(Vatican Radio) The Pontifical Council Cor Unum, the papal charitable office, will be organizing the distribution of funds raised in response to Pope Francis’ appeal for aid to the people of Ukraine.
Listen to this report by Tracey McClure:
The situation in the former Soviet state remains dramatic though the ongoing conflict between government forces and pro-Russia separatists has fallen off the collective radar.
Calling it a “worn out land,” on Sunday, Pope Francis appealed for an end to the conflict amid reports of fresh fighting. More than 9,000 people have been killed since clashes erupted in April 2014. 1.7 million people have been displaced – particularly in Crimea, annexed by Russia – and the eastern Donbass region.
Implementation of a deal agreed in Minsk last year and a lull in the violence had raised hopes that the conflict could be resolved soon.
Half a million people urgently need food and health authorities say more than double that number require urgent medical attention. Essential medicines, anesthesia and insulin are lacking and many operations are performed without anesthesia.
Drinking water is scarce for 1.3 million people and gas and electricity are only intermittently available.
Special collection for Ukraine 24 April
Pope Francis announced that a special collection for Ukraine will be taken up in churches across Europe on Sunday 24 April.
“This gesture of charity, beyond alleviating material suffering, expresses my personal closeness and the solidarity of the entire Church” he said. He expressed his profound hope that it may be of help to promote peace and the respect for rights.
About 10% of Ukraine’s mostly Orthodox population, Catholics in Ukraine have mobilized to assist their countrymen in need, regardless of background or creed. Proceeds from the Europe-wide collection will be distributed by the leaders of Ukraine’s various religious communities.
(from Vatican Radio)…
(Vatican Radio) The Secretariat for Communications announced an new web initiative on Monday: a dedicated office – DotCatholic – to inform and engage the worldwide virtual community with Catholic doctrine, preaching, and ethos.
Please find Vatican Radio’s English translation of the statement from the Secretariat, below
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At the invitation of the Secretariat, of State of the Holy See, the Secretariat for Communications has established a Bureau called “DotCatholic” with the purpose of utilizing a generic Internet domain name (.catholic) of the first level, in order to share the teachings, the message and the values of the Catholic Church with the broader global community in Cyberspace.
The former director of Vatican Radio’s Information Technology department, Eng. Mauro Milita, has been named head of the new working group, which counts 7 IT technicians on its staff.
(from Vatican Radio)…
(Vatican Radio) The Press Office of the Holy See on Monday confirmed that Pope Francis met on Saturday, April 2, 2016, with the head of the dissident traditionalist Priestly Fraternity of St. Pius X (SSPX), Bishop Bernard Fellay.
The confirmation came through a one-sentence communiqué from the Press Office, saying, “The Press Office confirms that Saturday, 2 April, a meeting took place in the Vatican between Pope Francis and Bishop Bernard, Fellay, Superior General of the St. Pius X Fraternity.”
The SSPX, as it is commonly known, was founded in 1970 by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre in order to preserve the centuries-old tradition of Catholic worship in the Latin Church.
In 1988, Archbishop Lefebvre consecrated four bishops in defiance of explicit Papal dispositions and in violation of an agreement reached a short time before, under the terms of which Lefebvre would have been permitted to consecrate one bishop (in order to guarantee continuity of leadership within the controversial Society).
Since that time, the status of the SSPX has been canonically irregular: efforts to repair the relationship between the SSPX and Church leadership in Rome have continued despite recurrent difficulties.
(from Vatican Radio)…
“Yes”. For a Christian there is no other
response to God’s call. Above all we must never turn away, pretending not to
understand. On 4 April, the Solemnity of the Assumption of the Lord, during
Mass at Santa Marta, the Pope invited a “celebration of the ‘yes’”. On
Monday morning, concelebrating with Francis were priests who, commemorating the
50th anniversary of their ordination, stated a definitive “yes”. Vincentian
nuns who work at Santa Marta also renewed their vows. “It is all a history that
ends and begins in this solemnity that we are celebrating today: the history of
mankind, when he leaves paradise”, the Pope noted at the beginning of the
homily. After sin, the Lord commands man to walk and fill the earth: “Be
fruitful and go forth”. However, “the Lord was paying attention to what man was
doing”. Thus, “several times when man made mistakes, God punished man: let us
think of Babel or of the flood”. In
this way, God was always “watching what man was doing: at a certain point, this
God who was watching and protecting man, decided to create a people and he
called our father Abraham: ‘Go forth from your land, from your home’”. And
Abraham “obeyed, he said ‘yes’” to the Lord, “and he left his land without
knowing where he was to go”. This is “the people’s first ‘yes’ to God”. It is
here, that “with Abraham, God — who watched his people — began to ‘walk with’.
He walked with Abraham: ‘Walk before me’, God told him”. The
Pope explained that God “then did the same with Moses, to whom at 80 years, God
said: ‘Do this’. And Moses at 80 — he was elderly — said ‘yes!’. And he went to
set the people free”. Then, the Pope said, God “did the same with
the prophets”: let us consider Isaiah, for example, when the Lord told him to
go and tell things to the people”, Isaiah responded that he was a man of
“unclean lips”. But the Lord “purified Isaiah’s lips and Isaiah said ‘yes!’. The
same thing also happened with Jeremiah, the Pope recalled. The prophet’s first
response was: “Lord I don’t know how to speak, I am a boy!”. But God commanded
him to go and he responded “yes!”. There are really so many of those “who said
‘yes’”. There is truly a “humanity of elderly men and women who said ‘yes’ to
the Lord’s hope”. Francis also added Simeon and Hannah to the homily. “Today
the Gospel tells us”, the Pope explained, that “at the end of this chain of ‘ yeses ’
is the beginning of another ‘yes’ which is beginning to grow: the ‘yes’ of
Mary”. It is with “this ‘yes’ that God”, the Pontiff affirmed, “not only
watches how man is going, He not only walks with his people, but becomes one of
us and takes on our flesh”. In fact “Mary’s ‘yes’ opens the door to the ‘yes’
of Jesus: “I come to do your will’”. And it is “this ‘yes’ that goes with Jesus
throughout his life, up to the Cross: ‘Father, remove this cup from me;
nevertheless not my will, but thine’”. It is “in Jesus Christ that, as Paul
says to the Corinthians, there is this ‘yes’ of God: He is the ‘yes’”. “It
is a beautiful day”, the Pope remarked, “to thank the Lord for teaching us this
way of ‘yes’, but also for caring about our life”. Indeed, “some of us”, he
said, as he turned toward the priests attending the Mass, “are celebrating the
50th anniversary of priesthood: a beautiful day to think about the ‘yes’ of
your life”. But “all of us, every day, must say ‘yes’ or ‘no’, and think about
whether we always say ‘yes’ or if we often hide ourselves, lowering our head,
like Adam and Eve, to avoid saying ‘no’”, pretending not to understand “what God
is asking”. “Today
is the celebration of ‘yes’, Francis said. Indeed, “in Mary’s ‘yes’ there is
the ‘yes’ of all of salvation history and there begins the ultimate ‘yes’ of
man and of God: there God re-creates, as at the beginning with a ‘yes’ He made
the earth and man, that beautiful creation: with this ‘yes’ I come to do your
will and more wonderfully he re-creates the world, he re-creates us all”. It is
“God’s ‘yes’ that sanctifies us, that lets us go forth in Jesus Christ”. This
is why today is the right day “to thank the Lord and to ask ourselves: am I a
man or woman of ‘yes’ or a man or woman of ‘no’? Or am I a man or woman who
looks away, so as not to respond?”. The
Pope then expressed hope “that the Lord grant us the grace to take this path of
men and women who knew how to say ‘yes’”. After sharing a thought with the
priests, Francis turned to the community of Sisters of Santa Marta: “At this
time, in silence, the Sisters who are in this Casa will renew their
vows. They do so every year because St Vincent was intelligent and knew that
the mission that he entrusted to them is very difficult, and for this reason he
wanted them to renew their vows each year. In silence, let us accompany their
renewal”….
(Vatican Radio) Pope Francis has put a video on his Instagram account. It went up on Divine Mercy Sunday. It was a short clip taken from his video-message to the Cuban people ahead of his visit in September 2015.
“I want to be among you as a missionary of the mercy and tenderness of God.” – Pope Francis said – “But allow me to encourage you, too, to be missionaries of this infinite love of God. May no one be without the witness of our faith, of our love. May everyone know that God always forgives, that God is always at our side, that God loves us.”
The Instagram account of Pope Francis was launched on 19 March, 2016, and currently has over 2 million followers. The account reached 1 million followers faster than any other account in history.
(from Vatican Radio)…