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".
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.
Francisco Otamendi-July 10, 2022-Reading time: 6minutes
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.
Alfonso Bullón de Mendoza repeats his presidency of the Catholic Association of Propagandists.
Bullón de Mendoza has been reelected as president of the Catholic Association of Propagandists (ACdP) during the IV Extraordinary General Assembly of the association.
Alfonso Bullón de Mendoza will continue, in the next four years, to head the ACdP and the works of the Association: the San Pablo CEU University Foundation, the Abat Oliba Foundation, the San Pablo Andalucía CEU Foundation, the Colegio Mayor Universitario San Pablo and the Ángel Herrera Oria Cultural Foundation.
Under his first mandate, the ACdP has given a key boost to its public dimension with initiatives such as the relaunching of the digital journal The Debate or the launching of nationwide communication campaigns, such as Vividores o Canceled. Evangelization in public life is a fundamental element of the charism of the Catholic Association of Propagandists.
Alfonso Bullón de Mendoza holds a PhD in History from the Complutense University of Madrid and is a professor at the CEU San Pablo University. He has served as rector of the CEU Cardenal Herrera University (2004-2007) and of the CEU San Pablo University (2007-2009). Since 2009, he has directed the CEU Institute of Historical Studies and the contemporary history journal 'Aportes'. He is also a full member of the Royal Academy of Doctors and a corresponding member of the Royal Academy of History, the Portuguese Academy of History and the Royal Sevillian Academy of Belles Lettres.
Eucharistic Revival in the United States: Time of Grace and Encounter with Jesus.
On June 19, 2022, the Solemnity of the Body and Blood of Christ, the National Eucharistic Revival began in the United States, a three-year initiative implemented by the Bishops to renew the love and knowledge of the Mystery of the Eucharist, the source and summit of the Catholic faith. The motto of this project is "My Flesh so that the world may have life" (Jn 6:51).
"Eucharistic Renewal is not a program or an event. It is a time of grace, a new encounter with Jesus and a moment to grow in our relationship with Him. We want to awaken in the Church in our country, and in the heart of every Catholic, what Pope St. John Paul II called, 'Eucharistic Awe,'" said Archbishop José Gomez, Archbishop of Los Angeles, on June 19 during his homily at the beginning of the Eucharistic Renaissance in Los Angeles.
From East to West, Phase One begins
The Solemnity of Corpus Christi in the USA marked the beginning of this movement in all the dioceses of the United States. From New York to Los Angeles solemn Masses were celebrated followed by Eucharistic processions in both cathedrals and parishes.
On the East Coast, in New York alone, 61 parishes held Eucharistic processions, preceded by Holy Mass.
At St. Patrick's Cathedral, Cardinal Timothy Dolan presided at the Liturgy followed by a procession along Manhattan's iconic Fifth Avenue.
On the West Coast, in Los Angeles, California, Archbishop Jose Gomez led the Mass and then the Eucharistic procession through the streets of downtown.
Why did this initiative arise?
Economic and social hardships in the U.S., such as political polarization after the 2020 elections and the pandemic, changed the lives and faith practices of thousands of parishioners.
Following the return to the new post-COVID normalcy, a high percentage of U.S. Catholics did not return to the Church. This fact was added to the increase in the number of "non-affiliated", "non-religious", or "Nones" (the "Nones") in the new generations.No religious affiliationThe pandemic is a multifactorial phenomenon, but the pandemic was the detonator and accelerator of this trend. Although this is a multifactorial phenomenon, the pandemic was a trigger and accelerator of this trend.
Another important factor was the lack of formation and profound ignorance of the Sacrament of the Eucharist among Americans. A 2019 survey by the Pew Research Center revealed that more than two-thirds of Catholics in this country consider the bread and wine consecrated during Mass to be only "symbols" of the Body and Blood of Christ. According to this surveyOnly 30% of Catholics believe in the Real Presence of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist.
This ignorance of the Mystery of the Faith is a visible reality in many North American parishes and translates into various aspects, from lack of reverence and piety before the Eucharistic Mystery to alienation from the Church.
Andrew Cozzens, Bishop of Crookston, Minnesota and chairman of the USCCB Committee on Evangelization and Catechesis (in charge of the Eucharistic Revival initiative), said: "This Eucharistic Revival is a spiritual response to the problems of our world. We are aware of the times of crisis we live in. It is a crisis rooted in the abandonment of God and faith. It is a crisis that manifests itself in wars, mass shootings, high suicide rates among our youth and moral struggles of various kinds... The list could go on and on. We are living in difficult times.
Timing
Against this backdrop, the North American prelates decided to launch the National Eucharistic Revival, which began on June 19, 2022. It consists of three parts: the year of the diocesan renaissance (2022-2023); the year of the parish renaissance (2023-2024) and the year of the National Eucharistic Congress (2024-2025).
During the first year, the bishops will organize various events and initiatives at the diocesan level, including diocesan Eucharistic congresses, catecheses and days of prayer centered on the mystery of the Eucharist in the life of the Church.
Likewise, the dioceses will have groups of evangelizers who, after a period of formation, will go to the parishes in the second phase to provide formation. The dioceses will also prepare and distribute catechetical material on the subject as well as web sites dedicated to the topic.
In the second phase, the year of parish renaissance (2023-2024), parishes and their parishioners will be the protagonists. The goal is to foster Eucharistic communities through Eucharistic adoration, prayer groups, parish processions and catechesis on the Mass and the Real Presence of Our Lord in the Eucharist.
Finally, in the last phase (2024-2025), the North American Church will gather from July 17-24, 2024 in Indianapolis, Indiana, to celebrate the National Eucharistic Congress. Thousands of Catholics are expected to attend this event, who at its conclusion will be sent back to their dioceses and parishes as Eucharistic missionaries.
Tools for Eucharistic Rebirth
Two important pillars of this initiative are the document "Mystery of the Eucharist in the Life of the Church" and cyberspace, especially the websites of each diocese.
The document "Mystery of the Eucharist in the life of the Church." was prepared by the North American Episcopal Conference and contains catechetical and doctrinal aspects on the source and summit of our faith. It is written in simple language and is therefore an accessible tool for different communities or parishes to prepare themselves to live this time of grace.
In addition, a special portal has been created in English and Spanish to report everything related to this movement at the national level: https://www.eucharisticrevival.org The site contains informative videos, newsletters, catechetical information and different forms of participation.
In his homily at the beginning of the Eucharistic Renaissance in Los Angeles, Bishop José Gómez said, quoting St. Josemaría Escrivá: "Jesus stayed in the Eucharist for love of you. He stayed, so that you might eat him, visit him and tell him your things, and by treating him in prayer at the Tabernacle and in the reception of the sacrament, fall more in love with him every day and make other souls follow the same path (cf. St. Josemaría Escrivá, The Forge, 887).
In these next few years we will have an incredible opportunity to renew our devotion and our personal love for Our Lord in the Eucharist. Let us ask for the grace to grow in our devotion, renewing our faith in the Real Presence of Jesus in Communion so that it may be the center and root of our Christian life," concluded Gomez.
Christian SchüllerMaria Taferl is nicknamed "the confessional of the diocese".
On the banks of the Danube stands the Marian shrine of Maria Taferl. We spoke with Christian Schüller, one of the managers of this holy place, the second most important in Austria.
Fritz Brunthaler-July 9, 2022-Reading time: 7minutes
On the north bank of the Danube, not far from the famous wine-growing region of the Danube, the Wachauvisible from afar and with a wide view of the Alps, rises the Marian sanctuary of Maria Taferl as "the jewel on the Taferlberg (Taferl mountain)".. After Mariazellis the second most important shrine in Austria and the largest regional shrine in Lower Austria. Between 250,000 and 300,000 visitors come each year to pray in the minor basilica before the small image of the Pietà of Our Lady of Sorrows.
Devotion to Maria Taferl dates back to the 17th century. In 1633, pastor Thomas Pachmann wanted to cut down an oak tree without noticing the wooden plaque with a cross hanging from it. Miraculously, he was unable to fell the tree, but in trying to do so he injured both legs. When he saw the cross, he asked God for forgiveness and was healed on the spot. Nine years later, Judge Alexander Schinnagl, in a situation of spiritual distress, replaced the cross with an image he had in his home, and as a result obtained relief and healing. When the dry oak began to green again in 1651 and news of apparitions and healings spread, construction of the church was begun in the Baroque style in 1660 and completed more than 60 years later.
In the 17th and 18th centuries, the influx of pilgrims was so great that sometimes twenty-five priests were needed to attend to the pilgrims. It is said that in the centenary of 1760, 700 processions and 19,000 masses were celebrated. The numerous votive offerings and miracle books preserved in the treasury of the pilgrimage church still bear witness to the popularity of the pilgrimage to Maria Taferl.
Under Emperor Joseph II, pilgrimages were banned, and the church, which until then had belonged to Passau in Germany, passed to the Austrian diocese of St. Pölten and became a parish church. After this decline of pilgrimages, also due to the Napoleonic wars, Maria Taferl experienced a revival in the 20th century and especially in the last decades: as in other places in the world, people come from all over the world, sometimes after a long journey, to pray before the altar with the stylized oak, to open their hearts, to receive the sacrament of penance and to participate in Holy Mass.
The Maria Taferl shrine on the banks of the Danube
We spoke with Christian Schüller, who has been instrumental in the management of Maria Taferl for more than three decades as a member of the parish council and the church council, about his experiences. Since 2000, he has been voluntarily responsible for the latest renovation and for the treasury and archives of the sanctuary.
Mr. Schüller, you have lived and worked in Maria Taferl for most of your life. What is so special about this place?
On the one hand, it has become my second home, and on the other, it is a place of grace where countless prayers are poured out. A place that attracts many people with worries and needs, but who also come to give thanks. Even for me, a local, Maria Taferl is an enormous source of strength.
All these years he has worked voluntarily in the parish, as a layman, and he helps in everything that is necessary, he opens the church in the morning and closes it in the afternoon, sometimes he also acts as an altar boy. Have you acquired a special relationship with the Blessed Virgin through this path?
Even as a child I had a deep relationship with the Virgin Mary. I remember the wonderful devotions of the month of May, and above all the Marian "jozos" that I still have in my ears today.
And then, at Maria Taferl, you really can't help but become a devotee of Our Lady of Sorrows. Every day I look at her on the high altar and thank her. But I also ask her for many things. And I am firmly convinced that she has helped me a lot in my life.
For a long time you have been the parish priest's representative on the parish council, that is to say, the second in charge of running the shrine. Can you summarize your activity in some way? What has been the most beautiful thing? What has been the most difficult?
The pilgrimage site has been looked after for the past 50 years by the so-called Hünfelder Oblaten (Hünfeld Oblates). Due to the constant coming and going of the religious, who are here for about seven years on average, I have become something of a guardian and administrator of this place of grace.
Over the years, the tasks have expanded, so that today I am in charge of the financial agenda, the archives, the paraments, the library and the treasury, and really everything that has to do with the church.
The most beautiful thing for me are the moving stories of the people when they bring votive offerings and thus present their gratitude or their petitions to the Virgin.
The most difficult thing is undoubtedly to ensure that we can cover the financial expenses. Since we don't own any land like the surrounding monasteries, for example, we have to finance the employees and all operating expenses with the income from donations. And that is sometimes really very tight.
Up to 300,000 visitors come to Maria Taferl every year. Do they come to pray, or do they come for relaxation? Can you say something about pilgrimages in recent decades?
Sometimes it is noticeable that pilgrimage, or perhaps also hiking, as people call it, is back in fashion. And so, hiking moves people, quite unconsciously, to say a prayer, to collect themselves for prayer and to light a candle. Of course, the geographical location of Maria Taferl also plays a role. You can read many touching stories in books of testimonies, and get an idea of the pilgrimage, hike or bus trip to Maria Taferl.
Are there special events for pilgrims in the church, or in the parish? Is it possible to say that many young people also come?
Of course, there must be special events in the sanctuary. It is a much sought after church for weddings (about 40 or 50 a year), and baptisms (about 60 a year). There are also confirmations and concerts. The parish life itself (we have about 800 faithful), it must be said frankly, takes a back seat to the intense activity of the pilgrimages.
Young people also like to come to Maria Taferl because, for example, they appreciate the range of the five Sunday Masses. In the time before COVID19, we also had Masses for families, which used to be attended by up to 400 people.
Image by Maria Taferl
Do you remember any special event or encounter related to pilgrimages?
Many of the pilgrimage groups have been coming to Maria Taferl for generations (mostly so-called votive pilgrimages). Over the years, many participants in the pilgrimage groups have become friends of the shrine, and one is happy when one reads in the weekly program that a group from here or there is coming to this holy place this week.
And the young people also come, and so this tradition is also passed on to the next generation. Many take a souvenir, holy water or a gingerbread for those who have stayed at home, to let them know: I was at Taferl.
Since the fire of 1870, the parish of Maria Taferl has also been on pilgrimage to the neighboring parish of Neukirchen.
There are about 20 confessionals in the church. Are all of them still necessary? How is the sacrament of forgiveness experienced here? Do the faithful express their satisfaction at being able to go to confession here?
Maria Taferl has been nicknamed "the confessional of the diocese" for decades. Until a few years ago, two or three priests always had to be in the confessionals on Sundays. People know that at Maria Taferl they can always go to confession. Nowadays, if someone needs to go to confession, they can press a bell that alerts the priest on duty at their smartphone.
Many young couples also like to go to confession here, especially before they get married, and often because they are afraid to confess to their own parish priest. Maria Taferl without confession would be unimaginable.
You are responsible for the treasury, can you describe it in more detail? Approximately how many votive offerings are there? Do you remember any special reactions from visitors? What is your favorite piece in the treasury?
Especially in places of pilgrimage, people like to bring votive offerings. As a form of thanksgiving or to accompany a petition. Even today, although not as much as in the past, some are still brought. The treasure of our basilica is a safe. But it is rather a treasure of faith, because behind each piece there is a story and a petition. That is why each piece is attributed the same value, whether it is a valuable diamond ring from a widow of good standing or a teddy bear brought by a child because his mother has recovered from a serious illness.
These are truly moving stories. Adding up all the votive pictures, there must be a few thousand objects. Many of the visitors also come to show their grandchildren or great-grandchildren the votive offerings of previous generations. Personally, I really like the antique paraments, most of which were made and embroidered by members of the imperial household themselves.
Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI called Maria Taferl "God's lighthouse" in a message of greeting. The lighthouse fits very well with the geographical location on the Danube. Can we say that this also applies to the spiritual dimension, that Maria Taferl also contributes to the spiritual renewal of the country?
I believe that Maria Taferl certainly contributes a lot to the spiritual renewal of the country. Everyone and, dare I say it almost with certainty, who is in Maria Taferl also enters the church. Even if sometimes you get the feeling that people behave as if they were in a museum, moreover, as I mentioned at the beginning, perhaps unconsciously they also say a short prayer, make the sign of the cross or light a candle.
And then it is worthwhile again to make a gesture to Our Lady when closing the church at night, and to thank her for all this. "Mary with the beloved Child, give us all your blessing," with the ejaculation so widespread in the German language, "Maria mit dem Kindlein lieb, uns allen deinen Segen gib."
Pope Francis will visit several towns in Italy next September.
On Saturday, September 24, he will travel to Assisi to participate in the event "The Economy of Francis" and on the following day he will close the National Eucharistic Congress in Matera.
AhNow you can enjoy a 20% discount on your subscription to Rome Reports Premiumthe international news agency specializing in the activities of the Pope and the Vatican.
Feminine mystical figures. The experience of God as incarnation
Carolina Blázquez Casado O.S.A. and professor of the Faculty of Theology at the San Dámaso Ecclesiastical University, presents in this article the work Feminine Mystical Figures by Louis Bouyer, which deals with the figures of women such as Hadewijch of Antwerp, Teresa of Avila, Teresa of the Child Jesus, Elizabeth of the Trinity and Edith Stein.
Louis Bouyer is an extremely interesting figure in 20th century theology. He actively participated in the theological renewal movement that preceded the Second Vatican Council and also lived through - it would be better to say in his case, suffered through - the difficult post-conciliar period in the Church.
Among his valuable contributions and responsibilities, we can highlight that Louis Bouyer actively participated in the launching of the Center for Liturgical Pastoral Care in Paris, was professor of History of Spirituality at the Catholic Institute of the same city, was appointed consultant to the Council and member of the ecclesial organism for its application in liturgical matters and the reform of the Eucharistic Canon, was appointed consultant to the Council and member of the ecclesial organism for its application in liturgical matters and reform of the Eucharistic Canon, was elected by Paul VI as a member, for two terms, of the International Theological Commission and, together with Balthasar, Rahner and Ratzinger, among other of the most relevant European theologians of the time, was co-initiator of the magazine Communio.
Gradually, however, from the end of the 1970s and 1980s, he was withdrawn from public activity, especially in Europe, until he was relegated to oblivion. This reaction was provoked by the incomprehension of his harsh critical position in relation to the ecclesial drift, mainly in liturgical, disciplinary and ecclesial matters. His life can be read as a process of identification with the kenosis of Christ in the light of the Paschal MysteryThe work he wrote under the same name was one of the author's most important works on liturgical matters and an invaluable contribution to the rediscovery of Easter and its celebration as a central mystery of Christian life.
Bouyer, throughout his life, lost everything until he suffered, in his last years, an extreme situation of loneliness and isolation, tragically aggravated by the Alzheimer's disease from which he died and which completely veiled his capacity for reflection and interrelation.
There are traces of a certain prophecy in Bouyer. He intuited, in advance, some difficulties and problems that, in his present, were not yet so clearly seen. This sharpness in seeing beyond, together with his difficult and ironic character, which was often expressed in a scathing and provocative way, fed this incomprehension and certain reserve towards his person, of which we have just spoken.
It is in this 21st century that his figure and his theological thought are being rediscovered and re-understood much more favorably. Probably, his tendency to always present a diachronic perspective of all issues explains this audacious capacity to interpret reality. The past always offers clues to foresee what the future will be in the present.
Bouyer was in love with history, with the development of processes - in all his books he devotes a great deal of space to the historical analysis of the development of content - and with the evolution of concepts. This was an inheritance from his beloved Cardinal Newmann, of whom he always considered himself a disciple, and from his common Reformed education.
This was also, paradoxically, the compass that led him to Catholicism, recognizing in the historical dogmatic and theological development the permanence of an element of perenniality that kept alive and referred to the first and unique event of revelation, the Christ event. In this sense, the discovery and understanding of the authentic meaning of Tradition was key.
He was born into a Lutheran family in Paris in 1913. He found and grew his personal experience of faith and his vocation in Protestantism and was ordained a Protestant pastor in 1936. He exercised his pastoral ministry in Strasbourg and Paris. He had as professors the best Lutheran theologians of the 20th century and also had great contact with members of other Christian confessions, which awakened in him an admiration and esteem for the Orthodox and Catholic tradition, especially for the liturgical and mystical dimension of the faith.
After a strong personal and spiritual crisis that led him to recognize that the principles of the Protestant faith: grace alone, faith alone, Christ alone, Scripture alone could only be lived in fullness within the Catholic Church - a theme that can be found described and substantiated in his work, also published by Encuentro, From Protestantism to the Church- resigned as a pastor and joined the Catholic Church. In 1944 he was ordained a priest and, from then on, he dedicated himself to the study and teaching of theology and other humanistic disciplines in various universities around the world.
His theological and literary output is enormous. He has authored more than thirty volumes on theological topics, a huge list of articles, has written four fictional novels about the quest for the Holy Grail, fascinated by Tolkien's legacy and his work, and has been the author of many other works. The Lord of the Ringsof whom he was a disciple and friend at Oxford.
Within theology, the themes of his works are extremely varied: dogmatic, liturgy, bible, spirituality, history, ecumenism, states of life, pastoral... Many of his writings were conceived as trilogies, such as the Trinitarian trilogy: The Invisible Father. Approches du mystère de la divinité. (Paris 1976); Le Fils éternel. Théologie de la Parole de Dieu et christologie. (Paris 1974); Le Consolateur. The Spirit and Grace (Paris 1980); the economic trilogy: The Church of God. Corps du Christ et Temple de l'Esprit. (Paris 1970); Le Trone de la Sagesse. Essai sur la signification du culte marial. (Paris 1957); Cosmos. The World and the Globe of God (Paris 1982); the trilogy on theological method: Gnosis. The knowledge of God in writing. (Paris 1988); Misterion. Du mystère a la mystique (Paris 1986); Sophia ou le Monde en Dieu (Paris 1994); the trilogy of states of life: The meaning of priestly life (Paris 1962); The meaning of monastic life (Paris 1950); Introduction to the spiritual life. Prècis de théologie ascetique et mystique. (Paris 1960) and, in my opinion, we can also establish a trilogy on the feminine.
This trilogy would be composed of the first volume of dogmatic character, his work on anthropology dedicated to Mary: Le Trône de la SagesseThe second volume has an ecclesiological theme: Mystery and women's ministryParis 1976; and the third, which is the one recently published for the first time in Spanish: Female mystical figures (Paris 1989) with a more existential, testimonial and vital orientation.
His interest in the feminine
Why this interest in the subject of women in Louis Bouyer?
We can find two very different but complementary motivations.
The first is of a strictly theological nature. Louis Bouyer has come to the conviction that, in the history of revelation, of God's relations with the created order, God, who in speaking of himself never allows himself to be linked to any sex as a way of defending his transcendence, relates to creation and, especially, to the human being, assuming the masculine role. We see this, above all, in the spousal metaphor and it will find its fulfillment in the incarnation of the Word. To describe God's relationship with man through this metaphor, God identifies himself with the male, while the created being assumes the feminine role. God always sees Mary before him when he looks at the creature, from whom he expects a free yes of love that allows him to pour out the love that, from all eternity, precedes each one of us, is the reason for our existence and, at the same time, waits to be accepted and consummated in interpersonal communion. The feminine, as an expression of the freedom that consents, that receives, that welcomes the first gift, becomes, therefore, for Bouyer, the paradigm of the Christian soul.
There is also another reason to explain this predilection for women in Bouyer and it has to do with his own life journey. He is an only child, being the only survivor of the four children of the Bouyer couple. Louis describes his childhood marked by a very special relationship with his mother, who died young, leaving him an orphan at the age of 12.
Such is the shock that this event provokes in little Louis that he loses his speech and his connection with reality and his father has to send him out of Paris, to the countryside, to the Lorenne region, to the house of a family close to his mother. There, for a year, thanks to the contact with the beauty of the environment that surrounds him and the company of a young girl with whom he will fall madly in love, the youngest daughter of this family, Elisabeth, will come out of this dark night and will begin to enjoy life again.
The beauty and tenderness of the feminine will always be for him a companion of grace and life and a healing reminder of the presence and tenderness of the mother. In fact, several women accompanied Bouyer's life through a deep and time-tested friendship, he will expressly speak of Julien Green and Elisabeth Goudge in his Memoirs. To the latter he dedicates the book Mystery and ministry of women. The bond between Louis Bouyer and Hedwige d'Ursel, Marquise de Maupeou Monbail, to whom he dedicates the book of Female mystical figuresis totally unknown to us.
Female mystical figures
Title: Feminine mystical figures
AuthorLouis Bouyer
Pages: 172
Editorial: Encounter
City: Madrid
Year: 2022
The book
This book, written in 1989 and republished several times in France, is the first time it has been translated into Spanish. The author presents it as an attempt at critical dialogue with the women's liberation movement that had awakened with great force in the United States and Europe throughout the twentieth century.
In the prologue, the author clearly presents his starting points. On the one hand, he distances himself, with a very negative assessment, from attempts to seek recognition of the dignity and capacity of women by fighting for equality with men. This is a real failure, because it means the renunciation of the peculiar and unique way of living the human from the feminine condition.
For Bouyer, women are endowed with a special way of seeing and interpreting reality and, therefore, also of living the religious experience. Hence, the objective that she be and act like men, renouncing the perspective of complementarity between the sexes, is a serious harm to both woman and man, who needs her, in the fullness of her uniqueness and peculiarity, to become himself and thus build society and the Kingdom together.
On the other hand, the author affirms that, contrary to what many believe and proclaim, Christianity has within itself a potential of custody and respect for women that has made it possible for many women, throughout the history of the Church, to open new paths of spirituality, starting from their personal and genuine experience of encounter and communion with Christ. From here, they have exercised a significant leadership in the Church from the paradox, many times, of a hidden life.
Many other names could have been chosen, but Bouyer opted for these five figures, of whom only the first, the Beguine Hadewijch of Antwerp, is not a Carmelite. Through them, we are offered a diachronic perspective on the theme of the role of women in the Church, since the first mystic places us in the 13th century and, with Edith Stein, the last witness, we move to the middle of the 20th century.
In reality, in the various chapters of the book we do not find a biographical account or a hagiography in the usual sense. Although there is always a brief reference to the most outstanding events in the life of each of these women, in reality, Bouyer dwells on the particular spiritual experience that each one lives, in her concrete context and with her own circumstances. This personal experience of encountering the love of God manifested in Christ is what amazes and surprises the author and what manifests that particular way in which women live their religious experience.
In them, Bouyer will say, the event of grace of the love of God giving himself to man is welcomed and received with a woman's heart that grasps the life of God with such a capacity for acceptance that it renews the event of the incarnation, God becomes present in the world through them who become, by recognizing themselves as daughters and accepting, moved by Love to be wives, mothers of Christ himself, giving birth to him for and in the world; the concrete world in which they live and for which they care and to which they give themselves.
Bouyer wants us to recognize, in each of them, this particular relationship with God which, being deeply personal, opens a path of grace for all men. They are the teachers of the great schools of spirituality in the Church, schools which, in many cases, have been formulated conceptually and made known in a methodical and expository way by men, their disciples.
Louis Bouyer's writing style is not easy. He mixes a serious academic theological language, in which, in addition, he takes for granted a lot of information that he handles with ease but that most of the readers, much less cultivated than him -he enjoyed a tremendous intellectual capacity and a vast theological and humanistic culture-, do not know so much, with a direct, colloquial, ironic language. For example, some opinions about "our saint", Teresa of Jesus, and about Spain -statements made, moreover, by a Frenchman (although Bouyer had Spanish heritage and showed a special sympathy for the Spanish character that he claimed to know well, as well as our country)- may seem somewhat proud.
Another very positive aspect of the book is the constant bibliographical references about these women and about themselves. The selection of texts that the author makes of each one awakens the desire for more, to come into contact with the direct words of each one of these women and thus get to know them first hand.
Traits common to these women
In conclusion, I would like to highlight three elements common to these five women, which each lives in a particular way but in which they coincide and which may be the reason for Bouyer's choice of these five figures:
Unique experience of God
Each of them has lived a unique experience of encounter with God in which her feminine disposition has been the key to grasp something proper to the divine Mystery: Hadewijch's communion with Christ that introduces us to Trinitarian love, Therese's contemplation of God through the contemplation of Christ's humanity, Therese of Lisieux's relationship of total trust and abandonment in the love of God the Father, Elizabeth's call to live in praise of the Glory of the Trinity and Edith Stein's recognition of God's Love and Wisdom manifested, in its fullness, in the redemptive cross of Christ.
Boldness to respond to the challenges of his time.
Each one of them traces an itinerary of encounter with God for the men and women of their time, of the present in which they live, assuming some aspects proper to that historical moment and, at the same time, breaking with a unique audacity with the molds, schemes or clichés that could oppress the novelty of the Spirit to keep alive the actuality of the event of Christ, to the point of being themselves renewers of Christian spirituality.
Guided by the sources of revelation: Scripture and Tradition
The light that guides this path is not the genius of a philosophical or theological preparation, it is not an abstract academic discourse, but the experience of a life confronted with the Word of God, guided by it and nourished by the Tradition of the Church, especially liturgical life. The constant return to the origin of Christian life allows an attractive originality that connects with the source of revelation: the love of God and the object of this: the restless heart of man who seeks, still groping, the God for whom he was made.
In short, the author's objective and the value and timeliness of this publication is that, through its reading, the constant interior rebirth that women have provoked in the Church can be awakened and kept alive, thus pointing out a way to clarify the always important and delicate question of the role of women today, in the world and in the Church, in the face of the challenges of our time.
Msgr. Fernando Vérgez, L.C.: "We need witnesses to the Gospel who know how to shake consciences".
In this interview with Omnes, Msgr. Vérgez Alzaga talks about some features of the functioning of the small Vatican State, the mission of those who work in it, the consequences of the pandemic, the desire for world peace, the ecological challenge and the reform of the Roman Curia. In the near future: "great challenges for the Church".
"Everything is at the service of the Pontiff and the Church": this is how Spanish Archbishop Fernando Vérgez Alzaga, L.C., president of the Governorate of Vatican City, comments that he will be created cardinal by Pope Francis on August 27, his service in the Roman Curia for more than fifty years.
Your Excellency, you have been serving in the Roman Curia for fifty years, having joined the Congregation for Religious and Secular Institutes as an official. How have you lived this trajectory that has run parallel to your vocation as a Legionary of Christ?
-In our service to the Roman Curia we must never lose sight of the reason for which we have been called to office. To be the Pope's closest collaborators in order to enable him to exercise his universal ministry over the Church.
Working daily in the Roman Curia means, therefore, to be the interpreter of the requests coming from the local Churches all over the world.
I have experienced responsibility as a call to mission, thus living my religious consecration.
My field of apostolate has been, in part, within the Roman Curia. In working in the various Dicasteries we do not lose our identity as bishop, priest, religious, layman, but everything is placed at the service of the Pontiff and the Church.
Among your various assignments, you have managed various sectors of the Vatican State, from APSA to telecommunications, to the current presidency of the Governatorato. What aspect would you highlight of the service you have provided and continue to provide?
-Working with passion is undoubtedly one of the characteristics that should characterize those who participate in the various bodies of the Roman Curia. It is natural, however, that there are tasks for which we are better suited according to our personal abilities.
Sometimes, we are asked to run certain offices or agencies, such as the large structure of the Governor's Office or simply the Telecommunications and Information Systems Directorate. I must say that working in the latter directorate at a time of profound technological and IT transition has been exciting and attractive. There are still many challenges to face, but it is precisely in them that one grows and matures from a human and professional point of view. Just think of the defense against hacker attacks, which are becoming more and more cunning and organized.
Seen from the outside, it is often difficult to understand how this small city-state is organized. Could you illustrate, even with similes, the role it plays and how the Vatican functions?
-To understand Vatican City State, one must consider its nature: it has been functional to the mission of the Successor of Peter from the beginning. If this is forgotten, one thinks of the State as an entity of record, due to its geographical extension, or as a postcard country, to be included in the tour of Europe.
The Vatican, as it is simply called, is the reflection of a reality rooted in ecclesial communion, in the universality of the Church.
If one wants to compare my role with an external structure in the international sphere, we must think of a governor of a State. A figure who has powers, by delegation of the Pope, to carry out the function of guiding and managing a series of diversified realities that depend on the Pontifical Commission for Vatican City State, which also promulgates the general regulations. I would like to recall that legislative provisions are issued by the Pope, or on his behalf, by the Pontifical Commission for Vatican City State.
The exercise of executive power is delegated to the President of the Pontifical Commission, who takes the name of President of the Government.
When he consecrated you bishop on November 15, 2013, Pope Francis also entrusted you with the spiritual care of State employees. What does this paternal accompaniment consist of in a community made up of many souls and different living conditions?
It is natural that Vatican City reflects the reality of the universal Church, so that all its constituent bodies are represented in it. Caring for the spiritual care of employees means accompanying them on their journey of union and fidelity to Christ.
This portion of the People of God needs pastors as do all the parts that make up the Church, so we must not neglect the promotion of pastoral care and training to motivate people to imitate the example of the Master.
Recently it has also been announced that you will be created a cardinal, which will take place on August 27th. With what feelings have you welcomed this decision of Pope Francis?
With great gratitude to God and to the Pope for having called me to serve him even more closely. I received the news with surprise and gratitude for a gift that came to me so suddenly. However, I am aware that it carries with it a greater responsibility and an ever greater dedication to the good of the universal Church.
As for those who work in the service of the Apostolic See, how important is the recognition of their contribution to evangelization?
The collaborators and those who are part of the working community of the Vatican must, by their very nature, be missionaries. This is demanded by the nature of the structure of which they are a part, so there is no doubt that all must share their talents in order to put them at the service of the Pontiff's mission.
The new Apostolic Constitution "Praedicate Evangelium".The title of the book, already in its title, underlines the aspect of ad gentes of the Roman Curia, so that it is in the very missionary nature of the Church that the recent reform also finds its realization. For this reason, it is important never to lose sight of the evangelizing tension implied in Christ's own request to his disciples.
We have gone through two years of a very painful pandemic and yet it is difficult to consider it over. What has been the impact on the Vatican and how have you managed the development of Covid-19?
Certainly, the Covid-19 pandemic was not an easy challenge, both because of its severity and because it took us all by surprise.
We had to deal with an emergency that went from being a health emergency to a social and economic one, with considerable repercussions also from the human point of view.
The recrudescence of the various waves of the virus has not yet been completely extinguished, and the damage it has left behind must be reckoned with.
The last few years have been particularly difficult not only for Covid-19 healthcare personnel and patients and their families, but also for workers and people in disadvantaged socioeconomic situations.
Numerous studies show that loss of work productivity, one of the effects of Covid, is among the leading causes of poor mental health. Y
On December 31, 2021, Pope Francis, during the Te Deum At the end of the year Thanksgiving celebration, he stressed: "This time of pandemic has increased the feeling of bewilderment throughout the world. After a first phase of reaction, in which we felt solidarity in the same boat, the temptation of "every man for himself" has spread. But thank God, we have reacted again, with a sense of responsibility.
The pandemic is a test to demonstrate our responsibility towards others, to bear witness to our coherence with the values of the Gospel and to exercise charity towards our brothers and sisters.
The world is currently experiencing a de facto "third world war", as Pope Francis has also said. What can be done to put an end to conflicts and restore peace?
Pope Francis never ceases to call for peace and to ask governments to take decisions to restore peace in countries where there are conflicts.
Unfortunately, there is not only the war in Ukraine. There are many scattered foci in different geographical areas, where no other solution is sought than the use of weapons.
Pope Francis in each of his speeches or meetings always tries to draw attention to the war ravaging Ukraine. Whether it is to achieve peace or a truce to silence the weapons, or to promote the reception of refugees and those suffering under the bombs. In his Wednesday general audiences, the Pontiff never fails to recall the dramatic situation of populations exhausted by the consequences of conflicts. Even in that of Wednesday, June 15, the Pope asked not to forget the tormented people of Ukraine and not to get used to living as if war were something far away.
One of the themes also close to Pope Francis is ecology, well developed in the Encyclical Laudato si'. How is this declined in the "management" and administration of the Vatican State?
The Vatican City State, since the last pontificates, has always been attentive to the implementation of alternative energies and the protection of the environment.
With the pontificate of Pope Francis and the publication of the Encyclical Laudato sìThe commitment has become even more important. I recall the installation of photovoltaic panels on the roof of the Paul VI Hall to produce electricity from the sun and also in the service canteen of the Governorate. Also the construction of water systems in the Vatican Gardens to optimize resources and eliminate waste and the creation of the ecological island that has allowed the selective collection of waste that, from being a cost, has become a resource.
I also stress that, as a State, we are ahead of the benchmarks set to achieve a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions of at least 55%, compared to 1990, as set by the European Green Deal targets. We have also opted for zero plastic throughout the Vatican.
A few weeks ago the new Apostolic Constitution on the Praedicate Evangelium of the Roman Curia came into force. Why is this new reform of Pope Francis important and what perspectives does it open up?
As I said before, one of the elements that characterize the Apostolic Constitution is the missionary. This means that it is necessary to be a missionary both in countries where the Gospel was proclaimed centuries ago and where it is in danger of disappearing due to secularization, and in those lands that have not yet accepted it.
The other fundamental element of the Constitution is the synodalityEach one, according to his task, is called to participate in the mission of the Church. Hence the need for pastoral care for those who work in the Curia. It is a call to conversion, especially for those who work most closely with the Pope. The Constitution has also tried to eliminate a certain careerist attitude in order to foster a mentality of service that does not demand to be rewarded with promotions.
As the next cardinal, how do you see the future of the Church?
The future of the Church is in God's hands, so we have nothing to fear. We are only cooperators of Providence, we must act as disciples who keep our eyes fixed on the Master.
The near future holds great challenges for the Church, but we must not forget that all of history has been characterized by dramatic and complex periods. We must never lose sight of the missionary nature of the Church.
There will be an increasing need for heralds witnessing to the Gospel who will shake consciences and call to God people immersed in secularized societies in which certain values are forgotten, absent or denied.
Last July 4, Independence Day in the United States, a man opened fire with his rifle, leaving six dead and 25 wounded near Chicago (Illinois). Three more were killed and seven wounded in a shooting in Gary, Indiana, and another shooting in Philadelphia. Greg Erlandson, director of Catholic News Service, analyzes gun violence in the country.
As of mid-June 2022, there have already been more than 260 mass shootings in the United States, defined as four or more fatalities or injuries. But three recent mass shootings - at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York, with 10 killed, at a Uvalde schoolThe deaths of 21 people, including 19 fourth-graders, and of four at a hospital in Tulsa, Oklahoma, have shaken the nation.
A satirical website called The Onion points to many of the mass shootings with the same headline, "'There's no way to prevent this,' says the only nation where this happens regularly."
Americans' obsession with guns and their willingness to use them against others and themselves is increasingly seen as a public health crisis,
but there is little political will to address it. It is believed that there are now more guns than people in the United States. An estimated 42% of U.S. households own guns. Those that do are likely to own more than one.
Gun sales soar
What is it about Americans and guns? Some blame it on our Wild West myths, cowboys and gunfighters. Some blame Hollywood or video games. Some blame it on a society that no longer trusts its police, fears its government and fears its fellow citizens. Gun sales skyrocket during the pandemic. Gun sales skyrocket after massacres. Gun sales skyrocket in good times and bad, but especially in bad times.
Guns are talismans of safety. One of the many ironies of America's gun culture is that the solution to shootings is often more guns. Lawmakers in Ohio and other states are now proposing that teachers carry guns while teaching.
The best-selling rifle in the United States is the semi-automatic, often called the AR-15. It is an imitation of a military rifle, and kills in an ugly way, blowing targets away instead of a clean entry and exit wound. Some of the 10-year-olds shot in Uvalde had to be identified by their shoes or clothing because their heads were unidentifiable.
More children die than police officers
However, the real horror of America's gun idolatry is not mass shootings. It is the fact that there are over 40,000 gun deaths each year, and over 50% of all gun deaths are suicides. Guns don't just kill bad guys or strangers. Guns kill their owners.
In a recent speech, President Joseph Biden stated that, over the past 20 years, "more school-age children have been killed by firearms than serving police officers and active military combined." There were 42,507 deaths of children ages 5 to 18. Of police and military: 29,110.
The U.S. bishops have consistently advocated stricter gun laws since at least 1975. In a letter to Congress on June 3, following the three recent massacres, the bishops said they supported a total ban on assault weapons and limiting civilian access to high-capacity guns and ammunition magazines. They also cited their support for universal background checks for all gun purchases.
Impact of violence
"Gun violence is a pro-life issue when you start looking at the statistics and the impact that gun violence has on lives and the destructive impact it has on society," said Sister Mercy Mary Haddad, president of the Catholic Health Association.
But with Congress in a political stalemate and Republicans blocking potential legislation to limit access to guns, many Americans sympathize with the bishop's outrage Daniel Flores of Brownsville (Texas) at the news of the Uvalde massacre:
"Don't tell me guns aren't the problem, people are. I'm sick of hearing it," Bishop Flores tweeted May 25. "Darkness first takes our children who then kill our children, using guns that are easier to obtain than aspirin. We sacralize the instruments of death and then are surprised that death uses them."
The beatification of modern genetics pioneer Jérôme Lejeune is very near. On January 21, in the year 21 of the 21st century (three times 21), - a date that some see as particularly significant because Lejeune was the discoverer of trisomy 21, the cause of Down syndrome - Pope Francis accepted the promulgation of the decree that recognizes the heroic character of the virtues of Jerome Lejeune.
The French physician Jérôme Lejeune, considered the father of modern genetics, is Venerable in the Catholic Church. The liturgical norms do not permit the worship of servants of God declared Venerable, but from the moment of the declaration, suffrages for his soul must cease, since the Holy See has judged that he lived the Christian virtues to a heroic degree.
January 21, in the year 21 of the 21st century (three times 21), - a date that some see as particularly significant, because Lejeune was the discoverer of trisomy 21, the cause of the Down syndrome-Pope Francis accepted the promulgation of the decree that recognizes the heroic nature of the virtues of Jerome Lejeune.
Before that, the positive vote of the Commission of Theologians, and later that of the bishops and cardinals of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, presided over by Cardinal Marcello Semeraro since October of last year, had taken place. For his beatification, all that is missing is a miracle, that is, an event that cannot be explained by natural causes and which is attributed to his intercession. Most of them are of a medical nature, and in any case must be physical, according to the norms of the Church.
– Supernatural Association of Friends of LejeuneThe Archbishop of Paris, the promoter of a process that was initiated on June 28, 2007 by the then Archbishop of Paris, Cardinal Vingt-Trois, expressed her joy for this "decisive step towards the beatification" of Lejeune. He added that it is also "an immense joy for all those in the world who follow his luminous example, dedicating themselves to the service of the sick and of life, with unconditional love, and also for those who are passionate about the truth.
Jean Marie Le Mené, president of the Foundation that bears the name of the French geneticist, said that "this decision is a great encouragement to continue the work of Professor Jérôme Lejeune in the service of life. The quality of a civilization is measured by the rest it has for its weakest members".
The Foundation recalls, in a note made public in recent weeks, that the announcement comes in an alarming context for respect for life in France, since the bioethics law still under discussion in Parliament increasingly objectifies and dehumanizes the embryo, which is the youngest member of the human species".
Indeed, "the struggle for respect for the embryo was permanent throughout his life in Jérôme Lejeune" ̶ recalls the note ̶ , a person who was "historical opponent of the Veil Law that legalized abortion in France in 1975, and who had seen the first bioethics law in 1994, just before his death, as a researcher and physician, which would lead to in vitro fertilization and embryo research."
In tune with St. John Paul II
The French geneticist was the first president of the Pontifical Academy for Life, appointed by St. John Paul II, and the Foundation emphasizes that the Catholic Church thus recognizes "an exceptional man of science, who placed his intelligence, his talent and his faith at the service of the dignity of people injured by a mental disability, including children with trisomy 21".
Pablo Siegrist Ridruejo, director of the Jérôme Lejeune Foundation in Spain, where there has been a permanent delegation since 2015, is one of the most authoritative voices to speak about the French physician and researcher. "Lejeune is the promoter of the Pontifical Academy for Life from his friendship with John Paul II. St. John Paul II accelerated the creation of the Academy when he learned of Lejeune's cancer, which lasted three months, and named him the first life president of the Academy. The study of bioethics is something absolutely central, nuclear, and Lejeune promoted it very actively in his talks and conferences, and he actually lived it".
"I think Lejeune is one of the people Pope John Paul II had in mind when he spoke of the martyrs of the 20th century. And there is a lot of harmony in the lives of the two. They were very close friends," he adds. "For example, on the day of the Ali Agca attack in 1981, the Pope was coming from lunch with Lejeune and his wife. Lejeune went to the airport, he was not in St. Peter's Square, and when he arrived in Paris, and learned of the attack, he had a nephritic colic; he was very ill, and then he recovered. There are many moments in which a great harmony between these two saints can be appreciated", commented Pablo Siegrist.
Pioneer of modern genetics
Siegrist defines himself as "a Lejeune enthusiast," so there's no need to pull his tongue out too much. "Here there is a Chair of Bioethics, whose director is Mónica López Barahona, and I direct the Foundation, which has three branches, fundamentally: medical care, research and the whole part of the defense of life," he explains. But "to understand the Foundation in depth, you have to know Lejeune, because the Foundation's only aim is to continue Lejeune's work.
In his opinion, "there is no doubt that Lejeune is the father of modern genetics, genetics that has consequences in concrete life. Jérôme Lejeune was the first to discover this and to find a path for research and eventual treatment of various pathologies. Because the first chromosomal anomaly to be detected is the trisomy of the 21st pair, in 1958. Lejeune went on to describe other genetic syndromes, and spent his whole life working on them.
Most valuable: his view of the person
"Now, if we go deeper, to what he represents for humanity, beyond this, which is very useful and very valuable, what is truly valuable about Lejeune is his view of the person."
In other words, Lejeune's discovery comes in a context, explains Siegrist, in which people with Down syndrome who had an average life expectancy of 10-12 years, "were thought to be the result of illicit sexual relations. There was a kind of urban legend that Down syndrome came from syphilis. Mothers who had children with Down syndrome were looked upon with suspicion. They were called mongoloids, or subnormal here in Spain. There was a whole look about them as the village idiot".
"And yet," he continues, "what is constantly emphasized in the testimonies of the families who treated him is, almost verbatim: 'he made me see my son Fulanito, not a syndrome'. It could be said that Lejeune rehabilitated people with Down syndrome, trisomics, according to numerous testimonies of that time (he discovered trisomy in 58)".
So much so that Lejeune "renames Down syndrome, although this has not caught on in other languages, but in France, to refer to a person with Down syndrome, one speaks of a trisomic person. He says: this person is not a syndrome; this person has a trisomy on chromosome 21.
It gives back their humanity to trisomics, to embryos....
Basically, it could be said that Jérôme Lejeune "He gives back their humanity and dignity to these people, and there he comforts and transforms the look of the parents and the environment of these people. For me, this is the core of Lejeune, to have such a clear understanding of what his patients are: there are photos that are precious, in which Lejeune can be seen engaging in a dialogue of glances with the patient, which is impressive to see".
Precisely because he has this clear understanding that "his patient is a person, a subject worthy of the highest recognition and a subject of rights, that is why he gives up his life to defend the embryo with Down syndrome," Siegrist points out. "Because his approach is: here, before anything else, there is a person, who deserves all the respect.
That leads him to lose all his greatness and human recognition. "There are testimonies on record in which it is stated that he was not given the Nobel Prize so as not to give him too much political power. What he has is such a deep conviction that he is in front of a son of God, that in the end everything else is muted. It is true that he does not express it in these terms, although in some conferences he does, when he speaks to a Catholic audience. But otherwise, he always speaks from the point of view of science. There is an overwhelming vital coherence. This is the key to understanding Lejeune".
He did not remain on the sidelines of the public debate
Madame Birthe Lejeune, Jérôme's wife, lived through all the ups and downs of her husband's life, and before she passed away last May at the age of 92, she recalled anecdotes of his life, also during a visit to Spain.
"Madame Lejeune told me about the precise moment when he becomes aware that he cannot stay out of the public debate," Pablo Siegrist recounts. "Because he was a geneticist, and he defines himself as a physician. His aspiration in life was to be a village doctor, and this is stated in a letter to his wife when they were engaged: I simply offer you the simple life of a village doctor. Then he went to do an internship at the Enfants Malades hospital in Paris, with a doctor, Professor Turpin, who was already working on the subject of those who were called mongoloids, and he let himself be carried away by that".
Deeply optimistic
Lejeune discovered the so-called trisomy 21 in 58, and published it in January 59. He received numerous recognitions in the 1960s, but he saw that medical societies were beginning to promote eugenic abortion. Amniocentesis could already be performed, with which the chromosomal anomaly could be detected in the uterus, and an abortion could be considered in cases of Down syndrome, Siegrist explains.
"In fact, in the first bill on abortion, on the decriminalization of abortion in France, in '69, the only case that is contemplated is eugenic abortion, the only chromosomal anomaly that can be detected is Down syndrome". He was very excited, because he thought that as soon as the cause was discovered, we were on the way to finding the solution. And he was deeply optimistic. He was convinced that we would find a solution to the drama of intellectual disability. At that time, during the processing of the bill, there began to be public televised debates, it was May '68..."
A television debate, "you have to defend me".
"And there was a debate on television in which a very aggressive feminist began to say that these beings are monsters, and that they must be eradicated from society. The next day, he is in consultation and a boy of about twelve years old arrives with his parents, very excited and nervous after having seen the debate, and tells him: doctor, doctor, you are my doctor, they want to kill me, you have to defend me".
Lejeune spent the morning ruminating on the child's request, and when he came home to have lunch with his wife, he told her: "look what has happened to me, I am going to have to step forward in the defense of my patients". That same afternoon he gathered the team in the laboratory, because he was not stopping his research, and he told them that he could not allow this, because they were attacking his patients (he sees the embryo with Down's syndrome as his patient), and he was going to take a gamble, and whoever wanted to, should leave.
Siegrist tells it as if she were hearing it from Mrs. Lejeune. "Her husband is going to put everything on the line, and he is aware of what is coming, already in '69. And indeed it came. What came was extermination. There are no cases in many areas of births of children with Down syndrome. They are rare to see.
He is right. "Down España told us last year that it estimated that eugenic abortion was occurring in more than 96 percent of the cases in which Down syndrome was diagnosed," he reveals. "The dramatic thing is that we have spread a social mentality and a culture, as Pope Francis said, of total discarding. We do not accept that others allow these people to be born, which is the last straw".
In a recent conference, Professor Agustín Huete (Salamanca) and doctoral student Mónica Otaola pointed out that "nowhere in the world has there been such a large drop in the birth rate of people with Down syndrome as in Spain", although data are difficult to find and sometimes incomplete (see sindromedown.net).
It mobilizes...
We return to Lejeune. If you have been able to see some videos, he does not lose his temper, he is very affable, he always recognizes first of all the person in front of him, even if they were really adversaries on the level of ideas... They carry out a campaign in which he ends up being the leader without wanting it, because he did not want to be an activist, he was a doctor, but he gathers thousands of doctors collecting signatures in France, politicians, jurists. In fact, his campaign knocks down the first abortion bill in France. And if De Gaulle had not died and if there had not been Simone Veil's law, perhaps another cock would have sung".
... but you are boycotted
There is a time when he is no longer invited to debates on television. Because they know he is too good. And they remove him from the spotlight. From then on, a direct battle against him began. "In those years, Marxist and feminist groups began to dynamite conferences. There was a conference on the embryo, I am speaking from memory, and Lejeune explained that the embryo, from the genetic point of view, is a new human being, with a differentiated genetic patrimony, and an autonomous life program from the moment the fertilization process ends. And in that conference, two or three people, located in different parts of the room, start shouting, they throw a liver at him as if he were a fetus, and then he, very calmly, says: "Gentlemen, those who want to follow the conference, let's go outside, they all leave and three or four people stay inside".
Nobel Prize at stake
Pablo Siegrist assures that Lejenue was aware that the Nobel Prize in Medicine was at stake. "He was very temperate, he was not looking for confrontations. But he is clear that what he has to defend, he will defend to the end," he explains. "And if the Nobel Prize is at stake, he'll play for it."
In August 1969, the American Society of Genetics awarded Lejeune the William Allen Memorial Award, and he gave a lecture in which he stated that the chromosomal message indicates membership of the human species, and is present and complete from its first cells; an embryo is a human being to be protected. Since his arrival in San Francisco, he perceives that the possibility of giving a free hand to the abortion of embryos with Down syndrome is being considered. In his speech, he defends the dignity and beauty of the life of these people, and calls for the responsibility of doctors and scientists. In a letter to his wife, from the plane, he tells her: today I have lost the Nobel Prize".
Medical professionals: defending the most vulnerable
The conversation with Pablo Siegrist is drawing to a close. Many questions remain unanswered, but we address only one: What can health professionals learn from Lejeune's testimony?
"In fact, on the medical level, the patient as a person has many implications, not only related to the origin of life. The patient as a person worthy of all respect when he sits down with me and I have only 5 minutes on the agenda because then I have the next patient."
This, of course, has consequences. Siegrist unpacks some of them. "That should lead to the utmost honesty and consistency. And this is a subjective thought of mine," he clarifies. "We see today how abortion has spread so dramatically in all Western societies. Doctors, at a given moment, have closed their eyes. Doctors know perfectly well if a fetus is a human being, they know about fetal suffering. A doctor, when he performs an abortion, knows in his inner self that he is liquidating a life. There is a moment when he has closed his eyes and said to himself: I am not going to think about it. That is why he continues.
No room for euthanasia
"So, at that moment, the Hippocratic oath, which was what moved Lejeune, breaks down. He argued from there, not from faith. He did not need faith as a means of knowledge. He kept to that scientific plane," says Pablo Siegrist.
Following the line of argument, I would say: "If I know that my patient is a human being, I cannot provide him with death, because I am here to help him to live well, not to die. Therefore, euthanasia is not possible. If I know that my patient is a human being, I don't care if he has an intellectual disability or not, I am going to give him all the time he needs.
And I will not think: as he has an intellectual disability, he will not complain; as he has autism, he will not complain. I don't care if he suffers, I am not going to apply techniques to alleviate his suffering... Or because he has cerebral palsy, I treat him brutally. Or I don't speak in a certain way in front of a patient who is in a coma...".
In short, "it is a coherence of medical practice, and of the practice of life, which Lejeune had perfectly integrated into his life, and which unfortunately in many cases society is encouraging many physicians to lose. This is when the practice of medicine is dehumanized".
Moses tells the people that it is possible to convert wholeheartedly to God and fulfill his precepts. Psalm 18 accompanies this assurance by proclaiming that God's precepts are right and gladden the heart.
The hymn to the Colossians tells us that Jesus "is the image of the invisible God", that "all things were created by him and for him."which "he is before everything", "He is also the head of the body: of the Church."
Therefore, what Jesus commands also has the value of God's precepts, which can be observed. Thus, the teacher of the law who speaks with Jesus can put into practice what Jesus tells him: "Go ahead and do the same." You too can live like the Samaritan.
Thank you, young teacher of the law, for your question, which was the occasion to give us the parable of the Good Samaritan. You put Jesus to the test by asking him what to do to inherit eternal life.
Jesus involved you in the answer and you answered well, quoting both the commandment to love God and to love your neighbor. But that was not enough for you and you brought up the captious rabbinical debate about who should be considered a neighbor to be loved. A question to which your colleagues gave very restrictive answers.
Jesus, in order to leave an everlasting teaching and to eradicate misconceptions, answered you by telling you a story. At the end of which he totally changed your question. He did not add new categories to his list of who is your neighbor in the passive sense: whom you would then be obliged by the law to love. He changes everything in the question he asks you: who has been close, in the active sense, to the man wounded by the thieves? You have followed Jesus' story, you have changed your perspective with his question. "He who practiced mercy on him." You have answered well, even if you have not dared to call him by his name: it was the Samaritan, the heretic, the infidel, the one who does not live the Law.
He looked at the wounded man; he had compassion; he approached. He was not deterred by the danger of the blood that would make him unclean according to the law. He gave him help: oil and wine, medicine and sacraments. He did not fear that his horse would be stained with blood, becoming impure. He changed his travel plans. He asked the innkeeper for help: he could not do it alone. He did not go immediately to his business and his family: he stopped to give him first aid, to reassure him with his words, to change his bandages with tenderness. Only then did he ask the innkeeper to take care of him: he paid him and he will pay him.
The innkeeper was also close to the wounded man. Now, master of the law, destroy the list of who is your neighbor, your horizon has become universal: with everyone you will be able to act like the Samaritan and the innkeeper, especially with the most needy. Courage: do the same!
The homily on the readings of Sunday 15th Sunday
The priest Luis Herrera Campo offers its nanomiliaa small one-minute reflection for these readings.
One 81-year-old parish priest for 100,000 inhabitants
Close-up of a veteran parish priest, Enrique Meyer, in a town in Paraguay. The number of parishioners or the difficulties of the pandemic do not diminish the energy of this priest.
Arriving at the city of Luque10 km from the capital, I see a sign that says: The patroness of the family economy is the Virgin of the Rosary. I arrive fifteen minutes before my interview at the parish. I go to the adoration chapel, there are four people, two women and two middle-aged men.
I am received by Father Enrique Meyer, 81 years old and fifty-three years of priesthood. When he arrives he tells me that the new Archbishop has given him two assignments in the Archdiocese. In addition to all that he has, he is Dean of the parishes of the Deanery. He is very calm behind his desk. He is the rector and pastor of the Shrine of Our Lady of the Rosary and is assisted by a cooperating vicar. He has a map of the whole territory. His territory has approximately one hundred thousand inhabitants. It also includes thirty-six chapels in which he is assisted by six other priests who are assigned to other nearby parishes. In the chapels they have Mass three times a month. In the sanctuary every day and on Sunday there are four masses. The daily masses are attended by about four hundred people.
Sacraments
He says that they attend to a thousand children for their first communion, who have to go to confession, but the ceremony is done in the chapels. He comments that there needs to be a better distribution of priests. The parish is divided into four pastoral zones. In addition, they have thirty-nine social territories that they call settlements: there they do missions. These are territories of people who have migrated and have settled in municipal lands or private properties, where they have no title. There they begin to give catechesis and administer the sacraments. It was not easy to enter. We are talking to the families to try to regularize their situation.
Resources
During the pandemic, food was given to seven thousand people daily, for a whole year, in twenty-three soup kitchens. He says that "thanks to that there was no social outbreak".
I ask him how the administration is doing and he smilingly tells me: "we have no economic problems". He shows me the monthly magazine, which has a circulation of a thousand copies, where he reports, among other things, on the economic situation. We see that he has a surplus of 35,000 Us. thanks to the Mass collection. I tell him that it is not in vain that his surname is of Jewish origin. He was also in charge of the financial administration of the Archdiocese for thirty years.
He mentions a priest from the beginning of the last century: Pantaleón García, who built the church, founded the soccer club called Sportivo Luqueñowho plays in the first division. He united the whole town and to this day is considered a hero.
He mentions that a community radio station has just been created. He proudly says that now the Internet is open to everyone. In addition, Luque is a pro-family and pro-life city by decree of the Municipality. He tells me that the people here are fans of his soccer club and of the Virgin of the Rosary.
Another service he offers is that of ten psychologists who attend free of charge to anyone who needs help. When I finish, I ask him what remedies he takes, and he tells me three pills and one more every other day.
Pope Francis has opened in June 2022 the "Jewish" archive, which contains the documentation with the requests for help that came to Pius XII from Jews during the Second World War.
For centuries it has been called the Vatican Secret Archives and was created by Paul V on January 31, 1612. Pope Francis changed its name in 2019: it is now more simply called the Vatican Secret Archives. Vatican Apostolic Archives. The word "secret" comes from the Latin adjective "secretum" (from secernere, which means to separate, to distinguish, to reserve). It distinguished the papal archive as separate from the others and reserved for the use of the pontiff and the officials appointed by him. The change is only nominal, because the pope's intention was to eliminate any possible misunderstanding about the intentions of the Church, all aimed at transparency, without any desire to conceal or misunderstand.
New headquarters
The amount of documents is immense, because they refer to several centuries of activity, longer than that of any nation in the world. In the 20th century, Pope Paul VI wanted a new Archive to be built under the Cortile della Pigna. It is an immense subway bunker with 85 kilometers of shelves that make it the largest historical database in the world.
The documentary patrimony preserved in its vast deposits covers a chronological span of the last twelve centuries, and consists of more than 600 archival collections. Although it is not the largest archive in the world in terms of quantity, it is the largest in terms of geography, since it covers all the continents and all the states in which the Catholic Church is present.
The Jewish archive
After the work of sorting out entire historical periods, the archives of that era will be made available to the public in their entirety. One example is that of the activities of Pius XIIThe company has aroused much interest and curiosity for its performance during the Second World War.
The "Jewish" series of the Historical Archives of the Secretariat of State has recently been published on the Internet. A total of 170 volumes, equivalent to almost 40,000 files, are available for consultation. Initially, 70% of the total material will be available, which will later be completed with the last volumes in progress.
During the war there were thousands of requests for help addressed to the Pope by Jews of all ages. For example, mention is made of how a young German student, Werner Barasch, fared. The reader hopes for a happy ending, imagining his release from the concentration camp and his successful attempt to be reunited with his mother abroad. In this particular case, our wish has been fulfilled: if you search for resources on the Internet, you will find traces of him in 2001. Not only is there an autobiography recounting his memoirs as a "survivor," but among the online collections of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum there is even a lengthy video interview, in which Werner Barasch himself tells his incredible story at the age of 82.
The "Jewish" archive is, therefore, a precious patrimony, since it collects the requests for help sent to Pope Pius XII by the Jews, baptized and non-baptized, after the beginning of the Nazi-fascist persecution.
Nearly 3,000 files
At the urging of Pope Francis, this patrimony is now easily accessible to everyone. The first part of this archive on the Jews (1939-1948) was already available for consultation by scholars from all over the world as of March 2, 2020, in the reading room of the Historical Archives.
The then Sacred Congregation for Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Affairs, equivalent to a Ministry of Foreign Affairs, entrusted a meticulous diplomat (Monsignor Angelo Dell'Acqua) with the task of dealing with requests for help that reached the Pope from all over Europe, in order to provide all possible assistance. Requests could be for visas or passports for expatriation, refuge, reunification with a family member, release from detention, transfer from one concentration camp to another, news about a deported person, provision of food or clothing, financial support, spiritual support and more.
Each of these requests constituted a file which, once processed, was destined to be kept in a documentary series called "Jews". There are more than 2,700 files, containing requests for help, almost always intended for entire families or groups of people. Thousands of people persecuted for their membership in the Jewish religion, or for mere "non-Aryan" ancestry, turned to the Vatican knowing that others had received help, as the young Werner Barasch himself writes.
The requests reached the Secretary of State, where diplomatic channels were activated to try to provide as much help as possible, taking into account the complexity of the political situation on a global scale.
Pacelli List
After the pontificate of Pius XII was opened for consultation in 2020, this particular list of names was called the "Pacelli list" (i.e., Pope Pius XII's), echoing the well-known "Schindler list". Although the two cases are different, the analogy perfectly captures the idea of how, in the corridors of the institution at the service of the pontiff, ceaseless efforts were made to provide Jews with concrete help.
As of June 2022, on the website of the Historical Archives of the Secretary of State - Section of Relations with States and International Organizations - the Jewish series will be available on the Internet in a virtual version, freely accessible to all.
In addition to the photocopy of each individual document, a file with the analytical inventory of the series will be made available, in which all the names of the beneficiaries of the aid found in the documents have been transcribed.
Accessible to family members
As in the case of young Werner Barasch's application, most of the more than 2,700 files that came to the Secretary of State, and that today tell us so many stories of flight from racial persecution, leave us open-mouthed, although sources with more information are not always available. The digitization of the entire Jewish series available on the Internet will enable descendants of those who sought help to search for traces of their loved ones around the world. At the same time, it will allow scholars and anyone interested to examine this special archival heritage freely and remotely.
The Church's objectives are to make the documents of its centuries-old history even more accessible, taking advantage of technological advances that make everything more accessible through digitization. Each year, this archive welcomes some 1,200 scholars from some 60 countries around the world. The opening desired by Pope Francis extends the possibility of consulting and studying the documents back to October 9, 1958, the day of the death of Pope Pius XII.
Gabriella GambinoIt's important not to leave families on their own' : 'It's important not to leave families on their own'.
2000 people from 120 countries around the world took part in the 10th World Meeting of Families in Rome, with the theme 'Family Love: A Vocation and a Path to Holiness'.
Leticia Sánchez de León-July 5, 2022-Reading time: 4minutes
Translated by Charles Connolly
The 10th World Meeting of Families, which took place in Rome (June 22-26), was an oasis of hope for the family and a glimpse of optimism for the future. About two thousand delegates chosen by the Bishops' Conferences, the Synods of the Oriental Churches and international ecclesial entities traveled to Rome to participate in the meeting.
Formation and accompaniment seem to be the key words of this year's meeting. Pope Francis wanted it to serve as the culmination of the Amoris Lætitia Year of the Family proclaimed by him just one year ago.
We have been hearing for some time that preparation for marriage is essential, with special insistence on the importance of remote preparation. At the same time, being born into a Christian family and having more or less established family values does not guarantee marital success. Marriages that experience difficulties and often end up breaking up are not only those of non-believers, but of people who could be said to belong to the Church.
Gabriella Gambino is the undersecretary at the Dicastery for the Laity, Family and Life and main organizer of the event. She explains to Omnes some of the key ideas presented in this World Meeting of Families.
Isn't it enough to know the theory about marriage and the couple's relationship for a marriage to last? Do you think we need to make young people more aware of the need to prepare themselves for this new adventure?
I think that an essential point in preparing for marriage is to be able to listen to the witness of other married couples who are already living married life. They know the difficulties involved and they've also learned strategies to take advantage of the grace of the sacrament of matrimony. The Christian sacrament marks the difference between a civil marriage and a canonical one: only in one is the presence of Christ found between the spouses. Before marriage, no one experiences this presence. It's something beautiful, a gift, that can only be experienced in marriage itself.
But you have to form oneself for it as engaged couples, placing Christ at the center of your lives. We must know how to listen and learn to grasp with precision the signs of his presence in our concrete daily life, in the simplest things. If you don't learn to do this from an early age, with a remote preparation for marriage and then a gradual preparation to lead you gradually to the sacrament, it's hard to learn to do it later on and all at once. Remote preparation makes it possible for young people to find faith and to learn to recognize Christ already during courtship.
For this, the Dicastery for the Laity, Family and Life has recently published Catechumenal Itineraries for Married Life. These pastoral guidelines for the particular Churches are intended as a kind of preparation for marriage; even though many journalists have labeled the document as a 'memorandum of sexual morality'.
Itineraries is a fundamental tool for rethinking the entire pastoral care of vocations in the Church. It is essential to accompany children in understanding the beauty of marriage and the family, for they are a gift within the Church. And parents must be helped to accompany their children in this discovery because they can't do it alone. Today the family faces many challenges: smartphones, fast and unlimited access to the Internet and so on. Often models of life are being put forward that are completely different from what parents expect for their children, starting with the vision of affectivity and sexuality.
The purpose of Itineraries is to put parents on a path early on, to really help them cultivate values such as chastity, because such values serve to protect children in their ability to prepare themselves for total love, lasting a lifetime. And today it's very important not to leave families to tread this path alone.
Another of the topics discussed at the congress was that of the education of young people in affectivity and sexuality. There are many parents who still view these topics as taboo subjects, very superficially. Do you think there has been a change in outlook? Are the new generations less afraid to discuss these topics with their children or with their friends?
The subject of sexuality is a complex one within the family. Certainly, today, young people are being tried and challenged by the many messages they're receiving from a complex world. Parents need to be well trained in these areas. They have to keep up with the times by developing greater relational or empathic skills, and by dialoguing with their children on these issues, right from childhood and adolescence into adulthood.
The way we talk to our younger children about affectivity and sexuality won't be the same as when they're sixteen or seventeen years old. But when that time comes, it will be very important to have begun a dialogue with them from a young age, and to keep that dialogue open. This will allow us to address these issues and the questions they come up with later on: otherwise they can become a source of inner anxieties. Because nowadays, young people are forced to undergo very intense experiences early on, that mark their later human and spiritual life.
What difference does it make to learn these things at home, in the family, from watching their parents' example, rather than to learn them outside, perhaps through cell phones or other devices in general?
They need to receive values at home if they are to know how to make better use of what they read on the Internet or what they find around them, in their own environment. From experience, we know that, if children have reading tools-critical tools to be able to observe the reality around them, and also to evaluate it intelligently-they are able to dialogue with this reality calmly.
In a certain sense, we've lost the certainty that God blesses marriage and gives spouses the grace to face all the difficulties they will encounter along the way. How can the sacramental value of marriage be revitalized?
First of all, with the witness of other spouses who live this grace and who can attest to its presence. Young people need to see, they need real testimonies: nothing is more convincing than a testimony. Secondly, we must accompany engaged couples and spouses, so that they learn to pray together. It's only praying together that really makes the presence of Christ alive among them. It's different from praying separately; and it has a very different effect on the couple, on the unitive dimension of their marriage. This is an aspect we have to work on a lot so that, especially in communities, in parishes, spouses are really accompanied when they pray together.
The authorLeticia Sánchez de León
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Liturgy to the sound of drums: the Zairé rite and Amazonia
Following the proposals of the Second Vatican Council, Pope Francis proposes that the good experience of inculturation of the Zairian rite be extended to other Christian communities.
Leticia Sánchez de León-July 5, 2022-Reading time: 4minutes
On December 1, 2021, the Libreria Editrice Vaticana published the volume "Pope Francis and the Roman Missal for the Dioceses of Zaire", just one year after the Eucharist presided by the Pontiff in the Zairé rite (proper to the region of the Congo), in St. Peter's Basilica. The Pope sent a video message to join the presentation of the book, which also carries a preface written by himself.
Inculturation of the liturgy
With so many initiatives underway, and so many challenges facing the Church today, the question is obvious: Why is the Pope giving so much importance to a book on Congolese liturgy? In a video message, Pope Francis points out the main reason for the publication: "The spiritual and ecclesial significance and the pastoral purpose of the Eucharistic celebration of the Congolese rite are at the basis of the creation of this volume." Moreover, in the preface of the book he adds: "The process of liturgical inculturation in the Congo is an invitation to enhance the different gifts of the Holy Spirit, which are a richness for all humanity".
Pope Francis, who has touched and experienced first hand the piety and popular religiosity during his time as Archbishop of Buenos Aires, clearly sees the need for a liturgy that is fully immersed in society, so that the people make their own the celebration of the sacraments, indelible seals of grace. And all this is not his invention.
The truth is that the inculturation of the liturgy is not a question that has arisen as a result of the Synod for the Amazon or with the pontificate of Francis. During the work of the Second Vatican Council, "norms for adaptation to the character and traditions of various peoples" were proposed. In this sense, the Zaire or Congolese rite is the first and only inculturated rite of the Latin Church approved after the Council and - as the Pope goes on to say in the video message - the experience of this rite in the celebration of the Mass "can serve as an example and model for other cultures".
Inculturation of the liturgy and continuity with the Roman Missal
Number 125 of the Instrumentum Laboris of the Synod for the Amazon (held October 6-27, 2019) in its number 125 says: "The celebration of faith must be carried out in an inculturated way so that it may be an expression of one's own religious experience and a bond of communion for the community that celebrates."
"A vibrant culture, a spirituality animated by songs with African rhythms, the sound of drums, body movements and new colors... all this is necessary for the celebration to be alive and fulfill its evangelizing purpose," the Pope explains. Perhaps for Western Catholics it might seem too novel and even irreverent, but not for the Congolese. They are familiar with the colors and the different languages, they know the movements and dances, and the songs are part of their daily celebrations. What the Church proposes is to translate these original celebratory customs of the different peoples into the liturgy; uses and customs that already existed and that are, in fact, well established in the communities, so that this liturgy better responds to their original spirituality, so that the celebrations are source and summit of his Christian life and are linked at the same time to their struggles, sufferings and joys.
Logically, this "inculturation of the liturgy" is not done for all cultures in a generic way but must touch "the cultural world of the people". This requires a "process of discernment regarding the rites, symbols and celebratory styles of the indigenous cultures in contact with nature that need to be assumed in the liturgical and sacramental ritual". This process leads to the separation of the true meaning of the symbol that transcends the merely aesthetic and folkloric. Special importance has, however, the inclusion in the celebration of the music and dance itself, and the autochthonous costumes, proper of each community and in communion with nature.
A long-standing issue
In the programmatic text of his pontificate, the Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii GaudiumThe Pope speaks precisely of the convenience of reaching out to different cultures with their own language. He exhorts us to overcome the rigidity of a discipline that excludes and alienates, for a pastoral sensitivity that accompanies and integrates", because "Christianity does not have a single cultural model". Christianity, while remaining "in total fidelity to the proclamation of the Gospel and to the ecclesial tradition, will also bring the face of the many cultures and peoples in which it is welcomed and rooted". In fact, the Roman rite continues to be the majority rite of the Christian faithful since Pope St. Pius V obliged the use of the same rite except where a different custom of a particular rite of at least two hundred years of uninterrupted celebration existed.
In this sense, the case of the Zairé rite may well be one more step towards new paths and processes of liturgical discernment where the different specificities of each community, inserted in a culture, with its own languages and symbols, can be taken into account without altering the nature of the Roman Missal, which guarantees continuity with the ancient and universal tradition of the Church.
A cross-cutting invitation
One might well think that the publication of the aforementioned volume is not new in itself, since the Roman Missal containing the Zaire rite was approved in 1988 by the Congregation for Divine Worship and the rite has been used since then in the region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. However, the key reading is not the publication or the presentation of the book but the Pope's invitation to work in this area: the Pope speaks of the Congolese rite as "a promising rite for other cultures", with an objective, above all pastoral, and of accompanying the communities that are asking for this recognition of their own spirituality. The Pontiff recalls that "the Second Vatican Council had already called for this effort of inculturation of the liturgy among indigenous peoples and, although little progress has been made". Thus, the Pope makes an appeal that is transversal - to the different communities and local associations and, above all, to the Episcopal Conferences - in this direction.
Navarro-VallsJoaquín left a good part of his memories of John Paul II ready for publication".
Rafael Navarro-Valls is professor emeritus of the Complutense University. He has just published From the White House to the Holy Seewhich brings together his articles on the political relations between these two institutions in recent years. We took the opportunity to talk with him about the Ukrainian war, the RoeThe Vatican reforms, the euthanasia law and the publication of his brother's memoirs.
What do you find remarkable about the new Apostolic Constitution? Predicate Evangelium and reformsof the Vatican in recent years?
I believe that they will make it easier to be better witnesses to the Gospel, with a better service of the Curia to the whole Church, that is, to all the faithful, from the bishops to the last baptized person in every corner of the earth. It is not a reform of the ChurchThe Pope's role in the Church is not only in the organization of the Pope, but also in the mechanisms that help the Pope to serve the Church. There is a restructuring of organisms so that there can be a greater dynamism. In short, to facilitate that the sap of the Church can reach the last dry branch and flourish again.
Knowing what the new College of Cardinals will look like and the meeting of theAugust cardinals, can we begin to draw a profile of the next Pope?conclave?
The Church was born universal and remains universal. This is manifested in the College of Cardinals. What may seem a limitation, is at the same time an enrichment. The characteristics of cardinals from so many places form a harmony that will be reflected in new tones. The Holy Spirit will make the next Pope face the challenges of each era with new lights. In the end, it is the Church that is always enriched. It is enough to think of the pontificates of the last Popes: John Paul I, John Paul II, Benedict XVI, Francis... The Holy Spirit will never cease to surprise us.
What are the most sensitive points between the Pope and Patriarch Kirill on theIn the context of the war in Ukraine, how does the Pope combine his role as head of theState with that of a pastor in a situation like this?
The difficulty lies in the fact that this dialogue must remain within the sphere of justice, without entering into political evaluations of political action. In this sense the Orthodox Church has in fact a closer relationship with the political regime. And the dialogue between the Pope and Kiril is complicated because of this duality. In any case, the Pope is a shepherd of souls, and he is concerned with the good of all men, and therefore with making Christ's message of peace reach them. The fact that he is the head of the Vatican State is a necessity because the Church is a society that interacts in this world; it is like the visible clothing of a spiritual reality and authority.
The U.S. Supreme Court has overturned the long-standing ruling that Roe v. Wade What is your opinion also about Biden's reaction?
From a strictly legal point of view, Roe was a flawed ruling. The U.S. Supreme Court, with its new ruling, has rectified its position on the matter, making it clear that nothing in the U.S. Constitution compels an understanding of abortion as a fundamental right. The removal of constitutional protection for abortion has given the States individual control over the timing and extent of abortion procedures. In fact, the Supreme Court would now agree, half a century late, with the justices who dissented in Roe v. WadeThe Constitutional Court, which categorically affirmed that there was nothing in the text of the Constitution that could justify the existence of a fundamental right to abortion. Hence, without holding their tongues, they described the sentence as an "imprudent and unreasonable exercise of the power of constitutional review".
Regarding Biden's reaction encouraging Congress to pass a law that takes up the aspects that the new sentence has eliminated, it reminds me of the recent intervention of Nancy Pelosi - Speaker of the House of Representatives - who has presented a law like the one Biden wants, but which has been rejected. Faced with this, the Archbishop of San Francisco - after several (unsuccessful) attempts to talk to the politician - has decided to prohibit Pelosy from receiving Communion, marking an escalation in a decades-long tension between the Catholic Church and those Catholic politicians in favor of abortion.
It goes on like this the position of Pope Francis when he recently spoke out against abortion with these harsh words: "Is it right to kill a human life to solve a problem?(...) is it right to hire a hitman to solve a problem? (...) That is why the Church is so hard on this issue, because if it accepts this, it is like accepting daily murder.". We will see the reaction of the Archbishop of Washington, Cardinal Wilton D. Gregory, to the extreme statements of the American president.
In a world marked by communication, many people would like to know if their brother's memoirs are going to be published.
Joaquín left a good part of his memories and experiences during the long pontificate of John Paul II ready for publication. Now they have been completed. Thus, I do not think they will take long to see the light of day. In fact, he once said that he would prefer it to take some time after his death. Now that it is the fifth anniversary of his death, it is a very appropriate moment.
And what would you highlight from Francis' pontificate so far?
Every Pope in the history of the Church has been confronted with problems that have been considered a priority. John Paul II, for example, encountered three major problems: in the first world, a vast tide of secularization; in the second (the countries of the East) he tried hard to face the challenge of the breakdown of human rights; in the third, hunger and technological backwardness.
Benedict XVI, for his part, set himself two objectives which he pursued tenaciously: to renew the old European continent culturally and spiritually and to awaken in the greatest number of countries a creative minorityThe idea was to create a new Pope, who, from his hard core, would serve as a lever for the anthropological transformation of an entire civilization. When Francis was elected, they were looking for a pastor, probably close to one of the places with the greatest number of Catholics: Latin America. For his part, he thinks that his objective is to apply the Social Doctrine of the Church with intensity. That is what he is doing.
It has been a while since the law on euthanasia came into force. On that occasion, some sectors have redoubled their criticism of conscientious objectors. How do you judge the figure of objecting healthcare personnel?
From my point of view, in conscientious objectors there is a determination to be custodians of the truth -in its timeless and objective sense- and, at the same time, creators of a future, historical and subjective truth.
The fact is that there is a thin border between conscience and law, where it is not uncommon to see the following occur border incidents. The problem here is that in some democracies - also in Spain - such incidents are proliferating. In the face of this multiplication, there are two possible positions: to believe that conscientious objection is a vulnus to democratic principles or, on the contrary, to understand that the objection "is a mature fruit of democracy, which combines the present of the norm with the future of prophecy" (R. Bertolino).
For the rest, I agree with those who understand that when a majority renounces to impose its will on dissident minorities, that is when democratic societies show proof not of weakness but of strength.
Before the pandemic, working with a group of friends, we realized that in some sectors of society the Church is not well regarded. Some because of misconceptions they have had in their personal formation, but most because of lack of knowledge. The best way to present a more attractive face is through the testimony, in particular, of the number of people who, because of their faith, try to live the works of mercy.
Most people don't know the things that Christians do for their neighbors, especially for the most needy. So we set out with a group of businessmen to find these social initiatives, help them grow and tell their stories so that more and more people would be attracted to this light. Thus was born Waki Maki which in Quechua means "To lend a hand".
We saw that we should focus on social enterprises that have proposed to carry out projects in the areas of the culture of life and the culture of encounter. This was a big challenge because there is no database in the country that includes them.
So it was a process of patience and learning. We had planning meetings with the team to build in the best possible way the project we had in mind.
The beginnings of Waki Maki
The first Waki Maki activity took place in April 2022 and consisted of a challenge, the idea was to engage the initiatives by offering them training sessions and, based on what they learned, to present documents explaining the possible improvement of their own projects. Finally, to participate for two prizes of 5,000 dollars.
For this we have two categories, the first one is called ideaThe project was designed for projects that were starting up or looking to start a new area based on an initiative that was already in operation.
The other category was called growthfocused on projects that already had a track record and were looking for improvement.
The first step was to call for numerous social work initiatives. We had the support of Universidad Hemisferios, Asociación de Empresarios Católicos, Cáritas, and AEI (a very large private business association in Ecuador).
We made calls to foundations and NGOs and sent many emails. In addition, we used social networks such as Whatsapp groups and publications on Instagram and Facebook to extend the invitation to all those who were interested in acquiring the tools to enhance their management to help the community.
Registrations closed on April 6 and 150 projects were registered. A first filter was used to validate the application forms, 100 were selected. Throughout the challenge we established a direct and permanent communication channel to resolve their concerns or address their comments.
The training sessions were held on April 19 and 20 and focused on the use of social networks, volunteer management, marketing for fundraising, financing, among others. During the training 80 initiatives were constantly connected and 60 presented the requirements to advance to the second phase.
On April 26 was the one-on-one mentoring day where the 11 finalists had the opportunity to discuss and receive feedback on their projects with each mentor for 10 minutes.
Finally, the committee selected the winner of each category. The Capabilities Care Center and the Sisters of the Touch of Assisi were the winners of the idea and growth categories respectively.
We held an awards ceremony where we were able to talk with the winners and learn from their experience both in the challenge and in their work with the community. We are happy with the results obtained and are eager to undertake more Waki Maki activities to link private enterprise with social aid projects and thus give us a hand to enhance the good deeds that the Church does in our society.
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From Peasant to Bishop: Juan Sinforiano Bogarín, Apostle of Paraguay
Monsignor Juan Sinforiano Bogarín is considered one of the great evangelizers of Paraguay. The fruitfulness of his apostolate has left a deep mark until today, and his beatification process began two years ago.
Hugo Fernandez-July 2, 2022-Reading time: 6minutes
Among all the figures that stand out in the wide historical range of Paraguay's history, Monsignor Juan Sinforiano Bogarín (1863-1949). He was born in the very heart of the country and grew up under the dangers of war. From a very young age, he knew how to unite two fundamental rules of Christian discipline: work and prayer. Today we remember him as the Moral Rebuilder of the Paraguayan Nation.
Its origins
He was born on August 21, 1863, in a remote place called Mbuyapey, a rural area along the Tebicuarymí River, about 180 km from Asunción. His childhood was very sad. When he was only three years old, he suffered the terrible war of Paraguay against the Alliance of Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay between 1865 and 1870. His parents died there, leaving him and his two brothers orphaned.
Once the war was over, the Bogarín brothers took refuge in the house of their maternal aunts, the Gonzales sisters, in a town near Asunción and dedicated themselves to farm work. Like almost all his contemporaries, he spoke Spanish and Guarani, a language in which he expressed himself with great force.
Preparing for God's plans
He received very elementary instruction. When the Conciliar Seminary of Asuncion was reopened in 1880, he entered at the age of 17 at the insistence of his brothers.
Pedro Juan Aponte, the diocesan bishop, had entrusted the direction of the seminary to the Fathers of the Mission of St. Vincent de Paul. The new seminary was under the guidance of Father Julio César Montagne, a brilliant formator and, later, a prudent advisor to the young bishop.
Consecrated to God and in love with his country
As soon as he received his priestly consecration in 1886, he was appointed pastor of the cathedral. He immediately gave proof of his organizational efficiency and of his faithful fulfillment of his tasks and obligations. Until 1930 the diocese of Asunción included the entire territory of the country.
With the see of the diocese vacant and exercising the right of patronage, a list of three candidates was presented to the Holy See. Among them was John Symphorian. For this reason he wrote repeatedly asking not to be appointed: ".... I was aware of the many difficulties ahead for the government of the diocese, especially when modern impiety, the fruit of the School without God, began to show its multiform face, and the youth began to look at religion and priests with great concern." (Bogarín, J.S. My notes, p. 19).
He always felt the episcopate as a heavy cross. Much to his regret, he was elected and consecrated on February 3, 1895 by the Salesian bishop, Bishop Louis Lasagna, titular bishop of Tripoli. He was 31 years old.
Preparing the land for cultivation
The young Bishop began a tremendous task. The words disaster, extermination, desolation and the like were not enough to give an accurate and complete picture of the state in which his unfortunate country had been left, a quarter of a century before, at the end of the great war. Such a state had changed little. There was no clergy; neither was there a basic organization, for lack of personnel.
In his heart: God and country
Pro aris et pro focusfor the altar and for the home was his episcopal motto. It sums up his pastoral work and his life. In his mind there was no distinction between missionary work and service to the homeland.
A few months after his consecration, he began his pastoral visits. He wrote in his notes: "Convinced as I was that the religious faith of the faithful was very weak in the diocese, I decided to make pastoral visits, in the form of a true mission, to the towns of the countryside, twice each year. ... From the first year I established the spiritual exercises for the clergy, with half of them attending in one year and the other half in the following year. This disposition caused displeasure and even resistance in some of the older priests, but later they submitted and were very happy with it." (Bogarín, J. S. My notes, p. 37)
Years later - in 1937 - the fruits of this pastoral work of cultivating souls were seen in the celebrations of the first national Eucharistic Congress. It was an impressive demonstration of popular strength and organization of a church that had been rebuilt from its foundations.
Living image of the Good Shepherd, he was called: Angel of Peace, Missionary Apostle, Star of Paraguay, Moral Rebuilder of the nation. He traveled 48,425 km in his pastoral tours; blessed 10,928 marriages; gave 553,067 confirmations; delivered 4055 doctrinal conferences and wrote 66 pastoral letters. His last letters and exhortations, in an atmosphere heated by the post civil war of 1947, were in favor of peace, spiritual disarmament, honesty, honest work and fraternal love.
Monsignor Juan Sinforiano Bogarín
Pastoral lines
Throughout his episcopal ministry he ordained more than ninety priests. He brought nine institutions of male religious and fourteen of women who did much good to the country. During the 19th century, in addition to the war, the Church was isolated and religious were expelled. There was much, much to be done. It was possible to reach the indigenous people, the formation of urban schools and the care of the poorest and sickest.
Following the guidelines of the Holy See, he wrote a pastoral letter on the danger of Freemasonry; very influential at that time. Secularism was rampant among the more educated classes. It was slandered in various ways and carried it with a Christian and gentlemanly spirit. There were even acts of violence in his house.
In social matters he also succeeded in grouping Catholic workers in religious associations and circles and in unions with great social energy. Faithful to the governing pontiff, he made his visits to the ad limina. He always trusted his collaborators. When in 1898 Pope Leo XIII summoned the bishops of Latin America, he brought his great collaborator Hermenegildo Roa, who was his collaborator throughout his episcopal ministry. Another collaborator was Father Mena Porta, who would be his successor.
Promoter of the laity
He promoted the first associations and movements of lay apostolate that arose in Paraguay. In 1932, the Catholic Action of Paraguay was founded, which since 1941 will have a great impetus thanks to its general director, Father Ramón Bogarin Argaña.
The family was his great concern, and he was even reviled for his insistence on regularizing de facto unions. During his pastoral visits, the "marriages guasú" (multitudinous), were frequent.
"Happy are the peacemakers."
Paraguay lived the first half of the century between revolutions, civil wars and the tragic war with Bolivia. Monsignor Bogarín knew his compatriots and no one better than him was called to bring about the pacification so longed for by the true lovers of the homeland. His opinion was always pacifying, although many times he was not listened to. All the leaders of the political groups had him as a reference.
During the Chaco War (1932-1935), she was the tears of countless Paraguayan mothers. From Bolivia he received voluminous correspondence asking for news and protection for the unfortunate prisoners. None of those letters remained without receiving an autographed reply from the kindly and already elderly Paraguayan archbishop. The Bolivian people in La Paz also received him with great affection when he visited the city several years later. An anecdote reflects his disposition: during the Paraguayan-Bolivian conflict, his elderly sister and other good old ladies washed the bandages used by the wounded in the departments of the metropolitan curia, and the bishop helped in this work.
Pastoral letters
The list of topics in his pastoral letters includes religious teaching in schools, canonical marriage, the Roman pontificate, the practice of religion, some traditional devotions, freedom and brotherhood, catechetical teaching, the Church and politics... With vibrant exhortations on the fulfillment of duties in work and sacrifice, he always accompanied his people in revolts and in war.
But his main pastoral contribution was his self-sacrificing ministry. Suaviter et fortiterHis pastoral activity was as much in his episcopal coat of arms as in his tenor. His priests and closest friends emphasized his intelligence and his congenital gift of personal sympathy, a very pleasant conversationalist and a sparkling conversationalist.
A connoisseur of History and defender of Heritage.
He formed a small museum that was his pride and his most pleasurable occupation in the hours of rest. He liked to exhibit it and to review, with great wealth of details, each one of its pieces. The Monsignor Juan Sinforiano Bogarín Museum is a true relic, an incalculable treasure of the national patrimony of Paraguay, located in an old building of the colonial period, next to the cathedral.
A yearning in progress
Asunción is the mother of cities and its episcopal see dates back to 1567. In 1930 suffragan dioceses were erected: Villarrica and Concepción y Chaco. Mons. Bogarín received the archiepiscopal pallium from the hands of the nuncio.. He died on February 25, 1949 at the age of 86 fruitful years and 54 as bishop. The Paraguayan people mourned the death of a patriarch. In 2020 the diocesan process of beatification of the Servant of God began.
The authorHugo Fernandez
Director of the Ecclesiastical Museum Monsignor Juan Sinforiano Bogarín and executive secretary of the Episcopal Commission for the Cultural Heritage of the Church in Paraguay.
Filippo Pellini "Nothing made me happier than to proclaim Christ."
This young man from Milan, a member of the Priestly Fraternity of the Missionaries of St. Charles Borromeo and a student of a degree in theology, discovered his vocation through the chaplain of his university.
He belongs to the Priestly Fraternity of the Missionaries of St. Charles Borromeo, a society of apostolic life founded in 1985 by Bishop Massimo Camisasca, now bishop of Reggio Emilia, together with other priests who wished to live their ministry following the charism of Communion and Liberation.
He was born and raised in Milan, in a family that was not particularly religious, but which encouraged him to study catechism and gave him the opportunity to receive the sacraments of Christian initiation. "However, like so many young people, after receiving confirmation, without any great existential dramas, I simply stopped attending the parish. I was 12 years old at the time and had nothing against God or the Church," he says.
He lived for some years with "his foot in two shoes", internally torn between two opposing visions of the world and of life. He began attending the faculty of design at Bovisa, the seat of the Politecnico di Milano, a very prestigious university. There I decided to follow the company of friends who brought me closer to God and to the universal Church.
"Antonio, a priest of the Fraternity of St. Carlo, was the chaplain of Bovisa during my last years of university. My meeting with him was an encounter with a father who knew how to accompany me in the labyrinth of affections, events and desires that from time to time took up space in my heart," Filippo recounts.
All these elements made me, a few days after obtaining my degree, go to D. Antonio to ask him the vocational question that I could no longer avoid: "What if the path by which the Lord is calling me was the priesthood?"
They decided to take some time to verify this hypothesis. "I started working as a graphic designer, working in an editorial office and as an assistant at the Polytechnic. However, all this was not enough. None of this made me happier than when I was announcing and witnessing to the newness of Christ. I did not understand why the Lord was asking me to take this big step, but I realized that if I had not taken it, I would have lost the most beautiful things that filled my life".
"After more than five years of life in the Fraternity and having reached the threshold of ordination, looking back, I can only be grateful for the adventure to which God has called me, full of kind faces and trials to face", he concludes.
Vatican mediation in the war in Ukraine is complex, but three levels can be distinguished. The classic diplomatic route, the personal action and follow-up of the Holy Father and the promotion of humanitarian aid.
Andrea Gagliarducci-July 1, 2022-Reading time: 4minutes
The news that the Russian Federation would be ready to accept the mediation of the Holy See in the Ukrainian conflict was communicated for the first time last June 13. It was made public by Alexei Paramonov, director of the first European department of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in declarations to the governmental agency Ria Novosti. But that the situation was more complex than the most optimistic media thought is attested to by the fact that, after that opening, there was no more news for a fortnight. What are you doing? the Holy See's diplomacy for Ukraine? In the end, there are three levels of activity, three diplomatic channels open, in various ways, in the hope of being effective.
The diplomatic route
The first channel is diplomatic. Statements to Ria Novosi were, in any case, a remarkable change of pace, that "small window" that Pope Francis had said he was looking for in an interview granted to the Italian newspaper Corriere della SeraMay 3. In summary, Paromonov stated that the Holy See has not only repeatedly declared its readiness to mediate, but that "these remarks are confirmed in practice." Russia maintains with the Holy See "an open and trusting dialogue on a number of issues, primarily related to the humanitarian situation in Ukraine." This last part links mediation primarily to the humanitarian aspect, and makes it clear that Russia does not want to change its position one iota. It is a complex dialogue.
But the Holy See knows this. Diplomatic activity and exchange of information are intense. Archbishop Paul Richard Gallagher, Vatican Minister for Relations with States, was in Ukraine from May 18-21, on a trip that took him not only to meet with Ukrainian state leaders, but also to experience the war situation up close, with a visit to the martyred cities of Bucha and Vorzel.
It is no coincidence, therefore, that immediately after the note disseminated by Ria NovostiArchbishop Gallagher spoke clearly about what can and cannot be accepted regarding the situation in Ukraine. Thus, on June 14, on the sidelines of a colloquium on migration held at the Pontifical Gregorian University, he stated that one must "resist the temptation to accept compromises on the territorial integrity of Ukraine." Archbishop Gallagher had reiterated the same concept from Kiev, on May 20, when he said that the Holy See "defends the territorial integrity of Ukraine".
Following the Pope
This is the position of the Holy See at the diplomatic level. Then there is the second channel, which is that of Pope Francis. Pope Francis' diplomacy seems to work on a parallel track, and engages him personally. When the war broke out, the Pope wanted to personally visit the embassy of the Russian Federation, in an unprecedented gesture (heads of state summon ambassadors, not the other way around) that was not matched by a similar initiative for the Ukrainian embassy. He then sent Cardinal Konrad Krajewski, the Pope's almoner, and Michael Czerny, prefect of the Dicastery for the Service of Integral Human Development, to see the situation, coordinate humanitarian aid and be the Pope's arm.
Moreover, he did not fail to give his opinion on the matter. In a conversation with the editors of Jesuit magazines around the world on May 19, Pope Francis had recounted that a "not very talkative and very wise" head of state, with whom he had met in January, had expressed his concern about NATO's attitude, explaining that "they are barking at Russia's doorstep and do not understand that the Russians are imperial and do not allow any foreign power to come near them." The Pope also added that he wanted to "avoid reducing the complexity between good guys and bad guys."
First-hand information
What then is Pope Francis' diplomatic key? Perhaps there simply isn't, because the Pope's point of view is mainly concerned with humanitarian aid. To the editors of Jesuit magazines, Pope Francis has asked them to study geopolitics, because that is their task, but at the same time to remember to highlight the "human drama" of war.
In order for the Pope to learn more about the situation, Father Alexander, an Argentine friend of the Pope, organized a meeting in Santa Marta with two of his friends, Yevhen Yakushev, from Mariupol, and Denys Kolyada, a consultant for dialogue with religious organizations, who had brought with him Myroslav Marynovych, his personal friend.
The meeting took place on June 8 and lasted 45 minutes. Marynovych said that "we talked about the fact that Russia uses both weapons and false information," to the extent that Ukraine, even from the Vatican, was seen mainly through the Russian prism, and that it was unfair to look at the offended "through the prism of the aggressor's information propaganda." On the contrary, Marynovych called on the Pope to "develop his own Ukrainian policy, not derived from Russian policy."
These are words that should be read against the grain, and that refer more personally to the Pope than to the diplomacy of the Holy See, certifying a kind of "two-speed diplomacy" towards Ukraine.
The humanitarian field
Finally, there is the third channel, which is the humanitarian channel. We have already mentioned the two cardinals sent by Pope Francis. Then there is the extraordinary commitment launched in the field. On June 22, speaking at the meeting of Works for Aid to the Eastern Churches, Major Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk, head of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, detailed the commitment of Caritas and the parishes, traditionally the places where people go for help.
Ukraine is divided into three zones: the conflict zone, where the first aid is provided; the zone bordering the fighting sites and which is the first reception point for refugees fleeing from both east and west (there are 6 million emigrants and 8 million displaced persons); and the relatively calm zone in western Ukraine, from where aid is organized.
A new Vatican currency
The latest support initiative is a special medal minted by the Vatican Mint, the proceeds of which are being used to finance aid to Ukraine. The first run of 3,000 copies sold out immediately and 2,000 more are being minted. This is a sign that there is not only attention, but also a willingness to do.
Now it remains to be seen whether these three avenues of Vatican diplomacy will lead to concrete results. The Pope has made it known that he wants to go to Moscow and then to Kiev. However, it would be good if his appeals were heard first.
He did so in the apostolic letter "Desiderio Desideravi". In it he stresses that the beauty of the Christian celebration must not "be reduced in value, or worse, exploited in the service of ideology of various kinds".
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Young people invade the Vatican for their "Summer 2022".
The children between the ages of 5 and 13 of Vatican employees are starting their summer camp. They have the good fortune to do so in the papal gardens themselves.
Not everyone knows that during the month of July some areas of the Vatican City, including the Paul VI Hall, are transformed into a large summer center to accommodate children from 5 to 13 years of age, children of employees of the Holy See.
Children's Summer in the Vatican, as the initiative is called, is now in its third edition and this year's theme will be "dreams", to help young people "rediscover the value of looking a little further ahead", explain the organizers.
The leitmotiv will be the figure of St. John Bosco, "a boy who believed in God's dreams, became a priest and dedicated his life to educating his children to be masterpieces." The book by Roald Dahl The great gentle giant will be the focus of the activities. The objective will be to become aware of the beauty of "growing together" and that "we should not be afraid to be a giant", as Jesus or the saints were.
The program
The daily program is very detailed, divided by age group, and includes group games, sports activities, art workshops, along with daily challenges, educational activities and performances. It starts early in the morning at 7:30 a.m. and ends at 6:00 p.m., except on Fridays, when it is brought forward to 2:00 p.m.
After the welcome, there will be a breakfast in the Paul VI Hall and the opening of the day with the hymn of Estate RagazziThe event will be followed by a moment of prayer and the presentation of the programmed activities. At 1 p.m. there will be a lunch followed by educational activities, team games and shows, interspersed with a snack.
Location
The backdrop will be the characteristic Vatican gardens. Team games and outdoor activities will be held in the heliport area, while guided tours of the green areas of the small state are also planned. Water games with special pools will take place in the eastern part of the city, where there are also tennis courts and indoor soccer fields.
Staff
The staff is made up of professional educators coordinated by the Director of the Salesian Community at the Vatican, Father Franco Fontana, who is also the Chaplain of the Gendarmerie and the Vatican Museums. In the 5/7 age group there will be one animator for every 7 children, every 10 children for the 8/10 age group and every 14 children for the older children.
The Pope's visit
In 2020, Pope Francis paid a surprise visit to the summer oratory hosted at his home and encouraged the boys to make new friends: "people who only know how to have fun alone are selfish; to have fun you have to be together, with friends".
True and False Reformation in the Church, by Yves Marie Congar
Congar's essay True and false reform in the Church is a classic of 20th century theology. No one had theologically studied this aspect of the life of the Church until then. He did it at a crucial moment.
On December 6, 1944, by the will of Pius XII, Roncalli, who represented the Holy See in Bulgaria (1925), Turkey and Greece (1931), received a telegram appointing him nuncio in Paris. It was not a promotion, but to put out a fire. At the end of the Second World War, the new head of the French Republic, General De Gaulle, a Catholic, asked for a change of Nuncio Valeri, who was too attached to Pétain's regime. And he urged that it be before Christmas, when the diplomatic corps was traditionally received and the nuncio acted as dean. In addition, the French government demanded the renewal of 30 bishops of France for the same reason.
Angelo Roncalli was then 63 years old. He would spend nine years in Paris until he was elected Patriarch of Venice (1953) and then Pope (1958), under the name of John XXIII.
Fruitful and complex years
Those post-war years in France were, from the Christian point of view, extraordinarily rich. A magnificent flowering of Christian intellectuals and theologians emerged, as well as apostolic initiatives, which renewed the panorama of French Catholicism. It had already begun after the First World War.
This, between great cultural and political tensions. On the one hand, the one maintained by the broad sector of traditional Catholics, refractory to the Republic, proud of France's Catholic past and wounded by the secularist republican arbitrariness that had already lasted 150 years. And on the other hand, the temptation that communism posed for Catholicism with social sensitivity and the young clergy, since it sought to incorporate them into its political project.
In this context, everything was easily confused and politicized and unexpected tensions arose. The Holy See - the Holy Office - received hundreds of complaints from France in those years, and a climate of suspicion was created in the face of the so-called "Nouvelle Théologie" which hindered proper discernment and greatly complicated the lives of some great theologians such as De Lubac and Congar. In 1950, De Lubac was separated from Fourvière.
Genesis of True and false Reformation
On August 17, 1950, Father General of the Dominicans, Manuel Suarez, on a visit to Paris, met with Yves Marie Congar (1904-1995) to talk about the reissue of Disunited Christians (1937), the pioneering essay Congar had written on Catholic ecumenism. At that time the subject was in its infancy, and would only mature with the will of the Second Vatican Council, becoming a mission of the Church. But at the time it aroused historical misgivings. Moreover, the Holy See wanted to prevent ecumenical relations from getting out of hand. The Ecumenical Council of Churches had just been created.
Congar carefully recorded the conversation in a memo (published in Diary of a theologian): "I tell him that I am correcting the proofs of a book entitled. True and false Reformation... [Father General's somewhat frightened look]; that this book will undoubtedly bring me difficulties, the weight of which poor Father General will still have to bear. [But what can I do? I cannot help thinking and saying what seems to me to be true. To be prudent? I am doing my best to be prudent..
Reading the book today, after the post-conciliar ups and downs, one has the feeling that it could have served as a guide to the changes. But when it was published, things sounded different. From the outset, the very use of the word "reform," at least in Italy, seemed to give reason to the Protestant schism. Although the book received some laudatory reviews (including in L' Osservatore Romano), suspicions were also raised, which had more to do with the context than with the book itself. Congar tells the anecdote of a lady who went to buy one of his books and the bookseller asked her: "Are you also a communist?
Complications of the moment
Father General of the Dominicans, Manuel Suarez, was a prudent man in a difficult situation. Everything was complicated by the question of worker priests, in which several French Dominicans were involved (but not Congar). It was an audacious and interesting evangelization project and perhaps in another context, with greater pastoral attention from those involved, it could have come to fruition serenely. But with the two tensions mentioned above, it was unfeasible. On the one hand, criticisms and denunciations multiplied; on the other, an opportunity for communist recruitment was seen.
Everything was precipitated by some defections. And this provoked an intervention in the Dominicans in France in 1954, but through Father General himself. Among other things, Congar was asked to stop teaching (but not writing). The second edition of True and false reform and its translations (but the Spanish version came out in 1953). There was no further sanction and nothing was placed on the Index, as had been feared. But for many years he could not return to regular teaching.
And Nuncio Roncalli? He remains to be studied. He was certainly a man faithful to the Holy See, who acted sensibly and with great humanity. He was bypassed both by the denunciations that went directly to Rome (also from the bishops) and by the measures that were taken through the general superiors. However, when, as Pope, he convoked the Council, both De Lubac and Congar were called to the preparatory commission. And they would play a great role: De Lubac, more as inspirer, but Congar also as editor of many texts. Those were his themes! Church, ecumenism...
The intention of the book
The title is already a program True and false Reformationin the Church. It is not about the "Reformation of the Church", but about the "Reformation in the Church". And that is because the Church is not in the hands of men. The Reformation is made from its own nature, more by removing what hinders than by inventing. And it requires work to adapt the life and mission of the Church to the changes of the times. Not for the comfort of accommodation, but for the authenticity of the mission. For this reason, in reality "reforms prove to be both a constant phenomenon in the life of the Church and a critical moment for Catholic communion."notes in the 1950 foreword.
For this reason, in a time of effervescence such as the one we were living through, it seems important to study the phenomenon, in order to reform well, learning from historical experience and avoiding mistakes. He says lucidly in the same place: "The Church is not just a picture, an apparatus, an institution. It is a communion. There exists in it a unity which no secession can destroy, the unity which its constituent elements generate by themselves. But there is also the unity exercised or lived by men. This questions their attitude, is built up or destroyed by that attitude, and constitutes the communion.". In this there is an echo of Johann Adam Möhler, always admired by Congar (and edited).
The Preface of 1967, gives an account of the change of context since he wrote the book. On the one hand, the magnificent Ecclesiology of the Council, but also the relations with a world much more independent of the ecclesial. This is positive in one sense; but, on the other, "that which comes from the world runs the risk of being lived with an intensity, a presence, an evidence that surpasses the affirmations of faith and the commitments of the Church.". It demands a new evangelizing presence.
On the other hand, Congar warns (we are in 1967) that "It happens that some, imprudently, put everything in question without sufficient preparation [...]. In the present situation, we would not subscribe to the optimistic lines we devoted to the reformist thrust of the immediate postwar period. Not because we are pessimists, but because certain orientations, even certain situations, are really worrisome.". All in all, it seems to him that the book retains substantial validity.
The structure
This is how he describes the structure in the 1950 prologue: "Between an introduction which studies the fact of the reforms as they are presented today and a conclusion, two great parts, to which it has seemed advisable to add a third: 1. Why and in what sense is the Church constantly reforming? 2. Under what conditions can a reform be true and be carried out without rupture? Reformation and Protestantism".. He added this third part to better understand the Reformation and the rupture it entailed. It should have been a reform of life, but they wanted to reform the structure and that led to schism.
The introduction states the fact of the reformation in the history of the Church: "The Church has always lived by reforming itself [...] its history has always been marked by movements of reform. [Sometimes it is the religious orders that correct their own laxity [...] with such impetus that the whole of Christendom is moved (St. Benedict of Aniane, Cluny, St. Bernard). Sometimes it was the popes themselves who undertook a general reform of abuses or of a seriously deficient state of affairs (Gregory VII, Innocent III).". He then points out that the time in which the book is written is a time of ferment. And he deals at length with the "situation of criticism in the Catholic Church.". There is, in fact, a self-criticism to which attention must be paid in order to facilitate improvements.
The first part, the most extensive, is titled "Why and in what sense is the Church being reformed?". It is divided into three chapters and studies the combination of God's holiness and our weaknesses, of which the Church is composed. He does so by examining the theme in patristics, in scholasticism, in other theological contributions and in the Magisterium. He underlines the meaning of the mystery of the Church as a thing of God. And it determines what is and what is not fallible in the Church.
Conditions for reform without schism
This is the title of the second part, which contains the most substantial and lucid part of the book. He points out that in every movement there is room for authentic development or deviation, and that often the reaction to a unilateral error also provokes a unilateral accent. Then he studies what are the conditions of a true reform. And he points out four conditions.
The first is "the primacy of charity and pastoral care".. One cannot pretend to reform the Church with ideas or ideals alone, which can remain theoretical statements: one must stick to pastoral practice, which is what guarantees effectiveness. Heresies often treat the Church as an idea and mistreat reality by creating destructive tensions.
The second condition is "to remain in the communion of the whole". It is also the condition of being Catholic, united to the universal in the Church. Often the initiative comes from the periphery, but it must be integrated with the center, which exercises a regulatory role.
The third condition follows the previous one and is "patience, avoid rushing".. Unity and integration have their times, which must be respected, and haste causes ruptures. This patience, sometimes painful, is a test of authenticity and rectitude of intention. Congar experienced this in his own flesh, although he did not always manage to be so patient.
The fourth condition is that true renewal entails a return to principle and tradition, not the introduction of a novelty by virtue of a "mechanical adaptation". Congar distinguishes between what is an adaptation as a legitimate development that has to be done by connecting with the sources of the Church, and what would be an adaptation as the introduction of a novelty that is added as something postitious. This was also inspired by Newman, another of his great references.
Also on the Reform
As if it were an echo, the encyclical Ecclesiam suam (August 6, 1964) of Paul VI, in the context of the Council, still to be completed, speaks of the conditions for a true reform of the Church; and of the method, which must be dialogue. It is a question of "always restore to it its perfect form which, on the one hand, corresponds to the primitive plan and which, on the other hand, is recognized as coherent and approved in that necessary development which, like the tree of the seed, has given the Church, starting from that design, its legitimate historical and concrete form.". Benedict XVI will also refer to the necessary distinction between reform and rupture when interpreting the will of the Second Vatican Council and specifying the hermeneutic with which it should be read.
Bibliographic news
A thick biography of Congar has just been published by Étienne Fouillox, who also edited his Diary of a Theologian (1946-1956)He is a well-known historian of this very interesting period in France. You can also find online several studies by professors Ramiro Pellitero and Santiago Madrigal.
The phrase is from St. Paul's famous hymn to charity and it serves me to speak today of a wonderful and exceptional love story, one of those that last forever: 75 years to be exact. The celebration of this brilliant wedding will have its culminating moment this July 1, at 6:30 p.m., during a Mass presided over by Cardinal Osoro in the Almudena.
But don't be fooled, there will be no renewal of wedding vows, no giving of rings and no prayer over the spouses, because this love story is not between two people as you may be thinking.
Allow me a parenthesis to reflect on how the abuse of the word love in our language to refer to the romantic union between two people has greatly devalued its meaning. The decline is directly proportional to the fragility of such unions. With 100,000 divorces a year and increasingly ephemeral relationships, it can be said that lifelong love is, to say the least, a rarity. And that's a shame, because most would want love to last forever. That is why the 13th chapter of the First Epistle to the Corinthians, which has served as the title of this article, is one of the most frequently proclaimed readings at religious and civil wedding ceremonies, and why Pope Francis himself, in his exhortation on love in the family Amoris Laetitia, puts it as a model of true love. It is beautiful to hear, but difficult to fulfill. Impossible, I would say, without the assistance of grace.
Only those who have experienced love can in turn be true love for others. This is what Caritas Española, which is celebrating its 75th anniversary today, has achieved.
At this time, with Corinthians 13Caritas has shown that love is patientaccompanying people in their often slow processes to move forward, if not in their chronic situations, without looking at the clock or the calendar.
Caritas has taught us that love is benignby putting themselves at the service of the poor free of charge, without asking for anything in return. The 2.6 million people accompanied last year during the pandemic can vouch for this.
With Caritas, we have learned that love is not envious, does not boast y do not get fatCaritas is an exemplary organization in the midst of society. Faced with the exhibitionism of some NGOs, the competition among them and the commercialization and politicization of poverty, the silent and humble work, always discreet, of Caritas is a light that shines in a special way. Few institutions invest less in publicity and press advisors and manage to be as relevant and valued as Caritas.
Caritas makes us understand that love is not unseemly. Its 73,661 volunteers and 5,408 contracted workers are the friendliest face of the Church for people who come to us broken, sometimes just in need of a listening ear, a welcoming shoulder, an outstretched hand.
Thanks to Caritas, we see that love is not selfish. In 2021, it invested €403 million in its various projects and resources in Spain (16 more than the previous year) while maintaining its austerity target in the Management and Administration section at 6.2%. In other words, out of every 100 euros invested, only 6.20 euros are allocated to management and administration costs. This figure has been maintained over the last 20 years.
That love is not irritated and does not bear evil accounts This is corroborated by the volunteers and workers of Caritas when they put up with the often ungrateful or excessively demanding treatment of some of the people who come to the parishes without knowing the precariousness of the means at their disposal and to whom they do not close their doors. Also for the calm response of the entity when it has had to put up with the criticism of those who have attacked it for political or ideological reasons.
The reports published by Cáritas through the FOESSA Foundation since 1967 show us how love and does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices in the truth. These prestigious sociological studies have been denouncing the unfair distribution of wealth and the truth about the levels of poverty in Spain, marking milestones in the knowledge of the social situation in Spain and allowing to refine responses and effectively accompany the recipients of its action.
Love, in Caritas, everything excusespointing out the sin of the structures and administrations, but not the sinner; all believesbelieving in the people it helps, giving them the vote of confidence that society so often denies them; everything awaitsThe company's work is a way of spreading hope to the people it serves and encouraging society to believe that a more just world is possible. everything supportsWe are facing the new challenges that the changing society presents to us, without lowering our guard but always pushing forward, even if the data always seem to be going against us.
In Caritas, as in marriages for life, love never passesbecause Deus caritas est (love is God).
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.
As every month, Pope Francis invites the faithful to join in his prayer for a specific intention. In the month of June, the Pope's monthly video invites us to make the elderly more present.
This month, the Pope speaks to us in the first person to transmit his prayer intention. He is one of the seniors who have never been "so numerous in the history of mankind. To the elderly, he says, society offers "many assistance plans, but few life projects," forgetting the great contribution they can still make.
They "are the bread that nourishes our lives, they are the hidden wisdom of a people," the Pope adds. The pontiff invites us to "celebrate them" in the "day dedicated to them": the World Day of Grandparents and the Elderly.
Sharing this video is a way of thanking them for all they are and do in our families.
Joaquín Paniello: "The Road to Emmaus shows God's love".
Reconstructing Jesus' conversation with the two walkers to Emmaus, tracing his words in the Acts of the Apostles, Gospels and Old Testament, could synthesize the book Why do you walk sadly? It was written by Joaquín Paniello, a priest living in Jerusalem, and presented at an Omnes Forum on the Holy Land, which was also attended by Piedad Aguilera, from the Pilgrimages Unit of Viajes El Corte Inglés.
Francisco Otamendi-June 30, 2022-Reading time: 10minutes
Religious destinations are also gaining strength during these weeks, in view of the gradual return to normality. In addition to Rome, the land of the Lord, the Holy Land, has always had a special place among them.
In this context, "Pilgrimages to the Holy Land after the pandemic" have been the subject of a Forum Omnes held in Madrid, sponsored by Banco Sabadell, the Fundación Centro Académico Romano (CARF), and Saxum Visitor Centre, a multimedia resource center that helps visitors to deepen their knowledge of the Holy Land in an interactive way, located about 18 kilometers from Jerusalem.
Among the attendees were the director of Religious Institutions and Third Sector of Banco Sabadell, Santiago Portas; the general manager of the CARFLuis Alberto Rosales, and other people related to the sector of religious institutions and religious tourism, as well as the director of Omnes, Alfonso Riobó, who moderated the event, and the editor-in-chief, María José Atienza. The Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, Archbishop Pierbattista Pizzaballa, also intervened in a video with the author of the book.
Demand recovery
The first speaker was the priest Joaquín Paniello (Barcelona, 1962), doctor in Physics, Philosophy and Theology. He has been living and working in Jerusalem for fifteen years, and has just published 'Why do you walk sadly? La conversación de Jesús con los discípulos de Emaús', a book published by emmausfootprints.
Next, Piedad Aguilera, from the Pilgrimages and Religious Tourism Unit of Viajes El Corte Inglés, whom we will later quote at greater length, mentioned some data. "In 2019, the Holy Land received 4.5 million visitors, even with saturation levels in some places. Then came the covid: in March 2020 we were carrying 800,000-odd visitors, according to the Israeli Ministry of Tourism. 2019 was even worse. But the sector expects, not long from now, "explosive demand." "In 2023 I think that will be the time when all the projects we have are going to be realized with that normality that we had in 2019. We are looking forward to everyone coming with that hope," said Piedad Aguilera.
A catechesis
The event was welcomed by the executive of Banco Sabadell, Santiago Portas. He pointed out that "today we are once again holding an Omnes Forum in person, or in a hybrid way, also by streaming, and it is a joy for everyone that in this return to normality the first event is with Omnes".
Santiago Portas thanked everyone for attending and told the author, Mr. Joaquín Paniello, that "once I have read your book, I have become an ambassador for it. It seems to me that reading it is a catechesis that we should all go through to find our way, our true meaning".
The director of Banco Sabadell also thanked the presence of Piedad Aguilera, from Viajes El Corte Inglés, "our partner, with whom we have formalized an agreement to assist our clients in their trips to religious destinations and pilgrimages". Finally, he thanked the Latin Patriarch of Jesusalén, Monsignor Pierbattista Pizzaballa, a member of the Franciscan order, for his intervention.
Pilgrimage, a form of prayer
The director of Omnes, Alfonso Riobó, then thanked Santiago Portas and Banco Sabadell for "the hospitality with which they are hosting this colloquium today". "The theme that brings us together, the pilgrimages in post-pandemic times," he added, "arouses many memories, at least for those of us who know and read the Gospel frequently, because in this passage [that of the disciples of Emmaus] perhaps the first of the pilgrimages, or at least the first of the Christian pilgrimages, on the very day of the Resurrection, is exposed."
"And if we think of the Holy Land, probably one of the emblematic places where memory and imagination stop is the Road to Emmaus, whether we know it or not, perhaps we will know it soon," added Don Alfonso Riobó, who recalled the words of an Italian priest, Don Giuseppe, who recently had the opportunity to be in the Holy Land, after having waited a long time for it.
Giuseppe wrote, "Returning to the Holy Land is a great gift, because here are the roots of our faith, the presence, the life of the Lord, the life of the Church. It is really a return to the sources. After such a long time, it is a precious gift at this moment to be able to give life to this form of prayer that is the pilgrimage, a form of life that allows us to enjoy the beauty of the Lord".
Reflection on Emmaus and the Luke passage
"It is not a travel book, nor a prayer guide for the pilgrim, but a reflection on that place and on that passage," said Alfonso Riobó as he introduced Joaquín Paniello, who has written the first book to present in dialogue form the conversation of Jesus with the disciples on the road to Emmaus.
But he has achieved this by reconstructing in its pages more than two thousand years of history told "through direct and effective images, which reveal a profound biblical knowledge, theological-philosophical rigor and great respect for the sources," said the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, Archbishop Pierbattista Pizzaballa, who prefaced the book.
"I would like to make a comment and link the theme of pilgrimages with the reason for this book on the Camino de Emáus," said Joaquín Paniello. "First I have to say that I have not made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, because I went, and I stayed. When we go to the Holy Land, we go thinking about the things of the Lord, of Jesus. But sometimes we miss a dimension of the root. Because Jesus was a Jew, he lived Judaism, he lived many things related to Judaism, and sometimes we leave many things aside, and we miss many things that are very much at the root".
"We know very little of the Old Testament."
"I have to confess that being in the Holy Land I have begun to appreciate the Old Testament and the Jewish people much more. There are many things in our liturgy, in our prayers, in the blessings, that refer to how the people of Israel, in the first century, lived Judaism, and how many of the things have been inherited to our days".
What does that have to do with this book? When we go to the Holy Land we have to see the Old Testament behind it. We Catholics know very little of the Old Testament, and we miss out on a wealth of information". "Now, we need a guide in some way. And I realized that when I was there".
"The Saxum Visitor Center was born to transmit the figure of Jesus and the Holy Places. When the project started, I had to follow it from Rome, but then I went to Jerusalem in 2010, and I was able to follow, even before starting to build, a matter linked to the permits (the land had not yet been purchased), and collaborating with what the professionals were doing, what could be the basic idea to transmit what we wanted there," explained Joaquín Paniello.
"We realized that he was on the Emmaus Road, and that being on the Emmaus Road summed up everything that was wanted at that center," the book's author reflected. "That it was, in a way, that people passing by could say, like the disciples themselves, 'Didn't our hearts burn within us when he spoke to us on the road and explained the Scriptures to us?' And what did Jesus say? What did he explain to them? That's when I started to get into it."
"They needed to talk about the prophecies."
"I had not studied the Old Testament in such depth. I had in theology classes, etcetera. And I noticed a couple of things that really caught my attention," added Joaquín Paniello. "One is that the early Christians needed to talk about the Old Testament, the prophecies in particular, and how they had been fulfilled in the life of Jesus, in order to present Jesus." And St. Justin, for example, in the second century, when he wrote to the emperor, it was not enough for him to present Jesus by saying that he was an extraordinary person, that he performed miracles, etc., but he begins by saying: in the Jewish people there is a figure who are the prophets, who said what was going to happen in the future. And he introduces Jesus as the one in whom the prophecies are fulfilled".
Situation similar to that of St. Justin
"Right now we are in a situation similar to that of St. Justin. We have to talk about Jesus, and many people think that Jesus was a great figure, a great man, and that's it. No, wait a minute, there is a plan of God from a thousand years before, David for example, and even before, the blessing of Jacob to his sons, where it already says that someone is going to come, that Judah is going to have a scepter, that he is going to be King -Judah at that time was only one of the sons-, and that this reign was not going to be lost until the one we were waiting for came. It was sixteen hundred years before Christ".
"There is a whole plan, and as it gets closer it intensifies, and the prophets become more and more concrete, telling us what has to happen in the life of Jesus, and how it will be fulfilled later in his life," Joaquín Paniello emphasized. "Of course, this introduction does not mean that Jesus suddenly appears, a great character, son of God, but that there is an introduction that seems to me very important for evangelization".
That was one of the things that caught the attention of this Catalan priest based in the Holy Land. But there is more. "The other has to do with sending the first version of the book to many people, who gave me comments, and I gathered a lot of things from many people. The book in the end is not only mine. One of them told me: whenever I read chapter 24 of St. Luke, I get angry, because St. Luke says that the Lord told them everything that Scripture says about Himself, and he says nothing!
The authority of Scripture
"But I realized that he does say a lot, but not there," Paniello argues in his book. "St. Luke also wrote the Acts of the Apostles. And in both the Gospel and the Acts of the Apostles there are many references to prophecies (they already appeared in St. Matthew, a little earlier). And in the Acts of the Apostles there are many speeches of some of the apostles".
"Those discourses would be long," the author continues, "and St. Luke includes a prophecy in each discourse, which logically came from the conversation with Jesus. It is the only time that Jesus speaks to his apostles not from his authority but from the authority of Scripture. There is only one passage, something similar, that of the Samaritan woman, who begins to speak with him. But here he is reasoning everything from Scripture, so that they realize that everything has been fulfilled in the life of Jesus. That there is a long plan of God. There are many things that, being there, you realize more deeply".
Jesus is transforming them
"The disciples of Emmaus were deeply discouraged, saddened. Their state of mind was one of total disaster," Joaquín Paniello pointed out in the colloquium, in a moment that seemed central to his brief presentation. "From there to returning to Jerusalem at nightfall, there is a whole journey with Jesus that transforms them. The first thing Jesus had to do was to make them understand that the Cross could have a meaning. That the Cross is not really incompatible with the love of God".
"That part seems to me to be the first thing to turn our own experience around. Understanding what God is like and that God's love is also manifested there is very important. I would say that the thread of God's love is fundamental in the book, because it is about highlighting that God's whole plan is for love. Everyone who reads this book will find new things", he concluded.
Experts in the Holy Land
"The Holy Land is the Promised Land. A land of infinite paths, a whole world of surprises and sensations. A place where the sacred becomes everyday and close to be felt in its varied landscapes, in its delicate aromas, in its culture, its history..., and above all in its deep silences that invite reflection and prayer".
So begins the description made by the Pilgrimages and Religious Tourism Unit of Viajes El Corte Inglés, of which Piedad Aguilera and her team are part, of the pilgrimage to the Holy Land. "A journey unlike any other, which should be made at least once in a lifetime," as Piedad Aguilera said at the Omnes conference, in which "pilgrimage to the Holy Land is a journey through the scenarios of the Old and New Testament, a journey through time, a journey through the melting pot where different and varied cultures converge, eagerly seeking a new path that leads to peaceful coexistence between the different cultures and religions that are manifested in it".
At the Omnes Forum, Piedad Aguilera began by recalling the recently signed alliance between Viajes El Corte Inglés and Banco Sabadell "to boost spiritual and cultural travel to religious destinations. It is a project that we have launched with great enthusiasm and excitement.
Regarding the book by Joaquín Paniello, Piedad Aguilera pointed out that "from a technical point of view - we are dedicated to the world of travel - this biblical journey, this historical journey, can add much value to our routes, especially starting at the Saxum Visitor Center, which we know, which provides a fantastic location for our pilgrims of what the Holy Land means. If we then also take that route, as far as we can, to Emmaus-Nicopolis, it will be fantastic".
Comply with thepilgrim's expectation
"It is true that it is a bit complex for us to synthesize our projects in seven days," acknowledged the director of Viajes El Corte Inglés. "What we are looking for is simply for the pilgrim to let himself go and not have to worry about his flight, accommodation, etc., and to synthesize that agenda."
"We like to emphasize that the pilgrimage begins when we have the meeting with our group, because there we have to detect what is the real motivation of the pilgrim. And based on that, we select the places, where we do the Eucharist, and above all, it is very important to detect the pastoral and that liturgy of faith, so that the pilgrim receives what he expects to receive, and his expectation is a success".
"What could be better than the trip to the Holy Land!"
"We are not dedicated to evangelization, but I believe that all of us who are here have the obligation, from our fields, and after the pandemic, to boost that confidence and that guarantee to the traveler, to have that desire to experience that experience. and what better than the trip to the Holy Land," encouraged Piedad Aguilera.
"Undoubtedly there are many places in the world, many places of worship, but we always say that the Holy Land is a journey unlike any other. We offer the Holy Land as a trip that you have to make at least once in your life, whatever the motivation of the visitor. We have had groups with a more cultural interest, but everyone who comes to the Holy Land arrives transformed, in one way or another. The pilgrim is the most grateful trip we have. If we add to that the pastoral care of the chaplain priest who is in charge of each pilgrimage, and the Christian guides that we always have at the destination, I think it is a success".
"They have suffered a lot."
"We try to bring the world of the great cultural heritage that we have, both in Spain and in places like the Holy Land, closer to the traveler. And with it we generate that experience that is the proof of everything that happened there in so many centuries, for any believer or non-believer," continued the expert, who wanted to emphasize the help of the Church to all Christians in the Holy Land.
During these two and a half years, "the Christian communities in the Holy Land, not only those in Israel, but also those in Palestine, have suffered a lot, because the visitor brings a wealth and a daily sustenance that in these two years have been very difficult. And it is fair to say that the entire Franciscan Order, with all that it means in the Holy Land, and other religious institutions, have carried out important actions to help these Christian communities, which are a minority in the Holy Land.
"You live together naturally."
Regarding security, sometimes political or social data are offered that create "fear of the Holy Land," added Piedad Aguilera, "but when you visit the old city of Jerusalem and see that you can live there naturally, fears dissipate. Since the last Intifada, I believe that it has been possible to travel with total normality".
Now we are putting in place all the resources, air, hotel, because we are going to face "an explosive demand". And in 2023 I think that will be the moment where we are already adapted, where all the projects we have are going to be carried out with that normality that we had in 2019. We are looking forward to everyone coming with that hope." Piedad Aguilera wished to highlight, finally, "that security that we can provide the traveler, in the structure of specialized people we have in the unit, hiring insurance at destination with comprehensive health coverage, so that the traveler can be with peace of mind in the event of an incident, which can happen to anyone. Our capacity to react to unforeseen events is guaranteed".
The subsequent discussion gave the opportunity to ask numerous questions to the speakers, about the guides, the profile of tourists and pilgrims, about pilgrimage, etc., which can be viewed on the Omnes Youtube account.
The liturgy is a true encounter with Christ. The central ideas of "Desiderio desideravi".
On June 29, 2022, the Holy Father Francis has published the Apostolic Letter Desiderio desideravi on the liturgical formation of the People of God. It is a long letter, 65 points, with which the Roman Pontiff does not intend to deal exhaustively with the liturgy, but to offer some elements of reflection to contemplate the beauty and truth of the Christian celebration.
A first point that develops the document is the Liturgy in the today of salvation history. In this first epigraph, the Pope situates us in the Paschal Mystery, the true center of the liturgical theology of the Council's Constitution on the Liturgy, the Sacrosanctum Concilium. The Last Supper, the Cross of Christ and the Resurrection, the Paschal Mystery, appear as the only true and perfect worship pleasing to the Father.
The liturgy is the means that the Lord has left us to take part in this unique and admirable event in the history of Salvation. And it is a means that we live in the Church. "From the beginning, the Church, enlightened by the Holy Spirit, has understood that what was visible in Jesus, what could be seen with the eyes and touched with the hands, his words and gestures, the concrete of the Incarnate Word, has passed into the celebration of the sacraments" (Letter, n. 9).
Encounter with Christ
Directly related to what we have said so far is the second epigraph of the Charter: The Liturgy, the place of encounter with Christ. This subtitle reminds us of a very significant expression from the Letter that John Paul II wrote 25 years after the publication of the Sacrosanctum Concilium: The liturgy is the privileged place of encounter with God and with the one He sent, Jesus Christ" (St. John Paul II, Apostolic Letter "The Liturgy is the privileged place of encounter with God and with the one He sent, Jesus Christ").. Vicesimusquintus annus, n. 7). Herein lies all the powerful beauty of the liturgy, Francis will say: it is an encounter with Christ, for we cannot forget that "the Christian faith is either a living encounter with Christ or it is not" (Letter, n. 10).
The liturgy is a true encounter with Christ, not just a vague recollection. An encounter that began in Baptism, an event that marks the life of all of us. And this encounter with Christ in Baptism, true death and resurrection, makes us children of God, members of the Church and thus we experience the fullness of the worship of God. "In fact, there is only one act of worship that is perfect and pleasing to the Father, the obedience of the Son, the measure of which is his death on the cross. The only possibility of participating in his offering is to be sons in the Son. This is the gift we have received. The subject that acts in the Liturgy is always and only Christ-Church, the Mystical Body of Christ" (Letter, n. 15).
Drinking from the liturgy
The Pope then wants to remind us, as he did on the occasion of the Vatican Council and the liturgical movement that preceded it, that the liturgy is the "primary and necessary source from which the faithful must drink the truly Christian spirit" (Sacrosanctum Concilium, n. 14). Therefore, "with this letter I would simply like to invite the whole Church to rediscover, guard and live the truth and power of the Christian celebration. I would not want the beauty of Christian celebration and its necessary consequences in the life of the Church to be disfigured by a superficial and reductive understanding of its work, or worse, to be instrumentalized in the service of some ideological vision" (Letter, n. 16). The objective of the Letter, beyond some sensationalist headlines, is clear reading these words of Francis.
Faced with the danger of Gnosticism and Pelagianism, to which the Holy Father has referred at length in his programmatic letter Evangelii gaudium, the Letter places before our eyes the value of the beauty of the truth of the Christian celebration. "The liturgy is the priesthood of Christ revealed and given to us in his Passover present and active today through sensible signs (water, oil, bread, wine, gestures, words) so that the Spirit, immersing us in the paschal mystery, may transform our whole life, conforming us ever more to Christ" (Letter, n. 21).
In this paragraph is contained all the beauty and depth of the liturgy: the mystery in which we participate, which is made present by means of sensible signs, which configures us to the dead and risen Christ, transforming us into him. Beauty which, as the Roman Pontiff reminds us, is not a simple ritual aestheticism, or the care only for the external formality of the rite or the rubrics.
Taking care of the liturgy
Logically, this is necessary so as not to "confuse the simple with banal sloppiness, the essential with ignorant superficiality, the concrete of the ritual action with an exaggerated practical functionalism" (Letter, n. 22). For this reason it is necessary to take care of all aspects of the celebration, to observe all the rubrics, but without forgetting that it is necessary to foster "wonder before the paschal mystery, an essential part of the liturgical action" (Letter, n. 24). An awe that goes beyond the expression of the meaning of the mystery. "Beauty, like truth, always generates wonder and, when it refers to the mystery of God, leads to adoration" (Letter, n. 25). Awe is an essential part of the liturgical action, because it is the attitude of one who knows that he is before the peculiarity of symbolic gestures.
After this first introductory part, the Pope asks: how can we recover the ability to live the liturgical action to the full? And the answer is clear: "The reform of the Council has this objective" (Letter, n. 27). But the Pope does not want the non-acceptance of the reform, as well as a superficial understanding of it, to distract from finding the answer to the question we asked earlier: how can we grow in the ability to live the liturgical action fully, how can we continue to be amazed at what happens before our eyes in the celebration? And Francis' clear answer: "We need a serious and vital liturgical formation" (Letter, n. 31).
Liturgical formation
Formation for the liturgy and formation from the liturgy are the two aspects that the following letter deals with. In this formation for the liturgy, study is only the first step to be able to enter into the celebrated mystery, since in order to be able to guide on the path, it is necessary to travel it first. Nor should it be forgotten that formation for the liturgy "is not something that can be conquered once and for all: since the gift of the celebrated mystery surpasses our capacity for knowledge, this commitment must certainly accompany the ongoing formation of each one, with the humility of the little ones, an attitude that opens one to wonder" (Letter, n. 38).
As far as formation from the liturgy is concerned, being formed by it entails a real existential involvement with the person of Christ. "In this sense, the liturgy is not about knowledge, and its purpose is not primarily pedagogical (although it has its pedagogical value) but is praise, thanksgiving for the Passover of the Son, whose saving power comes into our lives" (Letter, n. 41). Therefore, the celebration has to do with the "reality of being docile to the action of the Spirit, who is at work in us, until Christ is formed in us. The fullness of our liturgical formation is conformation to Christ. I repeat: it is not a matter of a mental and abstract process, but of becoming him" (Letter, n. 41).
Union of heaven and earth
This existential involvement takes place sacramentally. Through the created signs that have been assumed and placed at the service of the encounter with the Word incarnate, crucified, dead, risen, ascended to the Father. The Pope's phrase is very beautiful when he recalls that the "liturgy gives glory to God because it allows us, here on earth, to see God in the celebration of the mysteries" (Letter, n. 43). And how can we once again become capable of symbols? How can we learn to read them in order to live them? First of all, Francis will say, by recovering confidence in creation. In addition, another question will be the education necessary to acquire the interior attitude that will allow us to situate and understand the liturgical symbols.
One aspect that the Charter points out to guard and to grow in the vital understanding of the symbols of the liturgy will be the ars celebrandi: the art of celebrating. An art that entails understanding the dynamism that describes the liturgy, being in tune with the action of the Spirit, as well as knowing the dynamics of symbolic language, its peculiarity and its efficacy (cf. Letter, nn. 48-50).
Liturgical silences
Pope Francis recalls that this theme concerns all the baptized and involves a common doing (walking in procession, sitting, standing, kneeling, singing, being silent, looking, listening...), which educates each faithful to discover the authentic uniqueness of his or her personality, not with individualistic attitudes, but being aware of being one body of the Church.
A particularly important gesture is silence. It is expressly foreseen by the rubrics (in the opening rites, in the liturgy of the Word, in the Eucharistic prayer, after communion). Silence is not a refuge to hide in an intimate isolation, suffering the ritual as if it were a distraction, but it is the symbol of the presence and action of the Holy Spirit.
Ars celebrandi
While the ars celebrandi The Pope points out that ordained ministers should take special care in this regard. There are various models of presiding, but what is fundamental is to avoid exaggerated personalism in the celebratory style. For this service of presiding to be done well, with artistry, it is of fundamental importance that the presbyter be aware that he is, in himself, one of the modes of the Lord's presence.
This will lead him not to forget that the Risen One must remain the protagonist, as in the Last Supper and the Cross and Resurrection. It is a matter of showing in the celebration that the Lord, and not the celebrant, is the protagonist. "The presbyter is trained to preside by means of the words and gestures which the Liturgy places on his lips and in his hands" (Letter, n. 59). It should always be kept in mind that the words and gestures of the liturgy are an expression, matured over the centuries, of the sentiments of Christ and help to be configured to him (cf. Redemptionis sacramentum, n. 5).
Purpose of the document
Pope Francis, as St. John Paul II and Benedict XVI repeatedly did, concludes by encouraging us to rediscover the richness of the Council's Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, Sacrosanctum Concilium. At the same time, he reiterates, as he did at the beginning and at various points in the letter constituting his Leitmotiv, your filo rossoThe desire that this letter will help "to rekindle wonder at the beauty of the truth of the Christian celebration, to recall the need for authentic liturgical formation and to recognize the importance of an art of celebration that is at the service of the truth of the paschal mystery and of the participation of all the baptized, each according to the specificity of his or her vocation" (Letter, n. 62). These, and no others, are the underlying motivations of this beautiful Letter. A golden brooch to remind us of the importance of the liturgical year and of Sunday.
"Let us abandon polemics to listen together to what the Spirit is saying to the Church, let us maintain communion, let us continue to be amazed by the beauty of the Liturgy" (Letter, n. 65).
Without great pretensions, the book gathers in a succinct way, fifty short stories in which the author, taking as a model different female figures of universal literature, shells virtues, defects, attitudes of which these characters are the image. From the generous serenity of Eugenia Grandet, the purity of Catherine von Heilbronn or the virtue of Pamela to other less positive traits such as the cruelty of Electra, the obsession aroused by Rebecca or the almost unbearable superficiality of Madame Bovary.
"The Eternal Feminine" is not intended to be a book of thought but, rather, a work that serves as a guide and first approach to these more or less known figures of literature.
A very interesting work to use in educational environments when looking for examples and to make known the great works of all times as well as a starting point for conversations, especially with young people, on the great themes of the human being. A small vindication of the feminine figure, with its variety of nuances, in the history of universal literature and in the construction of archetypes that have arrived, almost unaltered, to our days.
Jesus' instructions on the mission, in Mark and Matthew are addressed to the Twelve, in Luke they are found in two discourses, the first to the Twelve (9:1) and the second to the seventy-two. The number recalls the seventy pagan nations mentioned in Genesis (seventy-two in the Greek version): which means that the mission is not limited to the people of Israel, but that it will reach "to the ends of the earth", as Jesus will say before his ascension.
It may also refer to the seventy elders that God asked Moses to choose to help him in the government of the people, to which two others were later added, underlining that their mission has a divine origin.
Jesus' actions and words define the disciple and the mission. He sends them two by two: their brotherhood is essential, they do not go alone, to support each other. He sends them ahead of him: their role is to open the way, they are forerunners, like the Baptist. The first task he entrusts to them is to pray to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers. Nor does the master of the harvest want to act alone: he involves his workers in the call of other workers, with their prayer. He warns them that they will be like lambs in the midst of wolves.
However, he exhorts them to go without baggage. But before his passion, he will say to them: "When I sent you without purse, scrip, or sandals, did you lack anything?" They said: "Nothing.". "But now, he that hath a purse, let him carry it, and likewise the scrip; and he that hath no sword, let him sell his cloak, and buy one." It means that that particular counsel was not valid in all circumstances. On the other hand, the exhortation to detachment is valid forever.
The first gift they bring from Jesus is peace, and he recommends them to keep it for themselves in case it is not received. Then he has to heal the sick. Only thirdly can they proclaim that the kingdom is at hand. It is good that they receive their livelihood, but they should not go from house to house as to make propaganda or to create a group of opinion or power.
Luke is very attentive to the disciples' detachment from worldly ambition: twice he writes that Jesus tells the Twelve that authority is service, and he is the only evangelist to record these words of theirs: "So likewise you also, when you have done all that you were commanded to do, say, 'We are unprofitable servants. We have done all that we ought to do."
With this preparation, the disciples go and subdue even the demons. Jesus sees Satan fall like lightning. They return full of joy, and Jesus assures them that nothing can harm them. But he tells them not to rejoice because of the outcome, but because they have been chosen by God and are promised his eternal gratitude.
The homily on the readings of Sunday XVI
The priest Luis Herrera Campo offers its nanomiliaa small one-minute reflection for these readings.
Church mourns murder of two more priests in Nigeria
Two more priests have been murdered this week in Nigeria. Father Christopher Odia and Father Vitus Borogo, the latest victims in a long trail of blood. It is the third major attack on Catholics in the last month.
Two priests were killed this weekend in the southern state of Edo and in the north-central state of Kaduna. Just a few weeks have passed since the Pentecost Sunday massacre, with the killing of at least 40 people at St. Francis Xavier Church in Owo, in the southwestern state of Ondo.
Cold-blooded murders
Father Christopher Odia, 41, was abducted yesterday from his rectory in St. Michael's Church as he was preparing to celebrate mass. The priest was later killed by his attackers, a local church statement said. On Saturday, Father Vitus Borogo, a priest of the Archdiocese of Kaduna, was killed at Prison Farm, following a raid by "terrorists", as reported by Father Alumuku, as also reported by the local press and sources of Aid to the Church in Need.
The 50-year-old priest "was there," explains the head of social communication of the archdiocese of Abuja, "with two people, his brother and another boy, who were later kidnapped" by the gunmen. "I knew Father Vitus, as he was a student of mine when he was rector of St. James Seminary in Makurdi Diocese, Benue State," recalls Father Alumuku. "He was a very kind and bright boy. I met him recently, a couple of months ago in Kaduna. As chaplain of the Kaduna State Polytechnic, he was guiding the Catholic students of that college in the faith to be positive signs in the local community."
Nigeria, country of martyrs
"As priests, we do not back down, we are not afraid: we are prepared to be martyrs, because it is with the blood of martyrdom how the Church in Nigeria will grow". These are the words of Father Patrick Alumuku, head of social communications of the Archdiocese of Abuja and director of the National Catholic Television of Nigeria, in the face of the bloodshed that is tragically striking the African country and the Catholic Church in particular.
"The Kaduna area is one of the most affected by Fulani herders," explains the priest, referring to the nomadic West African ethnic group. Their presence extends from Mauritania to Cameroon, often in bloody conflict with the settled agricultural populations. The general context of insecurity is generated by the violence of the various branches of the Islamic extremist Boko Haram.
Request for assistance to the authorities
Alumuku speaks of a "jihadist" drift in the country, Father Alumuku says that "the Catholic Church is a target to be attacked" simply "because of its Christian faith: we are not fighting against anyone, we have no weapons". On behalf of Signis Nigeria, the local branch of the World Catholic Association for Communication, of which Father Alumuku is president in Abuja, the priest urges the "security agencies at the federal and state levels to intensify their efforts to bring the killers to justice, while multiplying their efforts" to safeguard the lives of all citizens.
"The state has a duty to protect all Nigerians," says Archbishop Matthew Man-Oso Ndagoso of Kaduna. "It is a terrible thing. The Church is hurt, but not only the Church: all Nigerians are hurt by what is happening." "People don't feel safe in their homes, in the streets, anywhere," the prelate continued. "Hundreds of Nigerians are victims of kidnappers and terrorists and all this," he notes, "with impunity." "If there is peace in the country, those who have the task of announcing the Gospel, like us, have the possibility of doing so; where there is no peace and security, as is happening now, our work" is difficult, "inhibited" by the fact that "we cannot move freely." This, concludes the Archbishop of Kaduna, "is the terrible situation we are living today" in Nigeria.
A tragic month
The country has lived through a long and horrifying trail of bloodshed in the catholic world. Earlier this month, he writes CNAIn a statement, "gunmen attacked a Catholic and a Baptist church in Kaduna State, killing three people and reportedly abducting more than 30 worshippers. The heinous and cowardly attack on the Catholic church in Ondo state on June 5 was denounced.
With respect to the latest tragic episode, the news agency Fides reported the capture of two of Father Christopher's kidnappers. "Two of the murderers were captured by the community who were on the trail of the kidnappers," explained the auxiliary bishop of Minna, Monsignor Luka Gopep.
Since the beginning of the year, three priests have been killed in Nigeria alone. The first, Father Joseph Aketeh Bako, was kidnapped and then killed on April 20. Agenzia Fides also reports that 900 Christians have been killed so far in the first months of the year. The West African country is dealing with a wave of violence by armed gangs, mainly in unprotected rural communities. Since 2009, when the Boko Haram insurgency emerged, Nigeria has been living in a total state of insecurity.
On Friday, June 24, the Supreme Court annulled the sentence of Roe vs. Wadewhich had protected the "right" to abortion in the United States since 1973. Once the decision was known, thousands of people took to the streets to celebrate, while many others took to the streets in protest.
Abortion is possibly the most controversial moral issue in the West for more than fifty years.
The demands of pro-lifers seem reasonable, insofar as they believe that human lives are at stake. However, those in favor of abortion are equally convinced that it is a human right of women, since they believe that embryos or fetuses are not persons with rights.
I am personally against abortion but, in these lines, I do not want to go into the arguments of the two sides. I want to underline the fact that we clearly disagree. If we all recognize this, the next thing we can ask ourselves is how to move forward together in clarifying this issue.
It is true that one may think that it is impossible to reach an agreement on the matter. There are good reasons for this: The positions of both sides are very firm. We hardly listen to each other's reasons, there are many conflicting economic interests, it is an issue that involves us emotionally, and so on.
Now, after so many centuries of history, I wonder if it might not be possible to resolve our differences in a more rational and peaceful way. Throughout history, human beings have solved our disagreements by resorting to war, personal disqualifications and, lately, to cancellation or social condemnation. And the truth is that it makes sense to do so, because many times the forced imposition of the ideas of some over others has been effective. It has worked on many occasions, implanting a certain vision of the world.
I believe that this is the reason why we can all be tempted to impose by majorities the laws we consider just. And since violence is no longer socially acceptable, we prefer not to resort to it unless we have no other choice.
I am probably a bit naïve, but I wonder if we might not be able to have a calm dialogue on a controversial moral issue. It is obviously not easy, but if we don't try, we risk further deepening the polarization that increasingly divides our societies.
With the decision of the American court, the pro-lifers have won a great victory, overturning a sentence that seemed immovable. Tomorrow, however, it will be the pro-abortionists who will win the next battle. Now, what I think we can all agree on is that imposing laws by narrow majorities is not solving social discrepancies. On the contrary, it seems to be widening them.
So we should all accept that we have to face a complex and uncomfortable moral debate. Michael Sandel, the famous Harvard professor and Princess of Asturias Award winner, has devoted much of his work to explaining why most social debates on controversial moral issues have not actually taken place. His research shows that it makes no difference whether the issue is abortion, euthanasia, gay marriage or surrogacy: In none of these cases has there been any real dialogue. Nor is there any difference between how the decision-making processes have been managed in one country and another. In all of them we find the legislative imposition of some majorities over others.
Therefore, if we are all to respect each other and move forward as a society, both sides must seek the truth on every issue if we are to truly resolve it. And how will it be possible to overcome disagreements? Personally, I am convinced that on any of the issues on which we disagree, there are many aspects of the same issue on which we do agree. Only by starting from what we all accept, can we clarify exactly where we disagree. And, at that point, we will have to ask ourselves how we can live together.
Let's take the recently overturned abortion ruling as an example. The positions of President Joe Biden and the U.S. bishops are diametrically opposed when it comes to judging the Supreme Court's decision. However, both have stressed the importance of there not being an outbreak of violence. The fact that some states now prohibit abortion and others make it even easier does not solve the underlying problem. We are far from being able to live together peacefully and to create the conditions for a climate in which the truth about the origin of life can be clarified.
In this sense, pro-life triumphalism cannot be revanchist: It is not enough to ban abortion in some states if it does not really help all mothers who have difficulties in raising their children. And rubbing the victory in the face of pro-abortion supporters won't add up to much either (and this regardless of whether they do the same when they take the cake).
I understand the reasons of the pro-life protesters who have taken to the streets to celebrate. It is certainly a great step forward for their cause. However, the U.S. Supreme Court has been far from saying that abortion is ending a person's life. It has simply stated that it is up to the individual American states to decide whether or not to legalize it. In doing so, it is implicitly acknowledging that abortion is not killing an innocent person, for if it really thought that, American law would prohibit it nationwide.
Where am I going with all this? Well, regardless of whether abortion is legal or not in a given state (and we could say the same about any country), the real problem is how we are going to reach an agreement between the two sides. Laws are important and certainly shape culture, but what I have tried to point out in these lines is that on certain issues the establishment of a law does not end the controversy. So how can we move forward?
The road to solving these issues is not an easy one, so many think that the only thing left is the cultural battle. If we understand this concept as showing one's face in public debate in order to rationally justify one's convictions, then I agree that it is very necessary. However, if showing one's cultural battle means accepting that in society there are two sides to every controversial issue and only one of the two can remain standing, so I am not so enthusiastic about the idea. I don't want to do away with those who think differently and I don't want to impose my convictions on them either. I want a society where both sides have the opportunity to try to convince the other of their position without being cancelled for trying to do so.
Therefore, although I am pleased with the cancellation of the Roe vs WadeI do not have a triumphalist tone towards the supporters of abortion. In fact, they are now feeling attacked and more afraid, so they a priori it is not so easy for them to listen to the reasons of the opposing position. I, on the other hand, want to dialogue with them, to try to convince them, not to defeat them in a vote that today I have won and tomorrow I may lose. And of course, I am also willing to listen to their arguments without making personal disqualifications and respecting people who do not think like me. Perhaps in this way we will make real progress in the debate.
Transmitting the legacy of faith, the focus of the 24th Catholics and Public Life Congress
While last year, the CEU congress addressed political correctness, along with the analysis, for example, of the culture of cancellation and the woke movement, with a notable echo in public opinion, this year it will look positively with proposals around faith and the transmission of a legacy, advanced its director, Rafael Sanchez Saus.
Francisco Otamendi-June 28, 2022-Reading time: 3minutes
The director of the Catholics and Public Life CongressRafael Sánchez Saus, has advanced some details of the 24th edition of this congress to be held on November 18, 19 and 20, 2022, at the Moncloa campus of the CEU San Pablo University, under the title 'We propose faith. We transmit a legacy'.
As always, the congress will also analyze the events that are happening in our time, and will look at the United States, on the occasion of the recent decision of the Supreme Courtwhich has stated that the U.S. Constitution does not grant or contain a "right" to abortion, and returns the decision to "the people" and their "elected representatives", that is, to the government of each state. This is a "triumph" for the pro-life movement in the United States, and it will be analyzed, said Rafael Sánchez Saus in an informal meeting with journalists.
The congress will also look towards Eastern Europe and the Ukraine warand what is happening there, and will allocate "all proceeds from registration and masses, as has been done on previous occasions, to campaigns aimed at Ukraine, specifically Aid to the Church in Need," added Sánchez Saus.
Response to ideologies
The director of the Congress also pointed out that the November meeting summarizes the response that Catholics of our time could give to today's world in the face of ideologies. "The faith that we propose is faith in Jesus Christ, God and man, creator and redeemer, and in the Catholic, Apostolic and Roman Church, which has made him known to us".
In his opinion, "the legacy we must pass on is the one we received from our fathers and they from theirs, that of a civilization that was founded on radically new principles in the history of mankind".
In this sense, Sánchez Saus assured that "we have the right and the duty to receive, increase and project this immense spiritual, moral and cultural legacy, of which we are heirs, without diminution or reduction".
He also appealed to a legacy that "must certainly be updated to respond with new ideas and solutions to the problems of today and the immediate future, many of them derived from the anthropological subversion imposed on us by ideologies and their powerful terminals, from the loss of meaning and the emptying of life for the sake of hedonism and consumption".
The director of the Congress has not revealed, for the moment, the speakers for the next congress. meetingHowever, he added that there will be "a group of top-level international speakers and a group of experts in different interdisciplinary fields, from education and the family to history, economics and law, among others, who will lead the workshops in which the congress participants will be able to deepen their knowledge according to their area of interest in an atmosphere of dialogue".
The November congress will focus on "a formative and constructive experience that should strengthen our fully apostolic will to contribute to the existence of a more Christian and, therefore, more human world", emphasized Rafael Sánchez Saus.
Ideology woke
As will be recalled, in November of last year, the Catholics and Public Life Congress addressed the phenomenon of the Political correctness. Freedoms in dangerwith the analysis of the culture of cancellation and the woke movement.
Among other thinkers and specialists, the French philosopher and professor emeritus of the Sorbonne attended the congress, Rémi BragueFor him, what is at stake with the culture of cancellation is "our relationship with the past", and we must choose "between forgiveness and condemnation".
Rémi Brague, who proposed "recovering our capacity to forgive," also gave an interview to Omnes.
At today's meeting, the proceedings of the 23rd Congress, last year's, on political correctness, prepared by CEU Ediciones, were handed out. The Catholics and Public Life Congress, organized by the Catholic Association of Propagandists and its partner, the San Pablo CEU University Foundation, "aims to provide a framework for meeting and reflection for all Catholics and people of good will who are interested in ensuring that the light of the Gospel illuminates all aspects of life, both in its personal and social dimensions.
At the last Congress there were 1,063 registered participants, a figure that had never been reached before, almost 1,700 online followers, and a presence in 115 media outlets, 26 of them international, said Rafael Sánchez Saus, who highlighted the growth of the media impact in recent years.
The Priority of Grace: Theologian Karl-Heinz Menke on Opus Dei
The German theologian Karl-Heinz Menke emphasized the priority that St. Josemaría Escrivá, founder of Opus Dei, gave in his teachings to the action of divine grace, even in the ordinary life of the faithful.
Karl-Heinz Menke is professor emeritus of Dogmatic Theology at the University of Bonn, between 2014 and 2019 he was a member of the International Theological Commission and in 2017 he received the "Joseph Ratzinger" Prize for Theology. The prestigious professor has also refuted the criticisms that another renowned theologian, Swiss Cardinal Hans Urs von Balthasar, made of "The Way"the best-known work of Josemaría Escriváfounder of Opus Dei.
Karl-Heinz Menke acknowledges that he shared them for some time, but now perceives that von Balthasar missed "the crucial point: only if I have understood my parents, my upbringing, the blows of fate and disabilities, the limitations and talents of my life as grace; only if I have understood with my whole existence that I - precisely I! - can move mountains and be light and salt of the earth, can and must allow myself to be told, perhaps every day: 'You can do much more. Let it rest! You are not a punching bag; react! Temper your will!".
Karl-Heinz Menke said this in Cologne (Germany) on June 25, during the homily at a Mass celebrated on the occasion of the memorial of the founder of Opus Dei. In addition, he stressed the importance that St. Josemaría He also emphasized the social and charitable commitment of the people of the Work.
For its interest, we reproduce the complete text in a Spanish translation.
Homily in commemoration of St. Josemaría Escrivá in Cologne, St. Ursula
It was a long time ago, but there are things that are not forgotten. Thus, I remember a meeting to which I had invited the parents of the children who were going to receive their first confession and first Communion. As usual in this type of meeting, at the beginning everything revolved around external things: order, distribution of papers, clothing and the like. But then a mother, whom I knew well, stood up and, rather excited and red-faced, let off steam by saying what she had evidently been repressing for a long time. More or less: "You know us, me and my husband.. We go to Mass every Sunday and often during the week. We also go to confession. I go from house to house to collect funds for Caritas. And my husband is on the Kolping board. If we have to help at the parish feast, Corpus Christi or any other feast, we are there. Only people, and even our own relatives, laugh at us. Our neighbors don't have to argue with their teenage children to go to Mass on Sundays. They give their teenage daughters the pill and have no pangs of conscience when it comes time to file their tax returns. Much less do they have to explain to an eight-year-old child - as I have already done for the fourth time - what sin is and that Jesus is waiting for us every Sunday".
This woman said - decades ago now - what many people thought or felt. If I understood St. Josemaría Escrivá correctly, he himself is an answer to that question.
What fascinated me most in reading Peter Berglar's biography of Josemaría Escrivá is the saint's gift for discovering in every human being-even in those who are deeply wounded by the deviations and deviations of sin-the grace [!!!] that, discovered and deployed with coherence, can become something radiant (light of the world and salt of the earth). St. Josemaría was deeply convinced: every human being, no matter how inconspicuous his life may seem in the eyes of this world, and no matter how hindered by all kinds of adversities and limitations, is touched by grace. It is only necessary to recognize and awaken this grace, to foster it constantly and make it bear fruit.
The path marked by grace is rarely identical to a single possibility. A person who became a dentist could also have become a good teacher. Practically no one is naturally suited exclusively to a single profession. Certainly, nature must be taken into account; he who cannot speak should not become a speaker; and he who has no dexterity should not become a watchmaker. But it is always true that when one has discovered what one is destined to be, when one finally knows what the grace of one's own life is, then the rest unfolds.
St. Josemaría advises us to receive the Eucharist daily and to set aside two half hours a day to converse with our Lord. Not to add something religious to the numerous obligations of daily life. In that case, the relationship with God or with Christ would be something like a second floor above the first floor of the working day. No! It is a matter of giving primacy to the reception of grace, which should determine everything we speak, plan, think and do.
Grace is not a substitute for nature. A bad doctor does not become a good one by attending daily Mass. On the contrary, those who cover laziness, incompetence or incapacity with the cloak of piety are one of those comic figures scathingly caricatured by Friedrich Nietzsche and Heinrich Heine. Pity is no substitute for lack of competence. But, for example, a physician who understands his work as a gift from Christ to his patients will at the same time exert himself to the utmost. That is holiness: the sanctification of work.
Without grace, all is nothing. But with grace I can move mountains. St. Paul said it with an emphaticness that is hard to surpass: "Even if I speak with all the tongues of men and of angels, even if I have the gift of prophecy and know all mysteries and all knowledge, even if I have all faith, a faith that can move mountains, if I do not have love [Josemaría Escrivá would say: "grace"], I am as a sounding bell or a clanging cymbal, I am nothing" (1 Cor 13:1 ff.).
Only those who have understood that their life - be it that of the mother mentioned at the beginning, that of the doctor mentioned above, that of a bricklayer or a nurse - is grace (the vessel of love), understand the imperatives that St. Josemaría wrote in "The Way": "Do you dress up? -You... of the crowd? If you can do much more, leave your mark! You are not a punching bag; react! Temper your will!"
I must admit that for a long time, unfortunately, I took on board the criticisms of Hans Urs von Balthasar. He described these imperatives as mere slogans, as if they were a kick; but in doing so-and despite being one of the greatest theologians-he missed the crucial point: only if I have understood my parents, my upbringing, the blows of fate and disabilities, the limitations and talents of my life as grace; only if I have understood with my whole existence that I-precisely I-can move mountains and be light and salt of the earth, can and must allow myself to be told, perhaps every day: "You can do much more. Let go! You are not a punching bag; react! Temper your will!".
The Gospel of the miraculous catch of fish, the Gospel for St. Josemaría's feast day, reminds us of the basic requirement for all missionary success: "Cast your catch of fish, and you will be able to catch it. your Do not envy the nets of others! Be, where you have been placed, the love, the grace of Christ". Missionary success, for many contemporaries, is a term that smacks of manipulation and appropriation. But love does not take possession of anyone; on the contrary, it liberates.
Still today I correspond with a man who - he was employed in garbage collection - became a drunkard after the divorce of his marriage, homeless, etc.; you all know what downward career I am referring to. A twenty-year-old student - today a faithful member of Opus Dei with his whole family - literally picked him up off the street and accompanied him for two years with admirable fidelity, step by step and in spite of all the setbacks. Today, this man, freed from his hell, attends Holy Mass almost every evening; he collects discarded toys from the garbage, repairs them in his many free hours and donates them to various kindergartens and children's homes. He has even developed two patents; in May last year he received the German Cross of Merit.
Cardinal Schönborn speaks at The joy of being a priest of one of his priests: "For decades, he has been in the confessional every day at half past four in the morning. People from all over the region know that they can find the 'priest' there. When they go to work in Vienna or the surrounding area, many make a short detour to go to that village for confession. He is always there. He has even enlarged the confessional a bit so that he can do his morning gymnastics there. He reads, prays and waits; he is simply there. He is one of the best priests, also for the young people, by whom he is very dear. He is a priest who is grace because he lives by grace".
It is possible to live all in have mode and all in the way of love (from grace). There are scientists who work day and night to discover, for example, a vaccine that saves the lives of hundreds of thousands of people, without thinking for a second about the money they earn from it. And there are people who live even evangelical poverty in the way of having, following the motto: "Look: I have poverty; you don't have it!"
St. Josemaría called his priesthood "of the Holy Cross" because he lived by the Eucharist. Whoever lives by the Eucharist knows that grace as the perfection of nature is also its crucifixion. It is not possible to receive Christ who literally gives himself (sacrifices himself) without the will to allow oneself to be situated in this giving (sacrifice) of oneself: the more concrete, the better. Certainly: what is decisive is the indicative, not the imperative. The decisive is given to each of us in a singular way. But it is also true that we are not simply the object of grace; we are also the subject of grace.
I suppose that St. Josemaría would have replied to the mother who was venting her feelings at that parents' meeting on the eve of her children's first confession and communion: "Being a Christian has never been comfortable. But when one lives by grace, one no longer wants to do without it.
For he who gives himself becomes free. Hardly any of Opus Dei's many critics know that there is no subject on which St. Josemaría spoke more about than freedom. In one of his homilies in 1963, he confessed: "I am a great friend of freedom, and that is precisely why I love this Christian virtue [obedience] so much. We must feel that we are children of God, and live with the illusion of fulfilling the will of our Father. To do things according to God's will, because we feel like it, which is the most supernatural reason. When I decide to want what the Lord wants, then I free myself from all the chains that have shackled me to things and worries [...]. The spirit of Opus Dei, which I have tried to practice and teach for more than thirty-five years, has made me understand and love personal freedom.
This explains, it seems to me, the selection of the second reading for his commemoration (Rom 8:14-17): "Those who allow themselves to be led by the Spirit of God are children of God. You have received, not a spirit of slavery [...] but the spirit of sonship" (8:15).
The defense of life is reinforced in the streets of Madrid
In less than a year, Madrid has hosted three demonstrations in defense of life. In November 2021 it was 'Every life matters'. At the end of March, the March for Life 2022which vindicated the care of every human being from conception to natural death. Yesterday, with the leadership of the NEOS platform, tens of thousands of people shouted "yes to life" and crowded the Plaza de Colón.
Francisco Otamendi-June 27, 2022-Reading time: 2minutes
In a familiar and vindictive atmosphere, thousands of people from different parts of the Spanish geography demonstrated yesterday in defense of life and of the truth in Madrid, organized by the NEOS platform.
The harshest criticisms were directed towards the "indoctrinating educational laws", the reform of the abortion law and the current euthanasia law, which is already protecting the aid in dying of the sick by the hand of some doctors in Spain. The demonstration began at the Bilbao traffic circle and ended at the Plaza de Colón.
"The debate for life is open, and life will always win," he said. Jaime Mayor OrejaWe are mobilizing because we want to denounce not the rulers, but the inventors who generate ideas rather than laws, and who do not seek the common good. "We are mobilizing because we want to denounce not the rulers, but the inventors who generate ideas rather than laws, and who do not seek the common good, but the Spanish people against each other".
Mayor Oreja considered that the act "is a commitment, an obligation, which will mean a before and an after". "We are mobilizing in this great debate because we do not want to be part of a complicit and guilty silence." Shortly after, he appealed to the involvement of "believers and non-believers in the defense of our civilization" and requested "those of us who are believers tolet us not hide our faith.
The demonstration was called in advance, but it came two days after the Supreme Court ruled that the federal abortion "right" in the United States has been overturned. Six of the nine justices who make up the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the U.S. Constitution does not grant or contain a right to abortion.as reported by Omnes.
It has taken nearly half a century for the U.S. Supreme Court, in a landmark decision, to overturn its ruling Roe v. Wadewhich declared the existence of a right constitutional right to abortion, and the U.S. Court's decision, which returns jurisdiction to the states, may spell the beginning of the end of abortion in the United States, has written Rafael Palomino.
For the organizations that convened yesterday, the decision of the U.S. Supreme Court shows that "the battle for life is more alive than ever. It is a door of hope that this will also be done in Spain," said Maria San Gil, vice president of the Villacisneros Foundation and member of NEOS.
The March for Life 2022 at the end of March also took place in Madrid with an eye on the United States and Colombia. In Washington, thousands of people took to the streets in January to defend life with MarchforLifewhile Colombia decriminalized abortion up to 24 weeks.
At yesterday's event, among others, Carmen Fernández de la Cigoña, director of the CEU Institute of Family Studies, spoke at the event and asked: "Do not be afraid", recalling the first words of St. John Paul II after he was elected Pope in 1978. The CEU director criticized the passing of anti-life and anti-freedom laws. "Taking away the three days of reflection" is one more step to prevent "people from thinking," he pointed out.
Nayeli Rodriguez, national coordinator of the platform 40 days for lifeHe recalled that more than 2.5 million innocent people have died since the approval of the abortion law. "We are not talking about numbers, they are people."
Many of the marriage failures of the coming years are being forged in our days, especially because of addictions of all kinds that many times we do not want to face.
One of the advances that have taken place lately in the social field is the consideration of equality between men and women. Something that, on the other hand, is obvious, but often the obvious is the most difficult thing to discover and explain.
We must bear in mind that one thing is that they are equal as persons and as subjects of law and another is that a man is equal to a woman. It is not necessary anything more than having a son and a daughter, to realize the difference that exists.
For a couple to work, the man has to be treated as such and the woman as well.
In this last section we realize that women are bearing the brunt, there is a lot of physical and psychological violence against them. Also against men, but this is more psychological than physical. I am not going to talk here about the causes of violence, because this is not the purpose of this article and, probably, I would not know how to do it in sufficient depth.
What I would like to emphasize is the fact that, in recent years, a large segment of young people have been identifying fun with drugs, alcohol and sex. The latter distorted by pornography, by the addiction to it that is causing so much disorder in people. Young and not so young. No one will deny that these habits are having a great influence on couple relationships and on the aggressiveness that occurs in them.
You can be getting to know a person and perhaps not realize how important these lifestyle habits will be in influencing their future behavior.
How many times, in family counseling, someone comes to you saying that they married a person they didn't know was an alcoholic. Because, in fact, they drank theor that the othersl, he took lor that everyone. Come on, I was doing the norm.
What appears as "a way to have fun" as a couple, once married, these behaviors begin to appear as negative and unbearable in the relationship.
It used to be part of the fun, now it's part of life. No one is usually going to tell you, "Hey, your boyfriend, your girlfriend drinks too much, or drinks too much."
It is not politically correct. Apart from the fact that the scales are dislocated. It can be safely said that most young people who drink do so in an amount that is excessive for their health and negative for the future of a relationship.
With a person who is hooked on drugs, of whatever kind, it is impossible to live together normally.
A person with these characteristics can be said to be, in many cases, incapable of loving; it is very difficult, if not impossible, to love the other person.
Let us keep in mind that one of the components of love is will, together with intelligence and feeling. A person without will is a person who is not free to love. The more addicted he is to substances that change his way of being, thinking, behaving as he is, and the more incapable he is of freeing himself from these substances, the more difficult it will be for him to love, and therefore the more difficult it will be to live together.
Many of the marriage failures of the coming years are being forged in our days. Let there be no doubt that many of the causes are related to what we are talking about.
Let's keep in mind that what is said about men can be said about women.
When we read in Acts what the apostles suffered for their witness to Jesus, we can focus on the good: the power of faith, the crown of martyrdom or, in the case of Peter captured by Herod, that all ended well, that the Church with her unceasing prayer and the angel with his strength were able to overcome the evil of the tyrant. But it is important that we also reflect on the magnitude of the trials suffered by the apostles and martyrs of all ages. Let us think about it: "King Herod decided to arrest some members of the Church." It is not pleasant to feel persecuted, to have the uncertainty of what may happen in the street or to know that they may enter your home to imprison you. To be in danger of death. James, John's brother, is killed by the sword. He is the first of the apostles to follow Jesus to death. He had accepted it: he had told Jesus that he could drink his own cup, and Jesus had assured him: so be it.
Peter was arrested to please the Jews. Guarded by four pickets of four soldiers each. Herod feared that his brothers would take up arms to storm the prison and free him. Little did he know that the one sword Peter took on the night of the betrayal was of no use to him. The single, clumsy wound it produced in the ear of the high priest's servant was immediately healed by Jesus. Let us put ourselves in Peter's shoes to understand that it was not a pleasant moment. But thanks to the three acts of love that healed the three denials, and to the Holy Spirit who gave him strength and consolation, Peter felt the nearness of Jesus, and in fact slept peacefully in prison. He dreamed peacefully: even the angel who freed him seemed to him like a dream or a vision.
That night had gone well. Once again he had experienced the power of God. That memory must have helped him when it was not possible for him to come down from the cross, during the persecution of Nero, whose fatal outcome we celebrate today. He must have realized that the time had truly come for Jesus' prophecy to be fulfilled: "When you are old, you will stretch out your hands, another will gird you and take you where you do not want to go." Indeed, the time had come to accept that death with which, as the Gospel of John says, "I was going to give glory to God." The time had come to obey definitively the last word that Jesus said to him on the shore of the lake: "Follow me." This time no angel would come to free him. Let us ask for the intercession of Peter and Paul to obtain from God the grace to be prepared when the time comes for us to follow Jesus radically along the way of the cross. May we meet Mary's gaze.
Homily on the readings of St. Peter and St. Paul
The priest Luis Herrera Campo offers its nanomiliaa small one-minute reflection for these readings.
No one will know what the world will be like in 50 years. Therefore, the need to acquire the habits that facilitate continuous learning and a collaborative and entrepreneurial spirit is becoming increasingly clear.
Alejandro María Lino-June 26, 2022-Reading time: < 1minute
The Harvard professor Howard Gardner proposed the theory of the multiple intelligences. His contributions are celebrated around the world as a beacon of light in the uncertain world of education. In one of his latest works, The five minds of the futureanalyzes the five basic skills that will be most valued in the professional world. It opts for possess the knowledge of a discipline, the ability to synthesize, creativity, respect and ethics.
And the fact is that the new professional profiles demanded by companies do not only require knowledge of a discipline. They also require students to have self-confidence, initiative to solve unforeseen problems and a personal integrity capable of committing to the company's objectives. In order to internalize these habits, it is necessary to have a good humanistic formation and contexts to put these ideals into practice.
Making a mark
In order to achieve this objective, Villanueva University has developed the Impronta Program. It is a cross-cutting project for undergraduate degrees and has been reinforced with new content to meet the needs of careers in the fields of law and business, education, communication and psychology.
The goal of the program is to transform students to leave their mark and impact on society. To form citizens who assume their responsibilities with maturity and autonomy. To this end, there is also a tutoring program of mentoring throughout the university years and the development of a Service Learning mentality.
Some 60% of the university's students have some form of scholarship, thanks to an ambitious and varied scholarship program.
Pope Francis: "To let oneself be overcome by anger in adversity is easy; what is difficult is to master oneself".
After the closing Mass of the World Meeting of Families, the Pope addressed his reflections after the Angelus from the balcony of his office. Starting from the Gospel scene of the day, he encouraged the faithful not to let themselves be carried away by anger, despite being tempted to do so. The example of the apostles reflected in the story should serve as an encouragement to believers.
The This Sunday's Gospel shows how "the disciples, filled with an enthusiasm that is still too worldly, dream that the Master is on his way to triumph. Jesus, on the other hand, knows that rejection and death await him in Jerusalem; he knows that he will have to suffer much; and this requires a firm decision. It is the same decision that we must make if we want to be disciples of Jesus".
On the way to JerusalemIn a Samaritan village, the inhabitants refused to receive Jesus. "The apostles James and John, indignant, suggest to Jesus that he punish these people by bringing fire down from heaven. Jesus not only does not accept the proposal, but rebukes the two brothers. They want to involve Him in their desire for revenge and He does not agree. The fire that He came to bring to earth is the merciful Love of the Father.
The reaction of James and John is understandable from the human point of view, but Jesus does not justify it. "This also happens to us, when, although we do good, perhaps sacrificially, instead of welcome we find a closed door. Then anger arises: we even try to involve God himself, threatening heavenly punishments (...) Letting ourselves be overcome by anger in adversity is easy, it is instinctive. The difficult thing, instead, is to master oneself, doing as Jesus did, who - the Gospel says - set out "on the road to another village".
For this reason, Pope Francis encouraged the faithful that when they encounter the rejection of their preaching by others, "we should resort to doing good elsewhere, without recriminations. In this way, Jesus helps us to be serene people, content with the good we have done and without seeking human approval."
Gabriella GambinoIt is important not to leave families on their own".
We interviewed Gabriella Gambino, organizer of the WFM. 2,000 people from 120 countries around the world participated in the 10th World Meeting of Families in Rome. under the theme "Family love: vocation and path to holiness".
Leticia Sánchez de León-June 26, 2022-Reading time: 4minutes
The World Meeting of Families which took place in Rome (June 22-26), was an oasis of hope for the family and a glimpse of optimism for the future. Some 2,000 delegates elected by the Bishops' Conferences, the Synods of the Oriental Churches and international ecclesial realities traveled to Rome to participate in the meeting.
Formation and accompaniment seem to be the key words of this year's meeting. Pope Francis wanted it to serve as the culmination of the year. Amoris Laetitia proclaimed by the Pontiff just one year ago.
We have been hearing for some time that preparation for marriage is essential, with special insistence on the importance of remote preparation. At the same time, being born into a Christian family and having more or less established family values does not guarantee marital success. The marriages that run into difficulties and often end up breaking up are not only non-believers but also people who we could say Church.
Gabriella Gambino is the deputy secretary at the Dicastery for the Laity, the Family and Life and main organizer of the event. She explains to Omnes some of the key aspects of the World Meeting of Families:
Is it not enough to know the theory of marriage and relationships for a marriage to last? Do you think it would be necessary to make young people more aware of the need to prepare themselves for this new adventure?
I believe that an essential point in marriage preparation is to be able to listen to the testimony of other couples who are already living married life. They know the difficulties and have also learned the strategies to achieve a better marriage. take advantage of the grace of the sacrament of marriage. The Christian sacrament marks the difference between a civil marriage and a canonical one: In one, the presence of Christ is found between the spouses. And before marriage, no one knows this presence. It is a beauty, a gift, that can only be experienced in marriage itself.
But as engaged couples, we have to form ourselves for this, placing Christ at the center of our lives. You have to know how to listen and learn to grasp precisely the signs of his presence in our concrete daily life, in the simplest things. If you do not learn to do this from an early age with a remote preparation for marriage and then a gradual preparation that leads you little by little to the sacrament, it is difficult to learn to do it later in a sudden way. Remote preparation makes it possible for young people to find faith and learn to recognize Christ already during courtship.
In this regard, the Dicastery for the Laity, the Family and Life has recently published "Catechumenal Itineraries for Married Life". These pastoral guidelines for the particular Churches are intended precisely as a kind of preparation for marriage. However, many media have labeled the document as a "memorandum of sexual morality".
The itineraries are a fundamental tool for rethinking the entire vocation ministry in the Church. It is fundamental to accompany children in understanding the beauty of marriage and the family, which are a gift within the Church. And parents must be helped to accompany their children in this discovery because they cannot do it alone. Today, the family is facing many challenges: The smartphonesOften they propose life models that are completely different from what parents expect for their children, starting with the vision of affectivity and sexuality.
The itineraries have precisely the purpose of helping parents on a remote path. To really help them to cultivate values such as chastity, which serve precisely to protect children in their ability to prepare themselves for total love forever. And today it is very important not to leave families alone on this path.
Another of the topics discussed at the congress was precisely that of the education of young people in affectivity and sexuality. There are many parents who still approach these topics as taboo subjects, in a superficial way. Do you think there is a change of mentality? Are the new generations less afraid to discuss these topics with their children or with their friends?
The subject of sexuality is a complex one within the family. Certainly, today, young people are put to the test, challenged by so many messages they receive from a complex world. Parents need to be trained in these areas. They have to keep up with the times by developing greater relational or empathic skills, dialoguing with their children on these issues. From childhood and adolescence to adulthood.
The way we talk to our younger children about affectivity and sexuality will not be the same as when they are 16 and 17 years old. But when that time comes, it will be very important to have initiated a dialogue with them from a young age and to keep that dialogue open. This allows us to address these issues and the questions they generate later on, which otherwise can become a source of inner restlessness because, nowadays, young people are forced to have very strong early experiences that later mark their human and spiritual life.
What difference does it make to learn these things at home, in the family, by watching the example of the parents, than to learn them outsidethrough cell phones or other devices in general?
Receiving values at home is necessary to know how to make better use of what they read on the Internet or what they find around them, in their own environment. From experience, we know that, if children have reading tools, critical tools to be able to observe the reality around them, and also to evaluate it intelligently, they are able to dialogue with this reality serenely.
The certainty that God blesses marriage and gives spouses the grace to face all the difficulties they encounter along the way has been lost in a certain sense. How could the sacramental value of marriage be revitalized?
First of all, with the witness of other spouses who live this grace and who can attest to its presence. Young people need to see, they need real testimonies. Nothing is more convincing than a testimony. Secondly, we must accompany engaged couples and spouses so that they learn to pray together. It is only praying together that really makes the presence of Christ alive among them. It is different from praying separately. And very different is the effect it has on the couple, on the unitive dimension. This is an aspect on which we have to work a lot so that in the communities, in the parishes, especially the spouses are really accompanied in praying together.
Rome is eternal because it is the city of the resurrection and it makes us universal, it makes us Catholic. One leaves Rome with a resurrected personality.
One of my favorite sections in Omnes print magazine is called "Corners of Rome." The column showcases the hidden secrets of Rome, did I say hidden? No, they are not really hidden, but require attention and a certain sensitivity to find them. I am chronicling my own experiences in the corners of Rome. Time will tell the content.
I refer to the column because the other day I revisited one of those corners. June is a "hard" month in Rome. Temperatures start to rise and the humidity seems to have a multiplying effect on it, the exam period for university students is in this month, etc. The hardest part of June comes when friends who have finished their studies return to their respective countries. We try not to say goodbye, we dare to say with certainty, "see you later".
Just as my friends do not say goodbye as such, we try to say goodbye to the places we have always visited. We do not go to the Fontana Di Trevi to throw coins, hoping for a return, but we are grateful for the memories we have lived and, of course, with a tinge of desire to return.
We do not sing the famous Arrivederci Roma. We only went to visit her one last time. We were inspired by Lucia, in Manzoni's classic, The bride and groom. Lucia, leaving her village, makes a litany of things she says goodbye to. Goodbye mountains, goodbye streams, goodbye houses.... "Farewell, mountains rising from the waters, and raised to the sky; unequal summits, known to him who grew up among you, and imprinted on his mind, like the faces of our own family. Farewell! Streams, whose murmur distinguishes, as well as the sound of the domestic voices of our nearest friends. Scattered villages, that whiten on the slope, Like flocks of sheep grazing, Farewell!"
We, like Lucia, said goodbye, not to the mountains, but to the obelisks, not to the streams, but to the fountains, the houses, the roofs, the domes.
Farewell to the obelisks, which stand cheerful and firm as a trunk..., farewell to the domes that rise in the splendor of the sun, the sunrise and sunsets... Farewell to the fountains that let the water rise from below and flow upwards....
There was a place that contained in it, all our farewell wishes. It is St. Peter's Basilica. I know of a Spanish romantic who, contemplating the beauties of Rome from a rooftop, referred to [the place where the pope stays] as the most precious jewel of Rome. He wrote of Rome's splendor in these words:
"O quam luces, Roma. Quam amoeno hic rides pospectu quantis ecllis antiquitatis monumentos. Sed nobilior tua gemma atque purior Christi vicarius de quio una cive gloriaris."
"Oh, how you shine, Rome! How you shine from here, with a splendid panorama, with so many marvelous monuments of antiquity. But your noblest and purest jewel is the vicar of Christ, of whom you glory as a unique city."
The romantic was St. Josemaría Escrivá.
We went to St. Peter's Basilica to say goodbye. We saw the fountains, because Rome is the city of fountains. We saw the fountain of the Tiaras near the colonnade in St. Peter's Square, a beauty! The water of the three tiaras refreshes many pilgrims in these days of high temperatures. We didn't stop here to say goodbye, but went to a perhaps lesser known fountain. It has an inscription that I like:
"Quid miraris apem, quæ mel de floribus haurit? Si tibi mellitam gutture fundit aquam."
"why are you surprised by the bee that extracts honey from flowers, if [when] it pours sweet water for you from its throat?"
Sources are what Chesterton would call the "lungs of Rome". The fountain is a paradox. Water flows upward and not downward. The water is in a state of resurrection here, the water is propelled upward and rises. The same is true of the obelisk in the square before entering the basilica. They look like pillars that have planted their roots in the earth. A large, firm trunk, without branches. It seemed alive.
We bid farewell to the saints in the basilica, both those in the stone and those in the tomb. I remember the Brazilian boy named Zezé in "My lime orange plant". The boy was not sure if it was good to be a saint because he thought that saints were always static and calm in their place on the stones. As much as he wanted to do his own thing, standing still was not an option for the young man. What he didn't know was that they were more alive than static. Unlike Zezé, the stone saints were the companions of Quasimodo, the hunchbacked bell-ringer of Notre Dame in Victor Hugo's novel.
We went to the tomb, to the crypt, recited the Creed and felt every word alive.
Rome is a city of tombs, catacombs and crypts. One has the impression that the tombs are full of life. The dead are alive. The past comes to the present. Rome is eternal because it knows how to come out of the tomb.
Then, the dome of the basilica. It was like being on top of the world, or rather, on top of the capital of the world. When you look down from the top of the world, everything seems different, everything takes on a different meaning. Esmeralda marveled at the view of Paris from the top of the basilica of Notre Dame when Quasimodo offered her that moment, which she considered priceless.
It is from this peak that one begins to say goodbye. One begins to see with the eyes of the birds, a wide vision. It is here that one begins to see again what Rome is. Rome is the eternal city because it is the city of resurrection. Fountains that let the water rise, stone saints that seem majestic and alive, tombs that fill with life. The tomb is not the last place. The dome is just above it. Everything speaks of life. Everything is alive.
Rome is the city of resurrection. This is what we felt from the top of the dome and could see in retrospect. Rome makes us eternal because it does away with narrow-mindedness, a closed mentality and resurrects us with a greater soul - the magna anima. Rome is eternal because it is the city of resurrection and makes us universal, makes us Catholic. One leaves Rome with a resurrected personality.
Saints in family life, a central teaching of St. Josemaría Escrivá's message
Opus Dei, founded by St. Josemaría Escrivá, has its roots in the need to live contemplation in the midst of the world. As a consequence, the vocation and the mission of marriage are sanctified. At the conclusion of the Year of the Family Amoris LaetitiaThe book, which coincides with the feast of this saint, contains the key points of this core teaching of St. Josemaría.
Rafael de Mosteyrín Gordillo-June 26, 2022-Reading time: 2minutes
With regard to this curiosity, which we can understand as casual or providential, we would like to recall some of St. Josemaría's advice on marriage and family life.
The example of the Holy Family
The path of holiness, specific to marriage, has different parts in which the Christian's response develops. St. Josemaría Escrivá explains by what means identification with Christ is attained. The absolute answer, how to travel the path and reach the goal, is Christ.
The most important and continuous reference is that of the imitation of Christ in ordinary life. The example of the Holy Family, so that God may be found uninterruptedly.
St. Josemaría explains in this way the need to live contemplation in the midst of the world. As a consequence, the vocation and mission of marriage are sanctified.
In his writings, the sanctification of temporal activities, the sanctification of ordinary work, and the sanctification through family lifeThe vocation of the lay person is thus fulfilled in accordance with the Christian spirit of the professional, social or marital tasks that make up his or her life. The vocation of the lay person is thus realized in accordance with the Christian spirit of the professional, social or marital tasks that make up his or her life.
Sanctifying and sanctifying in the family
Based on the grace of the sacrament of marriage, St. Josemaría Escrivá explains the education of children, the sanctification of the home, attention to the family, dedication to one's profession, etc.
These are areas in which supernatural help is simultaneously required, which comes from prayer and the sacraments. Both in the home and in the different places in which it is carried out, the Christian family can gradually find the specific vocation foreseen by God for each member.
Care for the good of the spouse and children is a necessary element for the sanctification of each spouse in marriage.
The main challenge proposed by St. Josemaría to parents is to form authentic Christians, people who strive to attain and transmit holiness.
The path of every ordinary Christian is, therefore, the sanctification of professional work and of family and social relationships; with the means of sanctification and apostolate provided by the Church. By these means we have referred to participation in the sacraments, prayer and Christian formation.
Married and family life are paths to happiness and holiness through sacrificial and generous dedication to God's will and to others.
St. Josemaría saw the teachings of Revelation on the vocation to marriage in a new light. This light, derived from the charism God granted him, is, in our opinion, his greatest originality.
It is now up to each baptized person to recognize the dignity of the marriage vocation and to cooperate, each one from his or her place, in the world.
St. Josemaría's teaching, and his correspondence to God's grace, has been enhanced by the Church, also with his canonization in Rome on October 6, 2002.
After analyzing his preaching, we can conclude that the divine call to strive to be saints, through marriage and family life, is a central teaching of St. Josemaría Escrivá's message.
Propaganda Fide turns 400 years old and takes the name of Dicastery for Evangelization
The Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples has been transformed into the Dicastery for Evangelization. This is what Pope Francis has wanted in the reform of the Roman Curia contained in his Apostolic Constitution Praedicate Evangelium enacted on March 19, 2006, which came into force on the Solemnity of Pentecost.
The new Dicastery merges the former Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples and the Pontifical Council for Promoting the New Evangelization. It is a new evolution, following the reform carried out by Paul VI and the intervention of John Paul II. The famous institution known as Propaganda Fide has played an important role in the history of the Church throughout the centuries.
A bit of history
It was on January 6, 1622 when Pope Gregory XV founded this Congregation as the coordinating body of the Holy See for all the initiatives that were being carried out in the different continents to proclaim the Gospel and structure the presence of the Church through new missions and dioceses, which then took the form of prefectures and apostolic vicariates. The Pope assigned him a twofold purpose. On the one hand, to promote the reunification of Christians and, on the other, to spread the faith among non-Christians. Especially in those countries and continents that, through explorations and discoveries, had come into contact with Europe and the Catholic Church.
Propaganda Fide since its beginnings, has carried out the task of supporting missionary activity throughout the world. Its foundation constituted an important moment for the Church, which came to deepen its awareness of its inalienable vocation to proclaim Christ, the Savior of the world. It therefore had to direct, stimulate and organize all the forces at its disposal so that this saving proclamation might reach all peoples.
From then until today, from a beautiful palace in the Spanish Steps, designed by Borromini, the activities of the missionaries are coordinated. A formidable network, active in every corner of the planet, provides a continuous flow of information to the Vatican.
An open door to the world
In 1627, Pope Urban VIII founded the Collegio Urbano de Propaganda Fide. The objective was to train the secular clergy for the missions. It also had the Polyglot Printing Press, to print documents and texts in the different languages of the people.
Propaganda Fide has canonical jurisdiction over all territories in which the ecclesiastical structures are still at a level that does not permit the creation of a diocese. Or when a territory is divided into apostolic vicariates, apostolic prefectures or missions sui iuris. In addition, there are also countries where the Christian presence is more recent and less deeply rooted. For example, practically all of Asia, with the exception of the Philippines; Africa, with the exception of Egypt and Tunisia; and Oceania, with the exception of Australia. Alaska, the West Indies and even parts of Bosnia-Herzegovina, Macedonia, Kosovo, Montenegro and Albania are also dependent on the Christian faith. Propaganda Fide.
Propaganda Fide in detail
According to the most recent statistics, there are 1,117 ecclesiastical circumscriptions that continue to depend on the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples. The majority of these are in Africa (517) and Asia (483), followed by America (71) and Oceania (46). By ecclesiastical circumscriptions are understood archdioceses, dioceses, apostolic vicariates, apostolic prefectures and missions in the jurisdictional area.
From the Headquarters of Propaganda Fide It is responsible for the practices for the appointment of bishops and more than sixty Episcopal Conferences. It is endowed with its own budget, has a very important real estate patrimony that allows it to maintain universities, humanitarian activities and health facilities in different parts of the world. The cardinal who presides over it has always been called the Red Potato.
The present of Propaganda Fide
At the present time, the Apostolic Constitution of the Apostolic Constitution Praedicate Evangelium marks an important milestone in the pontificate of Pope Francis. It is the concretization of a process of reform, intended to affirm that the most important task of the Church is evangelization. The missionary dimension becomes an important part of the service structures of the Roman Curia. Structures that, even if they change their name, their partially operative profile and residual competencies, must necessarily be more missionary.
Of all the Congregations, which have now become Dicasteries or even Curial Institutions, it is not by chance that the Dicastery for Evangelization occupies the first place. It precisely marks the perspective with which this reform is being carried out.
The evangelizing mission of the Church in recent centuries is inextricably linked to the action of the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith; 400 years after its foundation, it remains the point of reference for the entire pontifical missionary system.
Pontifical Mission Societies
The scope of action of the Pontifical Mission Societies, even though they have arisen in different nations in different historical and geographical contexts, has the purpose of sustaining the missionary responsibility together with the charitable dimension, in order to extend the sense of mission to the whole Church.
The Second Vatican Council taught that the principal initiatives by which the spreaders of the Gospel, going throughout the world, carry out the task of preaching the Gospel and establishing the Church in the midst of unevangelized peoples, are called missions.
In the new Constitution, the Section for First Evangelization and New Particular Churches responds to this by adding the need to promote cooperation and the exchange of experiences among the new Particular Churches and to awaken missionary vocations.
The Pope's presidency
Another fundamental aspect of the new Constitution is that the Dicastery for Evangelization is the only one presided over directly by the Roman Pontiff.
The historical titles attributed to the Pope are: Vicar of Christ, Successor of the Prince of the Apostles, Supreme Pontiff of the Universal Church, Primate of Italy, Metropolitan Archbishop of the Roman Province, Sovereign of the Vatican City State, Servant of the Servants of God. It is not expressly stated in the Constitution that the Pope also assumes the title of prefect, but it can be inferred in relation to the other Dicasteries. The fact of being at the head of them underlines the centrality of the Dicastery for Evangelization. And at the same time it gives the Pope a task that until now has never been the competence of a pontiff.
The Dicastery for Evangelization, it can be read in numbers 53 and 54 of the Praedicate Evangeliumis at the service of the work of evangelization so that Christ, the light of the Gentiles, may be known and witnessed to in word and deed and that his Mystical Body, which is the Church, may be built up". The Dicastery is competent for "the fundamental questions of evangelization in the world and for the establishment, accompaniment and support of the new particular Churches, without prejudice to the competence of the Dicastery for the Oriental Churches".
The Congregation erects and divides missionary circumscriptions in its territories according to need; presides over the government of the missions; examines questions and reports sent by Ordinaries, Nuncios and Episcopal Conferences; supervises the Christian life of the faithful, the discipline of the clergy, charitable associations and Catholic Action; oversees the direction of Catholic schools and seminaries.
The current Prefect of the Congregation, appointed on December 8, 2019 by Pope Francis, is Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle, a Filipino national.
Families "take over" Rome at the Tenth World Meeting
The Pope plays with a child at the opening festival of the World Meeting of Families in the Paul VI Hall at the Vatican on June 22, 2022. The festival of families opens the 5 days of the meeting.
In a landmark decision, the U.S. Supreme Court today overturned the judgment of the U.S. Supreme Court that Roe v Wade 1973 that established legal protections for performing abortions at the federal level, which was interpreted as a "constitutional right".
Therefore, the Roe v. Wade ruling is vacated as of today. This verdict is part of the Dobss v. Jackson Women's Health Organization case, which addressed whether or not a Mississippi state law prohibiting pregnancy after fifteen weeks was constitutional.
From now on, "The power to regulate abortion is returned to the people and their elected representatives," the ruling states. This ruling will be one of the most important in several decades as the regulation of abortion will be left in the hands of each of the fifty states of the American Union. Thus, more than half of them are expected to implement restrictions or even ban abortion. Many of them already do so.
The arguments presented today and endorsed by six of nine justices in the 213-page ruling state that the Constitution does not establish abortion as a right.
The Constitution does not give anyone the right to destroy one life in the interest of another.
Such a prerogative, say the judges, is neither part of nor supported by the history and tradition of the American nation. The pro-abortion laws implemented at the federal level in recent decades have upset the balance between the interests of the woman seeking an abortion and the interests of the unborn human being.
Abortion essentially destroys a potential life, the opinion states. However, the Constitution does not give anyone the right to undermine or destroy one life in the interest of another. Roe v Wade and other laws, the justices say, disregarded the rights of an unborn life for fifty years.
Justice Samuel Alito writes in his opinion that abortion represents a moral issue that provokes divergent opinions, for example, when it initiates a human life. In a democracy, such sensitive issues "should be resolved by the citizens of each state. Therefore, it is time to return this matter to the people and their elected representatives," the magistrate states.
For those in favor of abortion, including U.S. President Joe Biden, this ruling was a "tragic mistake" and today was a somber day in U.S. history.
The President indicated that he will use everything in his power to defend "a woman's right to decide", including making birth control drugs available to women and promoting the transfer of women who wish to have an abortion to states where they can have the procedure performed.
A historic day
For those who have defended life from the moment Roe V Wade was passed in 1973, today is a day of joy, a historic day, as Jose Gomez, Archbishop of Los Angeles and President of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, points out: "For fifty years an unjust law was imposed. America was founded on the fundamental truth that all men and women are created equal, with God-given rights. However, that principle was seriously undermined by Roe v. Wade, which legalized the destruction of a human life".
The U.S. prelates recognize the work of thousands of people and pro-life organizations because it is thanks to their tireless work in favor of the rights of the unborn that it was possible to reach this ruling. These groups, according to the Episcopal Conference, should be considered as part of the social movements that have fought for civil rights in our nation.
Given that this verdict will provoke violent reactions, both President Biden and the U.S. Bishops have called for peace.
To take this post-Roe v. Wade time as an opportunity to heal wounds and repair social divisions through dialogue and reflection. The outlook indicates that this will not be an easy task.
The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that the American Constitution does not grant the "right" to abortion and returns the decision to "the people" and their "elected representatives," i.e., the government of each state.
It has taken almost half a century for the U.S. Supreme Court to reverse its ruling Roe v. Wadewhich declared the existence of a right constitutional right to abortion.
Almost 50 years to reach this new sentence, Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health OrganizationThe "abortion of the unborn," a major victory for unborn human beings, leaves behind slightly more than sixty million abortions.
As will be recalled, the new ruling Dobbs had its controversial pre-announcement with the leak to the press a few months ago (it has not yet been determined who leaked the draft), and with the subsequent reaction of the public against and in favor of it.
Dobbs is a major legal milestone, with undeniable symbolic value. However, it does not actually mean that abortion has been abolished in the United States of America.
In fact, the Mississippi state law from which the ruling stems did not abolish abortion, it limited it in time limits and indications: "Except in a medical emergency or in the case of severe fetal abnormality, a person shall not intentionally perform or induce an abortion of an unborn human being if it has been determined that the probable gestational age of the unborn human being is greater than 15 weeks." So where does the significance of this new decision lie? In many things, of which I now select three.
First, in debunking the myth (and legal inaccuracy) that the U.S. Constitution contains a right to abortion. There is no such right. That alleged right was constructed from judicial activism, which turns judges into legislators.
Secondly, to refer the question to the legislative chambers of the fifty states that make up the United States. Here, pro-life efforts will multiply in very different versions in terms of limiting abortion (prior ultrasound, prohibition of abortion if the baby's heart is already beating, systems of indications, obligation to anesthetize the baby before killing it...) but, above all, it will make it possible to promote positive protection standards (assistance to mothers, pregnancy support centers...).
Thirdly, these fifty years have meant the patient, constant consecration of the pro-life movement. This movement has meant, among other things, a transverse and ecumenical inter-religious current that has brought together people of good will under the banner of the common cause of human life.
Finally, as of today, we are witnessing the beginning of the end of abortion in the United States.
Every Friday you can listen to our 4-minute podcast with Church news and current events. You can follow it at iVox o Spotify
This week we talk about the synod in Spain, the projects of Aid to the Church in Need, the violence suffered by Christians in various parts of the world and other current news.
Alex is a parrotfish who makes a living as a janitor in the beautiful and populated coral reefs, where all kinds of marine creatures live in a habitat that the protagonist himself keeps neat and multicolored.
The lives of all the inhabitants of the community will be threatened by a strange black spot, at first nondescript, but which will begin to affect their lives more and more. Faced with the king's refusal to even consider it a problem, and on his mission to clean up the coral reefs, Alex embarks on an adventure that will take him beyond the unknown (of course, the black spot will be nothing more than oil leaks from a refinery).
Clearly intended to raise awareness, the story is told in the purest environmental newsletter style. A humble fish wants to make things right, while humans drill for oil that is leaking into the rest of the sea. There's a mission, an adventure, and plenty of jokes and characters to keep the little ones entertained.
For those asking for more than this, the rest of the film's factors don't quite gel. It tiptoes over the whys and wherefores of the story and the animation is less than most film releases. It is the feature debut of its director, writer and producer, and this is palpable in the overall result of the work, perhaps more comparable to animated TV shows.
In short, Go Fish: Save the sea is an epic film whose great virtues will be most appreciated by children. They consist of being colorful, bright, starring a large cast of fish of all kinds and conditions, from sharks to eels, having a moral and lasting only an hour and a quarter. The whole production is a fable in the purest bedtime story style. And therefore, it is an amusement for families and their children. A journey of discovery of the different sea creatures and their way of life.
Popes for peace in times of war. From Benedict XV and Pius XII to Francis. is the title of the meeting, promoted by the Pope Pacelli Committee - Pius XII Association, which took place at the Maria Santissima Bambina Institute in Rome. The aim of the session was to reflect on the magisterium of the Popes in armed conflicts.
The meeting, chaired by Dominique Mamberti, Prefect of the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura, was attended by Massimo de Leonardis, Professor of History of International Relations (Catholic University of the Sacred Heart of Milan); Johan Ickx, Director of the Historical Archives of the Vatican Secretariat of State (Section for Relations with States); and Andrea Tornielli, Editorial Director of Vatican Media. The magisterium of the Popes in armed conflicts is not a minor issue born out of the war in Ukraine.
New book by the Pope
The reflections of Pope Francis contained in his recent publication Against war. The courage to build peace. (published by Solferino), show the need for fraternity and denounce the absurdity of war. These pages are impregnated with the suffering of the victims in Ukraine, the faces of those who suffered the conflict in Iraq, the historical events of Hiroshima and the legacy of the two world wars of the 20th century.
Francis identifies in the greed for power, in international relations dominated by military force, in the ostentation of military arsenals, the deep motivations of the wars that even today stain the planet with blood. Confrontations that sow death, destruction and resentment and that bring new deaths and new destruction, in a spiral that only the conversion of hearts can put an end to.
The Papal Magisterium on War
Dialogue as a political art, the artisanal construction of peace that starts from the heart and extends to the world, the prohibition of atomic weapons and disarmament as a strategic choice are the concrete indications that Francis entrusts to us so that peace may truly become the shared horizon on which to build our future. For nothing truly human can be born of war.
The pontiff follows in the wake of the magisterium of his predecessors: the plea with which in 1962 St. John XXIII asked the powerful of his time to stop an escalation of war that could have dragged the world into the abyss of nuclear conflict; the force with which St. Paul VI, speaking in 1965 at the General Assembly of the United Nations, said: "Never again war! Never again war!"; the numerous appeals for peace of St. John Paul II, who in 1991 called war "an adventure of no return."
"From the beginning of my service as Bishop of Rome," reads the introduction to the volume, "I have spoken of the Third World War, saying that we are already living it, although still in pieces. Those pieces have become larger and larger, welding together. At this moment there are many wars in the world, causing immense pain, innocent victims, especially children. Wars that provoke the flight of millions of people, forced to abandon their land, their homes, their destroyed cities to save their lives. These are the many forgotten wars that reappear before our inattentive eyes from time to time".
The madness of war
Far from being the solution to conflicts, for Francis war "is madness, war is a monster, war is a cancer that feeds on itself, engulfing everything". Moreover, war is a sacrilege, which "wreaks havoc on the most precious thing on our earth, human life, the innocence of the little ones, the beauty of creation".
The solution is rather the one proposed by the encyclical Fratelli tutti: to use the money spent on arms and other military expenditures to create a World Fund aimed at eliminating hunger once and for all and promoting the development of the poorest countries, in order to avoid violent or deceitful shortcuts. A proposal that the Holy Father feels the need to renew "even today, especially today". Because "wars must be stopped, and they will only stop if we stop feeding them".
Pius XII and the Jews
Another book -Pius XII and the Jews (Rizzoli 2021)-will likely offer the opportunity to shed light on the work of Pius XII, with reference to the interventions desired by the Pontiff, coordinated by the Secretary of State, Cardinal Luigi Maglione, and carried out by high prelates such as Domenico Tardini and Giovanni Battista Montini (the future Paul VI). "The unpublished documents of Pius XII," Ickx writes, "counter the false narrative previously accepted by many."
The Pope, in fact, "organized a network of escape routes for people in danger and supervised a network of priests operating throughout Europe with a single goal: to save lives wherever possible." This is the so-called Pius XII list, the "Jewish series" of the historical archives of the Secretariat of State. A particular series, right from its name (the others are named after specific countries), which contains some 2,800 requests for intervention or aid and testifies to the extent to which the fate of these poor people was close to the Pope's heart. The series shows the fate of more than 4,000 Jews, some of them baptized as Catholics but of Jewish origin (but after a certain point not even baptism prevented the deportations).
The requests covered the period from 1938 to 1944 and intensified during the crucial years of the war. It was not always possible to save everyone, but the "Jewish series" "proves beyond reasonable doubt," says Icks, "that Pius XII and his staff did everything possible to offer assistance also to those who professed the Jewish faith."
Next Tuesday, June 28th at 6:00 p.m., we will have an exceptional Omnes Forum on the subject of Pilgrimages to the Holy Land after the pandemic.
We will have as guests Joaquin Panielloauthor of the book Why do you walk in sadness? Jesus' conversation with the disciples at Emmaus; y Piedad AguileraPilgrimages and Religious Tourism Unit, Viajes El Corte Inglés. It will be moderated by Alfonso Riobódirector of Omnes.
As a follower and reader of Omnes, we invite you to attend. If you would like to attend, please confirm your attendance by sending an email to [email protected].
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Recovering the essence of dialogue at the University
