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.”

(Follow Arocho on Twitter: @arochoju)

By Carol Glatz
VATICAN CITY (CNS) – Pope Francis has revised and clarified norms and procedures for holding bishops and religious superiors accountable in protecting minors as well as in protecting members of religious orders and seminarians from abuse.
The new juridical instrument is meant to help bishops and religious leaders around the world clearly understand their duties and church law, underlining how they are ultimately responsible for proper governance and protecting those entrusted to their care. For this reason, the new document establishes a clearer set of universal procedures for reporting suspected abuse, carrying out initial investigations and protecting victims and whistleblowers.

The new document, given “motu proprio,” on the pope’s own initiative, was titled “Vos estis lux mundi” (“You are the light of the world”), based on a verse from the Gospel of St. Matthew (5:14).
“The crimes of sexual abuse offend Our Lord, cause physical, psychological and spiritual damage to the victims and harm the community of the faithful,” the pope said in the document, released by the Vatican May 9. The norms go into effect June 1.
In order to stop all forms of abuse from ever happening again, not only is “a continuous and profound conversion of hearts” necessary, there must be “concrete and effective actions that involve everyone in the church,” he wrote.
Cardinal Marc Ouellet, prefect of the Congregation for Bishops, said the new norms ascribe a new role to heads of dioceses by making them responsible for alerting the proper Vatican authorities of all forms of suspected abuse, including the possession, distribution or creation of pornography involving a minor.
He told Vatican News May 9 that the norms respond to Pope Francis’ continued insistence for concrete and effective measures to ensure bishops and religious superiors have a very clear understanding of what their obligations are and what they should and should not do when it comes to safeguarding.
It also requires all priests and religious to report suspected abuse or cover-ups and encourages any lay person to report through a now-mandated reporting “system” or office in each diocese.
How the office or “system” works will be up to each diocese, but “the idea is that anyone who has suffered abuse can have recourse to the local church, while being assured they will be well received, protected from retaliation, and that their reports will be treated with the utmost seriousness,” Andrea Tornielli, editorial director of the Dicastery for Communication, told Vatican News.
The new norms now stipulate:
– Procedures for the investigation of bishops, cardinals, patriarchs, religious superiors and all those who lead – even temporarily – a diocese or particular church, including personal prelatures and personal ordinariates.
– Leaders will be held accountable not only with suspected cases of committing abuse themselves, but also accusations of having interfered with, covered up or failed to address abuse accusations they were aware of.
– When the accused individual is a bishop, the metropolitan will receive a mandate from the Holy See to investigate or delegate a person in charge of the preliminary investigation. A status report must be sent to the Holy See every 30 days, and the investigation completed with 90 days with some exceptions. Vatican offices are also held to specific timeframes and prompt action.
– By June 2020, every diocese in the world must create an office or “public, stable and easily accessible systems” for reporting suspected abuse against a minor or vulnerable person, failure of compliance of abuse guidelines by bishops or superiors, and cases of interference or cover-ups in either a civil or canonical investigation of suspected abuse.
– All priests and religious that become aware of abuse or its cover-up must alert their bishop or religious superior promptly.
– A minor is anyone under the age of 18 and a vulnerable person is “any person in a state of infirmity, physical or mental deficiency, or deprivation of personal liberty which, in fact, even occasionally, limits their ability to understand or to want to otherwise resist the offense.”
– The definition of child pornography as any representation of a minor, regardless of the media used, “involved in explicit sexual activities, whether real or simulated, and any representation of sexual organs of minors for primarily sexual purposes.”
– Bishops and religious superiors will be accountable not just for protecting minors against abuse but also for protecting seminarians, novices and members of religious orders from violence and sexual abuse stemming from an abuse of power. The norms apply to reports of “delicts against the sixth commandment” regarding clerics or members of religious orders and “forcing someone, by violence or threat or through abuse of authority, to perform or submit to sexual acts.”
– Those who report abuse cannot be subjected to pressure, retaliation and discrimination or told to keep silent. The seal of confession, however, remains inviolable and is not affected by the new norms.
– Procedures for carrying out the preliminary investigation include the bishop immediately requesting from the Vatican that he or a delegate be assigned to begin the preliminary investigation. If he considers an accusation is unfounded, the papal nuncio is informed. The Vatican will have 30 days to respond to the request and the bishop sends a status report to the Vatican every 30 days.
– When the investigation is complete, the bishop sends the results to the proper Vatican office, which then follows existing canon law.
– The continued obligation to respect civil laws regarding mandatory reporting.
– Those who reported suspected abuse or cover-up will be told of the outcome of the investigation if they request to be informed.
– A fund can be set up by bishops’ conferences, synods and church provinces to cover the costs of investigations.
The document is a follow-up to Pope Francis’ 2016 document, “As a Loving Mother,” on transparency and accountability of bishops and religious superiors.
The two documents together are meant to correct what had been a lack of or unclear procedures for investigating the way a bishop complies with already established norms against abuse and clearly expressing the consequences of noncompliance or cover-ups.

Bishop Kopacz comments on papal motu proprio

We welcome and celebrate the universal law enacted by Pope Francis to strengthen and support the Church’s commitment to protect children and vulnerable adults throughout the world. The law, Vos estis lux mundi, contains many of the provisions already enacted through the Dallas Charter in the United States so the Diocese of Jackson has already implemented almost all of the provisions included.
The Diocese of Jackson has a system for reporting abuse. It publicizes the reporting protocol throughout the year. It has an independent review board which includes lay members. That board has a policy to report to civil authorities – recognizing that law enforcement agencies are the proper responders for these cases.
The diocese provides psychological and pastoral care to victim survivors, using certified trauma therapists. This diocese goes even further, providing ongoing formation to priests, parish leaders and staff in how to spot and prevent abuse. The Office of Child Protection conducts background screenings on everyone who serves in parishes and schools.
The diocese welcomes the new provision in this law, which calls for accusations against bishops to go to the archbishop of a province. In this diocese, that would be Archbishop Thomas J. Rodi in the Archdiocese of Mobile. The Archbishop released his own statement about implementing this new provision which can be found here: https://bit.ly/2E8hhlB.
We affirm our Promise to Protect and our Pledge to Heal the damage caused by the sexual abuse crisis in the Church. We rejoice in efforts to thoughtfully and prayerfully evaluate policies on the local and global level and will continue to do all we can to participate in this much-needed process.