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José María TorralbaA Christianity with a bourgeois mentality is problematic".

An ambitious Master in Christianity and Contemporary Culture has just been presented on the campus of the University of Navarra in Madrid. Omnes spoke with José María Torralba, professor of Moral and Political Philosophy, who participated in its design. "Reinforcing humanistic training will help Christian thought in the great debates," he points out.

Rafael Miner-February 12, 2022-Reading time: 10 minutes

He recognizes that "we are in a moment of crisis in the humanities", although he assures that "there are reasons for hope". He is in favor of betting on "humanistic training", and this is what he has launched at the University of Navarra. And he affirms "as a hypothesis", after many conversations with different people, that "from the sociological point of view, Christianity in Spain today can be described as bourgeois", in the sense of "not taking risks, having everything under control, defined", whose "superior value is stability. And a Christianity with a bourgeois mentality is problematic. Because it lacks the sense of mission that Christianity has always had".

The author of these and other reflections is José María Torralba (Valencia, 1979), professor of Moral and Political Philosophy and director of the Core Curriculum Institute at the University of Navarra, who has been a visiting researcher at the universities of Oxford, Munich, Chicago and Leipzig. Professor Torralba directs the Great Books Program at the University of Navarra, as you will see in the interview, and has just published the book "A Liberal Education. Elogio de los grandes libros", by Ediciones Encuentro, which will go on sale on March 1.

Like someone who has never broken a dish, in a calm voice, Professor Torralba says things that should be noted. For example, that his wish is that the Master's Degree in Christianity and Contemporary Culture presented in Madrid will serve "as a platform, or forum to participate in the cultural and intellectual debates that are currently taking place in our country, and as a way to be more present in Madrid. A forum for dialogue and meeting for all those who wish to come".

This week, more than 400 people gathered, in person and online, for a colloquium organized by the University of Navarra at its Madrid campus, on the occasion of the Master's program that will be launched in the next academic year 2022-23. Participants included Gregorio Luri, philosopher and educator; Lupe de la Vallina, photographer; and Ricardo Piñero, professor of Aesthetics and professor of the Master's program.

In this interview, José María Torralba unravels some of the inner workings of this Master's program, its gestation and the ideas behind it.

The new president of the University of Navarra, Maria IraburuD. in Biology, referred to Strategy 2025 when she took office: "Transformative teaching, research focused on social, environmental and economic issues, and interdisciplinary projects, such as the Bioma Center and its Science Museum, which will enable us to contribute to the great challenges of our time". Well, here is another one, "interdisciplinary", as José María Torralba calls it, "a shared project of the whole University", reveals the professor.

Where did you study, Professor?

-I studied philosophy at the University of Valencia, the public university, and I ended up in Navarra.

I have been the director of the Core Curriculum Institute at the University of Navarra since 2013, 9 years ago.

His latest book is about to come out, according to what has been leaked to us. And as Umbral said that he had gone to a program to talk about his book, I ask him about his.

-I picked it up yesterday from the publisher. It is materially published, and now the dissemination stage begins. The title is 'A liberal education. Eulogy of the great books', in Ediciones Encuentro. There I gather the experience of ten years of work on the Core Curriculum. This is a concept that is not well understood in Spain.

Define the Core Curriculum.

-Core Curriculum is the humanistic education aimed at students of any career in the university. That all students benefit from having a good humanistic foundation is the ideal of the Core Curriculum or liberal education, according to Newman's original term. It is an education that is not only pragmatic or utilitarian, focused on getting a job, but is the education of the free man. This vision connects with the classical world and the humanities.

In the book, I talk about this project, which we have in the University of Navarraand which also exists in a few other universities. In fact, the book is intended to be a vindication. Education in Spain would improve if we incorporated what some other good universities do, in the United States but also in Europe.

Specifically, I am talking about a methodology that is that of great books seminar. The idea is to make a list of classic works of literature and thought (Shakespeare, the Odyssey, Aristotle, etc.). The students read these books, and then in class, in small groups of 25 students, in a seminar format, they comment on them and talk about them, the major themes that are there. Another element is that the students must write argumentative essays, choosing a major theme: freedom, destiny, justice, love....

At the University of Navarra we started it eight years ago and it is called the Great Books Program. We have been running the program since Core Curriculum Institute. It is already consolidated, and is now attended by close to a thousand students.

It is interdisciplinary...

We call it inter-faculty, because in the classes there are students from various degrees: Architecture, Economics, Law...etc. This is very enriching and very university-like: to have different perspectives. These subjects are part of the curriculum. At the University of Navarra, as in other universities, the degrees now have 240 credits that students must take. Of those 240, there are 18, in our case, which are Core Curriculum, humanistic subjects. And we tell the students: one of the possibilities to take those 18 credits are the seminars of great books. These are subjects with evaluation, obligatory, but taking the great books seminars is optional.

Let us delve a little deeper. These educational commitments do not seem to be made just for the sake of it. Have we been witnessing for some time now a certain cancellation of the humanities, a crisis of the humanities?

-There is a general tendency in the Western world for education to be very much oriented to the labor market, to what is immediately useful. That is clear, and everything that goes in the direction of the spirit, of the humanistic, of culture or reflection, is left behind. I would say that in universities even more clearly. Although there are humanities degrees, which there still are, effectively, the bulk of education continues to be of a professional nature. This is not bad in itself, because the university has to have careers to qualify for professional life. The interesting thing about the great books program that we have discussed, and humanistic education in general, is that it can also be offered to engineering or medical students. I think that is the educational ideal. A good education is one that offers you a qualification, a specialized qualification, but it is not reduced to that, it is combined with a good humanistic base of reflection, of the ability to ask the big questions about society and life.

I would say that, although we are in a moment of crisis in the humanities, there are also reasons for hope. And movements. I can mention two, in which I am closely involved and familiar with. In Europe, for the last six years, there has been a group of professors from different countries, especially from Holland, England and Germany, who organized a European congress on the Core Curriculum, the 'Liberal Arts and Core Texts Education'.

What is the dominant idea?

- In the three editions held so far, we have brought together almost 400 teachers from Europe. All of them are interested in the idea that education should not be reduced to the utilitarian. Although it is still a minority, there is progress. And then there are countries like Holland, whose university system is especially dynamic - the Spanish system is very static, because it is very controlled by the State. There they have much greater creativity. In the last 10 or 15 years, quite a few institutions have appeared, which are called Liberal Arts College, and they put this idea into practice. Education does not have to be directly focused on obtaining a job, but to give you a more basic, broader and more humanistic education. That on the one hand.

On the other hand, there is an association, the Association for Core Texts and Courses (ACTC), in the United States, a country where this subject is more developed. It has many universities, large and small, that offer a liberal education in this sense of humanistic training.

Also, for example, in Chile there is a university that a few years ago implemented a very good great books program. I do not accept the pessimism that we in the humanities have because 'this is sinking' and there is nothing to do. Things can be improved, even if it is difficult.

Could this sowing of concerns be somehow linked to, or provoked by, the debate on the deficit of intellectuals and Christian thought on issues such as freedom, education, family, etc.?

- From the educational point of view of institutions that have a Christian ideology, which is where the question of where is the voice of Christians, or the Christian perspective in the great debates, I agree that it is absent, especially in our country. It is all the more striking because of the sociological change that has taken place in a few decades, from an officially Christian society. What are the causes? One of the main ones is the type of education offered in Christian institutions or in religious formation in parishes, which is not as good as it should be, or is not up to the needs of the moment.

If we look at other countries -the United States is the reference-, any university, but also colleges, with a Christian identity, always have a very solid humanistic formation program. This is still not so present in Spain.

Indeed, in this reflection that has been opened on the fact that something must be done to change, clearly one of the ways to improve is to strengthen humanistic education. And here I would say one thing that seems important to me: a Core Curriculum, or a program of great books, cannot be approached in a utilitarian sense. In fact, if you want people to approach religion with a utilitarian perspective, you would be going against Newman's principle of liberal education. The only goal has to be to educate, that is, to get people to think for themselves and, to do that, to know the cultural tradition.

That in Spain, in the end, those who have a program of great books are universities of Christian inspiration? That is true. Nor is it a coincidence. But this is not something instrumental, a kind of strategy, but the fruit of conviction. A Christian-inspired university is interested in truth and considers tradition important. For this reason, it is not by chance that we have made this commitment at the University of Navarra.

master-christianity

Master in Christianity and Contemporary Culture

In this line is situated, I suppose, the Master in Christianity and Contemporary Culture that the University of Navarra is launching. You have been involved in its gestation?

- The Master's program begins in September. The idea began to take shape almost three years ago, and is organized by the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters, in collaboration with the Faculty of Theology, the Core Curriculum Institute, the group of Science, Reason and Faith (CRYF) and the Institute for Culture and Society. It is a shared project of the entire University.

Although it comes out now, at a time when the debate of Christian intellectuals, of the academic and intellectual formation of people interested in Christianity, does not respond to this conjunctural situation. In any case, it comes at a very opportune moment. This is an idea.

The other idea that I can share, having been part of the commission that designed the Master's Degree, is that from the beginning there was an interest in it not being a Master's Degree in Humanities in general (in the sense of dealing with culture, or Christianity from history), nor a Master's Degree in Theology, but a Master's Degree in Christianity and Contemporary Culture.

For this, a large teaching staff (36 people) was thought of, because each subject has two teachers. There are professors of Theology, History, Philosophy, Literature, and also some of Science (Biology, Environment, etc.). And since the subjects are taught in pairs, it is easy for a philosopher and a theologian, a scientist and a theologian, etc. to coincide.

This helps interdisciplinary dialogue, which is very necessary, and also to ensure that the title of the Master's program is not misinterpreted, as if Christianity were on the one hand and contemporary culture on the other. The idea behind the Master's is that, in reality, there is a dialogue between both elements and that Christianity is present in contemporary culture, so that today's world is not foreign to Christianity.

There are also professors from other universities.

- Indeed. It is noteworthy that almost a third of the professors are not from the University of Navarra. There has been interest in having colleagues from Madrid, Valencia, and other places, for several reasons. First of all, the main objective of the Master's program is to offer a training program. For whom? We are thinking of professionals who want to better understand the contemporary world and its relationship with Christianity. It seems to us that this will be of great interest to people who work in the world of education, from secondary school to university, but also in the world of culture, journalists... It is a Master's degree that will enable them to create a qualified opinion on all these issues.

We would also like the Master's Degree to serve as a platform, a forum, to participate in the cultural and intellectual debates that are currently taking place in our country, and to be a way to be more present in Madrid. We intend to create a forum for dialogue and meeting for anyone who wants to come.

Christianity today

Sometimes Nietzsche (God is dead) or Azaña (Spain is no longer Catholic) come to mind. In some laws of not a few countries it is difficult to appreciate the dignity of the person. Are we afraid to dialogue?

- I can think of two answers. One, which also connects with the Master, is the idea of hope. The Christian is someone who lives with hope, because he has an origin and a destiny, and knows that the world has a meaning. We are not in a situation of nihilism, in which God is dead or has abandoned us.

I think that this experience of hope is becoming more present right now, and I could give examples from the field of literature or cultural creation. We have been in a cultural situation for some decades where there was no longer any remnant of the religious, at least publicly, that was relevant, and what is emerging in the last two or three years is a kind of longing. The reason is that it is a human need: to seek and find meaning in life, and the main source of meaning is religious. It is not the only one, but it is the main one.

We are in a very interesting moment, in which Christianity continues to have a proposal, as always, but perhaps now more people can appreciate it, in contrast to what we have been living in recent years. And then I would underline: what should be the Christian proposal today? There are still many ethical challenges, without a doubt. These are challenges that must not be abandoned. But the focus should be on showing why Christianity is a source of hope for the life of individuals and society. Because otherwise, in the end, we have an inhuman world: dominated by success, money or results. In the face of this inhuman world, Christian hope rises up.

And in relation to Spanish society?

-I would dare to formulate a hypothesis, because I have been talking about it for some time with a variety of people, and I see a good deal of agreement. It is the following. From the sociological point of view, Christianity in Spain at present can be described as bourgeois. I explain this. When I say bourgeois, I am not referring to the social class, but bourgeois in mentality. According to the dictionary of the Royal Academy, bourgeois is the person for whom the highest value is stability: not to take risks, to have everything controlled and defined. And a Christianity with a bourgeois mentality is problematic, because it lacks the sense of mission that Christianity has always had. Why don't more Christians decide to get involved in public life? Perhaps because Christian formation is received in a bourgeois intellectual and social framework.

We are accommodated.

- The bourgeois mentality goes a little further. It's not that it's more comfortable, which it is, but that you don't even see the need to get involved, to do something. It's not that you are lazy, but that you don't see the need. On the other hand, the natural consequence of having a conception of life, of having a hope, is to want to share it, to propose it to society, because it seems good to you.

We concluded the conversation with José María Torralba. I do not know if you will like the headline, because the topic came up almost at the end, and there were excellent options. But it has been a pleasure to chat with this young Valencian professor, a man who thinks, embedded in the humanities, but one hundred percent "interfaculty" with the Core Curriculum and the Master, at the University of Navarra.

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Scripture

The paralytic of Capernaum (Mk 2:1-12) 

Josep Boira-February 12, 2022-Reading time: 3 minutes

The Church teaches us that "the plan of divine revelation is realized in deeds and words intrinsically connected with each other". (Dei Verbum, n. 2). We see this fulfilled in the Gospel where we meet Jesus who "began to make and teach" (Acts 1:1). His public life is intermingled with "words and deeds, signs and wonders."thus bringing divine promises to fulfillment "to deliver us from the darkness of sin and death and to raise us to eternal life." (Dei Verbum, n. 4). The Gospels bear witness to this perfect harmony of Jesus' deeds and sayings: "He went through all Galilee preaching in their synagogues and casting out demons." (Mk 1:39), so that Jesus, with his word, at the same time that he teaches, saves. 

In the synagogues

Jesus, as a good Israelite, went to the synagogue on the Sabbath, in the cities and villages he visited, and took the initiative to teach the meaning of the Scriptures in a new way, creating a strong impression on the listeners. This is what happened when he entered Capernaum: "As soon as the Sabbath came, he went into the synagogue and began to teach. And they were astonished at his teaching, for he taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes." (Mk 1:21-22). Moreover, on that same occasion, he cast a demon out of a man who was in the synagogue. When he saw him, "they were all stupefied, so that they asked each other: -What is this? A new teaching with power. He commands even the unclean spirits, and they obey him." (Mk 1:27). This first preaching and the first miracles of Jesus made his fame spread to the rest of the world. "soon everywhere" (Mk 1:28), so that they followed him "great multitudes from Galilee, Decapolis, Jerusalem, Judea, and beyond the Jordan." (Mt 4:25).

Home and away

Such was the fame of Jesus, "that he could no longer enter openly into any city, but remained outside, in solitary places. But they came to him from everywhere." (Mk 1:45). We see Jesus obliged to carry out his public ministry outside the urban centers of Galilee, turning the unpopulated land into a busy place. But he had to return; the evangelist tells us that Jesus, "after a few days" (Mk 2:1) returned to Capernaum. We can think that he arrived by stealth, after entering by a secondary entrance to the city, so as not to be seen by the people. But Jesus is very well known in Capernaum: he is "your city" (Mt 9:1), since, returning to Galilee from Judea, he had left Nazareth (cf. Mt 4:13); and there he has a house, most probably Peter's (cf. Mk 1:29). On another occasion, at the door of the house there was crowded together "the whole city": There they brought the sick and demon-possessed to him and he cured them (cf. Mk 1:32-34). As was to be expected, "it became known that he was at home and so many people gathered that there was no longer room even at the door". (Mk 2:2). Once again, the house of Capernaum was the meeting place of a crowd that was not satisfied with the weekly preaching in the synagogue, but was hungry for the word of God. The words that the Lord addressed to Moses were fulfilled: "Man does not live by bread alone, but by everything that proceeds out of the mouth of the Lord." (Dt 8:3). And Peter's house became an improvised synagogue, for in the presence of the crowd Jesus "preached the word to them" (Mk 2:2). 

Your sins are forgiven

Already when he was in the synagogue Jesus had healed a demoniac; on this other occasion, "at home" (Mk 2:1), during the preaching, "they came bringing him a paralytic, carried by four".. Because of the huge crowd it was impossible to get him close to Jesus, so, making a hole in the ceiling, they lowered him on his stretcher so that he was facing Jesus. This time it was he who was admired: "When he saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, "Son, your sins are forgiven you." (Mk 2:5). Everyone would expect another healing prodigy; however, these words were new. Undoubtedly, some would think that the cause of that sickness was the man's sins, according to the widespread mentality of the time. Others, the simpler ones, would be convinced of the divine power of Jesus, also to forgive sins. But the scribes present there "They thought in their hearts, 'Why does this man speak like this? He blasphemes. Who can forgive sins but God alone?'" (Mk 2:7). In the latter, they were right, but they did not have faith. 

It is significant that this phrase is accurately reported in the three gospels that narrate the miracle (Matthew, Mark and Luke): "Your sins are forgiven you.". In the rest of the narrative there are slight variations, as is usual in the parallel passages of the synoptic Gospels. It is an expression in passive voice whose agent subject is God, but it is not quoted, out of respect for the divine name: it is called in biblical exegesis "divine passive". 

After forgiving sins, Jesus heals the paralytic, thus confirming his divinity. Therefore, the Master of Nazareth is Jesus, "God who saves" with his word. At the end, seeing the paralytic completely healed, "they were all amazed and glorified God, saying, 'We have never seen anything like it.'" (Mk 2:12).

The authorJosep Boira

Professor of Sacred Scripture

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  • "There is a current that wants to destroy Benedict XVI and his work."
The World

"There is a current that wants to destroy Benedict XVI and his work."

Following the Pope Emeritus' statement, the German media reacted accusingly. In the meantime, the German bishops made brief statements or avoided making any pronouncements. Bishop Georg Gänswein speaks of a "campaign" against Benedict XVI.

José M. García Pelegrín-February 11, 2022-Reading time: 5 minutes
RelatedRelated NewsBenedict XVI expresses sorrow but rejects all accusationsRelated NewsReport on sexual abuse in Munich diocese tries to implicate Benedict XVI

In the media, the reactions to the letter of Benedict XVI of February 8 The reactions of the Pope emeritus, with few exceptions, would almost certainly have been the same, whatever he wrote: from those who accuse him of using "tricks" to dismiss his "personal responsibility" (Georg Löwisch in the weekly "Die Zeit") to the theologian Doris Reisinger who calls the Pope's letter a "mockery for those affected" and criticizes Benedict's referring to Jesus as "friend", "brother" and "advocate", because "to the ears of those affected" that sounds as if Jesus "is not on their side, but on the side of those who have tormented, ignored and hurt them". 

However, in "Der Spiegel", Thomas Fischer - a member between 2000 and 2017 of the German Supreme Court, and since 2013 its President - writes: "Since 1945, there have been seven archbishops in Munich. During that same time, seven bishops of Rome ruled the Church: Pius XII, John XXIII, Paul VI, John Paul I, John Paul II, Benedict XVI and Francis. And that is not counting the number of auxiliary bishops, vicars general and judicial vicars. Now, one of those mentioned has had to "apologize". He will soon be 95 years old and, by his own admission, he made a mistake in refusing to attend a meeting held 42 years ago. Predictably, that did him no good. He is required to apologize again, and again, and again. And, what's more, a full-fledged one.

More surprising are the reactions of precisely those bishops who demanded explanations from the Pope emeritus. The president of the DBK, Bishop Bätzing, merely wrote on Twitter, to express satisfaction with Benedict's letter and his apology to the victims of abuse. "The Pope emeritus had promised to speak and now he has done so. I thank him for it and he deserves respect for it."

For his part, the current Archbishop of Munich, Cardinal Reinhard Marx, made a brief statement welcoming the letter: "I am pleased that my predecessor as Archbishop of Munich and Freising, Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, has commented on the publication of the opinion of the law firm WSW in a personal letter. However, he also emphasized that the report, "the results of which Benedict's lawyers doubt," is taken very seriously in the diocese.

On the other hand, Bishop Franz-Josef Overbeck of Essen has openly criticized the statement of the Pope emeritus: "I am afraid that the statement will not be of much help to those affected in dealing with their past. I am concerned that those affected by sexual violence have reacted with disappointment and partly with indignation to the former Pope's statements about his time as Archbishop of Munich and Freising." Other bishops, such as Bishop Franz Jung of Würzburg and Bishop Bertram Meier of Augsburg, declined to comment when asked by the DPA press agency.

And the President of the ZdK says that the statement "lacks empathy for those affected", so that "Pope Benedict's second reaction is unfortunately not convincing". 

In the meantime, bishops from other European countries have also spoken out: Cardinal Dominik Duka, Archbishop of Prague, is critical of the preparation of a report on sexual abuse by a law firm; the events connected with it have caused him "astonishment and shame". Specifically, he referred to the case of the priest "H.": in 1980, "according to the canon law then and now in force," the Archbishop of Munich had no authority over a priest coming from the diocese of Essen. Nor could he refuse to have him transferred to Munich for psychiatric treatment: "If he had refused the possibility of such a priest being treated, his behavior would have been inhuman and unchristian".

For his part, the bishop of Fréjus-Toulon, in the south of France, Msgr. Dominique Rey, describes as "unjust" the treatment being given to Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI. "It is even slanderous not to recognize that Benedict XVI has played a decisive role in improving the treatment of sexual crimes in the Church. Benedict tirelessly reminded us of the need to repent, to purify the Church and to learn to forgive," although he always made it clear that forgiveness is no substitute for justice. "As a pioneer in the fight against abuse, Benedict XVI took it upon himself, in word and deed, to bring about in the Church a greater awareness of the evil of sexual abuse."

The mostly accusatory reactions - almost all of them without adhering to the facts refuted in the study of Benedict's advisors - demanding a "full-fledged" confession of personal guilt has led Bishop Georg Gänswein to speak out - in an interview with the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera- of a "campaign" against the Pope emeritus. "There is a current that really wants to destroy his person and his work", a current that "has never loved him, his theology or his pontificate" and many are fooled by this "cowardly attack". Those who know Benedict - he continued - know that "the accusation that he lied is absurd"; one must know "how to distinguish between an error and a lie". 

For his part, Pope Francis - at Wednesday's general audience - thanked Benedict XVI for his words on his approaching death. He recalled that the Pope emeritus had recently spoken of being "at the dark door of death". He added: "It is beautiful to thank the Pope who, at 95, is still so lucid. It was wonderful advice that Benedict gave. "Christian faith does not dispel the fear of death," Francis said, but "only through faith in the resurrection can we face the abyss of death without being overwhelmed by fear.

The precedents

In the presentation -on January 20- of the report on sexual abuse committed in the diocese of Munich-Freising between 1945 and 2019, prepared by the law firm Westpfahl Spilker Wastl (WSW) on behalf of the diocese, Benedict XVI was accused of "not having reacted adequately or in accordance with the norms to cases of (alleged) abuse that had come to his attention" in four cases; special attention was given to the case of a priest "H." -to which a special volume of more than 350 pages was devoted. In particular, the report reproached the Pope emeritus for the fact that, in his answer to the questions put to him by WSW's lawyers in preparing the report, Benedict had replied that he was not present at a certain meeting of the diocesan curia on January 15, 1980, at which it was a question of accommodating the priest, since he was moving from Essen to Munich for psychiatric treatment. However, the lawyers presented evidence that he had been present.

Immediately afterwards, voices were raised demanding explanations from the Pope emeritus, including those of several bishops such as the President of the German Bishops' Conference (DBK), Bishop Georg Bätzing, the person in charge of abuse at the DBK, Bishop Stefan Ackermann ("For many believers, it is difficult to understand and to endure that even a former Pope is accused of serious misconduct"). Stefan Ackermann ("for many believers it is difficult to understand and to bear that even a former Pope is accused of serious misconduct"), as well as the Bishop of Mainz, Bishop Peter Kohlgraf, and the Central Committee of German Catholics ZdK, whose President Irme Stetter-Karp called it "shameful" that Benedict XVI "did not admit to improper behavior".

On January 24, the Pope emeritus' secretary, Msgr. Georg Gänswein, issued a statement correcting the information: "Benedict wishes to clarify that, contrary to what he stated in response to the lawyers' questions, he did participate in the curia meeting of January 15, 1980". Furthermore, the Pope Emeritus "wishes to emphasize that the objectively erroneous statement was not made with malice, but was an oversight in the editing of his statement."

Bishop Gänswein announced that Benedict XVI would make a lengthy statement explaining how this mistake in the wording could have occurred. This happened with a letter from the Pope Emeritus himself on February 8, accompanied by a report prepared by four collaborators - three specialists in canon law, as well as another lawyer - in which they explained in great detail how the "transcription error" had occurred; They also refuted the other accusations point by point and, based on the answer given by one of the WSW lawyers to a journalist's question, made it clear that they had no proof of any "guilt" of the then Cardinal Ratzinger, but that their accusations were based on assumptions of probability.

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RelatedRelated NewsBenedict XVI expresses sorrow but rejects all accusationsRelated NewsReport on sexual abuse in Munich diocese tries to implicate Benedict XVI
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Cinema

The call to holiness through the homeless: Mother Petra

Patricio Sánchez-Jáuregui-February 11, 2022-Reading time: 2 minutes

Petra de San José

AddressPablo Moreno
ScriptAndrés Garrido and Pedro Delgado
Country: Spain
Year: 2022

In the mid-nineteenth century, in southern Spain, a girl in love with her boyfriend begins to experience signs that will lead her to question her entire existence. A century later, two partisans loot and burn a shrine in Barcelona, taking with them a cloth sack with a curious and macabre content.

Personal aspect of the supernatural, Petra de San José tells a story of sanctity and redemption, through jumps in time that tell the story of two tomb robbers during the Spanish Civil War, as well as the story of a woman waiting for her happy marriage. The film is born with the vocation of showing the goodness of a saint during her lifetime and the graces she continues to bestow after her death. To do so, it begins in the deep Andalusia of the 19th century, in the wanderings of a laughing girl in love who begins to experience divine signs that gradually change her way of life. First she will break up with her boyfriend, and little by little she will adopt rules of piety that will lead her to her true vocation: caring for the poor and helpless.

Intertwining the sacking of the Royal Sanctuary of San José de la Montaña, the death of Prim and the uprising of 1936, Petra de San José (1845-1906) is a historical-religious film that portrays the tragedy of a poor Spain, which had in the drama of this persevering character a work recognized in his beatification by St. John Paul II (1994). Modestly but carefully produced, the touching story of surrender also provides a somewhat sanitized but transparent testimony about the situation in Spain during both the 19th and 20th centuries, as well as the role of the religious congregations of the Catholic Church, especially the Mothers of the homeless.

With a careful hand and measured cinematography, Pablo Moreno, Pedro Delgado and Andrés Garrido, who between them put together a copious filmography of piousness.Holy Land. The last pilgrim (reviewed in Omnes), Fatima, Poveda, Claret, Freedom Network, etc.They bring us a careful production, with a large cast and respectable numbers. A stimulating play for all audiences, which tells the story of a challenging but inspiring journey.

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Initiatives

Voice of the Mass. Read and proclaim the Word of God well

The experience of unclear or confusing diction in the reading of liturgical celebrations is what has led a journalist and professional announcer to start Voz de Misa, short courses to learn how to read in liturgical celebrations. 

Maria José Atienza-February 11, 2022-Reading time: 4 minutes

"When the sacred Scriptures are read in the Church, God himself speaks to his people, and Christ, present in his word, proclaims the Gospel. For this reason the readings from the Word of God, which give the Liturgy an element of the greatest importance, should be listened to by all with veneration. 

In texts that are to be pronounced in a loud and clear voice, whether by the priest or by the deacon, or by the lector, or by all, the voice should respond to the nature of the respective text, whether it is a reading, prayer, monition, acclamation or hymn, as well as to the form of the celebration and the solemnity of the assembly. 

In addition, the nature of the various languages and the nature of the peoples must be taken into account". These words from the General Instruction of the Roman Missal speak for themselves of the importance not only of listening to, but also of proclaiming the Word of God in liturgical celebrations. Both listening and reading are key to achieving an encounter with Christ, the Incarnate Word, with each of the faithful. 

However, the experience of many of the faithful at Sunday or daily Masses, as well as at other celebrations, is far from this affirmation. Too often the readings are not prepared in advance, the texts are not known or are read with a monotonous or meaningless intonation, which makes it difficult for those listening to understand and reflect on them. 

The repetition of this experience and the realization that this reality was more than widespread was what led Angel Manuel Perez, journalist and professional radio and television broadcaster, to prepare specific courses for those who read, regularly or sporadically, in the various liturgical celebrations.  

"When I went to Mass, I found that I could not hear or understand what the laity read at the ambo, says the journalist. Specializing in voice-over in audiovisual media, Ángel did not hesitate to do his bit to try to improve, as far as possible, those public reading skills that many people, who are not communication professionals, do not have developed. 

A personal service 

"I decided to start offering this course in different parishes in the archdiocese of Madrid." Little by little, this initiative has been spreading throughout Spain and there are numerous parishes, brotherhoods, schools and youth groups in which Angel Manuel has taught the main tools to convey the Word of God in a clear way. 

Among the main mistakes we tend to make when reading, for example, during a Eucharistic celebration are the following "go out to read the Word of God without having prepared the text by reading it beforehand. I always recommend reading it aloud twice". before the celebration, in order to ensure that "read something they understand. Readers have to understand what they read, so that the faithful will understand it"..

In this sense, as Perez also emphasizes, knowing and reading Sacred Scripture on a regular basis is another of the bases for being able to proclaim it correctly. 

At present, the premise fides ex auditu is perhaps one of the most important realities in the Church, since many people only have contact with Sacred Scripture during liturgical celebrations. It is therefore important to know what we read because, as this professional points out, "the reader communicates the Word of God not only with the words pronounced correctly but also the conviction, the tone, the volume, the voice inflections according to the phrases, etc.". 

Angel Manuel has been professionalizing this course in such a way that, in a short time, he prepares interested people, adults, young people or children to face a public reading, something that is often costly. His web page www.vozdemisa.com gives an example of this. In it, he collects some basic tips and shows the different reader's courses he has been giving since he started, in a completely personal way, this work. 

At present, it teaches some 150 courses a year throughout Spain. 

Liturgical lector course

The Mass Reader Course "It is an intensive course, lasting three and a half hours. It contains a first part of an hour and a half in which I loosen up and relax the participants. After a 15-minute break, the second part begins, in which I focus on helping them, one by one, to make themselves heard and understood. And they succeed".. 

A basic premise is, obviously, to have a certain daily reading habit. A point that is increasingly difficult to find, and not only in young people. Moreover, this personal daily reading, as Angel Manuel points out, will be much more effective if everyone who reads on a regular basis, "read a few minutes out loud. I do it every day as a professional".. 

Angel Manuel Perez, who has been working with the voice all his professional life, is clear that in many occasions at present "the management of the spoken voice is totally neglected.". 

For his students, he provides examples and simple habits to help them improve beyond the three intensive hours of his Mass lector course. "Something very useful." notes "for readers is for them to imitate a professional."a radio or television announcer.

In addition, once the course is completed, "To all the groups I send the Sunday readings read by me via WhatsApp. In this way, with the text and listening to me, they have a sure way to improve. I have more than twenty WhatsApp groups to which I send these audios every week. In total, about 300 people and I have more and more groups".

A key participation of the laity

On January 23, Sunday of the Word, Pope Francis granted the ministry of lector and acolyte to women. An opening that "will increase the recognition, also through a liturgical act (institution), of the precious contribution that for a long time many lay people, including women, have been making to the life and mission of the Church". and which shows that care in the proclamation of the Word of God, as Angel Manuel Perez emphasizes "it is an essential task for the participation of the laity.".

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Spain

Celso Morga: "We are committed to eradicating child abuse".

The Spanish bishops are "committed to eradicate" the abuse of minors, and "help the victims, trying to repair the damage. They study for this "case by case, also those of the past," said the Archbishop of Merida-Badajoz, Monsignor Celso Morga, in an article published today on the Omnes website.

María José Atienza / Rafael Miner-February 10, 2022-Reading time: 4 minutes
RelatedRelated NewsChild abuseRelated NewsHans Zollner, SJ: "We need people who are serious about safeguarding minors".

"All Catholics are pained in our souls by these facts that have as their object a grave matter before God and that are grave crimes also before men, leaving indelible negative traces on those who are victims," he begins by stating in Omnes the Archbishop of Mérida - Badajoz, Celso Morga.

Monsignor Morga assures that "the bishops in Spain, in communion with the Holy Father and the entire universal Church, are committed to eradicating, as far as possible, these absolutely unacceptable behaviors in all areas of society and, even more so, in the Church".

The Spanish Episcopal Conference, for its part, "has sent to Rome for approval a very extensive and detailed General Decree on how to deal with abuses in the Church, whose approval we are awaiting.

At the same time, "each Diocese has created an Office for the Protection of Minors and Prevention of Abuse to receive complaints, accompany and assist victims as a preliminary step to criminal legal treatment if appropriate".

A false interpretation

Monsignor Celso Morga wishes to avoid any possible confusion. "The initiative of some political parties for Congress [it seems that it will be the Ombudsman] to examine cases of abuse in the Church," he says, "should not be interpreted as if the bishops are not doing anything, nor are they interested in clarifying cases of abuse, nor the pain of the victims. This is not the case.

"In the Episcopal Conference it did not seem convenient to create a national Commission to examine the cases of abuse committed, as has been done, for example, by the French Episcopal Conference -adds the Archbishop of Emerita-, "because it seemed that it is a way that does not solve the problem.

These initiatives bring to light an absolute number of cases, which subsequently receive well-founded criticism as to their statistical accuracy because it is objectively difficult, over such a long time span, to be precise.

Case by case study

"To the Spanish Episcopal Conference, until now, it has seemed more effective and fair to study case by caseThe same applies to past cases, but with procedural guarantees and an attitude of sincere and Christian help to the victims, trying by all means to repair the damage, as far as possible".

Archbishop Celso Morga recognizes that, "perhaps in the past we did not take sufficiently into consideration, neither in the Church nor in society in general, the enormous gravity of these facts, which on the other hand are linked to our human condition, which struggles in an endless combat against what is not worthy of the human being. It is time to react and for all of us to make every effort to stop, as far as possible, these deplorable events".

"We are sincerely committed to this in the Church and the Lord will help us," concludes Archbishop Morga.

He is not the only Spanish bishop who, in recent days, has spoken out on this issue. A sad issue that, although it comes from afar, in recent weeks has returned to the forefront after the government's announcement of commissioning a commission of inquiry into sexual abuse in the Church.

This is in addition to the recent visit ad limina The meeting of the Spanish prelates in which the management and reparation of these terrible acts was one of the topics discussed with Pope Francis who, shortly before, had received a dossier containing 251 reports of abuse in the last seventy years referring to Spanish clerics, diocesan priests and religious prepared by a Spanish newspaper.

Bishops such as the Bishop of Burgos, Mario Iceta, have also thanked the media and others for their efforts to help us clarify the facts guided by the principle of truth and justice, to repair as far as possible the damage caused, to hold accountable those who have committed such crimes, and to do everything possible to ensure that these events do not happen again.

For his part, the bishop spokesman of the EEC, Luis Argüello, has reiterated his willingness to investigate all cases that may have been committed in the ecclesiastical sphere and the seriousness of these cases, regardless of whether they are many or few.

"We want to know the truth."

In this regard, the video published by the Spanish Episcopal Conference in which the director of the Episcopal Commission for Social Communications, José Gabriel Vera, points out that, although cases of abuse of minors in the Church are estimated at around 0.2% (Data from the ANAR Foundation), "even if there was only one case for the Church it is something serious and terrible, which it has to look at and take care of. We cannot say that the cases are not significant. They are painful and cause great shame," says the director of the Episcopal Commission for Social Communications.

In addition, Vera points out the desire of the Spanish Church to "know the truth, to know how many cases there have been, under what circumstances they have occurred and why these people have been treated badly". A knowledge aimed at the prevention of these cases and the creation of safe spaces.

Diocesan offices

What is certain is that the Catholic Church in Spain has promptly set up offices for the protection of minors and the presentation of complaints of abuse committed.

These offices, as José Gabriel Vera explains, "seek to welcome, from the point of view of restorative accompaniment, the victims and to put their demands in the appropriate channel". These offices differ from the legal channel established for the denunciation of cases committed by priests and religious.

In fact, its work is directed to all those who have suffered abuse, whether or not the statute of limitations has expired or the abuser has died, and even to people who have suffered abuse in areas other than the ecclesiastical sphere.

In addition, many dioceses, religious orders and Catholic schools have implemented common processes for the protection of minors, protocols for educational centers and training for teachers and students for the detection and prevention of child abuse.

As Vera emphasizes, "all victims deserve reparations". Even though there is still a long way to go and to investigate, the Spanish Church does not shirk its responsibility and action in this painful but necessary task.  

The authorMaría José Atienza / Rafael Miner

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RelatedRelated NewsChild abuseRelated NewsHans Zollner, SJ: "We need people who are serious about safeguarding minors".
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Cristián Sahli, priest and writer: "Marriage and celibacy are paths to happiness".

Interview with Cristián Sahli, Chilean priest and writer. His work reflects his interest in spreading knowledge of a valuable life, entertaining and transmitting positive messages. We talked about this and about his latest book, about marriage and celibacy, as "two wonderful gifts".

Pablo Aguilera-February 10, 2022-Reading time: 5 minutes

Throughout history there have been many Catholic priests who have written books of various kinds. Theologian writers such as St. Thomas Aquinas and, in contemporary times, Joseph RatzingerOthers who have published ascetic works such as St. Alphonsus Liguori and St. Josemaría Escrivá; priest poets such as José Miguel Ibáñez; disseminators of the Catholic faith such as Leo Trese; priest historians such as Hubert Jedin and José Orlandis.

Less frequent are the priests who have written novels such as saint John Henry Newman. This is the case of Cristian Sahli (1975), Chilean, with a degree in Law and a doctorate in Canon Law, priest since 2010. In the last five years he has published biographical books, novels and short stories in Chile, Spain and France. He has received awards in Spain and Chile. His biographies include Would you dare to go to Chile? A portrait of Adolfo Rodríguez Vidal (he is the pioneer priest of Opus Dei in Chile, who arrived in 1950), published by Rialp, and José Enrique. Among his novels are The agony of Julian Bacaicoa (Didaskalos, 2019), a juvenile: The big puzzle (Palabra, 2020); another realistic-historical: Two daughters of the great earthquake (Didaskalos, 2021). He has written the short story entitled Captain Chocolateanother Christmas one called A lucky donkey and an award-winning micro-story. He has also ventured into the spiritual theological field with Two wonderful gifts (Rialp, 2021), on Christian marriage and celibacy. 

Through these books we can appreciate his interest in spreading the knowledge of a valuable life, entertaining and transmitting positive messages. His biographical sketch and his works can be found at www.cristiansahliescritor.cl.

Cristián, your literary vocation is relatively late, since your first book appears in 2017. What motivates you to write?

I would say that the ripe fruits are late, but I always had a penchant for writing. In high school I won some contests, I made a bulletin for the class, and in college, a periodical. I can't explain the origin of my taste for writing, but it probably comes from an innate creative desire. My current motivation for writing stems from the possibility of transmitting, to a tired and often hopeless world, examples of successful lives and ideas of human and spiritual content. 

You have ventured into several literary genres. Do you consider yourself a multifaceted author or have you not yet found your true niche as a writer?

I consider myself an amateur who has the desire to grow and better fulfill his vocation and profession, so I try to improve myself and face new challenges. I began with biographical sketches, then I ventured into literary fiction, and finally I published my first spiritual book. I try to develop each style respecting its own rules. There is nothing more repulsive than trying to read a moralizing or implausible novel.

How can you write fiction in Christian?

Fiction has its own rules and does not talk about religion. However, the characters in a good novel make decisions that always carry with them a moral value. That is where the true value of a literary text comes into play, in the relationship of those actions with happiness. Edith Wharton said that "a good theme, then, must contain within itself something that sheds light on our moral experience. If it is incapable of this expansion, of this vital irradiation, then, however showy the surface it presents, it is no more than a mere out-of-place occurrence, a meaningless piece of fact torn out of its context." That's what I'm trying to do, to make the characters show their humanity, and for them to show it fully, their orientation to the divine is necessary. I remember reading that Evelyn Waugh once said that characters without reference to God are not true characters.

Do you see any relationship between literary fiction and catechesis?

Yes, in terms of renewing the way of transmitting the faith to each generation. In this regard, it is worth recalling the words of Pope Francis in Evangelii GaudiumIt is desirable that each particular Church encourage the use of the arts in its evangelizing task, in continuity with the richness of the past, but also in the vastness of its present multiple expressions, in order to transmit the faith in a new way". parabolic language. We must dare to encounter the new signs, the new symbols, a new flesh for the transmission of the Word, the diverse forms of beauty that are valued in different cultural settings, and even those unconventional modes of beauty, which may be of little significance to evangelizers, but which have become particularly attractive to others".

How do you choose topics for your novels?

I want the plot and the lives of the characters to be marked by the deep moral dilemmas of existence. The old and successful doctor, Julián Bacaicoa, wonders in his agony if his life has been happy. Miguel Russo and Almudena, his companion, are wondering, as they leave adolescence, what are the appropriate choices for a life full of possibilities, as many as the pieces of a big puzzle. Amelia Candau and Erika Baier, after the unparalleled catastrophe of the Valdivia earthquake and tsunami, face the dilemma of giving meaning to their lives after experiences of pain and death. All my writings speak, deep down, of the redeeming value of love.

And what is your opinion of today's readers?

It is said that novels have different reading levels, and that is why there are different types of readers, who decipher more or less messages in the text. Some are content with mere distraction, others notice historical, psychological, geographical, sociological elements, but only the most cultivated readers discover the anthropological background. I have the best opinion of the readers, and I hope that in reading it everyone will be able to access the third level. For my part, I try to base my works on a Christian anthropological vision and it is up to the readers to judge whether I succeed. 

Why treat Christian marriage and celibacy together in your spiritual book "Two Wonderful Gifts"?

Because these are two great loves on which the whole existence of a person can be based, and although they are different, they have many points in common. Both are paths to happiness, since they allow us to give ourselves and to receive from others; both are fruitful realities, which enable us to live fatherhood and motherhood, provide companionship, and allow us to live with God in a special way. 

In the de-Christianized culture in which many Western countries live, celibacy is considered a rarity from ancient times. What is your contribution to a greater understanding of celibacy in "Two Wonderful Gifts"?

Celibacy has been hidden from the horizon of many young people because to understand it requires faith. The person who lives celibacy for the sake of the Kingdom of Heaven renounces marriage because he or she accepts an invitation from God to love him without sharing his heart and to occupy himself more immediately with his divine projects in the world. Perhaps my contribution can be expressed in these words from the book: "I think that the celibate person for the Kingdom of Heaven must be defined on the basis of what he has received and not on what he lacks. It is true that he has not married and will not marry, but the most important thing is not what he has left. The main thing is that she has found something that is better for her, a gift that she has received in addition". 

Any new literary projects in the pipeline?

God willing, there will be a book of illustrated Christmas stories, and a biographical sketch of a Chilean priest who exercised his pastoral ministry in Africa. 

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ColumnistsCelso Morga

Child abuse

These days the media have been informing us of the initiative of some political parties for the Congress of Deputies to examine the abuse of minors within the Catholic Church. In the end, it seems that it will be the Ombudsman who will carry out the investigation.

February 10, 2022-Reading time: 2 minutes

All Catholics are pained in our souls by these acts, which are a grave matter before God and which are also grave crimes before mankind, leaving indelible negative marks on those who are the victims: "Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me. But whoever scandalizes one of these little ones who believe in me, it would be better for him to have one of those millstones hung around his neck which the asses move, and to be drowned in the depths of the sea." (Mt 18:5-6).

The bishops in Spain, in communion with the Holy Father and the entire universal Church, are committed to eradicating, as far as possible, this absolutely unacceptable behavior in all areas of society and, even more so, in the Church.

Especially in recent years, the Apostolic See has publicly asked for forgiveness on several occasions and has made a strong commitment to shed light on what happened and to the reparation of the victims as a priority.

Thus, Pope John Paul II published, in 2001, the motu proprio "Sacramentorum sanctitatis tutela"(The protection of the sanctity of the Sacraments), which was followed, in the time of Pope Francis, by the reform of Book VI (book on penalties) of the Code of Canon Law and, in 2019, again by a motu proprio of Pope Francis entitled "Vos estis lux mundi" (You are the light of the world).

The Spanish Episcopal Conference, for its part, has sent to Rome for approval a very extensive and detailed General Decree on how to deal with abuses in the Church, whose approval we are awaiting.

Each Diocese has created an Office for the Protection of Minors and Prevention of Abuse to receive complaints, accompany and assist victims as a preliminary step to criminal legal treatment if appropriate.

The initiative of these political parties for Congress to examine the cases of abuse in the Church should not be interpreted as if the bishops are not doing anything, nor are they interested in clarifying the cases of abuse, nor the pain of the victims.

This is not the case.

In the Episcopal Conference it did not seem convenient to create a national Commission to examine the cases of abuse committed, as, for example, the French Episcopal Conference has done, because it seemed to be a way that does not solve the problem. These initiatives bring to light an absolute number of cases, which subsequently receive well-founded criticism as to their statistical accuracy because it is objectively difficult, over such a long period of time, to be precise.

To the Spanish Episcopal Conference, until now, it has seemed more effective and fair to study case by case, also the cases of the past, but with procedural guarantees and an attitude of sincere and Christian help to the victims, trying by all means to repair the damage, as far as possible.

Perhaps in the past we did not take sufficiently into consideration, neither in the Church nor in society in general, the enormous gravity of these events, which are linked to our human condition, which struggles in a never-ending battle against what is not worthy of human beings. It is time to react and for all of us to make every effort to stop, as far as possible, these deplorable events.

We are sincerely committed to this in the Church and the Lord will help us.

The authorCelso Morga

Archbishop emeritus of the Diocese of Mérida Badajoz

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Family

God's dreams

To love life is to pursue the dream that God had when he created human beings. He dreamed us in full communion with one another.

Lucía Simón-February 10, 2022-Reading time: 3 minutes

Loving life begins by accepting and welcoming it from the very first moment. This act resembles God the Father who, with immense tenderness, already had us in his heart from the very first moment. Sometimes it is difficult for us to accept a new life because we did not expect it to come at that moment or in that way. Because it doesn't adapt to what we had planned and it upsets us.

We live in a society where parenting is a real adventure. Reconciling work and family life, access to housing... it all seems very difficult and costly.

In addition, there is a trend that veiled rejection of children. We have seen it in the pandemic. They bother, they make noise, they touch everything... It seems that children bother us. They disturb their innocence and spontaneity. It bothers that they demand from everyone a response, a going out of oneself to take care of them, to attend to them or simply to put up with them. Their dependence bothers us.

Welcoming life means defending it from attacks as unnatural as abortion. But it also means not making a bad face when a child bothers us on public transportation or in line at the doctor's office. It means giving understanding and support to those who are afraid of being parents and feel alone in a task that belongs to all of us as a society.

We will not end abortion as long as we do not end the individualistic mentality, incapable of tolerating and loving others for being just who they are. For being a person. How much joy and happiness is given by true surrender. To give oneself to others and not to live thinking of oneself and our rights. So many families who welcome children, even if they are born in a moment of difficulty, know this. Those who take in and care for the elderly at enormous personal cost. In hard times we have the experience that the warmth of others and feeling united is what matters most.

There are many foundations and associations helping mothers at risk of miscarriage and families, which could tell so many examples of how support and being with each other radically change the attitude of the parents towards the new child. When a woman becomes pregnant she is not afraid and overwhelmed just because of how she will buy diapers. She is afraid because from the very first moment, every mother knows that she will be united to that child forever and will have to take care of it, accompany it... It is a task of the parents but also of the whole society.

The human being was created for donation. To give himself. We often find people frustrated because their life has not developed as they thought it would. Because they have not achieved everything they intended. How many lies in those self-help books that say that we achieve everything with our strength and our mind. Human beings are only happy in relationship with others. We depend on others. And that others are happy, also depends a lot on us.

To love life is to pursue the dream that God had when he created human beings. He dreamed us in full communion with one another. In harmony. It is true that because of sin this dream appears today blurred and damaged. We are not perfect. We hurt each other. Or we shout at each other. We put ourselves first in front of those who need us most... But all is not lost.

We can fight to change what depends on us. Even if they are just a few. Spending time listening, constantly fighting to achieve a balance between family and work, not complaining about the inconvenience caused by others...

There are a thousand ways in which we can advance in the love of life. It is not enough to participate in demonstrations against abortion, although they are also necessary to express our rejection of this cruel act. Let us change society with a few. Let us change society with our attitude towards life, loving others. Welcoming and accepting them from the first moment and until the end.

We leave you a history to help you understand God's dreams

The authorLucía Simón

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The Vatican

The effects of the pandemic on young people and how to overcome them.

Pope Francis gave an interview to Italian television in which he addressed important issues such as immigration, social emergencies and the future of the Church, among others.

Giovanni Tridente-February 9, 2022-Reading time: 4 minutes
RelatedRelated NewsRe-establishing links with the truthRelated NewsBenedict XVI expresses sorrow but rejects all accusations

Last Sunday, during prime time, RAI channel 3 in Italy broadcast a long interview with Pope Francis during the program "Pope Francis and the Pope". Che tempo che fa conducted by journalist Fabio Fazio. The interview lasted about an hour, and covered many topics close to the heart of the Church and society in general, from the suffering of so many people to the indifference affecting the world of immigration, from the winds of war that have returned to Europe to environmental emergencies, to the relationship between parents and children, the meaning of evil, prayer and the future of the Church.

In response to the journalist's question about social aggressiveness, Pope Francis again referred to a "problem" that he had already addressed on other occasions, that of "youth suicides," which are on the rise and have intensified in the last two years also because of the Covid-19 pandemic. And it is true that it is a social scourge that is always little talked about. In fact, it was the Pontiff himself who denounced it already in 2015, when at a Workshop on Modern Slavery held at the Vatican he pointed out for the first time how among the consequences of the lack of work is the suicide of young people, whose statistics "are not published in their entirety."

A moment of the interview with Pope Francis in the Italian program directed by Fabio Fazio, February 6, 2022. (CNS photo/RAI)

What has happened instead to the pandemic in terms of mental health and emotionality in adolescents and young people? A study by Wenceslao Vial, a Chilean priest and physician who teaches at the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross in Rome, and editor of the interdisciplinary portal Maturity psychological & spirituallooked at a young man's suicide attempt to monitor how Covid has truly changed the lives and affected the emotional world of many people.

Increased negative emotionality

From the analysis of various scientific publications that have addressed the issue of the health emergency in the last two years, it appears that "negative emotionality: sadness, fear, worry, irritability" has certainly increased, along with anxiety and depression, eating disorders, pornography consumption and "somatic symptoms" in younger children.

A survey of school principals in different parts of the world - also cited by Vial in his study - concluded that "the first period of seclusion or blocking is better coped with than the second, perhaps because of the novelty". The return to school was seen as a relief, but there were still "more relational problems, such as difficulty integrating into the group".

Relapses

Clearly, much also depended on how the pandemic was managed in different countries. The principal of a school in Estonia, for example, wrote that he had not noticed an increase in cases of depression or anxiety, partly because the press was "generally less emotional than in other cultures." However, there was "a relapse of depressive or anxious symptoms in those" who were being treated before the pandemic and were beginning to feel better.

The response of a school in Chile, a country undergoing a major social crisis, was different: "the increase in abnormal emotional reactions among students aged 13 to 18 was very evident. We had 5 girls in 2021 hospitalized for depression and eating disorders".

The family was considered an important factor. The isolation of the first period seems to have had the positive effect on the young people of giving them the opportunity to share, eat and play with their siblings and parents, as well as decreasing alcohol and drug consumption, which inevitably increased after the end of the confinement measures. On the other hand, an increase in divorces was also observed, which generated more sadness, anxiety, insecurity and hostile reactions among the young people.

Three previous crises

However, the conclusion reached by the Chilean physician and priest is that the impact of the pandemic on the affectivity of young people was significantly greater than the classic factors that cause emotional suffering in adolescents (drug addiction, weak identity, pornography) because it was added to three previous crises that were latent. The crisis of "emotionality", that is, confusion and ignorance of one's own affectivity, "which is equivalent to living with a stranger in one's own home"; the crisis of "coherence", both individual and social, in relation to the major problems but also to the pandemic itself; the crisis of "meaning", which further obscures suffering and illness.

The output

How to get out of it? Vial proposes as many strategies to counteract the three crises: teaching people to know their emotions; encouraging decision making and change, for example by exploring the value of time and inviting people to disconnect from external stimuli to pay more attention to what is important; searching for the meaning of life to be truly happy, rediscovering value, searching for purpose, making room for transcendent experiences and learning to know one's own personal history.

These are four pillars," suggests Wenceslao Vial, "that help to build a more confident personality": "many young people who do not have an easy life and have suffered great wounds can acquire the strength to get up again, if they are given security".

Clearly, this requires joint action by families, educators, religious ministers, politicians and all agencies dealing with young people, through a truly comprehensive approach that includes sports activities, live or online socializing spaces, time management, and social and family relationships. Only in this way will it be possible to restore to young people, to all young people, the security that comes from their value as a person. To be better people.

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RelatedRelated NewsRe-establishing links with the truthRelated NewsBenedict XVI expresses sorrow but rejects all accusations
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The Vatican

"Privilege care for all, so that the weakest are not discarded."

In his general audience catechesis on Wednesday, February 9, Pope Francis stressed the value of palliative care, but also the immorality of "therapeutic incarnation", once everything possible has been done to care for the sick person, since "we cannot avoid death".

David Fernández Alonso-February 9, 2022-Reading time: 3 minutes
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During the General Audience on Wednesday, February 9, Pope Francis dedicated his catechesis to "the special devotion that the Christian people have always had to St. Joseph as the patron of the good death. A devotion born of the thought that Joseph died in the presence of the Virgin Mary and Jesus, before they left the house of Nazareth".

"Pope Benedict XV," Francis began, "a century ago, wrote that 'through Joseph we go directly to Mary, and, through Mary, to the origin of all holiness, Jesus.'" And encouraging pious practices in honor of St. Joseph, he advised one in particular: "Being deservedly considered as the most effective protector of the dying, having died in the presence of Jesus and Mary, it will be the care of the sacred Pastors to inculcate and foster [...] those pious associations that have been established to beseech Joseph on behalf of the dying, such as those of the 'Good Death', of the 'Transitus of St. Joseph' and 'for the dying'" (Motu proprio Bonum saneJuly 25, 1920)".

The Holy Father assures us that "our relationship with death never refers to the past, but always to the present. The so-called culture of 'well-being' tries to eliminate the reality of death, but in a dramatic way the coronavirus pandemic has once again brought it to the fore. Many brothers and sisters have lost loved ones without being able to be near them, and this has made death even harder to accept and to deal with".

The pontiff recalls that the Christian faith helps us to face death. "The true light that illumines the mystery of death comes from the resurrection of Christ. St. Paul writes: "Now if Christ is preached as having been raised from the dead, how do some among you go about saying that there is no resurrection of the dead? If there is no resurrection of the dead, neither was Christ raised from the dead. And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is empty, your faith is also empty" (1 Cor 15,12-14)".

"Only through faith in the resurrection can we look into the abyss of death without being overwhelmed by fear. Not only that: we can give death a positive role. In fact, thinking about death, illuminated by the mystery of Christ, helps us to look at the whole of life with new eyes. I have never seen a moving van behind a hearse! There is no point in accumulating if one day we will die. What we must accumulate is charity, the ability to share, not to remain indifferent to the needs of others. Or, what is the sense of fighting with a brother, with a sister, with a friend, with a relative, or with a brother or sister in faith if one day we will die? In the face of death, many questions are re-dimensioned. It is good to die reconciled, leaving no grudges and no regrets!"

Referring to the parallelism made in the Gospel, "it tells us that death comes like a thief, and no matter how much we try to keep its arrival under control, perhaps by programming our own death, it remains an event to which we are accountable and in front of which we also have to make choices".

Finally, the Pope wished to underline two considerations: "the first: we cannot avoid death, and precisely for this reason, after having done everything humanly possible to care for the sick person, therapeutic incarceration is immoral (cfr Catechism of the Catholic Church, n. 2278)".

And "the second consideration has to do with the quality of death itself, of pain, of suffering. In fact, we should be grateful for all the help that medicine is striving to give, so that through the so-called "palliative care", every person who is preparing to live the last stretch of his or her life's journey can do so in the most humane way possible. But we must be careful not to confuse this help with unacceptable aberrations that lead to euthanasia. We must accompany death, but not provoke death or assist assisted suicide. I recall that the right to care and care for all must always be privileged, so that the weakest, in particular the elderly and the sick, are never discarded. In fact, life is a right, not death, which must be welcomed, not provided. And this ethical principle concerns everyone, not only Christians or believers".

He concluded his catechesis by invoking St. Joseph so that "he can help us to live the mystery of death in the best possible way. For a Christian the good death is an experience of God's mercy, which becomes close to us also in that last moment of our life. Also in the Hail Mary prayer, we pray asking Our Lady to be close to us "now and at the hour of our death". Precisely for this reason I would like to conclude by praying together a Hail Mary for the dying and for those who are in mourning.

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  • Clara PardoI am very proud of the work of Manos Unidas in this difficult moment".
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Clara PardoI am very proud of the work of Manos Unidas in this difficult moment".

Interview with the president of Manos Unidas, Clara Pardo. On Sunday, February 13, parishes throughout Spain will celebrate the National Day of Manos Unidas, which this year will be held under the theme "Our indifference condemns them to oblivion"..

Maria José Atienza-February 9, 2022-Reading time: 8 minutes
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20 years ago, Clara Pardo was a volunteer at the Manos Unidas. Since then, she has worked in the Projects area of Manos Unidas working in different countries. In May 2016 she was elected president by the Assembly of delegates and next May, after two terms at the head of this development NGO, she will say goodbye to her position as president.

Since March 2020, with the outbreak of the pandemic, Clara Pardo has lived through perhaps the most difficult period in recent decades. However, as the president of Manos Unidas points out, "we have seen an increase in the number of volunteers and in support for our emergency campaigns.

This 2022, the Manos Unidas campaign reminds us that the problems of the developing countries not only continue, but have been exacerbated by the pandemic, and that we must all come out of this global crisis together, giving opportunities to all.

What is your assessment of these years of presidency of Manos Unidas?

- I joined Manos Unidas 20 years ago and have been president for 6 years (re-elected in 2019). It has been an extraordinary 20 years. I am lucky to do a job that is what I like. I don't get paid, I am a volunteer, but the obligation and commitment are equal to a paid job. It's not just a matter of going for "a few hours". In this work you find the time where you can. Being a volunteer does not mean that it is a "light" task to which you dedicate "a little while".

My six years as president have been absolutely extraordinary. For me it has been fortunate. It has also been a burden, it is true, especially last season, with the coronavirus problem. But I am very proud of the work that all of Manos Unidas has done in this difficult moment of the pandemic. We have been able to cope with it.

How did Manos Unidas experience the outbreak of the pandemic? 

-Before the arrival of Covid, we had two options: to shut ourselves up at home and let everything sink or to change in order to continue fighting. Manos Unidas is an NGO that is characterized by its austerity and in which we have many older people, so we had to change to learn to work from home. The results have been very good. The delegates of our 72 delegations work, above all, on awareness-raising: raising awareness of hunger and the causes of hunger and raising funds for development projects. Events such as hunger dinners could not take place and the delegates reinvented themselves. We managed to reach people through social networks, the media, television....

By reinventing ourselves, by fighting together, we have been able to continue to reach out to our partners, to continue to support projects and to stay in contact with local partners in Mozambique, Peru or India, even if at the beginning we had to stop some projects, for example in construction.

It has been a very hard but beautiful moment. I leave happy. We have been able to fight together as we did 63 years ago.

Do you think we have become more or less selfish after two years of coronavirus as the main theme of our lives?

-At the beginning of the pandemic, solidarity was the order of the day: we saw that this was a global problem from which we had to emerge united. Little by little, unfortunately, this has turned around and is becoming a "unitary" project: I have to save myself, vaccinate myself... We are forgetting about the situation outside. A situation of extreme poverty which, moreover, has become much more acute.

In the countries where we work, people live on what they collect every day; it is a precarious job, a subsistence economy. The figures of hunger and multidimensional poverty have worsened with the pandemic and the confinements.

For some years we have been very slowly improving development figures in the world, but in the last two years, we have turned around and inequality has increased, also in Spain.

How have the Manos Unidas campaigns been in these two years?

-For me, it was impressive. When the confinement began, in 2020 we had just closed the campaign, which takes place on the second Sunday in February, so the collection for Mass celebrations was not affected. Suddenly, everything had to stop and we have many members who still bring their envelopes to the delegations, and activities such as the hunger dinners are face-to-face.

In the mid-2020s the economic figures were very worrying. We came to think that we were not going to make it. In the midst of that situation, our partners responded again. I always say that Manos Unidas members are the bravest and most committed people I know. People who understand the value of a euro, which can mean a coffee or the possibility of giving vaccines or food.

The number of Manos Unidas members in these months has gone up. Obviously we have decreased the number of activities, but we have looked for alternative ways to support the campaigns: virtual hunger dinners, etc. The important thing is that people are still committed. I always talk about the enormous generosity of the Spanish population and our partners are an example. Thank God, public funding for the projects has also recovered.

In the end, curiously, in 2020 we have grown over 2019 and in 2021 we have an increase in membership figures. An important item is the legacies: those people who leave a legacy for a more dignified future to so many others. During these months, we have also carried out several emergency campaigns, because Covid has struck in a terrible way in countries such as India where, for example, there was no firewood to cremate the deceased.

Manos Unidas is a Church NGDO, are your volunteers always part of the Catholic Church?

-As with our beneficiaries, most of whom are not Christian, we don't ask our volunteers and the people who work for Manos Unidas to profess a religion, to have a particular age or political affiliation... That said, we are a Catholic organization, so if you want to make a greater commitment, which involves being able to vote in the governing bodies or be part of those bodies, you have to be what is called a member of Manos Unidas. To be a member you have to declare that you agree with the principles of the Catholic Church and that your life is in accordance with those principles.

Delegate presidents must be members of Manos Unidas, thereby declaring that they are active members of the Church, practicing Catholics. In addition, delegate presidents must be approved by the local bishop and national presidents must be approved by the Episcopal Conference. In short, we follow the principles of the Church even if we accept anyone as a volunteer and of course, the beneficiaries do not have to be Catholics, in fact, in countries like India there are hardly any Christian beneficiaries.

It is true that a large part of the local partners we work with are religious congregations, dioceses or missionaries. It is not exclusive, but we have always done it and, besides, they are where no one else can reach. When an Ebola epidemic breaks out or there is a typhoon, it is the nuns and missionaries who stay behind. We rely heavily on the whole network of the Church, which also gives us certain guarantees.

Manos Unidas projects

How do you decide to finance a project from Manos Unidas? What is the role of the local partners to whom you give so much importance?

-We travel a lot. The projects to be financed are visited beforehand and the need is established... Certainly, we do not work in the same areas in all countries.

What we never do is arrive at a place and say: "Here we need a school or here we need a well". That is the best way for the project to fail. If, from the eyes of the north, we decide what they need in a developing area, we will always be wrong.

When I arrived at Manos Unidas they gave me an example that I always remember: Some time ago, the oil companies, in order to clean up their image, built a series of schools in Nigeria that nobody went to, because they built them in places where schools were not needed. Schools were needed in Nigeria, yes, but in other places.

You can't decide what a community needs. They are the ones who have to ask for it. Not out of misunderstood charity but to get them involved.

When we carry out a project, the beneficiaries contribute with a financial contribution or their own work, even if it is very small. For example, if we are talking about a school, the parents have to request it through a letter and contribute something, perhaps in the form of moving sandbags or helping in the construction. In this way, they make the project their own.

Subsequently, a follow-up is carried out over a period of time, because it is important to see how the project is evolving and whether it responds to what was expected. If a well has been built, for example, it is important to check that it has its water committee, how many liters of water are being extracted, whether the orchards have started to be irrigated with that water, etc.

In India we do a lot of women's animation projects. Training projects where they are taught a trade that they ask for, whether it's sewing or soap making. Women who have been taught to work, to leave the house, to have a voice, to have access to government loans, their lives are changing and we see it. We see the impact they have and how they are transforming society.

Are there "type" projects depending on the areas?

-Yes, in Latin America there are not so many projects related to education, but we have many projects for food sovereignty or to support indigenous populations, for the recognition of rights.

Africa is the continent with the greatest needs. From health issues: dispensaries, mobile clinics, as well as access to water or food sovereignty and education. In India, however, we find a mix of everything. We also work a lot on raising awareness of the state aid to which they are entitled, because there is a lot of corruption that means that this aid does not reach those who need it, or literacy projects.

It also depends on whether the countries are in coastal areas, which have fishing projects. In countries with mining wealth we work on workers' rights because there are many problems of appropriation or abuses.

Although there are no projects typified by country in the statutes, in the end there are some that occur in some areas more than others.

The female perspective in Manos Unidas

Manos Unidas was born out of the women of Catholic Action and has always had a special focus for the female worldWhat is the role of women in these developing areas?

-If women are able to know that they have rights, that they have the capacity to access the economy or education, they are the first to fight for their daughters to go to school and not to be the ones who stay at home to take care of their younger siblings or go to the fields while the boys go to school. These mothers are the ones who teach them that they have the same dignity. To educate a woman is to educate a family, it is to educate a people, it is not just a phrase.

A significant percentage of the projects we carry out are aimed directly at women and many others have a strong female component. For example, in sustainable agriculture projects, vegetable gardens, etc. When a well is built, it is for the whole community, but it makes it easier for women not to have to walk for an hour to fetch water, for example.

Manos unidas_2022

The Manos Unidas campaign for 2022 emphasizes the importance of not getting used to these situations of poverty and inequality. Why did you choose this idea?

- This year we want to call attention to how many times you see some hard images on television and you change the channel... because you don't want to know more or you think that "I have enough with my own".

The only way to transform the world is for all of us to participate as the Pope has told us. We may think that "I am not going to kill anyone" but, in reality, if I look the other way, I am not preventing that person from dying. This year's Manos Unidas poster is very eloquent, in which women are disappearing little by little: because we do not recognize that this reality exists.

We have to make people aware that it is impossible that, with enough food in the world, there are 811 million people who are starving or who do not have access to health care or education.

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Sunday Readings

"May Mary call us by our name". Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time

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

Andrea Mardegan-February 9, 2022-Reading time: 2 minutes

Commentary on the readings for Sunday VI

We read the first part of the "sermon of the plain", that of the four "sermons of the plain".blessed" y "woe unto you". In Matthew, Jesus speaks of the beatitudes on a mountain. In Luke, he has just come down from the mountain where he had spent the night in prayer and where he called the Twelve. His descent reminds us of God's descent among us with the Incarnation. The plain is an image of our daily life. There, Jesus encounters a crowd of disciples, and a crowd of pagans from Tyre and Sidon.

This crowd is well described in two verses that are not read in the Gospel of the Mass: "They came to hear him and to be cured of their illnesses; those tormented by unclean spirits were cured, and all the people tried to touch him, because a power came out of him that cured them all.". These are the people to whom Jesus says ".blessed"You, the poor, who hunger and mourn. Jesus defines them in this way, not because of the evil they suffer, but because their destitution led them to seek Jesus, his grace and his word. Spiritual or material deprivation, pain and existential need, open to the search for God and the desire for his lasting and eternal good.

The fourth beatitude differs from the first three because it refers to the hardships that the disciples will have because they are persecuted in the name of Christ. It is a Gospel that calls us to a profound conversion of our way of thinking. Jesus tells us that we must not seek the consent of the world: "Oh, if everyone speaks well of you. This is what your fathers did with false prophets". On the contrary, Jesus tells us: "Blessed are you when men shall hate you, and shall cast you out, and shall revile you"and invites us to rejoice and jump for joy".for your reward will be great in heaven. This is what your fathers did with the prophets.". If he had told us: "accept with serenity this situation, or offer this sacrifice"This would already have been a request beyond human strength; all the more so, since it asks us to be filled with joy and exultation. It is impossible for us to do this with our own strength alone. As the Lord says in Jeremiah: we need to trust in him to be trees planted by the water of his grace in order to have, even in those trials, evergreens and ever-fresh fruit. For rejoicing, Luke uses the same verb with which Elizabeth said that the son leaped for joy in her womb at the voice of the Lord's mother. She rejoiced in the Holy Spirit and with Mary's voice. Let us ask the Holy Spirit to give us his strength to live this teaching of Jesus, so lofty, so sublime, so beyond our strength. And may Mary call us by name.

The homily on the readings of Sunday 21st Sunday

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

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The World

Benedict XVI expresses sorrow but rejects all accusations

After studying the more than 1,200-page report on sexual abuse by clergy and laity of the Archdiocese of Munich-Friesland between 1945 and 2019, prepared by law firm Westpfahl, Spilker, WastlPope Emeritus Benedict XVI has taken a public stance rejecting all accusations.

David Fernández Alonso-February 8, 2022-Reading time: 3 minutes
RelatedRelated NewsReport on abuse: Cardinal Marx proposes reforming the Church through the synodal processRelated NewsWith Benedict XVI, a pioneer in the fight against abuse is pilloried

On Tuesday, February 8, he published a letter to this effect, accompanied by a detailed analysis of the investigation contained in the report, which included several accusations against him.

With the letter and the accompanying document, Benedict XVI responds to the comments and accusations, some of them even aggressive, that have circulated in the media, and in particular from some sectors of the Church in Germany. 

The pontiff emeritus reiterates, first of all, his sorrow and request for forgiveness for the abuses committed while at the head of the archdiocese. In the missive, Benedict assures us that "I am sorry for the abuses committed while I was at the head of the archdiocese.I can only express to all victims of sexual abuse my deep shame, my great sorrow and my sincere request for forgiveness. I have had a great responsibility in the Catholic Church. All the greater is my sorrow for the abuses and errors that have occurred during the time of my mandate in the respective places. Each case of sexual abuse is terrible and irreparable. To the victims of sexual abuse goes my deepest sympathy and I regret every single case.".

For the study of the report of the Munich law firm and for the drafting of the document that has just been published, the Pope Emeritus, who is now 94 years old and in frail health but with a clear mind, has been assisted by a group of collaborators. 

The case of priest X

The report accused Ratzinger of being present at a meeting of the Ordinariate of the archdiocese on January 15, 1980, in which the priest X was allegedly mentioned as a sexual abuser and was nevertheless entrusted with a pastoral task. However, the pontiff emeritus reiterates that at that meeting there was no mention of this priest having committed sexual abuse, but that it was only a question of providing an accommodation for this priest in Munich, where he had gone for therapy.

In addition, regarding the discrepancy between what Benedict XVI stated when responding to the arguments of the report before it was published and what he stated after its publication, he clarifies once again that it is explained by a transmission error in the work of his group of collaborators. And it is clear that "a transcription error cannot be imputed to Benedict XVI as a conscious misrepresentation or as a '.lie'".

At the press conference on January 20, 2022, at which the legal experts presented their report, no evidence could be presented that Joseph Ratzinger had any other involvement. Moreover, in response to a journalist's question as to whether the experts could prove otherwise, the law firm's representative openly confirmed that there is no evidence that Ratzinger had any further data on that priest; quite simply, in his opinion, it would "more likely"that he would have had them. Therefore, the document of Benedict XVI's collaborators concludes that "as archbishop, Cardinal Ratzinger was not involved in any cover-up of acts of abuse.".

Finally, regarding the also unfounded assumption that Benedict XVI has downplayed the importance of acts of exhibitionism by stating that ".parish priest X was known as an exhibitionist, but not as an abuser in the proper sense of the word."it is specified that "Benedict XVI did not minimize the exhibitionist behavior, but rather expressly condemned it"They blame the accusation on a decontextualization of the phrase, which was part of a legal consideration of the punishment of such behaviors in canon law. On the contrary, "in the memoir presented, Benedict XVI affirms with the utmost clarity that abuses, including exhibitionism, are 'terrible', 'sinful', 'morally reprehensible' and 'irreparable'.". 

Three other cases

On the other hand, the report accuses Benedict XVI of having mishandled the situation in three other cases as well. Without being able to adduce evidence, the report "assumes" that in these cases, too, he would have known that the priests were abusers.

However, the document of Ratzinger's collaborators replies, ".in none of the cases analyzed by the report was Joseph Ratzinger aware of sexual abuse committed or suspected to have been committed by priests.". And indeed, the report does not provide any evidence to the contrary.

Truthfulness of Benedict XVI

All this confirms the attitude of Benedict XVI, who in the course of his years as a cardinal and as pope, has been a pioneer in the commitment to the fight against abuse sexual abuse within the Church.

Benedict XVI points out in his very personal and painful letter that ".I have been deeply moved that the oversight was used to doubt my veracity, and even to portray me as a liar. I have been even more moved by the many expressions of confidence, warm testimonials and touching letters of encouragement I have received from so many people. I am especially grateful for the confidence, support and prayers that Pope Francis has expressed to me personally.".

In addition, the letter includes the prospect of the upcoming end of the pontiff emeritus, who faces, it says, "with a joyful spirit because I firmly trust that the Lord is not only the just judge, but at the same time the friend and the brother who has already suffered my inadequacies and therefore, as judge, is at the same time my advocate (Paraclete).)".

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Pope Francis speaks out against euthanasia

Rome Reports-February 8, 2022-Reading time: < 1 minute
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The catechesis of the general audience on Wednesday, February 9, focused on St. Joseph as the patron of the good death and the Christian perspective of eternal life. In this context, the Pope affirmed that "We must accompany until death, but not provoke it or contribute to any form of assisted suicide. Life is a right, not death, which must be welcomed, not administered. And this ethical principle concerns everyone, not only Christians or believers."

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  • Jacques Rouillard: "It is implausible that the Kamloops children died and were buried without warning".
The World

Jacques Rouillard: "It is implausible that the Kamloops children died and were buried without warning".

Interview with Jacques Rouillard, Canadian historian, on the investigation of the discovery of 215 graves of students of a former boarding school in British Columbia.

Fernando Emilio Mignone-February 8, 2022-Reading time: 8 minutes
RelatedRelated NewsCanada's "missing" peopleRelated NewsPope to travel to Canada to meet with indigenous people

A tweet from the Tk'emlups tribe (nation) last May 27 about the "discovery" of 215 graves of wards of a former boarding school in Canadian British Columbia triggered a news tsunami. The series of news and events included the burning of churches and the announced visit of the Pope to Canada. Francis would ask forgiveness for the role of Catholics in historical colonialist abuses of indigenous Canadians. On February 1, it was learned that a delegation of Canadian bishops and aboriginal leaders will meet with the Pope in Rome in late March to prepare for the visit.

June 8, 2021, at Omnes, I compared the Canadian disappearances with the Argentine disappearances of the 1970s.. Unfortunate comparison. Canadian historian Jacques Rouillard says that it has not yet been proven that any indigenous student was murdered at that boarding school in Kamloops, B.C. Nor has it been proven that educational, political or religious authorities premeditatedly killed pupils at the 130 Aboriginal boarding schools that operated from the mid-19th century to the end of the 20th century.

In 2008, Prime Minister Stephen Harper apologized on behalf of the government and the other parties in parliament for these boarding schools. And that year the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) was established to investigate the residential school system. The Commission gathered seven thousand testimonies from what it called "survivors" and in 2015 established the National Center for Truth and Reconciliation (CNVR), publishing a six-volume report that gathers testimonies, historical documentation, indigenist ideology and concrete recommendations, such as the Pope coming to Canada to ask for forgiveness. The TRC concludes that the residential school system amounted to "cultural genocide". The 2015 report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission is a j'accuse voluminous - but never mentions student murders. 

Historian Jacques Rouillard doubts that there have been student murders

Omnes interviewed 77-year-old Jacques Rouillard, professor emeritus of history at the Université de Montréal, in Montréal. Rouillard is like the child in Andersen's fairy tale, The emperor's new clothesin which the boy shouts: "But the emperor is naked! We offer the full interview below:

Were 215 young men buried unmarked in the Kamloops Indian reserve cemetery between 1890 and 1978?

-It would surprise me enormously. We will have to excavate to find out. The anthropologist Sarah Beaulieu made an analysis of the soil with a "georadar" on the surface and noticed deformations. But this apparatus cannot allow her to know if there are children's bodies in the ground. Since the 1990s, rumors of children buried in mass graves by the religious and of mistreatment in those schools have been spread among the aborigines. I believe this less and less every day: at least until the remains have been unearthed to see if it is true. The CNVR has given the names of 50 students who died at the Kamloops boarding school. Seventeen died in hospital and eight as a result of accidents. As for the place of burial, 24 are buried in the cemetery of their Indian reserves and four in the native cemetery of the Kamloops reserve. For the rest, information is missing or complete death certificates need to be consulted at the Archives of British Columbia. But you can't do anything about the unknown: how do you want to find out where unnamed students might be buried? The TRC report uses a flawed methodology for counting deaths. 

This is all part of French Canadian history, because missionaries from French Canada went west. And they are accused of a criminal act that would be the worst collective crime in Canadian history. It is impossible for religious communities to have committed such a crime. It doesn't make any sense. The media are not expressing a critical sense. 

Is it plausible that those Kamloops children died and were buried without notifying their parents and without a death record?

-No. That story is literally implausible. The gang leaders or the parents would have complained. These are not people who keep quiet. They would have gone to the Ministry of Indian Affairs, to the police, they are families as interested in the fate of their children as any other family. This idea of mass graves of unknown children dead without their parents having reacted seems to me to be completely outlandish: tout à fait farfelu.  

A writer and archivist from the province of Alberta, Éloi DeGrâce, sent me the following email: 

"I worked as an archivist for the Oblates of Mary Immaculate, the Sisters of Providence, and the Archbishop, in Edmonton, Alberta. The TRC never consulted those archives. However, they are full of important documents. In the chronicles that I copied into my computer I was able to write down all the names of the deceased pupils at school, at home or in the hospital of five Indian schools in the province of Alberta. I even wrote down the names of the deceased former students; the Sisters were very close to their former students and close to the families in bereavement. It is an important issue because the children are said to have 'disappeared' without a trace. The five Alberta schools that I have chronicles of were on reserves and parents took their children there. When a child became seriously ill, the parents were often informed. The chronicles show well that the dead were taken to the mission cemetery. No secrets. The five schools I studied did not have a private cemetery. Since those schools were on the reservations, it was never a question of 'uprooting' children from their families. I don't believe in missing children or mass graves. I think it was impossible for a child to disappear. There was a registry. The government knew who went to school. The doctor and the 'reserve agent' had to authorize the admission of a new pupil. And there was a lot of inspection of all kinds during the year: school inspector, doctors, nurses, reserve agent, Ottawa officials. If even one student was missing, it would have been known. And in Alberta, parents were free to send their children or not. Parents knew what was going on in the school. The parents of the students who went to the schools had graduated from the schools. If they had been mistreated, why would they have sent their own children to those institutions?" 

You are a professional historian: what means do you think should be used to clarify this issue?

-First, the indigenous community of Kamloops should go to the police to find the culprits of this horrible crime; if such a crime had happened anywhere else in Canada, they would have gone to the police to verify who the culprits are and bring them to trial if necessary. So in this boarding school drama, the culprits will have to be identified with a police investigation.

In the case of the Cowenesess First Nation Boarding House in Marieval, Saskatchewan province, founded in 1899, whose graves are the graves of 751 people buried there?

-That Catholic cemetery is known to the people of the area. It should not be implied that children have disappeared and are buried there, without digging up the remains first, and investigating. It is known that there are many adults buried in those graves. I consulted the records of marriages, baptisms and deaths during a period of that Catholic mission. They are available. One cannot imply that there are "missing" children buried in that cemetery. It is inaccurate. It is possible that some students are buried there, as well as adults of all kinds, including nuns and priests, and infants. It appears that the wooden crosses that once existed in that cemetery were removed in the 1960s because they were too deteriorated.

In Williams Lake, British Columbia, 93 unidentified graves have been discovered near a former boarding school, Saint Joseph's Mission (1891-1981). Whitney Spearing, who is leading the investigation, and band leader Willie Sellars make very serious accusations against the former priests and nuns...

-Most of the missionaries came from Quebec. It is the cemetery of this Catholic mission. But once again, it is a question of preliminary investigations. Let them call the police, to discover the perpetrators of this crime, and let them dig. The indigenous people there have come to their own conclusions. Mais en soithat religious communities are responsible for such horrible crimes as throwing dead children into mass graves, such slaughter is unimaginable. It makes no sense. Let them prove it. There is no proof. No one has been charged. There are no names of children. There are no names of parents of allegedly missing children. Everything is very vague. It seems to me that with all these stories there is an anti-Catholicism. primary. 

In its 2015 report, the TRC identified 3,200 student deaths at the boarding schools in almost a century and a half. But that Commission could not find the names of a third of those students; and it could not find out the cause of death of half of them (that is, 1600). Why were there deceased students without names?

-There was a methodological error. They counted the deceased children twice. I explain it in my articles: Where are the remains of the children buried in the Kamloops autochtone boarding house? ((DOC) Kamloops pensionnat | Jacques Rouillard - Academia.edu) y In Kamloops, Not One Body Has Been Found - The Dorchester Review)

The number of deceased children is therefore inflated. That is why the Commission could only find the names of 32 % of these deceased children: because they are double-counted. Now they are looking for these "missing" children in the cemeteries near the boarding schools. This is a false hypothesis from the beginning. The TRC's objective was not properly scientific historical, but was to demonstrate that the indigenous complaints were substantiated, that the abuses had taken place. It is not objective history of the boarding schools. The TRC presents an ultra-critical picture of the history of the residential schools, and of the role of the religious communities, of the role of the Canadian government. 

It should be noted that in English Canada at the end of the 19th century, compulsory schooling had been legislated and therefore the authorities wanted to extend compulsory schooling to natives between 6 and 15 years of age. The Canadian government created boarding schools in 1890 because there were scattered Native people who could not attend classes in normal schools, and made it compulsory to attend them. It was perhaps not the best way to educate them. The boys who had to go were between 6 and 15 years old. It seems inhumane. They should have left parents the freedom to send their children or not. Perhaps that would have been the best solution. The government's goal was to assimilate them into Canadian society. Today they are reproached for that, and the indigenous leaders are asking for and getting from the federal government more than millions of dollars in financial compensation for that reason, and for having lost their cultures and ways of life. And they are asking for more and more money in compensation, also from the Catholic Church. They are going to ask for financial compensation also from the Pope. I suggest consulting a document on indigenous legal claims. Billions of dollars are at stake, and there is a big profit for some Canadian lawyers: Tom Flanagan, FISCAL EXPLOSION - Federal Spending on Indigenous Programs, 2015-2022..

Do you find in your research that the authorities and missionaries wanted to suffocate native cultures?

-But from there to speak of "cultural genocide", as the TRC does, is debatable. I prefer to use the expressions "assimilation" and "integration". There was an attempt to assimilate the indigenous people to the culture of European origin, to the English or French language, to teach them to speak and write in those languages, to count. That was the role of the schools. But they had the effect of suffocating the native cultures and languages. They did not want to exclude them, as white Americans wanted to exclude blacks. It had the effect of stifling their ways of life, their cultures, their languages. Today, when education is in the hands of indigenous people, students also learn to write in English, to count, etc., and indigenous history and language subjects are added, and that's fine. But realistically they cannot go back to their original languages. Because they cannot function in the modern world like that. It's impossible. 

They lost, then, a part of their cultures. But could it have been otherwise, could they also have been taught their languages and their histories? Yes. It would have been more respectful. But there is a big difference with the treatment of the black community in the United States for a long time: there they tried to exclude them. In Canada, since the 19th century, they have not tried to exclude but to integrate the indigenous people as quickly as possible, with the dominant values and languages. They concentrated on the youth. The missionaries' objective was to instruct and convert them.

Until the 1990s most indigenous people had a favorable opinion of residential schools. I think that one "plotter" who may have contributed to the current situation is Kevin Annett, a former Canadian Protestant pastor, denounced by the United Church of Canada (see Kevin Annett and the United Church). 

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The hidden power of the sense of hearing

Among the three senses that we can call primary, the sense of hearing and the human being's capacity to listen stand out. Hearing would be the sense of the senses

Ignasi Fuster-February 8, 2022-Reading time: 4 minutes
RelatedRelated NewsThe decisive nature of listening

It is said of the sensitive man or woman who feels even the imperceptible. The sensitive person is one who develops the capacity to feel. To feel in an active sense (he/she becomes capable of appreciating things) and to feel in a passive sense (he/she is capable of easily feeling what surrounds him/her).

Insensitivity, on the contrary, is the blockage of the senses, which truncates the very flow of the human being towards the exterior. An insensitive person is one who neither appreciates nor allows himself to be stimulated by the multiform richness of the universe that surrounds us.

The senses are the irrefutable proof of the existence of an external world that constantly provokes and stimulates the inner world: the air we breathe, the colors we observe, the murmurs we hear.

The world enables our preservation and enhancement. Through the senses we open ourselves to the world, and we are able to internalize it through images. The senses are embedded in the human corporeality, in such a way that the external organs that represent each of the senses constitute the fundamental opening of the human being to the physical and corporeal world, inert and animate, visible and patent. On the other hand, the invisible is very far from that first experience that characterizes corporeal men.

It is a classic theme in the study of the human being and his cognitive roots, the recourse to the reality of the senses, which inhabit the corporeal confines of the human being: the eyes that see, the ears that hear, the touch that touches, the smell that smells and the taste that tastes. Such senses portray the mystery of the human being. It is not difficult to identify the five senses that adorn the human being (3+2).

Among the senses we can distinguish three main ones to ensure any experience of the other: sight, hearing and touch. The result of this triple sensitive coordinate is precisely the configuration of the image, with its visual figure, its own sound (or not) and its characteristic physical texture. The painter who paints a picture needs these senses to take charge of the exterior landscape or the interior intuition that seduces him.

In addition, there are two curiously complementary senses linked to the nose and mouth: smell and taste, which penetrate us through the olfactory (smell) and the tongue (taste). Now, is it possible to discover any order in this pentagon of sensibility? What does that second level of senses refer to? a posteriori?

From the initial triplet, the basic and shaping character of touch stands out. All the senses, in fact, are activated and wounded by the effect of touch, that is, by contact with the stimulus that penetrates in some way through the organs, to pre-configure perception.

The eyes are dramatically powerfulWe are able to see in greater or lesser detail the panorama of the world around us. Sight allows a marvelous possession of things and territories. I saw it; I was a witness; my eyes do not deceive me. The first truth of the world is given to us through the eyes. Hence blindness is a real drama for the human being who in his innermost being wishes to know and open himself to the truth.

However, among the three senses that we can call primary, the sense of hearing and the human being's capacity to listen stand out. Hearing is the sense of the senses. Listening is linked to man's ability to pronounce words, that is, to man's linguistic power.

The word is pronounced to be heard -not seen-. And precisely the face that we see with its lips in movement and that we hear through the word, transports us to an unknown world of meanings and stories. We are transported to the world of meaning, or rather, to that world that perhaps we have seen, but which is pending meaning. That is why eyes that do not listen can be terrifying, while ears that see are the best rational medicine for learning to look and finding the decisive perspective of meaning. The ear is, then, the organ of sense.

And this is the meaning of the appearance of the two senses that we are missing: smell and taste. The transition from the first fundamental level of the senses to the second derived level takes place through the unprecedented mediation of hearing, capable of listening either to tacit silence or to spoken discourse.

The ear opens us to the -perhaps silent- story, even if it is the simplest in the world. For example, "the sun rises over the horizon every morning to enliven the colors of the world". We have already found a first cosmological sense that takes our hearts! Then, those other two senses place us fully in the estimation (or valuation) of things.

We know that not all things give off a pleasant aroma. Nor that all things are fit to be tasted. But in a deeper sense, everything in the world gives off a smell and has a taste. The sun, for example, neither smells nor tastes. But it possesses an intimate sense, that is, its smell and its taste. The sensitive man is the one who is capable of discovering the inner sense hidden in things. That is why the artist perceives aromas and portrays tastes (and dislikes). What would be the smell and taste of the sun? The sun paints the colors of the world for our eyes and illuminates the dark and gloomy atmosphere of the night. It is the primal sense of light. That light that the Creator separated from the darkness on the first day of the time of the world (Genesis 1,3-4).

                                                                                                          I.F.

The authorIgnasi Fuster

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Diana García Roy: "I look for a sculpture that reflects the spirit, that comes from the heart in a sincere way".

The Spanish sculptor Diana García Roy is the author of numerous sculptural works of various themes. Her religious work, highly valued today, can be seen in oratories, chapels and churches in various countries. 

Maria José Atienza-February 7, 2022-Reading time: 5 minutes

Madrid, Rome, New York, Uruguay or Cameroon are some of the places where you can find works by Diana García Roy. 

This young Spanish artist is especially known for her work as a sculptor, although she also cultivates other disciplines such as drawing and painting. 

Author of works such as the Virgen de la Esperanza, a Marian image found in a chapel located on a hill above the Uatumá River, in the heart of the Amazon jungle, or the altarpiece of the parish of San Manuel González in San Sebastián de los Reyes in Spain and various works of abstract art, Diana García Roy, a graduate in Fine Arts from the Complutense University of Madrid, has been dedicated to sculpture for more than two decades. 

"I had an inner need to materialize personal experiences - of places, architectural spaces - a passion to tell the beauty I appreciate around me." highlights Diana García Roy. 

Step by step he made his way in the artistic field and, to date, he has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions. 

Throughout this time, Diana García Roy has received grants for artistic creation from prestigious institutions such as the Casa de Velázquez, the Marcelino Botín Foundation, the firm Barta & Partners and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for the Spanish Academy in Rome. "Thanks to them, and to the projects they have had the confidence to commission me."he points out, "I have been growing in my personal project".

His stay in Venancio Blanco's studio was a turning point in his way of conceiving sculpture and his creative process: "It changed the way I look at sculpture. He introduced me to the true paths of creation. I have a great admiration for his person and his work.", he notes. 

The sculptor describes her creative style as a creation born from the heart of the artist: "I try to translate into aesthetic expression the idea I have inside me. I use a language of playing with planes, rather architectural, but leaving the human trace of the process. I look for a sculpture that reflects the spirit, that comes from the heart in a sincere way. That transmits to the viewer that which has left its mark on me. I want it to be transcendent, with strength and sensitivity. 

Among the numerous works and commissions of this sculptor, "The memorials to victims of terrorism and to Miguel Angel Blanco have been very important to me, murdered by the terrorist group ETA". 

"See the spirit." His work of sacred art

"Gradually, the number of commissions for sacred art, which I have carried out for many countries, has increased, notes Diana García Roy. In fact, private oratories in New York, Rome or churches in Argentina and Puerto Rico host pieces of the young Spanish sculptor's religious work.

What is sacred art for an artist who dedicates part of her work to this encounter between God and man through art? For García Roy, it is a matter of "seeing the spirit". The sculptor argues that figurative art is not synonymous with good sacred art. "A minimum of figuration is necessary to be able to rise from there. That's true, but we must not remain too much in aesthetics, in appearance."says. "It's about going a step further: to see the spirit inside, to find its inner strength, its transcendent expression, to discover the sacred origin of that figure and to find the way to transmit it. It is a great challenge, not an easy one. 

A point on which the sculptor agrees with the idea of the painter, and also a sculptor, Antonio Lopezwho, in spite of his hyperrealism, defends that religious art has to focus on the religious and forget, in a certain way, the "art" (Cfr. Omnes nº 711). For García Roy, "just as prayer makes us connect with God, sacred art must go hand in hand for the same purpose. It must transmit a transcendence, a spirituality that elevates the soul.".

Among her religious works, the realization of the altarpiece of the Spanish parish of San Manuel González has been a real challenge for this sculptor. The altarpiece, about 12 meters high, consists of seven panels, each four meters high, distributed in three levels.  

Diana Gargía Roy emphasizes that "the altarpiece of the parish of San Manuel González has been a great challenge in which I have learned a lot".. For a practicing Catholic artist, being part of building God's house is always a responsibility. For Diana, "What has edified me personally the most is to have had the honor of making a creation at the service of God, a great spatial accompaniment around the tabernacle. And to have seen that, with my work, I can help people to pray". 

A face that leads to God

How does one "choose" the face of a carving of the Virgin or a Crucified Christ? Faced with this question, García Roy does not stop at the "artistic" but, as he points out, "I seek to convey the spiritual background of my experiences through sculptural means. I do not pretend to define the face of the Virgin or of Jesus Christ. It would be very pretentious on my part and I think it would not help. Looking for beauty, I try to decontextualize the faces, idealize them in such a way that it is a timeless, spiritual beauty, avoiding the portrait of a specific person. I want that face to move us in the most intimate part and lead us to God".. 

With her work of sacred art, Diana García Roy has it very clear: "My great challenge is to reach the heart of man and have that work invite him to conversion. To find, from faith, a way to express the beauty of God in a way that deeply moves and transforms our hearts".

Hoshi. The star 

One of the current projects on which this sculptor is currently working is called Hoshi. Under this concept, Diana García Roy "gives name to the work of many years: important projects and sculptures of sacred art".

Through Hoshi "The current intention is to give them visibility and facilitate the purchase of the reproductions that I make in small format, which many people have been interested in for some time. The idea is to create new works, expanding the variety and providing the contact for new orders. They are appropriate pieces for a home, a garden, a church...".which will be available through its website next spring, although they can already be ordered through social networks such as Facebook or Instagram.

The choice of the name is not accidental. Hoshi" means "star" in Japanese, and Diana Garcia Roy, "Hoshi" means "star" in Japanese. "I wanted to place this company under the protection of Our Lady. She is the Morning Star, the Star of the East. And since I have always been attracted to Japanese art, I chose this language for the name.".

Each piece is unique for Diana García Roy. Whether from her collection of abstract art or from the pieces of sacred art that have been coming out of her hands over the years. Today, she prefers none of them: "Each one has a story, circumstances... I feel a great affection for all of them. It is true that there are some that I like more than others, but the ones that interest me the most are the ones that I have in my mind, in my heart, and I am eager to capture them in material". 

Just as he does not choose one of his own works, he does not keep any other work of art, but he appreciates many of them, those that "with their beauty they catch me, they reach deep inside me, elevating my spirit.".

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Youth suicide and education

The cultivation of transcendence, finding meaning in life, the spiritual dimension of the person must be cultivated if we do not want to leave our young people amputated in their souls.

Javier Segura-February 7, 2022-Reading time: 3 minutes

The number of suicides among young people and adolescents is alarming and, above all, how the incidence is increasing to the point of becoming the leading cause of death among young people. Society is becoming aware of this. The media and teachers are talking about it with great concern. How can this scourge be prevented?

Adolescence is a particularly unstable time and many boys and girls go through experiences that are difficult to overcome because psychologically they are at a difficult time. There is a component at this age that adds to the problem of suicide. And it is clear that the pandemic and the management we have made of it, locking everyone at home, filling their minds with fears, taking away their social relationships has not exactly helped them to have an emotional balance.

But beyond these two keys, we must ask ourselves whether something really effective should be done in the educational field to fight against suicide among young people. Initiatives such as the telephone of hope are laudable and necessary, but we have to ask ourselves sincerely, without blaming ourselves, about this issue in depth. Is there something wrong with the education we give our children and adolescents, what else can we do from the family and from the school?

The first idea that comes to my mind is that it is necessary to introduce in formal education, and much more in the education they receive at home, an area where they work precisely to fill life with meaning, the most transcendent dimension of the person. Evidently this is done from the subject of Religion with the ultimate reference to God as the meaning of life. But undoubtedly it should be a learning that could reach all students, since it is an essential dimension of the person. The cultivation of transcendence, finding a meaning for life, the spiritual dimension of the person must be cultivated if we do not want to leave our young people amputated in their soul. And this does not have to be done from the perspective of the Catholic religion. There are other worldviews that try to answer the great questions of the human being. And students have the right to know them.

In this line was the proposal that the Spanish Episcopal Conference made to the Ministry of Education when it presented an area that would work on this humanistic dimension from different options and that, unfortunately, the Ministry rejected. The questions about the meaning of pain, of death, the deepest hopes and the most intimate longings of the heart, the very question about God, are in the minds and hearts of young people. And an education that does not address these issues is simply an education that lacks an essential dimension.

Secondly, it is necessary to make a radical self-criticism. We have not prepared our young people for suffering and frustration. Our education -including that which we give in the family and parish environments- fails miserably in this regard. I read in an article in which a father gave testimony about the suicide of his son, that when a young person commits suicide what he really wants is to stop suffering, not so much to end his life. And it is true. We have taught our adolescents many skills and knowledge, except the ability to suffer. We have hidden from them that suffering, failure, pain are as much a part of life as joy, growth or happiness. As a result, they do not know how to manage the hardest experiences in life.

Filling life with meaning, instilling reasons for hope, is the positive way to move forward. Developing the capacity to accept suffering and difficulties, knowing how to accept them and learn from them, is also another way to get out of life's potholes. These are the two wings that allow us to take flight when the shadow stalks us and hovers over us.

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Culture

Diana García RoyCerco una scultura che rifletta lo spirito, che esca dal cuore con sincerità".

The Spanish sculptress Diana Garcia Roy is the author of numerous sculptural works of various themes. Her religious work, which is currently much appreciated, can be seen in oratories, chapels and churches in different places.

Maria José Atienza-February 7, 2022-Reading time: 5 minutes

Madrid, Rome, New York, Uruguay and Cameroon are just some of the places where you can find Diana Garcìa Roy's works.

This young Spanish artist is known above all for her sculpture, but also for other disciplines such as design and painting.

He is the author of works such as the Madonna della Speranza, a Marian statue located in a chapel on a hill above the Uatumà fiume, in the heart of the Amazon jungle. Or the high altar of the parish church of San Manuel Gonzalez in San Sebastian dei Re in Spegna. And many other works of astratect art. Diana Garcia Roy graduated in Fine Arts at the Compplutense University of Madrid, has been dedicated for more than two decades to sculpture.

"I have always had a true and proper inner desire to materialize personal experiences of the places, of the architectural spaces, a passion for telling the beauty that I love around me, sottolinea Diana Garcia Roy.

Little by little he has made his way in the artistic field and today there are many personal and collective exhibitions in which he has taken part.

In these years Diana has received funds for artistic creation from prestigious institutions such as the Casa di Velazquez, the Fondazione Marcelino Botin, the Barta & Partners company and from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for the Accademia di Spagna in Rome. "Thanks to these funds and to the projects that have been entrusted to me with trust, I have grown in my personal project".

The permanence in Venanzio Blanco's studio has brought a moment of change in the way of conceiving sculpture and the creative process: "It has changed the way of seeing sculpture. He has introduced me to his true feelings of creativity. I have great admiration for his person and his work".

The artist discovers his creative style as a creation born from his heart: "I try to translate into aesthetic expression the idea I have in my inner self. I use a language that plays with the piano, perhaps more architettonic, but that shows well the human imprint in the executive process. I find a sculpture that reflects the spirit, that reaches out from the heart in a sincere way. That transmits to those who keep it what has left me as a deep way. In short, that it is transcendent, with strength and sensibility".

Among the numerous works and paintings of this artist "are very important to me those commemorating the victims of terrorism and the sculpture dedicated to Miguel Angel Blanco, assassinated by the terrorist group ETA.

"Vedere lo spirito". L'opera di arte sacra

Diana Garcìa Roy says that "little by little the sacred art works, which I have made in many countries, are increasing". And so in oratories and churches in New York, Rome, Argentina and Portorico there are works of this young Spanish sculptress.

What is sacred art for an artist who dedicates part of his work to this encounter between God and man from art? Diana Garcia Roy answers that it is about "seeing the spirit". The sculptor argues that figurative art is not always synonymous with good sacred art: "E' necessario un minimo di figurativo per potersi elevare a partire proprio da questo. It is true, but it is not necessary to stay too much on the aesthetic level, on the appearance. It is about taking a step forward: to see the spirit that is inside, to find its inner strength, its transcendent expression, to discover the origin of the sacredness of a certain figure and to find the way to express it. It is a great challenge, not easy at all".

There is an aspect on which the idea of the sculptress is in conflict with that of the painter and sculptor Antonio Lopez, who, despite his hyper realism, differs from the concept that religious art must focus on the religious and dimenticare in a certain sense the "art" (cfr Omnes n° 711). According to Garcia Roy "Just as prayer puts us in connection with God, sacred art must take us by the hand and lead us to the same end. It must transmit a transcendence, a spirituality that elevates the soul".

Among her religious works, the execution of the altarpiece of the Spanish parish church of San Manuel Gonzales was a real challenge for this artist. The panel, about 12 meters high, is composed of 7 panels of four meters each, distributed in three orders.

Diana sottolinea che "the altar of the parish of St. Manuel Gonzalez has been a great challenge in which I have learned a lot". For a catholic and practicing artist, taking part in the construction of God's house is always a great responsibility. For Diana "What has been most edifying for me personally is to have had the pleasure of doing something creative in the service of God, an accompaniment in the area of the Eucharistic tabernacle. And I have found that, with my work, I can help people to pray".

Un volto che porta a Dio

How do you choose the size of a statue of the Madonna or of a crucifix? Garcia Roy answers that it is not merely "artistic" but "artistic".I try to convey the spiritual sense of my experiences through the sculptural medium. I don't pretend to define the Madonna's or Gesù's volto. It would be pretentious on my part and I believe it would not help. By approaching beauty I try to decontestualize the volts, idealize them in such a way that they become a timeless, spiritual beauty, avoiding to look at a person from the living. I search for that will that moves in the most intimate and brings us to God.

Sulla dimensione dell'arte sacra Diana ha le idee chiare: "My great challenge is to reach the heart of man and to invite him to conversion. To find, starting from faith, a way to express the beauty of God in a way that deeply touches and transforms our hearts.

Hoshi. The stella

One of the projects currently in progress has been battezzato with the name of Hoshi. Con questo concetto Diana Garcia Roy "it calls the work of many years: important projects and sculptures of sacred art".

Attraverso Hoshi "I intend to give visibility and facilitate the purchase of the reproductions that I make in short format, in which many people have been interested for a long time. The idea is to create a new opera, extending the variety and offering the contact for new incarcerations. Sono opere appropriate tanto per la casa che per il giardino, e anche per una chiesa..." which will be available on the website from next spring, but will also be available on Instagram and Facebook.

The choice of the name is not accidental. Hoshi" means "stella" in giapponese and "Diana" in giapponese. "He wants to place this print under the protection of the Madonna. She is the Stella of the morning, the Stella of the East. And because I have always been attracted to Japanese art, I chose this language for the name of the site".

Each piece is a unique piece for Diana Garcia Roy, whether it is part of the collection of astratect art or the works of sacred art that she has modeled with her hands in recent years. Today, as today, she does not have a preference for any particular work: "ognuna ha la sua storia, le circostanze che l'hanno accompagnata, per tutte ho grande amore. E' vero che ce ne sono alcune che mi piacciono più di altre, la quelle che mi interessano di più sono quelle che ho ho nella mente, nel cuore, e che sto desiderando di plasmarle nella materia."

Just as he does not prefer one of his own works, he does not prefer other works, but he appreciates many of them, especially the ones that "con la loro bellezza mi conquistano, mi entrano dentro elevando lo spirito".

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"I cattolici di Russia, Ucraina, Kazakistan, Bielorussia, restano uniti".

Among believers there is no division. "I cattolici di Russia, Bielorussia, Ucraina, Kazakistan, sono uniti nella preghiera e cercano la pace", ha affermato Sviatoslav Shevchuk, arcivescovo maggiore della Chiesa greco-cattolica ucraina, in una conferenza stampa online organizzata da Aid to the Church in Need (ACN ) sulla crisi ucraina.

Rafael Miner-February 6, 2022-Reading time: 4 minutes

Testo originale in inglese qui

"The same Nunzio in Minsk [capital of Belarus] is praying for peace in Ukraine and is very grateful to the Catholics of Russia, Kazakhstan and Belarus, because they are united in the search for peace," added the Ukrainian Archbishop, in a conference in which Bishop Visvaldos Kulbokas, Apostolic Nunzio in Ukraine, also participated.

The Ukrainian archbishop Shevchuk has underlined another aspect: the crisis in Ukraine is not only in Ukraine, but has effects on Europe and the world, in four aspects: military, disinformation and propaganda, politics and economy. This topic will be dealt with later, but now let us listen to what he has to say regarding the current situation:

"In this conflict, Ukraine is only one part of the whole global framework of the crisis. Obviously, we have a peace. Because of our historical and geographical position, we are the most exposed country. We are in the front line. But the Ukrainian crisis is not only a problem for Ukrainians. It has consequences for the whole world, for the European Union, for the United States and for the NATO countries".

"War is the best way to respond to problems," he said. "Our hope today is that, with the vigilance and support of the international community, we can all say no to war. We are witnessing with our eyes a true idolatry of violence that is growing in the world. We Christians must say loudly no to military action as a solution to the problems. Only dialogue, cooperation and solidarity can help us to overcome every kind of difficulty and crisis".

Previously, the archbishop underlined that "we feel we have reached the culmination of a pericolous escalation and military aggression against Ukraine. "It is true that our country has been attacked by Russia for eight years, but the escalation we are witnessing today is not a mere continuation of the war in the Donbass or a consequence of the annihilation of the Crimea. We are witnessing an escalation of the conflict between Russia and the Western world, in particular the United States".

"La prima cosa è pregare".

In this context, the Greek-Catholic archbishop acknowledged that they are studying "what to do in case of an invasion". And now "we are promoting a network among us, 'facciamo rete', we develop cooperation among the churches, helping them to defend themselves. His proposal, and that of the other priests, is based on "three answers to the current situation".

"The first thing to do is to ask. We have seen it yesterday in a meeting of the faithful. Today all of Ukraine will recite the Rosary together. The prayer is very important. The second: solidarity with those who need it. Last year they made a collection for the needy. And this year another one to help those who need to heat their homes: helping to overcome the winter is fundamental. The third: to nourish our hope, we must be bearers of hope". "We believe that God is with us. We must have this light and be announcers of the good news for those who have pain, who are disoriented, who have fame, who have cold".

Then there is the "strengthening of the Ukrainian society to feel all united", a topic to which Nunzio has also referred. There are many friends from different faiths who want to commit themselves, to help others. "We hope to be able to say together no to war, no to violence. Military action is not the solution to any of our problems. Dialogue and cooperation are".

"Un vero cristiano non promuove mai la guerra."

Nuncio Kulbokas has affirmed, in a conference, that the Church is above politics. We must be able to speak of fraternity, of respect, of dialogue. We must not leave controversies only in the hands of politicians. We want to "promote peace. Pregare, non aggredire, he added. "A true Christian never promotes war" - he underlined. Si promuove piuttosto la coesione. In a special way we want the conversion of the hearts of those who govern".

At another point, Nunzio also pointed out the goal of "strengthening Ukrainian society" and added that the faithful, the believers, are much more united among themselves than the government or politicians. He also gave a personal testimony, underlining that it is very beautiful to work there, "because in Ukraine the Churches of the East and the West are united" and he can see it in his own work, in his daily commitment.

Attending the visit of Pope Francis

Bishop Visvaldos Kulbokas has expressed the "concern" with which the Pope follows the situation and his request for a prayer made in the Basilica of San Pietro, as he reports Omnes. The Greek-Catholic archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk added: "Even if the majority of Ukrainians are orthodox, Pope Francis is the highest moral authority in the world. And every word he says about the situation in Ukraine, both at the Angelus and on other occasions, is very important to us. Our people are very attentive to every word that the Holy Father addresses to the "Ukrainian face", regarding our sufferings. But what the Ukrainians expect above all from the Pope is his visit to Ukraine. The possibility of his visit is our greatest expectation and we ask that one day this trip will take place".

What to do against disinformation

The archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk has recognized that what people fear most is that the evil information becomes effective. Russia wants to change the Ukrainian government, he said. Economically, Russia is using the price of gas as an economic weapon: this is the critical aspect; people cannot pay all the money needed to heat their homes, and this entails many problems. "In our case, what we have to do is to be informed, to ask and to be in solidarity with each other", he added.

When asked how to avoid propaganda and disinformation, he stressed the need to be in contact with the people on the ground. He has also encouraged the unity of believers of all religions. This escalation is putting the Ukrainian economy, which is in crisis, to the test, he continued. There are problems at hand due to the increase in the price of fuel, which is devastating the middle class, small printers, bakeries... The Church is helping to promote "alternatives for the heating of houses, including intelligent houses" that do not depend on gas.

"Sacerdoti, solo mediatori".

In the southeast of Ukraine, the communities are small and economically fragile and every parish has become a social assistance point in recent years, the archbishop explained. They are responsible for the distribution of food, food, including psychological assistance to people suffering from post-traumatic stress.

There is "immense poverty in these communities, and there are priests who live under the shadow of poverty," he said. To help the people in those territories is difficult, because they have to cross Russian zones, and "the priests are the only mediators", who do not leave and say: we are with our people, we do not escape, and if we have to die in Crimea, we will die in Crimea.

The architects have remembered that, in a recent studio It has been found that "people are very fond of the Church, of any confession. "How should we behave? It is a responsibility that derives from the same faith with which the population honors us".

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  • Alejandro Rodríguez de la PeñaThe 'woke' movement degenerates into inquisitorial and denies compassion".
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Alejandro Rodríguez de la PeñaThe 'woke' movement degenerates into inquisitorial and denies compassion".

"The woke movement and the culture of cancellation can only degenerate into a censorious, inquisitorial movement that prevents freedom of expression and denies compassion," says Professor of Medieval History Manuel Alejandro Rodríguez de la Peña, winner of the CEU Ángel Herrera 2022 prize, in an interview with Omnes.

Rafael Miner-February 6, 2022-Reading time: 8 minutes
RelatedRelated NewsWoke culture in the classroomRelated NewsSociety today. Post-Christian, post-secular and post-liberal.

If dignity has been perhaps the most transforming and revolutionary concept of the 20th century, and one that has been disseminated with greater precision since the philosopher Javier Gomá published his work with the same title, 'Dignity', the concept of compassion could take over in this 21st century.

This can happen precisely because it is opposed to ideologies such as culture. wokeThe culture of cancellation, as referred to by the French thinker Rémi Brague at the CEU's own Catholics and Public Life Congress last November, or to the idolatry of violence, which Sviatoslav Shevchuk, major archbishop of the Greek Catholic Church of UkraineThe report was published by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in relation to the conflict affecting that country and Europe. Omnes.

One of the authors who can best contribute to the analysis and dissemination of compassion is the Professor of Medieval History at the CEU San Pablo University, Manuel Alejandro Rodríguez de la Peña, who has just been awarded by the San Pablo CEU University Foundation with the CEU Ángel Herrera Award, in its XXV edition, for the best research work in the area of Humanities and Social Sciences.

His story is linked in some way to that of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, since in 2011, at World Youth Day held in Madrid, he was. spokesperson of the professors at that meeting held in El Escorial. Perhaps many remember him, as well as the speech in response to the then Pope Ratzinger. In the interview we alluded to that moment.

The award went to Professor Rodríguez de la Peña for his work 'Compassion. A History', which analyzes compassion through the centuries and provides a new approach to the ethical roots of the West and a comparative analysis of Israel, classical Greece and Christianity.

The official note highlights the "social relevance of this work in these times of nihilism and confusion, given its optimistic character, by nurturing hope in the goodness of man inspired by the message of Jesus who, in difficult situations, was faithful to an ethic of compassion unknown to outstanding figures of Antiquity".

We talked to the medievalist professor Manuel Alejandro Rodríguez de la Peña, who has been vice-rector of Research and Teaching Staff, vice-dean of the Faculty of Humanities at the same CEU San Pablo University, and visiting professor at universities in other countries.

How many years have you been teaching?

- I read my thesis in 1999, I was in Cambridge for two years and then I came to CEU, where I have been a professor for 20 years. I have a PhD in Medieval History and, since a few months ago, I am Professor of Medieval History.

He has been awarded the CEU Ángel Herrera Prize for the best research work in the area of Humanities and Social Sciences.

- It is an award that is given every year and the projects that compete are submitted by the three CEU universities by area of knowledge. They can be books, as in my case, but there are also research projects.

 'Compassion. A History' is the title of his work, an account of compassion through the centuries....

- Essentially, what I defend is the thesis that compassion is not a biological attitude, it is not something genetic, but something learned. What I do is to study the origin of this ethic of compassion in different civilizations and mainly, and what I dedicate more time in the book is to the biblical world, Jesus of Nazareth, and the Greek world, the Greco-Roman philosophy.

But there is also a part on the Near East, India and China. So the idea is a comparative analysis, and to see to what extent compassion is linked to religion, because one of my theses is that at least in one of the religions is the origin of compassion, the ascetic spirit of renunciation and the origin of compassion that is linked.

And then, through this comparison, to see what is special or singular in the Christian mercy that is the compassion of the Gospels. Because in the comparative analysis between these cultures and when comparing it also with the Greco-Roman philosophy, it is appreciated that in the Gospel there is a different idea of compassion, more elevated, more advanced than in the rest of cultures. This would be the summary of the book.

In what way is the approach to Jesus?

- There is a chapter dedicated to Jesus of Nazareth, to Jesus Christ, not as Redeemer because it is not a book of theology, but to the Master of ethics. To what is the ethical dimension of the Gospels, to the Sermon on the Mount, to what extent Jesus Christ has introduced the idea of love of the enemy and the universal neighbor that reaches an ethical maximum that goes beyond the prophets in ancient Israel, that goes beyond Socrates, Buddhism or Confucianism.

A: The rejection of "an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth"?

- Yes, he revises it. And then he also reformulates the Levitical commandment. This commandment is already written in the Torah, which is "to love your neighbor as yourself and God above all things". Then there is a very important rabbi, a Jew, contemporary of Jesus, older, but he coincided with Jesus for some years of his life, who came to say that this commandment summarizes the whole Torah, the whole Law.

What I have tried to do is to see what was so special about Jesus, what ethical novelty there is in Jesus. I analyze how he turns it around, because the neighbor in the Hebrew reality was only the "Jew", he did not include the gentiles of that neighbor, and what he does is to universalize that neighbor.

Secondly, he picks up the concept of "love" and gives it a dimension that is already in Isaiah, but which he develops with the different types of love, for example. He uses 'agape' love, which is an unconditional, self-giving love. And finally, he includes in the neighbor the enemy, the love of the enemy. No one in any culture or civilization had ever said this. The enemy by definition was not included in love.

The truth is that loving the enemy is a challenge, isn't it?

- Absolutely. So, it goes beyond the golden rules. One of the things I advocate is that this is not Kant's golden rule or Seneca's golden rule. The golden rule doesn't say love your enemy.

Applied a bit to our days, to these decades; for example, in the economic or political culture, it is difficult to observe this ethical norm of compassion. In general, there is a tendency to hurt where it hurts.

- I talk about that in the book, in the epilogue and the introduction. I agree very much with what you have said; on the one hand, there is a hypercompetitiveness, there is a secularization of society that has caused this to be partly lost, but what I point out is that beyond that, there is a loss of compassion in the individualistic, western way of life..., and this coincides with what is a trivialization of compassion.

It is a term that I use from the reflection of several thinkers on how in the world, or in World War II, it can be said that Nazism or totalitarianisms in general, generate a dehumanization of man. They mark the historical minimum of compassion, that is to say, it goes to a cruelty or inhumanity, and then there is a reaction after World War II, which is the Declaration of Human Rights, civil rights... It can be said that during some decades in which many politicians and Catholic thinkers had a lot to do, there is an attempt to return to Christian humanism.

After May 68 and post-modernity, this has become trivialized. What I denounce is that this is a society that is constantly, unlike the Nazis for example, talking about solidarity, compassion, humanization, helping the weak...; but the reality is that it is a hypercompetitive world that hypocritically is constantly talking about solidarity, empathy; but true compassion, and this is what I explain in the origin of compassionate ethics, has to do with renunciation, with a religious life and with spirituality. So what it really is, then, is a kind of hollow and hypocritical discourse, and it is banal.

Just as Arendt speaks of the trivialization of the concentration camps, of evil, as she says; the trivialization of compassion is that we have routinized compassion and we have taken away all its value, because the value of compassion implied a way of loving one's neighbor that only fits in religious life and that has been lost because it has to do with renunciation, with not having interests....

If you are in a hypercompetitive and super individualistic society, everything that is this life of solidarity is nothing more than a kind of speech to look good, it is hollow, it is banal.

At an upcoming Congress you have a paper on 'Spiritual Roots of Europe'.

- I am going to talk about Christian humanism, but in a double dimension. Christian humanism is humanism in the sense of culture, because of all the Christian legacy, but, and this is one of the things I defend the most, the humanist is human in the sense that he has humanity. That is, Christian humanism is culture, wisdom and compassion. It is the mixture of both. Using this idea that Christian humanism has this double component, I am going to link all the classical Christianized cultural legacy, the humanism that changed Europe and then also the other dimension, the compassionate dimension, of humanity.

Does it seem to you that this "woke culture" or "culture of cancellation", also in history, is essentially non-compassionate? What is your reflection on this "culture of cancellation"?

- I completely agree, it goes against all this. Because by denying the tradition of the ancestors, by denying the past, he wants to cancel it and start from scratch. There is, in the first place, a kind of historical nihilism, there is a hyper-rationalism that basically goes hand in hand with the rationality of post-modernity; and all this leads to a contempt for everything that is your origins, for everything that has been transmitted to you by your elders.

The woke movement can only degenerate into a censorious, inquisitorial movement that bans books, that persecutes people, that cancels others, that prevents freedom of expression... All this cannot be more contrary to the Western tradition, which is that humanism that is human and at the same time seeks culture and wisdom. In short, it denies compassion.

Compassion is closely linked to forgiveness. Is this correct?

- Exactly. There is no forgiveness without compassion, just as there is no love without mercy. Divine mercy is the ultimate expression of divine love, so he who says he is compassionate and does not forgive, is not compassionate.

You greeted Benedict XVI at WYD 2011, representing Spanish professors. What are your memories of that moment?

- Well, he is very dear to me, because for me he is the wise Pope. I have always had a great intellectual admiration for him, but then the fact of meeting him there, beyond the special occasion, I had the opportunity to talk to him for just a few minutes and he transmitted kindness to me. It is curious, it may sound like a stereotype, but this intellectual man, in close contact, melted me. I noticed that he was a deeply human person, beyond the shyness that made him, unlike St. John Paul II, not so easy to transmit sympathy from afar, from a distance.

Now some people are attacking him.

- It is deeply unfair, because the pope who initiated the fight against abuse was Benedict XVI.

Let's conclude. He has been at a prestigious Catholic university for so many years. A brief reflection on the role of Catholic universities, in Spain and in the world.

- I have written several articles on what a Catholic university is. My reflection, very briefly, on three ideas: the first is that traditionally the Catholic university has had two characteristics. One is the defense of truth, in the sense of seeking and inquiring into the truth about creation, ethics....

Secondly, in their medieval origin, Catholic universities had the idea of 'community', and both John Paul II and Benedict XVI insist on this. The university was a community where fraternity among professors, students and researchers was an expression of community. And thirdly, Catholic universities, and this is beginning to happen in Spain, have become a refuge for freedom of thought, because right now in many public universities this freedom of thought is beginning to be threatened.

It is happening in the United States as well, in some other countries... The Catholic university has remained as a place where everyone can really freely exercise their academic freedom without restrictions. I am not saying that public universities persecute anyone, it is the pressure of colleagues and students that in some places causes some professors to have restrictions, to be somehow coerced in a silent way. So, the Catholic university has become a place where there is still academic freedom in the strict sense.

We end a conversation that could have more continuity with various topics. The work on compassion by Professor Rodríguez de la Peña can be found in CEU Ediciones, framed in the collection of the Ángel Ayala Institute of Humanities.

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German Synodal Path: A Road through Shifting Lands

The German synodal path takes resolutions that, in part, are in clear opposition to the doctrine of the Church. Those responsible are aware that some "changes" cannot be implemented unilaterally in Germany, but they hope that others can be implemented in the local Church.

José M. García Pelegrín-February 5, 2022-Reading time: 5 minutes
RelatedRelated NewsGermany, towards another Church?Related NewsSynodal path in Germany reproached for "abusing abuses".Related NewsThe German Synodal Path will create a Synodal Commission to prepare a permanent Synodal Council.

In Germany, the Synodal Path held its third plenary assembly from February 3 to 5. Prior to the issues that aroused the most public opinion - thepriestly celibacy, diaconate and priesthood of women, blessing of couples without access to marriage, "division of powers" in the Church-The assembly dealt with the "orientation text", a declaration of the "theological bases of the synodal journey", particularly controversial both for its form, since it was presented by the executive committee without consulting the "forums" or the assembly, and for its content: among the "loci theologici", in addition to Scripture, Tradition and the Magisterium, the "signs of the times" and a "magisterium of those affected (by abuses)" are also mentioned.

Although the interpretation of the "signs of the times" showed the differences within the assembly, the expression was kept in the final text. However, the expression "magisterium of those affected" was replaced by "their voice as the source of theology".

Celibacy

In the days prior to the assembly, the statements made by Cardinal Marx of Munich - former President of the Bishops' Conference - and Archbishop Heiner Koch of Berlin in interviews had caused perplexity. Cardinal Marx told the "Süddeutsche Zeitung": "It would be better for everyone if there were both celibate and married priests. For some priests it would be better if they were married; not for sexual reasons but because they would not suffer from loneliness; we have to have this debate".

In his interview with the Berlin "Tagesspiegel", Bishop Koch said that celibacy is a "strong witness of faith", but it does not have to be "the exclusive path to priestly ministry", because he knows "the strong faith and witness of many married people, which would also enrich the priestly ministry".

Female priesthood

As for "the opening of the priesthood for women," Marx did not define himself: "It would not be useful to answer now because we are debating about it; I not only have my own opinion, but I have to watch over unity. Here, Bishop Koch was more explicit: "Personally, I support the diaconate for women; to ensure the unity of the universal Church, the diaconate for women would be a practicable step, because I do not see that the priesthood of women can be imposed worldwide".

At the press conference prior to the assembly, the President of the Bishops' Conference, Bishop Georg Bätzing, referred to these statements: "The celibacy of priests is a way of following Jesus Christ, witnessed to in the Bible. It is a great treasure; I joyfully - and I hope convincingly - live this way of life. But it is not the only one, not even in the Catholic Church: the Eastern Catholic Churches have married priests. I do not conceive that marriage and the priesthood cannot be an enrichment both for that ministry and for the common life of the spouses". Referring to the Special Synod for the Amazon, he added: "We adhere to a movement that has spread far beyond the borders of Germany".

It is not surprising, then, that the assembly pronounced itself in favor of "repealing the obligation of celibacy" for the priesthood and introducing the "viri probati"; that is, the ordination of married men. Now, this is a resolution - approved by a large majority - on first reading, just like the decision in favor of the "admission of women to priestly orders"; therefore, the text of the resolution is returned to the corresponding forum for processing. In the debate prior to the decision, a large number of the assembly members were in favor of a "full equality of men and women in the Church".

Rudolf Voderholzer, as well as the philosopher Hanna-Barbara Gerl-Falkovitz and the theologian Marianne Schlosser spoke out against it. Schlosser emphasized that in order to change the constant doctrine and repeated practice of the Church, very strong arguments are needed. In her opinion, it is not enough to refer to a change in the understanding of roles. The assembly of the synodal path, however, instructed the Bishops' Conference to ask Pope Francis for an "indult", i.e. permission to admit women to the diaconate.

Blessing of homosexual couples

Related to these resolutions is also the vote in favor of the introduction of "blessing ceremonies for couples who love each other"; the assembly asks the bishops to make such ceremonies possible for couples who cannot (or do not want to) celebrate marriage; in addition to homosexual couples this also refers to divorced people who have entered into a new civil marriage or even to unbaptized couples. The argument: "to deny God's blessing to people who express the desire to receive it is heartless or even discriminatory".

Although such ceremonies are not currently planned, they are already taking place in many places in Germany, so the "situation of lack of clarity and unity" must be overcome.

The laity in the synodal journey

The synodal path also advocates a greater co-determination of the laity in the election of Catholic bishops; not only was a two-thirds majority obtained among the participants in the assembly, but also among the bishops: 42 (79 %) voted in favor and 11 against. Although each bishop can implement it in his diocese, it is recommended that a consultative body be created to draw up, together with the cathedral chapter, the list of candidates to be sent to Rome.

This resolution is in line with the approval of a text on "Power and separation of powers in the Church". On the basis that "there is a gap between what the Gospel teaches and the exercise of power in the Church", the assembly members voted in favor of a text in which the "norms of a pluralistic and open society in a democratic constitutional state" are considered positive, even though the Church is fundamentally different from the opinion-forming processes in society. Therefore, the central concept for the Catholic Church should be "synodality".

The resolutions of the synodal journey

Those responsible for the synodal journey are also aware that these resolutions can have different paths. At a press conference, the Secretary General of the Central Committee of German Catholics (ZdK), Marc Frings, acknowledged that some of the resolutions are to be sent to Rome, while others can already be implemented in Germany.

In any case, what ZdK President and Co-Chair of the Synodal Path, Irme Stetter-Karp, expressed at the opening press conference was clear: "The ZdK is willing to change the Church; I want to be President of the ZdK in a just Church, in a Church that is not primarily concerned with whether and how it gets out of its credibility crisis, but with how it does justice: For the victims of sexual abuse for the many affected, for church communities, for families, for people whose lives have not improved but worsened with the Church."

Among the various voices discordant with the decisions made by the majority in this assembly, the warnings of the Nuncio, Bishop Nikola Eterovic, in his address to the assembly members, are particularly significant. After referring to the fact that "the Pope is the point of reference and the center of unity for more than 1.3 billion Catholics, 22.6 million of whom live in Germany," he recalled that "the Bishop of Rome presented his authoritative opinion to German Catholics on June 29, 2019 in the well-known Letter to the people of God on pilgrimage in Germany.

In that letter, the Pope stressed that the decisions of the synodal journey must be in harmony with the universal Church, and in particular with the decisions of the Second Vatican Council, and he emphasized the supernatural vision, with prayer and penance, rejecting Pelagianism: "one of the first and great temptations at the ecclesial level is to believe that the solutions to present and future problems would come exclusively from purely structural, organic or bureaucratic reforms but which, at the end of the day, would in no way touch the vital cores that demand attention". Bishop Eterovic referred to the fact that the Pope frequently speaks of synodality, but also "encourages us to avoid false understandings and errors." While the synodal Church demands the participation of all, "Pope Francis warns against parliamentarism, formalism, intellectualism and clericalism".

The fourth plenary assembly of the synodal journey will take place in September 2022; the fifth - and, in principle, the last - in March 2023.

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"Catholics in Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Belarus, are united."

There is no division among believers. "Catholics in Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, are united in prayer, and seek peace," said Sviatoslav Shevchuk, major archbishop of the Greek Catholic Church in Ukraine, at an online press conference organized by Aid to the Church in Need (ACN) on the Ukrainian crisis.

Rafael Miner-February 5, 2022-Reading time: 5 minutes

Text in Italian here

"The Nuncio himself in Minsk [capital of Belarus] is praying for peace in Ukraine, and he is very grateful to the Catholics of Russia, of Kazakhstan, of Belarus, because they are united in seeking peace," the Ukrainian archbishop added, in a convocation in which Monsignor Visvaldos Kulbokas, apostolic nuncio in Ukraine, also participated.

Another idea launched by the Ukrainian Archbishop Shevchuk: the Ukrainian crisis is not only Ukraine's, but affects the whole of Europe, and the world, and he referred to its four dimensions: military, disinformation and propaganda, political and economic. Here are some of its features, but first, here are his words on the extent of the current tensions:

"In this conflict, Ukraine is only a part of the whole global picture of the crisis. Of course, we are afraid. Because of our historical and geographical position, we are the most exposed country. We are on the front line. But the Ukrainian crisis is not just a problem for Ukrainians. It has consequences for the whole world, for the European Union, the United States and NATO countries."

"War is the worst response to problems," he noted. "Our hope today is that, with the prayer and support of the international community, we can all say no to war. We are witnessing with our own eyes a real idolatry of violence rising up in the world. We, as Christians, must say loudly, no to military action as a solution to problems. Only dialogue, cooperation and solidarity can help us to overcome all kinds of difficulties and crises".

Earlier, the archbishop had stressed that "we feel that we have reached the culmination of a dangerous escalation and military aggression against Ukraine." "It is true that our country has been attacked by Russia for eight years, but the escalation we are witnessing today is not a simple continuation of the war in Donbass or a consequence of the annexation of Crimea. We are witnessing an escalation of the conflict between Russia and the Western world, in particular the United States."

"The first thing is to pray."

In this context, the Greek Catholic archbishop acknowledged that they are studying "what to do if there is an invasion". And now, "we are encouraging networking, cooperation between churches, helping each other. His proposal, and that of the other bishops, focuses on "three responses to the situation".

"The first thing to do is to pray. We saw it yesterday at a meeting of the bishops. Today all of Ukraine will pray the Rosary united. Prayer is very important. The second thing, solidarity with those in need. Last year they took up a collection for the hungry. And this year, another one for heating the houses. Helping to get through the winter is key. And third, nourishing our hope, we have to be bearers of hope." "We believe that God is with us. We must have this light and be heralds of the good news for people who are afraid, who are disoriented, who are hungry, who are cold."

Then there is "consolidating Ukrainian society", an issue to which the Nuncio also referred. There are many friends of different faiths who want to build, to help others. "We hope to be able to say all together no to war, no to violence. Military action is not the solution to any of the problems. Dialogue and cooperation are."

"A real Christian never promotes war."

Nuncio Kulbokas affirmed before the media that the Church is above politics. We are capable of talking, of fraternity, of respect, of dialogue. We should not leave the matter only in the hands of politicians. We wish to "promote peace. Pray, do not use aggression," he added. "A real Christian never promotes war," he stressed. "Cohesion is promoted. Especially, we want the conversion of the hearts of those who govern."

In another moment, the Nuncio also pointed to "the consolidation of the Ukrainian society", and added that the faithful people, the believers, are much more united than the hierarchy or the politicians. He also gave a personal testimony, pointing out that it is very nice to work there, "because in Ukraine the Eastern and Western Churches are united", and he sees it in his own work, in his work.

Pope Francis' visit is expected

Msgr. Visvaldos Kulbokas expressed the "concern" with which the Papa the situation, and his request for prayers at St. Peter's, as reported by Omnes. Greek Catholic Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk added: "Although most Ukrainians are Orthodox, Pope Francis is the most important moral authority in the world. And every word he says about the Ukrainian situation, whether at the Angelus or on other occasions, is very important for us. Our people are very attentive to every word the Holy Father addresses to "dear Ukraine", and to the suffering of the Ukrainian people. But what Ukrainians expect most from the Pope is his visit to Ukraine. The possibility of his visit is our greatest expectation, and we pray that one day this trip will become a reality."

What to do in the face of misinformation

Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk acknowledged that "people are more afraid, and disinformation works. Russia wants to change the Ukrainian government, he commented. Economically, Russia is using gas prices as an economic weapon, this is the most key thing; people cannot pay that money to heat their houses, and this bring a lot of problems. "In our case, what we have to do is to be informed, to pray and to be in solidarity with each other," he encouraged.

In response to a question on how to avoid propaganda and disinformation, he pointed out that one must connect with people there. And he also encouraged unity among people of all religions. This escalation is taking its toll on the Ukrainian economy, which is falling, he continued. There are labor problems due to rising fuel prices, which is devastating the middle class, small businessmen, bakeries... The Church is helping to promote "alternatives for heating homes, even smart homes" that do not depend on gas.

"Priests, sole mediators."

In southeastern Ukraine, communities are small and economically fragile, and each parish has become a point of social care in recent years, the archbishop explained. Attention in the distribution of food, blankets, even psychological assistance to people affected by post-traumatic stress.

There is "immense poverty in these communities, and there are priests who live below the poverty line," he said. Helping people in those territories is difficult, because it has to go through Russian areas, and "priests are the only mediators", who do not leave, and say: we are our people, we do not escape, and if we have to die in Crimea, we die in Crimea.

The archbishop recalled that, in a recent studyIt has been proven that "people value the Church very much, all religious confessions. "What do we have to do? It is a responsibility that gives us the trust of the people".

At the beginning of the event, Thomas Heine-Geldern, pinternational resident of the Pontifical Foundation Aid to the Church in Need (ACN), reported that his organization has been helping Ukraine for quite some time, especially in the area of religious freedom, which has suffered greatly during the pandemic, and that the assistance has been directed especially to priests and nuns.

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ColumnistsCelso Morga

To the thresholds of the apostles

The Bishops of the Ecclesiastical Provinces of Seville, Granada and Merida-Badajoz have made the "Ad Limina Apostolorum" Visitation (to the threshold of the Apostles) and to the Successor of Peter, which Canon Law foresees to be made every five years.

February 4, 2022-Reading time: 2 minutes

The Bishops of Andalusia and Extremadura have lived in Rome an intense week of meetings in the various Congregations and organisms of the Roman Curia, which help the Holy Father in his mission as universal Pastor of the Church.

For me, the visit to the Congregation for the Clergy, where I spent twenty-seven years of my priestly life, was especially moving.

But what was truly moving for each and every one of the bishops was the visit to the Holy Father that took place on Friday, January 21. The Holy Father showed himself very close and with a sincere desire to know how our day to day pastoral work in the dioceses entrusted to us is going on. We introduced ourselves one by one and then each one of us asked or explained to the Pope our problems, questions, expectations... The meeting lasted three hours and almost all the topics that are on the table of the Church today came up, from the way of transmitting the faith in a very pluralistic society and in many environments far from the faith, from religious practice or the enormous challenge that today represents the emigration and its full integration in the host countries. This problem of immigration is obviously very close to the Pope's heart.

The Holy Father insisted on four "closenesses" in our episcopal ministry: closeness, first of all, with God; closeness with our brothers in the episcopate; closeness with the priests; closeness with the Holy People of God, whom we have to serve with total dedication. As I said, it was a cordial meeting, without haste, each one was able to speak and we left comforted by the successor of Peter and Head of the Episcopal College.

There was an atmosphere of fraternity and friendship among us and with the vicars and priests who accompanied us, overlooking the small or not so small inconveniences of an agenda full of meetings, transfers and precautions due to the pandemic that we are suffering everywhere.

For my part, I have also had meetings with dear people after the long time I have spent in Rome.

I thank God for these days of my "ad limina" visit. I have remembered all the time, especially at the tomb of the Apostles, to pray for all the faithful of the Archdiocese, especially for priests, for children and young people, for the sick and the elderly and for all the families in serious difficulty.

The authorCelso Morga

Archbishop emeritus of the Diocese of Mérida Badajoz

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Pope's teachings

Peace, Word, Mercy. Words to write with a capital letter

Three of the Pope's teachings stand out in January, with three words that deserve to be written in capital letters: Peace, Word and Mercy. They correspond to the message for the Day of Peace, the first day of the year, to the celebration of the Sunday of the Word, and to the World Day of the Sick.

Ramiro Pellitero-February 4, 2022-Reading time: 8 minutes

Let us summarize the Holy Father's teachings on these three occasions.

The road to peace: dialogue, education and work

The message for the 55th World Day of Peace (1-I-2022) was entitled: Dialogue between generations, education and work: tools for building lasting peace.

Paul VI had already affirmed that the path to peace had a new name: the integral development of man and of all peoples (cf. encyclical Populorum Progressio, 1967, n. 76). 

However, even today, Francis warns, wars, pandemic diseases, environmental degradation, etc., have not succeeded in changing the situation of the poor. "an economic model that is based more on individualism than on solidarity sharing." (n. 1 of the message of Francis), without listening to "the cry of the poor and the earth". 

At the same time, the Bishop of Rome reminds us that peace building is something that affects us all, even personally: "Everyone can collaborate in building a more peaceful world: starting from one's own heart and relationships in the family, in society and with the environment, to relations between peoples and between States."

It proposes three ways to build a lasting peace: "Dialogue between generations, as a basis for the realization of shared projects. Secondly, education, as a factor of freedom, responsibility and development. And finally, work for the full realization of human dignity". Three paths, by the way, very "walked" by the current successor of Peter.

Dialogue between generations

Neither individualism, selfish indifference nor violent protest are solutions. The current health crisis has brought, along with the loneliness of the elderly, the feeling of helplessness and the lack of a common ideal for the future, also the lack of trust. But we have also seen wonderful examples of solidarity. Dialogue is necessary. Y "Dialogue means listening to each other, confronting each other, agreeing and walking together". (n. 2). This is possible by uniting the experience of the elderly with the dynamism of the young. But it requires our will, that of all of us, to look beyond immediate interests, patches or quick fixes, in favor of shared and sustainable projects. Trees can only bear fruit from their roots. And those roots are strengthened by education and work. 

"It's education." -The successor of Peter remarked. "that which provides the grammar for dialogue between the generations, and it is in the experience of work that men and women of different generations find themselves helping each other, exchanging knowledge, experience and skills for the common good." (ibid.).

Investing in education and fostering a "culture of care

It is therefore regrettable that, while military expenditures are increasing, the budgets for education and training have decreased considerably in recent years, even though they are the best investment, because they are the most important and the most important investments. "the foundations of a cohesive, civil society, capable of generating hope, wealth and progress". (ibid, 3).

A change in financial strategies in relation to education is therefore necessary, together with the promotion of a more efficient and effective "culture of care". (cf. encyclical Laudato si', 231). What the Pope says here is important: that culture can be the common language for a dialogue that breaks down barriers and builds bridges. For, as he has said on other occasions, "A country grows when its diverse cultural riches dialogue constructively: popular culture, university culture, youth culture, artistic culture, technological culture, economic culture, family culture and media culture. (encyclical Fratelli tutti, n. 199).

It is necessary, Francisco proposes, to forge a new cultural paradigm through "a global education pact". that involves everyone and promotes an integral ecology according to a model of peace, development and sustainability, centered on fraternity and on the alliance between human beings and their environment (cf. to the Global Compact on Education. Together to Look Beyond, 15-X-2020). Thus, at the same time, young people will be able to occupy an appropriate place in the world of work.

Promoting and securing work 

Work builds and maintains peace because it is both an expression of self and a commitment to collaboration with others. The labor situation has suffered a severe blow with the Covid-19 pandemic. Especially those who live on precarious jobs, such as many migrants, have been left unprotected in the midst of a climate of insecurity. And all this can only be responded to by promoting decent work. "We have to join ideas and efforts to create the conditions and invent solutions, so that every human being of working age has the opportunity to contribute with his or her own work to the life of the family and society." (Pope's Message, n. 4). 

This is a challenge for everyone: for workers and entrepreneurs, for the state and institutions, for civil society and consumers. Above all for politics, which is called to seek the right balance between economic freedom and social justice. And," Pope Bergoglio points out, "it is a challenge for all: for workers and entrepreneurs, for the State and institutions, for civil society and consumers. "all those who act in this field, beginning with Catholic workers and businessmen, can find safe orientations in the social doctrine of the Church". (ibid.).

The Word reveals God and leads us to others 

On January 23, the Word of God SundayThe Pope Francis instituted it for the Third Sunday in Ordinary Time. In his homily the Pope highlighted two aspects. 

-The revealing Word of God. 

First, the Word reveals God: "It reveals to us the face of God." -Francisco points out. "as that of the One who takes care of our poverty and is concerned about our destiny.". Not as a tyrant shut away in heaven, nor as a cold, unperturbed observer, a neutral and indifferent god. He is the "God with us," Word made flesh, who takes sides on our behalf and becomes involved and committed to our pain, the "Loving Spirit" of man.

As a qualified spokesman for that Word in the Church, the Pope addresses his listeners, each one of us, personally: "He is a God who is close, compassionate and tender, who wants to relieve you of the burdens that crush you, who wants to warm the cold of your winters, who wants to illuminate your dark days, who wants to support your uncertain steps. And he does it with his Word, with which he speaks to you to rekindle hope amidst the ashes of your fears, to make you find joy in the labyrinths of your sadness, to fill with hope the bitterness of your loneliness. He makes you walk, not in a labyrinth, but along the way, to meet him every day".

And so Francis asks us if we carry in our hearts and transmit in the Church this true "image" of God, wrapped in the trust, mercy and joy of faith. Or if, on the contrary, we see him and show him in a rigorous way, wrapped in fear, as a false idol that neither helps us nor helps anyone.

–The Word puts us in a healthy crisis. 

Secondly, the Word leads us to man. When we understand that God is compassionate and merciful, we overcome the temptation of a cold and external religiosity, which does not touch or transform life. "The Word urges us to go out of ourselves in order to set out to meet our brothers and sisters with the humble strength of God's liberating love". 

This is what Jesus did and said in the synagogue in Nazareth, when he revealed that "He is sent to go to meet the poor - who are all of us - and set them free." He did not come to deliver a set of rules but to free us from the chains that imprison our souls. "In this way he reveals to us what is the worship that most pleases God: to take care of our neighbor. 

The Word puts in crisis those justifications of ours that always make what does not work depend on the other or on others".. And the Pope does not speak of theories: "How much pain we feel when we see our brothers and sisters dying at sea because they are not allowed to disembark.". 

He continues to put the sword in the soul: "The Word of God invites us to come out into the open, not to hide behind the complexity of problems, behind 'there is nothing to be done' or 'what can I do' or 'it's their problem or his'. He exhorts us to act, to unite the worship of God and the care of man". 

In addition to rigidity, which for Francis is typical of modern Pelagianism, the Word of God is also opposed to any "angelic" or disincarnated spirituality, typical of the neo-Gnostic movements. The Pope describes it with a very graphic expression: "A spirituality that puts us 'in orbit' without caring for our brothers and sisters.".

The fruits of the Word of God are quite different: "The Word who became flesh (cf. Jn 1:14) wants to become incarnate in us. He does not distance us from life, but introduces us to life, to everyday situations, to listen to the sufferings of our brothers and sisters, to the cry of the poor, to the violence and injustices that wound society and the planet, so that we may not be indifferent Christians but hardworking, creative Christians, prophetic Christians"..

The Word of God is not a dead letter, but spirit and life. In the words of Madeleine Delbrêl (a French mystic who worked in the working class milieus of Paris, died in 1964 and is currently in the process of beatification), Francis says that "the conditions of the listening that the Word of the Lord demands of us are those of our 'today': the circumstances of our daily life and the needs of our neighbor". 

All this commits us, the Pope points out, first of all to place the Word of God at the center of pastoral care, to listen to it and from there to listen to and attend to the needs of others. 

Accompanying the sick with mercy

Finally, in his message for the 30th World Day of the Sick (February 11, 2022), Peter's successor echoes the words of the Gospel: "Be merciful as your Father is merciful." (Lk 6:36). And he invites us concretely to "to be at the side of those who suffer on a path of charity".

Jesus, mercy of the Father

Francis asks us to be "merciful as the Father", whose mercy "has in itself both the dimension of fatherhood and motherhood (cf. Is 49:15), for He cares for us with the strength of a father and the tenderness of a mother, always ready to give us new life in the Holy Spirit."

The Pope then asks why Jesus, "mercy of the Father"He cared especially for the sick to the point that this care, together with the proclamation of the faith, formed part of the mission of the apostles (cf. Lk 9:2). 

This time he responds by quoting E. Lévinas: "Pain isolates completely and from this absolute isolation arises the call to the other, the invocation of the other" (An Ethics of Suffering, Paris 1994, pp. 133-135). And the Pope evokes so many sick people who have suffered in the loneliness of the pandemic. 

Agents and health care facilities

This is especially relevant for healthcare workers (doctors, nurses, lab technicians, patient assistants, and so many volunteers).), "whose service at the side of the sick, carried out with love and competence, transcends the limits of the profession to become a mission". 

He adds as if speaking to each and every one: "Your hands, which touch the suffering flesh of Christ, can be a sign of the Father's merciful hands." and invites them to be aware of the great dignity of this profession and the responsibility it entails. They touch the flesh of Christ who suffers. 

Appreciating the great progress of medical science, both in treatments and in research and rehabilitation, the Pope recalls a fundamental principle. We cannot forget that "The patient is always more important than his illness and that is why every therapeutic approach cannot fail to listen to the patient, his history, his anguish and his fears. Even when it is not possible to cure, it is always possible to care, it is always possible to comfort, it is always possible to make the patient feel a closeness that shows interest in the person rather than in his pathology". It is therefore to be hoped that professional training will enable health care workers to know how to listen to and relate to the patient.

Francis stresses the importance of Catholic health centers and institutions: "In an era in which the throwaway culture is widespread and life is not always recognized as having the dignity to be welcomed and lived, these structures are not always recognized, as houses of mercycan be an example in the protection and care of every existence, even the most fragile, from its conception to its natural end".

For so many reasons, the Pope concludes with a reference to the pastoral care of health, even though visiting the sick is an invitation that Christ makes to all his disciples: "I was sick and you visited me." (Mt 25:36).

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Spain

Ecclesia: the digital media of the Spanish Episcopal Conference join forces

Ecclesia magazine, the SIC Agency and Aleluya become a single religious information media within the structure of Ábside Media.

Maria José Atienza-February 3, 2022-Reading time: < 1 minute

The website of Ecclesia Magazine, the SIC Agency and Aleluya, the religious information portal of the COPE radio station, are now united under a single brand: Ecclesia. Thus, these three religious information initiatives unite content, team and management.

Silvia Rozas FI, will be the director of this project that will continue with two media: paper and digital.

The merger of the websites was a logical step after the creation of Apse Media the communication platform of the Church, which includes the media dependent on the Spanish Episcopal Conference.

Last November, with the announcement of the creation of Ábside, the objective of this entity to integrate different projects of the Church in the field of communication was made clear, so it was foreseeable, since then, the incorporation "in a progressive way of other media, starting with other realities of the Episcopal Conference itself and its surroundings".

The president of the Spanish Episcopal Conference, Cardinal Juan José Omella, welcomed this project, recalling that "evangelizing is the greatest communicative act that Christians can perform".

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The Vatican

Avoiding the logic of opposition

Christians must be the first to avoid the logic of opposition and simplification, seeking understanding and accompaniment. This is what Pope Francis has assured before representatives of Catholic media gathered at the International Consortium "Catholic Fact-Checking".

Giovanni Tridente-February 3, 2022-Reading time: 3 minutes
RelatedRelated NewsRe-establishing links with the truth

"As Christians we must be the first to avoid the logic of opposition and simplification, always seeking rapprochement, accompaniment, a serene and reasoned response to questions and objections". This phrase of Pope Francis, pronounced last Friday in the presence of some representatives of Catholic media gathered in the International Consortium "Catholic Fact-Checking" received in audience, challenges us as journalists and communicators and puts at the center of reflection a basic attitude that should characterize our professions.

This is a reflection that we have been carrying out for some years with some scholars and university professors - among them the Italian philosopher Bruno Mastroianni - and which highlights the need to give a prominent place to the education of young people, who must be shown that not everything can be reduced to "one against one", but that peaceful and respectful confrontation can bear the mature fruit of mutual growth.

Here the Pope speaks of the "style of the Christian communicator". It is not by chance that, referring also to the social dynamics that have characterized the discussions around the Covid-19 pandemic for the past couple of years, Francis has invited us to counteract fake news, but with respect for people as a priority.

A universal style

And yet this is an attitude that, in my opinion, should characterize communication as such, without categories of any kind. The word itself identifies a connection, a union of two poles that are far apart. Therefore, if that "step" is cut and the link is broken through disagreements and exacerbated conflicts, the very essence of communication, of entering into relationship through arguments, is lost.

We see this very clearly in social networks, from which it is clear that in online confrontations, in heated conflicts, the loser is the communication itself, and basically the people who are arguing. This does not mean, of course, that there are no "crises" or problematic situations that can generate conflicts. The crisis, in this case, is not something to shy away from, but an opportunity to communicate better, to assume the reasons for the debate, the value of the arguments and thus show the mutual respect of the interlocutors.

Correct information

In another passage of his speech, the Pope recalled that being correctly informed is a human right, which must be guaranteed "especially to those who are less well provided for, to the weakest, to the most vulnerable". The perspective of this affirmation lies in that "correctly", which consists in actually providing information. This occurs when the person is put in a position to acquire more knowledge about a fact or incident than he or she had before. If, on the other hand, there is deception or even manipulation, one is not informed at all.

Correct information is undoubtedly that which respects the people who receive it, takes into account the context, the "complexity" of situations, and adds something more, allowing the "receiver" to acquire the most complete knowledge possible. Therefore, it is not enough to be the recipient, "by right", of a certain content, but it is essential to be the recipient in a full and correct way.

The ethics of algorithms

The Pope could not fail to mention digital algorithms, which today are designed to maximize profit and end up feeding radicalization and extremism, clearly to the detriment of a society that can truly be called "informed, just, healthy and sustainable." This aspect suggests that we must consider the ethical value of these innovations, which do not arise for their own sake, but are the result of human ingenuity, and as such must serve their good.

This brings us back to the respect for each person, which techniques must always preserve. In fact, a true "revolution", whether technological as in this case, is such if it brings something good to humanity; if, on the contrary, it is harmful, it must be avoided at all costs, and so we are certainly not wrong.

RelatedRelated NewsRe-establishing links with the truth
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The Vatican

Inauguration of nunciature in Abu Dhabi, for the United Arab Emirates

With the Mass inaugurating the papal representation activity, the proximity of the Holy Father to the Catholic community of the Arabian Peninsula is further manifested.

David Fernández Alonso-February 3, 2022-Reading time: 2 minutes
RelatedRelated NewsHuman fraternity marks Pope's trip to Abu Dhabi

The Deputy of the Secretariat of State, Monsignor Edgar Peña Parra, presided at the Mass inaugurating the activity of the papal representation in the United Arab Emirates, for the opening of the nunciature in Abu Dhabi. The physical presence of a representative structure of the Holy See is a sign of the Pope's proximity and constitutes a greater closeness to the population of the country, especially to the Catholic community.

The Eucharistic celebration took place on the feast of the Presentation of the Lord and in his homily, Monsignor Peña underlined some important aspects for that portion of the Church: "The physical presence of an Apostolic Nunciature is one more sign of the pastoral solicitude of the Holy Father for the people of this country, especially for the Catholic community, since it is rightly called the House of the Pope".

Referring to the Feast of the Presentation and the World Day of Prayer for Consecrated Life, the Assistant to the Secretary of State said that "this annual celebration offers us a beautiful opportunity to pray for those who have already responded to the Lord's invitation to serve him in this vocation, as well as to ask the Lord of the harvest to send even more laborers into the field. As we offer our prayers, we also reflect on the important role that consecrated life plays in the mission of the Church. This land has been blessed by the service of many religious men and women over the years, including Bishop Hinder, who is a member of the Franciscan Order.
Consecrated life is a reminder of the goodness and love of God, our Father. As he has done throughout history and continues to do today, the Lord sees what his children need and consequently calls men and women to serve the Church and society, inspiring them to embrace different charisms. No charism is the same, but each is a gift from God."

The prelate affirmed with hope that "responding to the Lord's call to follow him and serve his Church is not without its challenges. One of them, which applies to all vocations in the Church, is to fall into discouragement (...) However, we know from history that this has always been the case. We need only think of the Lord himself, who came to offer us salvation, but who often met with rejection and incomprehension, not to mention betrayal and death. In spite of everything, the Lord patiently endured and won for us the crown of victory. We should look to his example, for it offers us hope and encouragement."

Monsignor Peña Parra wanted to encourage the Arabian people by assuring them that "the Catholic community of Abu Dhabi and of the entire Arabian Peninsula is also an example of patience full of hope and Christian life. In this regard, I recall the words of gratitude expressed to you by the Holy Father during his visit in 2019 for the way in which you put the written Gospel into practice (cf. Homily, 5 February 2019). You too may be a "little flock," but every part of the Body of Christ, the Church, has a role to play. No part is better or more important than the other."

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Pakistani Catholics could have their first saint

Akash Bashir, a young man who stopped a suicide bomber from entering a church could be the first Pakistani saint.

Maria José Atienza-February 3, 2022-Reading time: 2 minutes
RelatedRelated News"We Christians in Pakistan have hope for a better future."Related NewsHope in the face of growing violations of religious freedom around the world

Article in English

The Catholic Church in Pakistan could have the first Pakistani saint in its history. The presence of Christianity in Pakistan, a Muslim confessional state, is estimated at less than 2%.

Christian denominations are frequent targets of attacks in this country, which is plagued by the scourge of terrorism at the hands of Islamic groups of various factions. To be a Christian is, in fact, to be considered a "second-class citizen" in Pakistan.

Akash Bashir prevented, in 2015, a suicide bomber from entering a St. John's Church in Youhanabad, belonging to the Diocese of Lahore.

Akash Bashir, born on June 22, 1994 in Risalpur, in the Pakistani province of Nowshera Khyber Pakhtun Khwa. Bashir was a student at the Don Bosco Technical Institute in Lahore and was a member of the youth of the parish community of St. John's Church.

On March 15, 2015, while keeping watch at the church gate, when he observed a man trying to enter the temple with an explosive belt on his body. Akash embraced the man holding him at the entrance gate, derailing the terrorist's plan to make a massacre inside the church.

The attacker - a member of Tehreek-e-Taliban Jamaatul Ahraar, a Taliban splinter group - blew himself up and young Akash Bashir died with him. His last words from Akash were, "I will die, but I will not let you in."

Along with him, 15 other people were killed and more than 70 injured. At the same time, terrorists attacked a nearby Protestant church.

"Bashir offered his life as a sacrifice to save the life of the community," Francis Gulzar, vicar general of the archdiocese of Lahore, said in a statement on the occasion.

The Diocese of Lahore initiated Akash Bashir's cause for beatification in 2016 on the first anniversary of the terrorist attack.

On January 31, as reported by Fides, the Archbishop of Lahore, Sebastian Shaw, announced that the Vatican had given the go-ahead for the young man to be declared a Servant of God. This confirms the first step in the cause of who could be the first saint of the Islamic Republic.

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The Vatican

Missionary Mariano Gazpio, declared venerable

Rome Reports-February 3, 2022-Reading time: < 1 minute
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The Pope has declared Mariano Gazpio Ezcurra from Navarre venerable for his heroic virtues. This Augustinian Recollect was a missionary in China from 1924 until 1952 when he was expelled by the communist government. He spoke Chinese perfectly and even the pagans called him "saint".

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

Jerusalem residents were surprised by a snowfall that covered the most emblematic places on January 27. Its inhabitants took advantage and enjoyed the snow, caused by storm Elpida.

Omnes-February 3, 2022-Reading time: < 1 minute
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Evangelization

Boring homilies? I care about God

Before we talk about what we understand in that way It is up to us to lower our heads in humility to recognize that we do not have a clue and instead of giving advice to the staff, we should ask the Lord in prayer to teach us what He means, like the Apostles.

Javier Sánchez Cervera-February 3, 2022-Reading time: 3 minutes

(You can read the German version here).

The book of Revelation describes in the tenth chapter a mighty angel "wrapped in a cloud, with a rainbow over his head" (Rev 10:1) descending to the place where St. John is. This angel had a small book open and, to his amazement, the voice from heaven asks him to eat it: "Take it and devour it, it will make your insides bitter, but in your mouth it will be sweet as honey". (Rev 10:9).

It is not the only case. In the Old Testament, the book of Ezekiel, narrates a similar episode when in the third chapter the Spirit, within him, asks him to eat the scroll held by a hand before him: He unrolled it before my eyes: it was written on the front and on the back; it had written, "Lamentations, groanings, and woe." And he said to me, "Son of man, eat what is offered to you; eat this roll, and then go and speak to the house of Israel." And I opened my mouth, and he made me eat the roll, and said to me, "Son of man, feed and be satisfied with this roll that I give you." I ate it, and it was in my mouth sweet as honey. Then he said to me, "Son of man, go to the house of Israel and speak to them in my words." (Ezek 2:10 - 3:3)

What these indications seem to say is the need to interiorize the Word of God that we are going to transmit. We give of our own because we have made our own what we give, contemplata aliis tradereThe scribe of the Kingdom of Heaven is "like a man, master of his own house, who brings out of his treasure new things and old things" (Mt 13:52), the old things are the eternal truths, the new things are the human and changing realities, but the important thing is that the place from which he brings out the old and the new is his treasure, his own soul.

The reading of the Word of God, meditation and contemplation are the beginning of preaching. Through this intimate contact the Lord plants the seed of eternal truth in our soul, a seed that, like a mustard seed, must grow into a leafy tree. Christ promised that He, the Spirit of Truth, "will guide you into all truth" (Jn 16:13) and He, the Advocate, does so by introducing us into a school that produces fruits of holiness in our lives and gives supernatural efficacy to our preaching. As Francisca Javiera de Valle explains in her Decenary: "This Divine Master places his school in the interior of the souls who ask him and ardently desire to have him as their Master. He exercises there this office of Master without the noise of words and teaches the soul to die to itself in everything, in order to have life only in God. The way this skillful Master teaches is very consoling; and he does not want to set up a school anywhere else to teach the ways that lead to true holiness, but in the interior of our soul; and he gives himself such art... and skill... to teach..., he is so skillful and so wise, so powerful and subtle, that, without knowing how, one feels, after a short time of being with him in this school, all changed. Before entering this school, I was rude, without ability, very clumsy to understand what I heard preached; and entering it, how easily one learns everything; it seems as if they transmit to one even in one's entrails the science and the ability that the Master has". (Decennial, 4th day, Consideration).

It is now understood that it is holiness of life that makes our preaching alive and not boring because it is a Life that we transmit with our life. It is understood that saints who hardly knew how to read, like St. Catherine of Siena, were so instructed in this school that they were declared Doctors of the Church; they could perfectly well say, like St. John: "What we have seen and heard, we proclaim to you so that you also may be in communion with us". (Jn 1:3)

Therefore, before talking about what we understand in that way, we should lower our heads with humility to recognize that we have no idea and instead of giving advice to the staff, we should ask the Lord in prayer, as the apostles did: edissere nobis parabolam(Mt 13:36), "Master, teach us the parable", so that I, understanding, contemplating, allowing myself to be instructed by you, may in turn, giving of my own, which is yours, teach my people.

With many such parables he expounded the word to them, adapting it to their understanding. "He expounded all things to them in parables, but to his disciples he explained everything in private" (Mk 4:24). Here is the quid of the matter. This is what it means to take God seriously.

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The Vatican

"With the saints we can weave a relationship of friendship."

In his Wednesday catechesis, Pope Francis reflected on the communion of saints, with particular emphasis on the communion we can live with St. Joseph.

David Fernández Alonso-February 2, 2022-Reading time: 4 minutes
RelatedRelated News"It does us good to look at ourselves in Joseph's fatherhood and allow the Lord to love us with his tenderness."Related News"Ukraine suffers and deserves peace," says Pope on Day of Prayer

Pope Francis reflected on the communion of saints in his catechesis during the General Audience on Wednesday, 2 February: "In recent weeks, we have been able to deepen our understanding of the figure of St. Joseph, guided by the few but important pieces of information provided by the Gospels, and also by the aspects of his personality that the Church over the centuries has been able to bring to light through prayer and devotion. Starting precisely from this "common feeling" that in the history of the Church has accompanied the figure of St. Joseph, today I would like to dwell on an important article of faith that can enrich our Christian life and can also frame in the best way our relationship with the saints and with our deceased loved ones: I speak of the communion of saints".

The Pontiff assured that at times "Christianity can also fall into forms of devotion that seem to reflect a mentality that is more pagan than Christian. The fundamental difference lies in the fact that our prayer and the devotion of the faithful people is not based on trust in a human being, or in an image or an object, even when we know that they are sacred. The prophet Jeremiah reminds us: "Cursed be he who trusts in man [...]. Blessed is he who trusts in the LORD" (17:5-7). Even when we entrust ourselves fully to the intercession of a saint, or even more so to the Virgin Mary, our trust has value only in relation to Christ. And the bond that unites us to him and to each other has a specific name: "communion of saints". It is not the saints who perform the miracles, but only the grace of God that acts through them".

"What is the communion of saints?" the Pope asks. And he answers by turning to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, when he states, "The communion of saints is precisely the Church" (n. 946). "What does this mean," he continues, "that the Church is reserved for the perfect? No. It means that it is the community of saved sinners. Our holiness is the fruit of God's love manifested in Christ, who sanctifies us by loving us in our misery and saving us from it. Always thanks to him we form one body, says St. Paul, in which Jesus is the head and we are the members (cfr. 1 Cor 12,12). This image of the body makes us understand immediately what it means to be united to one another in communion: "If one member suffers," writes St. Paul, "all the others suffer with it. If one member is honored, all the others share in its joy. Now you are the body of Christ, and its members each of you has its part" (1 Cor 12,26- 27)".

Francis affirmed that "the joy and pain that touch my life concern everyone, just as the joy and pain that touch the life of the brother and sister next to us concern me. In this sense, even the sin of a single person always concerns everyone, and the love of each person concerns everyone. By virtue of the communion of saints, each member of the Church is united to me in a profound way, and this union is so strong that it cannot be broken even by death. In fact, the communion of saints concerns not only the brothers and sisters who are with me at this historical moment, but also those who have completed their earthly pilgrimage and have crossed the threshold of death. Let us think, dear brothers and sisters: in Christ no one can ever truly separate us from those we love; only the way of being close to them changes, but nothing and no one can break this union. The communion of saints holds together the community of believers on earth and in heaven".

In this sense, the Pope continued, "the relationship of friendship that I can build with a brother or sister next to me, I can also establish with a brother or sister who is in Heaven. The saints are friends with whom we very often build friendships. What we call devotion is in reality a way of expressing love based precisely on this bond that unites us. And we all know that we can always turn to a friend, especially when we are in difficulty and need help. We all need friends; we all need meaningful relationships to help us face life. Jesus also had his friends, and he turned to them at the most decisive moments of his human experience. In the history of the Church there are constants that accompany the believing community: above all the great affection and the very strong bond that the Church has always felt in relation to Mary, Mother of God and our Mother. But there is also the special honor and affection she has paid to St. Joseph. Deep down, God entrusts to him the most precious thing he has: his Son Jesus and the Virgin Mary. It is always thanks to the communion of saints that we feel close to us the saints who are our patrons, by the name we have, by the Church to which we belong, by the place where we live, and so on. And this is the confidence that should always animate us when we turn to them in the decisive moments of our life".

The Pope concluded his catechesis with a prayer to St. Joseph "to whom I am particularly attached and which I have recited every day for many years":

Glorious Patriarch St. Joseph, whose power knows how to make impossible things possible, come to my aid in these moments of anguish and difficulty. Take under your protection the grave and difficult situations that I entrust to you, so that they may have a good solution. My beloved Father, all my trust is placed in you. Let it not be said that I have invoked you in vain and, as you can do everything with Jesus and Mary, show me that your goodness is as great as your power. Amen

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ColumnistsAntonio Moreno

#ThankYouConsecrated

I would like to promote today a great thanksgiving to God, but also to each of the men and women whose consecration God has used so that you and I may have a better life today.

February 2, 2022-Reading time: 2 minutes

40 days before Christmas we celebrate the Feast of the Presentation of the Lord. A festivity that gathers around itself a multitude of traditions. On the one hand, it is celebrated as a Marian feast: the Purification of Mary, Our Lady of Candelaria; on the other, as a Christological feast: Jesus is presented in the temple, God presents His Son to humanity, represented by the elders Simeon and Anna who recognize in Him the Messiah. This celebration of the consecration of the child God led John Paul II to establish on this day, in addition, the World Day for Consecrated Life, dedicated to deepen the knowledge and esteem of consecrated men and women by all the People of God and also, of course, to give thanks to God for this immense gift for the Church.

They say that consecrated life is at a low ebb, that the vocation crisis will wipe out hundreds of institutes in a few years... In this regard, I have to say that if consecrated life is dying of something, it is not of asphyxia, but of success, because the human need that many founders detected and that impelled them to fight with all their strength for this charism to remain alive, has been overcome to a great extent. How much consecrated life has done for education, health care, social services, culture and the struggle for the dignity of persons! After centuries of being a "light that enlightens the nations", institutes and congregations have ensured that today education and health care are a basic right, that societies are concerned about the most vulnerable, that men and women of the 21st century are involved in the struggle for a more just world through social movements....

Of course, in all these fields we must continue to bring the Gospel and its genuine practical application and the primitive charisms have continued to find ways to adapt to today, but congratulations for what you have done! Congratulations and thank you because this world is better because of you. Who more, who less owes you their education, their academic or professional career, the possibility of reconciling their family and work life, their physical or mental health, being free of addictions, or their peace of mind by having provided them with a dignified place for their parents' retirement.

And how much do we owe to contemplative communities? Apart from vertebrating entire towns and neighborhoods, their prayer sustains each and every one of the actions of the rest of the Christian community and remains as a lamp on the lampstand that shows us all year long that God alone is enough.

Today I would like to promote a great thanksgiving to God, but also to each of the men and women whose consecration God has used so that you and I can have a better life today. It is enough for us to make a phone call or upload a tweet or a photo on Social Networks saying thank you, thank you to that nun to whom we owe our life because she helped us to be born, to that religious who accompanied us in our adolescence, to that sister who takes care of our father. Today it's time to pick up the phone and say #ThankYouConsecrated

The authorAntonio Moreno

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

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"Three vocations of sinners". Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time

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

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

Commentary on Sunday readings V

Isaiah, after seeing the Lord, feels lost: "I am lost.I am a man with impure lips". A seraph touches his mouth with an ember:"your guilt is gone, your sin is forgiven". Then listen to the voice of the Lord: "Whom shall I send and who will go for us?". Isaiah launches out with the freedom of love: "Here I am, send me". 

Paul recalls the kerygma received at the beginning of the Church: "that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures and that He was buried and that He rose again on the third day according to the Scriptures and that He appeared to Cephas and then to the Twelve". Then he appeared to five hundred brothers, to James, to all the apostles. "Finally, as to an abortion, he appeared also to me. For I am the least of the apostles and not worthy to be called an apostle, because I have persecuted the church of God.". Feeling like a sinner is a profound reality in him, but it is linked to the awareness of the gift of grace received: "...".But by God's grace I am what I am, and his grace with me was not in vain. Rather, I have labored more than all of them. Though it was not I, but the grace of God was with me.". These are not words of vanity, but of truth and gratitude. He was a forgiven sinner and, therefore, an apostle.

Peter already knew Jesus. Tiredness and the failure of the night's unsuccessful fishing lead him and his companions to ignore Jesus who speaks to the crowd. Grumpy, they re-dredge the nets. Jesus does not reproach him or say anything to him. He approaches him, gets into his boat and removes him from his isolation by asking him to please help him in his work of preaching, moving a little away from the shore. So that the crowd can hear him better. And so he gets Peter himself to listen to him. After Peter's heart has been filled with the word of God, he can ask him to put out into the deep. And to let down the nets again. Peter trusts. His poverty is open to the word of God who invites him, he does not close himself like the Nazarenes. But he does not believe completely, but only half-heartedly. Jesus said to him: "Cast your nets", in the plural, and he replies "echaré"He leaves his companions and the other boat parked on the shore. He thinks they will be of no use. For this reason, faced with the number of fish in the nets, his heart melts with regret: "Lord, depart from me, for I am a sinner.". Jesus does not reproach him, he does not say to him ".I forgive you"He neither confirms nor denies it, but only says: "....Fear not, from now on, you will be a fisher of men.". This is how Jesus dealt with Peter's sin: "Please help me with your boat; put out into the deep; let down your nets; do not be afraid; you will be a fisher of men.". He did not promise him that he would cease to be a sinner. He knows that even from future sins he will learn to return to Jesus and to the origin of his vocation.

The homily on the readings for Sunday V

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

The authorAndrea Mardegan / Luis Herrera

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Vocations

Consecrated life today: Walking together being a light for others

Maria José Tuñón, director of the Episcopal Commission for Consecrated Life reflects on this XXVI Day of Consecrated Life, which the Church is living immersed in the synod process.

Mª José Tuñón, ICA-February 2, 2022-Reading time: 5 minutes

Last Sunday of the Word, Pope Francis invited all Christians to celebrate and share around the Word of God, which is always light for our steps, as the psalmist says.

How good it is that we too, consecrated life, in celebrating the 26th Day of Consecrated Life, have this conviction! So that, impelled by the Spirit and guided by his Word, we may continue to "walk together", as our motto says in this ecclesial moment, so important and at the same time challenging.

To walk together, impelled by his Word, always challenges us to more: to more commitment, more humble prophecy in the midst of the world, more dialogue without prejudice. To be more salt and light, so that the world may taste the tenderness and mercy revealed to us in Jesus Christ. The Son of God incarnate, made one of many, whom we consecrated men and women seek in our daily lives, from the different charisms, so that ultimately others may have life!

He himself has called and summoned us consecrated men and women, as his disciples, to communion, to listening, to proclaim that "today ... is the year of grace" (Lk. 4:14-21). In this way, trusting in his Spirit and in his Word revealed from of old, let us continue to proclaim that "today" the promises of covenant and salvation for the life of the world are fulfilled in him, a journey of gratuitous service, which is made by walking, generating processes, as a beloved and beloved people! This is synodality! A fundamental theme in this kairos to which Pope Francis has invited the entire Church.

We are therefore invited to look at Him, "all in the synagogue had their eyes fixed on Him", to transform our gaze and take charge to walk and dream together a new fraternity. To gestate a new world: "We have already had a long time of moral degradation, mocking ethics, goodness, faith, honesty, and the time has come to realize that this cheerful superficiality has served us of little use" (Cf, FT.ch.III).

Pope Francis will also say, especially to the consecrated: "The Lord does not call us to be soloists, no, he does not call us to be soloists, but to be part of a choir, which at times is out of tune... we need courageous patience to walk, to explore new paths, to seek what the Holy Spirit suggests to us. And this is done with humility, with simplicity, without great propaganda, without great publicity (homily 2.02.21).

Today's world and its cries cannot be faced without a hopeful synergy of each and every one, if we do not "walk together", if we do not make our own the pain of the world, increasingly fragmented. Consecrated life, as seekers of God, knows, with the wisdom of the heart, that God can only be found by walking, because He is the Way. He always goes out on the roads, as companion and Lord, who makes the heart beat like those of Emmaus, and returns them - returns us - to the community, to row together and to feel ourselves in the same boat to land together, to restore hope, to clean wounds, to repair gaps.

As our Pastors of the Episcopal Commission for Consecrated Life state in the presentation of this Day, to walk together "...".is an exercise of necessity and an experience of beauty". The need arises from the Church's demand to strengthen synergies in all areas of mission. The beauty comes from contemplating the witness of those who are called by the same vocation to live in fraternity and to give their lives for the kingdom at the service of their brothers and sisters.

Walking together is an always new, open proposal that invites us to go beyond our flat and individualistic looks, to widen the spaces of our tents and bet on the "we" that brings out the best in each one of us.

All this, if we lose our fears and free ourselves from the inertia of always having done it this way, from the bonds of rigidity and become a body in which, with our participation and vulnerable listening, we sprout wings that lead us to the mission. A body which, with our participation and vulnerable listening, sprouts the wings that take us to the mission. Not to regulated tasks, but to the dream of the new fraternity, to the vineyard of Jesus, where the laborers are called friends of the Lord and not servants. Friends who, together with Him, spread the universal tablecloth of His table, share His bread and wine, with the immoderation of the one who knows that He has loved us first to the extreme, and has invited us to do the same.

The proposal to walk together, from this horizon, becomes a plus of love. It is to allow the salvation that is given to us in a fragile Child to be realized. It is not for nothing that this Day of Consecrated Life is celebrated on the liturgical feast of the Presentation of Jesus in the Temple. Those who recognize him are an elderly man, Simeon, and Anna, a widowed, barren woman....

What a contrast for our agendas, planning, feelings that consecrated life has lost social relevance!

How hard it is for us to accept that God reveals himself to the little ones, to those who, as "seekers of God", look and hope in the Word given by the faithful God, who has committed himself to his People! Ours is to walk at his side, practicing tenderness and mercy. To recognize him with a clean gaze.

Simeon and Anna have been able to discover the consolation of Israel May we - the whole of Consecrated Life - today, as we celebrate this feast and renew our vows, not lose the opportunity to manifest and proclaim in prophetic symphony that our God is the God of life!

To bet on the gutters and the peripheries of so many areas of our society. May our yes be a yes of trusting love committed to the cries of the common home and the poor. That only from answers fermented in dialogue, in prayer, in common discernment, "walking together", we will take the necessary steps for another alternative world, where other gestures, actions that put the person at the center, the common good, become possible.

We are called and summoned with others to humbly cooperate as "artisans of communion" with our personal and institutional lives so that the world may believe.

The celebration of the Day of Consecrated Life implies to receive once again, in this important ecclesial moment, as all the People of God, the call to synodality -to walk together-. Not as a fashion but to recover the essential spirit of the Church and of our own congregational structures and as Church, with creativity, to accept God's plan for our concrete today that asks for a new apostolic impulse.

A consecrated life humus of the "new earth and new heavens". A consecrated life impassioned by Jesus Christ and his plan of salvation, which does not cease to question and search, despite its aging or lack of vocations. A consecrated life whose center is the spirit of the Risen Lord that continues to speak and inspire us, as it did our founders and foundresses, to put out into the deep. To make us one of many who "walking together" as sons and brothers, allow themselves to be guided "by the humble and happy certainty of those who have been found, reached and transformed by the Way, Truth and Life, which is Christ, and cannot stop proclaiming".

Happy Consecrated Life Day to all! 

The authorMª José Tuñón, ICA

Director of the E. Commission for Consecrated Life. Spanish Episcopal Conference.

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The World

With Benedict XVI, a pioneer in the fight against abuse is pilloried

Manfred Lütz, renowned psychiatrist and theologian, and long-time advisor to the Vatican, has published in the prestigious Swiss media "Neue Zürcher Zeitung" (NZZ) an article in which he refers to his own experience with Cardinal Ratzinger / Benedict XVI in relation to the handling of sexual abuse within the Church. Lütz also discusses the recent accusations against the Pope emeritus following the publication of a report on the Munich diocese.

José M. García Pelegrín-February 1, 2022-Reading time: 5 minutes
RelatedRelated NewsReport on abuse: Cardinal Marx proposes reforming the Church through the synodal processRelated NewsReport on sexual abuse in Munich diocese tries to implicate Benedict XVI

On October 24, 1999, the Vatican's top officials met at the Congregation for the Clergy in Piazza Pio XII in Rome. The cardinal prefects of the relevant congregations and their deputy archbishops, about fifteen people, attended. I was there to give a lecture on pedophilia. Before my talk, a young moral theologian urged that U.S. bishops be prevented from making a "summary judgment" of priests suspected of abuse.

Cardinal Castrillon Hoyos, prefect of the Congregation for the Clergy, had earlier read the letter from an American bishop to a priest: "You are suspected of abuse, so you must leave your home immediately; next month you will stop receiving your salary; in other words: you are fired".

But then Cardinal Ratzinger took the floor; he praised the young professor for his work, but said that his opinion was completely different. Of course legal principles had to be respected, but the bishops also had to be understood. That abuse by priests is such a heinous crime and causes such terrible suffering to the victims that it must be dealt with decisively, and the bishops often have the impression that Rome slows everything down and ties their hands. The participants were perplexed; in the afternoon a heated controversy developed in his absence.

Two years later, Cardinal Ratzinger succeeded in getting Pope John Paul II to remove responsibility for the abuses from the Congregation for the Clergy and assign it to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Cardinal Castrillón Hoyos reacted aggrieved.

At the beginning of 2002 I met with Cardinal Ratzinger. I told him that the press was satisfied that the Pope was dealing with this matter personally, but that in my opinion it was absolutely necessary for him to talk to international experts, to invite them to the Vatican. He listened attentively and reacted immediately: "Why don't you take care of that? I had not thought about that possibility and I asked him, "Are you sure you want to do it?". He replied, "Yes, I am."

I contacted the leading German experts; I attended international congresses, spoke to the world's most renowned scientists and coordinated everything with Monsignor Scicluna of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Cardinal Ratzinger insisted that he also wanted the victims' point of view to be mentioned and gave me a letter from the child psychiatrist Jörg Fegert, who had contacted him and whom I also invited.

Thus the first Vatican Congress on Abuse was held at the Apostolic Palace from April 2 to 5, 2003; all the institutions of the Curia concerned were present; Cardinal Ratzinger personally "motivated" those who had hesitated.

International experts - not all of them Catholic - advocated that the perpetrators should be controlled, but not simply thrown out; otherwise, having no social perspective, they would be a further danger to society. At a dinner, some experts tried to convince Ratzinger of this idea; but he disagreed: since abuse was such a terrible thing, the perpetrators could not simply be allowed to continue working as priests.

In 2005, when John Paul II was about to die, Cardinal Ratzinger was in charge of formulating the texts for the Stations of the Cross; at the ninth station he pronounced those words: "How much filth in the Church and among those who, by their priesthood, should be completely dedicated to him! Four weeks later, he was Pope.

He immediately expelled the criminal founder of the "Legionaries of Christ"; he addressed the victims for the first time as Pope on several occasions, which deeply moved some; he wrote to Catholics in Ireland that it was a scandalous crime not to have done what should have been done because of concern for the reputation of the Church.

In 2010, a high-ranking Church official who had falsely accused a priest told me that he could not recant because he had to look after the good reputation of his institution. I was horrified and, when the media asked me about this case, I turned to Pope Benedict. The answer came quickly: "Pope Benedict sends you a message: Speak up, you must tell the truth!

Since 1999, therefore, I had experienced Joseph Ratzinger's firmness against abuse; but what about before that? I was also curious to know what the Munich report said. Perhaps there were wrong decisions, dilettantism, failures. After the press conference, some journalists criticized the annoying theatricality in presenting the report, which did not distinguish between facts, assumptions and moral judgments. Only one point was made clear: that Ratzinger had been convincingly shown to have told a lie about his presence at a certain meeting; moreover, one of his answers, which trivialized exhibitionism, was quoted. Subsequent judgments were predictable, even before the text was known.

However, reading the parts of the report that referred to Ratzinger revealed two surprises: after meticulous investigation by experts in the four cases of which he was accused, there was not a single solid piece of evidence that he had any knowledge of the history of abuse. The only "proof" was the testimony of two dubious witnesses on one case, who by hearsay now claimed the opposite of what they had said years before.

The minutes of the above-mentioned meeting merely stated that it had been decided that a priest who was going to Munich for psychotherapy could live in a parish. Nothing about abuse, nothing about the pastoral assignment. But, above all, I was surprised that in some of the answers it was clear that this was not Benedict's language. "His" comments on exhibitionism sounded like something out of a canon law seminar; here, they were embarrassingly trivial.

It is now clear what the reason was. At 94 years of age, he has not been able to review the thousands of pages of documents himself. His collaborators did, and they made mistakes. Contrary to his response that he had not attended a meeting 42 years ago, he had been present. In addition, the law firm authoring the report displayed a strange style of questioning, with rhetorical, suggestive questions or a mixture of accusation and judgment.

In this situation, anyone would have sought legal advice, as Pope Benedict apparently did. Moreover, the firm's awkward questions left him no chance to answer about his personal responsibility. He has announced that he wishes to comment on this, and how the strange answers came about. It is to be hoped that this is really a text from him: one must have the fairness to wait for this statement.

One is left with the feeling that an elder who, among other things, was a pioneer on the subject of abuse, is being sensationally pilloried instead of finally investigating the decisive questions: why has no Church official in Germany openly admitted his personal guilt and voluntarily resigned?

Already in 2010, Pope Benedict said: "The first concern must be for the victims. How can we make reparation [...] with material, psychological and spiritual help? So why are victims still not helped to organize themselves in a truly independent way, and why are they not adequately compensated on an individual basis? Why is one report after another published without the consequences being drawn?

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RelatedRelated NewsReport on abuse: Cardinal Marx proposes reforming the Church through the synodal processRelated NewsReport on sexual abuse in Munich diocese tries to implicate Benedict XVI
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Evangelization

Vanna CerettaRead more : "The road to transparency is a long one, but we are already reaping the fruits".

Vanna Ceretta is the treasurer and director of the Administrative Office of the Diocese of Padua, Italy. With more than one million faithful and almost 500 parishes. In this interview with Omnes for the 5G Sustainability series, she assures that "listening, sharing, fraternity and transparency are the fundamental ingredients to be coherent with the mission of the Church and at the same time sustain it".

Diego Zalbidea-February 1, 2022-Reading time: 5 minutes
RelatedRelated NewsBettina Alonso: "Generous people give until it hurts a little bit".Related NewsAntonio Quintana: "Generosity is a virtue for everyone, rich and poor".Related NewsDiego Zalbidea: "I hope for a new springtime in the Church".

Vanna Ceretta is the bursar and director of the Administrative Office of the Diocese of Padua (Italy). She is married and mother of three children. She has worked 18 years in the diocesan Mission Office as coordinator. Since 2014 she had been doing coordination work in the bursar's and administrative offices and in 2019 she has become bursar. The Diocese of Padua has more than one million faithful, with almost 500 parishes. It depends directly on the Episcopal Vicar for the temporal goods of the Church. It has a budget for the diocese alone of about 10 million euros. In 2020 alone it has spent more than 38 million euros on local charitable activities and 48 million on charity with other churches. All of this can be seen in the reports that year after year they present in an exemplary exercise of transparency.

What is it that makes people increasingly generous and what characterizes them?

-I would like to respond with an image that comes to us from the Gospel. Jesus is in Bethany and a woman pours on the master a precious and abundant perfume of nard, a gesture of incalculable value, for most people considered an excess, a waste. Instead, the scent invades the scene and gives itself by spreading. Here is this absolutely unprecedented gesture that speaks to us of a generosity that is unexpected and precious gratuitousness. What, then, characterizes the generosity of people? Their gratuitousness in giving, in offering, without calculation and without seeking their own benefit. I have in mind a couple of friends of mine, both very committed professionally and already parents of three children, who welcomed a teenage girl into their home. She became part of their family, altered the dynamics of the relationship, asked for attention and energy to receive that love she so desperately needed to grow. It was not necessary for this couple to "break the alabaster glass," but this commitment of resources and energy has done a lot of good not only for this girl but also for me, my family and many others. 

How can we help the faithful to commit themselves to the mission and support of the Church?

-Listening, sharing, fraternity and transparency are the fundamental ingredients for being coherent with the mission of the Church and at the same time sustaining it. In these years of service in the diocese, I have seen communities that have put the poorest and most fragile at the center and have grown in charity. I have met others who have shared their savings with parishes in difficulty. I have met people who offer their professionalism free of charge to deal with the problems that arise in the parish or to passionately take charge of the accounting management. They are examples of how where there is a path of listening, where there is sharing and where fraternity is really lived, which also brings with it the precious values of transparency and fidelity in the administration of goods, the Church grows and the will to participate also on the front of sustainability grows.

Have you verified the pastoral effectiveness of transparency in the diocese of Padua?

-The road to administrative transparency is long and challenging, but we are reaping the rewards, both in terms of credibility and awareness. In the beginning, it was difficult to demand accountability for everything. Moreover, we were often told that charity cannot be reduced to double-entry bookkeeping, but after a long period of listening and dialogue, we became aware that transparency is a fundamental value - and not just an added value - in pastoral action, especially in a troubled time like the one we are living in. 

Is it easy for a woman with the position of "bursar" to dialogue and address economic issues with parish priests?

-It is responsibility, not gender, that sustains this office. Assuming the task of bursar, of administrator, means first of all to assume a responsibility that must be carried out with great determination, but which must always be accompanied by a deep spirituality. I have had no explicit difficulties as a woman. Of course, it always requires professionalism and a continuous openness to welcome, to accompany, to give indications sometimes even to say no. A book I read when my children were young is entitled "I no che aiutano a crescere"(The "no's" that help to grow). Teaches to recognize how situations of discomfort are created by the simple inability to say no, and how not knowing how to deny or prohibit something at the right time can have negative consequences in the relationship between parents and children, as well as in any other relationship in which you find yourself exercising a leadership role.. Deciding to say "no" always generates great conflicts: some communities live on nostalgia and cling to a false need for many buildings, many spaces, many activities, showing a face of Church that comes from a past that is still deeply rooted.
How important are financial matters in a diocese?

-Pope Francis reminds us that we are not only living in an era of change, but in a true change of era marked by a general anthropological and socio-environmental crisis. 

This complex time forces us to make demanding decisions also at the economic and real estate level that will change the history of our Church. The problems that arise every day require a lot of energy to seek solutions, but we are also called to trigger processes of change. In Padua the question has been on the table for several years and now the path undertaken with the diocesan Synod will help us to discern even more, also in this area.  

The bursar's service requires a continuous tension in order to be able to read reality and translate it into this path of renewal.
Why does the Church need goods and resources to carry out its activity if its mission is spiritual?

-The goods and resources are and must be functional to the mission of the Church. Of course, it is always necessary to be very balanced and to read the interventions carried out in the economic field and in the management of goods according to the main mission of the Church: to bear witness to Jesus, to spread the Gospel, to be close to the "poor" and to accompany them, whatever the form of their poverty, material or spiritual. 

We must place ourselves before the Word and continually examine ourselves to avoid wrong decisions and priorities.

Has the pandemic affected the generosity of the faithful?

-Surely there has been a decrease not so much in generosity as such, but in offerings, also due to the forced suspension of Masses and Church attendance. But generosity has not changed, and we have experienced this with a pastoral proposal for the year of the pandemic (2020-21) dedicated to the "charity in the time of fraternity" and the instrument we have called "Parish Social Support"."  a proposal that has solicited, in various ways, the generosity of Christians to create a parish fund to help individuals and/or families to "start over" from the moment of economic difficulty that continues to hit our country so hard. Thanks to the extraordinary funds received from the Italian Bishops' Conference, the Diocese has placed itself at the side of every parish that has requested it, donating to the parish fund one euro for every inhabitant and hoping that every community, with the help of all the parishioners, would commit at least double the amount. The result exceeded all expectations. We have lived a beautiful journey of experiences of solidarity and closeness that have filled our hard-hit communities with hope.

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RelatedRelated NewsBettina Alonso: "Generous people give until it hurts a little bit".Related NewsAntonio Quintana: "Generosity is a virtue for everyone, rich and poor".Related NewsDiego Zalbidea: "I hope for a new springtime in the Church".
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ColumnistsIgnacio Valduérteles

Giving or giving

Within the brotherhoods, charity is based on the doctrinal formation that the brotherhood must provide for each brother, which inevitably leads to giving and giving oneself to others.

February 1, 2022-Reading time: 3 minutes
RelatedRelated NewsLong live the chains!

A friend of mine, an elder brother of a well-known brotherhood, told me about the difference he appreciated between the corporal works of mercy - feeding, lodging, clothing the naked, visiting prisoners,...- and the spiritual ones -instructing, counseling, consoling, comforting,...-. The difference consisted in the fact that the corporal ones were referred to the givewhile the spiritual ones involved occur.

Some nuances could be made to this affirmation, but in general lines it is well reasoned. This does not imply that one is above the other, both have the same value; but it is true that the corporal works of mercy could be exercised, even in a spurious way, without rectitude of intention, including interests unrelated to the work itself, such as obtaining a tax deduction, improving one's image or soothing one's conscience. The spiritual ones imply a greater commitment, in them the person is more involved. In any case, all of them involve looking at others, being centered on others, knowing and attending to their needs, either directly or through an entity such as the brotherhoods.

It is a matter of giving and giving oneself; but no one gives what he does not have. In order to give oneself, one must possess oneself, which implies accepting oneself as a being created by God in his image and likeness, which is the true nature of man. However, a culture based on the rejection of this acceptance of oneself as a created being, with a given nature, is spreading and taking root, and attempts to endow itself with a new nature elaborated from its own initiative. All these attempts adopt as their intellectual support the dictatorship of relativism, "which does not recognize anything as definitive and which leaves only the self and its desires as the ultimate measure" (Ratzinger); which denies the possibility of reaching a common truth on which to build human coexistence, and replaces it with that which each one establishes at each moment Since there is no truth about the person, this will be what each one deems appropriate. Its approaches will never attack the dignity of the person, because that dignity is also relative, imputable only to a concept of person.

 There are many manifestations of the determination of some to establish their own truth about man: gender theory (it is I who decides my gender, regardless of whether I was born male or female); the ability to decide on one's own life (euthanasia, suicide), or that of others (abortion); the deconstruction of the family (new forms of family groupings, education of children by the State); the right of each identity minority, natural or induced, to have their opinions, transformed into enforceable rights, admitted and protected in a way that excludes others (culture, culture, etc.); the right of each identity minority, natural or induced, to have their opinions, transformed into enforceable rights, admitted and protected in a way that excludes others (culture, etc.). woke and cancellation policy), and so on.

Overcoming these approaches, Charity is presented, which resides precisely in this emptying of oneself in order to let God take possession of each one of us.... it is no longer I who live, it is Christ who lives in me... (Galatians 2:20)-, giving fullness to the person, who is invited by God to make his or her biography a continuous act of love, a continuous charity, a permanent gaze on others from Christ.

Thus approached, the concept of Charity opens to the brotherhoods a field of action, and above all of reflection, much broader than that of social assistance, which goes from being an end in itself to the inevitable action of the person in the exercise of his being. Charity is based, then, on the doctrinal formation that the brotherhood must provide to each brother, which inevitably leads to giving and giving oneself to others.

The authorIgnacio Valduérteles

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

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"Human rights do not depend on quotas"

Professor of State Ecclesiastical Law Francisca Pérez-Madrid argues that a comparison of the Guidelines for religious persecution and those relating to persecution based on gender identity or sexual identity shows a certain inequality of principles.

Maria José Atienza-January 31, 2022-Reading time: 2 minutes
RelatedRelated NewsEurope: intolerance towards Christians on the riseRelated NewsHope in the face of growing violations of religious freedom around the world

Francisca Pérez-Madrid, professor of State Ecclesiastical Law at the University of Barcelona developed this idea during her lecture "Asylum in cases of religious persecution and sexual orientation. A comparison".

The conference was the centerpiece of the events held at the School of Canon Law of the University of Navarra on the occasion of the celebration of the feast of St. Raymond of Peñafort.

As he pointed out, there are currently 70 million forcibly displaced persons in the world, of whom only 3.5 million are seeking asylum. A fact to be taken into account: the number of persecuted Christians exceeds 300 million worldwide.

In this line, the professor of State Ecclesiastical Law defended the need to review and update the High Commissioner's guidelines on religious persecution and those on persecution based on gender identity or sexual identity, since "the latter, with a broader and more flexible perspective, take into account the precarious situation of the applicant, and require the authorities to have a proactive point of view when assessing the factual assumptions. The Guidelines on religious persecution, on the other hand, start from a certain presumption of implausibility in the face of potential claims".

Therefore, for Francisca Pérez-Madrid, it is necessary to incorporate the reflections of academic literature, jurisprudential contributions and a person-centered perspective to avoid "differentiation in terms of the level of international protection depending on the reason for persecution".

"Human rights do not depend on numbers or quotas," defended Francisca Pérez-Madrid, "we are all holders of the right to freedom, security and, of course, religious freedom".

In addition, Francisca Perez-Madrid considers that this would guarantee the effective protection of every human being whose life, liberty and security are threatened. "The attitude of the receiving state with respect to the applicant should not be suspicious, but proactive, and there should be equal standards to avoid arbitrariness in the review of the seriousness of the persecution. The important thing is to assess the vulnerability of these people individually and see what situation they are in," he defended.

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The challenge of sustainability of religious institutions

Professional management, transparency and compliance with legal norms, an ethical sense of investment, and emphasizing profitability, but not at any price, are some of the parameters cited by speakers at a CARF Foundation reflection meeting on sustainability and investments by religious institutions.

Rafael Miner-January 31, 2022-Reading time: 4 minutes

The best way to ensuring the sustainability of religious institutionsThe meeting organized by the Centro Academico Romano Foundation (CARF) and the news agency Rome Reportssponsored by Caixabank, and held at the end of last week.

In the meeting discussed the principles of responsible investment as a strategy and practice that incorporates environmental, social and governance factors into investment decisions and asset management, according to practical recommendations of the United Nations and the World Bank. Oeconomicae et Pecuniariae Questiones, published by the Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and the Dicastery for the Service of Integral Human Development. This document addresses considerations for ethical discernment in relation to some aspects of the current economic and financial system.

Manage with professionalism

The participants were Cristian Mendoza Obando, priest and professor of Church Management at the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross in Rome; Yadira Oliva, economa of the Congregation of Martha and Mary; Sergio Camarena, bursar of the Augustinian Recollects and David Alonso de Linaje, head of Religious Institutions Private Banking CaixaBank. The meeting was moderated by Antonio Olivié, journalist and CEO of Rome Reports.

The teacher Cristian Mendoza, an expert in the training of bursars of religious institutions, stressed the importance of the economic managers of each congregation or diocese of the Catholic Church being professionals in the sector. The objective is to guarantee the sustainability of these institutions of the Church so that they can serve their specific mission and charism.

He also referred to two concepts that Church institutions should take into account today: transparency and compliance with legal norms. "Society demands more and more information. For this reason, transparency in the Church is very operative," Cristian Mendoza pointed out. In addition, he recalled that public institutions, such as congregations in the Church, must comply with regulations, which are increasingly on the rise. "The Church also has to comply with increasingly demanding regulations," he pointed out.

Looking beyond

Yadira Oliva, bursar of the Congregación Marta y María ̶ an institution founded in Guatemala 43 years ago, which has been in Spain since 1991 and which has has 700 sisters spread throughout the world ̶ , explained some of the economic issues of the institution.

"Our foundress always tells us: we have to look beyond. In Spain, we have 24 homes for the elderly and we also care for priests' residences. Many of our residences are not subsidized, but are supported by the residents' contributions. We make sure that they can receive a service and generous attention," she explained.

One of the problems encountered is the care of elderly religious who, because of age or health problems, are unable to carry out apostolic work. Instead of building residences just for them, this Congregation distributes them in different residences so that they can share the charism. "Our goal is to create a fund to sustain us in the future with our work," she says.

The Apostolic Congregation was founded by Monsignor Miguel Angel Garcia Arauz and Mother Angela Eugenia Silva Sanchez. It bears the name "Martha and Mary", the holy sisters of St. Lazarus, to mark the two principles that govern their lives: contemplation of the Divine Mysteries (Mary) and apostolic action in generous and selfless service to their brothers and sisters (Martha).

Economics at the service of the mission

Sergio Camarena, bursar of the Augustinian Recollects (with more than 400 years of apostolate), recalled in his speech the document of the Holy See on "Economics at the service of the mission"The points made, for example, refer to professionalizing the mission of each congregation or making the patrimony of each Order profitable.

Regarding investments, he clarified that religious institutions must rely on trained professionals, use important criteria to know with whom they are going to invest, and ensure that these investments are in accordance with the Social Doctrine of the Church, that is, to have an ethical sense of investments. "In our Congregation we have an Economic Council that watches over these investments and over what has to be destined to the different social works around the world," Camarena affirmed.

Senior Religious

As in the Congregation of Martha and Mary, a topic of great concern to the Augustinian Recollects today is the care of the older religious of the Order. "Our average age of the brothers is 63 years. Some reside in external institutions, others in our own houses, and others in public institutions. It depends on each country," he explains.

Profitability, but not at any cost

David Alonso de Linaje, head of Religious Institutions at CaixaBank Private Banking, stressed the importance of financial planning for each congregation, i.e., knowing what money is needed today to make the institution sustainable in the future.

"Profitability is important, but not at any price. Financial investments must be governed by prudence, legality and ethics. It is necessary for each Congregation to have experts who know the peculiarities of religious institutions," he said.

In response to questions from the people who followed this online meeting, Alonso de Linaje added that it is necessary to create some criteria for investments to respect the Social Doctrine of the Church (SDC).

On the other hand, Cristian Mendoza emphasized the need for professional training of bursars, and in line with investment in accordance with the DSI, he recalled that religious institutions should not invest in portfolios that promote pornography, alcohol or abortion.

Sustainability, a frequent topic at Omnes

Economic matters, both in the business and ecclesiastical spheres, require in the present era that the mechanisms of control and management in ecclesiastical institutions continue to be refined. In this regard, sustainability and compliance are a frequent topic of discussion in Omnes.

After a Forum  in which Diego Zalbidea, priest and professor of Canonical Patrimonial Law at the University of Navarre, and the expert on compliance of KPMG, Alain Casanovas, Professor Zalbidea has published in omnesmag.com a series of articles and interviews with experts on economic issues, under the general title Sustainability 5G.

Among those interviewed were José María Ziarrustamanager-economist of the diocese of Bilbao; Leisa AnslingerAssociate Director of the Office of Pastoral Vitality in the Archdiocese of Cincinnati (USA); Bettina AlonsoDirector of Development for the Archdiocese of New York; Antonio QuintanaDevelopment Director of the Sanctuary of Torreciudad (Huesca), or Abigail MarshProfessor in the Department of Psychology and in the Interdisciplinary Neuroscience Program at Georgetown University (Washington).

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Saints in comic format for the whole family

Rome Reports-January 31, 2022-Reading time: < 1 minute
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Ignatius of Loyola, Clare of Assisi or Padre Pio are some of the characters that appear in these books, which, in comic format, summarize the lives of saints of all times for young and old. 

AhNow you can enjoy a 20% discount on your subscription to Rome Reports Premiumthe international news agency specializing in the activities of the Pope and the Vatican.
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Christianity prays for peace in Ukraine as dialogue continues

Responding to the Pope's invitation, there has been an outcry these days in which the Catholic Church, and in some places such as Kiev, also the Orthodox and Protestant Churches, have prayed to God intensely for peace in Ukraine and in Europe.

Rafael Miner-January 30, 2022-Reading time: 5 minutes
RelatedRelated News"Ukraine suffers and deserves peace," says Pope on Day of Prayer

Ukraine "is a suffering people, they have suffered much cruelty and deserve peace."The Holy Father exclaimed on Wednesday at the Day of Fasting and Prayer for Peace, called by Pope Francis. Well, Christianity has echoed, and to a greater or lesser extent, many have begun to pray deeply for peace in Europe, and especially in Ukraine.

"Gathered together in prayer we implore peace for Ukraine," Archbishop Paul Richard Gallaguer, Secretary for Relations with States of the Holy See, asked in the Basilica of Santa Maria in Trastevere in Rome, in a celebration promoted by the Community of Sant'Egidio. "May the winds of war be silent, may the wounds heal, may men, women and children be preserved from the horror of conflict."

"We are in communion with the Pope so that every initiative is at the service of human fraternity", added Monsignor Gallagher. His words highlighted, first of all, the drama of conflicts and the disparity between those who decide them and those who suffer them, between those who systematically carry them out and those who suffer the pain, the official Vatican agency reported.

"We know how dramatic war is and how serious its consequences are: they are painful situations that deprive many people of the most fundamental rights," he added. But even more scandalous, he said, "is to see that those who suffer most from conflicts are not those who decide whether or not to start them, but are above all those who are only helpless victims of them."

"All defeated in humanity"

"How sad," Archbishop Gallagher stressed, "in the 'laceration' of entire populations caused by 'the hand of man,'" by "carefully calculated and systematically carried out actions," and not by "an outburst of anger," or "by natural catastrophes or events beyond human control."

"These are such widespread scenarios today," noted the Secretary for Relations with States, "that we cannot fail to recognize that we are all 'defeated' in our humanity and that we are all 'co-responsible for promoting peace.' But God has made us brothers and sisters, and therefore, aware of this scenario and bearing in our hearts the drama of the 'conflicts that tear' the world apart, we recognize ourselves as brothers and sisters both to those who provoke them and to those who suffer their consequences, and in Jesus Christ we present to the Father both the grave responsibility of the former and the pain of the latter. For all, let us invoke from the Lord the gift of peace".

We invoke peace, but "without limiting ourselves to waiting for agreements and truces to be reached and respected, but imploring and committing ourselves so that in us and in all hearts the new man may be reborn," unified in Christ "who lives in peace and believes in the power of peace," he added.

Ecumenical prayer in Kiev

This week the Ukrainian capital hosted the prayer for peace in the Latin Catholic Cathedral of St. Alexander, in unity with all the communities of the world, reports the Community of Sant'Egidio.

"Since the outbreak of the war in Dombas, the leaders of Sant'Egidio have been organizing every month a moment of prayer for peace, which on this occasion had a special solemnity. In the cathedral, many Kievites, including many young people, took part in the prayer presided over by the Nuncio to Ukraine, Msgr. Vysvaldas Kulbokas, which was attended by representatives of the various Christian churches.

The Nuncio stressed the importance of common prayer: "The temptation is to put before what divides and not what strengthens the human family. But if we give priority to the Kingdom of God, everything becomes secondary, and then the divisions in families, homes, in the people and among different peoples become secondary, because they lose their importance before the sun, which is our God, one for all".

Participating in the prayer were a bishop representing the Latin Catholic Church and another representing the Greek Catholic Church, together with the bishop of the Armenian Orthodox Church and other Orthodox and Protestant representatives, along with civil authorities.

American and European bishops

In addition to the appeal of the Polish and Ukrainian bishops, which reported OmnesThe Commission of the Bishops of the Bishops' Conferences of Europe (COMECE) and the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) have joined the whole Church and the people of Ukraine in two communiqués. In them, they invite the faithful to join the prayer called by Pope Francis for the end of hostilities in Ukraine and for peace in the Old Continent.

"We urge the international community, including the European Union, to renew its commitment to peace and to actively contribute to dialogue efforts, not by demonstrating force and reinforcing the dynamics of armament, but by seeking creative forms of negotiation and value-based compromise," said Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich, Archbishop of Luxembourg and President of COMECE, in a statement expressing grave concern over the current tensions between the "neighbors" to the East and expressing solidarity with the brothers and sisters of Ukraine.

In the communiqué, Cardinal Hollerich mentions the statement of the Polish and Ukrainian bishops, in which they call on the rulers to stop "hostilities", since "war is always a defeat for humanity". COMECE calls on all parties to put aside particular interests and promote steps leading to disarmament, which seek a peaceful and sustainable solution to the crisis, based on a truthful dialogue rooted in international law, the Vatican agency reports.

Respect integrity and independence

"In the face of the alarming situation in Ukraine, we call on all leaders to respect the territorial integrity and political independence of Ukraine and to engage in constructive dialogue to peacefully resolve this conflict that affects the lives and livelihoods of 43 million Ukrainians." This is stated in a statement Bishop David J. Malloy, Bishop of Rockford and Chairman of the USCCB's International Justice and Peace Committee.

"Let us join the Holy Father who, in his 2022 address to the diplomatic corps, said: 'Reciprocal trust and readiness to engage in a serene discussion must inspire all parties at stake, so that acceptable and lasting solutions can be found in Ukraine...'"

"The Catholic bishops of Ukraine and Poland issued an appeal on Jan. 24 for leaders to refrain from war and 'withdraw ultimatums immediately.' They called on 'the international community to join efforts in solidarity and actively support those threatened in every possible way."

"In this time of fear and uncertainty," concludes Msgr. Malloy, "we stand in solidarity with the Church in Ukraine and offer our support. We ask all the faithful and people of good will to pray for the people of Ukraine, especially on January 26, that they may know the blessings of peace."

Macron, Putin, Zelenski

At the same time, sources at the Elysee confirmed that the French and Russian presidents, Emmanuel Macron and Vladimir Putin, held a telephone conversation of about an hour on Friday, during which, despite "significant" disagreements, they agreed on the need for a "de-escalation" and to continue the dialogue.

Following the telephone meeting between Emmanuel Macron and Vladimir Putin, "the ball is in Russia's court", said the Elysée on the latent tension on Ukraine's borders, reported France 24. Moreover, a Kremlin communiqué stressed that the answers given by the United States and NATO on Wednesday 26 January did not reassure Putin, because they did not address his security requirements in Eastern Europe, according to the same sources. However, the two leaders left the door open to continue the dialogue on security in Europe.

At the same time, the President of Ukraine, Volodimir Zelenski, has stated that he believes there is danger, but not as imminent as his allies point out. In the same vein, the Russian Foreign Minister, Sergey Lavrov, has pointed out that "Russia does not want a war".

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  • José Luis MumbielaThe face of the Church in Kazakhstan is changing".
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José Luis MumbielaThe face of the Church in Kazakhstan is changing".

The Aragonese José Luis Mumbiela (Monzón, Spain, 1969), has lived in Kazakhstan since 1998, where he arrived from Lleida (Spain), when he was the youngest priest of the diocese (27 years old). In 2011 he was appointed bishop of Almaty, and presides over the Episcopal Conference in a country with a Muslim and Orthodox Christian majority. Almaty has been the epicenter of recent protests. On a possible visit by Pope Francis, he states, "For a father to come to the house, no reason is needed!"

Rafael Miner-January 29, 2022-Reading time: 8 minutes

The first thing to say about this interview with Monsignor José Luis Mumbiela, Bishop of Almaty, the most populous city in Kazakhstan, is that it was conducted a couple of weeks ago. The servitude of paper. So take the bishop's analysis with due caution. The second thing is that we have seen a cheerful bishop, with good humor, in spite of the hard episodes that his country, and especially the city of Almaty, has experienced.

And the third thing is that we talked about the serious disturbances, yes, as the Spanish/Kazakh bishop has done with numerous media, but then we got into the flour of evangelization, the Church in Kazakhstan, the martyrs, the blessed, St. John Paul II, "the culprit of my coming to Kazakhstan", and Pope Francis, of whom he says: "Our great dream is that he will come to this land".

How is Kazakhstan now after the serious events of the past few weeks?

–As of today, we are almost in tranquility. Tranquility is being restored. People are living as before, in the sense of being able to work. Tomorrow there will be the opening of the Metro. The only thing that remains until the 19th is the curfew, which is only in the Almaty region and some other regions. By law it is until the 19th. For the time being it has been maintained, life is being rebuilt. What happens is that apart from this, we have the pandemic. We are in what we call here the red zone, which is the number of contagions. There is also green and yellow. We are in the very red zone, which entails limitations in cafeterias, meetings, etc. And also in religious services. People can have personal visits, we are doing what we can. But we continue with optimism. As of today, our life is already normalizing.

Another thing is the consequences of what has been experienced. For many, they have been very tragic, with many deaths, the number of which is still not known for sure, not only at the level of police and security forces, but also of the attackers, who were belligerents. And we do not know the number of civilian deaths either... The police raids are still continuing, and they are on the lookout for and capture with the data they have. Those involved in violent actions, robberies and looting are being arrested. The cases of public accusations are also being opened at the legal level. Among the security forces, among the police, people are dying, it is not known if they commit suicide or die of heart disease?

If you like, we will analyze this issue later [see analysis], and change the subject. It is now thirty years since the establishment of the hierarchy in Kazakhstan.

-Indeed, last year was the 30th anniversary of the creation of the Diocese of Kazakhstan and Central Asia, the first bishop for all this land, in the present time. There were Catholic bishops in Central Asia already in the Middle Ages. It is necessary to remember the history. The creation of the new structures of the Church in Kazakhstan dates back to 1991. Pope John Paul II was the great promoter of the revival of the Church in Central Asia. He loved and cared personally for these lands. He knew, already from his time in Krakow, the history of the faithful of Kazakhstan and Central Asia. He knew it very well, he followed it closely. When he came to Kazakhstan in 2001 (20 years have passed), the words he said were that he had long dreamed of coming here, I know all your history, all your sufferings. They were not diplomatic words, they were the words he had been dreaming of saying in these lands for years. It was like this. John Paul II loved Kazakhstan, undoubtedly, because of the history of the Poles and the deportees. For his compatriots.

We know, for example, from the story of Blessed Wladislaw Bukowinsky, in the 60s and 70s, when Karol Wojtyla was Archbishop of Krakow, I know that when he went to visit the Archbishop, the Archbishop was waiting for him with a great desire to know how things were going here, and if Bukowinsky was ill., the archbishop was going to the hospital to talk to him. He was interested. Also because I knew he was a holy man. And he wanted to hear from the people, from Krakow. He was a priest born in a part of Poland which is now Ukraine, and he was also deported, taken to a concentration camp, and so he was a prisoner in Kazakhstan. He was in three prisons in Kazakhstan, where he lived for quite a few years. And in the 1950s, after Stalin's death, when he saw the possibility of returning to his country, he decided to stay here in Kazaijstan, working as a priest, risking his life, risking his freedom. He worked in turn as a civilian, he had a passport, he was legal, but he had 'extra-labor' activities [he smiles openly].

Are there any other canonized saints, from Kazakhstan? They have now the process of Gertruda Getzel....

There is a priest who is beatified but he is not from Kazakhstan, he died in Kazakhstan. He was a Greek Catholic, and he served the Greek Catholics and those of the Latin rite. His name was Alexei Zarinsky. He is blessed. His body was taken away. He is buried in Ukraine.

Gertruda Getzel is now in process, laywoman. A Catholic bishop who is buried in Karaganda, who is also a heroic man, could also be in the process, but every process takes time. Thank God, there is a waiting list. Since there are so many blessed bishops and saints, we are now putting a lay woman. Some call her Sister Gertruda, but no, she is a laywoman. She is what a good catechist would be, according to the Pope's dispositions of late. She was also in concentration camps. She was born in Russia, she was deported, etc. She helped priests, was in Georgia and other places. She came here to Kazakhstan, and was in Karaganda, helping also. Wherever she was, she always tried to do catechesis, to pray. I know he was in labor camps, forced labor camps. And when she went to live in Karadanga, at first she accompanied this priest, who was Bukowinsky, until the priest said; better for the woman to stay at home, because it was risky. She organized catechesis for young people, for women, everything, prayer meetings. She was like a spiritual director for girls, a motor of parish life.

There was a bishop that nobody knew he was a bishop, Alexander Hira. He had been a priest in Karaganda since the 1950's, and he died in 81. I guess he knew because he was his confessor. The Holy See knew he was there. Sometimes he went to Ukraine 'on vacation', and it was to see priests, and some bishops as well.. Radio Macuto He said that this woman, Gertruda, was "his archbishop"!

How was your coming to Kazakhstan? I mean yours. You were a young priest...

-I arrived in Kazakhstan in 1998, I came as a young priest, and the person responsible for my coming is John Paul II. John Paul II was very fond of Kazakhstan, and he encouraged the presence of priests for evangelization in this country. He was looking for priests, and he commissioned institutions to look for people to come. I know that he was also looking for priests from the Priestly Society of the Holy Cross, he wanted Opus Dei, but with the whole team. But the Prelature cannot send diocesan priests, juridically it is impossible. So it was decided to look for volunteer priests who were willing to respond to the Pope's call to come to Kazakhstan. The proposal reached many priests in Spain, and it also reached me. The first step was for the priest to be willing. The second step was for the bishop to send him. In my case there were both circumstances. In others, perhaps not.

Had you thought about going on missions?

-I never thought of going on missions around the world. But a proposal came to me: the Holy Father is looking for diocesan priests to go to Kazakhstan, would you be willing? Well, if the Pope wants it, and the bishop sends me, that's what I was ordained for, right? To serve the universal Church. Not me, but any priest, I think, has to be ready for this. Whether I like it or not I like to go on missions, to go to one parish or another, I go wherever the bishop tells me to go. And so it was.

 What diocese were you in and what did your bishop tell you?

-I always say that it was a very generous and beautiful gesture of this bishop of Lleida, my bishop, Dr. Ramon Malla, Modélico. A bishop who was very criticized for various things, the issue of ecclesiastical property. But this gesture is exemplary. At first he told me no. I was 27 years old. I was the youngest priest in the diocese, the diocese was going from bad to worse. There was an argument: where there are priests, let them look for them there, in Toledo, Madrid..., but here there are none. But he himself told me later: here we are bad, but there they will be worse. It is a service to the universal Church, let him go. God will say. Chapeau.

   When I was appointed bishop in 2011, the news was made public on March 5, 2011. I was called by the then bishop, who had already changed, it was Bishop Joan Piris, who is retired, He called me to congratulate. -I said to him: "Bishop, do you remember something? What is it? Well, today our diocese of Lleida is losing a priest, yes, but I know that tomorrow the Lord will give the diocese of Lleida two priests. You have an ordination of two priests. Yes. -Yes. -Do you realize? Bishop Malla gave one, and God gives us two.

Indeed, on Sunday, March 6, two new priests were ordained. Lleida lost one priest, but gained two. Bishop Malla gave one priest, and God gave him two.

The majority languages in Kazakhstan are Kazakh and Russian. In which language(s) is the language(s) of worship?

-Most of them speak and understand Russian. But the most widespread state language is Kazakh. The Church has always functioned in Russian, but there is a process underway. I often say the face of the Church in Kazakhstan is changing in these years. It is a challenge. We are in a time of transition. In the 1990s, there were Poles, Germans, Ukrainians, Balts... Masses were in German, Polish, depending on the place. Then they switched to Russian, although not all of them. In several villages, some grandmothers refuse to pray in Russian, because it is the language of the enemy... Some accept that the priest says the Mass in Russian, but the hymns have to be in Polish. It is a generational change, a very important one.

Now we are gradually incorporating the Kazakh, which is a change of axes, and which requires an authentic Catholic spirit. Perhaps it is difficult psychologically for many. I remember a priest, who is now a bishop, local, local, when we were talking about learning Kazakh, he said that the local priests were skeptical, until one of them said: we have to admit that we have been educated in Russian, and for us Kazakh was the language of the second class, of the uneducated, etc. For them, psychologically, to switch to Kazakh is to lower themselves. It is a change of mentality. And now he is a bishop. I think he has already changed. There are already beginning to be Masses in Kazakh, little by little, songs in Kazakh, there is a devotional book in Kazakh. And the Kazakhs are very happy. More and more Kazakhs are being baptized, thank God.

The local church is growing...

-Yes, local priests are taking more and more positions. This year, the new Rector of the Seminary will be, in principle, a local priest, half Kazakh, half Ukrainian. His name and surname are already Kazakh. As a fellow Bishop, Ordinary, says, we have to trust the locals once and for all, that's enough! And if they are wrong, let them be wrong, as we foreigners are wrong. Deep down, they want this, and this is what we have to do: let the child grow up, let the child grow up! Come on, come on, this Church is yours. Little by little. It is a dream we have. Growing in this sense. It's like grandparents watching their grandchildren grow up [he jokes again with the examples]. So a big challenge [in Kazaijstan] is that new face for the Catholic Church, which is in transition. A Church, like Kazakhstan itself, multiethnic. That is.

How do you see the interfaith meeting scheduled for September?

-From the beginning, it was a great showcase to show the world that Kazakhstan is a country that wants to be a model of peaceful coexistence between different ethnic groups and religions, and whose religious reality is not a problem, but a normal condition of life. That meeting was held with great support from the Vatican. I do not know if after the events of Almaty the meeting will be possible this year or not. Perhaps because of these events, it would be very nice to have this meeting,

Our great dream is that Pope Francis comes to this land. Since there is a desire for renewal in the country, perhaps his presence would be useful for everyone, on the one hand to give great international support; on the other hand, for him to accompany us, with some words of his, written in a book in the summer, which are 'Let us dream together'. May he accompany us and help us to dream together that new Kazakhstan that we want to create, which is not so new, because some things are already there, to dream and continue dreaming of that Kazakhstan that we want to be a model not only for us but for everyone. And a visit of the Pope can be a great reinforcement for this. Whether or not there is a reason for this meeting, there is no need for a father to come to our home!

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Spain

"Illuminare, the mission magazine celebrates its 100th anniversary

The dean of the publications of the Pontifical Mission Societies of Spain celebrates its first centenary on January 31.

Maria José Atienza-January 28, 2022-Reading time: < 1 minute
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Illuminare was born on January 31, 1923, when the Bulletin of the Missionary Union of the Clergy of Spain, which changed its name four years later, in 1927, began to be published in Burgos. One hundred years of "accompanying the mission, the missionaries and missionary animation in Spain" as highlighted by the Pontifical Mission Societies.

Illuminare currently launches three issues a year: in January, April and October, coinciding with the days of the Propagation of the Faith (Domund), Holy Childhood (Missionary Childhood) and St. Peter the Apostle (Native Vocations). There are more than 20,000 copies, which are also supported by a wide projection through the OMP website.

"Illuminare has gone through different stages during all these years of life," explains its director, Rafael Santos, "but it has always tried to help those responsible for missionary animation to live the mission passionately and motivate us all to live it this way. In fact, lluminare's main raison d'être is to support the campaigns of these works and to help priests, religious and other pastoral agents in the preparation and setting of mission-related events.

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The World

Report on abuse: Cardinal Marx proposes reforming the Church through the synodal process

Cardinal Marx is shocked by the findings on sexual abuse, which according to him have systemic motives. He recommends a profound reform, as - he said - is being carried out in the synodal path. A report commissioned by his diocese had reproached successive archbishops (among them Cardinal Ratzinger) for inadequate treatment of some abuse cases. 

José M. García Pelegrín-January 27, 2022-Reading time: 7 minutes
RelatedRelated NewsReport on sexual abuse in Munich diocese tries to implicate Benedict XVI

On January 20, a report was presented in Munich on sexual abuses committed in that diocese in the long period of time from 1945 to 2019. During those 75 years, six cardinals ruled the diocese, the last three of whom are still alive today: Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI (1977-1982), Friedrich Wetter (1982-2008) and Reinhard Marx (since 2008). The WSW report - so named by the three partners of the law firm Westpfahl Spilker Wastl, to whom the diocese itself commissioned the investigation - concluded, in its more than 1,200 pages, that at least 497 people had been victims of sexual abuse committed by 235 people (182 clerics and 53 lay people).

In public opinion, attention has focused not so much on the victims or the perpetrators of abuse themselves as on the reaction shown mainly by the three prelates mentioned in response to cases that occurred during their respective administrations and in which they were blamed for "not having reacted adequately or in accordance with the norms to cases of (alleged) abuse that had come to their attention."

The WSW report put the figure for such inadequate action at four cases due to the then Cardinal Ratzinger, at 21 cases in relation to Cardinal Wetter; Cardinal Marx was reproached for not having acted correctly in two cases and, moreover, "not having attached the necessary importance to the issue", for having begun to deal with it directly only in 2018, ten years after arriving at the See of Munich.

Special interest on Benedict XVI

As was to be expected, the possible involvement of the Pope emeritus aroused particular interest, especially in one particular case, since the WSW report devoted an additional volume of more than 350 pages to him: it concerned a priest "H." (in the report also called "X" or "Case X"), who in 1980 moved from the Diocese of Essen to Munich for psychiatric treatment. (in the report also called "X" or "Case X"), who in 1980 moved from the Diocese of Essen to Munich for psychiatric treatment. The first question was whether the then Cardinal Ratzinger was present at a working session of the Munich Curia on January 15, 1980, at which the matter was discussed.

In an 82-page brief in which the Pope emeritus responded to questions posed by the law firm WSW, he said he did not recall being present at the meeting. However, in a statement submitted by his secretary, Archbishop Georg Gänswein on Jan. 24, while announcing that Benedict will soon make a more comprehensive statement, he qualified that statement: "However, he wishes to clarify now that, contrary to what was stated at the hearing, he did attend the meeting of the curia on January 15, 1980.

Therefore, the contrary statement was objectively wrong. He would like to emphasize that this was not done in bad faith, but was the result of an oversight in the wording of his statement. He very much regrets this error and asks to be excused. However, it is factually correct, and documented in the files, to state that no decision was made at this meeting regarding the pastoral assignment of the priest in question. On the contrary, only the request to provide him with accommodation during his therapeutic treatment in Munich was granted."

Indeed, in the minutes of the session - collected in the WSW report - we read: "The Diocese of Essen asks Mr. H. to stay for some time with a priest in a parish in Munich. He is to undergo psychotherapeutic treatment". The curia gave its consent to this at this meeting. In the documents on the matter there is also a more detailed note from the personnel officer of the diocese: "The Diocese of Essen requests the temporary admission of a young chaplain who comes to Munich for psychotherapeutic treatment. The chaplain is very talented and can receive various assignments. It is desired that he stay in a good parish in the home of a sympathetic colleague. The written request from Essen has been received." The personnel officer suggests the parish of St. John the Evangelist in Munich as a possible "destination". However, no decision was made at the meeting about the possible pastoral work of such a priest. Above all, the meeting did not discuss the background of H. Therefore, the Pope Emeritus can rightly declare today that he had "no knowledge" of it. When, later, H.'s sexual misconduct in Munich came to light, Ratzinger had already moved to Rome.

This has also been confirmed by Cardinal Wetter - who has published a response to the accusations made against him, in which he sincerely apologized for everything that happened and for "my erroneous decision in the case of the priest H. with regard to his pastoral assignment". Cardinal Wetter describes his relationship to the case in detail: "As I recall, the first time I came into contact with the case of H. was when the question arose as to whether he could return to pastoral work after his misconduct. The decision - which I took after intensive consultation in the diocesan curia - to send him to Garching/Alz under strict supervision was undoubtedly objectively wrong. I did not think it necessary to have the complete dossier transferred to me from the beginning, since H. had already been working in Munich for quite some time. That was already a mistake. If I had known all about the past, I am convinced today that I would have had him returned to Essen instead of sending him to Garching."

"Without a renewed Church there will be no future for Christianity in our country."

When the report was presented on January 20, Cardinal Marx summoned the media to a press conference for Thursday, January 27, in order to present, after the study of the report in the bishopric, "some first perspectives and to outline the way forward". At the press conference he was shocked by the results of the WSW report, which "represents a before and after for the Church in the archdiocese and beyond", because it shows "the dark side that from now on will be part of the history of our archdiocese"; for many people the Church has become a "place of misfortune instead of a place of salvation, a place of fear and not of consolation". Despite the great commitment shown by priests and other people working in the Church "there has been this dark side that has been coming more and more to light".

The Cardinal described as "completely absurd" to speak of an "abuse of abuses" to oppose a "reform of the Church". This, he added, is what he told the Pope in the letter in which he resigned from the episcopal see -a resignation that Francis did not accept-: "for me, confronting sexual abuse is part of an integral renewal and reform, as the synodal path has assumed. Without a renewed Church there will be no future for Christianity in our country".

The "greatest fault" consisted in having "ignored the people affected", which is unforgivable. "We had no real interest in what had happened to them, in their suffering." According to Marx, "this also has systemic reasons", namely the clericalism of which Pope Francis also speaks; it is therefore of particular relevance to have set up last year an advisory board of those affected and an independent commission to confront the past, "which have already provided us with essential impulses from their perspective".

Resignation from office?

He also referred to the resignation presented to the Pope in May 2021: "Personally, I say it again clearly; as archbishop - according to my moral conviction and as I understand the office - I am responsible for the performance of the archbishopric. I am not attached to my office. The offer to resign last year was serious; the Pope made another decision and asked me to continue my ministry responsibly. I am willing to continue to exercise it, if it is a help for the next steps; but if I come to the opinion that I am more of an obstacle than a help, I would speak to the consultative bodies and have them question me critically. In a synodal Church I will no longer make that decision on my own".

The only personal consequence taken so far concerns Lorenz Wolf, Judicial Vicar of the diocese since 1997, who had been severely criticized in the WSW report: 104 cases in which he is involved give "occasion for criticism", as well as being accused of "putting the interests of the defendants above those of the alleged victims". Wolf wrote to Cardinal Marx renouncing his charges; at the press conference, the Cardinal said: "I agree with him; in due course he will take his position" on the accusations.

Responding to a journalist's question ("Who is telling the truth, the Pope emeritus or the report?"), Marx replied that so far he has no information "that makes me conclude that the Pope emeritus has covered up"; on the other hand, he cannot say that the WSW law firm "has not worked cleanly"; but his report is "neither a judicial sentence nor a judgment of history", but an element to confront the past. The final verdict will be determined by the talks and discussions to be held now, as well as what the experts contribute. In addition, Marx said that it was first necessary to wait for the statement that Benedict XVI has announced. However, his impression is that the Pope emeritus has collaborated constructively with the authors of the report.

On homosexual priests

Reinhard Marx also responded to a question about homosexual priests: no one is obliged to expose his sexual inclination; "but if he does, we must respect it; being homosexual should not be a restriction to the possibility of being a priest". He thus expressly dissociated himself from "some brothers in the episcopate" for not considering homosexuality an obstacle to priestly ordination.

However, he added that all priests - regardless of their sexual orientation - are expected to live celibacy. "At the moment, this is the requirement for the priesthood." Referring to the recent #OutInChurch campaign to change the Church's labor law, Marx said, "If we say that a homosexual relationship is perhaps not a marriage according to Church teaching, but we also positively accept it as a binding relationship," then this should apply to all. The Church's labor law should also be changed in this regard. And Vicar General Christoph Klingan added that there is currently an episcopal working group that is "working intensively on a proposal on how to change this ecclesiastical norm." 

RelatedRelated NewsReport on sexual abuse in Munich diocese tries to implicate Benedict XVI
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"Ukraine suffers and deserves peace," says Pope on Day of Prayer

The Day of Fasting and Prayer for Peace in Ukraine, called by Pope Francis in the face of the military tension in the area, had three key points: the Vatican, the Basilica of Santa Maria in Trastevere in Rome, and the Ukrainian capital, Kiev. Ukraine "is a suffering people, they have suffered much cruelty and they deserve peace", the Holy Father said.

Rafael Miner-January 26, 2022-Reading time: 5 minutes
RelatedRelated NewsPope's travels in 2022: increasingly a 'bridge builder

On Wednesday morning, at the end of the general audience, the Pope raised his prayer for peace in Ukraine, asking "the Lord with insistence that this land may see fraternity flourish and overcome the wounds, fears and divisions".

On the day of the Day of Fasting and Prayer for Peace in Ukraine, announced by Pope Francis at the Angelus last Sunday, Francis made this appeal, appealing to filiation to God the Father and to fraternity among men: "Let us pray for peace with the Our Father: it is the prayer of children who address the same Father, it is the prayer that makes us brothers, it is the prayer of brothers who implore reconciliation and concord".

The Roman Pontiff, who revealed an inflammation of a ligament in his knee, invited to pray in this way for peace in Ukraine: "let us pray to the Lord with insistence", so "that this land may see fraternity flourish and overcome the wounds, fears and divisions".

The Holy Father added that Ukraine, "is a suffering people; they have been hungry, they have suffered much cruelty and they deserve peace". For this reason, the Pope invited to pray insistently keeping in mind: "may the prayers and invocations that today rise to heaven touch the minds and hearts of those responsible on earth, so that dialogue may prevail and the good of all be put before partisan interests". Francis concluded his exhortation by recalling and underlining "please, never war".

Prayer meetings

In response to Pope Francis' appeal, prayer meetings for peace in Ukraine were held in churches and parishes in various countries. In Rome, in the Basilica of Santa Maria in Trastevere, at 7.15 p.m. the The Community of Sant'Egidio has promoted a special prayer that was presided over by Archbishop Paul Richard GallagherSecretary for Relations with the States of the Holy See, and which can be viewed at here.

Also in Rome, at 6:00 pm, a vespers prayer was celebrated in the Church of St. Sophia, convoked by the Ukrainian community, with the participation of Bishop Benoni Ambarus, the director of the Diocesan Office for Migrants, Msgr. Pierpaolo Felicolo, and the rector of the Basilica, Don Marco Jaroslav Semehen. Promoted by the Diocesan Office for Migrants, the vigil was attended by chaplains and representatives of the various ethnic communities.

In Bologna, Cardinal Archbishop Matteo Zuppi presided over the prayer at 7:30 p.m. in the Basilica of Saints Bartholomew and Gaetano. These moments of prayer were joined by other initiatives promoted by dioceses, movements and ecclesial realities.

Invitation of the Roman Pontiff

Last Sunday, Pope Francis said he was following "with concern the rising tensions that threaten to inflict a new blow to peace in Ukraine and to call into question security on the European continent." Tens of thousands of Russian troops are reportedly deployed on the Ukrainian border. In the background may beat the fact that the Kiev regime aspires to join NATO, following the Crimea crisis of 2014.

The Kremlin acknowledged a few days ago that the tension is "too high", while it has been leaked these days that French President Emmanuel Macron, who has just met in Berlin with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, will talk this Friday with Russian President Vladimir Putin in order to suggest a de-escalation plan.

On the other hand, the Apostolic Nuncio in Ukraine, Monsignor Visvaldas Kulbokas, pointed out that "the Pope's closeness comforts the spirits". In an interview granted to the Vatican media, Monsignor Visvaldas Kulbokas added that the people are grateful to Francis: "to know that they are not alone and forgotten is a great help".

"The risk of a possible escalation of the conflict is lived with more courage," the nuncio adds. "Here in Ukraine, Pope Francis is one of the most respected religious personalities by the local population, so this appeal of the Pope after the Angelus prayer last Sunday was immediately received as very important news, which soothes the heart, expresses closeness and solidarity, and in times of difficulty such as those experienced in Ukraine, knowing that you are not alone and forgotten is already a great help."

Polish and Ukrainian bishops alert

"The current situation represents for the countries of Central and Eastern Europe and for the entire European continent a great danger, which can destroy the progress made so far by many generations in the construction of a peaceful order and unity in Europe," the bishops of Poland and Ukraine stressed Monday in a appeal to seek dialogue and understanding.

"In their speeches, the leaders of many countries point to Russia's increased pressure on Ukraine, as it massively gathers weaponry and troops on its border," the bishops explain. "The occupation of Donbas and Crimea has shown that the Russian Federation - violating the national sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine - disregards the binding norms of international law," read the Appeal, according to the same Vatican agency.

The bishops note that "today, the search for alternatives to war to resolve international conflicts has become an urgent necessity, since the terrifying power of the means of destruction is now in the hands of even medium and small powers, and the ever stronger ties that exist between peoples throughout the earth make it difficult, if not practically impossible, to limit the effects of any conflict."

Avoiding hostility

In this vein, "based on the experience of previous generations, we call on the rulers to refrain from hostility. We encourage leaders to immediately abandon the path of ultimatums and the use of other countries as bargaining chips. Differences of interests should not be resolved through the use of arms, but through agreements. The international community must unite in solidarity and actively support, in every possible way, the society in danger," wrote the bishops of Poland and Ukraine.

"In the name of false ideologies, entire nations were condemned to annihilation, respect for human dignity was violated and the essence of the exercise of political power was reduced to violence alone. Today, too, we wish to make it clear that all war is a tragedy and can never be an adequate means of resolving international problems. It has never been and never will be an adequate solution because it generates new and more serious conflicts," they added.

The authors of the Appeal They recalled the words of St. Paul VI, who in his address to the 1978 session of the UN Conference on Disarmament called war "a most irrational and morally unacceptable means of adjusting relations between States". They also recalled the prayer of St. John Paul II: "Father, grant to our times days of peace. Never again war! Amen.

The Appeal has been signed by Major Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk, Head of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church; Archbishop Stanisław Gądecki, President of the Polish Episcopal Conference; Archbishop Mieczysław Mokrzycki, Vice-President of the Ukrainian Bishops' Conference; Archbishop Eugeniusz Popowicz, Metropolitan of Przemysl - Warsaw of the Greek-Catholic Church in Poland; Archbishop Nil Luszczak, Apostolic Administrator of the Ukrainian Episcopal Conference; Archbishop Nil Luszczak, Apostolic Administrator of the Ukrainian Bishops' Conference; and Archbishop Slav Shevchuk, Head of the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church. Headquarters Vacant Eparchy of Mukachevo, Catholic Church of Byzantine-Ruthenian rite of Ukraine.

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Icon of the Salus Populi Romani

January 28, the feast of the Translation of the Salus Populi Romani, marks four years since the icon returned to the Basilica where it is venerated in a climate-controlled reliquary. This month, the corresponding conservation control has been carried out. Pope Francis is a great devotee of this image.

David Fernández Alonso-January 26, 2022-Reading time: < 1 minute
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Education

Educating in suffering

The problem of today's society is not that it does not value the sick or that it does not respect death because it is "the end", the problem of today's society is above all that it does not value its own existence. We must change the value we give to life, in order to learn the value of suffering and death.

Lucía Simón-January 26, 2022-Reading time: 9 minutes
RelatedRelated News"Even in the most painful of our sufferings, we are never alone."

Graciano tightened his pace as he fixed his scarf. How cold it was that early morning. He put his hand in his pocket to check if he had taken his house key on his way out. "Everything is forgotten in a hurry," he thought, remembering the time when, also in the middle of the night, he had left his key inside. A night as cold as that one was not to be spent out in the open. He thought of Petra. Perhaps it was her last night. That little old lady full of energy. How many times she had taken his food to the sacristy: "Graciano, if I'm careless, you won't eat for days," she used to tell him.

When she reached the little house with light, she went to the door and knocked. Clara, Petra's youngest daughter, opened the door.

- Thank you, Father. At this hour I didn't know whether to call you, but she insisted so much... She has hardly spoken for days and has been asking me to call you all afternoon.

- You have done well, daughter. I have neither days nor nights of my own. They are all the Lord's.

Clara looked at him gratefully, and after taking the thick coat from him, led him into the room where her mother lay.

Petra was a tiny old woman. She seemed lost among so many blankets and pillows. She clutched a rosary tightly in her hand and stared fixedly at the door. When she heard the footsteps and saw her daughter entering, she was filled with life. As if she concentrated all the life she had left in her eyes.

- Did you bring Graciano?

- Yes, Mother. Here is Father Graciano," a smile of relief lit up his wrinkled face and he seemed to fill with peace. Graciano entered the room and carefully approached the sick woman. Clara left, closing the door.

- Hello, Petra. Good evening, Petra. Your daughter told me that she is worse and I have come here to administer the last rites and give her Communion - Don Graciano piously administered the sacrament and, after giving her Communion, sat down next to her. Petra looked happy and grabbed his hand.

- How many things since you came to town, do you remember? Just ordained and from the city. They said here that you would not adapt to such a hard and retired life," Graciano smiled.

- Here I found the family that God wanted for me. Every one of my parishioners and those who refuse to be parishioners," Petra nodded.

- I have been very happy, Graciano. Now that the end is coming, I understand that God does everything well. I married young and lost four children before I had Manuel and Clara. I thought I would never get over so much pain. Then the hard work, getting my children to study abroad and Antonio's illness.

- I remember him in his wheelchair with his club in his hand. When someone blocked his way or bothered him, he would hit him with it," Petra laughed softly.

- Yes, how many problems the blissful garrotte gave us. I even slept with it.

- Are you in a lot of pain, Petra?

- Many, but I don't care. I have many years and a great faith. God has taught me what is not in the books: to live and, therefore, to die when He wants me to - Graciano looked at her with affection and without hiding the tears that were beginning to wet his face. That woman, like all her generation, was a strong woman. How many lessons they continued to teach her. It was a wise generation, born to sustain.

- It is possible to be happy in suffering, Graciano. My children do not understand it and it is possible that it is because they have had everything easy. And life also teaches through pain. Perhaps they lack the experience of knowing nothing. They think they can do anything. They believe that science and their intelligence can fix everything.

- And, isn't it," Graciano smiled. He liked her to talk. He learned from her. He never got tired of listening.

- No, of course not. In this life only giving meaning and value to things is what brings happiness.

- What's the point of pain, Petra?

- Ah... Graciano, you know it well but you make me talk. No, don't smile. We've known each other for many years. You have eaten at my house more times than I can remember. You accompanied me to the funeral of several of my children and my husband. I never forgot one thing you said at the little boy's funeral: "In life and in death we belong to God".

- That is from Scripture.

- Yeah? I don't know, I didn't learn to read. But how much truth is there. There is no fear for the one who knows he is the son of the One who loves him most.

- Do you feel loved by God, Petra?

- Yes. In every pain I yelled at him and got angry. But I always knew he was by my side. Suffering with me. He gives meaning to meaninglessness. He shapes us in a certain way. Like my husband did with sculptures. With blows, with hardness. To set us free.

- Free?

- Yes, free. We hold on to so many things that happen. We set our hearts on so many things that are not worthwhile. And yet, in misfortune, we realize that the only thing that counts is love of God and love of others. That is to be free. To be tied to nothing in our hearts. I will go in peace today. With my faults, I know that my life has been what He has wanted. I only worry about my children and my grandchild. My children are so busy with things that are worthless. My oldest, with the virus thing, has gone crazy. "Mom, the only thing that matters is health," he was telling me the other day.

- And what did you tell him?

- I told him he was a beggar. Imagine, putting your happiness and trust in something you know you're going to lose. And the other one, Clara, is a good girl but she wants to run everything herself. She doesn't understand that the way to happiness is to obey God and do His will. She only cares about money and comfort. She should have taught them better when they were children.

- Learning the meaning of life is an apprenticeship of some years, Petra.

- Do you think they'll ever understand," she sighed, "I was wrong as a mother in that. I never taught them to suffer. Whenever they had any setback, I did everything I could to take it away from them. And when the pain came, I let them look the other way. I never taught them how to deal with it. I should have taught them. Because then they hit potholes and didn't know what to hold on to. For them, prayer is just reciting little words at full speed. They don't know Who Jesus is. They don't know what the Cross means. I did not teach them to offer, as my mother taught me. I thought it was too hard a teaching. I thought they would not understand until they had a stronger faith. And yet, how far they have gone.

- They still have time to know God, Petra. Let's pray for them and their grandson. When you are absent, I will continue to accompany them. But you can help from heaven, for the task is a big one," Petra smiled.

- Thank you, Graciano. Graciano began to pray and Petra accompanied him. First softly and then from heaven.

After comforting his daughter and promising to return first thing in the morning, Graciano went out into the cold again. But now he forgot to fix his scarf and even to button his coat.

Educate in suffering... educate and give reasons, I thought. But how can we explain the great mystery of God's love and suffering? Society does not understand pain and death because it does not understand life. Gratian thought about abortion. He thought of euthanasia. He thought of the materialism he saw so often and of the coldness towards all that is transcendent. He thought of so many people for whom a life like Petra's, without quality, was meaningless. He thought of those who think that God is like a genie of the lamp who must grant everything we desire and if not, out. Instead of understanding that He is God and we are weak creatures. How can we show all this to others when they neither ask nor are interested in it? Graciano felt very small and then the church bell rang. He smiled as lovers do and changed his way. He would no longer return home that night. He would go to his father's house. To the church where, in a small tabernacle, the Lord of all things dwells. She would ask Him for the grace, the help and the consolation to face the next day, with joy, the immense task that God had entrusted to her.

Society without suffering?

In a society in which no value is given to human life that does not enjoy "quality" according to modern standards, it is increasingly necessary to have spotlights, beacons that illuminate and fill meaninglessness with meaning. Finding meaning in suffering helps us to live it in the most humane way possible. That is why it is important to go deeper into this reality. How many times have we heard from our elders, that of "offer it" when we had some setback. Do we understand well what it means?

In our society it is becoming more and more necessary to educate in suffering. To teach children, according to their capacity, that suffering is part of life. It would be naive to think that we can deprive our children of the experience of pain and it is important to show them how to behave in those moments, what to hold on to and how to move forward. It is very frustrating not to know how to deal with one's own pain or the pain of those around us. Talking to children, according to the circumstances and their capacity to understand, without hiding from them what they are going to encounter sooner or later, means giving them the skills to face these moments. It is also surprising how children understand the mystery of pain and how they become strong and empathetic when we help them to face it, and not to deny it as if it did not exist. It is very positive to educate in this area. On the other hand, it is sad to see how many believers do not want to teach their young children about the cross, for fear of damaging their sensitivity. It is even hypocritical in a society where video games and movies are overrun with senseless violence. To teach how to offer up our pain, to support ourselves in prayer, in the recitation of the rosary and the sacraments, in love and in the support of our loved ones. All these tools God has left us so that we can find him in pain.

Christian suffering

It is possible to find joy in pain. It is possible to find hope where there seems to be nothing left to do. And it is possible because Christ exists. Because Christ rose and freed us from death and suffering, assuming them in his plan of redemption. And he did it through obedience. For he was obedient unto death, even death on the Cross. Indeed, there is a relationship between obedience and suffering. And not obedience as mere compliance or passive acceptance. But obedience as affirmation. As a positive action that affirms something greater, even if it is not clear at times: the Love of God in all circumstances and his loving care for each one. Christ was obedient unto death because he loved his own to the extreme. His obedience was perfect, born of Love. He did not limit himself to accepting "what came his way" but went further, seeing in suffering the occasion to affirm something greater: love for his Father in love for mankind.

Christ learned obedience by suffering. This statement is very revealing. Obedience that is born of love, that affirms, demands suffering from us. It demands of us a death to ourselves. It implies to stop looking at ourselves and to look at Him. Paradoxically, this is "easier" in pain. It is easier for us when we have nothing left. When it is only us and Him. We need to be "destroyed" to let Him rebuild us.

We only become like Christ when we allow Him to act in us. And we only let Him act through the experience of dying to ourselves. If we have had this experience, we will understand. For those who have never experienced their own collapse, it is incomprehensible. It is when we lack everything that seemed important to us that we can truly see our heart. What, or rather, Who we need above all.

Suffering, in itself, is an evil and evil is the absence of good. Suffering is the absence of physical and/or spiritual good. The true and greatest suffering is the absence of God, since without Him no good can exist. That is why Jesus Christ conquered suffering on the Cross. Because He assumed it in such a way that in every pain we can identify with Him. In every pain we are with Him. There is no longer complete absence. Nonsense can have meaning, value.

Christ did not eliminate the suffering of man because he respects human freedom and also the nature damaged by sin. Until the hour of Justice and the end of time arrives, we will live with pain and death. Jesus Christ did not eliminate suffering, but he did transform it at its deepest root. He participated in suffering to the extreme, to the point of invading it with his Presence.

Whoever has never asked himself about the value of his own life, it is very difficult to understand the meaning of suffering and death. One dies as one has lived. The problem of today's society is not that it does not value the sick or that it does not respect death because it is "the end", the problem of today's society is above all that it does not value its own existence. We find hardened people who live as if they were mere matter and thus it is very difficult to open a horizon of hope for them. For them everything is over. To these people we should first ask them what is the meaning of their existence in order to open them to find the meaning of their end.

Sometimes we think that God is a genie of the lamp who has to grant us what we desire if we ask hard enough. Hardly anything is preached today about doing God's will, whatever it may be. The whole Bible is permeated with passages inviting the People of God to fulfill God's will. Our life is for God, to fulfill his will. It is true that we can pray to ask for the removal of this or that suffering or for a solution to our problems. But prayer and trust in God must always be oriented to accept his Will. The anger with God, when suffering arrives, is in not wanting to let go of the reins of our life because we want it our way, or in understanding erroneously that suffering is God's command.

As a society we can help a lot. First of all, as we have pointed out, by educating our children from an early age about the meaning of suffering. But also by promoting solidarity, caring for the sick, investing in the training of health personnel, in palliative care... We must change the image that is often shown of the elderly, giving them their space and the importance and value they have in the face of a culture of youth and materialism. We must change the value we give to life, to learn the value of suffering and death.

The authorLucía Simón

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