Where silence should reign: Pope will pray, not speak, at Auschwitz

Posted on July 8, 2016 by Mississippi Catholic

By Cindy Wooden
VATICAN CITY (CNS) – Tears and not words. Prayers and not greetings.
During his trip to Poland for World Youth Day, Pope Francis will go to the Auschwitz-Birkenau Nazi death camp. He said he wants to go alone and say nothing.
When Pope Francis speaks, he can delight fans and frustrate critics. He can wax poetic or be bluntly funny about human quirks.
But in the face of great suffering and horror, his first and strongest inclinations are silence, a profoundly bowed head and hands clasped tightly in prayer.
Pope Francis had asked that there be no speeches during his visit to Armenia’s genocide memorial June 25. At times, even the prayer service there with the Armenian Apostolic patriarch seemed too wordy. An aide gently cupped his elbow when it was time to end the silent reflection and begin the service.
The Vatican’s schedule for the pope’s visit to Auschwitz-Birkenau July 29 had him giving a speech at the international monument at Birkenau, just as St. John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI did.
But on the flight back to Rome from Armenia, Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi, Vatican spokesman, told Pope Francis, “I heard that you want to live that moment more with silence than words.”
The pope responded by reminding reporters that in 2014 when he went to Redipuglia in northern Italy to mark the 100th anniversary of World War I, “I went in silence,” walking alone among the graves. “Then there was the Mass and I preached at Mass, but that was something else.”
Speaking about his planned visit to Auschwitz-Birkenau, “I would like to go to that place of horror without speeches, without crowds – only the few people necessary,” he said. “Alone, enter, pray. And may the Lord give me the grace to cry.”
Father Lombardi confirmed June 30 that the official program had been changed and the pope would not give a speech at the death camp. But it is not that Pope Francis has nothing to say about the horror of the Shoah, the importance of remembering it and the need to continue fighting anti-Semitism.
“The past must be a lesson to us for the present and the future,” he said Jan. 17 during a visit to Rome’s synagogue. “The Shoah teaches us that maximum vigilance is always needed in order to intervene quickly in defense of human dignity and peace.”
In the book “On Heaven and Earth,” written in 2010 with Rabbi Abraham Skorka, the future pope and rabbi discussed the Holocaust at length.
While the question “Where was God” is an important theological and human question, the pope said, “Where was man?” is an even bigger question. “The Shoah is genocide, like the others of the 20th century, but it has a distinctive feature,” an “idolatrous construction” in which the Nazis claimed to be god and embracing true evil tried to eradicate Judaism.
“Each Jew that they killed was a slap in the face to the living God,” the future pope wrote.
In a very formal, very solemn commemoration, Pope Francis visited the Shoah memorial, Yad Vashem, in Israel in 2014. He laid a wreath of flowers in memory of the 6 million Jews murdered by the Nazis, clasped his hands and stood in silence before slowly walking back to his place. He met six survivors of Nazi camps, kissing their hands in a sign of deference and recognition of their suffering.
Protocol for the occasion required a speech and, led to the podium, Pope Francis spoke softly, reflecting on the question of “Where was man?” and how could human beings have sunk so horribly low.
In his speech, he prayed to God, “Grant us the grace to be ashamed of what we men have done, to be ashamed of this massive idolatry, of having despised and destroyed our own flesh which you formed from the earth, to which you gave life with your own breath of life. Never again, Lord, never again!”
“Here we are, Lord, shamed by what man, created in your own image and likeness, was capable of doing,” he said. “Remember us in your mercy.”
After finishing the speech, the pope stood in silence at the lectern for almost three minutes, writing in the Yad Vashem guestbook.
His message: “With shame for what man, who was created in the image of God, was able to do; with shame for the fact that man made himself the owner of evil; with shame that man made himself into god and sacrificed his brothers. Never again! Never again!”
(Editor’s note: Mississippi Catholic would like to hear from any pilgrims from the Diocese of Jackson who are planning to attend World Youth Day. Send photos and reflections to editor@mississippicatholic.com.)

Catholic press faces ‘double mandate’

Posted on June 22, 2016 by Mississippi Catholic

By Julie Asher
ST. LOUIS (CNS) – Catholic communicators “have a double mandate: the First Amendment of the Constitution and the Gospel,” Greg Erlandson told the Catholic Media Conference in St. Louis.
Erlandson, former president and publisher of Our Sunday Visitor, (OSV) received the Bishop John England Award June 2 from the Catholic Press Association of the United States and Canada.
“These are perilous times,” he said in his acceptance remarks. “We are looking at competing ideological agendas that too often are incompatible with the Gospel and that too often threaten the weakest among us – both born and unborn – the undocumented, the terminally ill, the poor and neglected.”
Catholic communicators’ vocation “is to be their voice,” said Erlandson. “Our vocation is to be the voice of the church. That is our responsibility and our privilege.”
Our Sunday Visitor, based in Huntington, Indiana, was founded 104 years ago “to be a voice for the church and the rights of Catholics.” he said.
He said that in that role, he “sought to defend the church’s right to speak out on all the issues of the day, to defend the church’s right to participate in the debates that animate the public square, but to do so without rancor or histrionics, to do so without blinders or defensiveness, but in the spirit of loyalty, honesty and intelligence that I hope has defined all that we published.”
In editorials and articles, OSV Newsweekly “has spoken out in defense of religious liberty and supported – both in court and in our pages – the opposition to the HHS (Health and Human Services) mandate regarding contraception, sterilization and abortion-inducing drugs. We have addressed religious freedom issues worldwide, and defended the rights of migrants and refugees.”
The publication also has addressed the sex abuse crisis, he said, “both saluting the church for the policies it has instituted in the wake of the crisis, but also addressing the failures of leadership that occurred and that so wounded our church.”
He noted the publication’s defense of Catholic organizations “that have endured unjust attack,” he said, pointing in particular to Catholic Relief Services, the U.S. bishops’ overseas relief and development agency. CRS “has been the target of malicious and shameful witch hunts,” Erlandson said.
The England award is named for the Irish-born bishop of Charleston, South Carolina, who founded The Catholic Miscellany in 1822. As publisher of the newspaper, Bishop England defended separation of church and state, saying it was good for both entities. He also espoused freedom of religion. Presented annually, the award recognizes publishers in the Catholic press for the defense of First Amendment rights, such as freedom of the press and freedom of religion. It is the CPA’s highest award for publishers.
In 2015, Erlandson received the CPA’s St. Francis de Sales Award.
Mississippi Catholic production manager and creative services coordinator Contyna McNealy was recognized at this year’s Catholic Media Conference with a second place award for the design of the diocesan Saltillio Mission collection ad. Editor Maureen Smith attended the conference on behalf of the department of communications.

International deacons gather in Rome, share reflections on ministry, challenges

Posted on June 9, 2016 by Mississippi Catholic

By Cindy Wooden
ROME (CNS) – Thousands of permanent deacons and their wives began their Year of Mercy celebration by cutting straight to the heart of what it means to be a deacon, how the ministry impacts their families and the challenge of explaining their vocation to others, including bishops and priests.
The pilgrims divided into language groups and hundreds of English-, German- and Portuguese-speaking deacons and their families gathered May 27 at Rome’s Basilica of Santa Maria Sopra Minerva.
Whether alone or with their wives, dressed in clerical collars or T-shirts because of the afternoon heat, they began sharing experiences of formation, homiletics training and ministry assignments even before the formal program began.
The Jubilee of Deacons concluded May 29 with a Mass celebrated by Pope Francis in St. Peter’s Square.
In the informal conversations and the sharing afterward, the women were active participants. Many of them had accompanied their husbands to formation classes, and all of them are directly impacted by their husbands’ ministries.
Deacon James Keating, director of theological formation at the Institute for Priestly Formation in Omaha, Nebraska, said deacons are born in families, most of them fall in love and start families before discerning a vocation to the diaconate, and they often are called upon to minister to other families.
Deacon Keating insisted that a deacon who has had proper formation in prayer, theology and the sacraments “will become a better husband,” his wife “will actually fall more in love” because he will be converted to a closer relationship with Jesus and a greater availability to others.
However, he said, that availability is not so much about time and activity, as it is about “being” a deacon. It’s about “relationships, not ministries,” Deacon Keating insisted.
Kimberly Norman, whose husband, James, is a deacon at Our Lady of Sorrows Basilica in Chicago, said Deacon Keating was right. Speaking of her husband, she said: “Yes, he is a better man. Yes, he is a better husband.” The preparation and ministry “has strengthened our marriage.”
Deacon Norman said his wife has changed, too, and is a particularly good example and reminder to him to make more time for prayer.
The jubilee for deacons began just two weeks after Pope Francis told members of the International Union of Superiors General that he thought it was a good idea to establish a commission to study the role of New Testament deaconesses and the possibility of women serving as deacons today.
The Normans said that was a great idea. “I’m very hopeful,” Kimberly Norman said. Deacon Norman agreed, saying, “Clearly, women have had leadership in the church, but it’s not recognized by ordination.”
Deacon Anthony Gooley of the Archdiocese of Brisbane, Australia, and a lecturer in theology at the Broken Bay Institute, told the crowd that deacons were instituted in the early Christian community to minister to people whose particular needs were not being met by the disciples.
They have the same mission today to reach unserved or underserved populations, he said. In fact, their potential contribution to the new evangelization “is limited only by imagination and by the will of those who engage in placements and pastoral planning in the dioceses.”
“Too often a deacon is left to work out the details of his own pastoral ministry,” Deacon Gooley said, and arrangements are made with “a handshake deal with the parish priest.”
His remarks led to a ripple of agreement around the basilica.
Deacon Greg Kandra of the Diocese of Brooklyn, New York, a popular blogger and multimedia editor for the Catholic Near East Welfare Association, focused on the ministry of deacons in the workplace. Many of the almost 45,000 permanent deacons in the world continue to work in secular jobs in to support their families even after ordination.
But a deacon is a deacon no matter where he is, Deacon Kandra said. He is called by the church to be on the “front line,” wherever he is.
“The deacon is called to be a witness to compassion,” helping those who are hungry or poor, whether materially or spiritually. “They might work in the cubicle next to yours,” he said.
As a witness to the dignity of work, Deacon Kandra said, the deacon is called to stand up for just wages and decent working conditions, but also to improve the workplace environment by “quieting gossip,” listening to grievances, speaking up for those without a voice.
“Some of the most important missionary activity in the world today may begin in unlikely places, not in a jungle or desert of some far-off country, but around the water cooler, or on a bus, or over coffee in the company cafeteria,” he said.
“What began on the altar on Sunday,” Deacon Kandra said, “continues in the world and in the workplace on Monday.”

Bishop to priests: God makes big demands, provides love

Posted on June 9, 2016 by Mississippi Catholic

VATICAN CITY (CNS) – Catholicism is a faith of extremes, where God makes tough demands while always offering his unconditional love, a U.S. bishop told priests taking part in their jubilee for the Year of Mercy.
When preaching or communicating church teaching, some priests might emphasize the high ideals needed for holiness, whereas others might underline God’s loving, inclusive embrace of even his wayward children, Auxiliary Bishop Robert E. Barron of Los Angeles told Catholic News Service June 2.
But these two poles are not mutually exclusive, he said.
“We are not an ‘either-or’ religion, we’re the great ‘both-and’ religion” in which nothing can get in the way of divine mercy – “it moves into the arena of sin, it can never be trumped,” he said.
Bishop Barron was one of seven priests chosen to offer a catechesis on mercy during the Jubilee for Priests and Seminarians in Rome June 1-3. He presented his talk to English-language speakers at the Basilica of St. Andrea della Valle June 1.
He said he centered his talk on the Samaritan woman at the well in t John’s Gospel as a way to present four dimensions of mercy:
– “God’s mercy is relentless. It crosses all boundaries and borders. It can never be stressed enough,” he said.
– “God’s mercy is divinizing. It’s more than just patting us on the head or healing our wounds, it’s drawing us into the very life of the Trinity.”
– “Divine mercy is demanding, he said. “It affects a change in us, calls us to conversion.”
– “It inspires those who receive it to share the good news, embarking on mission,” he said.
Jesus “makes this very strong moral demand” on the woman and “calls her out” for living with a man who is not her husband, the bishop said.
But Jesus has also “won her over” with his pleasant approach and appealing offer of grace, he continued. And yet “that grace is not cheap, that grace is a demanding grace.”
This was the message he sought to tell the priests in his catechesis: “that it’s the great ‘both-and’ logic of Catholicism that ought to govern us here, and we shouldn’t fall into the trap of the zero-sum game.”
The “genius of the church,” he said, is that it includes all these facets and allows for a “great symphony of voices” in which some who preach the Gospel really emphasize “the inviting, inclusive side–others, that embody this demanding side.”
“Both should be part of the same chorus. The danger is reducing the symphony to a monotony,” he said.
He said a lot of what Pope Francis says reminds him of his spiritual mentor, the late Cardinal Francis E. George of Chicago.
He said the cardinal once told seminarians at Mundelein Seminary, where Bishop Barron taught for more than 20 years, that he greatly admired them for their devotion to the truth.
“But then he said, ‘Remember, you can’t just drop the truth on people then walk away. You have to give them the truth and then be willing to walk with them to help them implement it.’”
“I think that’s precisely (Pope Francis’) message. He’s not softening the truth, but he’s saying you don’t just drop it on people, you walk with them,” he said.
Contributing to this story was Robert Duncan.
(Editors note: A video to go with this story can be found at https://youtu.be/DCzvPZjG3oY)

Teen jubilee: ‘go back to church, not your phone’

Posted on April 27, 2016 by Mississippi Catholic

By Junno Arocho Esteves
VATICAN CITY (CNS) – Sharing and celebrating the joy of faith with thousands of Catholic teenagers from around the globe was a rare moment that not many people are able to experience, a U.S. teen said.
“It was a different atmosphere than what I’m used to, but it’s good because it shows that the beauty of the Catholic Church is there,” Emily Sullivan told Catholic News Service April 25.
Emily, her brother Ryan and parents Matt and Susan, came from North Carolina to participate in the Year of Mercy celebration for young teens April 23-24 in Rome.
Both siblings, who are preparing to receive the sacrament of confirmation, said that despite the language barrier, they were able to join in singing and praying during the April 23 youth rally at Rome’s Olympic Stadium.
“It was awesome; the energy was insane,” Emily said. “The people knew all the lyrics and they were jamming out. So we came up with a couple of words that we could sing along. It was really cool to be in that atmosphere.”
To see so many Catholic teens in one place was “definitely encouraging,” she added.
For Ryan, attending the April 24 Mass in St. Peter’s Square was the highlight of his pilgrimage. “It was great seeing the pope,” and “meeting other people and seeing the city” was “all good,” he told CNS.
“We will make our confirmation in two weeks so it was definitely great to see the history of the church and (meet) other people who are Catholic because where we live, there’s not as big of a following,” Emily said.
In his homily, Pope Francis told the more than 100,000 teens present that happiness “is not an ‘app’ that you can download on your phones” and that love leads to true freedom, which is a gift that comes from “being able to choose good.”
The pope’s message, Emily said, encouraged people “to go back to the church at the end of the day, not your phone.”
Their mother Susan told CNS she hopes that attending the jubilee event will give her children a “fuller and richer experience” as they prepare to receive confirmation in two weeks.
“It was really important for me and for them to have this experience,” she said. “To be that close (to Pope Francis) as he was celebrating Mass was truly, I hope, a life-changing experience for them that reaffirms their faith.”

Church leaders urge careful reading of exhortation

Posted on April 13, 2016 by Mississippi Catholic

WASHINGTON (CNS) — Church leaders from around the world hailed the tone of mercy in Pope Francis’ apostolic exhortation, “Amoris Laetitia” (“The Joy of Love”), but cautioned against a hurried reading of the document.
“What is new about this exhortation is its tone,” Cardinal Wilfrid Napier of Durban, South Africa, told Catholic News Service after the document’s release April 8. He said it calls on all ministers “to be warm and caring in the way they deal with people in difficult circumstances.”

A mother comforts her infant daughter at home. In his apostolic exhortation “Amoris Laetitia” (“The Joy of Love”), Pope Francis repeated his earlier reflection on motherhood: “Mothers are the strongest antidote to the spread of self-centered individualism. … It is they who testify to the beauty of life.” Mother’s Day is May 8 this year. (CNS photo/Nancy Wiechec)

“There is no one-size-fits-all” approach and “local churches are urged to adapt church teachings from the synod to their particular circumstances,” he said, noting, for example, that “different cultural understandings of marriage within South Africa would give the church here different challenges to those faced by churches in other parts of the world.”
Archbishop Diarmuid Martin of Dublin called “Amoris Laetitia” an “encyclopedic document and, like all encyclopedic documents, much of its most valuable content runs the risk of being bypassed by a preoccupation with one or two of its aspects.”
“It is not just a collection of separated chapters,” Archbishop Martin said in a statement. “There is a unifying thread: The Gospel of the family is challenging and demanding, but … with the grace of God and his mercy, is attainable and fulfilling, enriching and worthwhile.”
The exhortation reflecting on the 2014 and 2015 synods of bishops on the family contains no new rules or norms. However, it encourages careful review of everything related to family ministry and, particularly, much greater attention to the language and attitude used when explaining church teaching and ministering to those who do not fully live that teaching.
“It is a long document. As Pope Francis says, you can’t whiz through it. It needs reflection,” said Bishop Peter Doyle of Northampton, England, a synod participant and chairman of the English and Welsh bishops’ Committee for Marriage and Family Life.
“It has particular focus on the need to walk with those of us who feel excluded and to let everyone know that they are loved by God and that that love is a tender love, but also a love that challenges us all to change,” he said.

A same-sex couple exchange rings during their marriage ceremony in 2014 in Brighton, England. In his postsynodal apostolic exhortation on the family, “Amoris Laetitia” (“The Joy of Love”), released April 8, Pope Francis repeated his and the synod’s insistence that the church cannot consider same-sex unions to be a marriage, but also insisted, “every person, regardless of sexual orientation, ought to be respected in his or her dignity.” (CNS photo/Will Oliver, EPA)

“Some people will be disappointed that it is not full of black-and-white solutions but, as Pope Francis says, every situation is different and needs to be approached with love, mercy and openness of heart,” Bishop Doyle said.
In the pope’s home country of Argentina, Bishop Pedro Maria Laxague of Zarate-Campana, president of the laity and families commission of the Argentine bishops’ conference and participant in the last synod, said the document embraced the papal vision of the church being a field hospital, treating the wounded and attending to those with needs.
“There is not a good family or a bad family,” he said. “All require pastoral attention.”
He said the exhortation “touches all the realities that a family might experience.”
“Today the church can say that it has woken up to the realities of the family,” he told CNS. “We will be able to accompany (all) types of families as a church, as a community, in all situations.”
The Archdiocese of Mexico City welcomed the document and praised it for incorporating of various points of views, including conservative ones, and allowing local Catholic leaders some “discernment” in deciding how to go about opening the church to those traditionally left on the outside.
The encyclical “reflects the many (diverse) viewpoints expressed at the synod,” said Father Hugo Valdemar Romero, spokesman for the Archdiocese of Mexico City.
“There is an opening, but within the church doctrine,” he added. “There is an inclusiveness … on a case-by-case basis and the discernment of the local bishop.”
Jesuit Father David Neuhaus, patriarchal vicar of the Hebrew-speaking community of the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem, said people looking for “juicy” headlines would be disappointed. He said the exhortation was meant for people to read and ponder and said the document could help priests and bishops realize that “nobody is beyond the care of the church.”
“No one is outside, no matter what the circumstances … you can’t just take out the law book and say ’You have gone out of the boundaries.’ Every person has to be treated with love and respect,” said Father Neuhaus.
He added that, in the Holy Land, families are meeting challenges such as poverty, tensions and the breakdown of the family, a reality he described as “true for us and the whole world.”
Archbishop Paul-Andre Durocher of Gatineau, Quebec, who attended both synods, called the apostolic exhortation “a precious tool, a guide for pastoral workers accompanying couples. It’s an approach that many pastoral agents and priests have been promoting for a long time, but it now gives stronger theological foundations.”
“It invites us to take the teachings of the Bible and the church very seriously while welcoming in a true and realistic way couples experiencing hardships,” he said.
He said church leaders “have work ahead of us” regarding homosexuality. “This synod wasn’t the time to have this discussion, with its strong cultural impacts in our world.”
Australian Archbishop Mark Coleridge of Brisbane, who attended the 2015 Synod of Bishops on the family, said the document “is full of contemplative vistas but also down-to-earth practical wisdom which could come only from long pastoral experience of spouses and their families. It moves constantly between the ideal and the real.”
In an article for The Weekend Australian, he said the exhortation “insists that we have to deal always with the facts, however messy they may be; we have to be in touch with the reality of marriage and the family, not clinging to some romanticized sense of what the family should be. A genuinely pastoral approach to marriage and the family begins with the facts.

Copies of Pope Francis’ apostolic exhortation on the family, “Amoris Laetitia” (“The Joy of Love”), are seen during the document’s release at the Vatican April 8. (CNS photo/Paul Haring)

“Francis doesn’t claim to be the final word settling every controversial question. Nor does he claim to offer a comprehensive pastoral plan to be implemented around the planet. His claims are more modest — and for that reason more compelling,” he said.
Many bishops said they did not receive the document ahead of time, as the Vatican seemed to want to prevent the media leaks that occurred with Pope Francis’ environmental encyclical.
The secretary-general’s office of the Federation of Asian Bishops’ Conferences did not have an advance copy, but received a link to the exhortation via the Vatican website, available for downloading only once it was announced at the media briefing. Cardinal Orlando Quevedo of Cotabato, Philippines, told Catholic News Service in an email he did not have an early copy of “Amoris Laetitia.”
(Contributing to this story were Bronwen Dachs in South Africa, Simon Caldwell in England, David Agren in Mexico, Judith Sudilovsky in Israel, Simone Orendain in the Philippines and Philippe Vaillancourt in Canada).
(Copyright © 2016 Catholic News Service/United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. The CNS news services may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed, including but not limited to, such means as framing or any other digital copying or distribution method in whole or in part, without prior written authority of Catholic News Service.)

Papal Way of the Cross incorporated modern issues

Posted on April 1, 2016 by Mississippi Catholic

By Cindy Wooden
VATICAN CITY (CNS) – When he told Pope Francis that writing the meditations for the papal Way of the Cross service was tough, Cardinal Gualtiero Bassetti of Perugia-Citta della Pieve said the pope told him, “Remember, you aren’t doing it for me, but for the church.”
The Good Friday service, which takes places at night at Rome’s Colosseum, is broadcast around the world. Tens of thousands of people gather with the pope around the ancient Roman amphitheater to meditate on the last moments of Jesus’ life.
Each year the pope asks a different person to write the meditations and prayers that are read out after each station is announced. Cardinal Bassetti was chosen for the March 25 service.
“For every station I tried to make a reference to current events because, as Pope Francis says, ‘God is real and shows himself today,’” the cardinal told the Vatican newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano.
Reflecting on Christ’s passion, the cardinal also urged people to reflect on how human sin and suffering continue today. His meditations refer to modern martyrs being killed “in every corner of the globe” just because they are Christians. He refers to the suffering of migrants and refugees fleeing poverty and persecution but risking disease and death as they make the perilous journey toward a new life.
“Without a doubt, though, it was most difficult to write about violence against children,” both those reduced to slavery in forced work and those abused by adults, he said. “When I wrote those lines I felt like I was not using a pen on paper, but a chisel on marble, such was the suffering in writing about those plagues.”
Reading and praying about the stations in preparation for writing, the cardinal said he was struck particularly by portrayals of the use and abuse of power.
In the first station, “Jesus is condemned to death,” Pilate has political power and can “give or take a life according to his own interests,” he said. In the fourth station, “Jesus meets his mother,” one sees the power love has to give life; and the 11th station, “Jesus is nailed to the cross,” illustrates divine power in “the ability of the Lord to open the path to eternal life when human eyes see only death and humiliation.”
Standing before Pilate, the cardinal wrote in the first station, “Jesus is alone before the power of this world. And he submits to human justice completely.”
Pilate and the crowds – including men and women today – hand him over to be crucified, he wrote. They are “dominated by a sensation that is common to all people: fear – the fear of losing their security, their goods, their lives.”
The Vatican publishing house, Libreria Editrice Vaticana, printed booklets with the complete texts of the prayers and meditations. They were to be handed out free of charge to people joining the pope at the Colosseum and available for sale at the Vatican bookstore.
By participating in the Via Crucis service and remembering Christ’s passion, Christians assert their faith that suffering is not absurd and that, in the end, Christ is victorious over both evil and death, Cardinal Bassetti told L’Osservatore Romano.
At the same time, he said, it means “recognizing that in our daily crosses, Jesus is with us.”
Most of the cardinal’s meditations and prayers were designed to help Catholics recognize how much they need God’s mercy, the great cost paid by Jesus for their salvation and how Christ continues to suffer today in the lives of so many people.
In his meditation for the third station, “Jesus falls for the first time,” Cardinal Bassetti asks a question countless have asked throughout history, “Where is God?”
“There are situations that seem to negate God’s love,” he wrote. “Where is God in the death camps? Where is God in the mines and factories where child slaves work? Where is God in the rickety boats that sink in the Mediterranean?”

Curia’s Lenten retreat centers on mercy

Posted on March 22, 2016 by Mississippi Catholic

By Junno Arocho Esteves
VATICAN CITY (CNS) – Jesus’ call to be the salt of the earth is a reminder to his disciples to preach hope and life and not be wrapped up in dogmatic conundrums, a Servite priest told the pope and Vatican officials.
“We are salt that has lost its flavor if we are not resolute men, if we are not free from masks and fear. People want to receive fragments of life from Jesus’ disciples, not fragments of doctrine,” Servite Father Ermes Ronchi said.
The Italian priest, who is a member of Rome’s Pontifical “Marianum” theological faculty, was chosen by Pope Francis to lead the Lenten retreat of the Roman Curia; he chose to preach on the theme: “The bare questions of the Gospel.”
The March 6-11 retreat was held at the Pauline Fathers’ retreat center in Ariccia, 20 miles southeast of Rome.
In his morning meditation March 7, Father Ronchi spoke about fear, which entered the world after Adam and Eve’s disobedience in the Garden of Eden. Adam’s hiding out of fear of God’s wrath, he said, indicates the effect of sin which keeps the possibility of mercy far from him. For Christians, he added, this fear “produces a sad Christianity, a God without joy.”
“In this sense, the enemy of fear is not courage but faith,” he said.
Reflecting on the passage in Mark’s Gospel (4:35-41) where Jesus calms the storm, Father Ronchi said that fear initially drives the disciples on the boat to “almost command” God to act and save them from doom.
However, he added, “God does not take us out of the storm but supports us within the storm.”
The church, which “for a long time has transmitted a faith mixed with fear,” is called instead to free men and women from the fear of God like “the angels have done through sacred history.”
“Be angels who free (people) from fear,” Father Ronchi told the Vatican officials.
In the afternoon, Father Ronchi focused on the Bible passage from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount in which he says, “You are the salt of the earth. But if salt loses its taste, with what can it be seasoned?”
The Servite priest told Vatican officials that the imagery of the salt, which dissipates in order to season, reflects the mission of a church that “gives of itself and melts away.”
“Salt and light are not intended to perpetuate themselves but to pour themselves out. And so it is with the church: It is not an end, but a means to make person’s life better and more beautiful,” he said.
Father Ronchi chose to reflect on the church’s mission to give a true witness to Jesus on the retreat’s third day March 8. Drawing from the Gospel reading on Peter’s profession of faith, the Italian theologian said Jesus’ question, “But who do you say that I am?” is a query that “digs into the soul.”
“The answer Jesus is looking for are not words. He is looking for people. Not definitions but engagements,” he said. “Jesus does not give lessons, he does not suggest answers; he gently leads you to look inside of yourself.”
Jesus’ question, he continued, is striking given that he “does not indoctrinate anyone” nor compels the disciples to give a “prepackaged response.” Peter’s answer that Christ “is the son of the living God” is a witness that “Christ is living within us.”
“Our heart can become either God’s cradle or his tomb,” he said.
Jesus’ ordering of the disciples “to tell no one that he was the Messiah,” Father Ronchi said, extends to the church, which sometimes has preached a “deformed” perception of God and is called to preach through their own personal witness.
“We clergy look all the same: the same gestures, words and clothes. But people are asking us to ‘Give me an experience of God.’ Jesus is not what I say of him but what I live from him. We are not mediators between God and humanity; the true mediator is Jesus,” he said.
(Copyright © 2016 Catholic News Service/United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. The CNS news services may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed, including but not limited to, such means as framing or any other digital copying or distribution method in whole or in part, without prior written authority of Catholic News Service.)

Mother Teresa to be canonized Sept. 4; pope sets other sainthood dates

Posted on March 22, 2016 by Mississippi Catholic

By Cindy Wooden
VATICAN CITY (CNS) – Pope Francis will declare Blessed Teresa of Kolkata a saint at the Vatican Sept. 4.
The date was announced March 15 during an “ordinary public consistory,” a meeting of the pope, cardinals and promoters of sainthood causes that formally ends the sainthood process.
At the same consistory, the pope set June 5 as the date for the canonizations of Blessed Stanislaus Papczynski of Poland, founder of the Marian Fathers of the Immaculate Conception, and Blessed Mary Elizabeth Hesselblad of Sweden, who re-founded the Bridgettine sisters.

A poster of Blessed Teresa of Kolkata and Missionaries of Charity are seen in Kolkata, India, in this Sept. 5, 2007, file photo. Pope Francis will declare her a saint at the Vatican Sept. 4, the conclusion of the Year of Mercy and jubilee for those engaged in works of mercy. (CNS photo/Jayanta Shaw, Reuters)

In addition, Pope Francis declared that Oct. 16 he would celebrate Mass for the canonizations of Argentina’s “gaucho priest,” Blessed Jose Brochero, and Blessed Jose Sanchez del Rio, a 14-year-old Mexican boy martyred for refusing to renounce his faith during the Cristero War of the 1920s.
Setting the dates concludes a long process of studying the lives and writings of the sainthood candidates:
— Mother Teresa was widely known as a living saint as she ministered to the sick and the dying in some of the poorest neighborhoods in the world. Although some people criticized her for not also challenging the injustices that kept so many people so poor and abandoned, her simple service touched the hearts of millions of people of all faiths.
Born to an ethnic Albanian family in Skopje, in what is now part of Macedonia, she went to India in 1929 as a Sister of Loreto and became an Indian citizen in 1947. She founded the Missionaries of Charity in 1950.
Shortly after she died in 1997, St. John Paul II waived the usual five-year waiting period and allowed the opening of the process to declare her sainthood. She was beatified in 2003.
After her beatification, Missionary of Charity Father Brian Kolodiejchuk, the postulator of her sainthood cause, published a book of her letters, “Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light.” The letters illustrated how, for decades, she experienced what is described as a “dark night of the soul” in Christian spirituality; she felt that God had abandoned her. While the letters shocked some people, others saw them as proof of her steadfast faith in God, which was not based on feelings or signs that he was with her.
— Blessed Papczynski founded the Marian Fathers of the Immaculate Conception in Poland in the 17th century. Today the Marians are special promoters of the Divine Mercy devotion of St. Faustina Kowalska.

Blessed Stanislaus Papczynski of Poland, (right) founder of the Marian Fathers of the Immaculate Conception, also set to be canonized this year, is depicted in an undated painting. (CNS photo/courtesy Marian Fathers of the Immaculate Conception)

Born in 1631, he was ordained as a Piarist priest, but left the order after 10 years. His new congregation was established officially in 1679 and he died in 1701.
— Blessed Hesselblad was born in Faglavik, Sweden, in 1870 and went to the United States at the age of 18 in search of work to help support her family. She studied nursing in New York and, impressed by the faith of the Catholics she cared for, began the process of entering the Catholic Church. Coming from a Lutheran family, she was conditionally baptized by a Jesuit priest in Washington, D.C. On a pilgrimage to Rome, she visited the home of the 14th-century St. Brigid of Sweden and was welcomed by the Carmelite sisters who were then living there.
She received permission from the pope to make religious vows under the rule of St. Brigid and re-found the Bridgettine order that had died out in Sweden after the Protestant Reformation. She was beatified in 2000.
— Blessed Brochero, the “gaucho priest,” was born in Argentina in 1840 and died in 1914. Ordained for the Archdiocese of Cordoba, he spent years traveling far and wide by mule to reach his flock. Pope Francis, in a message in 2013 for the priest’s beatification — a ceremony scheduled before the Argentine pope was elected — said Father Brochero truly had “the smell of his sheep.”

Pope Francis greets cardinals during an “ordinary public consistory” to formally conclude sainthood causes at the Vatican March 15. Among new saints to be made are Mother Teresa of Kolkata, whose canonization will take place at the Vatican Sept. 4. (CNS photo/L’Osservatore Romano, handout)

He gained particular fame for his work caring for the sick and dying during a cholera epidemic in 1867. During his travels, he contracted Hansen’s disease, more commonly known as leprosy; many people believe he was infected by sharing a cup of mate, an herbal tea, with someone who already had the disease.
— Blessed Sanchez was martyred in Mexico in 1928, just weeks before his 15th birthday. In 1926 Mexican President Plutarco Elias Calles had introduced tough anti-clerical laws and confiscated church property across the country. Some 90,000 people were killed in the ensuing Cristero war before the government and church reached an accord in 1929.
Young Sanchez was allowed to be the flag bearer of a unit. During an intense battle, he was captured by government troops, who ordered him to renounce his faith. He refused, even when tortured. The boy was executed about two weeks later. He was beatified in 2005.
(Copyright © 2016 Catholic News Service/United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. The CNS news services may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed, including but not limited to, such means as framing or any other digital copying or distribution method in whole or in part, without prior written authority of Catholic News Service.)

Jubilee underway as Holy Doors open across the world

Posted on December 18, 2015 by Mississippi Catholic

JACKSON – Bishop Joseph Kopacz knocked and then opened the Holy Door at the Cathedral of St. Peter the Apostle before the start of 10:30 Mass on Sunday, Dec. 13, as a sign of the opening of the Jubilee Year of Mercy. The Diocese of Jackson has designated 10 pilgrimage sites across the diocese so everyone will have an opportunity to participate in a pilgrimage to a holy door. A full list of the sites, along with other activities for the year is posted on the diocesan website www.jacksondiocese.org.

VATICAN CITY (CNS) – With the opening the Holy Door at the Basilica of St. John Lateran, Pope Francis declared that the time for tenderness, joy and forgiveness had begun.
As holy doors around the world were opened at city cathedrals, major churches and sanctuaries Dec. 13, the pope said this simple gesture of opening God’s house to the world serves as “an invitation to joy. The time of great pardon begins. It is the Jubilee of Mercy.”
Dressed in rose vestments on Gaudete Sunday, the third Sunday of Advent, the pope began the ceremony outside the basilica in front of the bronze holy door. The door depicts a bas relief of the crucified Christ looking down on Mary tenderly holding the baby Jesus, whose small foot shone like bright gold from the countless kisses and touches of visiting pilgrims.
“This is the door of the Lord. Open for me the gates of justice. I will enter your house, Lord, because of your great mercy,” the pope read solemnly before climbing two marble steps and pushing open the large door.
The church and the people of God are called to be joyful, the pope said in his brief homily.
With Christmas approaching, “we cannot allow ourselves to become tired, no form of sadness is allowed even if we have reason for it with the many worries and multiple forms of violence that wound our humanity,” he said.
Amid the bullying, injustice and violence wrought, “above all, by men of power, God makes it known that he himself will rule his people, that he will never leave them at the mercy of the arrogance of their leaders and that he will free them of all anguish,” the pope said.
God always protects his people, he is always near, the pope said, and that is why “we must always be joyful and with our kindness offer everyone witness of the closeness and care God has for everyone.”
The Holy Year of Mercy is meant to be a time for people to rediscover God’s real presence in the world and his tenderness, he said.
“God does not love rigidity. He is father. He is gentle. He does everything with fatherly tenderness.”
As Christians are called to cross the threshold of “the door of mercy,” they are asked to welcome and experience God’s love, which “re-creates, transforms and reforms life.”
From there, people of faith must then go out and be “instruments of mercy, aware that we will be judged by this,” the pope said. Being a Christian calls for a lifelong journey and a “more radical commitment” to be merciful like God the father, he added.
Christians are asked to be joyful as they open their arms to others and give witness to “a love that goes beyond justice, a love that knows no limits. This is the love we are responsible for despite our contradictions,” and weaknesses, he said.
Later in the day, the pope appeared at the window of the apostolic palace to recite the noonday Angelus with visitors in St. Peter’s Square.
He focused on the day’s Gospel reading according to St. Luke, in which people in the crowd, including tax collectors and soldiers, asked St. John the Baptist “What should we do?” in order to convert and become acceptable for the coming of the Lord.
St. John does not leave them waiting for an answer, the pope said, and replies with concrete instructions: to live justly, in moderation and in solidarity toward those most in need. “They are the essential values of a life that is fully human and authentically Christian,” the pope said.
The saint said to share food and clothing, do not falsely accuse others, do not practice extortion and do not collect more than the tax prescribes, which means, the pope said, “no bribes. It’s clear.”
By addressing people who held various forms of power, the prophet showed that God excludes no one from being asked to follow a path of conversion in order to be saved, not even the tax collectors, who were considered among the worst of all sinners.
God “is anxious to be merciful toward everyone and welcome everyone in the tender embrace of reconciliation and forgiveness.”
Advent is a time of conversion and joy, he said. But today, in a world that is “assailed by so many problems, the future weighed down by the unknown and fears,” he said, people really need courage and faith to be joyful.
In fact, life lived with Christ brings the gift of solid and unshakable joy because it is rooted in knowing “the Lord is near” always.
The same morning, U.S. Cardinal James M. Harvey, archpriest of the Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls, opened that basilica’s holy door.
Pope Francis was scheduled to open the fourth and last holy door in Rome at the Basilica of St. Mary Major Jan. 1, the feast of Mary, Mother of God.
(A video to accompany this story can be found at https://youtu.be/MteWoKGc9qw)
(Copyright © 2015 Catholic News Service/United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. The CNS news services may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed, including but not limited to, such means as framing or any other digital copying or distribution method in whole or in part, without prior written authority of Catholic News Service.)

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