Francis managed to make his 37th international trip despite knee problems.
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Alder, Nicaraguan seminarian: "The Pope asked us to be courageous".
Alder Harol Alvarez Maltez is a 23-year-old seminarian from Nicaragua who resides at the Bidasoa International Seminary and studies at the University of Navarra. He comes from a Catholic family and has a younger sister.
Thanks to a grant from the Roman Academic Center Foundation (CARF), he was able to study at the Catholic University Redemptoris Mater (Unica), the degree in International Relations and International Trade and graduated in 2019 with good academic results. However, the vocation to the priesthood has always been a constant within him, a seed that grew little by little.
The turning point was in 2019 during the XI International Youth Forum, organized by the Dicastery for Laity, Family and Life.
"The participants in this meeting had the opportunity to listen to the Holy Father, and in his words the Pope asked us to be courageous and, without fear, to give ourselves to the service of the Lord. Those words were the final impetus that motivated me to take the definitive step to enter the Seminary and leave my professional career," says Alder.
His bishop sent him to Bidasoa. "There is a wonderful richness in this Seminar. Living with seminarians from different countries is an enriching experience for my spiritual, intellectual and cultural formation. For this reason, I would like to thank the benefactors for the great support they give us. Rest assured that you are always in our prayers, and that everything you do will be put to good use for the evangelizing mission of the Church".
Alder, concerned about his country, explains that Nicaragua needs priests who are firmly committed to the evangelizing mission of the Church. Pastors who, with courage and love, proclaim Christ's message of salvation and who, attached to the truth, defend what is just in the face of injustice.
"Following the example given to us by the bishops, the entire Nicaraguan Church must place itself at the service of the needs of the people, knowing how to suffer with the people and accompanying them in important and difficult moments. Poverty, inequality and the lack of individual and collective freedoms are some of the great social challenges of the country", he concludes.
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Social doctrine, St. Anne and St. François de Laval: Second stage of the papal journey
Francis sought to inject hope to the natives, optimism to the priests, and social doctrine to the politicians, in the French-speaking stage of his penitent pilgrimage.
Related
"Let us walk together, arrivederci in Canada." Pope's historic apology to indigenous Canadians.Bishop Raymond PoissonThe presence of the Holy Father in Canada will guide us in the direction we should take".Gestures of Pope Francis in Canada
"Let us walk together, arrivederci in Canada." Pope's historic apology to indigenous Canadians.Bishop Raymond PoissonThe presence of the Holy Father in Canada will guide us in the direction we should take".Gestures of Pope Francis in CanadaPope Francis continues his visit to Canada, which he himself has called a penitential pilgrimage. In this second stage in the province of Quebec, the Pope held a meeting with Canadian authorities, the celebration of Holy Mass for natives and other pilgrims in a sanctuary in Beaupré, and Vespers with the clergy and pastoral agents. Today he concludes his visit to this mostly French-speaking province and flies to Iqaluit.
Master class on social doctrine
The Pope first listened to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and then to the Governor General, of Inuit origin, Mary Simon (representative of Queen Elizabeth II and seated to the right of the Pontiff - in the heart of autonomist Quebec).
Francis delivered a master class on the social doctrine of the Church. That was on July 27 at 5 p.m., before Bergoglio plunged with his popemobile into a bath of people - the thousands of enthusiasts who followed him on a giant screen in the historic park of the Plains of Abraham (where in 1759 the English definitively defeated the French). The speech of the head of the Vatican State was given in a protocol atmosphere. It was clear that the Pope had done his homework. He wanted to be inspired by the Canadian symbol par excellence, the maple leaf.
Already "the native peoples extracted sap from the maple trees with which they made nutritious syrups. With their industriousness they were attentive to safeguarding the earth and the environment, faithful to a harmonious vision of creation... which teaches man to love the Creator and to live in symbiosis with other living beings. There is much to learn from their ability to listen to God, to people and to nature. We need it ... in today's whirlwind ... characterized by a constant "speeding up"which hampers a truly human, sustainable and integral development (see Laudato si'18), which ends up generating a "society of weariness and disillusionment" that needs contemplation, the genuine taste of relationships".
"The large maple leaves ... absorb polluted air and restore oxygen, marvel at the beauty of creation and ... the healthy values present in indigenous cultures are an inspiration to us all and can help us heal the harmful habits of exploiting ... creation, relationships, time."
He returned for the umpteenth time to ask for forgiveness, deploring past policies of assimilation and disengagement and deculturation (the neologism is mine). He repeated that "it is tragic when some believers, as happened in that historical period, do not conform to the Gospel but to the conveniences of the world. It was a deplorable system promoted by the government authorities of the time" and not by the Catholic, Anglican and Presbyterian churches (one understands).
In addition to this, the professor of political philosophy made two points. First, that Christians also did a great deal of good. Faith played an essential role in shaping the highest Canadian ideals. Second, that today's authorities may be sinning in the same way. Of course, he said it all very diplomatically, but it is well known that the one who points with the index finger accuses himself with the middle finger, the ring finger and the little finger.
Quoting his beloved Dear AmazoniaThe professor gave a lesson to those present, accusers of the past, on the current ideological colonization. There is "no lack of ideological colonizations today that ... suffocate the natural attachment to the values of peoples, trying to uproot their traditions, their history and their religious ties. It is a mentality that presumes to have overcome 'the dark pages of history'".
For example, in Québec, we often speak about la grande noirceur before 1960. This mentality gave rise to the cancellation culture, that judges the past only in terms of some current categories. Thus a cultural fashion is implanted that standardizes everything and does not tolerate differences, that focuses only on the present moment, on the needs and rights of individuals: it neglects the duties towards the weakest and most fragile: the poor, the migrants, the elderly, the sick, the unborn! Canada is the only country in the world, as far as I know, that does not regulate abortion, that is to say, that admits the law of the jungle on this issue. Not only that, but it prides itself on exporting abortion, and thus colonizes. The Pope insisted that these weak are forgotten by the welfare societies and that "in the general indifference, they are discarded like dry leaves to be burned".
Moreover, just as each leaf of a tree is essential to the rich multicolored foliage of the forest, so too society must not be uniform but open and inclusive. Every family is the fundamental cell of society and the future of humanity is forged in the family. However, it is threatened by all kinds of factors. "May the evil suffered by the indigenous peoples, and of which we are ashamed today, serve as a warning to us today, so that the care and rights of the family are not set aside in the name of eventual productive needs and individual interests."
The maple leaf still gave the pope occasion to dissert on environmentalism (Canada gets a very high mark, he says) and on the folly of war and the need for disarmament (lower mark perhaps): "We do not need to divide the world into friends and enemies, to distance ourselves and arm ourselves to the teeth: it will not be the arms race or deterrence strategies that will bring peace and security." In a tweet, Trudeau said he had spoken yesterday with the Pope and his Secretary of State Pietro Parolin about issues such as Ukraine and food insecurity. Trudeau's Liberal Party government sometimes gives the impression of following the polls. The Pope also referred to this: "Politics cannot remain a prisoner of partisan interests. We must know how to look, as indigenous wisdom teaches, to the seven future generations, not to immediate expediency, to electoral deadlines or to the support of the lobbies. And also to value the desires for fraternity, justice and peace of the younger generations." He recalled that the Catholic Church cares for the most fragile and serves in favor of human life in all its stages, from conception to natural death.
Pilgrimage to Sainte-Anne-de-Beaupré
In 1658 the ship of some Breton sailors sank off the coast of New France, today Quebec. They promised St. Anne that if they were saved they would build her a chapel, which was the origin of the present Basilica, built in the last century. The natives immediately fell in love with the grandmother of Jesus, and this morning the Pope gave her a very long look, like a devoted grandson. As he did so from his wheelchair at the end of the reconciliation Mass, an indigenous woman spontaneously went up to the altar and placed her visibly deformed child in his arms. Iconic moment.
Omnes spoke today with two pilgrims who visited the Basilica for the first time, both traveling from the province of Ontario by car for more than ten hours. Tiffany Taylor, a young social worker of Ojibway origin, went with a dozen indigenous people from a reserve in the city of Sudbury, none of them Catholic. "My language is preserved but I don't speak it. It is now taught in schools, even to non-natives. Near us there was a Catholic boarding school. It hurts me what my tortured ancestors suffered." Seventy % of those attending inside the Basilica were natives. Thousands of others, with free but hard-to-get tickets, congregated outside.
Father Scott Giuliani, SOLT, has been a Canadian missionary in Belize since 2014. He traveled to St. Ann from near Toronto. "In recent years there has been a growing influence in the Caribbean area from wealthy countries pushing to introduce alien values to the people. New definitions of human rights based on a new anthropology, not natural law. Gender ideology and pressure to change local legislation are examples of ideological colonization taking place there. This intrusion of ideas causes much damage to the culture. In Belize, the Canadian government has used part of its foreign aid to export ideological values."
The Pope, in preaching it, pointed out that his homily could be entitled: "From Failure to Hope". He commented on the episode at the end of Luke's Gospel in which two disenchanted disciples of Jesus escape from Jerusalem. He said that Christ resolves our tragedies through his paschal mystery. It is the only way to move forward in situations such as the historical colonization of the indigenous people. Resentment does not heal. We must avoid accusing each other, like Adam and Eve after sinning, or having a sterile discussion, like that of the two walkers. The only way out, for there to be a true reconciliation, is the one that Jesus explains to his two disciples. Christ gives us a way out of the labyrinth of our history. The Eucharist heals. Emmaus shows the temptation to flee - which is escape, not resolution. Jesus came to walk with us.
"There is nothing worse, in the face of life's setbacks, than to flee so as not to face them. It is a temptation of the enemy, who threatens our spiritual journey and the journey of the Church; he wants to make us believe that defeat is definitive, he wants to paralyze us with bitterness and sadness, to convince us that there is nothing to do and that therefore it is not worthwhile to find a way to start over again."
"We too, who share the Eucharist in this Basilica, can reread many events of history. In this same place there were already three temples, but there were also people who did not back down in the face of difficulties, and were able to dream again despite their mistakes and those of others. Thus, when one hundred years ago a fire devastated the sanctuary, they did not let themselves be defeated, building this temple with courage and creativity. And all those who share the Eucharist from the nearby Plains of Abraham (by giant screen), can also perceive the spirit of those who did not allow themselves to be kidnapped by the hatred of war, destruction and pain, but who knew how to project a city and a country anew." It refers to the city of Quebec and the country of Canada, peacefully built since 1759.
Injection of optimism to bishops and priests
Finally today, in Quebec's Notre-Dame Cathedral, the Pope put his finger on the major obstacle to re-evangelizing Canada - and especially Quebec, once a bastion of Catholicism from its explicitly missionary founding in 1608 until the 1960s. Francis delivered a homily during vespers to nearly 100 bishops, many more priests, and others, and spoke to them about secularism. That it is not true that all times past were better.
The Supreme Pontiff recalled that this was the cathedral of the primate see of Canada, whose first bishop, St. François de Laval, opened the Seminary in 1663. He spoke to them about the responsibility of pastoring and evangelizing, which always brings joy. There is no need to be officials of the sacred. He encouraged them to preach a living Jesus in a lively way, to be credible witnesses, to avoid at all costs a very current diabolical temptation: that of negative pessimism. Worldliness is bad but the world is good. He spoke of humility, and in a special way of fraternity.
The first thing is "to make Jesus known. In the spiritual deserts of our time, generated by secularism and indifference, it is necessary to return to the first proclamation." He quoted Montreal philosopher Charles Taylor: secularization is "the opportunity to recompose the spiritual life in new forms and also for new ways of existing."
"In this way," Bergoglio continued, "while the discerning gaze makes us see the difficulties we have in transmitting the joy of faith, it stimulates us to rediscover a new passion for evangelization, to seek new languages."
He concluded as follows. "Please, let us not shut ourselves up in 'retreat', let us go forward with joy! Let us put into practice these words that we addressed to St. François de Laval:
You were the man of sharing, visiting the sick, clothing the poor, fighting for the dignity of native peoples, supporting the weary missionaries, always ready to reach out to those who were worse off than you. How many times your projects were shattered, but always, you put them back on their feet. You had understood that God's work is not made of stone, and that, in this land of discouragement, a builder of hope was needed.
I thank you for all you do and bless you from the bottom of my heart. Please continue to pray for me." A truly emotional ovation followed.
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Vatican finances: how they work and what are their organs?
It is not easy to understand how Vatican finances work. The changes made in recent years have created some new control bodies. In this article we explain which entities manage the Vatican patrimony and what each one is responsible for.
RelatedWhat has the St. Peter's Obligation money been spent on?A crucial law for the reform of the Curia arrives: financial managementNew Vatican anti-corruption law: gifts of more than 40 euros banned
What has the St. Peter's Obligation money been spent on?A crucial law for the reform of the Curia arrives: financial managementNew Vatican anti-corruption law: gifts of more than 40 euros bannedIt is not easy to untangle the folds of Vatican finances. Certainly, the latest reforms brought by Pope Francis force a constant updating. The competencies and management of offices are changed, dicasteries are redesigned and even who and how money is managed is redefined. But how did the Pope's finances come about, how have they been structured throughout history, and how are they managed now?
The origins of modern Vatican finance
Just one day after the death of Pope Pius XI, on February 10, 1939, Monsignor Angelo Pomata appeared at a counter of the "Opere di Religione". The cashier was Massimo Spada. Pomata was there by order of Eugenio Pacelli, who had assumed the office of Camerlengo with the death of the Pope. Pacelli - who would be elected Pope at the next conclave - had ordered Monsignor Pomata to deposit the money found in the Pope's desk drawer, in lire and dollars.
Spada opened an account, under the name "Secretariat of State - Obolus New Accounts". The history of modern Vatican finances begins there. Through that current account, and then through the total autonomy of the "Istituto di Opere di Religione" - the so-called "Vatican bank", which in reality is more like a trust fund - funds could be made available to the Pope at his discretion. Funds with which to replenish the budget of the Holy See, as has happened recently. Or funds to be earmarked for charitable works. Or funds - and this was the case with Pius XII - to go through secure channels, to help peacekeeping operations.
The Vatican State
If the call "Onbolo AccountThe "Institute for the Works of Religion" was founded a few years before the Holy See began to provide itself with financial instruments. From 1870 to 1929, after Rome was invaded by the Kingdom of Italy, the Holy See had no territory. But in 1929, with the Conciliation and the signing of the Lateran Pacts, the Vatican City State had been created, "that great body which serves to support our soul", in the words of Pius XI.
The Italian government had also agreed to transfer a sum to the Holy See to compensate for the "evil" caused by the loss of the Papal States. Pius XI personally took charge of the negotiations, to the point of agreeing to an indemnity on the part of the Italian State of 1750 million lire, partly in cash and partly in bearer bonds.
What to do with this patrimony? Two months after the signing of the Lateran Pacts, and almost thirty days before their ratification, the Pope contacted the engineer Bernardino Nogara, who was manager of the Italian Commercial Bank, to entrust him with the management of the funds coming from the Financial Convention.
Bernardino Nogara brought the concept of stock ownership to the Vatican. He was entrusted with the Special Section of the Administration of the Patrimony of the Apostolic See, and from that position - analogous to a central bank - he bought shares, with conspicuous and successful investments. It was the time of the Great Depression of 1929, and it allowed Nogara to buy shares in several companies. Nogara was thus able to sit on the boards of directors of countless Italian companies, which increased his international prestige. And, precisely during the Great Depression, Nogara created two companies, Grolux and the Swiss Profima, with the idea of diversifying the investments of the Holy See, focusing on gold and bricks.
The poles of Vatican finances
The Constitution of the Vatican City State thus laid the foundations for the two main financial institutions of the Holy See: the Institute for the Works of Religion and the Administration of the Patrimony of the Apostolic See.
The first is generally known as the "Vatican Bank"but in reality it is not a bank, has no offices outside the Vatican, and only recently obtained an IBAN, after the Holy See entered the SEPA transfer zone, i.e. the Single European Payments Area.
The IOR's road to recognition by foreign institutions as a reliable counterparty has been particularly long, as it has been for all financial institutions in the world. John Paul II established the IOR's new statutes in 1990, while the first external audit dates back to the mid-1990s.
In the 2000s, the IOR implemented a series of innovative measures, which were also recognized by the international evaluators of MONEYVAL, the Council of Europe's committee that assesses States' adherence to international standards against money laundering and terrorist financing.
The APSA
The other pole of Vatican finances is the Administration of the Patrimony of the Apostolic See, the APSA. It has a function similar to that of a "central bank". Until the early 2000s, the APSA also provided pensions and had registered accounts, but these were closed to better meet international standards.
As a "central bank," APSA also has the management of the Holy See's real estate assets. According to APSA's first balance sheet, published in 2021, it says the Vatican owns 4,051 properties in Italy and another 1,120 worldwide, mainly in luxury real estate investments in London, Paris, Geneva and Lausanne.
"It is also thanks to the market-rate rents charged on the prestigious real estate owned in Paris and London, that it is possible to grant the Apostolic Almshouse a free loan for the use of a structure such as Palazzo Migliori, a stone's throw from the colonnade of St. Peter's, for the reception of the homeless hosted by the volunteers of the Community of Sant'Egidio. In addition, with the purchase of a property near the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, thanks to the mediation of Sopridex, the seller earmarked part of the proceeds of this operation for the construction of a church in a Parisian suburb".
Since last year, APSA has also been managing funds that were previously managed directly by the Secretariat of State, and it is assumed that the entire Vatican apparatus will have a single sovereign fund managed by APSA.
Autonomous entities
In addition to the administration of the Secretariat of State, there are other entities that are autonomous. The Governorate of Vatican City State, for example, has its own budget and resources, although they have not been disclosed since 2015. A consolidated budget that includes that of the Curia, i.e., that of the Holy See's agencies, and that of the State has long been envisaged, but has not yet been achieved. The most important revenues of the Governorate are those of the Vatican Museums and the museum complex of the Papal Villas.
It remains to be seen, however, whether the Dicastery for Evangelization will inherit the financial freedom of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples. When the missionary dicastery was actually established under the name Propaganda Fide in 1622, it was planned to give it financial autonomy, so that money could go directly to the missions. The former Propaganda Fide also had real estate, now estimated at 957 properties including land and buildings in Rome.
It should also be borne in mind that, in reality, all the dicasteries enjoyed financial autonomy, within certain limits, because they received personal donations and for personal purposes. When Cardinal George Pell, as Prefect of the Economy, spoke of hundreds of millions of euros hidden, i.e., concealed, in various accounts, he was speaking precisely of the personal resources of the dicasteries that they could administer liberally. Nor could the dicasteries choose the IOR as an investment bank, so it is not surprising, for example, that the Secretariat of State invested with Credit Suisse.
Supervisory bodies
The APSA, therefore, increasingly assumes the role of a central bank, which is why it underwent a minor reform in 2013, which changed the role of advisors, making them part of a supervisory board. Pension provision, finance management and sovereign wealth funds will be in the hands of the administration.
The Secretariat for the Economy is the controlling body for the finances of the Holy See. It oversees budgets, gives spending guidelines and rationalizes costs. The Prefect of the Secretariat for the Economy is also a member of the Commission on Confidential Matters, which establishes which acts of an economic nature must be confidential. The Secretariat for the Economy also oversaw the regulation of the Vatican's procurement code.
It is worth mentioning that all these decisions follow the Holy See's accession to the Merida Convention, which is the United Nations Convention against Corruption. As a result of this accession, the office of the Auditor General is now also defined as the "anti-corruption office" of the Vatican.
The Auditor General
The Auditor General, needless to say, is in charge of control, while the Council of Economy is a kind of Ministry of Finance, whose task is to direct the financial work.
In this case, the novelty lies mainly in the name and approach, not in the substance. The Secretariat for the Economy used to be the Prefecture for Economic Affairs, which was reformed in 2012 and almost equated to a Ministry of Finance. The Council of the Economy used to be the Council of Fifteen, that is, of cardinals called to oversee the financial approach of the Holy See.
Finally, there is the Financial Information and Supervisory Authority. This is an intelligence authority, which has only one entity under direct observation, which is the IOR. The Authority is tasked with investigating suspicious financial transactions reported to it and delivering the reports to the Promoter of Justice, who will then decide whether or not to continue the investigation. The Authority also plays a crucial role in international cooperation, due to the relationships it exchanges with its counterparts, to the extent that it has also played a role in the resolution of some international cases.
The reform of finances desired by Benedict XVI also led, in 2013, to the creation of a Financial Security Committee, a body that certifies the sovereignty of the Holy See and allows the Secretariat of State (i.e., the government) and other agencies to work together to prevent money laundering.
Consistent commitment to the mission
This is, broadly speaking, the financial structure of the Holy See. We read in MONEYVAL's first report in 2012 that the Holy See's move toward financial transparency was a path "consistent with its international nature and character," as well as with "its religious and moral mission." It is an important commitment to be credible in the world. For the Church, after all, money is not an end, but a means, and it serves the mission, which is a mission first and foremost for the least.
The authorAndrea Gagliarducci
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Obianuju EkeochaIt is better to give books to children than contraceptives".
Obianuju Ekeocha is president of Culture of Life Africaan organization that promotes an authentic culture of life in Africa and around the world. In its famous letter to Melinda Gates emphasized what the African continent and especially African women really need: more education and less contraception policies which she stresses "were never asked for".
RelatedMsgr. Luis ArgüelloThe moral health of a society is demonstrated by its defense of life".Thousands march in the U.S. in defense of human life
Msgr. Luis ArgüelloThe moral health of a society is demonstrated by its defense of life".Thousands march in the U.S. in defense of human lifeA native of Nigeria, Obianuju has been involved in social and political debates related to the dignity of life within African culture. She has also advised legislators in Africa, Europe and North America. Her advocacy for life has led her to speak at venues such as the White House, the European Parliament and Georgetown University in Washington.
In this interview with Omnes, Obianuju Ekeocha points out that the contraceptive policies imposed in Africa amount, in practice, to a new colonialism in which "every aspect of this model is controlled and determined by the wealthy Western donor."
You speak of new colonialism in relation to the contraception policies being implemented in Africa, paid for by Western companies or governments. Why do you use this term? What is the real objective of these policies that prevent the birth of so many people?
- The term "Neocolonialism" points to the current reality of humanitarian aid mechanisms completely controlled by donor nations and organizations.
It is well known that most African countries, due to socio-economic deprivation, have been recipients of Humanitarian Aid and Development Aid Funds for decades. This has created a space for Western donor organizations to insert themselves as actors and partners in support and development in Africa.
The problem is that, in recent years, donors from Africa have come with a clear and established agenda on ideology and cultural views and values.
One of the first major insistencies was that of contraception.
Despite the fact that African communities were asking for aid mainly for basic needs such as food, clean water and access to education, Western donors in Africa began to impose huge quantities of contraceptives on the continent.
This has meant a redirection of funds and possibly the defunding of other projects in order to ensure that contraception and, indeed, population programs are well funded.
I refer to this as neocolonialism because every aspect of this model is controlled and determined by the wealthy Western donor.
As for the purpose of these policies of flooding African communities with contraceptives, I believe it is a combination of the attempt (by Western powers) to control African populations, as well as the attempt to introduce a much more "liberated" view of human sexuality. A kind of sexual liberationism that erodes sexual decorum in all strata of African societies.
Today we are faced with terrible laws that drive death. In the United States, the Roe v. Wade ruling. For those who do not know what is behind this change in legislation, what does the overturning of this ruling mean and what does it mean in promoting a culture of life in the United States and around the world?
- To explain briefly, Roe v Wade is the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court decision that basically legalized abortion in all 50 states of America.
Since that decision, more than 60 million premature babies have been killed by abortion in the United States, which has caused a significant change in society due to the millions of women, men and also families that have been affected.
For nearly 50 years, Roe v Wade had never been robustly challenged until December 1, 2021, when a new case came before the U.S. Supreme Court: the Dobbs v Jackson Women's Health Organization case, a case that has successfully led to the overturning of the 1973 Roe v Wade decision.
This outcome undoubtedly helps in the promotion of a true Culture of Life, as it further strengthens pro-life efforts to meet and assist women in crisis with their needs. It also lays the groundwork for bringing to light the many unsavory facets of the abortion industry, such as the facilitation of abuse cases, the unreported sexual abuse and exploitation of minors, the unethical harvesting and sale of fetal organs to biological research companies, illegal late-term abortions, and all manner of greedy profiteering within the abortion industry.
The overturning of Roe v Wade marks the beginning of the end of abortion as we know it in the United States and around the world.
In your famous letter to Melinda Gates in 2012, you pointed out what was needed in Africa: prenatal and postnatal care, feeding programs, etc. and not contraceptives. Have these needs changed in Africa? Are they greater or lesser?
- It has now been 10 years since I wrote my open letter to Melinda Gates and, looking back over all these years, much has changed in the world. But what has not changed, or even become considerably more desperate, is the need for basic human needs across Africa.
Women continue to need prenatal and postnatal care, as Africa remains the continent with the highest maternal mortality rates. We remain the region with the least access to safe drinking water, we remain the region with the lowest school enrollment rates.
So, more than ever, more than in 2012, we need real development aid instead of contraceptives and unsolicited graphic sex education.
From Culture of Life AfricaYou denounce that the culture of death is beginning to erode traditional and very important values in Africa, such as the family, the arrival of children or the care of life. How do the new generations perceive these values?
- As in most parts of the world, cultures, customs, traditions, even language, heritage, views and values are passed down from one generation to the next. The older generations are the ones who try to teach and instill the most important lessons to the younger generations. African nations have depended on this for centuries.
The problem in our modern world today is that the world became much smaller, especially for young people, under the powerful influence of the media.
First, entertainment media that was heavily influenced by the West - movies, music, cable news from the richest Western television networks. African youth began to consume far more Western views than the valuable lessons of their elders. This was exponentially accentuated with the introduction of social media.
Hundreds of millions of young Africans are hooked on social media, as are young people around the world, and the reality is that social media has become a distribution mechanism for ideological content targeted and curated directly into the hands, hearts and minds of impressionable young people. African youth have not been spared.
The dirt is getting to them and overriding their ability (in many cases) to learn the lessons, views and values that have been passed down from older generations.
You are Nigerian, a biomedical scientist, resident in the UK, you know "both sides" of the planet. How do you respond to those who talk about "lack of resources", or "advances in the right to decide" and push for anti-life policies in Africa?
- Africa's most glaring problem is not really "lack of resources" but deep-seated corruption and lack of transparency of the ruling class. In fact, African nations can boast rich reserves of raw materials, precious metals, oil and, above all, human resources, as our population is predominantly young.
What we need at this critical time is not the right to kill our unborn babies, but a very serious overhaul of our socioeconomic systems and the education of our populations to form them into citizens who understand their own worth and dignity to the point of demanding better governance from their leaders. We need populations that understand how to elevate themselves to the highest status to make their own voice heard in their local and national arenas. We need a much more robust, healthy and empowered population that is proud of African countries, cultures, heritage and values.
How can we support, from each of our places, the culture of life, in our places and in Africa?
- The first step in building a culture of life in any part of the world is to have the knowledge and understanding of the cultural and ideological struggles that are taking place all over the world, starting with the West. There are many who do not even recognize that there is a real conflict over basic truths such as the sanctity of human life, the right to life of every human being, including those in the womb, there is a fierce battle over the understanding of human sexuality, the biological reality of sex, the rights of parents, the roles of parents, the importance of marriage and family and the need to safeguard children in every society.
Each of them represents a point of vigilance for those who want to build a true culture of life.
To support Africa and even society itself, we must make the conscious effort to look for the good organizations that are doing the work. Help those organizations, because in reality, pro-life organizations and pro-family organizations (for example) are the most repressed and least organizations out there, whose opponents in many cases are giant government-funded organizations. More people need to support organizations that dare to challenge the new "progressive" cultural and ideological movements.
People in Western countries should also oppose their governments' international projects that are obviously ideological. Insist that their government listen more to the needs of the people they are trying to help. It is better to give a disadvantaged community clean water than lots of contraceptives that may not even be used (because they were never asked for). It is better to give books to children than condoms.
It is time to really listen and find out what is most important to the host communities.
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The Introduction to Christianity by Joseph Ratzinger
Conceived as a course for university students, the then theologian and later Pope, assuming the difficulties and weaknesses of the modern mind, wanted to show in the Introduction to Christianity Christian faith as the only way to the fullness of the human being.
"Ratzinger's move from Münster (in 1969) to the Protestant university town of Tübingen is one of the most enigmatic decisions in the later pope's biography." Seewald writes in his biography. Although in his book My life Ratzinger himself recounts some of the reasons.
On the one hand, he was uncomfortable with the drift of his colleague from Münster, Johan Baptista Metz, towards a political theology, a very political theology. On the other hand, he was attracted by Hans Küng's invitation to join a theological renewal team in Tübingen. He was also attracted, much more so than his sister, to Bavaria, his homeland.
Ratzinger was then an emerging figure, after having stood out at the Council as a trusted expert and inspirer of many interventions by Cardinal Frings of Cologne. Although he was initially interested in Küng, he soon found that their horizons did not coincide. Küng arrived at the university in a red Alfa Romeo, while Ratzinger rode a bicycle with a beret.
They would meet again in 1981, when Ratzinger, as prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, had to face the "Küng case".
Difficult Tübingen
He stayed in Tübingen for only three difficult years (1966-1969). "The faculty had a faculty of the highest caliber, albeit inclined to controversy.". In addition, the intellectual atmosphere of the faculty changed completely: "The existentialist scheme collapsed and was replaced by the Marxist one.".
It was a hope without God, represented also by Ernst Bloch, a famous Marxist professor at the faculty of philosophy and author of a famous essay on The hope principle. In that environment, Ratzinger recalls: "I have seen without veils the cruel face of that atheistic devotion.". That was the famous '68 already boiling, and it touched him closely: "At the height of the confrontation, I was Dean of my faculty."member of several boards and "of the Commission in charge of elaborating a new Statute for the university"..
But there were not only complications. In '67 it was Küng's turn to give the course on Dogmatics, and Ratzinger found that "I was free to carry out a project that I had been silently pursuing for ten years. I had the idea of experimenting with a course aimed at students from all faculties with the title Introduction to Christianity".
Why a Introduction to Christianity
"In 1967" -he says in the foreword of the 2000 edition. "The impulses of the recent post-conciliar period were still in full effervescence: the Second Vatican Council wanted to do just that: to give Christianity once again a force capable of shaping history [...], it was once again confirmed that the faith of Christians embraces the whole of life"..
In a way, the amalgamation of Marxism and Christianity and its projection in liberation theology wanted to achieve the same thing, but "faith ceded to politics the role of a saving force".. And in parallel, there was Western agnosticism: "Hasn't the question of God [...] come to be regarded as practically worthless?".
The structure of the book
– Supernatural Initiation to Christianity has a clear three-part structure, corresponding to the three great questions: God, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit and the Church. And also with the three parts of the Creed.
Asimiosmo also prefaces them with an extensive introduction, where he explains what it is to believe, to accept faith. In the prologue, written in 1967, he described the intention of the book: "It wants to help a new understanding of faith as the reality that makes it possible to be authentic human beings in today's world.". Disregarding "a verbiage that can only barely conceal a great spiritual emptiness.".
It was necessary to transmit to those students a living and challenging expression of faith. Not just any old thing, but that they would see in it the path to the fullness of their lives. This demanded to be very clear about the starting point, the mental situation in which the students were, as well as the itinerary. This challenge of 1967 is the merit of the book.
The faith situation
The starting point is that faith is irrelevant for Westerners living on the margins. In former times, faith relied heavily on an attachment to tradition, but that itself makes it obsolete for those who today place their trust in progress.
A theologian today recalls the clown in Kierkegaard's story who came to the village to warn of the danger of fire. They laughed at him and did not expect him to say anything worthwhile. He would have to change his costume, like theology. But besides the fact that it's not easy, wouldn't getting comfortable be getting lost? That is "the unsettling power of disbelief."because the objections also affect the Christian, a child of his time: what if there is nothing? The interesting thing is that the unbeliever is in a parallel situation: what if faith is true? God is essentially invisible. Therefore, faith is "a choice whereby what is not seen [is] considered to be the authentically real.". It is a decision and a "return" or conversion. But it is very demanding, because it is not a vague belief that "something" exists, but that it has intervened in our history: "that man of Palestine"....
He traces the itineraries of modern thought and the successive difficulties of faith, from the positivism of modern science to Marxism. He concludes that believing today means accepting Christian revelation as the foundation of one's own existence.
Therefore, "the first and last words of the creed - 'I believe' and 'amen' - are intertwined with each other.". And it is also a "I believe in You", precisely because of what incarnation and history mean. I believe in the Logos - the reason for everything - incarnate. And that means that in Him (and not in me) I am sustained. This faith also has an ecclesial dimension, because it is believed with the Church and with its expressions, the creeds.
God
From the outset, he delves into the word, so as not to work only with a worn-out name, but also to notice all that it implies, also in relation to the world and matter. He goes through the history of the revelation to Israel, where God shows himself to be so different from other gods, personal and unique, and forbids any divinization of bread (of goods), of eros or of political power. Starting from the scene of the burning bush in the book of Exodus, with the vocation of Moses, he goes through the biblical names of God (TheElohim, Yahweh) to the God of the Fathers of Israel and the God of Jesus Christ. With the tremendous force of the Name suggesting that only God truly "is". And the echo of the "I am" in the New Testament and in Jesus Christ himself. With that paradoxical double aspect of the absolute solemnity of "I am" and, at the same time, the closeness of a God for Israel, for all men. And at the end, Father.
From there he jumps to the classical comparison of the God of faith with the God of the philosophers. Christian antiquity knew how to synthesize its knowledge of the biblical God with the reflection of classical philosophy on the foundation of the universe. And always, at the same time, Father. This happy encounter illustrated the important role that rational thought - theology - plays in the Christian faith. In modern reflection, the two dimensions remain important: God as the foundation and Logos of the cosmos, and the Father as the horizon of all persons. And from this need for relationship comes a beautiful and broad development of the Trinity, which it is not possible to summarize here without going too far down. But therein lies the key to the meaning and fulfillment of the human being.
Jesus Christ
This second part is, in turn, divided into two parts: the first part, the I believe in Jesus Christ, his only begotten Son, our Lord.The second, on the statements of the Creed about Jesus Christ: was born of the Virgin Mary, suffered..., rose again.... The starting point is "the problem of confessing Jesus today".The second is always more scandalous: how can the whole reality of the cosmos and of humanity revolve around something that happened at a moment in history? This cannot be fully achieved either from physics or from history. Moreover, the modern era tries to separate Jesus from Christ, dismantling what is supposed to be assembled in history. Disregarding the Son makes it possible to remain only with a generic Father, more acceptable in the interreligious field. And also to remain with an apparently closer model of Jesus Christ.
But Jesus is the Christ and this title of Messiah (confused in his time) is realized above all on the cross. "Jesus is Christ, he is King insofar as he is crucified."with the royalty of the gift of self, of love. Y "thus converting love into Logos, into the truth of the human being".. This theme is reinforced by the scene of the final judgment, where the Lord asks his own to see him in the brethren (cf. Mt 25). The identity of Jesus with the Christ of the Cross is also the identity of the Logos with love. He then addresses at length the mystery of the God-man.
The Spirit and the Church
The last part, much shorter, is also subdivided into two parts. First, it briefly addresses the unity of the last articles of the Creed, around the confession in the Holy Spirit and the Church that He animates.
Then he dwells a little more on two "difficult" points for those who heard him then and for those who read him today: the holiness of the Church and the resurrection of the flesh. How can one affirm against historical evidence that the Church is holy? He solves it in an original way. The Church, precisely because she is salvific, joins with what is sinful, like Jesus Christ himself. It is not a luminous and transcendent entity. It is incarnated in order to save. "In the Church, holiness begins by enduring and ends by enduring.". Those who only look at the organization and not at the sacraments do not understand it. True believers always live by the sacraments, while the organization changes better or worse in history.
As for the final resurrection of the dead, it is a requirement of the totality that is the human being with his bodily dimension. And it is convenient to detach oneself from certain aspects of the ancient Greek duality body/soul, because the Christian faith's conception of the human being is unitary. And its fullness does not consist in a simple survival of the soul, freed from the body, but in a "dialogical immortality", a life and a resurrection founded on the love of God for each person. God's love is what sustains the human personality and resurrection is a saving act of God's love that brings it to its fullness. This he will develop later in his Eschatology.
What has changed since then
We return to the remarks in the prologue, which the then Cardinal Ratzinger added in 2000. Especially after 1989, with the fall of communism, "all these projects [...] had to be withdrawn at the moment when faith in politics as the power of salvation broke down.". He then "in the leaden loneliness of a world orphaned of God, in its inner boredom, the search for mysticism has arisen.". In experiences, oriental substitutes, etc.. And also apparitions. As long as people "passes largely from the traditional Christian churches. The institution bothers and the dogma too.".
This is the novelty compared to the sixties. Part opportunity, part confusion. And it demands again, but in a different way, to show the characteristics of the Christian God, who works in history, with a Son who becomes man, in the face of the syncretistic tendency. And to the blurring of the idea of God, more and more impersonal, in order to make it acceptable not only to other religions, but also to those who do not want to believe.
But the center has not changed: it is always to show Christ, the Son, as the object of our faith (I believe in you), with that double dimension of Logos, the reason for everything, and of love for us, manifested and given on the cross. We need this double dimension to find the meaning of life and our salvation. And since then it has been a key to Joseph Ratzinger's theology.
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"Christ is indigenous": memory and reconciliation on Pope's trip to Canada
A radical and unconditional request for forgiveness. Beautiful preaching on reconciliation and memory. A Christian indigenism in the style of Querida Amazonia. Love for the grandmother of Jesus, on the feast of St. Anne. A very warm welcome from the Canadians in Alberta. Highlights of this first stage of Pope Francis' penitential pilgrimage to Canada.
RelatedBishop Raymond PoissonThe presence of the Holy Father in Canada will guide us in the direction we should take".Canada: Going to the peripheries. To the North Pole and the secularist desertWhy the Pope's visit to Canada matters
Bishop Raymond PoissonThe presence of the Holy Father in Canada will guide us in the direction we should take".Canada: Going to the peripheries. To the North Pole and the secularist desertWhy the Pope's visit to Canada mattersOmnes has already reported on the first gestures, emotive and photogenicThe 85-year-old intrepid pilgrim who travels in a chair, Fiat 500, popemobile and, of course, flies in a plane, some 19,000 km in total, during his 37th apostolic journey.
The Pope is more than fulfilling his promise to personally ask for forgiveness here, as he anticipated in Rome on July 17: "I will go ... especially in the name of Jesus to meet and embrace the indigenous populations. Unfortunately, in Canada, many Christians ... have contributed to the policies of cultural assimilation that, in the past, have seriously harmed, in different ways, the native communities. For this reason, I recently received in the Vatican some groups, representatives of indigenous peoples (and) I am about to make a penitential pilgrimage."
On Monday the 25th Francis could not have been less ambiguous or more genuine, and this was noted by observers and sensible natives, of which there are many in Canada. With a concrete gesture he returned to an indigenous woman from the province of Saskatchewan the moccasins that she had "lent" him in Rome - the little shoes in Canada are a reminder of those indigenous children who never returned from boarding schools: "I was asked to return the moccasins when I arrived in Canada; I brought them..., and I would like to draw inspiration precisely from this symbol which, in recent months, has rekindled in me pain, indignation and shame. The memory of those children provokes sorrow ... But those moccasins also speak to us of a path, of a journey that we wish to make together. Walking together, praying togetherWe must work together so that the sufferings of the past give way to a future of justice, healing and reconciliation.
Francis speaks to Canadians of hope and not just of past tragedies. "It is necessary to remember how the policies of assimilation and disengagement, which also included the residential school system, were nefarious ... When the European settlers first came here, there was a great opportunity to develop a fruitful encounter between cultures, traditions and spirituality. But to a large extent this did not happen. And I am reminded of what you told me, of how assimilation policies ended up systematically marginalizing indigenous peoples; of how, also through the residential school system, their languages, their cultures were denigrated and suppressed; and how children were physically and verbally, psychologically and spiritually abused; how they were taken from their homes when they were little and how this indelibly marked the relationship between parents and children, between grandparents and grandchildren."
"Although Christian charity has been present and there are many examples of dedication to children, the overall consequences of the policies linked to residential schools have been catastrophic. What Christian faith tells us is that it was a devastating mistake, incompatible with the Gospel of Jesus Christ. It hurts to know that this compact ground of values, language and culture ...has been eroded, and that you continue to pay the price. In the face of this outrageous evil, the Church kneels before God and implores his forgiveness for the sins of his children (see John Paul II, Incarnationis mysterium). I would like to repeat with shame and clarity: I humbly ask forgiveness for the evil that so many Christians committed against the indigenous peoples."
"In this first stage I wanted to make room for memory. Today I am here to remember the past, to mourn with you, to look at the earth in silence, to pray by the graves. Let silence help us all to internalize the pain. Silence and prayer. In the face of evil let us pray to the Lord of good; in the face of death let us pray to the God of life... Jesus Christ made a tomb... the place of rebirth, of resurrection, where a story of new life and universal reconciliation began. Our efforts are not enough..., his grace is necessary, the gentle and strong wisdom of the Spirit is necessary, the tenderness of the Comforter."
Christ is indigenous
On the afternoon of July 25, Francis quoted John Paul II (Province of Ontario, September 15, 1984): "Christ animates the very center of every culture, so that Christianity not only embraces all indigenous peoples, but Christ himself, in the members of his body, is indigenous".
That afternoon, at Sacred Heart parish dedicated to indigenous people in Edmonton, the capital of Alberta, Francis spoke about the concept of reconciliation. "Jesus reconciles by putting together, making two distant realities into one reality, one thing, one people. And how does he do this? By means of the cross... Jesus, by means of the extremities of his cross, embraces the cardinal points and brings together the most distant peoples, Jesus heals and pacifies all (see Ephesians 2:14)."
He continued: "Jesus does not propose to us words and good intentions, but he proposes the cross, that scandalous love that lets its feet and wrists be pierced by nails and its head pierced by thorns. This is the direction to follow, to look together at Christ, the love betrayed and crucified for us; to see Jesus, crucified in so many students in residential schools. If we want to be reconciled ...we really have to raise our eyes to Jesus crucified, we have to obtain peace at his altar... Reconciliation is not so much a work of ours, it is a gift, it is a gift that flows from the Crucified One, it is peace that comes from the Heart of Jesus, it is a grace to ask for."
He spoke to a church filled with another aspect of reconciliation. "Jesus, through the cross, has reconciled us into one body... The Church is this living body of reconciliation. But, if we think of the indelible pain experienced ... one experiences only anger ... shame. This happened when the believers allowed themselves to become worldly and, rather than promoting reconciliation, they imposed their own cultural model. This mentality...is slow to die, even from a religious point of view. In fact, it would seem more convenient to inculcate God in people, instead of allowing people to come closer to God. A contradiction. But it never works, because the Lord does not work like that, he does not force, he does not suffocate or oppress; he loves, he liberates, he sets free. He does not sustain with his Spirit those who subdue others."
With a lapidary phrase Francis said: "God cannot be proclaimed in a way contrary to God. However, how many times has this happened in history! While God presents himself simply and humbly, we are tempted to impose him and to impose ourselves in his name. It is the worldly temptation to bring him down from the cross to manifest him with power and appearance. But Jesus reconciles on the cross, not by coming down from the cross."
He went on to speak of reconciliation as "synonymous with the Church... The Church is the house where we reconcile ourselves anew, where we meet to begin again and grow together. It is the place where we stop thinking as individuals to recognize each other as brothers and sisters, looking into each other's eyes, welcoming each other's stories and culture, letting the mystique of being together, so pleasing to the Holy Spirit, favor the healing of wounded memories. This is the way, not to decide for others, not to pigeonhole everyone into pre-established schemes, but to place oneself before the Crucified One and before the brother in order to learn to walk together. This is the Church ..., not a set of ideas and precepts to inculcate in people, ... (but) a welcoming home for all. And may it always be so. ...Praying together, helping together, sharing life stories, common joys and struggles opens the door to God's reconciling work."
July 26, Santa Ana
July 26th is a beloved feast in Canada, especially by indigenous Catholics. At 10 o'clock in the morning the Pope concelebrated (without being able to preside the Eucharistic celebration due to his bad knee) at the Commonwealth Stadium in Edmonton. The Eucharistic prayer was in Latin. Before the final blessing the main celebrant, Edmonton Archbishop Richard Smith, thanked him "deeply" for his great personal sacrifice on this trip, and the more than 50,000 attendees applauded for three minutes.
In the afternoon, he blessed the water and the people at St. Anne's Shrine on the lake of the same name, 100 kilometers northwest of Edmonton. There, as in the morning at the stadium, he spoke heartfelt words related to the grandmother of Jesus.
For this media Pope, the doors are wide open to evangelize, since the ceremonies are broadcast to millions of people, for example, through the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. A priest who accompanies him translates in an intercalated and very effective way, into English, so that he can be followed very well.
Homily of the Mass
We are children of a history that must be guarded, we are not islands, said the Pontiff during the Mass. He explained that faith is usually transmitted at home in the mother tongue. Hence the great tragedy of the boarding schools that distorted that dynamic. Precisely from our grandparents we learned that love is not an imposition. Faith should never be imposed. Let us not oppress consciences - and let us never cease to love and respect the people who have gone before us and who have been entrusted to us. For they are "precious treasures that guard a history greater than themselves".
But "in addition to being children of a history to be guarded, we are artisans of a history to be built." The Pope asked those present not to be sterile critics of the system, but builders of the future, precisely by dialoguing with past and future generations.
He distinguished between a healthy tradition, that of the tree whose root sends its sapilla upwards and bears fruit; and a horizontal traditionalism, which does things because they have always been done that way. Tradition is the living faith of our dead, while traditionalism is the dead faith of the living.
"May Joaquín and Ana intercede for us. May they help us to guard the history that has generated us and to build a generative history. May they remind us of the spiritual importance of honoring our grandparents and elders, of taking advantage of their presence to build a better future. A future in which the elderly are not discarded because they are functionally "not necessary"; a future that does not judge the value of people only by what they produce; a future that is not indifferent towards those who, already advanced in age, need more time, listening and attention; a future in which the history of violence and marginalization suffered by our indigenous brothers and sisters is not repeated. It is a possible future if, with God's help, we do not break the link with those who have gone before us and nurture dialogue with those who will come after us: young and old, grandparents and grandchildren, together. Let us go forward together, let us dream together. And let us not forget Paul's advice to his disciple Timothy: 'Remember your mother and your grandmother'."
Grandparents and babies. Francis was able to go around the inside of the stadium in the popemobile and greet and kiss about twenty babies. That was before the mass.
A tale of two lakes
Later, at Lac Sainte Anne, after the liturgy of the Word (Ezekiel about the water coming out of the temple and healing and Jesus saying "If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink"), the Pope compared that lake to the one in Galilee. He imagined Jesus carrying out his ministry on the shore of a similar lake.
The Sea of Galilee was "like a concentration of differences, on its shores were fishermen and publicans, centurions and slaves, Pharisees and poor, men and women ... There, Jesus preached the Kingdom of God. Not to selected religious people, but to different peoples who, like today, came from various parts, welcoming everyone and in a natural theater like this." There God announced to the world "something revolutionary: 'turn the other cheek, love your enemies, live as brothers and sisters to be children of God, the Father who makes the sun rise on the good and the bad and makes the rain fall on the just and the unjust'. In this way, precisely that lake, 'mixed with diversity,' was the site of an unprecedented announcement of ... a revolution without death or injury, that of love."
He compared the sound of the indigenous drums that have been constantly accompanying him to the beating of his heart. He added: "Here, on the shores of this lake, the sound of the drums that crosses the centuries and unites different peoples, takes us back to that time. It reminds us that fraternity is true if it unites those who are estranged."
He referred to assisted suicide, euphemistically called assisted suicide. Medical assistance at deathwhich has been legal in Canada since 2016, first by a unanimous decision of the Supreme Court and then by an act of Parliament. The number of those legally euthanized since then is now around 40,000. "It is necessary to look more to the peripheries and to listen to the cry of the last, it is necessary to know how to welcome the pain of those who, often in silence, in our overcrowded and depersonalized cities, cry out: 'Do not leave us alone'. It is also the cry of the elderly who are in danger of dying alone at home or abandoned in a structure, or of the uncomfortable sick to whom, instead of affection, death is provided."
He also referred to young people, to the "stifled cry of boys and girls more questioned than heard, who delegate their freedom to a cell phone, while in the same streets other peers wander lost, anesthetized by some diversion, captive of addictions that make them sad and unsatisfied, unable to believe in themselves, to love what they are and the beauty of the life they have. Do not leave us alone is the cry of someone who would like a better world, but doesn't know where to start."
The maximum evangelizer did not hesitate to affirm, as it could not be less, that inculturated evangelization is a great blessing, also human. "During the dramas of the conquest, it was Our Lady of Guadalupe who transmitted the right faith to the Indians, speaking their language, wearing their costumes, without violence and without impositions. And soon after, with the advent of the printing press, the first grammars and catechisms in indigenous languages were published. How much good the missionaries who were authentic evangelizers have done in this sense to preserve indigenous languages and cultures in many parts of the world! In Canada, this 'maternal inculturation' that took place through the work of St. Anne, united the beauty of indigenous traditions and of the faith, embodied them with the wisdom of a grandmother, who is twice a mother."
For 133 years, indigenous Christians have been making pilgrimages to this sanctuary. Before the arrival of Christianity, there was already the custom of praying there, because according to the indigenous oral tradition, a chieftain had a dream in which he saw that in this lake they were going to find healing. Thus, the pilgrim pope said in his homily: "How many hearts came here longing and weary, weighed down by the burdens of life, and by these waters they found consolation and strength to go on!"
The Pope flies for four hours on July 27, arriving in Quebec City at three o'clock in the afternoon. We are waiting for him here.
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"Sharing goods with those in need". 18th Sunday in Ordinary Time
Andrea Mardegan comments on the readings for the 18th Sunday in Ordinary Time and Luis Herrera offers a short video homily.
The Gospels of recent Sundays guide us on a spiritual journey. The parable of the Good Samaritan has helped us to understand how to live our relationship with our neighbor according to mercy and compassion. To the teacher of the law who mentioned love of neighbor, Jesus said: do this and you will have life. Compassion for one's neighbor is the way to eternal life.
Jesus' dialogue with Martha and Mary, and then the revelation of the prayer to the Father and the parable of the importunate friend, encourage us to live our relationship with God with filial trust and as friends. Today, the parable of the rich foolish man directs us to live our relationship with earthly goods, together with a relationship of trust with God and his thought about those goods, and in a relationship of mercy with other people: not only "distributing" the goods as that man wanted speaking to Jesus about his brother's inheritance, but "sharing".
The question about the inheritance to Jesus is explained because the law of Moses had indications about this aspect, and in case of dispute they went to a master expert in the law. But Jesus is not a simple rabbi or interpreter of the law, he is the Messiah and the Son of God; he has come to fulfill and surpass it. He searches hearts and gives rules of life that go beyond what the law indicates: "Beware of all covetousness.". Paul echoes this teaching when he asks the Colossians to put to death "greed, which is idolatry.".
In fact, what is striking about the figure of the wealthy "foolish"The word that in the Bible designates the man who does not believe in God or who lives as if God did not exist, is his loneliness. The Greek text says that "converses with himself", and in this soliloquy he has only his own things in mind: my harvest, my barns, my goods. He imagines, always in dialogue with himself, what will be said when he has built new warehouses: "And then I will say to myself: my soul, you have goods stored up for many years; rest, eat, drink, feast merrily.".
There is no God in his horizon and there is no one. That is why God, in speaking to him, opens him to an "other" that does not exist in his thought: "Whose will it be that you have prepared?". In Luke's Greek there is an even more obvious play on words. The rich and selfish man uses "psyché" (soul) twice: "I will say to my soul: soul you have many good things."and God says to him: "Tonight they're going to claim your soul.".
The wisdom of Qoheleth resounds in the parable: "All is vanity! There is one who works with wisdom, science, and right, and has to leave his portion to one who has not worked.". God wants the authentic life of our soul: to share our goods with those in need.
The homily on the readings of Sunday 18th Sunday
The priest Luis Herrera Campo offers its nanomiliaa small one-minute reflection for these readings.
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Gestures of Pope Francis in Canada
Pope Francis' pilgrimage to Canada is turning out to be a trip full of gestures and great symbolic value.
RelatedCanada: Going to the peripheries. To the North Pole and the secularist desertCanada's "missing" peopleBishop Raymond PoissonThe presence of the Holy Father in Canada will guide us in the direction we should take".
Canada: Going to the peripheries. To the North Pole and the secularist desertCanada's "missing" peopleBishop Raymond PoissonThe presence of the Holy Father in Canada will guide us in the direction we should take".Since last Sunday Pope Francis has embarked on an intensive apostolic and penitential trip to Canada. His encounters with indigenous peoples are charged with great symbolic value. Although this pilgrimage is not without its difficultiesThe first impressions are positive.
At its meeting on Monday, July 25 with indigenous peoples First Nations, Métis and InuitPope Francis said: "I was waiting for this moment to arrive so that I could be among you. From here, from this sadly evocative place, I would like to begin what I desire in my heart: a penitential pilgrimage. I come to your native lands to tell you personally that I am grieving, to implore God for forgiveness, healing and reconciliation, to express my closeness to you, to pray with you and for you".
The Pope's words clearly expressed his sorrow for the situation suffered by the indigenous peoples, "in particular, for the way in which many members of the Church and religious communities cooperated, also through indifference, in those projects of cultural destruction and forced assimilation of the governments of the time, which ended in the system of residential schools". In his speech he asked for forgiveness seven times.
Gestures with footprint
One of the first people Pope Francis was able to greet was a woman who passed through one of the boarding schools. The kiss on the hand with which he said goodbye has become one of the iconic images of these days. It shows the humility with which the Pope has come to Canada and the response of the indigenous leaders is corresponding to this mood. Therefore, it is not surprising that after the request for forgiveness the Pope received a traditional Indian hat, as a token of affection and recognition.
Another image of the trip was Pope Francis' prayer at a cemetery in Maskwacis, some 70 kilometers south of Edmonton. The Pope's heartfelt prayer at the graves of some of the children of the boarding schools is another meaningful gesture.
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Pope blesses Lake Santa Ana
Pope Francis blessed the waters of St. Ann's Lake in Alberta (Canada) following the indigenous custom and blessing towards the four cardinal points.
This lake is the goal of an annual pilgrimage on the feast of St. Anne, the mother of the Virgin and grandfather of Jesus. It has an importance for Catholics and indigenous people.
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Considerations on the motu proprio "Ad charisma tuendum" on Opus Dei
We asked Professor Giuseppe Comotti, an expert jurist, to comment on the document of the Holy See (the motu proprio "Ad carisma tuendum") which, on July 14, modified some aspects of the canonical regulation of Opus Dei. His considerations are based on two key interpretations.
Related"Ad charisma tuendum" concretizes the figure of the Prelature of Opus DeiCharism and hierarchy in Opus Dei, two dimensions in the same reality. The Relationship between the Gifts of the Holy Spirit in the Church
"Ad charisma tuendum" concretizes the figure of the Prelature of Opus DeiCharism and hierarchy in Opus Dei, two dimensions in the same reality. The Relationship between the Gifts of the Holy Spirit in the ChurchTranslation of the article into Italian
Translation of the article into English
A correct interpretation of the actual scope of the recent motu proprio on Opus Dei "Ad charisma tuendum" requires the use of two hermeneutical keys provided by Pope Francis himself in the document.
The first key point is the express reference made in the motu proprio to the apostolic constitution "Ut sit".with which St. John Paul II erected the Personal Prelature of the Holy Cross and Opus Dei on November 28, 1982.
It seems important to me to point out that the new motu proprio does not repeal the Apostolic Constitution, but merely adapts it to the new organization of the Roman Curia, which provides in a general way for the competence, henceforth, of the Dicastery for the Clergy, and no longer of the Dicastery for Bishops, for all that pertains to the Apostolic See in matters of personal prelatures.
For the rest, the structure and content of the Apostolic Constitution "Ut sit", summarized incisively by St. John Paul II himself in the Speech delivered on March 17, 2001 before the participants in a meeting promoted by the Prelature of Opus Dei. In that address, the Holy Pontiff, in unequivocal expressions, not only described the Prelature as "organically structured," that is, composed of "priests and lay faithful-men and women-at the head of which is its own Prelate," but also reaffirmed the "hierarchical nature of Opus Dei, established in the Apostolic Constitution by which I erected the Prelature."
Hierarchical nature
From this hierarchical character, St. John Paul II drew "pastoral considerations rich in practical applications," emphasizing "that the belonging of the lay faithful both to their particular Church and to the Prelature, to which they are incorporated, makes the particular mission of the Prelature converge in the evangelizing commitment of every particular Church, just as the Second Vatican Council foresaw when it established the figure of personal prelatures.
This reference to the Second Vatican Council is highly significant, and constitutes the second hermeneutical key to the motu proprio. "Ad charisma tuendum", where the need to refer to "the teachings of conciliar ecclesiology on personal prelatures" is expressly emphasized.
As is well known, the last Council, in foreseeing the possibility of establishing "special dioceses or personal prelatures and other such provisions" in order to facilitate "not only the convenient distribution of priests, but also pastoral works peculiar to the various social groups to be carried out in any region or nation, or in any part of the earth" (Decree "Presbyterorum Ordinis".The Bishop omitted to outline its precise contours, preferring to leave room for a future ecclesial dynamism and an articulated discipline, "according to modules to be determined for each case, with the rights of the local ordinaries always being preserved".
The application of the council
The successive interventions of the Roman Pontiffs, in implementing the perspective indicated by the Council, left these spaces open: this is the case of the motu proprio "Ecclesiae Sanctae" The Code of Canon Law of St. Paul VI (August 6, 1966) and, above all, the 1983 Code of Canon Law of St. John Paul II, where some provisions are dedicated to personal prelatures (canons 294-297), which can be concretized in different ways, according to the needs identified by the Holy See, which is responsible for the erection of personal prelatures.
It should be noted, however, that the Code of Canon Law of 1983 (unlike the previous Code, which admitted the existence of the simple honorary title of prelate), uses the term "prelate" exclusively to indicate subjects other than diocesan bishops, but who have, like them, the power of proper ordinaries with respect to areas of exercise of the power of government called "prelatures," further specified with the qualifier of territorial or personal, according to the criterion adopted in each case to identify the faithful to whom the exercise of the power is addressed. Having said this, the Code of Canon Law leaves room for a wide variety of configurations which, concretely, the individual prelatures could receive in the statutes given to each one by the Supreme Authority of the Church.
The prelate's episcopate
In this broad area of freedom, the Code of Canon Law does not foresee the necessity, but neither does it exclude the possibility, of the prelate being invested with the episcopal dignity, this choice depending exclusively on an evaluation by the Roman Pontiff, who alone in the Latin Church is responsible for the appointment of bishops.
The abstract compatibility of the nature of a personal prelature with the episcopal dignity of the subject at its head is confirmed, in fact, by the decision of St. John Paul II to appoint as bishops the two previous Prelates of Opus Dei, on whom, among other things, he himself personally conferred episcopal ordination.
On the other hand, there are ecclesiastical circumscriptions of a territorial nature at the head of which there are prelates who are certainly holders of power of government of a hierarchical nature, but who, nevertheless, are not usually invested with the episcopal dignity (think of the apostolic prefectures in mission territories).
To this must be added that - as is well known - in the perspective of an exercise of the functions of government not limited to bishops alone, the pontifical insignia are not reserved by canon law exclusively to the latter, but their use is foreseen for a much wider category of subjects, even if they are not elevated to the episcopate, such as, for example, Cardinals and Legates of the Roman Pontiff, Abbots and Prelates who have jurisdiction over a territory separate from a diocese, Apostolic Administrators permanently constituted, Apostolic Vicars and Apostolic Prefects, and Abbots of monastic congregations.
The motu proprio Ad charisma tuendum
Therefore, if it is accepted without difficulty that the functions of a prelate can be entrusted to a priest, this does not prevent personal prelatures from always involving the exercise of the power of ecclesiastical government, if only because, as foreseen in canon 295, paragraph 1, the personal prelate "has the right to establish a national or international seminary, as well as to incardinate students and promote them to orders with the title of service to the prelature".
The fact that Pope Francis intends, appropriately, to protect the "charismatic" origin of Opus Dei, "according to the gift of the Spirit received by St. Josemaría Escrivá de Balaguer," in no way impedes the fact that the Prelature as such has been erected by means of an Apostolic Constitution, which is the instrument that the Roman Pontiff usually uses to institute the ecclesiastical circumscriptions, through which the exercise of the power of government that corresponds to the hierarchy is distributed and regulated.
Consequently, the motu proprio "Ad charisma tuendum", the Magisterium of the Council, far from imposing a clear separation between the charismatic dimension and the institutional-hierarchical dimension of the Opus Deishould be read as an invitation to live with "a new dynamism" (cf. St. John Paul II, Apostolic Letter "The New Dynamism of the Church").Novo millennio ineunte"15) fidelity to the charism of St. Josemaría, which the Supreme Authority of the Church, through the apostolic constitution "Ut Sit," has translated into the institution of a personal Prelature, that is, an instrument of a hierarchical nature.
To it is entrusted what Pope Francis defines in the motu proprio as a "pastoral task", to be carried out "under the guidance of the prelate" and which consists of "spreading the call to holiness in the world, through the sanctification of work and of family and social commitments, by means of the clerics incardinated in it and with the organic cooperation of the laity engaged in apostolic works".
A task which, precisely because it is pastoral, cannot but be shared with the Pastors of the Church and which, in terms of its content, does not refer to specific categories of subjects, but involves all the faithful, called to holiness by virtue of Baptism and not by reason of a particular choice of life.
The authorGiuseppe Comotti
Professor of Canon Law and Ecclesiastical Law
University of Verona
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The last smile
A true story for a day like today, when we celebrate the feast of St. Joachim and St. Anne.
In my memory of the last months of Margarita's life, there is a mixture of pain and sweetness. She was a tender and strong woman who, despite the inclement circumstances of her life, had the virtue of keeping her smile afloat.
Rodrigo met her in 2016. At that time he was a business student, I was a law student, and together with a group of friends we were trying to move forward with a social initiative. We wanted to put young university students in contact with grandparents who were abandoned in their own homes. It would be a win-win dealWe would learn from the experience of the elders and they would be relieved of their loneliness.
We chose to start in a vulnerable area: La Pincoya, a sea of 60-square-meter houses set among asphalted but narrow streets, whose zinc roofs reach the foot of the hills that enclose Santiago de Chile to the north. There we went to explore. At the local police station, we were advised to arrange visits on Saturday mornings, because that is when the drug traffickers rest.
The pastor, for his part, suggested that we wear white T-shirts so that people would associate our presence with that of the parish volunteers working on other initiatives, as this would give us more security. We then went door to door asking where grandparents lived who were interested in receiving visitors for a chat.
In spite of our initial fear, the people welcomed us with warmth, we became familiar with the neighborhood and discovered that the problem of loneliness was frequent and heartbreaking. Saturday after Saturday, we visited grandparents to listen to them, congratulate someone on their birthday or give them a moment of conversation. We were not doctors, psychologists or social workers, but just inexperienced young people who left each visit with a full heart and a moved soul.
Very soon, Rodrigo met Mrs. Margarita. He was introduced to Mel, a young French missionary who had been working in the area for a few months. At that meeting, Margarita was happy to talk and Rodrigo told her that he would come back. The appearance of this lady was eloquent regarding her need: when she said that she was born in 1942 and that she was 74 years old, he was surprised, both because of her confidence in giving them this delicate information, and because she seemed to be 15 or 20 years older.
She was short and somewhat plump, wore a high hairstyle that sprouted like a field of white wheat on her head, was wrapped in a loose blue fleece jacket and a scarf (on subsequent visits she exchanged it for a much more elegant black sweater with gold buttons); she had large, expressive eyebrows, and was blind in her left eye. She walked with difficulty and complained that the muscles on the right side of her body ached. Her biggest problem, in any case, was not physical pain, but loneliness. She was a widow and lived in her little house accompanied by two small dogs and one of her six children, whom she unfortunately saw very little and who also made her cry with alarming frequency, as he was a severe alcoholic. She saw the other children "late, badly and never", since all but the daughter were also alcoholics.
Two Saturdays later, Rodrigo returned accompanied by José Miguel. Mrs. Margarita was impressed by the fact that the young men had kept their promise, thanked God and welcomed them into her home with excitement. They sat down in some low armchairs in the living room and quickly got to know each other. First he spoke to them about his childhood in the city of Talca and then he moved on to topics that concerned him more, until he reached his children. There she finally opened her heart completely and told them, with trembling lips and shy words, a black sadness: the previous week the son who lived with her had died of alcohol poisoning.
This poor man had been suffering from this addiction for a long time, but when he was told that his only son had hanged himself because of problems with drug trafficking, he lost control: he became desperate and clung to the bottle like a castaway to a plank. He spent a year like that, mired in the most dreadful anguish, until his body could take no more and he gave up living.
Margarita recounted these misfortunes to Rodrigo and José Miguel as if they had been friends for a long time, at length and in detail: she managed to talk, lament and cry. After an hour and a half of catharsis, she felt she had finished: she wiped her tears with a handkerchief and looked my friends in the eyes, or what was left of them, for at that point they were as if petrified by the shock. Margarita gave a childish smile and thanked them: "If it weren't for you, I would have had no one to unburden myself to... now I feel more relieved. Thank you.
They replied briefly and realized they were running late, so they said goodbye. As she opened the door, she winked at them with her healthy eye and, pleading with her eyes for them to come back, she added, "I'll never get bored of you, I promise!". They parted and she directed their steps to the kitchen to prepare lunch, with a smile on her face, while the wall clock resumed its usual slowness.
Rodrigo returned fifteen days later. This time with the surprise that he was accompanied by José Tomás, a chubby and friendly student who was born in Talca, just like Margarita! The conversation was endearing and was interspersed with laughter and jollity, they even took a selfie. The farewell ceremony had a more festive ending: "My doors are open to you, and even more so if a Talquino comes," she told them, beaming with joy.
In the following months there were three more visits, in which Rodrigo was getting more university students to accompany him: some more photos were taken, one day José Tomás gave Margarita two of those framed photos, she made jokes to the talquino and said goodbye with tender and varied phrases such as: "Thanks for coming, kids, I have you as my family" or "I have to thank God for sending these kids to my family" or "I have to thank God for sending them to my family". lolos so handsome to see me".
In October I joined the plan to visit Margarita for the first time. By then there were 6 of us in the entourage. I remember that we parked at the local police station, as we used to do, and started walking around the town in our white T-shirts.
It was a very blue and warm Saturday morning, cloudless, the drug gangs were sleeping despite the loud reggaeton that flowed from some houses like musical jets, the ladies were leaving their houses pushing little canvas suitcases on wheels to buy vegetables at the neighborhood market, the children were playing soccer in the street and stopped the ball to look at us with some skepticism.
When we arrived at the corner facing our grandmother's alley, we realized that something had happened. On many front doors, the neighbors had hung white balloons. In the background, at the house with the white gate where Margarita lived, we saw a crowd of people.
Rodrigo smiled, although with trepidation: "He told me that his daughter was getting married, but I didn't know it would be today. Let's go! We followed him and as soon as we reached the front steps, we saw the door open and about 15 very serious and casually dressed but dignified people looking back at us.
In the middle of the group, a middle-aged man stood out, leaning on the shoulders of the others to watch us with particular intensity. He was bald, wearing sport pants and jacket and dirty sneakers. With a quick movement he took off his sunglasses and leaned out to get a better look at us with his reddened eyes. He seemed to recognize us, made his way through the crowd and descended the three steps that separated us to greet us with a grimace of bitterness, remorse and gratitude: "You came, you came, I can't believe you also came to my mother's wake, thank you, thank you!" he exclaimed, warmly shaking hands with each of us, while we processed what was happening.
We entered the house and he introduced us to his brothers, three fat and badly shaved men whose flat faces showed a dense and cryptic sadness, and a broad woman who seemed more empathetic. They greeted us with a look of deep respect and we saw ourselves, suddenly, in the front row, surrounding the coffin where Mrs. Margarita rested in peace. The surprise we got was enormous, we did not expect it at all!
Through the glass that showed the face of the deceased, I saw that she was smiling, for the last time. She was expressing pure joy, as if she wanted to leave us her strength, her trust in God, her gratitude for life. The relatives were watching us from the walls, but we had remained absorbed, with our eyes fixed on those closed eyes, those calm eyebrows and that sincere smile. The son who had welcomed us, with difficulty due to the tears that kept escaping like a badly turned off faucet, broke the ice. In a confidential tone, although with the obvious intention of making himself heard by everyone, he said to us:
-It's been two or three years since I've been to see Mom. We talked on the phone, although very occasionally. The last few months she only told me things about you and asked me if I knew when the guys from the university were going to visit her again..." He wiped his tears with the sleeve of his tracksuit, sighed as if to catch his breath and continued, although looking at the floor, with a groan, "We had abandoned her.
The brothers looked down too, we waited a few seconds and he continued with difficulty.
-And while we were busy doing our own thing, you came to replace us. You gave our mother a family in her last months of life. That's why we wanted to..." He looked at his brothers, they nodded, and he pointed to a small table in the corner of the room that he hadn't noticed until then. Ahem, we wanted to place here, at the Virgin's feet, the two photos you took with my mommy.
There she was, indeed, in front of a plaster statuette of Our Lady of Lourdes and a photo of her husband and another of her deceased son, in the front row, the two of them in the front row. selfies framed pictures that José Tomás had given Margarita some time ago, facing the coffin. We did not know what to say, our throats tightened and we could not respond: Rodrigo was the first to cry, then José Tomás also broke down and we all ended up crying, we and Margarita's children, united with the rest of the relatives who had witnessed the conversation, all holding hands around the coffin. We prayed an Our Father, a Hail Mary and a Glory Be, all together in an unforgettable moment of communion, while we contemplated that face, as tormented as it was smiling, of the deceased Margarita, that smile that attracted all eyes and consoled us with the thought that she was in a better place, freed at last from the sufferings of the earth, embraced perhaps by her husband, her son and her grandson in the hereafter; so much pain suddenly transformed into happiness, as a rose opens after being watered with tears and blood. Her smile comforted us: "You have come! -she seemed to want to exclaim with incombustible joy-, you have even come to my wake, children, thank you! By the way, I look sensational. When I arrived here I contemplated God only with the eyes of my soul, but then a very handsome seraphim lent me some of the eyes he carries in his wings, and you can't imagine how well I see here! Come soon, children, and don't worry too much about the pain you suffer in life, because all that finds its consolation here. Come and see me here too, don't delay too long!
We went out into the street in silence, accompanied by the brothers with the seriousness of a Holy Week procession. We looked at each other and did not know how to say goodbye. First a hug, then another. Promises of prayers, new thanks, a photo. In the end we managed to separate and walked back to the car, in silence, aware that we would always carry Margarita and her smile in our hearts. We were not doctors, nor psychologists, nor social workers, it is true, in that we could not give her professional help, but we had been fortunate enough to be adopted by Margarita as her grandchildren, and that is what we will remain for all eternity.
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Charism and hierarchy in Opus Dei, two dimensions in the same reality. The Relationship between the Gifts of the Holy Spirit in the Church
In the Church, the hierarchical and charismatic dimensions are inseparable and complementary. This is also true in the case of Opus Dei. The recent motu proprio recently published by Opus Dei "Ad charisma tuendum"with which Pope Francis wishes to promote the mission that Opus Dei carries out in the Church. The author, a well-known canonist, comments on this aspect.
Translation of the article into English
The institutional dimension and the charismatic dimension are two dimensions that can be distinguished, without confusing them. At the same time, they are necessary for the life of the Church and complementary to each other.
There is no Church that is not hierarchical, founded on the Apostles and governed by their successors, and at the same time is not charismatic. There is no such thing as a hierarchical Church and a Church "of the People".
Nor is there a Church that is only hierarchical, without being at the same time charismatic.
In fact, the charisms given by the Holy Spirit have been a reality in the Church since its foundation. It is enough to read the letters of St. Paul to understand that there is a great variety of gifts of the Spirit, for the usefulness and good of the Church; some are of the authority, and others of the faithful (as can be seen, for example, in 1 Cor 12:28 and 1 Cor 14:27-28).
The gifts that the baptized received in the Christian community were in each case gifts of diverse entity and content. But they were not for individual benefit, but for the good of the community. Therefore, their exercise must be ordered, since they are for edification, not destruction.
Noting this reality, the Second Vatican Council has emphasized that the Holy Spirit provides and governs the Church with hierarchical and charismatic gifts. As the Constitution points out Lumen gentium, n. 4, "the Holy Spirit (...) guides the Church into all truth (cf. Jn 16:13), unifies her in communion and ministry, provides and governs her with diverse hierarchical and charismatic gifts and embellishes her with his fruits (cf. Eph 4:11-12; 1 Cor 12:4; Gal 5:22)".
The hierarchical and charismatic dimensions of the last Roman Pontiffs
This presence of the Holy Spirit has been especially valued by recent Roman Pontiffs. A clear contribution of John Paul II, when referring to the presence of new groups endowed with a remarkable charismatic and evangelizing thrust, was to emphasize that the gifts of the Spirit are essential for the Church.
Thus, he said: "On several occasions I have emphasized that there is no contrast or opposition in the Church between the institutional dimension and the charismatic dimensionof which the movements are a significant expression. Both are equally essential to the divine constitution of the Church founded by Jesus, because they contribute to making present the mystery of Christ and his saving work in the world" (Message to the participants in the World Congress of Ecclesial Movements, May 27, 1998, n. 5). If they are co-essential, it means that they belong to the nature and being of the Church.
Pope Benedict XVI, for his part, specified how the two dimensions combine and relate to each other: "In the Church even the essential institutions are charismatic and, on the other hand, the charisms must be institutionalized in one way or another in order to have coherence and continuity. Thus both dimensions, raised up by the same Holy Spirit for the same Body of Christ, concur together to make present the mystery and salvific work of Christ in the world" (Address to the Fraternity of Communion and Liberation on the 25th anniversary of its pontifical recognition, March 24, 2007).
These are two dimensions that intertwine, that complement each other, that are always present, with greater or lesser intensity. How can we fail to recall that, united to the figure of the Roman Pontiff, there is the charism of infallibility; that he who is the successor of the Apostles receives the gifts of the Spirit to govern and guide the Church, and that among these gifts is discernment of the authenticity of charisms (as the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith pointed out in n. 8 of the letter "The Roman Pontiff and the Roman Pontiff"). Iuvenescit EcclesiaMay 15, 2016, "the same Spirit gives to the hierarchy of the Church, the ability to discern authentic charisms, to receive them with joy and gratitude, to promote them with generosity and to accompany them with paternal vigilance"; it is a gift received for the good of the whole People of God).
Pope Francis has also highlighted the harmony between the two dimensions: "Walking together in the Church, guided by the Pastors, who have a special charism and ministry, is a sign of the action of the Holy Spirit; ecclesiality is a fundamental characteristic for Christians, for every community, for every movement" (homily at the Pentecost Vigil with the ecclesial movements, May 19, 2013), and emphasized how charisms are born and flourish in Christian communities: "It is within the community that the gifts with which the Father fills us sprout and blossom; and it is within the community where one learns to recognize them as a sign of his love for all his children". They are always ecclesial, and are at the service of the Church and its members.
In the letter Iuvenescit EcclesiaIn its 2016 letter, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith affirms: "Ultimately, it is possible to recognize a convergence of recent ecclesial Magisterium on the co-essentiality between the hierarchical and charismatic gifts. Their opposition, as well as their juxtaposition, would be a sign of an erroneous or insufficient understanding of the action of the Holy Spirit in the life and mission of the Church".
The complementarity between hierarchy and charism, in the case of Opus Dei
In the recent motu proprio Ad charisma tuendumOn July 22, 2022, Pope Francis once again emphasized the complementarity of the hierarchical and charismatic gifts. In fact, the Prelature of the Opus Dei was established by Pope John Paul II, with the Apostolic Constitution Ut sitto carry out a purpose proper to these hierarchical entities: the realization of specific pastoral works (the other purpose is to contribute to the distribution of the clergy: decree Presbyterorum Ordinis10; Code of Canon Law, canon 294).
As Pope Francis recalls in the Proem of the motu proprio, Opus Dei has a special task in the evangelizing mission of the Church: to live and spread the gift of the Spirit received by St. Josemaría, which is none other than to spread the call to holiness in the world, through the sanctification of work and the family and social tasks of the Christian.
To achieve this goal of spreading the universal vocation to holiness, which is not the exclusive task of Opus Dei, but of the whole Church (cf. Lumen gentium, n. 11, and Francis, Apostolic Exhortation Gaudete et exultate, March 19, 2018), the hierarchy has created a Prelature, presenting a real and practical model of living that holiness in the midst of the world.
In fact, the path opened by the Holy Spirit on October 2, 1928, the date of Opus Dei's foundation, has borne fruits of holiness among a wide variety of faithful: men and women, married and celibate, laity and clergy. In fact, among the faithful of the Work, some have reached the glory of the altars: St. Josemaría, Blessed Álvaro del Portillo and Blessed Guadalupe Ortiz de Landázuri. Opus Dei is, in fact, a possible and real example of holiness in the world.
In turn, the Holy See carried out a discernment of the charism of Opus Dei, giving its approval at various points in its history (cf. Illanes, "El itinerario jurídico del Opus Dei: historia y defensa de un carisma", Pamplona 1989), and in 1982 concluded that it should be configured as a Personal Prelature, a configuration that has been confirmed by Pope Francis in the motu proprio (which at the same time modifies some articles of the Apostolic Constitution Ut sit, in the points in which the relationship with the Holy See is specified: articles 5 and 6).
Two dimensions in the same reality
It is normal that, in the face of charismatic and hierarchical gifts, the tendency is to think that the recipients of one or the other are different people.
In this case, we find an entity that is hierarchical (its guide is a Prelate, who acts with the necessary collaboration of a presbyterate and lay faithful as members: cf. canons 294 and 296, and John Paul II, Apostolic Constitution Ut sit, articles 3 and 4), and at the same time charismatic: it has to live and spread that charism. All its members have received God's call to be saints, incarnating the spirit that God gave to the Work's founder.
It constitutes, therefore, an example of an entity in which the complementarity between hierarchical and charismatic gifts becomes palpable in the same reality. Every charismatic reality has a relationship with the function of hierarchy. In this case, apart from the normal relationship with authority, which has decreed the authenticity of the charism and which always accompanies this living charism that has its developments in history, some peculiar aspects are added, such as the one I have just indicated: a Prelature with a Pastor, with a presbyterate and with laity destined to spread a charism at the service of the People of God.
The authorLuis Felipe Navarro
Rector of the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross, Professor of Personal Law, Consultant to the Dicastery for the Laity, the Family and Life.
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Javier ViverIf art does not generate communion, it will be anything else, but not art".
The photographer and sculptor Javier Viver, the author of the Mother of Hakuna, or the Bella Pastorais one of the leaders of contemporary sacred art in Spain. From July 25 until July 30, he directs the Observatory of the Invisiblein which a hundred students and professionals from different artistic disciplines share creative experiences and reflections within the framework of the Monastery of Guadalupe.
RelatedMaría Tarruella OriolMy paintings are prayers".Art and spirituality meet at the "Observatory of the Invisible".Diana García Roy: "I look for a sculpture that reflects the spirit, that comes from the heart in a sincere way".
María Tarruella OriolMy paintings are prayers".Art and spirituality meet at the "Observatory of the Invisible".Diana García Roy: "I look for a sculpture that reflects the spirit, that comes from the heart in a sincere way".From his hands have come Marian images such as the Mother of Hakuna, the Beautiful Shepherdess of Iesu Communio, Lot's wife or the Guardian Angel that, since a few days ago, can be seen in Madrid's Puerta del Angel. Javier Viver is one of the benchmarks of the contemporary sacred art in Spain, but he is also a prolific author of non-religious works, both sculptural and photographic.
Since last year, it has been promoting, through Fundación Vía, the Observatory of the Invisible. A summer school for students from different artistic disciplines, who, for a week, are immersed in an experience of art and spirituality in the framework of the Monastery of Guadalupe de Cáceres.
Against this backdrop, Viver points out in this interview with Omnes what he sees as the role of the artist in today's society: "to offer a sliver of hope, a piece of paradise, to society".
The first experience of the Observatory of the Invisible was a success and this has led to the expansion and continuation of the call for applications.
- The possibility of sharing artistic creation with a great diversity of artists of all disciplines and ages. More than 100 attendees between artists and students.
Why did you choose the surroundings of the Guadalupe Monastery?
- The Monastery is a historical center of spirituality and artistic creation of the first order. With masterpieces by Zurbarán, El Greco and Goya.
Speaking of the invisible, that art is the way of materialization of the spirit
Can there be an inanimate art?
- No, art is waiting for a soul to interpret it, to reactivate it.
Does the artist create for himself or for the viewer?
- From my point of view it creates for a spectator, for a reader. Art as a cultural phenomenon only makes sense for a society. If it does not generate communication, communion, it will be anything else, but not art.
The most important works are those that connect and awaken the contemplation of other souls, of his generation and those to come. In this sense their projection is timeless, their audience universal and unlimited. Art in the long term is the best investment.
Among your best-known religious-themed works are the Marian images of the Bella Pastora or the Mother of Hakuna. How do you imagine the Virgin?
- The Virgin Mary is the nascent Church, the maiden of Nazareth who began this exciting adventure we call the Church. First it was the domestic Church of Nazareth, then the hierarchical Church. She is the living tradition of the Church, made domestic stories that she would later tell to the disciples of Jesus and they wrote in the Gospels and other writings. Moreover, Mary is the initiator of the Way of Art, via pulchritudinis.
Like the great women of history she was the great domestic narrator of salvation history and the great weaver. She was the mother of Jesus and became the mother of Jesus' disciples.
Art has been identified, perhaps romantically, with outsiders, madmen or visionaries... Is there any truth in this identification?
- Art is always at the limit, in that region where mystery appears, that which is not seen, that which is not understood, that which breaks with political correctness.
In a society that is torn between continuous rupture and new molds, what is the role of the artist?
- That of making everything new and everything old. That of offering a sliver of hope to his society, a piece of paradise, that of making the invisible visible.
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Vittorio ScelzoElderly people ask not to be left alone".
"It is the first time in history that growing old has become a mass phenomenon." So says Vittorio Scelzo, responsible for the pastoral care of the elderly in the Dicastery for the Laity, Family and Life, in this interview for Omnes.
Related"The Church has in the elderly an army of witnesses of Faith"."If we really care about the elderly, we have to listen to them."Pope institutes the first World Day of the Elderly
"The Church has in the elderly an army of witnesses of Faith"."If we really care about the elderly, we have to listen to them."Pope institutes the first World Day of the ElderlyToday, for the second year, the Church is celebrating the World Day of Grandparents and the Elderly 2022 with the theme, "In old age you will still bear fruit". It has been preceded by several months of catechesis on old agePope Francis has developed in his Wednesday audiences, the elderly and the role of the family.
Scelzo also emphasizes in this interview that the elderly ask the Church, fundamentally "that they not be left alone, and the Church, especially with the magisterium of Pope Francis, is very clear: abandoning the elderly is a grave sin".
The Pope's message for this Day highlights a reality typical of the first world: the fear of old age. How does this affect us in the family, in the Church?
- The Pope speaks of the fear of aging. It is something we are all clearly aware of: we associate old age with the loss of autonomy, of health. It is often thought that growing old means in some way losing dignity because of the fragility we experience.
However, growing old - so the message goes - is a gift. After all, for centuries one of humanity's great goals has been to live a long time. Now that longer life has become a reality for many, our societies seem unprepared.
Aging is something new. It is the first time in history that growing old has become a mass phenomenon. We are not prepared and that is why the Pope devotes so much attention to the elderly: it is necessary to develop reflection on this age of life. It will be one of the most important challenges of the coming years.
The population, and therefore the members of the Church, in the West are mostly elderly. This is also a pastoral challengeHow can we involve the elderly in the work of the Church when they may not be in top shape?
- Often the elderly are involved, they are the ones who run our parishes, they are the protagonists of our commitment to charity. You only have to look around the Church to see that they are the most assiduous Mass attenders. But there is a challenge posed to us by those who are not at full strength.
Going back to the Gospel passage we heard last Sunday, I would say that we are challenged by Mary: to understand that being a Christian is not just running after the many things to do, but rediscovering the centrality of listening and prayer.
The Pope, in his message for the World Day of Grandparents and the Elderlyentrusts the task of prayer to the elders. It is not a residual commitment, the future of the Church and the world depends on it: Jewish tradition says that it is the prayer of the righteous that sustains the world.
At this time, it seems to me that perhaps the first pastoral urgency is to arouse prayer for peace in Ukraine, and the elderly, who know the horror of war, in this perspective, are not in the rearguard, but among the pioneers.
In a world where loneliness is increasingly present, especially in the elderly population, what do the elderly ask of the Church?
- Isolation is the great disease of the elderly and our society runs the risk of catching it. We are getting used to thinking that loneliness is normal and the pandemic has made it seem unavoidable.
But God - it is no coincidence that it is one of the first words in the Bible - does not want man to be alone.
The elderly ask not to be left alone, and the Church, especially with the magisterium of Pope Francis, is very clear: abandoning the elderly is a grave sin.
However, we see multiple manifestations of the throwaway culture, and unfortunately this also occurs within Christian families.
The Pope also encourages the elderly to be protagonists of the revolution of tenderness that the world needs. In this sense, how can tenderness and the teaching of responsibility be combined in the family?
- The Pope in his message associates the word tenderness with the no longer fashionable word revolution. I think he means that the behavior marked by this attitude should be the seed of a change in our cities.
He asks us to have for the poorest of the poor - he mentions in particular the refugees from the war in Ukraine and the others who stain our world with blood - a tender thought and a tender attitude.
The elderly can do a lot (we are witnessing a great movement of solidarity) not only from a practical and welcoming point of view, but they can help us to de-escalate the climate, to understand - as many of them have had to do - that we cannot save ourselves alone.
This is the magisterium of fragility of which the Pope spoke in one of the last Wednesday audiences: the wisdom of those who understand that they are not enough for themselves and the futility of opposition at all costs.
At the same time, and aware of all this, how can we encourage the new generations to participate actively in the Church and in society?
- The Pope speaks very often of a covenant between the generations. It has always struck me that the first time he spoke about older people was during World Youth Day in Rio de Janeiro.
The question you ask is really very complex, but - surely - part of the answer lies in the rediscovery (or the construction) of a link between young and old. It is not just a nice idea: we know many experiences that tell us that the encounter between young and old is always a very rich experience for everyone.
In recent months we have heard the Pope not only talk about the elderly, but also address them, alluding to attitudes that hinder intergenerational coexistence. How can the Church promote this mutual understanding beyond a one-day visit?
- First of all, let's make this visit! The Pope writes in his message that a friendship is often born from a first visit. Taking a step towards others, especially towards the weakest, always has a value, and that is what we ask of everyone on World Day of Grandparents and the Elderly: let's visit an elderly person who is lonely! Especially in this time of sweltering heat, let no one live this day alone!
Then the Pope, with the concreteness that characterizes him, speaks to the elderly and not of the elderly because they are a large part of the laity. The elderly are many and will always be more numerous, how can we continue to ignore them?
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July 24: Pope Francis dedicates a day to grandparents and senior citizens
Next Sunday, July 24, the World Day for Grandparents and the Elderly will be celebrated around the world this year 2022. Parishes, dioceses and ecclesial communities are also called to celebrate with creativity and in a decentralized way this feast, which this year has as its theme "In old age they will continue to bear fruit".
The World Day of Grandparents and the Elderly has become one of the events that bears the unmistakable signature of the Argentine pope. It was Pope Francis himself who last year wanted to establish a day dedicated exclusively to grandparents and the elderly. The Day is scheduled to be celebrated every year on the fourth Sunday of July, around the feast of Saints Joachim and Anne, grandparents of Jesus.
This year it will take place this Sunday, July 24, with the celebration of a Eucharist in St. Peter's by Cardinal De Donatis, Vicar General for the Diocese of Rome. De Donatis, Vicar General for the Diocese of Rome. On the same day, the Pope begins an apostolic journey to Canada, during which he plans to visit the Shrine of St. Anne and meet with young people and the elderly at an elementary school in Iqaluit.
"Please do not leave them alone" is one of the phrases that the Pontiff has repeated most often in reference to the care and attention of the elderly, and the institution of the Day is a sign that he is concerned about this topic. It is not in vain that he has wanted to dedicate a good part of the Wednesday audiences to talk about the stage of old age and the richness that the elderly represent for families and for society.
"In old age they will continue to bear fruit", is the motto chosen to promote dialogue between the elderly and the young: "It is important that grandparents meet their grandchildren and that grandchildren meet their grandparents, because - as the prophet Joel says - grandparents will dream in front of their grandchildren, they will have illusions (great desires), and the young, taking strength from their grandparents, will go forward, they will prophesy".
In addition to next Sunday's event, this July Christians are also praying especially for the elderly; the prayer intention that Francis entrusts to the whole Church this month, through the Pope's Worldwide Prayer Network, is precisely to pray for the elderly.
In the video message, the Pope reflects on this stage of life: "Old age, in fact, is not an easy stage to understand, even for those of us who are already living it. Although it comes after a long journey, no one has prepared us to face it, and it almost seems to take us by surprise." The Pope appeals to the elderly to continue to contribute all that they can give because older people have "a special sensitivity for care, for reflection and affection" and invites them to be We are, or we can become, protagonists of a "revolution of tenderness."
"Many people are afraid of old age," the Pope begins in the message prepared for the event, "They consider it a kind of illness with which it is better not to come into contact. The elderly do not concern us - they think - and it is better for them to be as far away as possible, perhaps together among themselves, in facilities where they are cared for and which spare us from having to take care of their worries." Pope Francis wants to be close to all the elderly and he does so by speaking to them on a one-to-one basis, showing himself to be elderly himself: "And we, grandparents and the elderly, have a great responsibility: to teach the women and men of our time to see others with the same understanding and the same tender gaze that we address to our grandchildren. We have sharpened our humanity by caring for others, and today we can be teachers of a peaceful way of life, attentive to the weakest.
"The elderly," the Pope continues, "help to perceive "the continuity of generations," with "the charism of serving as a bridge. Often it is the grandparents who ensure the transmission of great values to their grandchildren, and "many people can recognize that they owe their initiation into the Christian life to their grandparents".
With these words, the Pope wants to make us understand that the construction of a better world passes - also - through revaluing the figure of our elders, going "against the tide with respect to what the world thinks of this age of life", encouraging at the same time older people not to maintain a resigned attitude", "with little hope and no longer expecting anything from the future".
A Church close to the elderly
The Pope has also addressed this topic in greater depth in other messages and in papal documents, such as the Apostolic Exhortation Amoris Laetitia: "The Church cannot and does not want to conform herself to a mentality of intolerance, much less of indifference and contempt, with regard to old age. We must awaken a collective sense of gratitude, appreciation, hospitality, which make the elderly feel a living part of their community." In this line, the World Day of Grandparents and Older Persons, wants to be an appeal to all families, and to society as a whole, to give back to the elderly all the value they have and to treat them as they deserve while inviting them to "continue to bear fruit".
In a society that values only that which produces an instant benefit, grandparents and the elderly find themselves more and more alone and neglected, sometimes even by their own families. The "throwaway culture" so often mentioned by the Pope also refers to this; the attention and care of the elderly has no short-term benefit and attending to their daily needs is tiring and repetitive and often becomes an additional burden in the daily lives of families. However, as the Pope says in the Apostolic Exhortation Amoris Laetitia: "A family that does not respect and care for its grandparents, who are its living memory, is a disintegrated family but a family that remembers is a family with a future."
La Jornada
In this second year of the Day dedicated to grandparents and the elderly, the Dicastery for the Laity, Family and Life suggests two ways to participate: celebrating the Eucharist or visiting the elderly alone.
The same Dicastery has made available to the various dioceses a series of pastoral and liturgical materials and suggestions, available on the Dicastery's website. Among the recommendations made, one that stands out is that of visiting or accompanying elderly people who are alone.
In fact, the Church grants the faculty to obtain the plenary indulgence under the usual conditions: sacramental confession, Eucharistic communion and praying for the intentions of the Supreme Pontiff. It can be received by grandparents, the elderly and the faithful who participate in the Mass on July 24 in St. Peter's Basilica or in the various celebrations that will take place throughout the world. The indulgence may also be applied as a suffrage for the souls in purgatory.
In addition, the same Plenary Indulgence will be granted to the sick elderly and to all those who, "unable to leave their homes for a serious reason, unite themselves spiritually to the sacred celebrations of the World Day, offering to the Merciful God their prayers, pains and sufferings of their own lives, especially while the Pontiff's words and the various celebrations are being broadcast by the media".
The World Day of Grandparents and the Elderly is also the starting point for developing a specific pastoral program that effectively reaches this part of society which, as the Pope says, is going through the loneliest phase of life and often does not know how to live it because "there are many projects of assistance" to the elderly but "few projects of existence".
Cardinal Kevin Farrell, Prefect of the Dicastery for the Laity, Family and Life, regarding the organization of Sunday's event noted that, with the Day, the Holy Father "invites us to become aware of the relevance of the elderly in the life of societies and our communities, and to do so in a way that is not episodic, but structural, and the Day helps to lay the foundations for an ordinary pastoral care of this time of life."
The authorLeticia Sánchez de León
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Giorgio MarengoThe most important thing is faithfulness to the Lord".
The future Cardinal Giorgio Marengo, Prefect Apostolic of Ulaanbaatar, capital of Mongolia, pastors a community that represents 1% of his fellow citizens. The key to the growth of the Church in this mission country is, as he points out, the accompaniment of converts and consistency of life.
RelatedMsgr. Fernando Vérgez, L.C.: "We need witnesses to the Gospel who know how to shake consciences".What are the new cardinals chosen by Francis like?The Pope announces the creation of new cardinals
Msgr. Fernando Vérgez, L.C.: "We need witnesses to the Gospel who know how to shake consciences".What are the new cardinals chosen by Francis like?The Pope announces the creation of new cardinals"To think of appointing a bishop who leads a small and minority Church as a cardinal is a great missionary gesture". Father Giorgio Marengo, Apostolic Prefect of Ulaanbaatar, the capital of Mongolia, was in Rome when he was surprised to learn of his appointment as Cardinal: "In those days - says the Consolata missionary - I had accompanied a delegation of Mongolian Buddhists to the Holy Father: it was the first time this had happened. We had just concluded this beautiful and historic initiative of inter-religious dialogue when, during the Regina Colei on Sunday, May 29, I heard the Pontiff call my name. At that moment I was overcome with a very strong joy and a feeling of deep gratitude and humility.
The Church led by Monsignor Marengo in the East Asian country is very small: 1,400 faithful out of a little more than three million inhabitants, eight parishes and one public church that is not yet recognized as a parish.
"Here, the majority of the population is of Buddhist faith, while Catholics do not reach 1%. It is different for Protestant Christians - Evangelicals and Pentecostals - who are more numerous than Catholics," adds Monsignor Marengo.
What is the work of evangelization carried out by the Catholic Church in Mongolia?
- I respond by using a poetic image borrowed from a great Salesian pastor, the Indian Archbishop Emeritus Thomas Menamparampil: we try to whisper the Gospel to the heart of Mongolia. It is an expression that speaks of our commitment to a constant witness to the Gospel: a discreet, non-noisy proclamation.
The 70% of our activities are works of human promotion: education, health, assistance to people in difficulty, but also preservation of Mongolian culture.
Then, of course, there is the celebration of the sacraments. The Church is committed on many fronts and tries to have as its basic attitude the desire to share the joy of the Gospel in a humble but profound way.
This year marks the thirtieth anniversary of the revival of the Church in Mongolia and of the establishment of the of diplomatic relations between the country and the Holy See. In summary, what can be made of this thirtieth anniversary?
- Thirty years is not a short time, but it is not a long time either. However, it has been a conspicuous time in which the Church has been able to present itself and put down roots. If today we have nine Catholic communities in the area, it is a sign that the Gospel has been accepted and is being lived in practice.
At the beginning, it was a time marked by pioneering in a nation that suddenly saw a regime marked by communism and state atheism collapse and fall into a phase of disorientation and poverty. It was at this precise moment in history that the first three missionaries arrived, among them Monsignor Wenceslao Selga Padilla, the first Apostolic Prefect of Ulaanbaatar. They began to implement concrete projects of friendship and solidarity, with the aim of creating relationships of trust that would last over time.
Instead, what does the future hold for the Church in Mongolia?
- There is still much to be done. This first nucleus of Christian life that is emerging still needs a lot of care in order to continue to grow and allow it to obtain a missionary dimension within our country that will be the sign of its evangelization.
In this sense, one of the main challenges will be that of depth: to accompany those who have become Christians by allowing the faith to reach the depths of the person and, consequently, of society itself. However, as the Pope says, pastoral plans and strategies are fine, but what matters most is fidelity to the Lord practiced in a consistent Christian life.
The Apostolic Prefecture of Ulaanbaatar, the only church in all of Mongolia, has recently been included as a member of the newly created Central Asian Bishops' Conference. How do you see this decision?
- Before this decision, our local Church was not part of any Episcopal Conference. My predecessor, Bishop Wenceslao Selga Padilla, referred, in a personal capacity, to the Episcopal Conference of South Korea, with which we continue to maintain excellent relations today. With the passage of time, and in the synodal perspective so dear to Pope Francis, it seemed opportune to identify a closer assembly to which to adhere in order to exercise collegiality in a more concrete way.
As Providence would have it, in the fall of last year, the Episcopal Conference of Central Asial, to which we adhere with full agreement. This election is a real enrichment for us because, as for all the pastors of the local Churches, it is good to have a collegial point of reference.
The authorFederico Piana
Journalist. He works for Vatican Radio and collaborates with L'Osservatore Romano.
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"Ad charisma tuendum" concretizes the figure of the Prelature of Opus Dei
The Holy See has made public the Apostolic Letter in the form of Pope Francis' Motu proprio Ad charisma tuendum modifying some articles of the Apostolic Constitution Ut sitwith which John Paul II erected Opus Dei as a personal Prelature.
Translation of the article into English
The Holy See has made public the Apostolic Letter in the form of Motu proprio of Pope Francis. Ad charisma tuendum. This Motu proprio modifies some articles of the Apostolic Constitution Ut sit of November 28, 1982, with which St. John Paul II erected Opus Dei as a personal Prelature.
Founded in 1928 by the priest St. Josemaría Escrivá, Opus Dei is currently the only personal prelature in the Catholic Church, and recently, with the publication of the Apostolic Constitution Praedicate Evangelium on the Roman Curia, it came under the Dicastery for the Clergy and not under that of the Bishops, as it had been until now.
The Prelate of Opus Dei, Bishop Fernando Ocáriz, has published a brief note about this Motu Proprio in which he emphasizes that Opus Dei "filially accepts" the new ordinance.
Deepening the charism of the Work
In it, the Prelate of Opus Dei underlines the Pope's interest in caring for "the charism of Opus Dei," since he wishes, as John Paul II expressed earlier in the Constitution Ut Sit, "that it may always be a suitable and effective instrument of the salvific mission that the Church carries out for the life of the world.
For this reason, Bishop Ocáriz encourages the faithful of the Prelature to "deepen the spirit that the Lord instilled in our Founder and to share it with many people in the family, work and social environment," which consists in "spreading the call to holiness in the world, through the sanctification of work and family and social occupations."
The media of the Holy See, in presenting the document, have also underlined the objective of protecting the charism of Opus Dei and promoting the evangelizing work carried out by its members in the midst of the world. For its part, Opus Dei has published on its website theu website an explanation of the new document in the form of ten questions and answers..
Modifications to the Apostolic Constitution Ut sit
Specifically, the new Motu Proprio establishes, for example, the modification of the text of article 5 of the Apostolic Constitution Ut sit, which is now replaced by the following: "In accordance with art. 117 of the Apostolic Constitution Ut sit, the new Motu Proprio establishes, for example, the modification of the text of article 5 of the Apostolic Constitution Ut sit, which is now replaced by the following: "According to art. 117 of the Apostolic Constitution Praedicate EvangeliumThe Prelature depends on the Dicastery for the Clergy, which, depending on the subject matter, will evaluate the relative questions with the other Dicasteries of the Roman Curia. The Dicastery for the Clergy, in dealing with the various questions, will make use of the competencies of the other Dicasteries by means of the opportune consultation or transfer of dossiers." In this sense, "all matters pending in the Congregation for Bishops concerning the Prelature of Opus Dei will continue to be treated and decided by the Dicastery for the Clergy."
It also changes the frequency with which Opus Dei must, from now on, present a report on the situation of the Prelature and the development of its apostolic work, which will now be annual and not five-yearly, as determined by the Constitution Ut sit.
The Motu Proprio also states that, as a result of these modifications, "the Statutes proper to the Prelature of Opus Dei will be suitably adapted at the proposal of the Prelature itself, to be approved by the competent bodies of the Apostolic See.
The prelate will not become a bishop
As for the figure of the Prelate of Opus Dei, Ad charisma tuendum establishes that the prelate will not receive the episcopal order.
This decision "aims to reinforce the conviction that, for the protection of the particular gift of the Spirit, a form of government based more on charism than on hierarchical authority is necessary".
The Prelate of Opus Dei is granted, on the other hand, by reason of his office, the use of the title of Supernumerary Apostolic Prothonotary with the title of Reverend Monsignor and, therefore, may use the insignia corresponding to this title.
In this regard, Bishop Fernando Ocáriz wanted to recall that "the episcopal ordination of the prelate was not and is not necessary for the guidance of Opus Dei. In fact, St. Josemaría Escrivá, the founder of Opus Dei, was not a bishop, and his first successor, Blessed Álvaro del Portillo, was ordained a bishop in 1991, three years before his death. Later, Prelate Bishop Javier Echevarría was ordained in 1995, shortly after assuming the government of the Work.
Along these lines, Bishop Ocáriz encouraged the rekindling of the family spirit proper to Opus Dei, pointing out that "the Pope's desire to emphasize the charismatic dimension of the Work now invites us to strengthen the family atmosphere of affection and trust: the prelate must be a guide, but, above all, a father.
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To guarantee religious freedom in all its manifestations and everywhere.
The Pontifical Gregorian University hosted the three-day Religious Liberty Summit, promoted annually by the American University of Notre Dame on the theme of the future of religious freedom in the world.
The central theme of the summit is the Dignitatis HumanaeThe declaration of the Second Vatican Council, which expressed the support of the Catholic Church for the protection of religious freedom and established the basic norms for the relationship of the Church with the States.
This year's summit in Rome underscores the global reach of the initiative, which in 2021 was held at the University of Notre Dame itself.
"Religious freedom is a fundamental human right and its protection is a global issue," said G. Marcus Cole, dean and professor of law at Notre Dame Law School, in introducing the initiative. "Every person in the world has the God-given right to live their lives according to their convictions, with pride and without fear," Cole added.
Based on these principles, Notre Dame promotes and defends religious freedom for people of all faiths through scholarship, events and the work of its law school. At its core is the protection of the right to worship, the defense of sacred property from threats of destruction, the promotion of freedom of choice of ministers of faith, and the prevention of all discrimination against religious schools and teachings.
The goal of the summit is to stimulate discussion among scholars and religious leaders about the future of religious freedom in the United States and around the world. Such as the one scheduled today between two of today's leading contemporary philosophers and intellectuals: Cornel West of Union Theological Seminary and Robert P. George of Princeton University.
Notably, the 2022 Notre Dame Religious Liberty Award was presented to Mary Ann Glendon, professor emerita of law at Harvard Law School and former U.S. ambassador to the Holy See. Glendon was honored for her profound and innovative legal research and for her service to the United States and the Catholic Church, with a worldwide impact on the premise of religious freedom as a fundamental human right.
Steven Smith, professor of law and co-executive director of the Institute for Law and Religion at the University of San Diego School of Law, received the 2022 Religious Freedom Initiative Award.
Attacks on religious freedom
Religious freedom is under attack around the world. "Violence has risen to historic levels in the past decade, affecting nearly every religious group," said Samah Norquist, a scholar at the Wilson Center in Washington. "Believers of almost every faith - Christians, Muslims and Jews, Buddhists, Yazidis, Baha'is - have faced discrimination, harassment, repression and, of course, persecution by state and non-state actors as well as ideological movements," Norquist said. In the same vein was Nury Turkel, chair of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, a bipartisan, independent advisory body that monitors religious freedom abroad.
Turkel raised the alarm about the deterioration of religious freedom in China, where the government has continued to "vigorously pursue its policy of 'sinicization of religion'" and has demanded that religious groups and their adherents support the government and the ideology of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
Although China recognizes Buddhism, Catholicism, Islam, Protestantism and Taoism, adherents of religions with alleged foreign influence - such as Christianity, Islam and Tibetan Buddhism - and those of other religious movements, are especially vulnerable to persecution, said Turkel, an ethnic Uighur American lawyer.
Throughout 2021, Xinjiang authorities continued to arbitrarily detain Uighurs and other Turkic Muslims in internment camps and prison-like facilities on various religious grounds.
More than one million Uyghurs have been imprisoned in concentration camps for the mere fact of worshipping Allah and not Xi Xinping. They have been subjected to numerous abuses, including torture, rape, forced labor and murder. The "worst nightmare" for the CCP, Turkel noted, are communities that care about human rights and human dignity. A compromised religious population, Turkel argued, is also a threat to the Chinese government, because its authoritarian regime is incompatible with religious freedom.
The issue is not to allow abuses of religious freedom to go unnoticed, either by government action - as in the case of China - or by inaction, as in countries such as Nigeria, where persecution on religious grounds continues to increase.
"Research has shown," concluded the president of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, "that countries that support religious freedom have more vibrant and democratic political institutions, greater economic and social well-being, decreased tensions and violence, and greater stability. Nations that trample on or fail to protect fundamental human rights, including religious freedom, provide fertile ground for poverty and insecurity, war and terror, and violent and radical movements and activities."
"What are the religious freedoms we are concerned about?
At the opening of the summit, Dallin H. Oaks, President of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, called for
a global, multi-faith effort to defend and promote religious freedom in all nations of the world.
Here are his words: "What are the religious liberties we are concerned about? For religious communities, the U.S. Constitution guarantees freedom of association and the right to assemble; the right to determine new members; the right to elect leaders and key employees, including in related organizations; and the right to function as an organization. For individual believers, essential rights include the expression and exercise of religion and freedom from religious discrimination. In defense of these rights, we must stand together. Catholics, evangelicals, Jews, Muslims, Latter-day Saints and other faiths must be part of a coalition of religions that rescues, protects and promotes religious freedom around the world. Knowing that freedom can be achieved by supporting the freedom of those we consider our adversaries. So when we see that our interests are linked to those of all others, then the real work of religious freedom begins. Hence the need for believers to listen to others, empathize and resolve conflicts peacefully. Without compromising fundamental religious principles, but grasping what is truly essential to our free exercise of religion.
"In this way," according to Oaks, "we learn to live at peace with some laws we do not like and with some people whose values differ from ours. All that is necessary for unity is the shared conviction that God has commanded us to love one another and has granted us freedom in matters of faith".The Dignitatis humanae declaration on religious freedom was mentioned as a central point of the second international summit promoted by the University of Notre Dame. It is worth recalling some passages from it.
"The content of such freedom," the document states, "is that human beings should be immune from coercion by individuals, by social groups and by any human power, so that in religious matters no one should be compelled to act contrary to his conscience or prevented, within due limits, from acting in conformity with it: in private or in public, individually or in association."
It further declares that the right to religious freedom is indeed based on the very dignity of the human person as revealed by the word of God and by reason itself. This right of the human person to religious freedom must be recognized and enshrined as a civil right in the legal order of society."
A decisive contribution to the formulation of the document and to the definition of religious freedom as immunity had been that of Paul VI, who in the course of a public audience on June 28, 1965, describing religious freedom, had said: "You will see that a large part of this capital doctrine is summed up in two famous propositions: in matters of faith let no one be disturbed! Let no one be constrained" (nemo cogatur, nemo impediatur).
Speaking at the international conference "Religious Freedom in International Law and the Global Conflict of Values" (June 20, 2014), Pope Francis noted, "Religious freedom is not just freedom of private thought or worship. It is the freedom to live according to ethical principles resulting from the truth encountered, both in private and in public. This is a great challenge in the globalized world, where weak thinking - which is like a disease - also lowers the general ethical level, and in the name of a false concept of tolerance we end up persecuting those who defend the truth of man and its ethical consequences."
Today, in the light first of the pandemic and then of the war in Ukraine, there is a debate on de-globalization or the new globalization. The challenge, however, remains the same: to ensure respect for fundamental human rights, including religious freedom in all its manifestations and everywhere.
The authorAntonino Piccione
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Holy See warns the German Synodal Way
The Holy See has warned the German Synodal Way that it has no power to force bishops or faithful to assume new forms of government or moral doctrines.
In a note published on July 21, he reminds that changes must be agreed upon at the level of the universal Church and that dioceses cannot make doctrinal decisions unilaterally.
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Sister Roberta TremarelliMissions take us out of individualism to live fully our condition as baptized persons".
Sister Roberta Tremarelli, AMSS, Secretary General of the Missionary Childhood in Rome affirms that "today's missionary world shows the universality of the Church, the openness and welcome, the circularity of solidarity in prayer and charity".
RelatedThe missionary fervor of young Pauline Jaricot, soon to be BlessedMissionary childhood: "Jenet, Michelle and Íscar represent all the children of the world".
The missionary fervor of young Pauline Jaricot, soon to be BlessedMissionary childhood: "Jenet, Michelle and Íscar represent all the children of the world".In this interview with Omnes, Sister Roberta Tremarelli, SSMC, Secretary General of the Work of Holy Childhood in Rome, tells of the past and present of an organization whose missions are centered on children, a warning for all baptized people.
Sister Roberta, in the great group of missionary works of the Church there is one that is perhaps not very well known but which has very interesting roots that go back to the evangelization of China in the middle of the 19th century, the Work of the Holy Childhood. How did this great evangelization project come about?
- The propitious time for the foundation of the Work of Holy Childhood was that of Pope Gregory XVI, former Prefect of the Congregation of Propaganda Fide, during whose papacy many priestly congregations and women's missionary congregations ad gentes were born, as well as numerous lay associations, among them the Work for the Propagation of the Faith of the Holy Childhood. Pauline Jaricot.
The Work of the Holy Childhood was born in France on May 19, 1843, after a long period of reflection during which the founder, Charles de Forbin-Janson, was concerned and interested in the salvation of Chinese children destined, because of poverty and ignorance, to die without being baptized.
The Founder's desire was to go as a missionary to China, but he never had the opportunity. And so he continued to nourish his missionary passion through the testimonies and letters that reached him from French missionaries who had gone to China.
What news was coming in?
- Thanks to them, he learned about the conditions of children from poor or difficult families. The babies, as soon as they were born, were eliminated, especially if they were girls and if they had any defects. The missionaries asked for help to save them, to welcome them in the missions where they were baptized and educated in a Christian way. The bishop took the problem seriously and began to sensitize the population.
We can imagine that it was not an easy thing to do....
- From the beginning, Forbin-Janson had many difficulties in getting the idea of creating a new Missionary Work accepted, because there were numerous foundations of Missionary Institutes underway in France, and Forbin-Janson's could appear to be in competition.
The members of the Work for the Propagation of the Faith themselves seriously opposed the bishop's proposal. But the novelty of the institution going directly to the children for the children overcame all perplexity. Since China seemed to be too far away for adults, the bishop called the children's attention to the plight of Chinese children and asked them for their willingness to help the Church save the little ones who die without receiving baptism with two simple commitments: a Hail Mary a day and a penny a month. The children agreed and, through prayer, sacrifice and gestures of solidarity, began a race of universal brotherhood that continues to this day to save children on every continent.
With what objectives was this Work born?
- The objectives of the Work were immediately clear to both the Founder and his collaborators: to rescue a multitude of children from death and to open heaven to as many children as possible through Baptism; to make these children an instrument of salvation as teachers, catechists, doctors, priests, missionaries. The missionary work of the children was not a one-way street; the prayers, sacrifices and will of the European children were reciprocated by the prayers, sacrifices, joy and sometimes the witness of martyrdom of the Chinese children.
And what is the characteristic element?
- The characteristic element is the active participation of children and young people in the evangelizing work of the Church. The Founder gives children the role of missionary protagonists in the history of salvation.
For the first time, the little ones acted in the Church as pastoral actors and soon became part of the current of universal solidarity: a true spiritual and material cooperation between the Churches, carried out by the children, for sanctification and salvation, was set in motion.
How does it spread in today's world?
- Today the Work of the Holy Childhood or Missionary Childhood is spread in more than 120 countries around the world and the initial motto "children helping children" has been enriched "children evangelizing children, children praying for children, children helping children all over the world".
Faithful to the initial charism and the desire of the Founder, it continues to aim to help children develop a missionary spirit and protagonism, encourages them to share their faith and material means, and promotes, encourages and supports missionary vocations ad gentes. It is an instrument of growth in faith, also in a vocational perspective. It is organized differently according to the local context. Prayer, offering and sacrifice are the three key words of every Pontifical Missionary Work and also of the Holy Childhood, to which is added witness, essential for the Christian faith.
On May 3, 1922, Pope Pius XI, aware of the great contribution that the Work had made to the missions in some eighty years, made it his own, recognizing it as Pontifical. On December 4, 1950, Pope Pius XII instituted World Children's Day, declaring the day of the Epiphany as the date of celebration, but giving each nation the freedom to adapt the date to local needs.
You are its Secretary General in 2017. How has the world of missions in general and childcare in particular changed in recent years characterized by not a few "emergencies"?
- I believe that today we are increasingly trying to promote missionary awareness and responsibility from an early age.
There are still those who, when speaking of mission and missionaries, think of the long-bearded priest who leaves his country and goes far away to proclaim the Gospel and help other peoples and never returns.
There are still many missionaries ad gentes, as I have reported, but there are also many missionary realities committed to missionary proclamation and cooperation in their local context, to encourage Christians to live according to the missionary nature that flows from Baptism.
Among other things, there are no longer countries that receive and others that give, not only economic aid but also a priority human presence. Today's missionary world, if we look at it well, shows us the universality of the Church, the openness and welcome, the circularity of solidarity in prayer and charity. Elements that we have not yet really internalized to live them in fullness and depth.
In addition, there are many priests and lay people fidei donum in mission, not only from the countries of Europe, but from all continents; dioceses that organize missionary experiences abroad for young people.
Each proposal should contribute to open our hearts, minds and eyes, helping us to get out of our limited enclosure. Let's hope so.
On May 22, Pauline Jaricot, foundress of the Work for the Propagation of the Faith, was beatified in Lyon. A faithful laywoman who put her entire life at the service of the missions, what teachings does the new Blessed transmit to today's laity?
- Pauline Jaricot was a woman passionate about Jesus and the missions, attentive to the needs of others, to the social reality of the world around her, and available to the Holy Spirit through faithful and persevering prayer. She lived with her feet on the ground and her heart turned towards God. Many describe her as a mystic in action. She desired to love God and to make him loved by all men and women. She nourished her passion and her missionary commitment in the Eucharist and with sacrifice.
His life is an invitation for all lay men and women to cultivate a relationship with the Lord to serve the Church and in the Church. Her creativity in supporting the missions urges us to take advantage of the tools we have, but also to go further by proposing the high values of the Gospel without fear of being left alone. Pauline died poor and alone, but in her heart she had the joy that only God can give.
This year also marks the 400th anniversary of the Congregation De Propaganda Fide, now the Dicastery for Evangelization. How can we make the "passion" and commitment for evangelization captivating in a world like ours, individualized and somewhat "boring"?
- I would say that the answer is already in the question: passion and missionary commitment help to get out of individualism and selfishness, to discover that we belong to a world.
So I invite all mission enthusiasts to reintroduce, with fervor, missionary animation and missionary information, well done and with respect for dignity. Passion is enlivened by these two, supported by the life witness of those who carry them out, using inclusive and welcoming language.
It is up to each one of us, consecrated women, priests and lay people, to go out, as Pope Francis says, not so much to make ourselves known and promote our limited initiatives, but to proclaim the salvation of Christ.
What projects are you currently involved in as a Missionary Childhood Work?
- The projects supported by the Universal Solidarity Fund (the big piggy bank fed by missionary children and young people around the world) of the Work of the Holy Childhood are various and in favor of particular churches in Africa, Asia, Oceania and some in Latin America, the so-called "mission territories". Last year, more than $15 million in grants were approved for children and young people up to the age of 14, divided among the following categories of projects:
- Ordinary Pastoral Care, 16%.
- Formation and missionary animation, 16%.
- School education, 45%.
- Protection of life, 23%.
Would you like to make an appeal to our readers?
-Of course! More than an appeal, an invitation to visit the website of the Pontifical Mission Societies, International Secretariats, www.ppoomm.va to discover and deepen the reality of the PMS that every Christian should know and promote, in order to nourish his or her missionary spirituality.
In addition, for those who work with children and young people to share the charism of the Work of the Holy Childhood and the various proposals, at national and international level, to make them participants in this worldwide network of prayer and charity at the service of the Pope.
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Care for the links
Today, more than ever, it is important to take care of our personal ties, especially those of family and friendship. Cultivate them like the plant we cherish the most. Summer offers us a privileged time to do so.
Today many people think that one is freer -and happier- to the extent that one remains free of ties. That bonds with others are ties that limit and, in the long run, imprison. It is not by chance that we think this way.
The prevailing liberalism in the West has introduced us into increasingly individualistic and self-referential lifestyles.
Personal relationships, from this point of view, become an instrument to achieve our goals, or a burden that prevents us from doing what we want to do. This generates what Bauman has described as the "liquid condition" of the new generations: "loose" individuals, without roots in the past, with a volatile identity and little projection towards the future.
This poverty of ties leads to loneliness. This is why the recently created "ministries of loneliness" are not the brainchild of original governments, but an attempt to respond to an increasingly widespread problem.
Relationships are there to unite, not to bind. Human relationships are in themselves a richness, because they allow us to go out of ourselves and receive from others. If this happens in a context of unconditional love, such as the family, the good is incalculable. That is why the greatest treasure for each person should be "his or her own".
The Italian neuropsychiatrist Mariolina Ceriotti, whom I have quoted on other occasions, affirms that the problem is not the bonds, but rather the lack of the right balance between them. For a relationship to work, it is very important to occupy the right position in the family, to respect each other's limits and to maintain the right distance in the relationship with other people. Often, many personal and family crises have to do with the failure of any of these aspects.
Today, more than ever, it is important to take care of our personal ties, especially those of family and friendship. Cultivate them like the plant we cherish the most. Summer offers us a privileged time to do so.
Time-sharing tests the necessary balance of bonds: it can be a time of separation or a time of increased bonding.
My proposal can be no other: it should be a time to assume that family relationships are a priority; a time to take advantage of shared space to get to know each other better; to make those around us feel special; to share tasks and responsibilities; to encourage creative entertainment and limit the merely passive.
To enjoy, in short, family life for what it is: a true gift for everyone.
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The Holy See issues a clear warning to the German Synodal Way
In a communiqué he recalls that the Synodal Way has no prerogatives "to force the bishops and the faithful to adopt new forms of government and new doctrinal and moral orientations".
RelatedGermany, towards another Church?"Are we facing a new ethic of sexuality in the German Synodal Way?"Synodal path in Germany reproached for "abusing abuses".
Germany, towards another Church?"Are we facing a new ethic of sexuality in the German Synodal Way?"Synodal path in Germany reproached for "abusing abuses".The Holy See has made public a brief statementThe communiqué, in Italian and German, with clear warnings to the so-called Synodal Way of Germany, which it reminds that it does not have "prerogatives to force the bishops and the faithful to adopt new forms of government and new doctrinal and moral orientations". The communiqué stresses that it seems necessary to clarify these points in order to "safeguard the freedom of the People of God and the exercise of the episcopal ministry." The intention of the Synodal Way to make decisions regarding the direction of the Church, ministries or moral teachingThe Synodal Way, outside of Rome and the universal Church, as well as the worldwide synodal process, lacks any foundation. Rather, the proposals of the Synodal Way should be addressed to the universal synodal process.
The sender of the letter is "the Holy See" and not a specific Vatican dicastery; it therefore emanates from the supreme authority of the Church, with the endorsement of the Pope, from whom a key phrase is quoted from the "Letter to the People of God on Pilgrimage in Germany," which Pope Francis sent in 2019. The statement was made ahead of the celebration of the fourth Assembly of the Synodal Way, in Frankfurt from September 8-10. It reads as follows:
"In order to safeguard the freedom of the People of God and the exercise of the episcopal ministry, it seems necessary to clarify the following: the "Synodal Way" in Germany is not empowered to force the bishops and the faithful to adopt new forms of government and new doctrinal and moral orientations.
The Pope's letter to the synodal journey
It would not be admissible to introduce new structures or official doctrines in dioceses before agreement has been reached at the level of the universal Church, since this would constitute a violation of ecclesial communion and a threat to the unity of the Church. In this regard, the Holy Father recalled in his letter to the People of God on pilgrimage in GermanyThe universal Church lives in and from the particular Churches, just as the particular Churches live and flourish in and from the universal Church; if they were separated from the universal Church, they would weaken, perish and die. Hence the necessity of always keeping communion with the whole body of the Church alive and effective".
It is therefore desirable that the proposals of the journey of the particular Churches in Germany should lead to the synodal process through which the universal Church is passing, in order to contribute to mutual enrichment and to bear witness to the unity with which the Body of the Church manifests its fidelity to Christ Our Lord.""
This statement of the Holy See comes after bishops from all over the world have written to the German Bishops' Conference expressing their concern about the drift of the Synodal Way: both the President of the Polish Bishops' Conference and the Bishops of the Nordic countries, first, and - in April - a letter addressed by more than 100 cardinals and bishops from all over the world, mainly from the United States and Africa, warned that the radical changes in the doctrine of the Church advocated by the process could lead to schism. In June, Cardinal Walter Kasper, who is considered close to Pope Francis, warned that the German process would indeed run that risk if it did not heed those objections.
A new warning
The Holy See's communiqué also came a week after the President of the Central Committee of German Catholics (ZdK) - and of the Synodal Way - Irme Stetter-Karp, wrote an opinion piece in a major weekly newspaper in which she said that "abortion must be made possible throughout the country", including that a "reflection was needed on how to guarantee the offer throughout Germany, also in rural regions, which would also include the training of medical students".
The press officer of the German Bishops' Conference, Matthias Kopp, immediately rejected this demand: "The position of ZdK President Irme Stetter-Karp on the need to offer abortion nationwide contradicts the position of the German Bishops' Conference. Instead of making abortion possible nationwide, we need an offer of qualified counseling for women." The following day, Stetter-Karp in turn rejected Matthias Kopp's statement: "If, after counseling, the woman decides to terminate the pregnancy," it should be possible: "The right of self-determination is of no use if there are insurmountable obstacles. These statements have led to a collection of signatures calling for the resignation of Stetter-Karp as president of the ZdK.
And even more recently, on July 18, the Secretary of the Synodal Way Marc Frings has declared that he wants to change the doctrine of the Church on homosexuality: the Synodal Way, with its texts, is "a conscious pronouncement" against the Catechism of the Catholic Church, "which since the mid-seventies has dealt with homosexuality in a critical, derogatory way and with the accusation of sin". In the writing of the Synodal Way to which he refers, there are comments on "the change of opinion" -in relation to Catholic doctrine- on marriage and other aspects of sexuality.
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The Radbruch formula in a bipolar world
Is Justice the patrimony of a specific ideological group or is it rather a value that all human beings and all political institutions and communication groups should aspire to discover and practice?
"The formula, which takes its name from the German jurist Gustav Radbruch, states that the validity of extremely unjust laws can be denied, since extreme injustice is not and cannot be law. Years later, Robert Alexy studied the aforementioned formula in depth, demonstrating its usefulness in legal processes. We note the timeliness of this great contribution to legal thought, paying special attention to its usefulness in a world in which the media and public opinion in general conceive some of today's controversial social issues in a bipolar manner and according to their respective ideologies".
More than thirty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall and while we are witnessing the war of invasion of Ukraine by Russia, it seems appropriate to recall the theory of the denial of the extremely unjust right elaborated by the German jurist Gustav Radbruch after his unfortunate experience with the years of National Socialism, the Second World War and the subsequent division of Europe into two blocs with the beginning of the Cold War.
Radbruch was Professor of Philosophy of Law and Criminal Law at the Universities of Kiel and Heidelberg, Minister of Justice in the ill-fated Weimar Republic (1921-1923) and one of the main authors of its constitutional charter. Initially, like so many others, he belonged to the Nazi party, but during the Nazi regime he was purged and stripped of his chair of Philosophy of Law in 1933 - the year in which Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany - and was forbidden to exercise any public, political or teaching function. With the collapse of that regime, he regained his chair in 1945 and was dean in Heidelberg until his death.
The suffering of the horrors of World War II and the helplessness caused by the legal relativism of the previous decades changed his way of thinking and, as opposed to the positivist vision of the Law of his compatriot Hans Kelsen, he came to conceive the world in two spheres, the natural and the cultural. The juridical phenomenon would be within the second, marked by the search for Justice, a value inherent to it. From this construction he would elaborate his concept of Law as a cultural reality referring to values.
Already as a moderate iusnaturalist, in his famous work "Arbitrariedad Legal y Derecho Supralegal", he introduced his great contribution to legal thought, the formula that bears his name, according to which the validity of extremely unjust laws can be denied, because extreme injustice is not law. It is significant that the year of his return to Germany from exile also saw the famous Nuremberg trials, in which Nazi leaders were tried and convicted for their genocidal crimes committed in Germany and occupied countries during the war, and in which true atrocities were revealed. These trials would undoubtedly influence his reasoning.
In Arbitrariedad Legal y Derecho Supralegal, the general obligation to always apply positive law is established, unless it is extremely unjust to the point of denaturalizing the law itself. It is understood that this is not a formula applicable to any type of injustice in the law, since its generalization could lead to legal chaos.
We wonder if these ideas from the legal field will not be of interest nowadays, at a time when the media and public opinion in general tend to approach major ethical debates in a bipolar way, establishing a framework of "good guys and bad guys" that does not always respect the elementary principles of Justice when the truth endangers the status quo and the solidity of one's own convictions.
According to the Democracy Index 2021, only Canada, Costa Rica, Uruguay, Uruguay, Iceland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Ireland, the Netherlands, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan are full democracies. In these countries there are laws in force that allow to kill the unborn at an advanced stage of gestation, to execute people condemned to death, to eliminate terminally or mentally ill people thanks to euthanasia laws, to impose through educational laws some ideologically controversial approaches such as the postulates of gender ideology, seriously violating the freedom of teaching and thought, to take away the right of some people to be adopted by a father and a mother through adoption laws, to prohibit religious symbols to public officials in violation of religious freedom, not to give asylum to people fleeing authoritarian and extremely unjust regimes leaving them defenseless and at the mercy of satraps thanks to certain laws on foreigners, etc.
Can the aforementioned laws be considered seriously unjust, so much so that the application of the Radbruch formula that could declare them unlawful could be considered at some point? This is the opinion of many citizens, governments and communicators in various countries.
It will be said that these are very complex issues in which the different moral conceptions of citizens clash, and that is undoubtedly true. But it is also true that the fact that these legislations have prospered in recent decades in various nations that enjoy prestige as full democracies - supported by a social or at least legislative majority - does not automatically confer on them the status of just.
The claim of correctness of the law that Alexy speaks of is none other than the claim of Justice. A legal system that aspires to be correct, that is to say, to fulfill its function well, must aspire to be just or at least -if we follow Radbruch's doctrine- not to be extremely unjust. And the principles of Law that guarantee Justice are, as the Roman jurist Ulpian taught us many centuries ago: honeste vivere, alterum non laedere, suum cuique tribuere (to live honestly, to give to each his own and not to harm others).
To give two topical examples, a national poll conducted by Harvard University and the Harris polling firm confirms that 75% of Americans support the Supreme Court overturning the June 24, 2022 Roe v. Wade ruling affirming that there is no constitutional right to abortion. We could also talk, on the other ideological spectrum, about the injustice of the immigration veto imposed by President Donald Trump on citizens of 5 Muslim countries who were banned from entering the United States and subsequently endorsed by the Supreme Court of that nation. Or the death penalty in force in that same country.
Could an American citizen who survived an attempted abortion claim in court under the Radbruch clause for compensation for the after-effects of an attempted murder, or a citizen of Iraq or Somalia who was banned from entering the United States, thereby causing serious personal injury? Or the family of a person sentenced to death for the irreparable harm caused by that person's execution?
Is Justice the patrimony of a specific ideological group or is it rather a value that all human beings and all political institutions and communication groups should aspire to discover and practice? Are human rights like "witches and unicorns", as the Scottish philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre maintains, or something invented by political parties according to the social aspirations of each moment in history, or rather something objective that can be discovered if specific cases are studied honestly and objectively?
The authorSantiago Leyra Curiá
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Syria: Paradise Lost (I)
Syria is one of the oldest nations in the world, possessing an ancient history that is intrinsically linked to the history of our faith.
The history of the Syrian nation has much to do with the history of the Christian faith. In what is now Syria the faithful of Christ began to be known as the ChristiansThere are still villages there where the ancient language of Jesus, Aramaic, is still spoken, and it was in this land that the conversion of Saul, St. Paul, took place, who would spread the message of Christ to the known world.
The soul of the world
We often think of the East, and by extension all areas of the world that seem "exotic" or distant to our Western mentality, as foreign. "Poor people!" people are heard to say about the wars, fratricidal struggles and persecutions that plague those countries. And yet, never before has Syria been a place we should really consider "our home," at least as Christians.
Why? First of all, because here, in the ancient Syrian Antioch, which today is also in Turkey (although geographically and culturally it is a Syrian territory), Christ's faithful were called Christiansbecause Peter was the first bishop of Antioch, before arriving in Rome; because, again, Paul turned on the road to Damascus and from there undertook his evangelizing mission (the house of Ananias can still be visited in Damascus); because in a city in Syria, Edessa, the Shroud of Turin (known in this area as the apron) remained for more than a millennium, until 1204, when the city was sacked during the IV Cross; because in a Syrian city, Edessa, the Holy Shroud (known in this area as the apron) remained for more than a millennium, until 1204, when the city was sacked during the Fourth Crusade; because, finally, there are still villages where the ancient language of Jesus, Aramaic, is still spoken, as well as some of the oldest churches in the world.
There are many other reasons, but we do not have time to enumerate them. However, suffice it to recall that it was precisely the Christians of Syria, once the majority in the country (also, for several centuries, after the Islamic conquest), who helped to preserve the Syriac manuscripts (translations of Latin and Greek texts) and to transmit them to the West thanks to the Arabic translations they made.
In the Letter to DiognetusIn a short apologetic treatise probably composed at the end of the second century, Christians and their role in the world are spoken of as a place assigned to them by God, a place from which they cannot leave. Indeed, Christians "represent in the world what the soul is in the body". The soul is found in all the members of the body; and Christians, too, are scattered throughout the cities of the world. The soul, then, dwells in the body, but does not leave it; and Christians also dwell in this world, but they are not of the world."
The soul gives life to the body, so Christians have given this crazy world a soul, and in this case a soul that is not only spiritual, but also cultural and civilized.
Even in the Middle East, an area known today for being the nucleus of Islam rather than Christianity, those who helped create Islamic civilization were, paradoxically, Christians.
Christians, in fact, were the men of letters, philosophers and scientists who codified and gave a grammar and alphabet to the Arabic language (along with the Jews) and foundations to the Arab-Islamic culture (Islam was considered by St. John Damascene nothing more than a Christian heresy, a fact confirmed by a great number of later theologians and philosophers, including the Englishman Hilaire Belloc, many centuries later, in his book The great heresies).
A long and troubled history
Syria is home to some of the oldest inhabited cities in the world (one of them is Damascus, called jannat ad-dunyah, "paradise of the world" by Arab poets and considered, along with Jericho in Palestine, the oldest city still inhabited on our planet) and civilizations.
The ancestor of most modern alphabets also originated in Syria. In fact, in Ugarit, a city on the Syrian coast near Lattakia, the Ugaritic alphabet was developed, an alphabet in which cuneiform characters of Assyrian-Babylonian origin were still used, but which no longer had a pictographic value, like the latter, but a syllabic one. And from this system emerged the Phoenician alphabet, later reworked first by the Greeks and then by the Romans.
The cradle of several Semitic peoples, such as the Eblaites, Ugaritic, Amorites and Arameans, with their respective kingdoms and city-states, Syria became a Roman province in 64 BC.
Under the Romans, its capital, Antioch, became one of the largest and most flourishing cities of the Empire (reaching a population of some 600,000 inhabitants) and the center of Syrian Christianity, whose main exponents were St. Peter, the first bishop of Antioch, and St. Thomas. He, along with disciples such as Thaddeus of Edessa and Mari (to whom is attributed the authorship of one of the oldest Eucharistic anaphora of Christianity, the Anaphora of Addai and Mari) and others later, was the architect of the evangelization of a large part of the Near and Middle East (Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Iran, even India, where the Syrian Catholic churches of Syro-Malabar and Syro-Malankar survive, but Syrian missionaries reached as far as China, through the Silk Road).
Despite the Islamic conquest of the 7th century (from 651 Damascus became the seat of the Umayyad caliphate and the majestic cathedral, in which the relics of St. John the Baptist are still preserved, was partially demolished and converted into a mosque), which occurred, moreover, with the partial approval of the Christian populations, they were able to prosper for centuries, despite the obvious difficulties.
This was because the Christians preferred to submit to an element culturally closer to their own (the Semitic Arabs) rather than to the longa manus of the Byzantine emperor, a foreigner who demanded increasingly exorbitant tribute. The gizyah and the kharaj Islamic taxes (capitation taxes reserved for Christians and Jews, considered second-class citizens within the Muslim state and therefore subject to a special regime in terms of personal status and individual and collective rights) were considered even by Christians as less onerous than Byzantine taxes.
Thus, Syria retained, even after the Crusades, the Mongol invasions and the final submission to the Ottoman Empire in 1517, a considerable Christian minority (mainly Greek Orthodox, but also Syriac Orthodox, Syriac Catholic, Maronite, Armenian, etc.).
Ottoman rule ended at the end of World War I (1920), although the country was not fully independent until 1946, with the end of the 26-year French Mandate. Decades of instability followed, with alternating governments and a clumsy attempt to unite with Egypt, a non-contiguous state but another pole of Arab nationalism, to form the United Arab Republic (1961).
Since 1963, after a new coup d'état, the Ba'ath party has been in power, whose main exponent, and since 1970 president (and shortly after de facto dictator) was first Hafiz al-Asad and then, after his death (2000), his son Bashar, Syria's current head of state, who remains in power despite the eleven years of civil war that have ravaged the country.
The Arab Spring and civil war
What later became the Syrian civil war began with the revolts that broke out in several cities in the country (especially in Homs, Aleppo and Damascus) following the so-called "Arab Springs", a series of popular protests, which erupted mainly in Tunisia, aimed at demanding economic and social reforms and pushing for the fight against corruption, endemic in Arab countries, especially in those ruled for decades by nationalist parties and regimes nurtured by both the West and Russia (Syria being one of the latter).
In Syria, the situation was peculiar in that since 2000, the year he came to power, President Bashar al-Assad had undertaken a series of reforms aimed at reducing the presence of the State in the economy (until then a nationalist and socialist model had been followed at the same time, in the style of the Ba'ath party). The structural reforms initiated by Assad, also in the social sphere, had helped the Christian population of the country, around 10% before the outbreak of the revolts and the ensuing war, to experience a period of remarkable prosperity and freedom.
However, Christians initially participated in the 2011 anti-corruption demonstrations. However, they withdrew soon after, when it became increasingly clear that they were led by radical Salafist Islamic groups and movements (including the Muslim Brotherhood and Al Qaeda), often encouraged and armed by the United States and Sunni Gulf Arab countries, such as Qatar. The latter, characterized by a Salafist vision of Islam, oppose the Assad regime because the Syrian president is an Alawite (the Alawites are a sect of Shiite Islamic origin, therefore close to Iran, and a minority in the country, where 70% of the population is Sunni) and, for the most extremist Sunnis, the Shiites and their sects are considered even worse than Christians, Jews and pagans.
By the time Islamic radicalism came to account for about 75% of the uprising movement against Assad and it became clear to both the UN and the West that the goal of the rebels was to form a Sunni Islamic state in which Sunni Islam would be in force. sharia (Islamic law), which was later proven with the birth of the Caliphate founded by ISIS in 2014, the first neighborhoods to suffer armed assaults by the rebels were precisely the Christians, besieged and then also bombed by the regime in an attempt to regain control.
The conflict, which then spread like wildfire throughout the country and in which Russia, Iran and Hezbollah intervened in support of Assad and, in support of the rebels, the Persian Gulf countries, the United States and Turkey, lasted more than ten years and cost some 600.000 lives, more than 12 million displaced, 6 million of them abroad (bringing the total population from 24 million to about 18 million) and an economic damage of 400 billion dollars, as well as a mortal wound, perhaps incurable, to the coexistence of the different ethno-religious components of Syria.
The authorGerardo Ferrara
Writer, historian and expert on Middle Eastern history, politics and culture.
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Matera, the city to be visited by the Pope
View of Matera, Italy. Pope Francis will visit southern Italy on Sept. 25 to celebrate the closing Mass of the Italian National Eucharistic Congress.
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Message of Pope Francis for the Second World Day of Grandparents and the Elderly
The day was established in 2021 and is celebrated every year throughout the Church on the fourth Sunday of July, around the feast of St. Joachim and St. Anne, the "grandparents" of Jesus. This year it takes place on July 24.
The Pope addressed a message for this occasion in which he invites grandparents and the elderly to continue to bear fruit and proposes to them to live in a particular way the dimension of prayer. He also encouraged everyone to go and visit the elderly who are lonely in their homes or in the residences where they live.
In old age they will continue to bear fruit." (Salt 92,15)
Dear sister, dear brother:
The verse of Psalm 92 "in old age they will continue to bear fruit" (v. 15) is good news, a true "gospel" that we can announce to the world on the occasion of the second World Day of Grandparents and Older People. This goes against the grain of what the world thinks of this age of life; and also with respect to the resigned attitude of some of us older people, who carry on with little hope and no longer expect anything from the future.
Many people are afraid of old age. They consider it a kind of disease with which it is better not to come into contact. The elderly are of no concern to us, they think, and it is better for them to be as far away as possible, perhaps together among themselves, in facilities where they are cared for and where we do not have to take care of their worries. It is the "throwaway culture", that mentality that, while making us feel different from the weakest and alien to their frailties, authorizes us to imagine separate paths between "us" and "them". But, in reality, a long life - so Scripture teaches - is a blessing, and the elderly are not outcasts to be distanced from, but living signs of the goodness of God who grants life in abundance. Blessed is the home that cares for an elderly person! Blessed is the family that honors its grandparents!
Old age, in fact, is not an easy season to understand, even for those of us who are already living it. Although it comes after a long journey, no one has prepared us to face it, and it almost seems to take us by surprise. The most developed societies invest a lot in this age of life, but they do not help us to interpret it; they offer assistance plans, but no projects of existence. . That is why it is difficult to look to the future and glimpse a horizon towards which to turn. On the one hand, we are tempted to exorcise old age by hiding our wrinkles and pretending that we are always young; on the other hand, it seems that all that remains is to live without illusion, resigned to no longer having "fruits to give".
The end of the work activity and the children already autonomous make diminish the reasons for which we have spent a lot of our energies. The awareness that our strength is waning or the onset of an illness can put our certainties in crisis. The world - with its accelerated times, in the face of which we find it difficult to keep up - seems to leave us no alternative and leads us to internalize the idea of discarding. This is what leads the psalmist to exclaim: "Do not reject me in my old age; do not abandon me when my strength fails me" (71:9).
But the same psalm - which discovers the presence of the Lord in the different seasons of life - invites us to continue to hope. As we grow old and gray-haired, he will continue to give us life and will not allow us to be defeated by evil. Trusting in Him, we will find the strength to praise Him more and more (cf. vv. 14-20) and we will discover that growing old does not imply only the natural deterioration of the body or the inescapable passing of time, but the gift of a long life. Growing old is not a condemnation, it is a blessing!
For this reason, we must be watchful over ourselves and learn to lead an active old age also from the spiritual point of view, cultivating our interior life through the assiduous reading of the Word of God, daily prayer, the practice of the sacraments and participation in the liturgy. And, together with our relationship with God, our relationship with others, especially with our family, children and grandchildren, to whom we can offer our affection full of attention; but also with the poor and afflicted, whom we can approach with concrete help and prayer. All this will help us not to feel that we are mere spectators in the theater of the world, not to limit ourselves to "watching from the balcony," to watch from the window. Instead, by sharpening our senses to recognize the presence of the Lord. we will be like "green olive trees in the house of God" (cf. Salt 52,10), and we can be a blessing to those who live next to us.
Old age is not a useless time in which we step aside, abandoning the oars in the boat, but it is a season for continuing to bear fruit. There is a new mission that awaits us and invites us to look to the future. "The special sensitivity of us elderly, of old age for the attentions, thoughts and affections that make us more human, should once again become a vocation for many. And it will be a choice of love from the elderly towards the new generations." . It is our contribution to the revolution of tenderness A spiritual and peaceful revolution in which I invite you, dear grandparents and elderly people, to be protagonists.
The world is living through a time of severe trial, marked first by the unexpected and furious storm of the pandemic, then by a war that affects peace and development on a global scale. It is no coincidence that war has returned to Europe at a time when the generation that lived through it in the last century is disappearing. And these great crises can make us insensitive to the fact that there are other "epidemics" and other widespread forms of violence that threaten the human family and our common home.
In the face of all this, we need a profound change, a conversion that will demilitarize hearts, allowing everyone to recognize in others a brother or sister. And we, grandparents and elders, have a great responsibility: to teach the women and men of our time to see others with the same understanding and tender gaze that we direct to our grandchildren. We have honed our humanity by taking care of others, and today we can be teachers of a way of living peacefully and attentively with the weakest. Our attitude may perhaps be mistaken for weakness or submission, but it is the meek, not the aggressive or the prevaricators, who will inherit the earth (cf. Mt 5,5).
One of the fruits we are called to bear is to protect the world. "We have all passed through the knees of grandparents, who have carried us in their arms." But today is the time to hold on our knees - with concrete help or at least with prayer - together with our own, all those frightened grandchildren whom we have not yet met and who are perhaps fleeing from war or suffering because of it. Let us carry in our hearts - as did St. Joseph, a tender and caring father - the little ones of Ukraine, of Afghanistan, of South Sudan.
Many of us have matured a wise and humble conscience, which the world so badly needs. We are not saved alone, happiness is a bread to be eaten together. Let us witness it to those who delude themselves into thinking they can find personal fulfillment and success in confrontation. Everyone, even the weakest, can do it. Even letting people take care of us - often people who come from other countries - is a way of saying that living together is not only possible, but necessary.
Dear grandmothers and grandfathers, dear old ladies and dear old men, in this world of ours we are called upon to be the architects of the revolution of tenderness. Let us do this by learning to use more and more effectively the most precious instrument we have, the one that is most appropriate for our age: that of prayer. "Let us also become a little bit poets of prayer: let us cultivate a taste for finding our own words, let us make our own again those that the Word of God teaches us". . Our confident invocation can do much, can accompany the cry of pain of the suffering and can contribute to change hearts. We can be "the permanent "choir" of a great spiritual sanctuary, where the prayer of supplication and the song of praise sustain the community that works and struggles in the field of life".
This is why the World Day of Grandparents and the Elderly is an occasion to say once again, with joy, that the Church wants to celebrate with those to whom the Lord - as the Bible says - has granted "an advanced age". Let us celebrate it together! I invite you to announce this Day in your parishes and communities, to go and visit the elderly who are most alone, in their homes or in the residences where they live. Let us try to make sure that no one lives this day alone. Having someone to wait for can change the meaning of the days of those who no longer expect anything good in the future; and from a first meeting a new friendship can be born. Visiting the elderly who are alone is a work of mercy of our time.
Let us ask Our Lady, Mother of Tenderness, to make us all the architects of the revolution of tendernessto free the world together from the shadow of loneliness and the demon of war.
May my Blessing, with the assurance of my loving closeness, reach all of you and your loved ones. And you, please do not forget to pray for me.
L
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The Way of the Cross in Jerusalem: where Christ's footsteps still echo
The Way of the Cross is one of the most popular devotions among Christians. Through fourteen stations, the faithful contemplate and meditate on the Passion of Christ, accompanying Jesus on his way to the place of the crucifixion.
Original Text of the article in Spanish here
The devotion of the Way of the Cross has its origin in the Gospel accounts of the passion and death of Jesus. The various evangelists collected the story of the Lord's life, but not in the way that a biography or a study is currently conceived.
The Passion narratives do not contain all the details of Jesus' journey to Golgotha. Of the fourteen stations that make up the Way of the Cross today, nine are directly anchored in the Gospel accounts. The stations of Jesus' three falls and his encounters with the Blessed Virgin and with Veronica are the fruit of the pious tradition of the Christian people.
The Via Dolorosa of Jerusalem
The Gospel of John indicates that Christ was taken from the house of Caiaphas to the Praetorium. There, after the impressive conversation with Pilate, the praetor "brought Jesus out and sat down on the judgment seat at a place called the Pavement, and in Hebrew Gabbatha. Now it was the day of Preparation of the Passover. It was about the sixth hour. He said to the Jews, "Behold your King!" They cried out, "Away with him, away with him, crucify him!" Pilate said to them, "Shall I crucify your King?" The chief priests answered, "We have no king but Caesar." So he delivered him over to them to be crucified. So they took Jesus, and he went out, bearing his own cross, to the place called the Place of a Skull, which in Hebrew is called Golgotha. There they crucified him, and with him two others, one on either side, and Jesus between them." (Jn 19:13-18)
Christ had been imprisoned, held in chains in the house of Caiaphas, located in an area next to the city walls, not far from Herod's palace. From there, still in chains, he would be taken to the Antonia Tower, the seat of the Roman government.
Archaeological findings have placed this Praetorium mentioned by St John inside the Antonia Tower, built at the eastern end of the second city wall to its north-east.
The impressive model of Jerusalem at the time of the Second Temple (until AD 70) that can be seen in the Israel Museum gives us an idea of what the city would have looked like when Jesus crossed it, carrying his cross.
The route would have started from the Antonia Tower to the outskirts of the city, where the mound of Golgotha was located (today inside the Basilica of the Holy Sepulchre).
The distance was some 600 yards, about 2000 steps, which Christ would have walked loaded down with the horizontal crossbeam (patibulum) of the cross, whose weight would have ranged between about 110 and 150 pounds.
All this after having been imprisoned (probably hanging by his hands), having received dozens of lashes in the Praetorium, and with his head bleeding from the thorns of the crown plaited by the soldiers. The footsteps of Christ, which still echo in the Holy City, walked the first Stations of the Cross.
Today, the Via Dolorosa in Jerusalem follows only a part of what would have been the path Jesus took from the Praetorium to the place of execution. At that time, the place was outside the city walls, in a kind of wasteland. Today the Basilica of the Holy Sepulcher, which contains both Golgotha and the tomb where Christ was laid, is within the Christian quarter of what is known as the Old City of Jerusalem.
The Via Dolorosa is not simply a street, but a route consisting of parts of several streets, and is divided between the Muslim and Christian quarters.
The history of the devotion
The ups and downs of this devotion has been influenced by the historical vicissitudes through which what is now Israel passed. Travelers of the time have left us descriptions of the various stations visited in pilgrimage by the Church of Jerusalem. One of the richest sources is the well-known Itinerarium Egeriaefrom the end of the 4th century. Egeria, a pilgrim who traveled to the Holy Land from the Roman province of Galicia in 381-384 AD, wrote her travel account, Itinerarium ad Loca Sanctatowards the end of the century: in it she describes her journey to the Holy Places in the East, and the liturgies and religious services carried out in the Holy Land.
The fall of the Byzantine empire and the subsequent Islamic domination in the area hindered the popular piety of local Christians and pilgrims. The Christians present in Jerusalem went through difficult times and, although the devotion to the Passion of Christ never disappeared, the near-impossibility of pilgrimages brought about a decline in the practice of following in the footsteps of the Passion.
After the reconquest of the Holy City by the Crusaders, these practices of piety returned. In the first half of the 14th century, Pope Clement VI entrusted the Franciscans with "the guidance, instruction and care of the Latin pilgrims, as well as with the guardianship, maintenance, defense and rituals of the Catholic sanctuaries of the Holy Land", and the practice of commemorating the way that Jesus himself traveled was developed.
The Stations of the Via Dolorosa
Since 1880, every Friday (except for a break during the pandemic), starting at 3:00 p.m., the Franciscan community solemnly leads the Stations of the Cross through the streets of Jerusalem.
The route starts at the Lions' Gate, in the courtyard of the Omariya School, an Islamic madrassa that occupies the area of the ancient Antonia fortress.
A few yards away we find two small churches, one in front of the other, dedicated to the first and second stations. The churches, which are small in size, are built on the probable location of the courtyard of the Praetorium. As a curiosity, on the floor of the chapel that commemorates Christ's taking up the Cross, one can see "boards" of ancient dice games cut into the stone, dating from the first centuries and which could be part of those games with which the soldiers cast lots for the clothes of Jesus. The third station is marked by a chapel belonging to the Armenian Catholic Patriarchate. It is one of the best-known points of the Via Dolorosa.
Nearby we find the arch of the door that marks the fourth station: Jesus meets Mary, his Blessed Mother. A small Franciscan chapel, not far from the church of Santa Maria del Spasmo (restored by the Armenians in 1881), recalls the episode of Simon of Cyrene that is contemplated at the fifth station.
The sixth station is a Greek-Catholic chapel. The episode of Veronica, the fruit of popular piety, is recalled in the mosaic of the oratory. To the south one can see the remains of an ancient wall and the arches of an unidentified building, considered by some to be the monastery of Saints Cosmas and Damian (built in the years AD 548-563). On its exterior, a stone column with the inscription Pia Veronica faciem christi linteo deterci[t] is another of the most significant points of this path. From here, the stations enter the Christian quarter, on what would have been the cardo maximus of Jerusalem in the time of the Lord. We are already very close to the Basilica of the Holy Sepulcher, where the last five stations of the Way of the Cross are prayed.
At the place of the seventh station there is a small Franciscan chapel, in which there is a column that was probably part of the columns that marked the main street of the Roman Jerusalem. The place of the eighth station is indicated by a small black cross engraved on the wall of the wall of the Greek monastery of St Charalambos. At this point, the Via Dolorosa "breaks off", so one goes back to the previous crossroads to continue on the way to the Holy Sepulcher.
Almost at the entrance to the strange courtyard leading to the Basilica of the Holy Sepulchre, the ninth station is indicated on a column placed near the door of the Coptic monastery, behind the apse of the Basilica of the Holy Sepulcher.
Inside we find the five final stations of the Way of the Cross, which refer to the events that took place directly between Calvary and the rock-hewn tomb of Joseph of Arimathea, where Jesus was laid after his death.
Today these two areas, only a few yards apart, are covered by a single roof, although they are clearly differentiated and continue to manifest, with silent cries, the greatness of the salvation worked by Christ through his death and resurrection.
In the Holy City, meditation on the mysteries of the Passion takes on a special intensity and meaning. Only in Jerusalem can those who pray this devotion say "here". HereIn this place, Jesus was condemned to death; here he died on the cross; and hereIn this place, he rose and made the whole earth the home of his children.
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Decalogue for marriage preparation
The ten key points that can be gleaned from reading the pastoral guidelines published in June 2022, which take into account the wealth of situations that families are currently going through
Translation of the article into English
Once you have read and studied in depth the Catechumenal Itineraries for Married LifeFrom its reading, it is possible to extract a decalogue of key ideas from this document of which you can find an extensive summary here.
1- The purpose of preparation for marriage in the Church is the conjugal sanctity: to form marriages capable of evangelize our society.
2- The grace of the sacrament leads the spouses to take the awareness of the efficacious presence of Christ in their communion of married life and love.
3- The greatness of vocation of Christian spouses requires a serious and prolonged ecclesial work, with a formative approach attractive, all-encompassing, deep and intense.
4- The proper way to gestate a Christian marriage is a "...".catechumenate". or itinerary of faith, in which the future spouses will accept the divine gift and assume the protagonism of its preparation process, guided and accompanied by the pastors and by other members of the Church who have been duly prepared.
5- Training for mature spousal love presupposes a continuous training process, at various stagesfrom the preparation remote in childhood and youth (in the family, parish, school, movements and ecclesial groups), up to the next and immediate to the celebration of the sacrament (of at least one year's duration), which will be extended after contracting the sacrament in the married life (especially in the early years).
6- The Church must instruct and be close the bride and groom on their way to marriage, with a style that is positive, encouraging and testimonial from trust and dialogue sincere; it is also necessary to prayer and community, with the appropriate sacramental celebration of the sacrament of Eucharist and the Reconciliation. In this way, future spouses will be able to welcome the Gospel of marriage and the family with hope and live it within the ecclesial community.
7- The good news of Christian marriage is to be transmitted in a gradual process of purification and growthwith mercy and prudence. In this way, the candidates to the married state will be able to assimilate the blessing of the sacrament, overcoming with the opportune aids the possible shortcomings and limitations and improving couple's communication.
8- It must be ensured that the bride and groom understand the meaning, purposes, characteristics and benefits of the marriage according to God's plan of creation and redemption. They will then be able to choose it in a conscious and mature manner, in an exercise of reflection and discernmentavoiding the cultural confusions of some widespread erroneous ideologies.
9- The affective-sexual education of the heart by means of the human and Christian virtue of the chastity, ally of loveas well as the reasoned explanation of the doctrine of the responsible procreation, will allow us to understand and assume with joy the beauty of the meaning of the human body in its masculinity and femininity as a call to interpersonal communion.
10- Adequate and permanent ecclesiastical preparation and accompaniment is guarantee of the fulfillment of the divine promise inscribed in the conjugal vocation. In this way, the conjugal covenant can bear fruit in the fruitful joy of Christian homes, for the glory of God and the extension of his kingdom in our world.
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Proper preparation for Christian marriage
The Year of the Family "Amoris laetitia" will end on June 26, 2022. A few days before, the Catechumenal Itineraries for Married Life were published. A document that aims to update, renew and above all, to make real, the insertion of Christian families in the path of the Church with the current circumstances.
RelatedWhy get married? Christian marriage in the 21st centuryChristian marriage: a great hopeMarriage: "Mission Possible
Why get married? Christian marriage in the 21st centuryChristian marriage: a great hopeMarriage: "Mission PossibleThe Year of the Family "Amoris laetitia".The Catechumenal Itineraries for Married Life were published a few days earlier. A few days before, the Catechumenal Itineraries for Married Life were published. These are pastoral orientations that, bearing in mind the richness of situations that families are going through today, propose a serious revision of formation for Catholic marriage. The itineraries are committed to a practical and real catechumenate, based on the accompaniment of spouses and families throughout their lives.
1.Vademecum of pastoral care of marriage
Dated June 15, 2022, the Vatican Dicastery for the Laity, Family and Life, has published an important document with the title: Catechumenal Itineraries for Married Life. It is a timely vade mecum or handbook with the guidelines or guidelines for an adequate pastoral care of marriage preparation for our time.
In continuity with the magisterium of John Paul II and Benedict XVI, the Holy Father Francis has explained on various occasions the need for this marriage catechumenate, which is "an antidote to avoid the proliferation of null and void or inconsistent marriage celebrations" (Address to the Roman Rota, 21-1-2017).
Indeed, from a negative point of view, the need for preparation is particularly urgent in our times, given the lamentable rates of marital failure. We cannot stand by and watch unmoved as the family fabric crumbles in a counterculture of rupture and divorce, which causes so much human destruction.
The Church, as mother and teacher, recognizes the duty she has to "accompany with responsibility to those who express the intention of uniting in marriage, so that they may be preserved from the traumas of separation and never lose faith in love" (Preface).
In a positive sense, the originality and the purpose of the proposal of the marriage catechumenate is decisive: "it aims to make the mystery of sacramental grace resonate between the spouses, which corresponds to them by virtue of the sacrament: to make the living presence of Christ with them and among themselves"; for which it is necessary "to travel with them the path that leads them to an encounter with Christ, or to deepen this relationship, and to make an authentic discernment of their own nuptial vocation" (n. 6). The gift of the Spirit needs to be properly accepted in order to produce fruits of holiness and evangelization.
2. Formation for conjugal sanctity
In this sense, it is necessary to recognize a a certain incoherence The Church devotes much time, several years, to the preparation of candidates for the priesthood or religious life, but she devotes little time, only a few weeks, to those preparing for marriage" (Preface). For this reason, a renewed appreciation of the vocation to marriage is necessary, in conformity with the universal call to holiness and mission - which includes the lay faithful with their specificity - proclaimed with emphasis by the Second Vatican Council. It must be affirmed that "the sacrament of Holy Orders, religious consecration and the sacrament of marriage deserve the same careThe Lord calls men and women to one or the other vocation with the same intensity and love" (n. 7). For this reason, Christian spouses need an integral, profound and constant formation, so that they can fulfill their task for the good of the whole human community.
It should be noted that this Vatican document is limited in its pretensions, since it is not a manual for the premarital course, nor does it consider all the themes of family pastoral care, but only offers the most important indications for preparation for married life. P
For this reason, there are many doctrinal and pastoral tools that must be articulated, as specified in the Family ministry directories of the episcopal conferences and dioceses.
Thus, for example, Francis indicates that this document will have to be complemented by "another document indicating concrete pastoral methods and possible itineraries of accompaniment, specifically dedicated to those couples who have experienced the failure of their marriage and are living in a new union or have remarried civilly" (Preface).
3. Transversality, synodality, continuity
We must bear in mind that is not a normative text but a pastoral textopen to the consideration of the diverse realities of the subjects and environments to be evangelized. For this reason, these "guidelines that ask to be received, adapted and put into practice in concrete social, cultural and ecclesial situations" (Preface), in a prudent exercise on the part of pastors and other agents of the delicate task of preparation for Christian married life.
Three major general principles of pastoral action are identified. First, the transversality, which "means that the pastoral care of married life is not limited to the restricted sphere of the meetings of engaged couples, but crosses many other pastoral areas and is always present in them" (n. 12). In fact, it is the very life of the couple (engaged or married) that is carefully accompanied by the Church, so that the vocation may produce all the fruit of holiness that it contains germinally, capable of radiating and fertilizing society with the Gospel of marriage and the family.
Secondly, the synodalityfor "The Church is communion and concretely realizes her communion in walking together, in the coordination of all pastoral areas and in the active participation of all her members in her evangelizing mission" (n. 13). In this field of ecclesial action, as in others, we must avoid a clerical reductionism or that many disengage themselves from the Lord's mandate by neglecting their duties: we are all responsible - each according to his or her vocation, abilities and charisms - for the evangelization of society, cultures and persons.
The third criterion is the continuity, that "it refers to the fact that it is not episodic, but prolonged in time, including permanent. This makes it possible to establish pedagogical itineraries which, in the various stages of growth, accompany the rooting of the vocation to marriage in the journey of Christian initiation in the faith" (n. 14). Something analogous to the processes of education or human maturation occurs: their interruption or neglect is counterproductive and often harmful. Different modalities should be considered, adapted to the different stages and situations of life, but the task of human and Christian formation should never be abandoned. In this sense, it is necessary to remember to avoid "long periods of pastoral neglect of certain phases in the life of individuals and families, which unfortunately lead to alienation from the community and often also from the faith" (n. 15). If formation is neglected, confusion and exposure to ideological deformations, such as passionate emotionalism or materialistic pansexualism, irremediably advance. Adequate and uninterrupted formation, on the other hand, favors the development of discerning persons, solidly grounded in the truth of the Gospel and in human and Christian virtues.
4. Catechumenate
Let us add that, although the modalities and adaptations can be very varied, a marriage catechumenate is not just any old thing: it possesses a consistency and some elementary features, which are made explicit in this document. Moreover, this institution is inspired by the beautiful and secular ecclesial tradition of preparation for adult baptism. "The Ritual of Christian Initiation for Adults can be a frame of reference to be inspired by" (n. 19).
For this reason, "in the development of this project, it is necessary to take into account certain requirements: for the duration of the enough time to allow couples to reflect and mature; that, starting from the concrete experience of human love, faith and encounter with Christ be placed at the center of marriage preparation; that it be organized by stagesmarked - when possible and appropriate - by rites of passage that are celebrated within the community; that encompasses all of these elements: formation, reflection, dialogue, confrontation, liturgy, community, prayer, festivity" (n. 16).
The document considers that a concrete proposal to begin on this path could be the implementation in the dioceses, whenever possible, of a "pilot project". (n. 17). However, "this pastoral tool cannot simply be imposed as the only way to prepare for marriage, but must be used with discernment and common sense" (n. 16). Indeed, an indiscriminate obligation could have counterproductive effects, such as the alienation of many from the sacrament of marriage or external and formal compliance, as an imposed requirement to be suffered and fulfilled "reluctantly". It is rather a consistent suggestion, to be shown to the candidates as a plausible offer of integral formation. For this formative instrument to be truly effective, it must be presented in a suitable and attractive way, so that the candidates to the sacrament of marriage themselves come to discover, yearn for, and to take a leading role in the project.
5. Guiding, helping, accompanying
In the characterization of this training modality, the document considers some general and methodological characteristics: its intention is to be "...to provide the best possible training for the students", and "...".guiding, assisting and being close to couples on a path to be traveled together"It is not a preparation for an exam to be passed, but for a life to be lived"; moralism is to be avoided and care must be taken instead to "...".proactive, persuasive, encouraging and all oriented towards the good and beautiful that is possible to live. in marriage"; it also has to take into account "gradualness, welcome and supportbut also the testimony of other Christian spouses who are welcoming and present along the way", as this will help to "create a climate of friendship and trust"(n. 20), so necessary for the efficacy of this journey towards Christian marriage.
Each person and each couple will be accompanied on their journey of reflection, conversion and understanding of the human and Christian meaning of married life, "always following the logic of the respectthe patience and the mercy. However, it never leads to obscuring the requirements of truth and charity of the Gospel proposed by the Church, and must never be allowed to obscure the divine plan for human love and marriage in its fullness. beauty and grandeur" (n. 56).
Usually, "the team of companions that guides the way can be formed by couples helped by a priest and other experts in family pastoral care" (n. 21). The presence of married couples is not only due to a shortage of clergy, but also responds to the vocation of the married couple as evangelizers and to the connaturality with the form of life that they want to undertake.
In addition, it should be taken into account that "some complex issues related to conjugal sexuality or openness to the life of the couple". (e.g., responsible parenthood, artificial insemination, prenatal diagnosis, and other bioethical issues) have strong ethical, relational, and spiritual implications for spouses, and require today's specific training and a clarity of ideas" (n. 22). The document also recalls the "urgency of a more adequate formation of priests, seminarians and lay people (including married couples) in the ministry of accompanying young people to marriage" (n. 86).
6. Assess situations and attitudes
Also to be considered are to consider, distinguish and accompany in an appropriate and timely manner the various existential situations of those who approach the sacrament of marriage in our day. The great number of people who live more or less distant from the faith and from the Church calls for a solicitous and timely proposal: "Pastoral experience in much of the world now shows the constant and widespread presence of new requests for preparation for sacramental marriage on the part of couples who already live together, have celebrated a civil marriage and have children. Such requests can no longer be evaded by the Church, nor can they be flattened within paths laid out for those who come from a minimal journey of faith; rather, they require forms of personalized accompaniment" (n. 25).
We often meet "couples who have preferred to live together without getting married, but who nevertheless remain open to religious matters and are willing to approach the Church. With a sympathetic view, they should be warmly welcomed without legalismappreciating its desire for family" (n. 40). Adequate pastoral action does not confine itself to theoretical schemes, but places itself in the vital place - attitudes, dispositions, situations, etc. - in which people find themselves in order to help them with human and supernatural wisdom according to the stages of healing and growth in ongoing conversion and in the ascent to human fulfillment, which is holiness.
7. Significant rituals
The document proposes some symbolic rites or quasi-liturgical gestures of initiation or culmination of the various stages or phases of this formative process or journey. "Among the rites to be considered, before arriving at the marriage rite proper, may be: the giving of the Bible to the bride and groom, the presentation to the community, the blessing of the engagement rings, the giving of a couple's prayer that will accompany them on their journey. The appropriateness of this will be evaluated according to the local ecclesial reality. Each of these rites may be accompanied by a retreat" (n. 23).
This initiative is made with a lot of cautionOn the one hand, it is important to avoid creating excessive expectations that force the freedom of the candidates, and on the other hand, it is also important to avoid confusion or identification with the rites proper to the sacrament. For this reason, the text urges "the necessary prudence and a careful evaluation of how to propose these rites, according to the social context in which one acts. In some cases, for example, it may be preferable for these rites to be celebrated only within the group of couples following the itinerary, without involving families or others. In other cases, however, it is preferable to avoid them altogether" (n. 26). Therefore, these rites are suggestions to consider and use prudentially to take advantage of its stimulus to persevere with enthusiasm on the training path and avoid possible counterproductive effects.
8. Stages. Remote preparation
Since it is a matter of accompanying internal growth, this process or articulated path must take into account the following various stages of formative development and of human and Christian maturation. For this reason, the document suggests that "in a long-term pastoral perspective, it would be good if the catechumenal itinerary itself were preceded by a pre-catechumenal phase: this would coincide practically with the long period of remote preparation to marriage, which begins in childhood. The proper catechumenal phase consists of three distinct stages: the upcoming preparationthe immediate preparation and the accompaniment of the first years of married life" (n. 24).
In family and ecclesiastical education for true love during childhood and youth, the objectives of remote preparation are: "(a) to educate children in self-esteem and esteem for others, in the knowledge of their own dignity and in respect for others; (b) to present to children the Christian anthropology and vocational perspective contained in baptism that will lead to marriage or consecrated life; c) to educate adolescents in affectivity and sexuality in view of the future call to a generous, exclusive and faithful love (whether in marriage, in the priesthood or in the consecrated life); d) to propose to young people a path of human and spiritual growth to overcome immaturity, fears and resistance to open themselves to relationships of friendship and love, not possessive or narcissistic, but free, generous and oblative" (n. 36).
9. Reception: announcement and maturation of the conjugal project.
In the intermediate or reception phase of the candidates to the marriage catechumenate, "the style of relationship and reception implemented by the pastoral team will be decisive"; for "it is important that the moment of reception becomes a proclamation of the kerigmaso that the merciful love of Christ constitutes the authentic spiritual place in which the couple is welcomed" (n. 38).
Here the document emphasizes some features of the evangelizing style This is especially important for engaged couples: "the pastoral care of married couples should always have a cheerful tone and kerygmatic -The witness, beauty and driving force of Christian families will be able to come to the aid of pastors in the face of these challenges; the sacrament of marriage itself must be the object of a true proclamation by the Church; fidelity, uniqueness, definitiveness, fruitfulness and totality are, after all, the essential dimensions of every bond of authentic love, understood, desired and coherently lived by a man and a woman" (n. 39).
Those who ask the Church for the nuptial sacrament should be helped to overcome superficial attitudes that are often unconsciously and inculpably held by those who ask for it, for "it is important that there be an interior willingness to begin a journey of faith-conversion through the marriage catechumenate" (n. 42). In the discernment of the conjugal intention Church doctrine distinguishes between the virtue of faith in the candidates and the will to wanting a real marriage. "The presence of a living and explicit faith in couples is obviously the ideal situation for coming to marriage with a clear and conscious intention to celebrate a true marriage. However, a necessary condition for access to the sacrament of marriage and its validity remains their intention to do what the Church means to accomplish in celebrating marriage between the baptized" (n. 44).
Thus, "if they explicitly and formally reject what the Church wishes to accomplish in celebrating marriage, the engaged will not be admitted to the sacramental celebration" (n. 45). Pastors cannot neglect the formation and conversion of souls, for they have the grave duty to "make the Church's will known to the faithful" (n. 45). to bring out the true intentions The Church's intention is to make the bride and groom aware of them, so that the preparation and celebration of marriage may not be reduced to purely external acts. If, on the other hand, without denying what the Church wishes to accomplish, there is an imperfect disposition on the part of those who wish to marry, their admission to the celebration of the sacrament should not be excluded" (n. 45).
In this phase it is necessary to "take advantage of this situation as a a favorable moment for them to rediscover their faith and bring it to a greater maturity.returning to the roots of his baptism, rekindling the seed of divine life that has already been sown in them, and inviting them to reflect on the choice of sacramental marriage as the consolidation, sanctification and full realization of their love" (n. 45). Thus, with patience and zeal, pastors and others entrusted with this task are to bring about the right interior conditions for entering into a true and prepared marriage in the best possible conditions.
However, with some frequency it will happen that both parties or "one of them refuses to follow the catechumenal path. In all these cases, it will be up to the presbyter to evaluate the best way to proceed in preparing for marriage" (n. 46), in order to ensure not only the validity of the sacrament but also that it not be wasted and produce fruits of life Christian.
10. Upcoming preparation: vocational itinerary of faith
Regarding the main time of the catechumenate, "in general terms, it is suggested that the upcoming preparation last approximately one yearDepending on the couple's previous experience of faith and ecclesial participation. Once the decision to marry has been made, immediate preparation could begin. to marriage, lasting a few months, in order to become a true and proper initiation to the nuptial sacrament" (n. 48).
In order to achieve this goal, it is necessary to drastically change the way in which the mentality of the pastors and, later, of the people of God, so that everyone becomes aware that marriage preparation is something serious and intenseThe idea is that it should not remain the superficial varnish of a short course. In this regard, it may be useful to consider the analogy with the rigor in the academic education and professional training that are so demanding in our time. For, in a similar way to technical, artistic or sporting skills, to prepare virtuous subjectsThe formation of those who are truly capable of true spousal love, who have reached the maturity of the freedom of self-giving, requires a formative effort of great scope, intensity and duration.
"The marriage catechumenate at this stage will take on the character of a real catechumenate. faith itineraryduring which the Christian message will be rediscovered and reproduced in its perennial newness and freshness. Candidates for marriage will also be gradually initiated into Christian prayer" (n. 49). During this period, "couples are to be helped to approaching ecclesial life and to participate in it. With gentleness and human warmth, they will be invited to participate in moments of prayer, Sunday Eucharist, confession, retreats, but also in moments of celebration and conviviality" (n. 50).
It will also "be essential to prepare an itinerary of reflection on marital propertyand thus be ready to accept these graces and embrace these goods as a gift" (n. 51). "It will be important at this stage to deepen everything that has to do with the relationship with the couple and interpersonal dynamics with its rules, its laws of growth, the elements that strengthen it and those that weaken it" (n. 52). For this, it is necessary to count on the contributions of the human sciences.
They "must also be duly explored: the human dynamics of marital sexualityThe correct conception of responsible parenthood, the education of children" (n. 53). And, finally, we must "become aware of the possible psychological and/or affective deficienciesThe marriage can weaken or even completely nullify the commitment of self-giving and mutual love that the spouses promise to each other. But they can be the stimulus to initiate a more serious process of growth that prepares to reach a sufficient condition of interior freedom and maturity" (n. 54).
The specific objective of this central stage of the marriage catechumenate is "to finalize the discernment of each couple about their vocation to marriage. This can lead to the free, responsible and meditated decision to marry, or it can lead to the equally free and meditated decision to end the relationship and not to marry. This discernment, which should also take place within the framework of spiritual dialogue" (n. 55).
11. Learning chastity, ally of love
One of the central themes at this formative stage has to be the proper understanding and vital apprenticeship in the human and Christian virtue of chastityIt must be presented as a true ally of love, not as its negation. It is, in fact, the privileged way to learn to respect the individuality and dignity of the other, without subordinating it to one's own desires. It has a fundamental importance in guiding and nourishing conjugal love, preserving it from any manipulation. It teaches, in any state of life, to be faithful to the truth of one's own love.
This will mean, for the engaged couple, to live chastity in continence and, once married, to live conjugal intimacy with moral rectitude. Chastity facilitates reciprocal knowledge between the bride and groom, because by preventing the relationship from becoming fixed on the physical instrumentalization of the other, it allows for a deeper dialoguea freer manifestation of the heart and the emergence of all aspects of one's personality - human and spiritual, intellectual and affective - in such a way as to allow true growth in the relationship, in personal communion, in the discovery of the richness and limits of the other: and this is the true purpose of the engagement period.
They are diverse and beautiful values and attentions that the virtue of chastity teaches: the respect the other, the care of never submitting it to one's own desires, the patience and the delicacy with the spouse in times of difficulty, physical and spiritual, the strength and the self-control necessary in times of absence or illness of one of the spouses, etc." (n. 57).
12. Care for substance and form
As for the methodology of this central phase, it should be emphasized that "it is necessary that the content transmission Theoretical studies must be accompanied by the proposal of a spiritual path that includes experiences of prayer (personal, community and couple), celebration of the sacraments, spiritual retreats, times of Eucharistic adoration, missionary experiences, charitable activities" (n. 58). Without neglecting the tone testimonial from trust that enables authentic openness and inner renewal.
In summary, the objectives of the upcoming preparation are: "a) to re-propose a catechesis of initiation to the Christian faith and an approach to the life of the Church; b) to experience a specific initiation to the sacrament of marriage and to reach a clear awareness of its essential notes; c) to deepen the themes linked to the couple's relationship and to become aware of their own psychological and affective shortcomings; d) to complete a first phase of discernment of the couple on the nuptial vocation; e) to continue a spiritual journey with more decision" (n. 63).
13. Immediate preparation for engagement
In the months preceding The immediate preparation for the nuptials takes place prior to the celebration of the marriage. "It will be opportune to remember the main contents of the path of preparation followed up to now: emphasis will be placed on the indispensable conditions of freedom and full awareness of the commitment to the choice to be made, linked to the essential characteristics of marriage" (n. 65).
The objectives of the preparation at the gates The main objectives of the celebration of the sacrament are: "a) to recall the doctrinal, moral and spiritual aspects of marriage; b) to live spiritual experiences of encounter with the Lord; c) to prepare for a conscious and fruitful participation in the nuptial liturgy" (n. 73).
14. To fill gaps and encourage ecclesial insertion.
Although this pathway presents the ideal and complete training framework, it is nevertheless realistic to note that it is frequent and regular "that some couples are only now being inserted into the catechumenal itinerary, and that immediate preparation is the only concrete possibility for them to receive a minimum of training. in view of the celebration of the sacrament of marriage. For them, it would be opportune to arrange some personalized meetings with the pastoral team of marriage preparation, to make them feel the care and attention, to deepen together some more personal aspects of the choice of marriage, according to the situation of the couple, and to establish a relationship of trust, cordiality and friendship with those accompanying them" (n. 65).
It is a matter of making up for deficiencies with charity, but without considering that this exceptional situation, however widespread it may be, is the normal or the good thing. With patience and prudence, the pastors and other members of the Christian community must to seek insertion in the life of the Church to those who are far away and to invite everyone to participate in the processes of proper faith formation.
In this phase, moreover, it is necessary to "always return to the encounter with the Lord as the source of the whole Christian life. It is always necessary, in fact, to go beyond the mere sociological vision of marriage in order to make the spouses understand the mystery of grace that is implicit in it" (n. 66). In this last stage prior to the celebration of marriage "it will be useful to reformulate the announcement kerygmatic of redemption of Christ who saves us from the reality of sin, which always looms over human life"; as well as "to have recourse to God's forgiveness which, in the sacrament of reconciliationHe bestows his love more powerfully than any sin" (n. 67).
15. Liturgical catechesis
The celebration of the sacrament contains a transcendent divine richness, which should not be reduced to merely human aspects such as the social, festive or sentimental. It is up to the sacred ministers and other catechists to open the minds of the couples to these sacramental and missionary dimensions-transcendent and fascinating-which they may barely glimpse. "Couples should be enlightened about the the extraordinary value of a sacramental sign that their conjugal life will acquireThe wedding rite: with the nuptial rite, they will become a permanent sacrament of Christ who loves the Church. Christian spouses are called to become living icons of Christ the Bridegroom. It is the way spouses live and relate to each other that should make present to the world the generous and total love with which Christ loves the Church and all humanity. For this is the extraordinary witness that so many Christian spouses give to the world: their capacity for mutual self-giving and dedication to their children, their capacity for fidelity, patience, forgiveness and compassion are such that they give a glimpse of the fact that at the basis of their relationship there is a supernatural source, a something moreinexplicable in human terms, which unceasingly nourishes his love" (n. 68).
In the whole process of preparation for Christian marriage and, later, in the life of the marriage, one must count on the powerful and decisive divine help: "The awareness of a new outpouring of the Holy Spirit during the nuptial rite, which, inserting itself in the dynamism of grace initiated in baptism, gives a new connotation to the divine charity instilled in us from baptism itself and which now acquires the features of the marital charity. It is very timely invoking the saints/beats cThe Church should also appeal to the faithful of our time, who have already lived the experience of being husbands and wives, fathers and mothers, and also to the holy intercessors, to enhance the dignity of the state of married life in the ecclesial community and to help them to understand the beauty and power of this sacrament in the economy of salvation" (n. 69).
16. Previous retreat and confession
The document insists on a very appropriate proposal: "a few days before the marriage, a spiritual retreat of a day or two will be very beneficial. While this may seem unrealistic, given the many commitments due to wedding planning, it must be said that it is precisely the hustle and bustle of the many practical tasks related to the upcoming celebration that can distract the bride and groom from what matters most: the celebration of the sacrament and the meeting with the Lord who comes to dwell in his love human being by filling him with his divine love. In the event that a true retreat is impossible, a shorter time of prayer (for example, an evening meeting, such as a prayer vigil) could serve as an alternative" (n. 70). "Involve parents, witnesses and close relatives. in a moment of prayer before the wedding, can be a very beautiful opportunity for everyone" (n. 72).
It adds another indispensable element: to go to the sacrament of penance in order to receive the grace of marriage in the best possible way, cleansed of grave sin and purified also of minor faults. "In the period leading up to the wedding - in the context of the aforementioned spiritual retreat or prayer vigil or even in another context - the celebration of the sacrament of penance is an essential element. sacrament of reconciliation is of great importance" (n. 71). Thus they can worthily receive Holy Communion - the source of all divine blessings and the presence of Christ's nuptial covenant - at the wedding celebration.
17. Pastoral care of the newlyweds
The third stage of this process is related to the early married life. In fact, "the catechumenal journey does not end with the celebration of marriage. In fact, rather than as an isolated act, it should be considered as the entrance into a permanent state, which therefore requires a lifelong learning specific, made of reflection, dialogue and help from the Church. For this, it is necessary to accompany at least the first years of married life and not to leave the newlyweds in solitude" (n. 74).
It is not good for marriage to be alone, we can say mimicking the Lord's affirmation in the story of the creation of the woman. "Newlyweds should be aware that the celebration of marriage is the beginning of a journey, and that the couple is still a open projectnot a finished work" (n. 75). To this end, "the following will be proposed couples the continuation of the catechumenal journey, with periodic meetings" (n. 76). In our society, with a mentality so contrary to the true anthropology of marriage, it is very necessary for couples to find the company of the Christian community that reinforces and sustains the motivations of their journey.
It often happens that the attention of young couples is focused on the need to earn money and on their children, neglecting the commitment to the quality of their relationship with each other and forgetting the presence of God in their love. "It is worthwhile to help young couples to know how to find time to deepen their friendship and welcome grace of God" (n. 77).
18. Living the gift
The document recalls how the meaning of the sacrament is to be unfolded in all its beauty: "this is an opportune moment for a true matrimonial mystagogy, that is, an introduction to the mystery. Reviewing the different moments of the wedding rite, one could delve deeper into its rich symbolic and spiritual meaning and its concrete consequences in married life: the exchanged consent (the will to unite, and not a passing sentiment, at the basis of marriage, a will that must always be strengthened); the blessing of the signs that recall marriage, for example the rings (the promise of fidelity that must always be renewed); the solemn blessing of the spouses (the grace of God that descends upon the human relationship, assumes it and sanctifies it, to which one must always be open); the remembrance of marriage in the Eucharistic prayer (to always immerse conjugal love in the paschal mystery of Christ in order to reinvigorate it and make it ever more profound)" (n. 77).
In short, with mystagogical marriage catechesis, as with baptismal catechesis, the invitation is: Become what you are! You are now a married couple, so live more and more like a married couple! The Lord has blessed and filled your union with grace, so!make this grace bear fruit!
New topics and interests
From the very beginning of married life, it is important to receive a concrete help to live the interpersonal relationship with serenity. There are many new things to learn: "to accept the diversity of the other that manifests itself immediately; not to have unrealistic expectations of life together and to consider it as a path of growth; to manage the conflicts that inevitably arise; to know the different stages through which every loving relationship passes; to dialogue in order to seek a balance between personal needs and those of the couple and the family; to acquire healthy daily habits; to establish an adequate relationship with the families of origin from the beginning; to begin to cultivate a shared conjugal spirituality (n. 78).
There is many aspects of conjugal and family life that can be the subject of dialogue and catechesis in recent years. "It is essential, for example, to enlighten couples on the sensitive issue of sexuality within marriage.... and related issues, that is, the transmission of life and the regulation of births, and on other moral and bioethical questions. Another area that should not be forgotten is that of the human and Christian education of children, which constitutes a serious responsibility for parents, and in regard to which couples should be sensitized and suitably trained" (n. 79). For the various topics of conjugal and family life, the Church's teaching offers spouses a treasure of wisdom.
These early years of marriage represent a "learning phase in which the closeness and the concrete suggestions of mature married coupleswho share with the younger ones what they have learned along the way, will be of great help" (n. 80).
20. Pastoral care of the link and various resources
The pastoral ministry of marriage will be first and foremost "a pastoral care of the bondIt will help couples, whenever they face new difficulties, to have at heart above all else the defense and consolidation of the marital union, for their own sake and for the sake of their children" (n. 81). "It is essential to focus the couple's journey on the encounter with Christ: the couple needs to encounter Christ continually. and nourished by his presence" (n. 82). He is the model, the source and the support of the promised fidelity: only with his grace, in ecclesial communion, can the communion of the conjugal "we" be strengthened.
The Church's constant and permanent attention to married couples can be carried out through the following means various pastoral media: "listening to the Word of God; meetings for reflection on current topics related to conjugal and family life; the participation of married couples in liturgical celebrations especially designed for them; periodic spiritual retreats for married couples; Eucharistic adoration organized for spouses; conversation and spiritual accompaniment; participation in family groups to share experiences with other families; participation in charitable and missionary activities. For spouses need to develop a true conjugal spirituality to nourish and sustain the specific path of holiness that they follow in married life" (n. 83).
This spirituality includes conjugal co-vocation, the life and commitment to lay holiness, as well as the evangelization of the family culture. As the conjugal identity develops, "the sense of missionthat flows from the sacrament, can grow. It is opportune to invite married couples to become involved in the ordinary family ministry of their parishes or other ecclesial realities" (n. 84).
In summary, the objectives of accompaniment in the first years of married life are: "(a) to present, in a mystagogical marriage catechesis, the spiritual and existential consequences of the sacrament celebrated in concrete life; (b) to help couples, from the beginning, to establish the interpersonal relationship in the right way; (c) to deepen the themes of sexuality in married life, the transmission of life and the education of children; d) to instill in married couples the firm will to defend the marriage bond in any situation of crisis that may arise; e) to propose the encounter with Christ as an indispensable source of renewal of marital grace and to acquire a conjugal spirituality; f) to recall the meaning of the specific mission of Christian marriages" (n. 85).
21. Accompanying in difficult marital situations.
Finally, the ecclesial accompaniment of married couples in crisis situations is considered. "In the history of every marriage there can be times when conjugal communion diminishes and the spouses encounter periods, sometimes long, of suffering, fatigue and misunderstanding, going through true marital crises. They are part of the history of families: they are phases which, if overcome, can help the couple to be happy in a new way, starting from the possibilities that a new stage opens up, making the wine of the union mature even more. However, in order to prevent the crisis situation from becoming irremediable, it is advisable that the parish or the community have at its disposal a pastoral service for the accompaniment of couples in crisis" (n. 87). The family counseling centers (COF) are a key reference in this regard.
In fact, experience shows that in difficult or critical situations most people do not turn to pastoral accompaniment, perhaps because "they do not feel it to be understanding, close, realistic, incarnated". For this reason, "it is appropriate that - in addition to the pastor - it should be the spouses, especially those who have experienced a crisis after having overcome it, who become accompanying couples in difficulty or already divided" (n. 88). "It is a matter of guaranteeing not only psychological accompaniment, but also spiritualto recover, through a gradual and personalized mystagogical journey and the sacraments, the profound meaning of the bond and the awareness of the presence of Christ between spouses" (n. 90). These tutors or mentors The marriage can be a decisive help in saving and sanctifying especially those who are in difficulty.
It was noted that, unfortunately, "there are situations in which the separation is unavoidable. In these cases, a particular discernment is indispensable in order to pastoral accompaniment the separated, the divorced, the abandoned. We must especially welcome and appreciate the pain of those who have unjustly suffered separation, divorce or abandonment, or who have been forced to break off their cohabitation because of the abuse of their spouse. Forgiveness for the injustice suffered is not easy, but it is a path that grace makes possible. Hence the need for a pastoral care of reconciliation and mediationthrough specialized listening centers to be established in the dioceses" (n. 93).
It is considered that "divorced people who have not remarried - who are often witnesses to marital fidelity- to find in the Eucharist the nourishment that sustains them in their condition. The local community and pastors should accompany these people with solicitude, especially when there are children or when their situation of poverty is serious". (n. 94).
22. Building the family on rock
The Conclusion recalls that this document responds to the profound "desire to offer couples a better and deeper preparation for marriage, through a sufficiently broad itinerary, inspired by the baptismal catechumenateThe aim is to provide them with an adequate formation for Christian married life, based on an experience of faith and an encounter with Jesus, which is not limited to a few encounters close to the celebration, but which allows them to perceive the quasi-permanent character of the pastoral care of conjugal life that the Church intends to carry out. The entire ecclesial community must be involved in the mission of accompanying couples. In the tasks of formation and updating, it is necessary to work with a sense of complementarity and co-responsibility.
In this path of integral formation, it is necessary to employ "not only the method of the catechesisbut also the dialogue with the partners, the meetings individual, the liturgical moments of prayer and celebration of the sacraments, rites, retreats and interaction with the whole ecclesial community". Throughout this process, the following must be taken into account character kerygmatic of the Christian proposal, that is, its strength, beauty and newness. The "sacrament of matrimony is presented as a good newsIt is a gift from God to couples who wish to live their love to the full". Avoiding dichotomies, "the path of human growth and the process of spiritual growth are always kept together".
The formation of Christian marriages must be "embedded in today's concrete reality and must not be afraid to address issues and questions that represent social and cultural challenges", including the "formation of consciousness personal morale and the formulation of a family life project".
Pastoral accompaniment must be customizedbased mainly on the testimony of the accompanying persons and of other couples involved in the journey. It is a question of leading in each case to a serious discernment The mission of the Institute is to prepare couples for the celebration of marriage and married life as the fruit of a conscious, free and joyful decision. At the same time that it prepares couples for the sacrament of marriage, it also prepares them for the sacrament of matrimony. initiates in the ecclesial life and helps them to find in the Church the place where they can nourish the marriage bond and continue to grow throughout their lives in their vocation and service to others, thus fully developing their spousal identity and their ecclesial mission. In addition, special attention should be given to the accompaniment of married couples in crisis.
By offering the new generations itineraries of catechumenal growth in view of marriage, we are responding to one of the most urgent needs of society today: to accompany young people towards the full realization of what remains one of their greatest "dreams" and one of the main goals they intend to achieve in life, which is to establish a solid relationship with the person they love and to build a holy and evangelizing marriage on the basis of the sacrament.
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"Abba, dear Father!". 17th Sunday in Ordinary Time
Andrea Mardegan comments on the readings for the 17th Sunday in Ordinary Time and Luis Herrera offers a short video homily.
Commentary on the readings of Sunday XVII
Luke's reconstruction of the context in which Jesus' prayer to the Father, which has always defined Christians, is given to his disciples, is very realistic.
Jesus turns aside to pray, as the reader of Luke's Gospel has become accustomed to seeing: "He used to retire to uninhabited areas and devote himself to prayer." (5, 16); "In those days Jesus went out to the mountain to pray and spent the night praying to God." (6, 12); "once Jesus was praying alone" (9:18); "he took Peter, John and James and went up on the top of the mountain to pray." (9, 28).
The person asking you about prayer is "one of his disciples"although his request seems to be made on behalf of everyone: "Teach us to pray.". The motivation given corresponds to the custom of the time: each group had its own way of praying, the disciples of John, the Essenes, the Pharisees.
But it must have been more fascinating for the disciples to see Jesus praying with an unusual familiarity with God. And they longed to be able to draw on that same way of praying. To discover his secret.
In fact, in that word, "Father," is contained the secret that the disciples wanted to discover, and from that moment the nascent Church began to imitate Jesus in his relationship with the Father. G. Ravasi writes: "Unlike Matthew, who uses the more Judaizing and less original form 'Our Father', Luke has only 'Father', translated from the original Aramaic used by Jesus, Abbà, 'dear father', 'papa'. And in this there is not only the ipsissima vox Iesu, there is the echo of a historical word of Jesus, as the German scholar J. Jeremias has shown, but also the courageous voice of the Church that discovers God very close and 'human' in an absolutely new and unprecedented relationship: 'We are before something new and unprecedented, which surpasses the limits of Judaism. Here we see who the historical Jesus was: the man who had the power to address God as Abba, and who made sinners and publicans sharers in the kingdom, authorizing them to repeat this one word: 'Abba, dear Father' (Jeremiah)"..
The parable that immediately follows offers a new nuance of the climate of the relationship with the Father, that of friendship. There are three friends. One arrives suddenly in the evening from a journey, with nothing, to ask for hospitality from his friend, who also has nothing to feed him, and turns to a third friend to insist that he borrow three loaves of bread.
In a few words Jesus relates all the vivacity of the fraternal relationship that is also friendship in the Church, and the filial relationship that is also friendship with God, who alone can help in many matters in which we intercede for our brothers. He is the only one who can give the Holy Spirit.
The homily on the readings of the 17th Sunday of the week
The priest Luis Herrera Campo offers its nanomiliaa small one-minute reflection for these readings.
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Catholics and Shiites facing the future, days of dialogue in Rome
Shiite authorities from different countries of the Middle East met in Rome together with scholars and representatives of the Catholic Church in a meeting organized by the Community of Sant'Egidio.
Shiite authorities from different Middle Eastern countries together with scholars and representatives of the Catholic Church, such as Cardinals Louis Raphaël I Sako, Patriarch of Baghdad of the Chaldeans, and José Tolentino De Mendonça, Archivist and Librarian of the Holy Roman Church.
The conference on July 13-14, which opened with presentations by Andrea Riccardi, founder of the Community of Sant'Egidio, and Jawad Al-Khoei, secretary general of the Imam Al-Khoei Institute, started from the proposal to strengthen the threads of dialogue between two worlds, Catholic and Shiite, following the historic meeting between Pope Francis and Grand Ayatollah Al-Sistani in Najaf in March 2021. This is what the director of the Holy See press room, Matteo Bruni, said on the occasion of this event: "The Holy Father met the Grand Ayatollah Sayyid Ali Husaini Sistani this morning in Najaf.
During a courtesy visit, which lasted about 45 minutes, the Holy Father stressed the importance of collaboration and friendship between religious communities so that, by cultivating mutual respect and dialogue, they can contribute to the good of Iraq, the region and all humanity.
The meeting was an opportunity for the Pope to thank Grand Ayatollah Al-Sistani for having, together with the Shiite community and in the face of the violence and great difficulties of recent years, raised his voice in defense of the weakest and most persecuted, affirming the sacredness of human life and the importance of the unity of the Iraqi people. In bidding farewell to the Grand Ayatollah, the Holy Father reiterated his prayer to God, the Creator of all, for a future of peace and fraternity for the beloved land of Iraq, for the Middle East and for the whole world.
Four sessions dedicated to shared human values, responsibility in the religious community, models of thought and the encounter between generations: the basis of mutual understanding between Catholics and Shiites. In the background, the commitment to peace, the relationship with politics and the State, spiritual life, the value of the family, the role of believers in contemporary society.
With the aim of offering a way of dialogue that is not abstract, but practicable, capable of opening new horizons for the future in a delicate historical moment in the relations between Christianity and Islam, as well as between the West and the East.
Hence the idea - proposed by Jawad Al-Khoei and shared by Andrea Riccardi and Cardinal Louis Sako, Patriarch of Baghdad - of creating a permanent commission between Catholics and Shiites to address issues of common interest in a spirit of cooperation and brotherhood. A second operative proposal concerns the convening of a new meeting in Iraq, in Najafa.
This initiative has registered numerous positions, worthy of being remembered, although under rapid review.
Zaid Bahr Al-Uloom, director of the Al-Balagha Academy, Imam Al-Khoei Institute, observed that "dialogue does not mean the fusion of religions, but mutual understanding" and that "the war of religions puts Muslims and Christians in the same trench."
This is why it is necessary to build bridges and tear down walls, in the opinion of Andrea Riccardi, who has just returned "from a long trip to Africa". Many countries are suffering from the effects of the war in Ukraine. No country is an island. The global world needs dialogue to find a soul it does not have".
In the same vein, Vittorio Ianari (Sant'Egidio) presided over the opening of the proceedings, invoking dialogue and culture, fundamental ingredients for opening up a perspective for the future in a troubled world.
With the audacity to propose the "simple and radical way of the Good Samaritan", in the words of Marco Impagliazzo, historian, president of the Community of Sant'Egidio: it is the way that "aims at universal fraternity as a choice without alternative".
So it is not possible to follow undaunted the steps that have made us sick, that have made the world sick. It is time to take different paths. It is time to assume the same logic that underlines the Gospel text, the logic that no matter what nation or tradition I am and you are".
The Church of Francis - concluded Impagliazzo - does not accept to shrink, to close itself, to be a community without dreams. It continues to speak so that the world may be different, so that the world may have a future".
Cardinal Louis Sako, Patriarch of Baghdad, proposed a joint appeal for peace in Ukraine by Catholics and Shiites, calling for more fruitful cooperation.
Cardinal Tolentino, Archivist and Librarian of the Holy Roman Church, stressed the importance of hospitality as "a theological and human place that profoundly unites religions, all of which respond to the emptiness and confusion of man. Let us not taste this gift. The sacred texts," he added, constantly present "a model predisposed to diversity, with a surprisingly new vision".
An ambivalence addressed to the Jewish and Greek worlds: "openness, welcome, hospitality" show that Christianity "has been plural from the beginning". Reflections were also at the heart of the speech by Ismail Al-Khaliq, director of the al-Khoei Foundation in Paris: "The Abrahamic religions that are moving towards freedom show how to free oneself from slavery and sin".
And on the fight against extremism and terrorism, Al-Khaliq recounted the French experience which, "in the name of Mary," has seen interfaith meetings in ten churches, mosques and public halls, the last one in St. Sulpice with 30 groups and communities. A path that will be replicated in other realities.
Lebanese professor Mahdi Al-Amin, citing the declaration of Nostra AetateHe said that a Koranic vision is needed "that recognizes religious otherness and establishes the basis for dialogue with it. To imagine spaces and ways of establishing religious and human relations that can develop a dialogue that recognizes the other". He recognizes that the Pope has taken important steps, but he hopes that a document will be drafted with the Shiites, along the lines of the Abu Dhabi declaration signed with Al-Tayyeb.
Among the main themes of the conference, the theme of freedom accompanied the reflections of Professor Armand Puig, rector of the Ateneo Sant Pacià in Barcelona, who recalled that "God chooses to set man free because he has faith in him. He believed in us before we believed in Him.
The beginning of the 21st century seems to be a continuous trail of huge failures. "However, this is not the story God has planned for his children, this is not the dream of peace that the children of Abraham want to share. The future of humanity cannot be a condemnation." It is necessary to reflect "on a model of thought in order to translate it into concrete life".
With regard to migrants, Daniela Pompei, head of Sant'Egidio for services to migrants, spoke, recalling the fruitful experience of the humanitarian corridors, crucial to ensure reception and integration.
Vincenzo Paglia, President of the Pontifical Academy for Life, in addressing the care of the elderly in an increasingly "old" society, referred to the commission commission commissioned by the Italian government, which he chaired, and which drew up a document, endorsed by Prime Minister Draghi, on the rights of the elderly and the duties of society towards them. With emphasis on: the right to protection and dignity; responsible care and respect for the will of the elderly; the right to a life of relationship and the duty not to abandon them. And the importance of spiritual life in the last phase of life, in which religions play a decisive role.
From the dialogue between Catholics and Shiites, of which the initiative of the Community of Sant'Egidio is an expression, emerges a firm condemnation of terrorism and religious extremism, phenomena that can be defined as the result of a distorted understanding of religion, the fruit of ignorance of the religion's own teachings, as well as ignorance of the other.
With the need for religions not to remain isolated, but to dialogue in encounter and visitation, through which plurality can better understand each other and contribute to a more peaceful world.
The authorAntonino Piccione
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Look to the sky and you will see
I hope that contemplating the Webb's images can help us not to become arrogant, not to be mistaken about the human condition and to understand that it is precisely because we are so small and fragile that we are so valuable.
Translation of the article into English
The U.S. president released the deepest and sharpest infrared image of the distant universe taken to date at the White House on Monday.
The photograph shows the SMACS 0723 galaxy cluster as it looked 4.6 billion years ago (that's how long it has taken light to reach the lenses of the James Webb Space Telescope that captured it).
It is impressive to contemplate how hundreds of galaxies, each one with its hundreds of thousands of stars, squeeze together to appear in the color photo.
As NASA explains, the frame captures a portion of the universe as small as a person on earth would see a grain of sand held at arm's length. How much more we have left to explore!
With the delivery of its first images, Webb has proven to be the world's premier space science observatory, taking over from the legendary Hubble telescope.
This marvelous ingenuity is the result of collaboration between the American, European and Canadian space agencies, however, President Biden took the liberty of jumping a day ahead of the agreed release date with the project partners to put on his medal and state: "These images are going to remind the world that America can do great things, and remind the American people, especially our children, that there is nothing that is beyond our capability.
The phrase is especially shocking when, just days before, the president had signed an executive order to "deny unborn children their most basic human and civil right, their right to life," as the archbishop of Baltimore and president of the Committee on Pro-Life Activities of the American Episcopal Conference would affirm.
Of course, these are two very different issues and it may seem crude to mix them, but, at bottom, both actions reveal the self-sufficiency, not of a person, but of a system that truly believes that "there is nothing that is beyond our capacity".
The proud man does not flinch at the evidence of unborn human life, not even at the thrilling mystery of unfathomable space. If I am God, who prevents me from doing what I want?
It was in the early 1980s when I had the good fortune to see one of the most famous popular science series in history: Cosmos, by Carl Sagan. I always repeat that, paradoxically, this magnificent work of a convinced and militant agnostic was key in my life of faith.
I remember being ecstatic contemplating the images of our universe and listening to his clear explanations that made me admire the beauty of nature and at the same time the genius of the human spirit that is capable of understanding and making sense of it.
Those were the years of the cold war, when the fear of a nuclear hecatomb hovered over the collective subconscious. Films like "The Day After" or "War Games" brought us face to face with the harsh reality: life on earth hangs by the thread of the arrogance of four powerful people or a badly configured computer.
In my childish conscience, I could not find an explanation for the double aspect of the human being: someone who is capable of the best and the worst.
Disappointed, I found the key in the catechesis of First Communion (those wonderful years), when we sang "I thought man was great because of his power, great because of his knowledge, great because of his courage, I thought man was great and I was wrong, for only God is great".
I discovered then, and after 40 years of experience I continue to corroborate it, that every time the human being tries to take the place of God he crashes miserably and that the truly great people are those who, putting everything on their side, recognize that they do not know everything, that they cannot do everything.
They are those who, contemplating the immensity of the cosmos, are able to see its absolute spatio-temporal insignificance and, therefore, the absolute value of each inhabitant of planet Earth.
In these 20s of the 21st century, when the nuclear briefcases have been dusted off again, we need men and women capable of being moved by the inalienable value of every human life, people who put all their abilities, not in favor of death, but in favor of life.
Hopefully, the contemplation of the Webb's images can help us not to become arrogant, not to be mistaken about the human condition and to understand that it is precisely because we are so small and fragile that we are so valuable.
Like a glass toy.
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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Borja BarraganIf the Church invests, it is so that these goods bear fruit that can be used for the benefit of needs".
Founder of Altum Faithful Investing, a financial advisory firm that follows the criteria of the magisterium of the Catholic Church in each and every one of its decisions, Borja Barragan works to eliminate the dichotomy between the profitability of an estate or living one's faith to the fullest.
Married and father of seven children whom he considers "his best investment", Borja Barragán has been working in investment banking for 19 years. Multinationals such as Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Royal Bank of Scotland, Goldman Sachs and Julius Baer are on his resume.
He has furthered his education in Business Administration and Management (ICADE) at Harvard University (Boston) in the Sustainable Finance & Investments Program; he has also completed a Master's degree in Family Pastoral Care at the John Paul II Institute; he has studied the Social Doctrine of the Church at the Angelicum (Rome); and he has studied in depth the management of endowments and institutional funds at IESE Business School.
In 2017 he founded Altum Faithful Investing, a financial advisory firm that follows the criteria of the magisterium of the Catholic Church in each and every one of its decisions. He tries to ensure that, as he says, a Christian does not have to choose between the profitability of his assets and living his faith to the full.
Why are we afraid to talk about money and relate it to God and our faith in His love?
- I believe that this is due to two reasons: on the one hand, we live too attached to material goods. Our security is based more and more on the things we possess, leaving less and less room for trust in God. Providing for the future, for our children, for when "bad things come" is a symptom of proper administration, but when all trust is placed in "having", that is where God has no place and it is uncomfortable to be able to relate the material with God.
On the other hand, today's society separates the transcendental from the ordinary and money tends to be considered as something tremendously "ordinary" and far removed from the spiritual. However... does this separation make sense? If for the Catholic "everything is a gift" and that gift comes from God, in the face of the gift received (whether it is a material or spiritual gift) the task of administering it correctly arises. Not by imposition, but by reciprocity, by wanting to correspond to the love received through gifts, also with love, through a responsible and coherent administration.
Is it Christian to save, when so many people are in need? Wouldn't it be better to trust in providence?
- I recognize that St. Thomas Aquinas is one of the authors who challenge me the most. In the Summa Theologica he says the following about Providence: "God has ordained certain things according to his Providence for the bodily sustenance of man", so that "goods are subject to man, so that he may use them in order to meet his needs".
Therefore, we start from a clear premise, which is that man needs material goods to cover his present and future needs, hence providing for the future by saving seems not to be a conflict for the Christian.
Discernment (and here comes into play the freedom of each person to decide what is appropriate for each moment) comes into play at the moment when it is necessary to decide between what is necessary and what is superfluous. If the act of saving, of providing for the future, is orderly, according to the state and condition of each person, it should not pose any problem.
If, on the contrary, it is disorderly in the sense that this saving becomes obsessive, hoarding, seeking to prevent all possible eventualities, leaving Providence aside, then perhaps it is convenient to review this way of saving.
Can the Church invest money with so many pressing needs in the world?
- As we mentioned before, investing in an orderly manner is perfectly licit for any entity, be it the Church or a family. In the specific case of the Church, what we said about the superfluous takes on greater relevance. If the Church invests, it is not to hoard or to appropriate goods, but so that these goods may bear fruit and that this fruit may be used in favor of the needs of others.
I believe that it is beyond any doubt that the investment that the Church can make will always seek a perfect balance between the two aspects inherent to saving. On the one hand, to have assets to cover what is necessary to sustain its own sustenance (let us not forget that without this there would be nothing - neither for the Church, nor for the needs of worship, pastoral and other needs) and on the other hand, to combine covering the needs of the Church and the needs of others. what is necessary with help with the superfluous to satisfy the needs of the other.
I think a good practical exercise would be to visit the web site of transparency of the Episcopal Conference to understand how the money is used and the balance that is achieved for the support of the diocesan church itself, while at the same time attending to all kinds of pastoral and welfare activities.
Are investments a good way to save?
- Assets are not good in themselves, they are good because of the good that can be achieved with them. Earmarking a portion of savings that will not be needed in the short term to generate a return is part of the objective of preserving capital to meet future needs; it is a healthy exercise and part of responsible management.
In fact, it is an exercise that obviously applies not only to a mother managing her household savings, but even the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life (CIVCSVA) has resurrected a term used in canon law which is the concept of stable patrimony. In a very summarized form, this stable patrimony would be the minimum patrimony that a religious institute would need to guarantee and sustain its charism and mission.
The latest indications of the CIVCSVA contemplate the possibility that part of this wealth can be invested (either in movable assets or real estate) not only as a way of saving (providing for the future) but also as a correct way of managing this stable wealth.
Are investments for the rich?
- Technology today allows anyone, from anywhere in the world to invest. The question is whether I want my investment to be consistent with my faith or hide my head in the sand to avoid uncomfortable questions.
From Altum we wanted to do our bit by creating Altum App. It is a free application where the user, regardless of their wealth, can check before investing (or consuming) if the companies they are interested in are in conflict with the Social Doctrine of the Church and for what reason.
The first is to highlight the fact that the Faithful Investing is for everyone, regardless of one's savings.
The second is to help anyone with a Christian sensibility to be able to unite faith and coherence when investing (and consuming).
The last one is to encourage managers and CEOs to know how to respond and adapt their business policies so that the dignity of the person (the basis of the Social Doctrine of the Church) is always respected and that in no case should the end justify the means.
Are there good and bad investments or are they all the same?
- I answer the question with the understanding that as "good" we emphasize the search for the good and not for high profitability. St. John Paul II said it very clearly in Centessimus Annus: "The choice to invest in one place and not in another is always a moral and cultural choice". If in life there are good acts (helping the sick), bad acts (killing the innocent) and neutral acts (humming a song), the same is true for the concrete act of investing.
It is curious that for some aspects of our lives we go to a lot of trouble to find out how we spend our money (for example, analyzing whether the eggs we buy in the supermarket are free-range eggs or whether the nuts are organic) and that for the act of investing we hardly stop to think whether the activity carried out by a company is lawful or whether the philanthropic practices developed by the company conflict with the Social Doctrine of the Church (it is impressive how many entities consistently support abortion, to cite just one example).
Altum's raison d'être is precisely that: to accompany the Christian investor so that he does not have to choose between integrity and an adequate return.
Do we influence the world's big companies? Does money rule or do people rule?
- I have no doubt: people are the ones who are really capable of influencing and changing the world. But this is not easy because it usually involves swimming against the current.
Benedict XVI often made allusion to the creative minorities, that is, small groups of people who are capable of generating a cultural change, in many cases against the masses. Several examples: nowadays, a handful of tweets can cause a listed company to withdraw an advertising campaign.
The Little Sisters of the Poor in the USA have won Supreme Court recognition of their conscientious objection to performing abortions or providing contraceptives in their hospitals. A consortium of American congregations joined together 50 years ago to influence the decisions of the companies in which they were invested - today they influence more than $4 billion.
Therefore, I reiterate my previous statement: it is people who influence the world. Money is only a means and not an end. It is up to us not to make a pact with the established order and to have the courage to broaden our horizons. In our specific case, to be able to make an investment that is consistent with faith in Christ.
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Pope at the Angelus: "Let us take advantage of the vacations to stop and listen to Jesus".
Pope Francis has encouraged to pray and read the Gospel more calmly and attentively during the summer vacations and asked for prayers for Sri Lanka, Ukraine and the upcoming trip to Canada.
Pope Francis held his traditional Angelus prayer in St. Peter's Square this afternoon. At the height of the summer season, when many people are already enjoying their vacations, the Pope wanted to remind us that this is a good time to dedicate more time to prayer. He did so by taking his cue from the Gospel of this 16th Sunday in Ordinary Time, which presents "a lively domestic scene," as the Pope described it, in the home of Martha, Mary and Lazarus.
Francis wanted to recall that excessive occupation, even in good things, if it is not founded on prayer "is reduced to fatigue and agitation for many things, it is reduced to sterile activism".
For this reason, the Pope emphasized, "Mary sensed that there is a 'good part' to which we must give first place. Everything else comes later, like a stream of water flowing from the source. And so we ask ourselves: And what is this "good part"? It is listening to the words of Jesus".
Francis wanted to emphasize that "the word of Jesus is not abstract, it is a teaching that touches and shapes life, changes it, frees it from the opacities of evil, satisfies and instills a joy that does not pass away: the word of Jesus is the good part, the one Mary had chosen. That is why she gives him the first place: she stops and listens. The rest will come later".
In this regard, the Pope pointed out that one of the practices that the summer, and the slower pace of work, can favor is that of "stopping and listening to Jesus. Today it is increasingly difficult to find free moments to meditate. For many people the rhythms of work are frenetic, exhausting. The summer period can also be valuable to open the Gospel and read it slowly, without haste, a passage each day, a small passage of the Gospel".
Countries in conflict and prayer for Canada
At the end of the Angelus prayer, the Pope wanted, once again, to remember the people of Sri Lanka and implored all "parties to work together to seek a peaceful solution to the current crisis, in favor, in particular, of the poorest, respecting the rights of all.
The crisis in Ukraine, which continues to suffer from the Russian invasion, was also at the center of the Pope's final greetings, and he asked a direct question: "How is it possible not to understand that war creates only destruction and death, driving peoples apart, killing truth and dialogue? I pray and hope that all international actors really work hard to resume negotiations, not to feed the senselessness of war".
The Pope also asked the faithful to accompany him with their prayers on his next trip to Canada, "a penitential pilgrimage" where he is going "in the name of Jesus to meet and embrace the indigenous peoples. Unfortunately, in CanadaIn the past, many Christians, including some members of religious institutes, have contributed to policies of cultural assimilation that have, in various ways, seriously harmed native communities. I hope, with God's grace, I can contribute to the path of healing and reconciliation already undertaken."
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Teresa FloresLatin America has environments hostile to religious freedom".
The right to religious freedom is recognized in most Latin American countries. But freedom "is not limited to the private sphere, but transcends the collective and public sphere, and there are impediments and threats that undermine the full exercise of this right," lawyer Teresa Flores, director of the Observatory of Religious Freedom in Latin America (OLIRE), told Omnes.
"In countries with authoritarian tendencies, as in Nicaragua, the Church is one of the few, if not the only institution that enjoys greater credibility and, therefore, its level of influence among the population is seen as a danger to government control," explains in this interview lawyer Teresa Flores, director of the Observatory for Religious Freedom in Latin America (Observatorio de Libertad Religiosa en América Latina).OLIRE), whose mission is to promote religious freedom and publicize restrictions to this right in the region.
In Nicaragua, "politically motivated violations of religious freedom have been escalating and there have been various strategies used by the government to intimidate the voice of religious leaders, especially Catholics.
The expulsion of the Missionaries of Charity is just one more episode in this campaign of intimidation and retaliation," he adds.
By the way, the missionaries have been welcomed in Costa Rica by Msgr. Salazar Mora, bishop of the diocese of Tilarán-Liberia, who assured that it is "an honor" to receive them.
Precisely a month and a half ago, OIDAC Europe, its Latin American partner OLIRE, and the IIRF (International Institute for Religious Freedom) presented a joint report in Vienna, based on four studies conducted through personal interviews with practicing Christians from different sectors of society, and carried out in two European countries (France and Germany) and two Latin American countries (Colombia and Mexico). I had already spoken about some of these ideas Martin Kugler in Omnes.
Now, Omnes talks to Teresa FloresShe is a lawyer from the Universidad Católica Santo Toribio de Mogrovejo (Peru), with a master's degree in Constitutional Law and Human Rights from the Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos (Peru), and a diploma in Religious Studies from the Universidad Católica de Chile, who has also worked in Mendoza (Argentina), and is a researcher at the Centro de Investigaciones Sociales Avanzadas (CISAV) in Querétaro (Mexico).
Can you summarize some of the conclusions of the report, especially with regard to Latin American countries? It seems that intolerance is growing and increasingly threatens the freedom of expression of Christians and Catholics.
- It is important to remember that the research is an initial, exploratory approximation of the phenomenon of self-censorship among Christians (Catholics and non-Catholics) in Colombia and Mexico. As indicated in the report, a tendency has been identified in the group of interviewees (approximately 40 people) whereby they find it very difficult to express opinions based on their faith in public or private spaces, especially when it comes to issues related to life, marriage, family, euthanasia, adoption between persons of the same sex and other related issues, so that, on occasions, they opt for self-censorship.
This difficulty lies not only in the fear of being administratively or criminally sanctioned under the application of anti-discrimination laws, but also in being socially discredited. It is worth clarifying that social discrediting is not only limited to criticism.
Sometimes, the hostile social environment brings with it a burden that translates into exclusion from certain circles and therefore social isolation, which has repercussions on the way in which the person develops on a day-to-day basis.
Reactions to a hostile social environment will be different, won't they?
- Of course, the way of facing possible sanctions or a hostile environment varies from person to person. One of the findings of the research is precisely that, among the interviewees, on the one hand, there is the group of those who do not self-censor and accept the consequences of a hostile environment, arguing that their faith is worth it, and that they must assume the consequences of it.
On the other hand, there are those who censor themselves for fear of legal and/or social sanctions. There are also those who, due to constant self-censorship and the null or almost non-existent accompaniment in the faith of a religious, Christian community, are losing their faith or little by little and stop seeing the characteristics related to self-censorship as a problem.
However, the results of this research should not be understood as an attempt to victimize Christians (Catholics and non-Catholics). While there is a limitation to the expression of opinions based on the faith of Christians in both Mexico and Colombia, we must also recognize the counterpart, Christians who are intolerant of other positions or beliefs and who, taking their faith as a premise, end up stigmatizing or discriminating against other groups. But it is important to keep in mind that it is always necessary to evaluate each specific case.
Tell us about a case in Colombia or Mexico.
- For example, in Colombia and Mexico, students told us that they stopped participating in class because their faith-based opinions on issues of sexuality or gender contradicted the teacher's way of thinking or contravened the institutional line and they were at risk of being disapproved or expelled.
In Mexico, public officials interviewed stated that they have to think twice about what words to use so that they are not included in a "certain framework" or are not denounced before the Ombudsman's Office, Congress or the Attorney General's Office. Sayings related to their faith or their points of view based on their faith, arouse controversy and the consequent rejection of their parties or the institutions in which they work. A Colombian councilman pointed out that permanent caution is a sacrifice inherent to public activity.
Recognizing self-censorship and the paralyzing effect on Christians implies recognizing that there is a sector of believers of Christian doctrine who, because they find themselves in a hostile environment, do not feel free to share their faith-based beliefs on the sensitive issues mentioned above.
Madeleine Enzlberger, executive director of OIDAC Europe, has pointed out that "one of the most worrying and tragic conclusions of this (Vienna) report is that if the social costs of following your belief and expressing it become too high, people will eventually abandon their belief. Do you share this point of view?
- As I have mentioned, the research in Colombia and Mexico did identify among some interviewees the possibility of no longer seeing self-censorship as a problem or as something that affects the experience of faith.
The consequences may not always lead to abandoning the belief completely; however, the fact of identifying one's faith or opinions based on one's beliefs as something harmful, as a disadvantage or a burden that does not allow one to "advance" in the social environment is a form of pressure with the possible consequence of ceasing to nurture one's faith, or lack of interest in sharing it. Even those who do not have a solid formation in their faith may adopt doctrinal content more in line with political correctness.
On olire.org they have a report entitled 'Data Can you give a brief overall assessment of the recognition of this fundamental right in Latin America?
- The right to religious freedom is recognized in most Latin American countries. The normative frameworks regulate this right, although depending on the country or the political context, some may be more protective than others. For example, the protection of religious freedom is not the same in Nicaragua as in Colombia, El Salvador or Honduras.
The fact that a country's Constitution or regulations attempt to guarantee this right is a good starting point, but it is not enough. Sometimes, even when the laws in the text establish parameters of application and protection, in practice there are various contexts that jeopardize the exercise of this right in its various dimensions.
Considering that religious freedom is not limited to the private sphere, but transcends the collective and public sphere, impediments to perform religious services in public spaces, funding obstacles for religious organizations, criminalization of expressions of faith, threats to religious leaders who carry out political or social activism, etc. undermine the full exercise of this right.
Latin America is not exempt from these phenomena; throughout the region various dynamics have been identified that limit this right. We can mention, as general lines, the hostility of religious expressions by state and non-state actors, hostility towards religious conversion in indigenous communities, regulation of religion by organized crime and religious restrictions motivated by the totalitarian control of the government or motivated by a political ideology related to communism.
The Observatory on Religious Freedom in Latin America has an open access platform Violent Incidents Database, The database contains information on episodes of violations of the right to religious freedom in the region, identified through desk research, information provided by collaborating partners or as a result of field research. In this database it is possible to review cases related to the dynamics mentioned above.
Nicaragua has expelled the Missionaries of Charity of Mother Teresa of Calcutta. What is happening in that country, in your opinion?
- In countries with authoritarian tendencies, such as Nicaragua, the Church is one of the few, if not the only institution that enjoys greater credibility and, therefore, its level of influence among the population is seen as a danger to government control. In the country, politically motivated violations of religious freedom have been escalating and there have been various strategies used by the government to intimidate the voice of religious leaders, especially Catholics, when their speech is perceived as critical, for showing their support for the opposition or when they denote efforts to return the rule of law to the country.
The expulsion of the Missionaries of Charity is just one more episode in this campaign of intimidation and retaliation by the government. The measures applied against the Catholic religious sector perceived as opposition, range from restrictions on mobility/travel with the withholding or revocation of visas, impediments to enter the country, harassment of religious leaders and their families through surveillance of parishes, homes, vehicles; to defamation campaigns, verbal threats, attacks on physical integrity, arrests, threats of arrests.
Laws that criminalize all criticism
On the other hand, in the context of the legal framework, there are laws that criminalize any criticism and under which religious leaders can be sanctioned with arrests or, in the case of faith-based organizations, the loss of legal status, not to mention other obstacles to the functioning or operations of faith-based organizations, as well as restrictions on the normal functioning or activities of churches related to humanitarian assistance.
Even the Inter-American Court of Human Rights has issued precautionary measures in favor of a bishop and a deacon in the country, given the serious and urgent situation of risk to which they are exposed.
These strategies, plus the hate speech of the authorities against the church, have also permeated society and have promoted acts of intolerance on the part of collectives or groups related to the government that, in addition to monitoring the actions or statements of religious leaders or congregations related to these leaders, commit acts of vandalism or desecration of places of worship. The attacks are carried out with particular viciousness in the case of Catholic temples.
On the other hand, there are countries with a constituent process underway. How do you see these processes in relation to the right to religious freedom?
- Regarding constituent processes and their relationship with the right to religious freedom, I would say that it is quite close. Political constitutions embody, among other things, the fundamental principles of the state, the type of government and the way in which the human rights of the citizens of each country are understood and protected, including the right to religious freedom.
Several aspects can be taken into account in these processes. On the one hand, it can lead to friction with minority religious denominations, if the same constitutional recognition is not provided for as for majority or traditional religions.
On the other hand, a whole discussion on whether the State should or should not include any specific religious denomination may come into play, especially taking into account whether the State recognizes itself as secular or not. And what is understood by the principle of separation Church-State.
Additionally, in these processes, religious communities seek not only the recognition of religious freedom in general, but also the protection of certain legal figures that are important according to each doctrine of faith, such as marriage and the family.
Cuba, Chile, Nicaragua...
In the Cuban case, the last constitutional reform submitted to referendum included changes in the concept of marriage, which motivated the rejection of the proposal by religious groups, and this in turn originated pressure from the authorities against religious leaders and congregations that refused to accept such constitutional reforms.
In the recent Chilean case, one of the topics of discussion in the constitutional convention is also the way in which the right to religious freedom will be incorporated. Given that the constitution informs the entire legal system of a nation, incorporating this right is an important prerequisite for its protection and guarantee in the country.
In Nicaragua there has not been a recent constituent process, but there have been presidential elections in November of last year, which have been quite irregular. In some way this is also closely linked to the way in which religious freedom is protected, since the electoral process as a mechanism for citizen participation, if it is not completely free and transparent, does not consolidate democracy and rather corrodes the system of rights guarantees, violating fundamental freedoms such as the right to religious freedom, especially in its public and collective dimension.
Contexts of pressure in Mexico
One of the authors of the Vienna report, Friederike Boellmann, stressed that "the German case reveals that universities are the most hostile environment. And the highest degree of self-censorship I found in my research in academia." Does something similar happen in Latin America?
Regarding the hostile environment in universities, it was especially among those interviewed in Mexico that various contexts of pressure against Christian professors and students (Catholic and non-Catholic) were known.
In Mexico, a university professor stated that when he moved from Chihuahua to Mexico City he felt more pressure to avoid talking about his faith in the academic environment, and at the University he was forced to stop using phrases such as "Gracias a Dios", "Dios te bendiga", "Con el favor de Dios", etc.
The same professor pointed out that, until he is explicitly asked about some topics, he prefers not to touch on them for fear of being ignored or not listened to. In this sense, he understands his situation as didactic self-censorship, so as not to lose the opportunity to continue "being present".
Another Mexican teacher commented that she had to be careful with the vocabulary or expressions she used. If the students knew her religious affiliation, it did not matter if she used scientific arguments to deal with certain topics, she felt that she was socially rejected by her students and that she was disqualified beforehand just for accepting to have religious beliefs. Even her scientific articles were rejected by editorial boards on the grounds of being "biased".
In the same vein, a Mexican student, undergoing a disciplinary process at the university for accusations of violence against women for his rejection of abortion, stated that he knew of a professor of his who was in favor of it, but that he could not openly support it because it would mean trouble for the professor with the head of the department.
Are there laws or projects in preparation, as in European countries, that prevent the expression of a Christian or Catholic point of view on sexuality or gender?
- From what I know, there are laws and legislative initiatives that seek to limit the expression of faith-based opinions in the region, although they do not affect only the academic sector, but have a broader scope.
There are regulations or policies that limit the exercise of religious freedom, the right to conscientious objection or affect the autonomy and immunity from coercion of confessional institutions when they manifest or act according to their own convictions or institutional ideology and this is not in accordance with the sexual orientation and gender identity policies in a specific country.
We can mention the initiative presented in 2020, which sought to reform section IV of article 29, corresponding to the chapter on infractions and sanctions of the Law of Religious Associations and Public Worship of Mexico.
The proposal was intended to sanction acts of discrimination based on sexual identity or gender expression by religious organizations and their agents against the population belonging to sexual minorities. The initiative did not prosper, but it is an example of the attempts to limit the freedom of expression of religious leaders on issues related to sexuality and gender.
Any other cases?
- In Argentina, there was also the case of an investigation by the National Institute against Discrimination, Xenophobia and Racism into the educational content of the educational network of the Fraternity of St. Thomas Aquinas Groupings (FASTA). The authorities considered that the teachings in line with the Christian ideology of the grouping had homophobic and hateful connotations against sexual minorities and the feminist movement.
In Colombia, a judge refused to marry a female couple because doing so would go against his Christian morals and convictions. The LGTBI community considered the judge's attitude offensive and discriminatory. The judge was denounced for prevarication.
In April of this year, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights declared the State of Chile responsible for the violation of the rights to equality and non-discrimination, to personal liberty, to privacy and to work of Sandra Pavez Pavez, for the apparent discriminatory treatment she suffered when she was removed from her position as a Catholic religion teacher in a public school, after the Vicariate for Education of the Bishopric of San Bernardo revoked her certificate of suitability based on her sexual orientation. This despite the fact that, according to Chilean regulations, the national authority confers to the religious authority the power to issue the certification of suitability for those teachers who will teach their doctrine and principles.
To mention a few.
We thank Teresa Flores for her answers. The right to religious freedom seems to have a red light in some Latin American countries, that is, serious problems, and certainly amber in several of them, depending on the issues, especially life, sexuality, family and gender. The Observatory that he directs (OLIRE) can be a good watchtower for its monitoring.
The authorFrancisco Otamendi
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Friar Pascual SaturioThe people of Cádiz "never leave the Virgin".
Today is the feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, Patroness of the people of the sea and of the Stella maris. But there is another Virgin, from Cádiz, the Virgin of the Rosary, who was embarked annually for more than 150 years with the armed fleet that preserved the merchant navy. It is the small Galeona, which sails the sea while the Patroness, life-size, stays in the sanctuary of Cádiz. Fr. Pascual Saturio talks to Omnes about the Virgin.
Fray Pascual Saturio arrived in Cadiz in 1988, already a Dominican priest, and it does not seem that there are many people who know as much about the intense relationship of the capital of Cadiz with the Blessed Virgin, as this man full of vitality.
The presence of the Virgin of the Rosary among the men of the sea comes from the naval victory of Lepanto (1571) and is deeply rooted in Cadiz. Fray Pascual speaks to Omnes from the sanctuary of our Lady of the Rosary. Our Lady of the Rosaryin the temple of Santo Domingoalthough popularly people call it Santo Domingo, precisely because the Rosary, the devotion to the Rosary, and the presence of the monks here, has as a circumstance the black slaves".
In fact, "the black slaves that were not taken to America stayed here in the city. They came from Angola and Mozambique, which was a part of Africa evangelized by the Dominican friars. And they were the ones who set up the confraternity [of the Virgin] which was a shelter, a kind of private insurance, so that all of them could have medicine, a doctor, a small pension at the end... And they placed it under the shelter of the Virgin of the Rosary".
They asked for a friar, who came from Sanlúcar, Fr. Luis CastendaPascual, around 1620-1622, who came with them as chaplain, explains Fr. Pascual, and they started the small chapel of the Virgin.
"In total, that between the presence of the blacks, and the Rosary in Cadiz, and the victory of Lepanto, was when the Virgin achieved the patronage over the city of Cadiz, and to be Patroness of the city. And in the same sanctuary are the two images, that of the Virgin of the Rosary, life-size, and the Galeona".
We first asked Fray Pascual for historical dates, and his arrival in Cadiz.
Since when is the Virgin of the Rosary the Patron Saint of Cadiz?
- The Virgin of the Rosary has been the Patron Saint of Cadiz for 150 years. The pontifical appointment of the Virgin is 152 or 153 years ago, and we celebrate it. But there is evidence that more than three hundred years ago the people, and the city council, considered her Patroness of Cadiz, although the appointment is later.
And you, how many years have you been there, in the convent of Santo Domingo?
- I came in 1988, and from then until now, 2022, I am here in the convent, and I am still a conventual. Life goes by fast.
And he has been a prior since then? Rector?
- When we had a community and there was a larger group of Dominicans, I was doing the services that the community asked me to do. Among them, the prior's service a couple of times. And then, when the work of adapting the house began, because we wanted to build a provincial infirmary, and then it could not be done and we had to leave a part of it for a guest house.
All that time I have been here alone, and I have been the main responsible for the sanctuary of the Virgin and for those things that have been under the care of the convent. And right now, now that the work on the house is finished, I am still responsible for the sanctuary, the one in charge. Well, rector, yes, which is the office and the main occupation of the house now. And since it is a single friar, there is no priory.
One last question about you, and we will move on to talk about Our Lady. When did you enter the Dominicans and become a priest, Bro Pascual?
- I joined the Order in 1978. And then Cardinal Amigo Vallejo, may he rest in peace, ordained me a priest in 1984. So I entered the Order of Preachers, of the Word and at the service of the Word, in 78, and a year later I professed as a Dominican, which is what the common people call us.
Let's go to the Virgin. The feast of the Patroness is in October, but as all the feasts of the Virgin are beautiful, we do it now.
- Of course.
How do you see the devotion to Our Lady in Cádiz? Do the people of Cádiz go there to pray to their Patron Saint?
- Look, it happens with the Patron Saint exactly as it happens with mothers to all Spaniards. Maybe we are not very effusive, nor are we saying all day long, "I am not very effusive. I love youWe do not kiss her all day long, but nevertheless, in the heart of each one of us, the person of your mother occupies more than half of our heart. That is what happens with Our Lady of the Rosary.
This sanctuary here, in Cadiz, is not a sanctuary like the other big sanctuaries... However, in all the people of Cadiz, the patronage of the Virgin and the affection for the Virgin of the Rosary, effectively, as their Mother and their family, is well established in their hearts and in their conscience. That is true.
This is a city in which there are many churches and many images, and throughout the year there are many religious circumstances to celebrate. But nevertheless, in the interior of each heart, they have placed their altar, and they never leave the Virgin.
You have a brotherhood, don't you?
- Yes. The Archconfraternity of the Most Holy Rosary. It is of the whole Order and it is universal. It is the group of the faithful. Here they are about three or three hundred and fifty. It is a group of faithful that has as a commitment, at least once a week, to pray a part of the Rosary, and then to participate in the life of the sanctuary, in the cult of the Virgin, in collaboration with the friars. And they do not cease to be part of the Dominican family, and part of the Order in that sense.
Here for years an area of the convent was used as a broadcasting studio, and every day the Rosary prayer was rebroadcast from the convent. When this retransmission was lost, it is necessary to remember that the Spanish Episcopal Conference, and even the Order, wanted to buy the necessary and sufficient space to retransmit every day the prayer of the Rosary by the necessary radio stations. But this did not come to fruition.
And now the value of the means of diffusion that you have is being highlighted once again. Look at the television network, Radio Maria, and those elements that have also been put into operation in some dioceses, the success they are having. Because many people, not only the elderly and the sick, while they are doing their things at home, can at the same time be praying and thus participate in the prayer of the Church.
Tell us about the Patroness of the city, and about the Galeona. Those of us who do not know the history well may confuse them.
- They are two different images. One is the Patroness of Cadiz, the image of the Patroness, life-size, and it is always in its altar, in its sanctuary. By the way, here was born, in the convent, the devotion to the first image, that of the Virgen del Carmen, and it was born here because we Dominicans arrived in Cadiz before the Discalced Carmelites, and when they came, we took the Virgin there to her temple.
Well, here in Cadiz, every year there were three military expeditions that had to preserve the merchant navy in the middle of the sea, precisely because of the piracy of the English, Portuguese and those who were dedicated to stealing at sea. That armed fleet, which preserved the merchant navy, was called galleons. And one of the captains of the fleet that went every year from Cadiz to Cartagena de Indias, in Colombia, had the idea: 'Man, why don't we embark the image we have in our chapel'.
They had here in the convent the chapel of the mainland, to bury the admirals and the most important ones who died. Why don't we take the image that we have in our chapel? While we are at sea, it comes and goes with us. And then in the time of rest, here in Cadiz, it is in the convent'.
And so the Blessed Virgin was embarked annually for more than 150 years in that fleet. It is the second image of the Virgin of the Rosary, a carving of 70 to 75 centimeters. When the commercial transit disappeared, and trade began to be done by other means, airplanes, etc., the image remained here in the convent.
But then they embarked the Galeona and it began to sail around the world...
- Yes, it was when it came to the training ship Juan Sebastián Elcanowhich is the ship of the Spanish Navy, where the sailors do their last courses. The men of the Armada, with the mayor and the prior of the time, came up with the idea that when the Elcano goes around the world, why don't we embark the Galeona. She comes with us and we make her present in the whole world remembering the presence of the Virgin of the Rosary among the men of the sea since the time of Lepanto, since the naval victory of Lepanto. And so it was done.
And now, lately, she has sailed around the world six times. And every year, we go with her, we make a small procession, sailors and us, to the farewell of Elcano, which is still in the dock of Cadiz.
The image of the Virgin of the Rosary, Patroness, of natural size, the one that is in the sanctuary, dressed, that one has not been embarked. It has been embarked on occasion, sporadically, when we have taken it on some visit to the parishes or in some marine act in the dock, but very sporadically. The one that always embarks is the second image of the Virgin of the Rosary, which we also have here in the convent.
Off the microphone, one last question, which we also pick up at the end. The Pope wears white because of the Dominicans, the story goes. And Bro Pascual comments on it.
- It's like this. The Pope dressed like a cardinal until he was Pope Pius V, Saint Pius V. He was very fond of his Dominican habit, and he was elected Pontiff, and he was the one who said, well, that's fine. But I am not going to change now my usual way of dressing, my habit, to carry out the task that you entrust to me.
And if you look at our habit, the habit of the Pope is the same, what happens is that they have added the sash on which carries his coat of arms, and then the hood has removed the peak behind, which is the sign of the mendicants. The friars who have a hood, and the hood ends in a beak, it is because we live of the work in the midst of others. To the Pope, as his work is another way, the hood is rounded, removing the peak of the mendicancy, but it is exactly the same habit. And the Pope is still the one who wears white in the Church.
Friar Pascual concludes by saying, on his own initiative and without question: "Now in this time, in this Western Europe, this way of life that we are leading, has many gaps and many difficulties. I think it needs a turnaround. It happened in Roman times, and also then they were so sure: the Roman empire will fall. Well, it fell. The same difficulties that families and the social order are having, and the way we have been living, are affecting religious orders and the Church. Because we are part of all, and in the world we are with you".
Today, and this is ours, we turn to the Virgin, the Virgin of Mount Carmel, the Virgin of the Rosary, and the invocations that each one wishes. Who does not have a Carmen in his family, near or far, and a Rosary close to him!
The authorFrancisco Otamendi
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Why the Pope's visit to Canada matters
The pope's upcoming trip to Canada is more than just a visit; it is a time for indigenous people to reconcile with an inculturated Jesus Christ, a Christ that indigenists would like to reject.
RelatedCanada: Going to the peripheries. To the North Pole and the secularist desert"Let us walk together, arrivederci in Canada." Pope's historic apology to indigenous Canadians.Canada's "missing" people
Canada: Going to the peripheries. To the North Pole and the secularist desert"Let us walk together, arrivederci in Canada." Pope's historic apology to indigenous Canadians.Canada's "missing" peopleI read daily Le Devoira nationalist and secularist newspaper in Montreal. For this medium, which a century ago was nationalist and clerical, the Pope's visit to Quebec in a few days it does not seem to be news. Surely he will change his mind...
Every papal trip is important, but it seems to me that the end-of-month trip to Canada is especially so. The Western anti-religious revolution of the second half of the 1960s hit Canada's proactive Catholic minority very hard. Six decades later, Christianity no longer exists here, in the sense given to it by the French philosopher Chantal Delsol.
Delsol, who recently spoke in Montréal, published in 2021 the essay The end of the Chrétienté. There he affirms that the Christian millennium and a half that is coming to an end in the West was based on dominion. Christianity, which never dies, must invent a new mode of existence: witnessing.
It seems to me that this is what the witness Francisco is coming to. Travel to this existential periphery to be a witness of forgiveness and understanding. He comes at the request of the ninety Canadian bishops. These bishops were pressured by indigenous and indigenist groups who demanded that the Pope personally request forgiveness in Canada by Christian colonialism. This will not be the first time that Francis has spoken out on behalf of the Church, as a poverello of the 21st century.
The relatively low number of indigenous and Métis Canadians (less than two million) shows that for the Church - Francis - Christ - human beings count in themselves. No matter how few they are. The Pope is coming to see them, even if he has to do it in a wheelchair. He is coming from July 24 to 29 to the provinces of Alberta and Quebec and the territory of Nunavut. He is coming to listen, to be with them.
St. John Paul II did something similar during his long tour in September 1984 (meeting with indigenous people in Ontario, for example); and then on September 20, 1987. On that day the Polish pope visited Fort Simpson in the Northwest Territory. He addressed a message to Aboriginal peoples, met with the leaders of four national indigenous organizations, and celebrated Sunday Mass. It was the fulfillment of a promise made three years earlier when fog prevented his plane from landing at Fort Simpson.
Now Francis is also traveling to the far reaches of America. Iqaluit, the capital of Nunavut, has only eight thousand inhabitants. If this territory of the Inuit, which reaches the North Pole, were a country, it would be the 15th largest in the world.
Risks of the visit to Canada
Francisco is a daring man. At 85 years old, he can hardly walk: but he wants to Walking together with the natives (that is the motto of the visit). He is also betting that the natives will be reconciled with an inculturated Jesus Christ, a Christ to whom the indigenists are allergic. The proportion of indigenous Canadian Catholics is probably more than 40 % (that is more or less the percentage of baptized Canadian Catholics). Key fact: the indigenous birth rate (about 2.5 per woman) is higher than the anemic Canadian rate of 1.4.
Francis is betting that his strategy (by divine inspiration, no doubt) of going to the geographical peripheries (appointing electors of the future pope in places far from the big headlines and unknown to the stock exchanges) - that this will re-center the ecclesial global positioning system.
Its strategy is to move away from self-referentiality. From narcissism, from the typical illness of the enclosed Church that looks at itself, bent like the woman of the Gospel, which leads to spiritual worldliness and clericalism, and which prevents us from experiencing "the sweet and comforting joy of evangelizing" (see "Evangelii gaudium", quoting St. Paul VI). Francis wants to get out of the sacristies, kick the boulevards of the metropolis and the alpine, Asian, Amazonian and African trails.
Francis is perhaps betting that his critics - he has them in English-speaking Canada, influenced by a certain North American clerical conservatism - will realize that he is simultaneously progressive and conservative. Or that he is, as Juan Vicente Boo says in The Pope of joyan "intelligent... conservative".
For all this and more, this trip matters. Let's see how it turns out. Stay on your screen.
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Bishop Raymond PoissonThe presence of the Holy Father in Canada will guide us in the direction we should take".
Bishop Raymond Poisson, president of the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops, gave an interview to Omnes ahead of Pope Francis' upcoming visit to Canada to encourage the process of reconciliation and healing of Canadian Catholics with indigenous communities.
Related"Let us walk together, arrivederci in Canada." Pope's historic apology to indigenous Canadians.Pope to travel to Canada to meet with indigenous peopleCanada's "missing" people
"Let us walk together, arrivederci in Canada." Pope's historic apology to indigenous Canadians.Pope to travel to Canada to meet with indigenous peopleCanada's "missing" peopleIt is a historic visit for many reasons. Pope Francis will visit Canada later this July on a very special trip. In addition to listening to and dialoguing with Indigenous peoples, expressing his closeness and addressing the Catholic Church's involvement in the operation of residential schools across Canada, the papal visit will be an opportunity to meet the wider Catholic community in Canada.
A community that, for years, has been immersed in a process of acceptance, forgiveness, but above all, construction of the future as he wanted to emphasize in this interview for Omnes, Raymond Poisson, president of the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops.
In this conversation, Bishop Poisson, who is bishop of the diocese of Saint-Jérôme-Mont-Laurier, in the province of Quebec, notes that "the word, the gestures, the presence of the Holy Father will guide us in the direction we must take" on this difficult but necessary path.
How is the Canadian Church preparing for this visit?
- It is a great teamwork with several collaborators, at a national-local level, which must be done in record time.
For more than three years, a group of four bishops has regularly accompanied the initiatives of the bishops of Canada with a view to concrete actions and gestures of reconciliation with our indigenous brothers and sisters. As I am part of this group, I can testify to the journey that led us to organize this meeting in Rome of 3 delegations - First Nations, Inuit and Métis - with Pope Francis (March-April 2022).
These meetings culminated in an audience of more than 150 indigenous delegates with the Holy Father, during which Pope Francis joined the apologies made by the bishops of Canada in September 2021. To follow up on these delegations in Rome, Pope Francis accepted the invitation of his brother bishops. to come to Canada as of July 2022.
National Indigenous peoples' organizations are involved in the planning of the papal visit to Canada. The exchanges began with delegates preparing to travel to the Vatican in March/April 2022 and continued during their private meetings with Pope Francis, as well as with a working group of Canadian bishops in an ongoing dialogue.
The indigenous brothers also participated in pre-visits to potential sites for the papal visit. Programming has been finalized in close collaboration with them to ensure that Pope Francis' upcoming visit will be an important step on the path of healing and reconciliation.
We pray for the health of the Holy Father as we embark on intensive planning for this historic visit.
The preparation for this trip has been, as you point out, very quick. In addition to the "official" preparations, how are the faithful involved in the preparations?
- There are many ways in which the faithful are involved in the preparations for our Holy Father's visit, to rejoice in God's love and to show how we join the Pope in his commitment to healing and reconciliation.
Some parish groups pray together, some volunteer, some travel to attend one of the public events, etc.
This issue affects residential school survivors, but also anyone who has suffered pain or trauma from members of the Catholic Church.
Raymond Poisson. President of the Conference of Catholic Bishops of Canada
The Pope's visit is marked by reports of unedifying behavior of certain church institutions towards the indigenous population. Do you think this visit will mark a turning point in the history of the Canadian Church?
- During the delegations to Rome, we heard the words of Pope Francis, speaking in terms of apologizing to his brother bishops for the behaviors of some members of the Church in residential schools. We know that his visit will be a further step of healing and reconciliation.
This issue affects the survivors of the residential schools, but also anyone who has suffered pain or trauma from members of the Catholic Church. But this visit touches above all on the Church's willingness to live with our indigenous brothers and sisters new projects of reconciliation. Not just apologies.
The Pope's visit may also have a certain liberating effect, which will allow a step towards healing for a large number of victims of different types of abuse, as well as their families of former students, who live the multigenerational impact.
Obviously, not all victims will be appeased, but for many it will be an opportunity to hear and see Pope Francis moved by the testimonies heard.
Aboriginal people attach great importance to relationships, to presence. Hence the importance of having it on Canadian soil and having as many Aboriginal people as possible attend.
This visit touches above all the will of the Church to live with our indigenous brothers and sisters new projects of reconciliation. Not only apologies.
Raymond Poisson. President of the Conference of Catholic Bishops of Canada
In this sense, how do the indigenous population, including non-Catholics, experience this path?
- In general, after two years of pandemic: how good it will be to see each other again in large groups, to be happy to be together!
There is a need to rebuild ties and solidify them, to know and respect each other better, to better understand aboriginal spiritualities, their traditions, to deepen our understanding of truths, to clarify our ways of seeing ourselves.
There are prejudices and stereotypes among us, so walking together, Catholics and other religious denominations with the whole population, will help us create a more united future. The idea is to transform the way we look at each other. This visit is a unique opportunity offered to the whole of Canadian society.
The motto of the visit is "Walking Together", as part of the reconciliation process initiated years ago by the bishops of Canada. How is this process going?
- The delegation to Rome last April follows more than three years of dialogue between Canada's Catholic bishops and their indigenous partners, including the Assembly of First Nations (AFN), the Métis National Council (MNC) and the Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami (ITK), with the goal of learning and discerning how best to support them on the path of healing and reconciliation.
As this dialogue continues, we have taken several important stepss to support a brighter future, including the announcement of $30 million in support for healing and reconciliation initiatives, our commitment to ensuring that documents related to residential schools are available to survivors, and our continued efforts to educate our clergy, consecrated and lay women and men on indigenous cultures and spirituality.
There is a clear consensus among Canadian bishops that more needs to be done to alleviate the historical and current suffering caused by the residential school system.
The Holy Father's trip to Canada will allow us to be together, to walk together, members of Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities. To live together strong events that speak for us, we think it will be beneficial.
The word, the gestures, the presence of the Holy Father will guide us in the direction we must take, will open paths for us to continue walking together towards reconciliation, healing, to have a vision of the future.
Walking together, Catholics and other religious denominations with the entire population, will help us create a more united future. The idea is to transform the way we look at each other.
Raymond Poisson. President of the Conference of Catholic Bishops of Canada
Canada, like the rest of the West, has undergone a major process of secularization. How is the Church in Canada today? How has it lived and is it living this process of purification, which can sometimes be almost incomprehensible?
- The Church as an institution personalizes a whole people on the move; it is a force for action. There is also a danger: the Church should not be limited to consecrated or clerical members but to all the baptized.
Through challenges and controversies, joys and projects, the Church tries to make a central place for Christ, the Gospel and Gospel values. It is made up of human beings and, therefore, is not perfect.
There is a growing importance in society for the authenticity of the witness that this Church, with its pastors and its entire structure, must serve to the core of society. It is also this authenticity, "fidelity to the mission", which is often reproached to the members of the Church in the case of boarding schools.
Through my own membership and participation in the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops, I am inspired by wonderful examples of commitment and holiness in the missionary journey of the People of God in Canada. The modern world is full of complexity, but there are also times when the Word of God can take root in society.
As bishops, we rely on all members of the People of God, including clergy, laity and consecrated persons, all the baptized, to give good witness to the Gospel in daily life.
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The Social Doctrine of the Church: guide and basis for the life of the Brotherhoods.
In the brotherhoods, the fundamental values of social life: truth, freedom, justice and charity are to be fostered and lived in a special way; that is their mission. For this reason, the Social Doctrine of the Church seems to be especially elaborated to be put into practice in the life of the brotherhood.
Man reaches his fullness only in society. Human nature is the only nature that needs social relationships to be fulfilled. This is explained in the Book of Genesis, at the beginning of the Bible: "It is not good that man should be alone" (Gen. 2.18), he needs to live in society, to relate to others in order to reach his full development as a person. Created in the image and likeness of God (Gen. 1:26-27), the human person is called from the beginning to social life.
Plato reached the same conclusion from the point of view of reason (The Republic) and Aristotle (The Policy). Taken up centuries later by St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas respectively and enriched by Revelation, they are at the basis of the meaning of life and of the moral convictions of the West, of European culture.
The continuity of this line of thought has not been peaceful. Authors, perhaps overrated, such as Hobbes (17th century) or Rousseau (18th century), questioned this differential quality of the person, his necessary sociability. Their approaches may not have had much consistency, but they opened the way to other models of thought, starting with the Enlightenment (18th century), which base the ideals of personal life on nature and reason, synthesized in science. Religion, Revelation, remained outside the social sphere, enclosed in the conscience of each individual and without legitimacy to propose its vision of man and society.
From this point on, a vertiginous dynamic begins. It begins with the unfocused contribution of modern sciences that call into question the dignity and freedom of people and leads to postmodernity, a category that encompasses various totalitarianisms of one sign or another, which try to rewrite human nature and its dignity and impose the civil cancellation of those who dare to think in freedom without assuming the official story, which is what culture is all about. woke.
The Church has not remained indifferent to these counter-cultural currents that reduce the dignity of the person. The first papal encyclical correcting the political and philosophical drift of modern times was that of Gregory XVI, Mirari vos (1832)This was to be followed by the encyclical Quanta cura (1864) of Pius IX, on certain forms of liberalism and the Pascendi (1907) by Pius Xagainst modernism.
From this point on, the pontifical doctrinal production is continuous. All this material, in the form of encyclicals, allocutions, letters, apostolic exhortations, speeches and other interventions, has been forming a system with great internal coherence. At the beginning of this century (2004), at the request of John Paul II, all this doctrine, systematized and organized by epigraphs, is collected in the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church (DSI), a manual that does not belong to the field of ideologies, but to that of moral theology, to guide the conduct of individuals and organizations of people in all aspects of social life.
If the Social Doctrine of the Church The purpose of the Trinitarian life is to guide the behavior of persons in order to their full development, and any association or social group should feel concerned by it, especially the brotherhoods. In them the means must be provided so that man may be introduced by Christ into the Trinitarian life of God and participate in his communion of life and love, together with other men and women in the communion of saints. "That they all may be one as you and I are one" (Jn. 17:1-22).
In the brotherhoods, the fundamental values of social life must be fostered and lived in a special way: truth, freedom, justice and charity; that is their mission. If a brotherhood were to cut off the internal roots of its socialitasIf it were to live far from communion with God in the Trinity, its structuring as a social group would be denaturalized and would fall apart. It would no longer be a social group, a space of humanization, but an addictive environment that resolves itself in the power-opposition dialectic; that proclaims freedom, but in which selfishness takes precedence over the common good; that focuses on short-term activism. Without recourse to a true God who guarantees individuality and sociability, brotherhood would oscillate between the emptiness of individualistic solitude and false identities.
In each of its sections, the Social Doctrine of the Church seems to be especially elaborated for the life of brotherhood. It is worth knowing it, living it and spreading it.
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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Maria Lia Zervino: "WUCWO is a mosaic of women united in a common love for the Church".
It is one of the three women who, as of July 13, 2022, are part of the Dicastery for Bishops and the only laywoman. Maria Lia Zervino, President of the World Union of Catholic Women's Organizations, talks to Omnes about this institution that represents more than eight million women worldwide.
Related"We women have been looked at with short-range lights."Nadia CoppaWe must reflect on the new way of presenting the consecrated life of women".Antonio Hernández DeusAfrican women stand out for their hope and optimism".
"We women have been looked at with short-range lights."Nadia CoppaWe must reflect on the new way of presenting the consecrated life of women".Antonio Hernández DeusAfrican women stand out for their hope and optimism".The World Union of Catholic Women's Organizations (WUCWO) was founded in 1910 and today is spread across all continents and has more than eight million affiliated women whose objective is to support programs and projects aimed primarily at the defense and dignity of women.
For more than a hundred years of promoting and defending women throughout the world, in the most diverse social, political and economic environments. Maria Lia Zervino, president of the organization, which was recognized by the Holy See as an International Public Association of the Faithful in 2006, explains that it is a source of pride and boast for the entire Church.
"From the very beginning, the visionary foundresses were present at the international level. In 1928, these women were already working in the League of Nations, in the commissions of Trafficking of Women and Protection of Children. Their impact and prestige both for the propagation of the faith and for the protection of the family were such that, during the Second World War, they had to burn their archives to avoid persecution; unfortunately, their Ecclesiastical Assistant died as a result of torture," Zervino points out.
A fruitful ecclesial action that led Paul VI to "appoint as president of the organization the Spaniard Pilar Bellosillo, present in the first group of women auditors of the Second Vatican Council and whose cause for beatification is now in progress," recalls Maria Lia Zervino.
What are the objectives of the World Union of Catholic Women's Organizations and how is the organization structured to achieve them?
- WUCWO focuses on the dignity of women. Its purpose is to promote the presence, participation and co-responsibility of Catholic women in society and in the Church, so that they may be protagonists, together with men, in evangelization and integral human development. That is why it associates Catholic organizations (mixed or exclusively feminine) always represented by a woman. Practically all the members are lay women, although many religious women are part of its organizations and it also gathers associations of consecrated women.
Who is part of this organization?
- The delegates of the organizations participate in the General Assembly every 4 years and democratically elect the members of the Council. This collegiate body votes for the members of the Executive Committee: the vice-presidents of each region and finally the president, who is located at the bottom of the pyramid. The governing bodies that form part of the inverted pyramid are at the service of WUCWO member organizations.
The Dicastery for the Laity, Family and Life also participates in this process as it can veto a candidate for president, but cannot choose who will occupy that position.
WUCWO is an existential observatory of women in the world and a reflection of what is happening throughout the Church. WUCWO's greatest human growth is in Africa and it is experiencing a certain decline in some European countries, as is the case at the global ecclesial level. The organizations with the highest number of young women are found on the African continent and in some countries of Asia-Pacific and Latin America.
In the North American region, the situation has not changed significantly in recent years. WUCWO can be said to be a mosaic of cultures of very diverse women who are united in a common love for the Church and a desire to apply and contribute to its teachings. To its ecumenical initiatives, since 2019 it has added a path of dialogue with women of other faiths - who are also leaders of their respective communities - and together they celebrate International Women's Day each year.
What are the objectives for the near future?
- There are three objectives for the near future: to grow in synodality, to create synergy with women in countries where it is not possible to associate and to give visibility to those women who seem invisible.
With regard to synodality, the objective is twofold: on the one hand, to contribute to the Synod on Synodality in each diocesan, continental and universal phase and, on the other hand, to incarnate it within WUCWO.
Among the tasks to be undertaken in synodal style, a central place is occupied by the preparation of the WUCWO World Women's Meeting with Pope Francis on May 13, 2023, which will be the threshold from which to illuminate the General Assembly to be held later in Assisi.
In order to create synergy with Catholic women in some countries, usually Muslim, whose governments do not allow them to associate, we will hold the III Meeting with Women from the Middle East and Mediterranean in October this year in Athens, a process we started in Amman (2013) and continued in Bari (2016). "Women peacemakers in a Church. outbound"will make it a priority to listen to women, in addition to sharing the update of the Amoris laetitia and dream together of the post-Covid 19 scenario, within the framework of a culture of peace.
In order to give visibility to women from different parts of the world, who normally seem invisible to many as a result of what the Pope calls the globalization of indifference, WUCWO created the World Observatory of Women in 2021.
The World Observatory of Women has recently been launched: what does it consist of and what are its objectives?
- It is a new project and is intended for the short and long term. The motto of the World Women's Observatory (WWO) is "Listening to transform lives".
It consists precisely in listening to women from different regions of the world on a particular topic, offering them the opportunity to express themselves and have their voices heard. To gather their experiences of suffering and deprivation, as well as their strengths and good practices, in order to systematize them in a format with academic rigor that allows their dissemination in an accessible language.
The second phase of the Observatory's work is the dissemination and awareness-raising at the local, national and international levels, in order to inspire and generate pastoral strategies on the part of the Church; synergies on the part of civil society NGOs; public policies on the part of States and contributions to the international agenda that favor the integral human development of women and that of their families, communities and peoples.
The WWO is destined to be the international reference point from which to visualize and evaluate alternatives for transformation in the area of women in different parts of the world. Its vision is integral and universal, that is to say, it identifies with the magisterium of the Church, in particular with Laudato si and with Fratelli tutti. It is at the service of all Church structures and other organizations, including non-denominational ones.
This Observatory, as a first act, presented a survey to know the impact of Covid 19 on women in the world. What were the results?
- The WWO carried out its first work Impact of Covid-19 on women in Latin America and the Caribbean. According to the studies collected, as well as to the field experts consulted and the thousands of surveys conducted, the main effect of the pandemic on the situation of women in the region was the deepening and aggravation of pre-existing structural social, economic and cultural inequalities, such as the increase in gender-based violence, the deterioration of economic autonomy, the worsening of the feminization of poverty, the deterioration of physical and mental health, the increase in caregiving tasks, the difficulties in education aggravated by social differences, the increase in human trafficking and organized crime, among other indicators.
Their strengths and resilience also emerged, such as reinventing ways of subsistence for their families and ways of marketing their products, the creation of solidarity networks for the care of the elderly or those most in need during the pandemic, new forms of prayer and spiritual accompaniment.
And a series of creative proposals emerged, including training for female leadership in all areas, the representation of women in public spaces - betting on collaboration rather than competition -, research and dissemination on structural and symbolic violence, a strategy for the prevention of violence working, from childhood, for equal rights between men and women, the improvement of education, including digital education, and the reform of systems of access to justice for the most vulnerable women.
How can the World Union of Catholic Women's Organizations help women find space and visibility also in the ecclesial context?
- WUCWO contributes to the formation of women so that they can find their place and provide quality service in the various sectors of the Church. To this end, it has made intensive use of the two years of the pandemic to train its women and its collaborators in English, Spanish and French on the major themes of the current magisterium. It has counted on the teaching and accompaniment of specialists in each of the themes that have to do with its resolutions for the present period: responsibility before integral ecology, protection of the family and in particular of its most vulnerable members, violence and discrimination against women, and education for the path to holiness.
The authorFederico Piana
Journalist. He works for Vatican Radio and collaborates with L'Osservatore Romano.
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"The good part that makes life good". XVI Sunday in Ordinary Time
Andrea Mardegan comments on the readings for the 16th Sunday in Ordinary Time and Luis Herrera offers a short video homily.
Jesus is grateful for the hospitality of Martha, who welcomes him into her home and does everything possible so that he, with his disciples, can rest and regain strength. Jesus knows Martha and Mary well. The two sisters have a simple and direct relationship with him, which we would like to imitate. It is noticeable that they have a different character: Martha is operative and extroverted, Mary quiet and reflective.
In her work, something happens to Marta that can happen to anyone. If we are pressured by urgencies, deadlines, the fear of not being up to the circumstances, the desire not to disfigure, not knowing how to prioritize two simultaneous requests, we can lose patience, and at the same time lose the right perspective of things and the sense for which we do them.
So we put ourselves at the center of the scene and begin to protest, even if only inwardly, to the people from whom we expect help that does not come. Everything is dragged down by impatience: the brothers, the sisters, even God who has put us in this situation and does not respond to prayer as we would wish, according to our command.
If, moreover, it happens to us, as it did to Martha, that when we look at the person who should understand us and help us, we discover that he or she is enjoying life, doing what we would like to do but cannot, we are overcome by victimhood, exacerbated by a hidden envy. Martha would also have liked to sit and listen to Jesus, but she thinks she cannot: there are too many things to do.
Jesus repeats his name twice: "Marta, Marta"He does the same, also in Luke's Gospel, with Simon when he tells him that he prayed for him before announcing his denial, and with Jerusalem when he reveals to the beloved city that he would have liked to gather her children together like a hen gathers her chicks. It is a way of tenderly telling her that he loves her as she is.
He loves her impetuous character, as he loves Mary's meek character.
She loves her work of service, but precisely for that reason she desires for herself a greater and more lasting happiness, and so she gives him the remedy: she must talk to him, as Mary does, listen to him, not lose sight of him when she works for him, love him as he wishes to be loved.
He appreciates his food, but enjoys more his serene company and his love freed from his overbearing ego: three times he has spoken of himself in a few words: "My sister has left me alone, tell her to help me.".
The part that Mary chose can best be translated from the Greek as "the good part", without comparison. It is being with Jesus, loving him, before work and during work. A part that is never lost and that is capable of making good every action, every day, every work, every service, every apostolate, every life.
The homily on the readings of Sunday XVI
The priest Luis Herrera Campo offers its nanomiliaa small one-minute reflection for these readings.
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Three first women members of the Dicastery for Bishops
Sister Raffaella Petrini, Sister Yvonne Reungoat and Maria Lia Zervino are the first three women to join this Dicastery which, until now, had only cardinals and bishops among its members, while the consultors included only prelates and priests.
He announced this in an interview with Reuters last week. Pope Francis today appointed three women as members of the Dicastery for Bishops. They are Sister Raffaella Petrini, secretary general of the Governorate of Vatican City State, Sister Yvonne Reungoat, former superior general of the Daughters of Mary Help of Christians, and Maria Lia Zervino, president of the World Union of Catholic Women's Organizations.
Two religious women and one laywoman will therefore participate in the process of electing the new diocesan pastors. A dream come true for Maria Lia Zervino, that of "a Church with suitable women". She herself wrote it in a letter published in English translation in the American Jesuit magazine: "I dream of a Church that has suitable women as judges in all tribunals where marriage cases are dealt with, in the formation teams of all seminaries and for the exercise of ministries such as listening, spiritual direction, pastoral care of health, care of the planet, defense of human rights, etc.". For which, by our nature, we women are equally or sometimes better prepared than men. Not only consecrated women, but all lay women from all regions of the world who are willing to serve". And addressing Francis, Zervino added: "And I dream that, during his pontificate, he will inaugurate, together with the synods of bishops, a different synod: the synod of the people of God, with a proportional representation of the clergy, consecrated men and women, lay men and women. We will no longer rejoice just because a woman votes for the first time, but because many prepared lay women, in communion with all the other members of that synod, will have made their contribution and their vote will be added to the conclusions that will be placed in your hands. Probably, Holy Father, you already have this "card in your deck" to put synodality into practice and are only waiting for the right moment to play it'.
On the occasion of the aforementioned interview with Reuters, in response to a question about the presence of women in the Vatican, in light of the new Apostolic Constitution Praedicate Evangelium, the Pontiff had foreshadowed, precisely, the appointment also of lay people to head dicasteries such as "that of the laity, the family and life, that of culture and education, or the Library, which is almost a dicastery".
Prior to today's appointments, the Dicastery for Bishops counted among its members only cardinals and bishops, while the consultors included only prelates and priests.
A choice, therefore, made today by Francis, which goes in the direction of a renewal of the Church's institutions and for the promotion of a model that is more just and closer to the legitimate aspirations of those who represent the source of life par excellence.
Among the women in high positions in the Holy See were Spanish nun Carmen Ros Nortes, undersecretary of the Dicastery for Religious, French nun Nathalie Becquart, undersecretary of the Synod of Bishops, and Salesian nun Sister Alessandra Smerilli, secretary of the Dicastery for the Service of Integral Human Development. Among the laywomen were Francesca Di Giovanni, undersecretary for the multilateral sector of the Section for Relations with States of the Secretariat of State, Argentine professor Emilce Cuda, secretary of the Pontifical Commission for Latin America, Linda Ghisoni and Gabriella Gambino, both undersecretaries of the Dicastery for the Laity, Family and Life: and then Barbara Jatta, the first woman director of the Vatican Museums; Slovenian Nataša Govekar, head of the theological-pastoral directorate of the Dicastery for Communication; and Brazilian Cristiane Murray, deputy director of the Holy See Press Office. German professor Charlotte Kreuter-Kirchof is also deputy coordinator of the Council for the Economy.
The authorAntonino Piccione
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Pietro Angelo MuroniThe liturgy reveals the mystery and opens us to the presence of Christ".
In this interview for Omnes, Professor Pietro Angelo Muroni, dean of theology at the Pontifical Urbaniana University, explains the key points of Desiderio Desideravi, the document on the liturgical formation of all the faithful.
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The liturgy is a true encounter with Christ. The central ideas of "Desiderio desideravi".Liturgy to the sound of drums: the Zairé rite and AmazoniaUpon reading the recent letter of Pope Francis to the People of God on the liturgy, entitled "Desiderio desideravi", Professor Pietro Angelo Muroni, dean of theology at the Pontifical Urbaniana University, author of numerous books on faith and spirituality and priest of the Diocese of Sassari, was certain that the importance of this document lies in the fact that it is not addressed only to the ecclesiastical hierarchy: "It affects - he says - the entire People of God, because liturgical formation must concern everyone, it must involve everyone. The Pope says it: the liturgy is the fundamental dimension for the life of the Church". So much so, Don Muroni explains, that the letter "does not want to be a treatise on liturgical theology, it does not want to have an academic slant. Instead, the Pope wants it to be an element of reflection to contemplate the beauty and truth of the Christian celebration".
Professor, so the Pope is calling the people of God to return to the true essence of the liturgy?
- Indeed. The Pope calls the people of God to return to the spirit of the liturgy, as the theologian Romano Guardini would define it. Not long ago, the Pope received in audience the members of the Pontifical Liturgical Institute on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of its foundation and told them: beware when the liturgy becomes a battlefield for questions that are not essential or even obsolete. For this reason, the Pontiff, faced with the danger of spiritual worldliness, which he also dealt with in his first apostolic exhortation Evangelii GaudiumThe President wants to urge us all to consider the integrity of what we are celebrating.
What are the other important elements of this document?
- In the first place, it is insisted that the liturgy is the Work of God, in which God involves man. Point number 7 of the Sacrosanctum Concilium says: in this great work, in which God, through the rite, reaches man in order to save him, Christ unites his Church, his bride. Therefore, it is God who reaches out to us but, at the same time, God involves the Church. Another important element of the document is precisely the invitation to rediscover the beauty of the liturgy. In this sense, already in the Evangelii GaudiumPope Francis had underlined the fact that the Church evangelizes - and evangelizes herself - with the beauty of the liturgy.
What does the document mean when it talks about beauty?
- A beauty, the Pope explains in the letter, that is not the search for aestheticism, for beautiful forms. Although, undoubtedly, the liturgy must be beautiful, it must not be neglected. The continual rediscovery of the beauty of the liturgy means the rediscovery of the beauty of the mystery of Christ celebrated in the liturgy. We must come to be moved by the liturgy, which means going beyond the mere observance of rules and norms.
Is incarnation another important element?
- Yes, because the incarnation is the theological foundation of the Christian faith, but also of the entire liturgy. That is to say, the liturgy is not disembodied; the liturgy is expressed through the humanity of man and is also expressed through gestures, attitudes, signs and symbols that are part of man's life.
It is beautiful what the Sacrosanctum Concilium in number 83: Christ, by assuming human nature, brought to this land of exile that song which is sung eternally in the heavenly places. Christ's incarnation becomes the bond by which we unite ourselves to Him in order to unite ourselves to the Father and to the heavenly Church.
Does the document also delve into the rediscovery of the meaning of mystery?
- Of course it is. The Pope asks us to be careful with the smoky expression 'sense of mystery'. Sometimes, the Pontiff points out, the liturgical reform of the Second Vatican Council is accused of having eliminated the sense of mystery in the celebration. But what is the mystery for us? Pauline literature explains to us that the mystery of God is Christ, Christ himself who revealed the Father.
It is obvious, therefore, that the liturgy for us remains transcendent, man can never penetrate deeply into what is celebrated in the liturgy. But Christ also came through the liturgy, through the sacraments, to reveal himself, not to hide himself. The liturgy reveals the mystery and opens us to the presence of Christ in his Word, in the Eucharistic species, in the priest, in the people of God.
The letter also mentions training. Why is this important?
- If there is no liturgical formation, one cannot understand with the heart what is being celebrated. If I do not understand what I am doing in the liturgy, it is difficult for me to respect it. Formation is essential, especially in seminaries. I fear that certain drifts, such as Pelagianism and Gnosticism, that creep into the liturgy also depend on a lack of formation. If we educate future priests well in the true sense of the liturgy, we will have, as a consequence, laity formed in the true sense of the liturgy. On the contrary, we will have priests who live the liturgy as something to be done. As the Pope says in this letter, we must be formed for the liturgy, but also be formed with the liturgy.
The authorFederico Piana
Journalist. He works for Vatican Radio and collaborates with L'Osservatore Romano.
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Synod of Bishops of the Ukrainian Catholic Church
Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk celebrates a Divine Liturgy with members of the Synod of Bishops of the Ukrainian Catholic Church at the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist in Przemysl, Poland, July 7, 2022.
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Could the Pope travel to Ukraine this summer?
RelatedPope calls for "serious and dynamic" liturgical formationAssisi and Matera to host Pope Francis
Pope calls for "serious and dynamic" liturgical formationAssisi and Matera to host Pope FrancisAlthough the Vatican has not made an official statement, Archbishop Paul Richard Gallagher has declared that the Vatican is studying a possible trip by the Pope to Ukraine. If so, it would follow his visit to Canada at the end of July.
It is the Pope's wish to travel to this invaded area, although Francis himself has also said that he should first visit Moscow.
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Simplicity in truth, the seal of Pope Luciani
The vice-president of the John Paul I Vatican Foundation, Stefania Falasca, recalls the figure and work of the Pope of the smile a few months before his beatification scheduled for September 4.
Translation of the article into Italian
"Closeness, humility, simplicity, poverty and insistence on the mercy and tenderness of Jesus: these are the most salient features of his magisterium, which more than 40 years ago aroused attraction and which today remain more relevant than ever." Stefania Falasca, vice-president of the John Paul I Vatican Foundation, recalls the figure and work of Pope John Paul I. Pope of the smilein view of his beatification scheduled for September 4.
The occasion was provided by the usual meeting that the ISCOM Association promotes with Vaticanists and information professionals interested in the current affairs of the Catholic Church: a breakfast meeting attended this morning by some thirty journalists from the media in a place a stone's throw from St. Peter's in Rome.
Falasca, a Vaticanist and writer, has worked since 2006, when the diocesan investigation was concluded, as vice-postulator for the cause of beatification of John Paul IPasquale Liberatore and Monsignor Enrico Dal Covolo, and then Cardinal Beniamino Stella, who succeeded each other in the office until today. A long and demanding study of the documentary sources on Albino Luciani, which led her to emphasize, during the ISCOM meeting, first of all the "evangelical simplicity" of the Pope, and his ability to communicate "the substance of the Gospel" to all, "in the absolute coincidence between what he taught and what he lived".
A journey of no less than 15 years, with a research that has involved more than 70 archives in different places, of deep historical and historiographical depth.
Immediately after his death", Falasca observes, "it was Professor Vittore Branca, who was close to Luciani during the years of his patriarchate in Venice, who focused on the Pope's pastoral attitude: a great simplicity. A Pope faithful to the doctrine of St. Francis de Sales, a saint who was very dear to him since his adolescence, when he read the Philothea and the Treatise on the Love of God. Luciani was the shepherd nourished by human wisdom, who lived all the evangelical virtues. A shepherd who precedes and lives in the flock with the example, without any separation between the spiritual life and the exercise of the government".
On the role of the Church in the service of humanity, it is worth recalling the words pronounced by Luciani himself in his homily at the beginning of his pontificate (September 3, 1978): "May the Church, humble messenger of the Gospel to all the peoples of the earth, contribute to create a climate of justice, fraternity, solidarity and hope, without which the world could not live".
Closer to the pain of the people, "a Church," Falasca concludes, "not self-referential, rooted in that never forgotten treasure of an ancient Church, without worldly triumphs, that lives by the reflected light of Christ. Close to the teaching of the great Fathers and to which the Council had returned".
The legacy of the Second Vatican Council constitutes, then, the inspiration and the trace of an ephemeral pontificate - a heart attack ended Luciani's life, according to the reconstruction of the history and the clinical documentation, as well as the depositions acquired during the process - and at the same time of rigorous actuality. This is eloquently attested by the six "we want" of the radio message Urbi et orbi pronounced in Latin by John Paul I the day after his election, on August 27, 1978.
Falasca recalls them punctually: "We want to continue in the continuity of the legacy of the Second Vatican Council (...) an impulse of renewal and life"; "We want to maintain intact the great discipline of the Church (...) both in the exercise of the evangelical virtues and in the service of the poor, the humble, the defenseless (...). We wish to remind the whole Church that her first duty is evangelization (...) We wish to continue the ecumenical commitment with attention to all that can foster union (...) We wish to continue with patience and firmness in that serene and constructive dialogue which Paul VI placed as the foundation and program of his pastoral action (...). Finally, we want to encourage all initiatives that can safeguard and increase peace in a troubled world".
Priorities that have nourished the thirty-four days of a pontifical throne dedicated to episcopal collegiality, service to ecclesial poverty, the search for Christian unity, interreligious dialogue and dialogue with the contemporary world, in favor of justice and peace.
Perspectives that resonate clearly today, in the opinion of the Vice-President of the John Paul I Vatican Foundation: "These six we want help to highlight a Pope as a point of reference in the history of the universal Church. In the light of the papers of the private archives, of the texts and of the interventions of the pontificate, it is now easier to deepen in the master lines of Albino Luciani's magisterium for a conciliar Church close to the people and to their thirst for charity".
The authorAntonino Piccione
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The day our son told us: "I want to be a priest".
In 2020 (latest data offered by the EEC) 125 priests were ordained in Spain. 125 stories of boys who give themselves to God forever. 125 stories of boys who give themselves to God forever... and 125 families in which fathers, mothers, brothers, brothers, friends, are also part of the journey. How do families live the call of a son? What do they fear? How do they accept God's will?
Related"In the military, a priest gives a reason for the life you are willing to give."Pope Francis explains the figure of the priest at an important congress in RomePriest who enjoyed life on wheels
"In the military, a priest gives a reason for the life you are willing to give."Pope Francis explains the figure of the priest at an important congress in RomePriest who enjoyed life on wheelsMaría Luisa, Manuel, María José, Antonio, Julia... are those mothers and fathers who have seen how God became body and blood through the words pronounced by their children at the Consecration of the Blessed Sacrament. Holy Mass. Normal and diverse families, from rural and urban areas, with very different histories, with more or fewer children, with more or less ecclesial life... But united by the call to which their children have responded and in which they participate.
United at the altar
Manuel and María José have two sons, one of whom, Antonio Jesús, is a priest at the diocese of Cádiz and Ceuta. In his case, there is a peculiarity: Manuel is a permanent deacon, he shares part of the ministry with his son, something that he lives with great joy.
His vocation story is linked to a date: that June 24 when "after the Eucharist attended by the whole family, we were presented by our parish priest to our bishop, Bishop Ceballos, to ask for Antonio Jesús to enter the seminary and for me to be admitted to the diaconate".
Manuel and Antonio Jesús meet as father and son physically, but also spiritually, especially in those celebrations in which the permanent deacon assists the priest.
"The day of his First Mass," recalls Manuel, "was a moment full of meaning and feelings. As a deacon, I asked for his blessing before reading the Gospel, as established by liturgical norms: 'Father, bless me,' to my son. A moment that I will never forget and that every time we celebrate the Eucharist is repeated and acquires the same value".
When God asks for the 100% of children
The Navarro Carmona family, from Cordoba, has two sons, both of whom are diocesan priests. The entry into the seminary of Antonio, the eldest, did not catch them by surprise: "We saw his process and we saw him eager to advance on his way; and the road was not easy, we would say it was very hard. However, he saw the positive side, he reaffirmed himself and his vocation grew in the face of setbacks".
Juan Carlos' decision, however, took a little longer: "We thought he could do something else. We offered him multiple options. I remember," says his mother, Julia, "that we mentioned the vocation of a doctor, healing, saving lives... when we finished talking, he said, 'Do you want me to do that career? I'll do it. Then I will continue with the one I like: I want to devote myself to healing souls and saving them.
We were thrilled to answer her: "Your vocation is strong, go ahead. Her husband, Antonio, emphasizes that the call of their second son seemed to him, in fact, "too much for our family".
In spite of everything, they did not violently oppose the call of their children: "We believe in freedom and the right to choose the life of their children. We do not agree with any imposition, we parents do not have the right to deny God's decision".
Perhaps because of this commitment to the freedom and personal responsibility of young people, when asked what to say to those who oppose their children entering the seminary, Antonio and Julia are clear: "Our advice is to listen to your children".
With a promising future as an architect, Antonio Jesús' entry into the seminary was accompanied by a lot of misunderstandings. As his father recalls, "in the family there were certain comments, they asked us why we let him be in the seminary with what he was worth... after he became a priest, most of the family is happy. In his school, a classmate, his teacher, told me that he regretted that we let him go to the seminary with the academic value he had".
Normal reactions in those who do not share or understand the transcendence of the call, and to which these parents responded with a clear analogy: "How many parents, while disagreeing with the choice made by their children, defend them by saying, 'if he is happy, that is what is important'. Well, we can respond in the same way: Not only is he happy, but with his dedication and witness, he can make many people happy".
There are also more tender misunderstandings, recalls the couple based in Cadiz, such as the reaction of the lady who took care of him since he was a child while his parents worked. When he told her of his decision to enter the Seminary because he felt the call, I asked him, "Antonio, my beautiful one, but tell me, who is that calling you?
An army of prayers
In a letter addressed to the mothers of priests when he was Prefect of the Congregation for the Clergy, Cardinal Mauro Picenza, pointed out that "Every mother of a priest is mysteriously 'daughter of her son'. Towards him she can also exercise a new "motherhood", in the discreet, but most effective and invaluable, closeness of prayer and in the offering of her own existence for the ministry of her son. They are a true "army" that, from earth, raises prayers and offerings to Heaven and, even more numerous, from Heaven intercedes so that every grace may be poured out on the life of the sacred shepherds". Words that could well be applied to the group of mothers of priests who, every month in Madrid, meet to pray for priestly vocations.
An initiative of Maria Luisa Bermejo, which was born as a result of the ordination of her son Yago, of the Prelature of Opus Dei. At that time, Maria Luisa got in touch with other mothers of priests and started a prayer group for priestly vocations: "I spoke with a friend of mine who has a son who is a diocesan priest. Together we thought that we could do 'something more' for priests and the idea came up to get together one day to pray the Rosary for priestly vocations. We shared this idea with some diocesan seminarians who put us in touch with their mothers and things began", When the meetings were filled with new members.
"We spoke with a priest who suggested that we meet in a church so that we could pray better. Then, the rector of the Church of the Holy Spirit in Madrid, D. Javier Cremades, gave us everything he could. Not only did he allow us to go once a month to pray the Rosary, but he also began to say Mass for us and lead us in prayer.
That small group of mothers of priests grew little by little: "We became almost 70 people," recalls Maria Luisa, who points out that "now there are fewer of us, but we continue with this meeting. Every month a son of one of the priests comes to say Mass for us and leads us in prayer. Not only do we pray for the priests, but we have also created an impressive network of friendship among us.
These mothers of priests decided to name their prayers: "we decided to make a kind of 'invisible prayer friend'," says Maria Luisa, "we wrote down the names of the priests and their mothers on slips of paper, each one took one or two slips - it could not be her son - and promised to pray for these priests every day. I have two of them, very nice," she concludes.
These fathers and mothers pray for their children, with "the gratitude that their liturgical prayer is a 'two-voice' prayer," as Manuel points out, but they also pray for those who find it difficult in their environment to respond to God's call, for their fidelity, for their perseverance.
Fears and joys
In a society in which the figure of the priest is, more than ever, in the spotlight, these parents share the fears of those who have a child in public office. As Julia points out, "they are always in the spotlight: their decisions, actions and deeds are scrutinized with a magnifying glass" and there is always the fear of a misinterpretation, or even an unfair public judgment... but "the joys are immense and in abundance because these children are very enjoyable. We know that they are there at all times supporting us with their prayers and their presence.
Maria José and Manuel express themselves in a very similar way when they point out that "in today's society, just by saying that you are a believer, you are sure to be criticized, scorned..... The more so when your son not only manifests that he is a believer, but with his life and way of dressing he proclaims that he is a priest. It is not strange to observe looks and comments as he passes by, but it must also be said that you observe that other people approach him and ask him for confession, advice, blessing...".
But that same manifestation brings with it many anecdotes of "chance encounters" with the Church, such as the time when "on one of his trips from Madrid - where he was studying Moral Theology - to Cadiz, the train stopped in the middle of the countryside and some passengers came to him asking "father, pray for us to get out of this situation".
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Pope Francis Let us ask God to make us see and have compassion".
The Pope once again recalled the need to touch and look into the eyes of the poorest on this 15th Sunday in Ordinary Time, in which the parable of the Good Samaritan was the focus of the Gospel and of the Pope's words at the Angelus.
"The Samaritan, despite having his own plans and heading for a distant goal, does not look for excuses" for failing to care for the stranger wounded along the way. This is how the Holy Father began his commentary on the Angelus on Sunday, July 10, 2022. An appeal to all Christians to live with their eyes "on the final goal, while at the same time paying close attention to the steps that must be taken, here and now, to reach it".
The parable of the Good Samaritan narrated today in the Gospel of the 15th Sunday in Ordinary Time gave Francis the opportunity to recall that one of the appellatives of the first Christians was "the Good Samaritan". "disciples of the Camino". In fact," the Pope said, "the believer is very much like the Samaritan: like him, he is on a journey (...) He follows the Lord, who is not sedentary but always on the road: on the road he meets people, he heals the sick, visits villages and towns. This is how the Lord acted, always on the way".
The example of Christ, the Good Samaritan, is the one to be followed by Christians who, "Walking in the footsteps of Christ, become wayfarers and learn - like the Samaritan - to see and to have compassion. Go and feel compassion. First and foremost, go toIt opens our eyes to reality. The Gospel educates us to see: it guides each one of us to understand reality correctly, overcoming day after day preconceived ideas and dogmatisms", the Pope pointed out.
Compassion is a gift
Francis pointed out that "in the face of this Gospel parable, it can happen that we blame or blame ourselves, that we point the finger at others, comparing them to the priest and the Levite: "This one and that one pass by, they do not stop!"; or that we blame ourselves by enumerating our lack of attention to our neighbor".
Two attitudes that, although natural, the Pope encouraged to overcome with another exercise: to recognize the error and above all, to ask the Lord "to make us see y have compassion. This is a grace, we have to ask the Lord for it".
In this sense, the Pope pointed out once again that we must look our neighbor in the eye, especially the poorest and most vulnerable: "Do you touch the hand of the person to whom you give the coin?" - "No, no, I drop it." -And do you look the person in the eye? -No, I don't think of it". If you give alms without touching reality, without looking into the eyes of the person in need, that alms is for you, not for him. Think about this: "Do I touch the miseries, even those miseries that I help? Do I look into the eyes of the people who suffer, the people I help? I leave you this thought: see and have compassion.
I recall Libya, Sri Lanka and Ukraine
The instabilities and problems that plague the nations of Sri Lanka and Libya were the object of the Pope's remembrance in his words after the Angelus, in which he also had words for the people of Ukraine "tormented daily by brutal attacks whose consequences are paid by the common people. I pray for all the families, especially for the victims".
The Pope concluded with a remembrance of the workers and chaplains of the sea on Sea Sunday and remembered "all seafarers with esteem and gratitude for their valuable work, as well as the chaplains and volunteers of "Stella Maris". I commend to Our Lady the seafarers who are stranded in war zones, so that they may return home".
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José M. BarrioOpening spaces for dialogue, a university urgency".
"Restoring the prestige of truth and making it once again be valued as something very important for human beings," that is, "opening spaces for true dialogue, respectful and with arguments," is "the main urgency of the University," assures José María Barrio Maestre, professor at the Complutense University of Madrid and Doctor of Philosophy, in an interview with Omnes.
RelatedRecovering the essence of dialogue at the UniversitySantiago Leyra-CuriáThe new generations want to be educated so as not to be manipulated".José María TorralbaA Christianity with a bourgeois mentality is problematic".
Recovering the essence of dialogue at the UniversitySantiago Leyra-CuriáThe new generations want to be educated so as not to be manipulated".José María TorralbaA Christianity with a bourgeois mentality is problematic".A report made public in Vienna by OIDAC Europe, your Latin American partner OLIRE and the IIRF (International Institute for Religious Freedom), on self-censorship among Christians, has shown an advanced degree of social pressure driven by intolerance. And one of the authors, Friederike Boellmann, has stressed that "the German case reveals that Universities are the most hostile environment. And the highest degree of self-censorship I found in my research in academia."
Almost in parallel to the studies in the aforementioned report, José María Barrio, a professor at the Complutense University of Madrid, has written a wide-ranging articlewith this meaningful title: 'Truth is still very important, also at the University'". In his opinion, "society has the right to expect from the University a supply of people who know how to discuss respectfully, with arguments, and who take their interlocutors seriously, even when they express arguments contrary to their own. In this field, the University has a role that is difficult to replace".
There is "a virus that has been corroding the University since Bologna," he says. It has been discouraging "rational discussion, which is precisely one of the main tasks for which the University was founded, in the path of the Academy that Plato founded in Athens, and in whose wake some of the most relevant progress of Western culture has been recorded".
In conversation with José María Barrio, current issues of interest arise, and names such as Millán-Puelles, Juan Arana or Alejandro Llano, as well as Deresiewicz, Derrick and Jürgen Habermas.
Professor, what has motivated your reflection on truth in the university environment?
̶ I have the impression that in many university environments dialectical rationality is at risk of disappearing in favor of a merely instrumental and technocratic rationality. If any trait can identify what the University has aimed at throughout its history and what constitutes its nature-at least what it was "born" to be- is the pretension of being a space apt to discuss with reasons, with logically well-armed and rhetorically well-presented arguments. But pressures from outside the University introduce the "anti-logic" of the "escrache", of the cancellation of certain speeches, due to ideological interests completely alien to the interest for truth.
There are topics of theoretical, anthropological, political or social importance that are increasingly difficult to talk about, and there are agencies that arrogate to themselves the authority to decide what is and what is not to be talked about in the university, and, of what is talked about, what should be said and what should be kept quiet. Such mental restrictions are anti-academic, anti-university and anti-intellectual. To veto the discrepancy on the part of those who hand out cards of democrat or homophobe, as if they were bulls and anathemas, besides being not very congruent in a public University, is culturally shabby and mentally not very neat. It is tyrannical. And it is the final straw for the University.
You have spoken of lies as a revolutionary weapon, and you have written that truth is no longer of interest, that it has been replaced by post-truth. Even in the Bologna process the term truth disappeared.
̶ Of course, that is not what I say. I rather deplore that someone says that knowing what he is saying. Lenin invented the lie as a revolutionary weapon, and it has been revitalized by some who try to emulate him, like Pablo Iglesias in Spain.
The fact that there is no mention of truth in the Bologna documents, or that the Oxonian dictionary has authorized the infectious word "post-truth", is undoubtedly a symptom that something is wrong with the University. But as long as humans continue to be rational animal truth will continue to be important to him, because reason is not only worth to count votes, money, or likes. It is also a faculty of knowledge, and to know is to recognize what things really are; otherwise we would have to speak rather of ignorance, not of science but of nescience.
As a professor of philosophy, he has no qualms about putting his finger on prestigious American universities and their anthropological vision.
̶ I am not the only one who has pointed out that sore spot. I think it is much more knowledgeably pointed out by William Deresiewicz, American professor of English literature, in his recent book Excellent flock, which I strongly recommend to anyone interested in this process that leads to turn the University into a factory of straw souls.
You speak of a process of university demolition. What do you think of the university vision and the challenges of the university professor that professors such as Millán-Puelles or Juan Arana have put forward?
̶ I would mention many others on this list, and I would highlight the also retired professor Alejandro Llano. I fear that, unless the current state of affairs takes a very radical turn, the University will have to be rebuilt outside the current campuses. There are, however, egregious exceptions. I recommend reading the book by Christopher Derrick entitled Fleeing skepticism: A liberal education as if truth counted for something. He recounts an experience he had, during a sabbatical period, on a North American campus at a time when he was beset by a discouragement that today affects many.
For my part, I know of universities in South America where a genuine university sensibility is still being cultivated. A feature that identifies them is that they are not only concerned that their graduates "succeed" in the labor and socioeconomic aspect. Naturally they are not insensitive to this. But above all, they aspire to be able to harbor a well-founded hope that they will never engage in fraudulent or corrupt practices.
Let us listen to a brief reflection on the beginnings of universities and theology.
̶ The first Universities were founded to take up the heritage and continue the lineage of the Academy founded by Plato in Athens, and their original embryo were the cathedral schools in the high European Middle Ages. It was precisely the high self-critical potential of Christian Theology that was the initial catalyst for the most important academic research and reflection, and, of course, that has driven it to open up to new humanistic, scientific, social and artistic horizons and perspectives, and even to the horizon of technology.
Journalism is defended as an element of control of power, through truth, and disappointments arise when it is perceived, according to others, that it is rather intoxicated by power. How do you see this issue?
̶ That unfortunate word, post-truth, was originally coined to mention a sociocultural reality that has been making its way mainly in the world of communication and, above all, with the emergence of social networks.
The phenomenon, in its essential core, is the widespread impression that in the processes of public opinion formation, objective data no longer count as much as narratives, "stories" and, above all, the emotional elements that they are capable of arousing in the public. Something similar happens with social networks: it seems that the important thing is to make oneself heard, and what is less important is to verify the validity of what is being said. Many networks have become -perhaps they were from the beginning- mere aggregators of people who have the same prejudices and who do not seem at all to want to get out of them to turn them into judgments.
That human beings are not pure reason with legs, but are quite impressionable -a reed shaken by the wind, as Pascal said- was not discovered the day before yesterday. But what I find most pathetic in this case are not the ideological ingredients or the emotional ornamentation of the stories -probably there is not always a malicious intention to deceive-, but the little attention, the frivolity, the superficiality and the total absence of critical contrast with which many information that would deserve some seriousness are dispatched.
In your opinion, what is, what should be, the true contribution of the university to society? You point out that restoring the prestige of truth is the main urgency of the university, correct?
̶ Right. To restore the prestige of truth, in short, to make it once again be valued as something very important for human beings, is to open spaces for true dialogue, which is something in serious risk of extinction among us. There is much debate but little discussion. Discussion only makes sense if there is truth/s, and if there is the possibility, within the limits of all that is human, of getting closer to it/them. Conversely, if truth does not exist, or is completely inaccessible to reason, what is the point of discussion? As Jürgen Habermas has said on more than one occasion, discussion is a meaningful praxis only as a cooperative search for truth. (kooperativen Wahrheitssuche), often of the real solution to a practical problem.
Society has the right to expect from the University a supply of people who know how to discuss respectfully, with arguments, and who take their interlocutors seriously, even when they express arguments contrary to their own. In the civil and socio-political space it is necessary to have people willing to contribute to the common good in cooperative environments of serious discussion. In this field, the University has a role that is difficult to replace.
If the challenge of university education were purely professional training, aimed at training effective managers who apply protocols, we could achieve this much more effectively and quickly, and we could save ourselves a very expensive institution. What is not improvised is that people should be able to think thoroughly and rigorously, and that they should know how to deal with complex and multifaceted problems, with many facets, including human ones, which cannot be tackled just by pushing buttons, bureaucracies or prescriptions.
We confuse leadership with mediocre technocracy. It is the mediocre who are able to prosper who end up leading, not the best or the most intelligent. This is the virus that has been corroding the University since Bologna.
We conclude. Professor Barrio tries to show in his exposition "some toxic elements of the socio-cultural atmosphere that negatively influence the work of the University, and that result in losing the reference of the value that truth has for the human being". For those who wish to read more, you can read and download for free his text at View of The truth is still very important, also at the University (usal.es) The technical reference is Theory of Education. Interuniversity Journal, 34(2), 63-85. https://doi.org/10.14201/teri.27524.
The authorFrancisco Otamendi
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