2/7/2012
Rome, Italy, Feb 7, 2012 / 11:40 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Pope Benedict XVI called upon bishops to respond in a “Christ-like” manner to clerical abuse as part of a “profound renewal” of the Church.
His Feb. 6 comments marked the opening of an international symposium in Rome to discuss the issue. The Pope’s wishes were expressed in a communiqué from Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the Vatican's Secretary of State.
“He (the Pope) asks the Lord that, through your deliberations, many bishops and religious superiors throughout the world may be helped to respond in a truly Christ-like manner to the tragedy of child abuse,” the statement said.
“As His Holiness has often observed, healing for victims must be of paramount concern in the Christian community, and it must go hand in hand with a profound renewal of the Church at every level.”
The “Towards Healing and Renewal” symposium is being organized by Rome’s Pontifical Gregorian University and runs from Feb. 6 - 9. Delegates have arrived come from about 110 bishops’ conferences, along with the superiors of more than 30 religious orders.
The message from Cardinal Bertone said that the Pope “supports and encourages every effort to respond with evangelical charity to the challenge of providing children and vulnerable adults with an ecclesial environment conducive to their human and spiritual growth.”
Pope Benedict urged symposium participants to “continue drawing on a wide range of expertise” to promote “a vigorous culture of effective safeguarding and victim support” throughout the Church.
All bishops’ conferences around the world have until May 2012 to draw up guidelines for dealing with cases of abuse. Those guidelines will then have to be approved by the Vatican. Many countries already have approved guidelines in place.
The symposium was opened on the evening of Feb. 6 with an address from Cardinal William J. Levada, Prefect of the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. His department has handled all alleged cases of abuse since 2001 when his predecessor Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, was in charge of the congregation.
“The Pope has had to suffer attacks by the media over these past years in various parts of the world, when he should receive the gratitude of us all, in the Church and outside it,” Cardinal Levada told delegates.
He outlined how then-Cardinal Ratzinger centralized and streamlined the Vatican’s procedures for dealing with allegations of abuse, while also significantly increasing penalties for those found guilty.
Cardinal Levada also explained how since his election to the papacy in 2005, Pope Benedict XVI has made a priority of implementing best practices for handling abuse allegations around the globe.
The Pope was also praised by Cardinal Levada for meeting with abuse victims during his pastoral visits to England, Malta, Germany, Australia and the United States.
“I think is it hardly possible to overestimate the importance of this example for us bishops, and for us priests, in being available to victims for this important moment in their healing and reconciliation.”
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2/6/2012
Jackson, Miss., Feb 6, 2012 / 06:33 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- A federal court’s dismissal “with prejudice” of a 2002 lawsuit by five U.S. state commissioners against the Holy See shows the Vatican had “nothing to do” with a multi-million dollar criminal scheme against insurance companies, the Holy See’s U.S. attorney Jeffrey Lena said.
The suit charged that the Holy See had engaged in criminal fraud and racketeering in violation of federal law.
The allegations against the Holy See “make good fodder for conspiracy theorists,” said Lena, who added that journalists who “enthusiastically” publicized the allegations should “write with equal vigor upon the cases’ demise.”
State insurance regulators sued the Holy See for $600 million in 2002 in connection with the actions of financier Martin Frankel.
Frankel and his co-conspirators allegedly acquired several insurance companies from 1991 to 1999 in Mississippi, Tennessee, Missouri, Oklahoma and Arkansas and illegally used the companies’ money for his own gain.
The Vatican was first approached by Frankel’s associates under the false pretense that Frankel, who used the pseudonym “David Rosse,” was a wealthy U.S. financier who wanted to donate millions of dollars to the Church to help the poor, Lena said in a Feb. 2 statement.
Frankel proposed the creation and funding of a charitable foundation in the Vatican, allegedly intending to use the foundation in an ongoing scheme to buy insurance companies and illegally exploit them.
“The Holy See categorically rejected the notion that ‘Rosse’ could ever create a Vatican foundation,” Lena said, citing a 1998 letter from then-Holy See Secretary of State Cardinal Angelo Sodano which said no such foundation could ever be created.
Frankel then created a false foundation in the British Virgin Islands named the St. Francis of Assisi Foundation to Serve and Help the Poor and Alleviate Suffering. He claimed the organization was affiliated with the Holy See and that John Paul II had personally authorized the funding.
According to Lena, the Vatican never received any money from Frankel.
“Through these machinations, the Holy See became the unwitting victim of Frankel’s fraud, which sought to trade on the Holy See’s name and reputation to continue to purchase and loot insurance companies,” the attorney commented.
Lena said the lawsuit was filed despite the fact that the Holy See never received money from Frankel.
The lawsuit was not dismissed because of a settlement agreement, he added. Rather, the insurance commissioners filed for dismissal of their own accord.
“As today’s dismissal with prejudice shows, the state insurance regulators’ decision to sue the Holy See for Frankel’s crimes was unsupported by the evidence,” said Lena, who reported that before the lawsuit was filed two government investigations concluded that state insurance regulators had allowed Frankel’s scheme to continue uninterrupted.
Lena suggested that state regulators sued the Holy See despite the findings of the U.S. Government Accounting Office and the Tennessee Comptroller that they bore “much of the blame” for allowing the scheme to continue.
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2/6/2012
Vatican City, Feb 6, 2012 / 01:45 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- The body responsible for the governance of the Vatican City State is denying claims of corruption leveled by its former deputy governor, Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò.
The allegations were made in private correspondence with Pope Benedict XVI and Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the Vatican Secretary of State, in spring 2011, but were only recently leaked to an Italian television station.
“The allegations contained in them cannot but lead to the impression that the Governorate of Vatican City State, instead of being an instrument of responsible government, is an unreliable entity, at the mercy of dark forces,” said an official statement issued Feb. 4.
“After careful examination of the contents of the two letters, the President of the Governorate sees it as its duty to publicly declare that those assertions are the result of erroneous assessments, or fears based on unsubstantiated evidence and are even openly contradicted by the main characters invoked as witnesses.”
The statement is signed by four leading figures involved in the running of the governorate, including the current president, Cardinal-designate Joseph Bertello, and his predecessor, Cardinal Giovanni Lajolo.
The Governorate of Vatican City State is the department responsible for such things as the buildings, maintenance, gardens and museums within the world’s smallest sovereign state. Archbishop Viganò was second-in-command between July 2009 and September 2011.
Since October 2011 he has been the papal nuncio to the United States.
In the leaked letters, which the Vatican has confirmed are authentic, Archbishop Viganò claimed nepotism and mismanagement were rife within the city-state.
In an April 4 letter to Pope Benedict, he alleged that a small number of Italian businesses were gaining the majority of contracts and then billing the Vatican at inflated prices.
“Work was always given to the same companies at costs at least double compared to those charged outside the Vatican,” he told the Pope.
The archbishop gave the example of the annual nativity scene that is built in St. Peter’s Square. His due diligence, he claimed, reduced the cost from $ 718,000 in 2009 to $392,000 in 2010.
He also criticized an unofficial group of Italian bankers, known as the Finance and Management Committee, who advise the Vatican City State on financial matters. In his April 4 letter, he claimed their involvement “resulted more in their own interests than ours,” and said that one recommended transaction “made us lose two and a half million dollars.”
During the two-year tenure of Archbishop Viganò, the governorate’s balance sheet went from running a deficit of $9.8 million in 2009 to a surplus of $28 million in 2010.
In his letters to Pope Benedict, the archbishop argued that it was his commitment to financial transparency that made him internal enemies who were seeking to push him out of the Vatican.
But the Feb. 4 statement from the Governorate of Vatican City State offered a detailed rebuttal of the claims made by Archbishop Viganò.
The statement explained that the budget of the governorate is regularly submitted to the Prefecture for the Economic Affairs of the Holy See and to its “college of international auditors” for scrutiny.
It also attributes the turnaround in the governorate’s financial situation during Archbishop Viganò’s tenure principally to two factors – improved returns from financial investments and “to an even greater extent, to the excellent results of the Vatican Museums.”
The governorate also insisted that it uses “standard bidding procedures” for major work carried out within the Vatican City State, such as the present restoration of the Colonnade of St. Peter’s Square. The bidding process is overseen by the Cardinal President of the Governorate and an “ad hoc” commission. Smaller projects are overseen by the staff of the Vatican’s Directorate of Technical Services or by “well known and well qualified external firms, on the basis of the prices in use in Italy,” the statement said.
The governorate also expressed “complete trust in, and respect for” the members of the Finance and Management Committee, and the governorate’s administrative offices and collaborators.
“All suspicions and accusations have, following careful examination, been shown to be unfounded, as have (almost to the point of seeming laughable) news reports – fruit of a certain kind of highly superficial journalism ….”
It does, however, say that the “implementation of the improvements” suggested by McKinsey management consultancy firm in a report commissioned by Cardinal Lajolo in 2009 will continue to be implemented.
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2/5/2012
Vatican City, Feb 5, 2012 / 12:05 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Faith in the love of Jesus Christ can overcome the suffering of long-term illness, Pope Benedict XVI said in his Sunday Angelus address on Feb. 5.
Just as Jesus faced the devil “with the power of love that was from the Father,” the Pope explained, so also a sick person can “overcome and defeat the test of disease with a heart immersed in the love of God.”
Indeed, he noted, “we all know people who have endured terrible suffering because God gave them a deep serenity.”
Pope Benedict addressed his remarks to thousands of pilgrims braving the cold and snow in St. Peter’s Square. From the window of the papal apartments, he reflected on the day's Gospel, in which Jesus “healed many who were sick with various diseases” and “cast out many demons.”
He observed how the four evangelists – Matthew, Mark, Luke and John – all describe “freedom from disease and illness of any kind, together with preaching, as the main activities of Jesus in his public life.”
While disease is “a sign of the evil in the world and in man,” Christ’s healings show that “the Kingdom of God is near,” and they serve as “a foretaste of his victory obtained by his death and resurrection.”
The Pope recognized that if healing does not arrive swiftly and suffering is prolonged, those who are sick “can remain crushed, isolated,” and even “depressed and dehumanized.”
Appropriate medical treatment is in order and, as the Pope pointed out, “medicine in recent decades has made great strides.”
But he also noted that the “Word of God” teaches “a decisive attitude” toward illness, an attitude which is “that of the faith.”
Even in the face of death, “faith can make possible what is humanly impossible.”
“But faith in what?” the Pope asked, answering that faith in God's love “is the true answer, which radically defeats evil.”
As an example of how to bear illness through the love of God, Pope Benedict highlighted the life and death of Blessed Chiara Badano, an Italian teenager who died in 1990 from an aggressive and painful bone cancer.
Although she was struck “in the bloom of youth,” those who visited her during her illness saw that she manifested “light and trust” through her love for Christ.
The Pope concluded by noting that next Saturday, Feb. 11, is the Feast of Our Lady of Lourdes and also the World Day of the Sick.
On that day, he suggested, believers should imitate people of Jesus' time and “spiritually present to him all the sick people, confident that he wants to and can heal,” while also invoking the intercession of the Virgin Mary “especially in situations of immense suffering and abandonment.”
“Mary, Health of the Sick,” he declared, “pray for us!”
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2/4/2012
Rome, Italy, Feb 4, 2012 / 06:39 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Currently on an “ad limina” visit to the Vatican, Detroit Auxiliary Bishop Arturo Cepeda is taking the Michigan faithful along with him by means of his blog.
“My blog is for all of my people in the Archdiocese of Detroit who can actually follow every single movement that I do,” Bishop Arturo Cepeda told CNA Feb. 3. “I call it a ‘virtual pilgrimage.’”
“So I’m blogging every single day, every meeting I go to. I take pictures and send them to my blog. I’m able to text and tell them what my feelings are and what’s going on.”
Ordained in May 2011 as an auxiliary bishop for Detroit, 42-year-old Bishop Cepeda is making the pilgrimage required of all dioceses every five years to meet with the Pope.
The current visit allows the bishops of Detroit and Cincinnati to update the Pope and the Vatican on the health of the Church in their regions of the U.S.
For Bishop Cepeda, the “updating” goes two ways.
“For example, when I go to meetings with the different Vatican congregations, I give those reading the blog some idea of the issues we’ve just discussed,” he explained.
The auxiliary bishop's relative youth places him in a generation more at ease with the world of new media like Facebook, Twitter, and blogs.
“I’m a product of the 70s, and that was when that particular technological revolution began,” he said, “so I’ve always been on top of all the technological gadgets that are out there and I feel very comfortable with it all – and I believe that our future generations of Catholics feel very comfortable with it too.”
As the Church approaches Pope Benedict XVI’s “Yearof Faith” which begins in October 2012, Bishop Cepeda also believes that such technologies can aid in the “New Evangelization” of the traditionally Christian West.
“I do believe in the new media and I do believe in communication. It’s a gift not only for society but it’s also a gift for our Church.”
“We want to communicate our feelings, we want to communicate our thoughts. We want to communicate faith, and truth, and how the truth can change our culture.”
Recent blog entries by the bishop have covered his Feb. 3 audience with Pope Benedict, as well as the unusually heavy snow covering Rome.
“Let me tell you, I lived here in Rome for five years and never saw snow fall once. So this is the first time I’ve seen snow in my life here in Rome and it is coming down pretty heavy.”
Detroit Catholics, of course, got an update about it at http://aodonline.wordpress.com/.
“I have already taken pictures and sent them to my blog,” Bishop Cepeda said, clutching his smartphone. “I told them: ‘Guess what! Right after our meeting with the Holy Father it began to snow – so it seems that Detroit is following me all the way to Rome!’”
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2/4/2012
Vatican City, Feb 4, 2012 / 06:09 pm (CNA).- The director of the Vatican Observatory said that the Church is open to the scientific theory that the world began from a cosmic explosion billions of years ago.
“The Big Bang is not in contradiction with the faith, ” Father Jose Gabriel Funes said during a Feb. 2 announcement of a Vatican exhibit that will feature photos, research tools and minerals from the Moon and Mars.
The exhibit titled “Stories from another world: The Universe within us and outside us,” will be on display March 10 - July 1 in Pisa, the birthplace of Galileo, the father of modern astronomy.
Fr. Funes told CNA at the event that the Big Bang explanation “is the best theory we have right now about the creation of the universe.”
The theory holds that creation began some 14 billion years ago with a colossal explosion in which space, time, energy and matter were created, and galaxies, stars and planets – which are in continual expansion – came to be.
“We know that God is the creator,” he added, “that He is a good Father who has a providential plan for us, that we are his children, and that we everything we can learn by reason about the origin of the universe is not in contradiction with the religious message of the Bible.”
Fr. Funes said that as an astronomer and a Catholic, he is open to this explanation of the creation of the universe, despite “some yet unanswered questions.”
He noted, for example, that while there is no proof of other intelligent life in the universe, “we cannot rule it out,” since studies show that there are nearly 700 planets orbiting other stars.
“If in the future it was established that life, and intelligent life, exists, which I think would be very difficult, I don’t think this contradicts the religious message of creation because they would also be creatures of God,” he said.
Ultimately, Catholics “should see the cosmos as a gift of God” and should “admire the beauty that exists in the universe.”
“This beauty we see in some way leads us to the beauty of the creator,” he said.
“And also, because God has granted us intelligence and reason, we can find the logos, that rational explanation that exists in the universe that allows us to engage in science as well.”
The Church’s official interest in astronomy dates back to the 16th century. In 1891, Pope Leo XIII decided to officially create the Vatican Observatory to show that the Church is not against scientific development, but rather promotes it.
Since then, the Vatican Observatory has operated out of Castel Gandolfo and uses a telescope located in Tuscon, Arizona, for research.
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2/3/2012
Vatican City, Feb 3, 2012 / 08:03 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Being Catholic in 2012 involves “paying a price” for loving Jesus Christ and his Church, says Archbishop Allen H. Vigneron of Detroit.
“If we are not willing to pay a price for the grace of the revelation then it is a sign that we don’t really treasure it,” the archbishop told CNA Feb. 3.
“And maybe that is what God is asking us to do – to re-appropriate our own conviction about how precious the knowledge of Jesus is to us.”
Archbishop Vigneron is currently in Rome with 16 other bishops from the Provinces of Detroit and Cincinnati to update the Vatican and Pope Benedict on the health of their dioceses. As part of their “ad limina” visit, the group has also made pilgrimages to the tombs of St. Peter and St. Paul.
“When I see those tombs,” said Archbishop Vigneron, “I immediately think of Our Lord’s big recruitment speech to the apostles when he said ‘I am sending you out like lambs in the midst of wolves’ and I imagine them looking around at one another and saying ‘Is he talking to us?’”
And yet, Christ's prediction that “if they rejected me they’ll reject you,” is present for Catholics “in every age” even if “it differs in how it takes its shape,” he said.
He believes that one clear manifestation of this is the Obama administration’s decision to force all health insurance to cover sterilization and contraception services, including abortifacient drugs. The “price to be paid,” he said, could be in terms of religious freedom and also financially.
“If I think about these fines that it seems the government will impose upon us, well that is money I could use in my Catholics schools, it’s money I could use for feeding the hungry, providing services to people with addiction. I expect we’ll have to pay a price like that.”
The one price that Archbishop Vigneron said he will refuse to pay is any violation of Catholic moral teaching. As Cardinal-designate Timothy M. Dolan of New York recently said, “they’ve given us a year to figure out how we can violate our principles – it’s not going to happen.”
On Friday morning, Archbishop Vigneron led the bishops of the Detroit Province as they met with Pope Benedict XVI in a private audience. During the seminar-style discussion, the Pope was asked about how to authentically interpret the Church’s mind as regards the liturgy.
“The Pope’s way of talking about it was to say that the liturgy is the experience of the Church and what should happen is that people experience at the Mass the existence of the Church as it is true through all time. I thought that was a very good way to talk about it,” said Archbishop Vegneron
He added that he has “heard the Pope make this point before. The liturgy isn’t something we do. It’s something we inherit and enter into.”
Archbishop Vigneron said the meeting with the Pope also “confirmed” the bishop’s own intuition “that we really have to focus ourselves on the new evangelization,” which involves giving “intentionally focused energy on bringing the Gospel to people who think they’ve already heard.”
That doesn’t involve “some sort of miracle program,” he contended, but does involve “helping people who are strong in their faith to share their faith.”
The archbishop said he took inspiration from the 19th century English cleric, Cardinal John Henry Newman, who saw faith as growing “from being passed from one heart to another heart.”
In modern society, there is immense opportunity to evangelize those “parts of our culture that look upon the Gospel and Gospel way of life as a burden which they seem to think they are fortunate to have escaped,” he noted.
“What we bring is not an onerous burden – we bring a liberation,” he said, “and people may not know they do want this good news from Jesus but it really is what they’re looking for.”
Archbishop Vigneron and the other bishops conclude their “ad limina” visit on Monday Feb 6. He said they return home full of “new encouragement” after a week that has helped them to “take stock of our lives and to find some new breath to go back to reapply ourselves to our task.”
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2/2/2012
Vatican City, Feb 2, 2012 / 07:16 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Pope Benedict XVI marked the Feast of the Presentation of the Lord with vespers and explained that the presentation of Jesus in the temple reveals Christ as the light of the world.
“In the encounter between the old man Simeon and Mary, a young mother, the Old and New Testaments come together in a wondrous way in giving thanks for the gift of the light that shone in the darkness and has prevented it from prevailing: Christ the Lord.”
The Pope presided over solemn vespers at St Peter’s basilica for the Feast of the Presentation of the Lord, Feb. 2.
The feast recalls the occasion when Mary and Joseph, in observance of Jewish custom, presented their first born son to the priest in the temple in Jerusalem 40 days after his birth.
There they were met by the old priest Simeon who was promised that “he should not see death before he had seen the Lord’s Christ.” It is he who declared the infant to be “the light to enlighten the Gentiles and for glory to your people Israel.”
This “ritual act” of the parents of Jesus is in the “style of humble obscurity that characterizes the Incarnation of the Son of God,” said the Pope.
He noted that the feast is “one of the cases in which the liturgical season reflects the historical because today is precisely 40 days from the feast of Christmas.”
“The theme of Christ the Light, which has characterized the series of Christmas feasts and culminated in the Feast of the Epiphany, is taken up and extended to the celebration today.”
Indeed, one of the traditional names given to today’s feast is “Candlemas” denoting the blessing of candles which often takes place and the candlelit procession that begins and concludes the liturgy of vespers.
Pope Benedict also noted that today is the World Day for Consecrated Life. The term “consecrated” applies to those Christians who have taken public vows of poverty, chastity and obedience. Many monks, nuns and others who live consecrated lives were present in St. Peter’s basilica for vespers.
The Pope told them that the presentation of Jesus “is a significant icon” for those who serve both Church and world “through the evangelical counsels, the characteristic traits of Jesus, chaste, poor and obedient, the Anointed of the Father.”
He recalled how the day had been instituted by Blessed Pope John Paul II in 1987 to give “praise and thanks to the Lord for the gift of this state of life, which belongs to the Church’s holiness.”
He also said that the day is an occasion for those who live the consecrated life to give “testimony” to the world and to “renew and revitalize” their own vocation.
“This we do today, this is the commitment that you are called to carry out every day of your life,” he told them.
He concluded by looking ahead to his Year of Faith which begins in October 2012. He told those living the consecrated life that the “most important and distinctive element” of their existence was their “deep closeness to the Lord” and that this would have a “positive influence” on everybody during the Year of Faith.
His hope was that they will “engage enthusiastically in the new evangelization,” through “the contribution of your gifts, in fidelity to the Magisterium, in order to be witnesses of faith and of grace, credible witnesses for the Church and for the world today.”
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2/2/2012
Vatican City, Feb 2, 2012 / 06:12 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- The Vatican’s Observatory is helping organize an exhibition that will delve into the history of the universe at both the human and celestial levels.
“Stories from another world: The universe inside and outside us,” will run from March 10 to July 1 in the Italian city of Pisa.
“This exhibition will tell the story of the universe outside us, the galaxies and stars, and the universe that is within us,” explained Jesuit Father José Gabriel Funes, Director of the Vatican Observatory, in remarks to CNA on Feb. 2.
The exhibition was announced at the Vatican’s press office this morning. It is being organized in conjunction with the Italian National Institute of Nuclear Physics, Pisa University and the “Palazzo Blu” cultural foundation, which will host the event at their headquarters in Pisa.
“The history of the universe could not be told without our ‘small’ human stories,” said Fr. Funes, a 49-year-old Argentinean priest and astronomer. He believes the city of Pisa has “a privileged place” in this story about the “intersection of cosmic history and human history.”
Pisa is the birthplace of the famous astronomer Galileo Galilei, but it is also the hometown of Cardinal Pietro Maffi. He was both archbishop of the city and president of the Vatican Observatory in the early 20th century.
“Cardinal Maffi lived a dual existence: the world of the Church and that of science,” said Fr. Funes, explaining how the cardinal always saw “an opportunity for cooperation and growth between these two aspects of human experience,” since they work in harmony “in the search for the deeper meaning of human existence.”
Fr. Funes stressed that the complementarity of faith and science is a message Pope Benedict XVI is particularly keen to impart to young people.
He recalled that in 2010 the Pope encouraged school children in the United Kingdom to remember that “every subject you study is part of a broader horizon.”
With that perspective in mind, Fr. Funes said the exhibition will be aimed at young people. It will attempt to “make complex and difficult knowledge accessible, while at the same time avoiding the risk of superficiality.”
Cosimo Bracci Torsi, the President of the “Palazzo Blu” Foundation, told journalists that the event “is the outcome of fruitful collaboration between lay scientists and religious scientists – all members of scientific institutions of great prestige but with very different origins.”
And he promised that the exhibition will include “spectacular images, instruments and exhibits, such as Lunar and Martian minerals.” Torsi said visitors will embark “on a fascinating journey which begins in the solar system and our material nature, reaching the stars of this and other galaxies, up to the spatial and temporal confines of the universe and of our current knowledge.”
Today’s announcement comes only two weeks after Pope Benedict established a new foundation aimed at building a “philosophical bridge” between science and theology. The Science and Faith Foundation will be headquartered within the Vatican, under the auspices of Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi, President of the Pontifical Council for Culture.
“Catholics must see in the cosmos a gift from God,” explained Fr. Funes, adding that everybody, Catholic or otherwise, can clearly “admire the beauty in the universe, the cosmos, beauty that somehow leads us to the beauty of the creator.”
“Also, because God has endowed us with intelligence and reason, we can find the logos, the rational explanation in the universe that allows us to do science ... and which also explains to us the creative plan of God.”
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2/2/2012
Vatican City, Feb 2, 2012 / 01:45 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Nobody is “worthy” of the call of Christ, and yet, Jesus still calls everybody to him, Archbishop Dennis M. Schnurr of Cincinnati said at the tomb of St. Peter on Feb. 1.
Archbishop Schnurr said he often hears young men who think they are called to the priesthood exclaim, “Archbishop, I’m not worthy of that!”
“But that’s the point isn’t it?” he said, “none of us is worthy to be considered an instrument of God shaping his Church, shaping his people, making them into the livings stones upon which the Church is built.”
Yet “in humility we accept that role,” especially since anything can be achieved by a person “filled with Christ and filled with confidence in faith.”
Archbishop Schnurr was joined by 16 other bishops from the Provinces of Detroit and Cincinnati at the start of their ad limina visit to Rome. The visits take their name from the Latin phrase “ad limina apostolorum” (to the threshold of the apostles), which indicates that one of the main purposes for the visits is to pray at the tombs of Sts. Peter and Paul.
Over the next six days the bishops will also meet with Pope Benedict and various Vatican departments to discuss the health of the Church in their dioceses.
As is traditional, the bishops began their visit with Mass at the tomb of St. Peter.
In his homily, Archbishop Schnurr drew inspiration from the numerous papal tombs surrounding the bishops in the crypt, which is situated below the high altar of St. Peter’s Basilica.
“Today as we celebrate Mass in this crypt we realize the call to faith, the faith upon which the Church is built,” he said, noting, “we are surrounded by the mortal remains of individuals who have surrendered their life for the faith and have built up the Church in significant ways.”
He said that many saintly Popes had managed to achieve great things despite their human frailties – including St. Peter.
“We know how his faith was tested and how, in fact, Peter did fail at times.
“But ultimately he triumphed by his martyrdom for the faith,” thanks to the grace he received from Christ, Archbishop Schnurr said.
The example of St. Peter and his successors should remind the bishops that they “are not the ones who are achieving things in our own churches,” he said. Instead, they are “instruments through which Christ is working.”
The bishops will spend their first day of their ad limina in meetings with the Congregations for Bishops, Clergy, and Institutes of Consecrated Life.
The bishops were also treated on the evening of Feb. 1 to a reception at the U.S. Embassy to the Holy See, hosted by Ambassador Miguel Díaz.
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2/1/2012
Vatican City, Feb 1, 2012 / 03:55 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Christians should trust in the loving providence of God, even when going through dark periods in life, Pope Benedict XVI said in his Feb. 1 general audience.
“In prayer we must be able to bring before God our fatigue, the suffering of certain situations and of certain days, our daily struggle to follow him and to be Christians, and even the weight of evil we see within us and around us, because he gives us hope, makes us aware of his nearness and gives us a little light on the path of life,” he said.
Pope Benedict offered his reflections to thousands of pilgrims who gathered in the Vatican’s Paul VI Hall.
His address continued an ongoing series on the subject of prayer and focused on the prayer of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, just prior to his arrest, passion and death.
Jesus’ Company
While Jesus previously withdrew from the crowds and his disciples to pray in the wilderness or on a mountain, the Pope noted that this time Jesus did not want to be alone and called Peter, James and John to be closest to him. They were the same disciples who were chosen by Jesus to be with him during his Transfiguration.
“This proximity of the three during prayer in Gethsemane is significant,” explained the Pope, because “their presence is an invitation to every disciple to draw near to Jesus along the way of the Cross.”
Christ’s Fear and Anguish
Christ’s anguish, the Pope said, is articulated in his words to the three disciples – “My soul is sorrowful even to death. Stay here and watch.” His statement is foreshadowed throughout the Old Testament, the Pope taught, highlighting the suffering of the prophets Elijah and Moses. They experienced the same emotion after “finding hostility, rejection, persecution” following God entrusting certain tasks to them.
In the case of Jesus, his words show that he was experiencing the “fear and anguish at that ‘hour’ … the ultimate profound solitude as God’s plan was being accomplished,” said the Pope.
Christ’s fear and anguish also “summarizes all the horror that man feels at the prospect of his own death, its inexorable certainty and the perception of the burden of evil which affects our lives.”
Praying on the Ground
Jesus then moves away from the disciples and lays on the ground. The Pope noted that Christ’s prostration is “a position for prayer which expresses obedience to the Father’s will, an abandonment of self with complete trust in Him.”
Similarly, this is a position assumed by monks when professing vows, or by bishops, priests and deacons at their ordination. It is also the position priests assume when they begin the service for Christ’s passion on Good Friday. As a posture it expresses “in prayer, even bodily, complete reliance on God,” said the Pope.
Christ then asks that, if possible, he be spared his impending ordeal. “Abba, Father, for you all things are possible; remove this cup from me; yet, not what I want but what you want.”
Pope Benedict explained that this episode “is not just the fear and anguish of man in the face of death.” It is also the “distress of the Son of God Who sees the terrible accumulation of evil He must take upon Himself, in order to overcome it and deprive it of power.”
Revealing Passages
The Pope then highlighted three “revealing passages,” contained in this particular Gospel scene.
He first said that Jesus’ use of the Aramaic word “Abba,” which was used by children to informally address their fathers, expresses “Jesus relationship with God the Father, a relationship of tenderness, affection and trust.”
Jesus also teaches people about his Father’s omnipotence, the Pope noted, when he makes “a request in which, once again, we see the drama of Jesus’ human will in the face of death and evil.”
Most importantly, said the Pope, we see that ultimately Christ’s “human will adheres fully to the divine will.” In doing so “Jesus tells us that only by conforming their will to the divine will can human beings achieve their true stature and become ‘divine.’”
Pope Benedict said that if Christians pray the Our Father and ask that God’s will is done, “a little of heaven” is brought to earth as a “place where love, goodness, truth and divine beauty are present” but “only if the will of God is done.”
He concluded by telling the pilgrims that in daily prayer they “must learn to have greater trust in Divine Providence, to ask God for the strength to abandon our own selves in order to renew our ‘yes,’ to repeat to Him ‘your will be done,’ to conform our will to His.”
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1/31/2012
Vatican City, Jan 31, 2012 / 09:28 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- The bishops of several southern U.S. states say they are returning home from their “ad limina” visit to Rome refreshed and ready to evangelize.
“I think we just felt so energized by being present with the Holy Father,” Archbishop Thomas J. Rodi of Mobile, Ala. told CNA on Jan. 27.
“He is such a gracious man, a great man, a welcoming man. And I just feel very affirmed in my role as a bishop and now look forward to returning to Alabama so I can share that with the people of God.”
Archbishop Rodi and 21 of his fellow bishops have been in Rome since Jan. 22 for discussions with Pope Benedict and Vatican officials on the health of the Church in their dioceses. The group comes from the states of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee and Kentucky. They are the fifth delegation of U.S. bishops to visit to Rome in recent months, and on Feb. 1 they will return home.
“The Holy Father is obviously very concerned by evangelization in our world that is becoming increasingly secular and at the same time so hungry for the Word of God,” said Archbishop Rodi, who was part of a group that met Pope Benedict on Jan. 27.
“He made it so beautifully clear,” recalled Archbishop Rodi, “that the foundation of evangelization must be the calling of people into a personal relationship with Christ – those were his words, a personal relationship with Christ.”
He said the Pope told them that he knows their “flocks are small but they are important,” and that he wants them to be welcoming all those who seek to enter the Catholic Church.
Bishop Robert Baker of Birmingham, Ala. said the meeting with Pope Benedict gave him inspiration for the forthcoming Year of Faith, which begins Oct. 2012.
“I mentioned to him that he has already written encyclicals on hope and on charity and that we look forward to his next one on faith so that trilogy shall be complete,” he said.
Bishop Baker explained how his diocese is already “cranking up in different ways,” ahead of the Year of Faith. The diocese’s preparations include the creation of a new “catechetical institute” to help certify those who teach the Catholic faith in schools and elsewhere.
Pope Benedict was also eager to hear from Bishop Baker about the Eternal Word Television Network, the global Catholic broadcaster based in the Diocese of Birmingham.
He said the Pope was particularly interested in the “efforts towards the new evangelization that are going on through EWTN.”
Pope Benedict also asked Bishop Baker to encourage the station in its “continued collaboration with the Holy Father, the Vatican and bishops across the United States.”
Bishop Baker explained to Pope Benedict how “the flavor of Catholicism in the South is drastically changed” because of the increased numbers of Latinos migrating to the area in recent years.
He related to the Pope how the local Church has stood in solidarity with the immigrant population, particularly over proposed new immigration laws in Alabama which he feels need to be “softened in terms of religious freedom.”
They also discussed the challenge that changing demographics present to the Church’s mission to evangelize.
“It calls us bishops into responding ourselves by learning Spanish and about the cultures of Latin America. And then having our priests and seminarians learn the Spanish language, too,” said Bishop Baker.
The challenge is “not just to learn the language but embrace the peoples and the cultures,” he explained.
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1/29/2012
Vatican City, Jan 29, 2012 / 04:51 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- The power of Jesus Christ is manifested in humble service and love, Pope Benedict XVI said in his Sunday Angelus address on Jan. 29.
“For man, authority often means possession, power, control, success,” the Pope said to thousands of pilgrims gathered in St. Peter's Square.
“For God, however, authority means service, humility, love,” he continued, “it means entering into the logic of Jesus who stoops to wash the disciples’ feet, who seeks the true good of man, who heals wounds, who is capable of a love so great as to give up his life, because he is Love.”
The Pope’s made his comments as part of a reflection on today’s Gospel reading in which an unclean spirit identifies Jesus Christ as the “Holy One of God,” during his travels in Galilee. The Pope observed how Jesus heals both spiritually and physically through his teaching and miracles.
“In a short time, his fame spread throughout the region, which he travels announcing the Kingdom of God and healing the sick of all kinds: word and action.”
He then quoted the fifth-century Church father St. John Chrysostom, who noted that Jesus “alternates the speech for the benefit of those who listen, moving on from wonders to words and again passing from the teaching of his doctrine to miracles.”
The Pope suggested that Jesus’ use of words immediately opened up most of those listening to “the will of the Father and the truth about themselves.” However, the scribes who “struggled to interpret the Holy Scriptures with countless reflections” were not open to his words.
Therefore, Jesus also united to his words to miraculous actions as “signs of deliverance from evil,” the pontiff explained. He further recalled how St. Athanasius, the third-century Church father, would say that the “commanding and driving out demons is not human but divine work” and demonstrates how Jesus “distanced men from all diseases and infirmities.”
“Divine authority is not a force of nature." Instead, it is “the power of the love of God who created the universe and, in becoming incarnate in His only begotten Son, in coming down to our humanity, heals the world corrupted by sin.”
Pope Benedict finished with a quotation from Romano Guardini, the 20th-century Italian-German philosopher and theologian, who wrote that “the whole life of Jesus is a translation of power in humility ... Here is the sovereignty that lowers itself to the form of a servant.”
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1/28/2012
Rome, Italy, Jan 28, 2012 / 07:03 am (CNA).- U.S. Military Archbishop Timothy P. Broglio says the collapse of Iraq’s Christian population is among the legacies of America's invasion in 2003.
“Yes, you can say in a certain sense that the invasion of Iraq did provoke this tremendous diminution of the Christian population in that country. And what the future holds, that still remains to be seen,” the archbishop for the armed forces told CNA during his visit to Rome on Jan. 16.
His comments come only a month after the final pull-out of U.S. troops from Iraq, where they remained following the invasion that toppled dictator Saddam Hussein. Aid agencies estimate that over the course of eight years, the Catholic population of Iraq fell from over 800,000, to less than 150,000 now
Archbishop Broglio believes Catholicism suffered after the invasion because of a perceived closeness to its previous ruler. He said Saddam Hussein tended “to trust Catholics, and gave them positions of responsibility.” One prominent Iraqi Catholic was Hussein’s Foreign Minister Tarik Aziz.
And even if Catholics “weren’t particularly part of the regime, they became identified with the regime,” Archbishop Broglio said.
“Before, they were a minority that was protected, but now they are a minority that is not protected.”
As President Barack Obama withdrew the last U.S. troops from Iraq on Dec. 15, he said they were leaving behind a “sovereign, stable and self-reliant,” country.
But there are signs that Iraqi Christians' plight has worsened since then.
“At a time of increased political instability, we continue to receive disturbing reports,” said John Pontifex of Aid to the Church in Need on Jan. 20.
He said an attack took place earlier in the month against security personnel outside the residence of Kirkuk's Archbishop Louis Sako.
Archbishop Sako, who was indoors at the time, told Aid to the Church in Need that the situation is less stable now that U.S. troops are gone, with much of the turmoil stemming from the power struggle between Sunni and Shiite Muslims.
Pontifex says there is a “ticking bomb regarding Christianity in Iraq.”
“Few Christians, no matter how deep their roots are in the local society, feel able to withstand the pressure to leave.”
Fear of an attack forced Archbishop Sako to cancel the Chaldean Catholics' midnight Christmas celebration last month. Services were moved to the daytime, and Christians were warned not to display decorations outside their homes.
Nevertheless, it appears that many of the Catholics who fled Iraq would return if safety improved.
Monsignor John Kozar, president of the Catholic Near East Welfare Association, recently spoke of the “strong determination” some Iraqi Catholics have to go back home. He recently visited Jordan, where many Christians from Iraq now reside.
“I think they have a yearning to return to the homeland, and that homeland for them means practicing their Chaldean-rite Christianity,” the monsignor said. “That has become very, very important to them.”
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1/27/2012
Vatican City, Jan 27, 2012 / 07:26 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Archbishop Zygmunt Zimowski told those affected by leprosy that God's love will never fail them.
In statement for the 59th World Leprosy Day, which will be observed on Jan. 29, the archbishop addressed survivors of the disease and those still suffering from it around the globe.
“He who is in suffering and … prays to the Lord is certain that God's love will never abandon him,” the Archbishop told those who are suffering from the disease.
Archbishop Zimowski, who heads the Pontifical Council for Health Care Workers, said that those currently being treated for leprosy can and must “express all the riches of their dignity and spirituality.” He also counseled them to be in solidarity with others who have been “equally afflicted and have been marked indelibly by this infection.”
Those who have been cured of the disease can “communicate their gratitude in a practical way” by providing moral support to those still suffering from leprosy and contributing to the identification and prevention of the disease, he said.
“Those who have attained a cure can in this way communicate all their interior riches ... as people touched by suffering and involved in working for the health of the community to which they belong.”
Leprosy, which is also called Hansen’s Disease, has not been eradicated from the modern world, although it continues to decrease every year. The World Health Organization estimated a total of about 200,000 cases in 2010 – 2011.
Archbishop Zimowski said that God's love and the love of the Church, which is an extension of God's work, “will never fail” them.
Pope Benedict XVI recently chose the gospel passage of Luke 17:19, “Stand and go; your faith has saved you” as the theme for the 20th World Day of the Sick, to be held on Feb. 11.
The archbishop pointed out that those afflicted by leprosy can find particular comfort in the Pope's scripture selection because it speaks of Christ's healing of the 10 lepers who were “readmitted to the community and reintegrated into the social occupational fabric.”
He expanded on the scripture passage by pointing out that the leper who returned to thank Jesus showed that “reacquired health is a sign of something more precious that mere physical healing.” The healing that the leper experienced was also a sign of salvation through Christ.
Archbishop Zimowski noted the many volunteer organizations that have helped in reducing the number of cases of leprosy, especially the Raoul Follereau Foundation based in Bologna, Italy.
He urged those involved in treating leprosy to fight against the disease and to continue their work “tenaciously” to reduce relapse cases.
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