By Junno Arocho Esteves
VATICAN CITY (CNS) – The Synod of Bishops for the Amazon will help the Catholic Church make its presence felt and voice heard in a region that is dangerously approaching “a point of no return,” said the special secretaries of the synod.
“It is a great and continuing challenge for the Catholic Church to make the original Amazonian peoples feel part of it and contribute to it with the light of Christ and the spiritual richness that shines in their cultures,” Cardinal-designate Michael Czerny and Bishop David Martinez De Aguirre Guinea wrote in an article published Sept. 12 in La Civilta Cattolica, the Jesuit journal.
Cardinal-designate Czerny, undersecretary of the Migrants and Refugee Section of the Vatican Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development, and Bishop Martinez, apostolic vicar of Puerto Maldonado, Peru, said the synod will take place at a time when “both human and natural life are suffering serious and perhaps irreversible destruction.”
The synod, scheduled for Oct. 6-27, will focus on “Amazonia: New paths for the church and for an integral ecology.”
The Amazon rainforest includes territory belonging to nine countries in South America and has experienced significant deforestation, negatively impacting the indigenous populations in the area and leading to a loss of biodiversity.
As special secretaries, Cardinal-designate Czerny and Bishop Martinez will assist Brazil’s Cardinal Claudio Hummes, synod relator general, in providing a comprehensive outline of the synod’s theme at the beginning of the meeting and summarizing the speeches of synod members before work begins on concrete proposals for the pope.
In the article, titled “Why the Amazon merits a synod,” the prelates said that the synod for the Amazon is an effort to implement “’Laudato Si’ in this fundamental human and natural environment.”
Much like Pope Leo XIII’s 1891 encyclical “Rerum Novarum” recognized the exploitation of workers in the early days of the industrial revolution, Pope Francis’ observations on the “gross inequality and cruel marginalization” caused by financial and consumerist greed call “for a new attitude toward nature and the social environment.”
“This new synthesis is a wake-up call to the entire world, to all of humanity,” they wrote. “But it also suggests a new socio-pastoral orientation and dynamic for the church, which must understand the challenges faced by individuals and families and groups within these various dimensions.”
However, Cardinal-designate Czerny and Bishop Martinez wrote that the church “cannot give spiritual guidance and pastoral care if people are understood in isolation from – i.e. not integrated with – how they live and function within the actual natural, economic and social conditions that they face.”
They also noted that the crisis facing the region is not limited only to environmental problems such as pollution, privatization of natural goods and trafficking.
“Mercantilism, secularization, the throwaway culture and the idolatry of money” coupled with decreasing numbers of priests and religious “is endangering the presence of the Catholic Church among the indigenous peoples of the Amazon.”
Such challenges, they added, require a response that moves from a “ministry of visits to a ministry of presence.”
“This is why, during the October Synod, the entire world should walk with the people of the Amazon; not to expand or divert the agenda, but to help the synod to make a difference,” the prelates wrote. “The Amazon region is huge, and its challenges are immense. If destroyed, the impacts will be felt worldwide.”

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MANITOWOC, WI – The Congregation of the Franciscan Sisters of Christian Charity, Manitowoc, WI, re-elected Sister Natalie Binversie as Community Director on June 24, 2019. Bishop David Ricken, of the Diocese of Green Bay, presided over the election. Sister Natalie, from St. Gregory Parish in St. Nazianz, served one six-year term from 2013 to 2019. Previous to being Community Director, she was a teacher in the primary grades and Novice Directress.
Four Sisters were elected to serve on the General Administration Council. First Councilor is Sister Myra Jean Sweigart and the Treasurer General for the Congregation. Sister Myra Jean, from Cambridge, OH, served one six year term and was re-elected for another six years. Sister also has a background in elementary education as teacher and principal.
Second Councilor is Sister Theresa Feldkamp from Wrightstown, WI, who was re-elected for a second six-year term. Sister Theresa served as an elementary school teacher and principal before being elected to Community leadership.

Sister Leonette Kochan, originally from Francis Creek, WI, was elected Third Councilor. Sister Leonette was missioned in Tucson, AZ where she served as principal of Santa Cruz Catholic School and most recently was Coordinator of the Office of Human Life and Dignity in the Diocese of Tucson.
The Fourth Councilor elected is Sister Jane Kinate from Wrightstown, WI. Sister Jane has been in the field of education all of her life and a teacher at Roncalli High School in Manitowoc for the past 20 years.
Installation services for the General Administration of the Franciscan Sisters of Christian Charity were held on July 21, 2019 at Holy Family Convent in Manitowoc. The Franciscan Sisters of Christian Charity were founded 150 years ago on November 9, 1869 in Manitowoc, Wisconsin. The Sisters presently serve at St. Francis of Assisi Catholic School and Parish in Greenwood, Mississippi. Missions where the Sisters serve outside of Mississippi are located in Arizona, Michigan, Missouri, Nebraska, Ohio and Wisconsin.

WESTPHALIA, TEXAS – A statue of Mary is seen amid flames through a window in the Church of the Visitation in Westphalia, Texas, July 29, 2019. The nearly 125-year old wooden church with bell towers on each side, burned to the ground that morning. Since 1883 the parish has served the Catholic community of southwestern Falls County, many of whom are descendents of immigrants from the northwest German region of Westphalia. (CNS photo/courtesy Nathan Wilde)

By Catholic News Service
PARIS, France – The archbishop of Paris wore a hard hat as he celebrated the first Mass in Notre Dame Cathedral since a huge blaze devastated the landmark building in April.
The Mass was celebrated in the Chapel of the Virgin June 15 by Archbishop Michel Aupetit to mark the anniversary of the consecration of the cathedral’s altar, an event that usually takes place June 16 each year.
About 30 invited guests – mostly clergy, cathedral employees and building contractors – wore protective headgear because of dangers of falling masonry, although the Virgin chapel, situated behind the choir, had been designated as safe.
In his homily, Archbishop Aupetit did not mention the fire but stressed the purpose of Notre Dame as a place of Christian worship, and not an ornament of the secular state.

He said the building could never be reduced to a cultural or “patrimonial good” and warned the congregation that if Jesus was removed as the cornerstone, it would collapse in a spiritual rather than a physical sense.
The cathedral would simply be an “empty shell, a jewelry box without riches, a skeleton without life, a body without a soul,” the archbishop said.
“The cathedral is born of the faith of our ancestors,” he said during the Mass, which was broadcast by KTO, a French Catholic TV channel.
“This cathedral is born of the Christian hope, which perceives well beyond a small self-centered personal life to enter a magnificent project at the service of all, projecting well beyond a single generation.”
“It is also born of charity since, open to all, it is the refuge of the poor and the excluded who found there their protection,” he added. “Are we ashamed of the faith of our ancestors? Are we ashamed of Christ?”
The cathedral was most significantly a mirror of “the living stones” of the members of the church who worship there, he said.
“Can ignorance or ideology really separate culture from worship?” asked Archbishop Aupetit. “Let me put this bluntly – culture without worship becomes a negative culture.
“You only have to look at the abysmal religious ignorance of our contemporaries because of the exclusion of any divine notion and the very name of God in the public sphere by invoking a secularism that excludes any visible spiritual dimension,” he said.
The cathedral has been closed since April 15, when it was engulfed by fire that destroyed its spire and much of its vaulted ceiling.
French President Emmanuel Macron wants the cathedral rebuilt in five years, but Culture Minister Franck Riester told French radio June 14 that so far just 80 million euros of the 850 million euros pledged has been received, with most of it coming from small donations.
He said the cathedral, originally built in the 12th and 13th centuries, remained in a “fragile state,” with unsecured sections of the vaulted roof still in danger of collapse.

By Junno Arocho Esteves
VATICAN (CNS) – Too often when Catholics try to talk to young people about vocational discernment, “it’s as if we were speaking Esperanto to them, because they don’t understand a thing,” Pope Francis said.
Bishops, pastors, religious and other adults must learn to speak young people’s language and must avoid exercising undue pressure on young men and women to enter a seminary or join a religious order, the pope said June 6 at a gathering of people doing vocations work in Europe.
With the advent of new technologies and social media, he added, young people today know how to contact others, “but they do not communicate.” “Communicating is perhaps the challenge that we have with young people,” the pope said. “Communication; communion; we must teach them that computers are good, yes; to have some form of contact, but this isn’t language. This is a ‘gaseous’ language. The true language is to communicate, to speak.”
Participants in the Congress for the Pastoral Care of Vocations in Europe were in Rome to study ways to implement the recommendations made during the Synod of Bishops on young people and vocational discernment in October.
Departing from his prepared speech, the pope said he preferred to speak “a bit off the cuff with what comes from my heart.”
Citing the words of Pope Benedict XVI, Pope Francis said the “church grows through attraction, not proselytism” and recalled a time when several Italian religious orders went to the Philippines in the early 1990s to search for vocations to bring back to Italy.
Seeking vocations “isn’t about looking where to take people like those nuns” who would “go there and brought girls here,” he said. “I wanted to clear this up because the spirit of proselytism hurts us.” Instead, the church must help young people learn how “to dialogue with the Lord” and how to ask him, ‘What do you want from me?’”
“This is important, it is not an intellectual conviction,” the pope said. “No, the choice of a vocation must be born from dialogue with the Lord, no matter what their vocation is.”
Young people, he said, must be helped to get to the point where they can say, “The Lord inspires me to go forward this way in life, on this path.” Pope Francis said helping young people discern their vocation is tiring work and requires “so much patience and a great capacity to listen.”
“It isn’t easy, it isn’t easy, but you can’t go forward with preconceived notions or purely doctrinal impositions, in the good sense of the word: ‘You must do this!’” the pope said. “No, you must accompany, guide and help so that the encounter with the makes them see what their path in life is.”

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