. The world needs, needs strong young people, who will go forward, and wise old people." (ibid).

"Memory" and "testimony" of lived faithfulness

The Pope also looks at the so-called "Canticle of Moses," which is like the spiritual testament of the one who was the guide of the Chosen People (cf. Deut. 32ff.). A beautiful confession of faith, which transmits, as a precious inheritance, the memory of God's faithfulness to his People. Also our elders can reach that lucidity, that wisdom that comes from the years well spent; and therefore that capacity to deliver ("tradition") the sense of the passed history.

"In our culture." -Francisco observes, "so 'politically correct', this path is hindered in various ways: in the family, in society, in the Christian community itself. There are those who even propose abolishing the teaching of history, as superfluous information about worlds that are no longer current, which takes resources away from knowledge of the present. As if we were born yesterday!" (General Audience, 23-III-2022)

This is why the Pope points out: "It would be nice if in the catechesis plans there was also from the beginning the habit of listening, of the lived experience of the elderly."Thus they enter the "promised land" (the life of faith) that God prepares for each generation.

Protecting the elderly, educating in eldercare

Francis says that it is the duty of society to educate everyone to honor the elderly (cf. General Audience 20-IV-2022). The Bible condenses this duty when it commands us to "honor father and mother," suggesting a broader interpretation. But we often fail in this duty. "Honor is lacking when overconfidence, instead of manifesting itself as delicacy and affection, tenderness and respect, becomes rudeness and prevarication. When weakness is reproached, and even punished, as if it were a fault. When bewilderment and confusion become an occasion for mockery and aggression." (ibid).

This - warns Peter's successor - opens the way, in society, to unimaginable excesses.

The bridge between the young and the old

The Pope has insisted that the "covenant between generations" be fostered in order to open up the future (cf. General Audience, 27 April 2022). He relies on the book of Ruth, which he considers complementary to the Song of Songs in explaining the value of nuptial love, in that it celebrates the power, poetry and strength of love, which can be found in the bonds of family and kinship.

Taking his cue from another biblical story, that of the old man Eleazar (cf. 2 M, 18 ff.), Francis explains how the fidelity of old age shows the "honor" that we owe to the faith, and that we give it when we live it to the end, even when we have to go against the tide (cf. General Audience, May 4, 2022).

Opposing the Gnostic position (a purely theoretical and spiritualistic faith, which is not "tainted" by life and has no influence on society), Francis declares that "the practice of faith is not the symbol of our weakness, but the sign of its strength." (ibid.).

And so: "We will demonstrate, in all humility and firmness, precisely in our old age, that believing is not something 'for old people,' but something vital. Believe in the Holy Spirit, who makes all things new, and he will gladly help us.". Living faith is the heritage of old age.

The generosity of the elderly is the fruit and guarantee of an admirable youth.

From the biblical figure of Judith - a heroine who saves her people through the strength and courage of her love - Francis draws other important lessons (cf. General Audience, May 11, 2022).

"Little ones learn the strength of tenderness and respect for fragility: irreplaceable lessons, which with grandparents are easier to impart and receive. Grandparents, for their part, learn that tenderness and fragility are not only signs of decadence: for the young, they are passages that make the future human."

The book of Job teaches that old age can overcome trials - pandemics, diseases, wars - with faith, and thus open up hope for all (cf. General Audience, "The Book of Job")., 18-V-2022). In the face of the serious trials that God allows, and the apparent "silence" of God, Job does not shrink back and manifests his faith: "I know that my redeemer lives, and that at last he will rise above the dust: after my skin is torn off, no longer fleshless, I shall see God. I myself shall see him, and no other; my own eyes shall see him." (19, 25-27).

Love of justice, prayer and "magisterium of fragility".

The Pope also turns to the book of Ecclesiastes or Ecclesiastes. There he teaches how to overcome the disenchantment that comes with old age ("all is vanity"), with a passion for justice; and this is a sign of faith, hope and love (cf., 25-V-2022). Instead of cynicism and lukewarmness (acedia), which combine knowledge and irresponsibility, a successful old age becomes an antidote to disappointment, skepticism and paralyzing discouragement.

This requires prayer. Taking his cue from Psalm 71, Francis points out some characteristics that prayer in old age should have. "We are all tempted to hide our vulnerability, to hide our illness, our age and our old age, because we fear that they are the prelude to our loss of dignity." (General Audience, 1-VI-2022).

The old man rediscovers prayer and testifies to its power. "The elderly, by their weakness, can teach those who live other ages of life that we all need to abandon ourselves to the Lord, to invoke his help. In that sense, we all need to learn from old age: yes, there is a gift in being old understood as abandoning oneself to the care of others, beginning with God himself." (Ibid).

This gives rise to a "magisterium of fragility".not to hide the weaknesses of old age is a lesson of the elderly for everyone.

The human and Christian mission of the elderly

In the Gospel of John, Nicodemus asks Jesus: "How can one be born already old?" (Jn 3:4). And Jesus explains that old age is an opportunity to be spiritually reborn and to bring a message of future, mercy and wisdom (cf. General Audience, June 8, 2022).

Today, says the Pope, "old age is a special time to dissolve the future of the technocratic illusion of biological and robotic survival, but above all because it opens up to the tenderness of the creative and generative womb of God." (ibid.).

And so he teaches: "The old are the messengers of the future, the old are the messengers of tenderness, the old are the messengers of the wisdom of a life lived." (ibid.).

School of acceptance and service

From the account of the healing of Simon's mother-in-law (cf. Mk 1:29-31), Francis considers: "When you are old, you no longer command your body. It is necessary to learn to accept one's limits, what we can no longer do." (cfr. General Audience 15-VI-2022: "I have to go with a cane now, too.").

Pedro's mother-in-law "he arose and began to serve them." Says the Pope: "Elders who preserve the disposition for healing, consolation, intercession for their brothers and sisters - be they disciples, be they centurions, persons troubled by evil spirits, discarded persons...-, are perhaps the highest testimony of purity of that gratitude which accompanies faith.". All this, she notes, is not exclusive to women. But women can teach men about gratitude and the tenderness of faith, which is sometimes harder for them to understand.

In the dialogue between the risen Jesus and Peter at the end of John's Gospel (21:15-23, cf. General Audience 22-VI-2022), Francis also finds grounds for advising the elderly:

"You must be a witness for Jesus even in weakness, in sickness and in death.". Moreover, the Lord always speaks to us according to our age. And our following must learn to allow ourselves to be instructed and shaped by our own frailty, our helplessness, our dependence on others, even in our clothing, in our gait".

Spiritual life is what gives us that strength and wisdom to knowing how to say goodbye with a smile: "A joyful farewell: I have lived my life, I have kept my faith.".

It is up to others, especially the young, to help the elders to live and express this wisdom, and to know how to receive it.

Time to bear witness to the life that no longer dies

In the same vein, near the end of the catechesis, the Pope invites us to reread Jesus' farewell (cf. Jn 14): "When I have gone away and prepared a place for you, I will come again and receive you to myself, that where I am, there you may be also." (14, 3).

Peter's successor affirms: "The time of life on earth is the grace of that passage. The presumption to stop time-to want eternal youth, unlimited well-being, absolute power-is not only impossible, it is delusional." (cf. General Audience, 10-VIII-2022).

Here below, life is initiation, imperfection on the way to a fuller life. And Francis takes the opportunity to say that, to our preaching, where beatitude, light and love abound, "maybe it lacks a little life".

In connection with this is the Pope's original catechesis on the "white-haired old man" which appears in the book of Daniel (7:9; cf. General Audience, 17-VIII-2022). This is how God the Father is usually represented. But this," Francis observes "it's not a silly symbol" that should be demystified. It is a symbol of an eternal existence, of the eternity of God, always old and always new, with his strength and his closeness; "because God always surprises us with his newness, he always comes out to meet us, every day in a special way, for that moment, for us.".

Francis brought his catechesis on old age to a close by contemplating the mystery of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary (cf. General Audience, 24-VIII-2022). In the West," he recalled, "we contemplate her elevated on high, wrapped in glorious light; in the East she is represented lying down, asleep, surrounded by the Apostles in prayer, while the Risen One carries her in his hands like a child. The Pope indicates that the connection of the Assumption of the Virgin with the Resurrection of the Lord, to which our own is linked, should be emphasized.

Mary precedes us in her assumption into heaven, also as a figure of the Church, which will be in the end: the extension of the risen body of Christ, made family. Jesus speaks of this - of the full life that awaits us in the Kingdom of heaven - with various images: the wedding feast, the feast with friends, the rich harvest, the fruit that comes, not without pain.

From all this and for the good of others," Francis proposed, including himself in the group, "we, the elderly, must be the seed, the light and also the restlessness of that fullness of life that awaits us.

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Photo Gallery

The Nativity of the Virgin Mary in Art

The Catholic Church celebrates, every September 8, the feast of the Nativity of the Virgin Mary. A motif picked up by artists such as this work by Andrea di Bartolo from the 15th century.

Maria José Atienza-September 8, 2022-Reading time: < 1 minute

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In difficult times: solidarity, memory and hope

Cardinal Parolin explains how to unite societies in the face of polarization

The speech of the Secretary of State of the Holy See, Cardinal Parolin, at the International Conference on Cohesive Societies (ICCS) offers several clues to avoid polarization.

Antonino Piccione-September 8, 2022-Reading time: 2 minutes

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Translation of the article into Italian

"Solidarity means overcoming the harmful consequences of selfishness to give way to the value of listening gestures. In this sense, solidarity is a means of creating history." This is one of the key passages of the address that Cardinal Pietro Parolin, Secretary of State of the Holy See, delivered from a distance at the International Conference on Cohesive Societies (ICCS), which opened today in Singapore.

A cohesive society is so, he said, if it pursues the goal of forming individuals capable of relating to one another and transcending the individualism of the self to embrace the diversity of the we. According to Parolin, to achieve the goal of a cohesive and caring society we must be promoters and co-responsible for solidarity; build solidarity by focusing on the talent, commitment and leadership of young people; solidarity to create welcoming cities, that is, "rich in humanity and hospitable, to the extent that we are able to care for and listen to those in need; and if we are able to engage constructively and cooperatively for the good of all."

The cardinal also insisted on the need to take on the problems of others and the importance of closeness and generosity in getting involved in caring for others. In this way solidarity will leave its mark on history.

From polarization to cohesion

These are the keys to addressing the risk factors of a cohesive society, where cohesion goes beyond racial and religious harmony, and also encompasses migration and multiculturalism, social and economic inequality, the digital divide and intergenerational relations. These issues affect resilience and solidarity among individuals and communities, according to Professor Lily Kong, Chair of the Singapore Management University.

The Conference is organized at the Raffles City Convention Center by the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies and with the support of the Ministry of Culture, Community and Youth of the country. Rajaratnam School of International Studies and with the support of the Ministry of Culture, Community and Youth of the Asian country. Under the theme "Secure Identities, Connected Communities," the three-day event, opened by Singapore President Halimah Yacob, brings together more than 800 delegates from over 40 countries around three key pillars: faith, identity and cohesion.

Planned sessions

Three plenary sessions have been scheduled: the first one is dedicated to "How faith can bridge divides", with the aim of investigating the reasons for the increase and persistence of the "faith-based social polarization due to ideological beliefs or nuns. Promoting peace and interreligious dialogue. The second plenary session focuses on "Harnessing Diversity for the Common Good". The idea is to focus on tools and concepts for understanding a world marked by "superdiversity", i.e. the existence of highly complex and heterogeneous societies, in the hope of fostering authentic links, albeit from different positions and readings, for the common good.

Finally, the session "How technology can be harnessed to promote mutual trust": digital platforms can create echo chambers for divisive purposes, to the detriment of social cohesion. The aim is to show how online platforms can be beacons of cohesion and hope, rather than vectors of division and hatred.

The authorAntonino Piccione

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In difficult times: solidarity, memory and hope

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Kazakhstan. Pope visits a growing Church

The Holy Father will travel to Kazakhstan to take part in the VIIth Congress of Leaders of World and Traditional Religions. Aurora Díaz has been living in the country for fifteen years and from her hand we approach the idiosyncrasy of a land halfway between east and west.

Aurora Diaz Soloaga-September 8, 2022-Reading time: 5 minutes

Kazakhstan, in the heart of Central Asia, is a mosaic of peoples: of ethnicities, languages and religions. A cultural welter that has managed to preserve and promote harmony through a history forged on the banks of the Silk Road, nomadic tribes and the reception of deportees during the Soviet regime.

Kazakhstan, after its independence in 1991 when the Soviet Union collapsed, is today a sovereign country of immense steppes, multiple mineral resources, a small population (barely 19 million inhabitants) for the enormous extension that makes it the ninth largest country in the world (2,750,000 square kilometers: five times larger than Spain). It is also the country chosen by Pope Francis for his next trip, on the occasion of the VIIth Congress of Leaders of World and Traditional Religionsto be held in Nur-Sultan, the young capital of the country, on September 14 and 15, 2022.

The Pope's trip, the second that a Roman Pontiff has made to the country (John Paul II visited in 2001), will also be an opportunity to meet with the young Church that is growing in the country. A Church with a chequered and uneven history, but which goes back many centuries, to the point of being considered one of the traditional religions in the country.

The first probable presence dates back to the end of the ancient age (3rd century), as a result of the commercial and cultural movements brought about by the Silk Road. Several centuries later, Franciscan and Dominican missionaries, taking advantage of the heyday of the Silk Road, arrived in these lands in the 13th century: they cared for Christians who had kept the faith, spread the Gospel, and built monasteries. The fury of Genghis Khan, lord and master of the steppes in those years, nevertheless granted a certain religious tolerance to the peoples he conquered. These were years of conversions and of the first diplomatic relations between the Holy See, Genghis Khan and other rulers of the Central Asian states, even establishing a certain canonical structure: the first known bishop in the area dates back to 1278. However, in those years of intense Islamic growth, the hordes of Khan Ali overthrew the previous rulers, destroyed the monastery of Almalik in 1342, and martyred the Franciscan bishop Richard of Burgundy, along with five other Franciscans and a Latin merchant (all of whom are now in the process of beatification).

Modern martyrs

Once again, Tertullian's old adage that states. "the blood of the martyrs is the seed of Christians". is fulfilled again, although it has been necessary to wait several centuries: until the middle of the 20th century. Ironically, the providential instrument for that seed to bear fruit was Josef Stalin, and his deportation orders, which populated the deserted steppes with groups of Europeans, often Catholics: Poles, Germans, Ukrainians or Lithuanians... Some of those first deportees died trying to master the harsh climatic conditions of the area. But others survived and came to call these lands their homeland, thanks also to the hospitality and compassion of the primitive inhabitants of this area: the Kazakhs. During the Stalinist era, even at the risk of their safety, many of these Kazakhs fed or sheltered the deportees, sharing their fate.

With the dissolution of the USSR, modern Kazakhstan achieved independence in 1991 and established diplomatic relations with the Holy See in 1992. This marked the beginning of a time of freedom for the faithful of various confessions. Little by little, this Church, which emerged from a thousand difficulties and which brought together so many nationalities, was able to structure its work and the care of Catholics scattered throughout the vast expanse of the country. Today there are three dioceses: that of St. Mary in Astana, that of the Holy Trinity in Almaty, and the diocese of Karaganda. There is also an Apostolic Administration in the west of the country, in Atyrau. There are 108 churches throughout the country, serving a total of approximately 182,000 Catholics: about 1 % of the population. It is therefore the second largest Christian minority, after the Orthodox Church, in a country with a Muslim majority. Although Catholics often belong to families with European roots (Poles, Germans, Ukrainians or Lithuanians), the Church is gradually taking root in these lands with the conversion of people of various ethnicities (including Kazakhs). Every Easter, it is common to attend baptisms in the main cathedrals of the country.

Reasons for optimism

Although the numbers are small, the reasons for hope for this young Church are multiple: relations with the country's government are cordial and they seek collaboration in the field of peace building. The Catholic Church has been present in each of the editions of the Congress of Leaders of World and Traditional ReligionsThe first religious harmony and mutual respect between faiths was promoted by the country's first president, Nursultan Nazarvayev, in 2003. As has been emphasized since the beginning of modern Kazakhstan in 1991, one of the guarantees of peace in the country has been precisely religious harmony and mutual respect between faiths. Coexistence and common work with other confessions, in fields such as assistance to the family institution, ecumenical dialogue and education in values, is one of the guarantees to avoid a drift towards radical Islamism.

In the three dioceses and the apostolic administration, of gigantic extension, there is a calm but steady growth: new churches are opened and baptisms take place every year, thanks to the often self-sacrificing work of diocesan priests from various countries of Europe, Latin America and Asia. The religious orders present in the country guarantee a core of vocational diversity, which facilitates the growth of local vocations throughout the country. The twinning with the Greek Catholic community is also particularly close, as a clear sign of communion in such a mission and peripheral area.

In Karaganda, a city in the center of the country, is located the Central Asian Seminary, with aspirants to the priesthood coming from all over the area, such as Armenia, Georgia and other countries. In the same city, the Cathedral of Our Lady of Fatima, consecrated in 2012, commemorates the victims of what was one of the largest centers of persecution of the communist regime, the correctional complex "Karlag" (by its initials "KARagandinskiy LAGer-Karaganda camp") in which priests and lay Catholics suffered and died, as well as faithful of other religious confessions. The cathedral is thus considered a center of reconciliation and diffusion of spirituality and culture, also facilitated by concerts of the magnificent organ installed there (a particularly lucid way of spreading the beauty of the faith, considering the multi-religious environment of the country). Karaganda hosts, together with the Astana diocese, the majority of the Catholics in the country, due to the greatest concentration of deportees that took place in that northern area. In fact, in this second city lived and died key figures for the current flourishing of the Church, such as Blessed Bukovinskiy, Aleksey Zaritsky and others.

The faithful of the Church in Kazakhstan are eagerly awaiting the Pope's visit. As Francis himself remarked during his last visit ad limina of 2019, it is time to rejoice with the small herbs that grow in this land of steppes, harmony and peaceful coexistence. The Pope's visit to this missionary periphery will undoubtedly be very fruitful. The whole country joins in the welcome that the current president of the country Kasym-Jomart Tokaev, initiator of the official invitation to the Pope, is preparing with care and respect.

The authorAurora Diaz Soloaga

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ColumnistsCelso Morga

Faith

Unlike other religions, in which the image of the founder fades and fades with time, in the Christian religion faith is always directed directly to the living Jesus.

September 8, 2022-Reading time: 3 minutes

I would like to begin this new course by inviting you to meditate on faith. The Letter to the Hebrews defines faith as "the assurance of things hoped for; the proof of things not seen" (Heb 11:1). It goes on to present as examples of faith "our elders": Abel, Enoch, Noah; above all, it presents Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Jacob, Moses, Joshua, Gideon (....), David, Samuel and the prophets. In faith they all died without having attained the object of the promise.

And what is the promise? The promise is our Lord Jesus Christ. In Him we know what is the hope to which we have been called; what is the riches of the glory bestowed by Him as an inheritance on the saints (cf. Eph 1:16-19).

Our faith in Jesus Christ is not an act of purely natural knowledge; it is not a merely rational conclusion that can be deduced from scientific, historical, philosophical premises....

Our faith is certainly not irrational, but it is not purely rational either; if it were purely rational it would be exclusively reserved for the intelligent, the "smart", those who study....

Faith involves the understanding, but also the will, which is always attracted by the good and, even more, by the supreme good, which is God. Our reason sees Christ as a man who can be believed (Jn 8:46); no one has been able to accuse him of sin (Jn 8:46); he works miracles that testify to the truth of what he says (cf. Jn 3:2) and our will, feelings and affections are attracted by his truthfulness, his goodness, his affability... His whole person is tremendously attractive to the point that "the world goes after him" (Jn 12:19).

However, all this is not sufficient for the act of faith. To be able to make the confession of St. Peter: "You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God" (Mt 16:16) is grace, it is a gift of God, it is not the fruit of our reason or our will. And this great gift of God comes to us in the Church and through the Church; and in the Church, through apostolic succession. "Through apostolic succession, time is dead; in apostolic preaching there is no yesterday, no tomorrow; only today" (K. Adam).

In the Christian religion, the person of the Founder himself is the object of faith; he is the integral background of faith. Unlike other religions, in which the image of the Founder fades and fades with time, in the Christian religion faith is always directed directly to the living Jesus.

The Church always confesses: "I myself have seen Jesus; I myself have heard him and hear him preach; I see him risen; I deal with him as a living and present person".

For this reason the Gospels are a living letter; if it were not for the Church, the living Body of Christ, the Gospels would be a dead letter. "Without Scripture, we would be deprived of the genuine form of Jesus' discourses; we would not know how the Son of God spoke, but, without (apostolic) tradition, we would not know who it was that spoke and our joy in what he said would likewise disappear" (Mohler).

When a dying person in the Church prays with faith: "Jesus, I trust in You", the same confession of Peter beats in his heart and on his lips: "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God" (Mt 16:16) and that of Stephen: "I see the heavens opened and the Son of man standing at the right hand of God" (Acts 7:56).

That dying man or woman will look at the priest, who is probably in front of him or her, and the priest at the bishop, and the bishop at the Episcopal College and its Head, the successor of Peter in Rome. By apostolic succession, Christ is as close to us as he was to Peter. It is pure actuality!

The authorCelso Morga

Archbishop emeritus of the Diocese of Mérida Badajoz

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Sunday Readings

The joy of finding the one who was lost. XXIV Sunday in Ordinary Time (C)

Andrea Mardegan comments on the readings for the 24th Sunday in Ordinary Time and Luis Herrera offers a short video homily.

Andrea Mardegan-September 7, 2022-Reading time: 2 minutes

Hearing again the Exodus account of the perversion of the people of Israel, who had made themselves a molten metal calf to worship, the same people had the opportunity to remember how their privileged position as God's people depended on God's free choice, and on God forgiving their sins before even expecting their repentance, and certainly not because of their exemplary behavior in comparison with that of other peoples.

It is certainly suggestive how in this passage the Bible expresses itself anthropomorphically as if there had been a path of repentance in God, favored by the intercession of Moses. In this way, God even sets himself, before his people, as an example of repentance, of change of way of thinking and acting, thus suggesting to his people to act in the same way, to forgive to
To be like God who forgives. To be faithful in love in spite of the possible betrayals of the loved one. Moses himself, who reminds God of his promises and oaths, is the protagonist of a story of God's forgiveness: despite the slaughter of the Egyptian, and the decades of flight in the desert, God called him to liberate his people.

Paul had the same experience: God chose him to be His apostle and to take the Gospel to the nations, even though he was "blasphemous, persecuting and violent."as he reminds his disciple Timothy.

God is like this, and Jesus seeks every occasion to reaffirm this in an environment such as his, in which Pharisees and scribes, for whom "sinners" were a category of people defined by them according to their behavior, thought they should be judged and condemned, distancing them and not maintaining any relationship with them. Instead, Jesus welcomes them and eats with them. They "murmur", like the people in the desert who protested to God, and so they become the sinners God tries to save, telling them parables about God's mercy.

The behavior he proposes to them is surely disconcerting: to leave the ninety-nine sheep, not in a safe place, but in the desert, to go and look for the one lost one. And then not to return for them, but to go and celebrate a feast with friends. The dimension of the search for what was lost runs through the three words of Jesus: to go in search of the lost sheep, to look carefully for the lost coin, to scan the horizon.
waiting for the son who has wandered away, going out of the house to recover the one who was inside the house but because of his hardness of heart had been left out of the feast of forgiveness, with the joy of the son and of the reunited brother. The joy of heaven, the joy of the angels, the joy of God, the joy that spreads among friends give the whole journey of repentance and forgiveness a dimension of exultation that encourages everyone to walk this path, that of asking for forgiveness and giving mercy.

The homily on the readings of Sunday 24th Sunday

The priest Luis Herrera Campo offers its nanomiliaa small one-minute reflection for these readings.

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Pope Francis begins catechesis on discernment

"God works through non-programmable events, 'that' by chance this has happened to me," says Pope Francis.

Pope Francis continued his catechesis on discernment. On this second occasion he took the example of an episode in the life of St. Ignatius of Loyola.

Javier García Herrería-September 7, 2022-Reading time: 4 minutes

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The catechesis of the Pope Francis reflected on the workings of providence in ordinary life. The hand of God is hidden behind the apparent casualness that encloses a multitude of daily actions.

After being wounded in the leg in the defense of the city of Pamplona, he was convalescent for several months. Lacking screens that could entertain him during the hours of prostration, he could only turn to reading as a means of entertainment and escape. For this reason, he asked his relatives for books of chivalry, of which he was very fond, but as there were only religious books in the house, he had to be satisfied with this genre. Thanks to this situation, he began to learn more about the life of Christ and the saints.

Pope Francis, the spiritual son of St. Ignatius, commented on how the founder of the Jesuits "was fascinated by the figures of St. Francis and St. Dominic and felt the desire to imitate them. But the chivalrous world also continues to exercise its fascination on him. And so he feels within himself this alternation of thoughts, those of chivalry and those of the saints, which seem to be equivalent.

"But Ignatius also began to notice the differences," the Pope continued. "In his autobiography - in the third person - he writes: 'When he thought of the world - and of chivalrous things, it is understood - he took great delight; but when after he was tired he left it, he was dry and discontented; and when in going to Jerusalem barefoot, and in eating nothing but herbs, and in doing all the other rigors that the saints should have done; he was not only consoled when he was in such thoughts, but even after leaving it, he was content and joyful' (n. 8). 8), they left him a trace of joy".

Francis explains the action of grace

Glossing on this story, the Holy Father underlined the contrast between the emptiness left in the human heart by certain desires that are presented in an extremely attractive way and the things of God, which may not be very appealing but then do fill the human being. Something like this happens to St. Ignatius when he is saddened by the religious literature offered to him.

The Pope quoted a famous text from the "Spiritual Exercises" of St. Ignatius in which he explains the devil's different ways with better and worse people: "In persons who go from mortal sin to mortal sin, it is commonly customary for the enemy to propose apparent pleasures to them, to reassure them that everything is going well, making them imagine delights and pleasures of the senses, in order to preserve them and make them grow more in their vices and sins; in such persons the good spirit acts in the opposite way, pricking and pricking their conscience by the right judgment of reason" ("Spiritual Exercises," 314).

Listening to the heart

"Ignatius, when he was wounded in his father's house, was not thinking precisely about God or about how to reform his life, no. He had his first experience of God by listening to his own heart, which showed him a curious inversion: things that at first sight were attractive left him disappointed and in other, less brilliant things, he felt a peace that lasted for a long time. We also have this experience, many times we start to think one thing and we stay there and then we are disappointed (...). This is what we have to learn: to listen to our own heart".

But listening to the voice of the heart is not easy, not least because we are bombarded by so many stimuli. "We listen to the television, the radio, the cell phone," the Pope continued, "we are masters of listening, but I ask you: do you know how to listen to your heart? Do you stop to say: 'But how is my heart? Is it satisfied, is it sad, is it looking for something? To make good decisions it is necessary to listen to one's heart.

Appearance of causality

To prepare oneself to listen to one's inner voice, it is necessary to read the biographies of the saints. In them one can easily see God's way of acting in the lives of people, so that their example guides us in our daily decisions. By interiorizing the Gospel and the lives of the saints, one learns to see how "God works through non-programmable events, that by chance, by chance this happened to me, by chance I saw this person, by chance I saw this movie, it was not programmed, but God works through non-programmable events, and also in the setbacks: 'I had to take a walk and I had a problem with my feet, I can't....'. What is God saying to you? What is life saying to you there?" . Following this supernatural logic, the Pope advised the faithful to be "attentive to unexpected things".

It is in the unexpected events that God often speaks. "Is the Lord speaking to you or is the devil speaking to you? Someone is. But there is something for discernHow do I react to unexpected things? I was so calm at home and 'bang, bang', the mother-in-law arrives and how do you react with the mother-in-law? Is it love or is it something else inside? And you make the discernment. I was working in the office and a colleague comes to tell me that he needs money and how do you react? See what happens when we experience things we do not expect and there we learn to know our heart, how it moves. Discernment is the help to recognize the signs with which the Lord makes himself found in unforeseen situations, even unpleasant ones, as it was for Ignatius the wound in his leg".

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The Economy of Francesco or the opportunity to lead radical change

Assisi will host the participants of "Economy of Francis".

Rome Reports-September 7, 2022-Reading time: < 1 minute

Thousands of young people will meet in Assisi with Pope Francis as part of the project Francisco's Economy.

There, the Pope will listen to their proposals for the future and share his reflections on how the economy can build a more equitable society.

The project Francisco's Economyis inspired by the Pope's desire to involve young people in the renewal of the global economy.

AhNow you can enjoy a 20% discount on your subscription to Rome Reports Premiumthe international news agency specializing in the activities of the Pope and the Vatican.

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Signs for the Church in Germany

The German synodal path celebrates its fourth plenary assembly

From September 8 to 10, the Plenary of the Synodal Path will meet again in Frankfurt. The main proposals are in open opposition to the note of the Holy See sent in July, especially with regard to "new forms of government" of the dioceses, which are to be introduced.

José M. García Pelegrín-September 7, 2022-Reading time: 4 minutes

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From September 8 to 10, Frankfurt will once again host an international Plenary Assembly of the German Synodal Way. This will be the fourth, following those of January/February 2020, September/October 2021 and February 2002. It was originally planned to be the last, but already in February it was decided that a fifth and possibly last Plenary Assembly would be held at the beginning of 2023.

Regardless of the specific topics proposed to be addressed, which we refer to on the occasion of the previous assembly -The "Forum on Power and Separation of Powers in the Church" in Frankfurt is presenting a new "assessment" of homosexuality and Catholic sexual morality in general; optional" celibacy for the priesthood or the "opening" for women of all ministries in the Church-, in Frankfurt the so-called "Forum on Power and Separation of Powers in the Church" presents for its second reading, that is, for its "final vote", two proposals aimed at perpetuating the synodal path, to give it a permanent character or, in the words of a responsible of this Forum, "a leverage effect far beyond the synodal path".

The proposal "To consult and decide together" foresees a "synodal council of the diocese" in order to "discuss and decide together on all questions of diocesan importance". In short, the idea is that decisions relevant to the diocese would be made jointly by the bishop and this "democratically" elected council. In the event that the bishop does not "agree" with a decision taken by the council, the council may "oppose the bishop's vote by a two-thirds majority".

The warning to the synodal path

This is precisely the most explicit aspect that was criticized by a note from the Holy See last July. Here it was recalled that the synodal path "is not empowered to oblige the bishops and the faithful to adopt new forms of government". The note makes explicit that "it would not be admissible to introduce new structures or official doctrines in the dioceses before an agreement has been reached at the level of the universal Church". It remains to be seen how the 4th Assembly of the synodal journey will attempt to resolve this contradiction.

The same can be said of another of the texts proposed for approval by the Assembly, entitled "Strengthening Synodality in a Sustainable Way: A Synodal Council for the Catholic Church in Germany". Such a "Synodal Council" would not only have the task of advising "on essential developments in the Church and society," but it is proposed that it would have the capacity to make "fundamental decisions of supra-diocesan importance on pastoral planning, questions of the future and budgetary matters of the Church that are not decided at the diocesan level." Its composition would correspond to that of the Assembly of the Synodal Way and it would have a "permanent secretariat, which should be adequately staffed and financed."

Political categories

According to one of the leaders of the Forum, its function was to coordinate the work of the Bishops' Conference and the Central Committee of German Catholics. Implicitly, therefore, it is being stated that the Central Committee is given the same level of decision-making within the Church as the Bishops' Conference. This explains the discomfort, expressed on several occasions by representatives of the "Central Committee of German Catholics", that the Vatican only invites bishops and not lay people for talks. Apparently, the categories by which they are guided are those of a political nature: what they would like are "bilateral negotiations" between the Roman Curia and the German synodal path or council.

Another aspect that is being emphasized in the days leading up to the celebration of the 4th Assembly is that the synodal path "is not a special German path". Georg Bätzing (President of the Bishops' Conference) and Irme Stetter-Karp (President of the Central Committee of German Catholics). In a publication on "synodal processes of the universal Church", "comparable considerations, dynamics and questions in other countries and regions of the world" are being sought.

As reported by KNA ("Catholic News Agency"), Bätzing and Stetter-Karp conclude that "not only in Germany there is a demand for more transparency and power-sharing, for a more developed and better communicated sexual relationship and ethics, for a more open design for the future of priestly existence and for a more responsible and visible role of women in the Church."

Travel companions for the German synodal journey

Here seems to be the "answer" to the Holy See's July note: the German synodal path is looking for "fellow travelers" or even allies to emphasize that the issues discussed there also matter in "the universal Church", since "the universal Church is not simply the Vatican curia", in the words of a representative of the synodal path.

On the other hand, criticism of the synodal process continues: letters sent by bishops or by bishops' conferences, such as those of Northern Europe or Poland, as well as by associations of the faithful such as "New Beginnings" or "Mary 1.0", are joined by the criticisms of some theologians. Thus, the Swiss theologian Martin Grichting - former Vicar General of the Diocese of Chur - has recently published an article in the newspaper "Die Welt" with the title "You cannot vote on the substance of Christianity".

According to this theologian, the synodal path "imposes on the Church democratic structures that attack the substance of Christianity. It is not believed that the Church is something proper to Revelation, so it is left in the hands of people who have empowered themselves". With officials linked to politics and "social engineering" and with the majority of bishops "the Church has dethroned its King, Christ himself." According to Grichting, the synodal path "tacitly assumes that it is not the self-revealing God and thus the Gospel and the tradition of the Church that are decisive for the Church, but the contemporary, post-Christian worldview."

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ColumnistsMaria José Atienza

Humans without rights

The yellow stars have been replaced by the diagnosis of trisomy 21 but, ultimately, the result is the same: they are not considered people. They do not deserve to be shown, let alone shown happily.

September 7, 2022-Reading time: 2 minutes

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Translation of the article into English

That the European Court of Human Rights considers that to show that persons with disabilities have Down syndrome should not be shown happy and normal would be a bad joke in a dystopian world if it were not for the fact that it is real. It happened on September 1 of this year.

Indeed, this Court, which, according to its name and office, is the ultimate guardian of the fundamental rights of individuals, does not seem to consider human beings, or at least subjects of law, as human beings. down. The video in question is a marvel addressed to a future mother of a Down's child. The argument used by the Court of some human rights is that such an approach can make women who decided not to continue with the pregnancy feel guilty when they knew that the child could be born with this genetic alteration.

The history of this sentence is available at various sites well explained, so I will not dwell on it. It frightens me to see how an instance that was born - like several others, from the experience of the terrible world wars, in particular, from the terrible violations of human rights, exterminations and systematic massacres perpetrated by the Nazi ideology - is capable, a few decades later, of differentiating between people who deserve to be treated and shown as such and people who do not.

The yellow stars have been replaced by the diagnosis of trisomy 21 but, ultimately, the result is the same: they are not considered people. They do not deserve to be shown as those who do meet "their standards." They do not deserve to be happy. They cannot, following the argumentation of the French Audiovisual Council supported by the ECHR, remind us that we all have defects, even if we are not slant-eyed.

They must be prevented from remembering that a monochromatic and "free of the syndrome" society is not only a monochromatic and downThe "generation with the highest consumption of antidepressants, the highest suicide rate and the highest number of young people under 20 years of age who consider themselves to be unhappy.

It has taken us less than 100 years to return to restricted rights; to having those who decide who should and who should not live, who can or cannot be happy.

Today are the down those who cannot be happy, tomorrow it may be the deaf, the bald, those who are slightly overweight, or families with children or the terminally ill or those who take anxiolytics who cannot be happy because it is considered that it may make those without children or those who have depression feel guilty.

Just as in the past discrimination was based on skin color, accent or region of origin, today it is based on a - sometimes even erroneous - prenatal test.

Today, in a first world in which these people - who before often did not leave their homes - finish a career, work, live alone, compete worldwide in sports, are runway models or even help take care of their families, they want to put them back inside four walls for the fact that they are different. For the fact of showing that yes, the varied world is a richness, that they too, like you and me, make this world better.

The authorMaria José Atienza

Director of Omnes. Degree in Communication, with more than 15 years of experience in Church communication. She has collaborated in media such as COPE or RNE.

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Guest writersJuan Arana

Happy end

September 6, 2022-Reading time: 4 minutes

Three months ago, I finished my little reflection "Tumor fear"I was in a very low key situation, half out of fear of having overreacted and half because every sick person goes through successive good and bad stages, and at that moment I must have been in one of the first ones. The fact is that I turned out to be an accurate augur, because the operation went smoothly, I went through a postoperative period with more discomfort than pain or discomfort and, at the end of the process, the doctors declared me cured, with no other obligation than a minimum follow-up every few months.

Some drips (in the most literal sense of the term) have remained as a memory but, anyway, I would be ungrateful if I were not grateful to the entire health care team that got me out of trouble, to the family and friends who supported me tirelessly and, last but not least, to Divine Providence that in this case at least squeezed a little, but not drowned, giving me an extension to continue down here for a while.

Which reminds me of the story told about Walter Matthau, one of my favorite actors. Apparently he suffered from a heart condition and in the middle of a filming he had a heart attack. When he was discharged, the film crew greeted him expectantly. He came in with a broken face and said: "The doctor has given me three months to live...". After checking that he had achieved the desired effect, he added: "...but when he found out that I had no money to pay him, he gave me six more months".

Anyway, it's not a subject to get into a row about, although I have always found black humor preferable to tragedy... as long as it does not imply a denialist attitude towards the catastrophe which, whether we like it or not, is the inevitable outcome of every human existence. To definitively escape death there is no other alternative than religion, as all those who insist on attacking it (religion, it is understood, because there is no one who can fight death) know quite well.

And rightly so, because atheists, agnostics and indifferent people in general are not unaware that we believers are here to fight also for their immortality, and even for their good death, which is the only thing they confess to be concerned about. I am well aware that there are some torquemadas out there bent on increasing the list of those condemned to hell, but, according to my experience as an ordinary believer, if it were up to us, we would all go straight to heaven without anguish or death throes!

Let us return for a moment, however, to my past experience and its presumably happy outcome. Happy also because of the frank joy that many friends and even simple acquaintances expressed when I told them the good news. I had been a bit mouthy and made perhaps too many people aware of my "affair", causing more concern than necessary. So I had to be equally explicit when everything was resolved favorably, a penance that I have fulfilled with great pleasure.

However, more than once I have detected a slight note of mistrust in my interlocutors, a bit as if they were saying to themselves, "Is everything really in order? Could it really be a false negative?" I say "false negative" because in matters related to health, the desirable thing is that everything turns out to be negative, with the permission of van Gaal, that Dutch coach of Barcelona who always repeated: "You have to be positivvve, never negativvvve".

As I say, I detected a certain apprehension in the most worried of those close to me: with this cancer thing, you know. "You say you are doing very well, and I hope so. But we'll see how you go on in six months, or a year, or two..." Man, the truth: it all depends on how long the waiting period will be extended, because I suppose that if I survive thirty years, I will have reached more than a hundred and, unless there have been a few medical revolutions in between, I will be frankly knackered.

The only swords of Damocles that count are the ones that threaten to fall on you at any moment. And that's where we are. I confessed in my previous writing that I am as much of a hypochondriac as the next guy. I have surprised myself some nights when sleep takes a little longer than usual by saying to myself: "Well, if it were true that they have removed the root of my prostate cancer, who can assure me that I am not incubating another colon, lung or throat cancer? After all, one basket is a hundred baskets.

Maybe I should ask for a thorough check-up..." But, no, No, NO. If there are MRIs, CT scans, colonoscopies or whatever, let the primary care physician ask for them. Not me. As the Italians say (I will omit the ugly word): "Mangiare bene, ... forte e non avere paura della morte". We Spaniards are less expressionistic and put it this way: "A vivir, que son dos días!

Anyway and well thought out, something positive can be taken out of the false negatives. One of my favorite records (from when we had records) is a recital of Bach and Handel arias by the great artist Katheleen Ferrierdied of cancer at the age of 41. It was her last recording and I was impressed by the testimony of her record producer on the back of the cover:

During the afternoon session on the 8th, a telephone message was received from the hospital where Katheleen had recently undergone a medical examination. I never saw her looking more radiant than when, a few minutes later, she returned to the stage. "They say I'm perfectly all right, dear," she said in the Lancashire accent to which she reverted in moments of great joy or humor. She then sang "He Was Despised" with such beauty and simplicity that I believe it has never been and never will be surpassed.

On October 8, 1953, exactly one year after his last session, he died at University College Hospital.

And now comes the question: Did the doctor make a mistake in making the diagnosis, or did he piously mislead the patient, or did she simply not want to know what she was being told? Now, on second thought, does it really matter what the correct answer is? She could also have been hit by a bus leaving the recording studio, or any number of other possibilities. What really counts is that -whether she knew it or not- she said goodbye to life with a masterful and memorable interpretation of that beautiful aria from The Messiah, perhaps the greatest oratorio ever composed.

I believe that neither I nor almost anyone else will be able to climb a peak of similar height no matter how many years we live and no matter how hard we try. For the one thing that is certain is that, corroded as she was by illness, Katheleen never felt so alive or so close to fullness as she did for those few minutes, knowing how she knew she was perfectly well and could carry out in all simplicity and perfection what she had come into this world to do. So he did. I ask for no greater grace for myself or anyone else reading these lines. Time is the least of it.

The authorJuan Arana

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Translation of the article into English

The Order of Malta renews itself: new Constitutional Charter is promulgated

Following the crisis that originated in 2016 within the Order of Malta, Pope Francis has just promulgated the new constitution, while waiting for the General Chapter next January 2023 to confirm the normality of this long process.

Giovanni Tridente-September 6, 2022-Reading time: 5 minutes

The first phase of an intricate affair involving the historic and widespread Sovereign Military Hospitaller Order of St. John of Jerusalem, of Rhodes and of Malta (S.M.O.M.), known simply as the "Order of Malta" for several years, at least since 2016, has come to an end these days.

Pope Francis, in fact, with his own Decree that came into force on September 3, promulgated the new constitutional charter of the order and the corresponding Melitense Code, revoking at the same time the high offices and dissolving the Sovereign Council. The document is already available on the website of the organism.

Now begins the second phase that will lead the S.M.O.M. to an internal renewal that has taken at least seven years, and numerous vicissitudes, to identify the modalities with the new Constitution. The Pontiff himself has set January 25, 2023, feast of the Conversion of St. Paul, as the date for the Extraordinary General Chapter, which is to appoint the new leadership of the Order, including the Grand Master - vacant since 2020 following the death of Fra' Giacomo Dalla Torre del Tempio di Sanguinetto - according to a Regulation approved by the Pope.

In the meantime, a provisional Sovereign Council of 13 members has been constituted to assist the Pope's special delegate (Cardinal Silvano Maria Tomasi) and the Grand Master's lieutenant (Fra' John T. Dunlap), who is still in office, in the preparation of the General Chapter, which will be co-chaired by the latter.

The history of the Order

The Order of Malta has a secular history dating back to the first century of the second millennium. Since 1113 it has been recognized as a subject of international law and maintains diplomatic relations with more than 100 States, with the European Union and is a permanent observer at the United Nations.

It is a Catholic lay religious order operating in 120 countries, where it is mainly engaged in charitable, medical, social and humanitarian activities. It is organized into 11 Priories, 48 National Associations, 133 diplomatic missions, 33 relief corps and 1 international aid agency, in addition to managing numerous hospitals, medical centers and specialized foundations.

It was Pope Paschal II who officially recognized the monastic community of the "Opitalieri of St. John of Jerusalem" with the document Pie Postulatio Voluntatis, giving a weight of sovereignty and independence to that first monastic community that since half a century earlier (1048) had been caring for poor pilgrims in a hospital in Jerusalem, and transforming it into a lay religious order. The first leader and Grand Master was Blessed Fra' Gerard, a native of Scala, a few kilometers from Amalfi, in southern Italy.

The new Constitutional Charter incorporates the objectives of the Order, which refer mainly to the promotion of "the glory of God and the sanctification of its members" through the defense of the faith and attention to the poor and the suffering "in the service of the Holy Father". Its members are led "to be credible disciples of Christ" and the whole Order "bears witness to the Christian virtues of charity and fraternity".

The events of recent years

On several occasions, the Holy See has intervened with the Knights of Malta to affirm their identity and help them overcome crises, as Pope Francis reports in his latest decree. And this has also occurred during this pontificate, according to a series of vicissitudes that have represented an internal division of its members, which began with an initial defenestration of one of the previous grand chancellors (Albrecht Freiherr von Boeselager) in December 2016.

At that time, the patronage of the order was entrusted to Cardinal Raymond Leo Burke (appointed by Pope Francis on November 8, 2014), who had already been a member since 2011. The purpose of this position is to represent the Pontiff and promote the spiritual interests of the order, as well as to maintain relations with the Holy See. The Grand Master of the Order was Fra' Matthew Festing.

At this juncture, between the end of 2016 and the beginning of 2017, the first disagreements occurred, which would then lead in the following years to various measures of the Pontiff for a complete reorganization of the order and its relations with the Apostolic See.

The origin of the vicissitudes, as mentioned, goes back to the forced dismissal of Grand Chancellor Boaselager in early December 2016, accused of having distributed condoms during a humanitarian initiative in Myanmar in previous years. He has defended himself by claiming that he was unaware of the matter, which was decided at the local level, and that he intervened as soon as he became aware of it.

The then Cardinal Patronus had informed the Pope, probably to obtain his support for the decision to dismiss Grand Chancellor Boaselager, but it seems that in a letter addressed to Burke and the order, the Pontiff, while stressing the moral relevance of the question, had asked for a "dialogical" resolution to understand the reasons for the incident, without any particular shock. But this practice was not carried out. Then, a couple of missives from the Secretariat of State, signed by Cardinal Pietro Parolin, were addressed to the Grand Master to underline what the Pope had asked for: "dialogue on how to address and resolve any problem".

The Pope's request

At this point, a few weeks later, on December 22, 2016, the Pontiff created a first commission of inquiry to clarify the matter, of which the then Monsignor Silvano Maria Tomasi and the Jesuit canonist Gianfranco Ghirlanda, among others, were members, both now cardinals.

January 2017 saw a new stage in the affair, with the resignation of Grand Master Festing, a position usually for life, requested by the Pope after the order's leader himself opposed the papal commission, claiming full autonomy for the Knights of Malta and denying any collaboration.

The following month, Pope Francis, "in view of the extraordinary chapter that is to elect the new grand master" of the S.M.O.M., appoints as special delegate the then substitute for general affairs of the Secretariat of State, Cardinal Angelo Becciu, called to collaborate with the interim lieutenant "for the greater good of the order and reconciliation among all its components, religious and laity".

On May 2, 2018, Fra' Giacomo Dalla Torre, a balanced person and excellent mediator between sensitivities and internal conflicts, was elected grand master, but he died prematurely on April 29, 2020. In the meantime, the Pope had renewed Becciu's appointment to continue "the path of spiritual and juridical renewal" of the Order, but this process was interrupted by his resignation following the notorious "Palace of London" affair. He was succeeded on November 1, 2020 by Scalabrinian Silvano Maria Tomasi, with the task of continuing the office "until the conclusion of the process of updating the Constitutional Charter".

On November 11, 2020, the order elected by a large majority the new lieutenant grand master, Fra' Marco Luzzago, who also died of illness on June 8 of this year. The following week Pope Francis appointed the Canadian Fra' John Dunlap as the new lieutenant, acknowledging that the order is "living a new moment of consternation and uncertainty."

Months later, the order has concluded the constitutional reform process and is preparing to celebrate the extraordinary general chapter on January 25, with the hope of Pope Francis that the unity "and the greater good" of the S.M.O.M. can finally be safeguarded.

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EditorialOmnes

Holiness of the Church and the reality of sin

Editorial of issue 719 of the printed magazine. September 2022.

The reality of sin is undeniable, but this does not mean that the Church ceases to be holy. Conjugating these two realities allows us to understand correctly the Creed's affirmation of the Church's holiness.

September 6, 2022-Reading time: 2 minutes

For some time now, society, and within it the Church, has been witnessing waves of information that fill it with perplexity and sadness in the face of serious scandals of various kinds, or less scandalous but not very exemplary behavior, or simply in the face of the sins and human failings of Christians.

Of course, the baptized have more motives and more help to do good, and they should know more clearly the goal to which their condition as followers of Christ summons them, which is holiness. In particular, the duty of exemplarity is greater in those who in some way represent the Church publicly.

As a first step, these situations make us aware that, as far as the possibilities of doing evil are concerned, all people are equal. But in addition, and in the first place, they must serve the baptized to become aware of the need to rectify one's conduct in many aspects, to convert and do penance, to have recourse to divine mercy, to have recourse to the grace offered in the sacrament of Confession; if one knows one's evident personal fallibility, all this is inseparable from the true desire to progress along the path of Jesus Christ. Sacred Scripture refers to human life as a "militia" in which each one struggles with himself. The holiness to which we are all called is not a reality that comes about automatically by the very fact of being "Catholic". Its crowning will come at the end, and it will be after a judgment in which each one will be tested by his works.

What about the Church as such, that which we proclaim in the Creed as "holy"?

In what sense have we used this expression since the early days of Christianity? Above all, is this attribution of "holiness" still valid today? After abuses, errors, etc., to what extent is this affirmation affected, or does it need to be corrected? Some feel an intellectual reaction similar to that of those who found it difficult to continue to speak of God after Auschwitz; others may think that holiness can be "demanded" of Catholics, as if the only possible Church were that of the pure; there will also be those who trust that the most appropriate disciplinary and juridical measures will solve the problems.

Now, as Francis often explains, the reform of the Church, as far as it is appropriate and precisely in order to be effective, must begin with a reform of the hearts of each person.

The authorOmnes

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Pope Francis and the message of forgiveness at Celestine V's tomb

After 728 years, a Pope opens the holy door of the Celestinian Perdonanza

On August 28, Pope Francis visited L'Aquila to celebrate the feast of the "Perdonanza" created by Celestine V. We offer the first person account of one of the attendees.

Giancarlos Candanedo-September 5, 2022-Reading time: 5 minutes

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We have heard of plenary indulgences and holy doors. However, few know that it was in a small town in central Italy that the tradition of granting plenary indulgence for devout participation in a liturgical celebration began in the year 1294. In that year in the city of L'Aquila, on the occasion of the liturgical memory of the martyrdom of St. John the Baptist and the beginning of his pontificate, Pope St. Celestine V granted by means of the bull "Inter sanctorum solemnia" the plenary indulgence to those who "sincerely repentant and confessed enter the church of St. Mary of Collemaggio from the eve of the vigil of the feast of St. John until the eve immediately following the feast". Since then, every year from August 29 to 30, the inhabitants of L'Aquila exercise with great devotion the right and grace granted to them by Pope Celestine V, a feast known as "Perdonanza Celestiniana".

Several pontiffs have passed through these lands of Abruzzo, including St. John Paul II and Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, but it has taken 728 years for a Roman pontiff to expressly preside over this feast of forgiveness. Francis is the first pontiff to open the holy door of the Collemaggio so that thousands of faithful may benefit from the "Perdonanza".

The Feast of the Pardonanza

On Sunday, August 28, on the esplanade of the Basilica of St. Mary of Collemaggio, Francis presided at Holy Mass and celebrated the rite of the opening of the Holy Door. Together with his Archbishop, Card. Giuseppe Petrocchi, L'Aquila dressed up to welcome the Pope. From very early in the morning, despite the bad weather forecast and a dense fog, thousands of people came to the esplanade with the façade of the imposing basilica as a backdrop. In the atrium, a metal structure had been elegantly set up as a presbytery. To the right was a choir composed of hundreds of men and women who performed a beautiful repertoire. Thousands of booklets were distributed to follow the liturgical celebration and all the decorations and ornaments were designed with motifs and symbology of the Archdiocese of L'Aquila.

The Pope's visit was brief but intense. At 8.30 a.m. we heard the helicopter flying overhead that was bringing him from Rome, but due to the fog it was impossible to see him. There were some problems but finally, in the midst of the fog, a space of light opened up that allowed the helicopter to land and thus began the visit that was to end at noon.

With the victims of the earthquake

The first event was the Pope's greeting to families who were victims of the earthquake that destroyed a large part of L'Aquila on April 6, 2009 and in which 309 people died. The meeting took place in the Cathedral Square. It could also be followed on giant screens set up on the Collemaggio esplanade.

A smiling Francis, despite the ailments that force him to move around in a wheelchair, offered words of encouragement to those who have lost everything, including loved ones. He invited them not only to material reconstruction but also to spiritual reconstruction, but always together, "insieme", as they say in Italian. He was warmly reciprocated by the applause of those present and also by those of us who were in Collemaggio. Then, escorted by Card. Petrocchi, he inspected the reconstruction works of the Cathedral, still closed due to the damage caused by the earthquake. Immediately after, he moved to Collemaggio and entered the esplanade in the mobile pope, enthusiastically greeting all those present.

Holy Mass

At 10:00 a.m. the Holy Mass began. By then the fog had given way to a radiant sun that accompanied us throughout the celebration. The Mass was preceded by the Pope, although a large part of the liturgy was celebrated by Card. Petrocchi, due to Francis' limited mobility. In the homilycentered on humility - referring to Pope Celestine V - and forgiveness, Francis recalled that "everyone in life, without necessarily experiencing an earthquake, can, so to speak, experience an 'earthquake of the soul', which puts him in contact with his own fragility, his own limitations, his own misery".

He also said that in the midst of these miseries a space of light opens up, as happened to them in the helicopter, and that when we see this space we have to run towards it because they are the wounds of Christ that await us to purify us, to heal us, to forgive us. Finally, he encouraged the faithful of L'Aquila to make this city "a true capital of forgiveness, peace and reconciliation!

Opening of the holy door

After the heartfelt words of thanks from Card. Petrocchi's heartfelt words of thanks to the Pope, he moved to the left side of the basilica to fulfill the rite of opening the holy door. Seated in his wheelchair before the ancient closed wooden door, Francis listened to the choir intoning the litany of the saints, after which he stood up, took a few steps to approach the door and received a wooden stick with which he hit hard, three times, the door that opened and where he prayed for a moment and then went through it to pray before the remains of St. Celestine V, located in the right side chapel of the basilica.

Thus the "Perdonanza Celestiniana" (Celestinian Forgiveness) remained open until the eve of August 30. Pope Francis left the basilica, said goodbye to the civil and ecclesiastical authorities and boarded a small white car that took him to the place where the helicopter was waiting to take him to Rome.

Photo: The holy door of the basilica of Collemaggio.

Extension of indulgence

Participating in this event and experiencing firsthand the faith, hope and pride of the citizens of L'Aquila for their land and traditions was a gift. And when we thought that the "Perdonanza" was over, Pope Francis surprised us. Through the Apostolic Penitentiary the Holy Father has extended the "Celestinian Pardon" for one year. That is to say that until August 28, 2023, all those who wish to do so can benefit from the Celestinian pardon by fulfilling the conditions established for this purpose: recite the Creed, the Our Father and a prayer according to the Pope's intentions, go to confession and receive communion within eight days before or after participating in a rite in honor of Celestine V, or after praying before his remains in the basilica of Collemaggio.

Getting to know this part of Italy of great natural beauty was the occasion to gain the plenary indulgence. Thousands will be able to do the same this year.

The authorGiancarlos Candanedo

Pope Francis opens the Jubilee of "Forgiveness". Related News

Pope Francis and the message of forgiveness at Celestine V's tomb

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