(Vatican Radio) On Saturday evening, Pope Francis celebrated Mass at the Roman church of “Ognissanti” – All Saints’ – in commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the first Mass offered in Italian. It was in the church of Ognissanti, fifty years ago, on the First Sunday of Lent, 1965, that Pope Paul VI offered the…
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THE PATH TO FREEDOM Most of us, if we were asked “Does the phrase ‘the Ten Commandments’ appear in the Bible?” would likely get it wrong, because the answer is “no.” “The Ten Commandments” is a post?biblical, phrase that developed along with an image of God as police officer that is not found in today’s…
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Bulletin: March 8, 2015-Third Sunday of Lent
(Vatican Radio) Pope Francis received members of the Communion and Liberation movement – at least 80 thousand of them, from nearly 50 nations – on Saturday, in St. Peter’s Square, to remember the group’s founder, Msgr. Luigi Giussani, and to mark the 60 th anniversary of the movement’s founding.
CL began in 1954 in Italy, at a secondary school in Milan that followed the classical curriculum, when Father Luigi Giussani started an initiative of Christian presence, to teach the basics of the faith to those who did not know them, primarily by lives of radical and radically authentic witness to the transformative power of Christ and the Good News of His resurrection in all areas of human endeavor, and down to the most intimate depths of each and every human soul.
The name, Communion and Liberation, appeared for the first time in 1969: it brings together the conviction that the Christian event, lived in communion, is the foundation of the authentic liberation of the human person.
In his remarks to the members of the movement in St Peter’s Square on Saturday, Pope Francis recalled that bringing those who most need it to an encounter with Christ is the central ethos of Communion and Liberation. “Centered on Christ and in the Gospel,” he said, “you can be the arms, the hands, the feet, the mind and the heart of a Church that is ‘out and about’.”
The Holy Father went on to say, “The way of the Church is that of going abroad in order to seek out those who are far off, in the peripheries, to serve Jesus in every person who is marginalized, abandoned, without faith, disappointed with the Church, a prisoner of his or her own selfishness.”
(from Vatican Radio)…
Vatican City, 3 July 2015 (VIS) – Yesterday afternoon Cardinal Secretary of State Pietro Parolin spoke at the high-level conference “People and planet first: the imperative to change course” (Rome, Augustinianum, 2-3 July), organised by the Pontifical Council “Justice and Peace” and CIDSE, an international network of Catholic non-governmental development organisations. The theme of the Cardinal’s address was “The Importance of the Encyclical Laudato Si’ for the Church and the World, in the Light of Major Political Events in 2015 and Beyond”. Three key United Nations conferences are scheduled to take place in the second half of 2015: the “Third International Conference on Financing for Development”, (Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, 13 to 16 July); the “United Nations Summit to adopt the Post-2015 Development Agenda”, (New York, U.S.A., 25 to 27 September); and the “Twenty-First Session of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations framework Convention on Climate Change” or “COP21” (Paris, France, 30 November to 11 December), for the purpose of adopting a new agreement on climate change. Cardinal Parolin affirmed that “the Encyclical will have a certain impact on these events, but its breadth and depth go well beyond its context in time”. The Secretary of State’s discourse focused on three sectors to help understand of “Laudato si’” – the international sphere, the national and local sphere, and the sphere of the Church – emphasising the two pressing requirements relevant to all three, namely “redirecting our steps” and promoting a “culture of care”. In the international framework, he said, there is a need for “an ever greater recognition that ‘everything is connected’ and that the environment, the earth and the climate are ‘a shared inheritance, whose fruits are meant to benefit everyone’. They are a common and collective good, belonging to all and meant for all, the patrimony of all humanity and the responsibility of everyone’. Recognising these truths is not, however, a foregone conclusion. It calls for a firm commitment to develop an authentic ethics of international relations, one that is genuinely capable of facing up to a variety of issues, such as commercial imbalances, and foreign and ecological debt, which are denounced in the Encyclical”. “Unfortunately, what has prevented the international community from assuming this perspective can be summed up in the following observations of the Pope: its ‘failure of conscience and responsibility’ and the consequent ‘meagre awareness of its own limitations’. We live, however, in a context where it is possible to ‘leave behind the modern myth of unlimited material progress… [and] to devise intelligent ways of directing, developing and limiting our power’; ‘we have the freedom needed to limit and direct technology; we can put it at the service of another type of progress, one which is healthier, more human, more social, more integral’”. The Cardinal remarked, “more than once I have had occasion to emphasise how the technological and operative base for promoting such progress is already available or within our reach. We must seize this great opportunity, given the real human capacity to initiate and forge ahead on a genuinely and properly virtuous course, one that irrigates the soil of economic and technological innovation, cultivating three interrelated objectives: to help human dignity flourish; to help eradicate poverty; and to help counter environmental decay”. “The forces at work in the international sphere are not sufficient on their own, however, but must also be focused by a clear national stimulus, according to the principle of subsidiarity. And here we enter into the second area of our reflection, that of national and local action. Laudato Si’ shows us that we can do much in this regard, and it offers some examples, such as: ‘modifying consumption, developing an economy of waste disposal and recycling… [the improvement of] agriculture in poorer regions… through investment in rural infrastructures, a better organisation of local [and] national markets, systems of irrigation, and the development of techniques of sustainable agriculture’, the promotion of a ‘circular model of production’, a clear response to the wasting of food, and the acceleration of an ‘energy transition’”. He added, “unfortunately, ‘there are too many special interests, and economic interests too easily end up trumping the common good and manipulating information so that their own plans will not be affected’”. The final area considered by the Secretary of State was the Catholic Church, who “finds nourishment in the example of St. Francis who, as indicated from the very opening pages of the Encyclical, ‘lived in simplicity and in wonderful harmony with God, with others, with nature and with himself. He shows us just how inseparable the bond is between concern for nature, justice for the poor, commitment to society, and interior peace”. He concluded, “Pope Francis states once again that ‘the Church does not presume to settle scientific questions or to replace politics’, but seems to be the bearer of the need to question the meaning and purpose of all human activity. What is well-known by now is the Encyclical’s call for us to reflect on ‘what kind of world we want to leave to those who come after us, to children who are now growing up’. The answer which the Pope offers to this question is quite revealing: ‘When we ask ourselves what kind of world we want to leave behind, we think in the first place of its general direction, its meaning and its values. … It is no longer enough, then, simply to state that we should be concerned for future generations. We need to see that what is at stake is our own dignity”….