(Vatican Radio) Promoting reconciliation and dialogue in a divided and wounded world is a top priority for the Society of Jesus under its new leader, Venezuelan Father Arturo Sosa, the first non-European to be elected as the Jesuit superior general.
Fr Sosa held a press conference on Tuesday morning to discuss his election last week by Jesuits from around the world who are meeting in Rome for their 36th General Congregation.
Philippa Hitchen went along to find out more about the reactions of the new ‘black pope’, as he’s popularly known, and the direction in which he’ll be leading the Church’s largest order of religious men…..
Listen:
Fr Sosa said he was serene, surprised, grateful and “ready to respond with joy” to the challenges currently being discussed by the Jesuits holding their 36th general congregation since the order was founded by St Ignatius of Loyola, nearly five centuries ago.
Speaking at the Jesuit headquarters, just down the road from St Peter’s Basilica, Fr Sosa thanked especially his predecessor, Fr Adolfo Nicolas who’ll be returning as a missionary to the Philippines to serve as spiritual director of the East Asian Pastoral Institute.
Venezuela’s political crisis
Responding to journalists’ questions, the new Jesuit leader discussed the political crisis in his home country, Venezuela, where he said the government of President Maduro and the opposition have failed “to build bridges” of dialogue. The country’s dependence on declining oil revenues and the lack of political agreement has left the nation in a situation of “serious suffering,” he said.
Working with refugees, migrants and the poor
Asked about priorities for the order over the coming years, Fr Sosa said these are currently under discussion by delegates at the ongoing General Congregation, representing almost 17.000 Jesuit priests and brothers across the globe. However he pointed to key issues of interfaith dialogue, tackling poverty, working with migrants and refugees which emerged as priorities during the previous General Congregation back in 2008.
Uphold faith, work for justice
All Christians are called to work for reconciliation, Fr Sosa, said, though that can often seem like an impossible task in a world dominated by finance, the illegal arms trade and human trafficking. Yet the two pivotal goals of the Jesuits, he stressed, are to uphold the faith of the Church and to deepen an understanding of the world through research and education. Formation, he insisted, continues to be a priority in order to be able to witness to the Gospel and work for justice within the political, economic, social and cultural contexts of our times.
Serving the pope, the Church and humanity
Fr Sosa was asked how he felt about the nickname ‘black pope’, given to the Jesuits because of their plain black cassocks, but also on account of the power they were seen to wield within the Church in the early centuries of their existence. He replied that he didn’t like the name much, since Jesuits today seek to serve rather than to be in the front line, even if today there are some 70 Jesuit bishops, as well as the first Jesuit pope. Members of the order make a special vow of obedience to the pope, he concluded, so that they can best serve the Church, wherever and in whatever way that service is required.
(from Vatican Radio)…
(Vatican Radio) Bishops of the Catholic Eastern Rite Churches in Europe are meeting in Portugal from 20-23 October to discuss the challenge of the pastoral care of Eastern Catholic migrants in Western European nations, especially the preservation of their cultural and ecclesial identity.
Please find below a press release in English on the upcoming meeting published by the Council of European Episcopal Conferences:
The annual meeting of the Bishops of the Catholic Eastern Rite Churches in Europe is taking place this year at Fatima (Portugal), at the invitation of the Patriarch of Lisbon, Cardinal Manuel Clemente, President of the Portuguese Bishops’ Conference.
In this meeting-pilgrimage at the Marian Shrine of Fatima, which in 2017 is celebrating the centenary of the apparitions, the bishops representing 15 Catholic Eastern Rite Churches in Europe, along with bishops representing various episcopal conferences from Western European nations (France, Germany, Portugal, England and Wales and Spain), will examine the challenge of pastoral care of Eastern Catholics in these countries. In effect, since the collapse of the totalitarian regimes in Eastern European countries, a massive flow of Eastern Rite Catholic migrants, therefore belonging predominantly to sui iuris Churches, have started new lives in Western countries. After twenty years, with a fairly constant flow of new migrants and the birth of the second generation among those first arrivals, the welcoming local churches, largely Latin Rite in the Western nations, are faced with new challenges in terms of the preservation of the cultural and ecclesial identity of these migrants.
At the Marian Shrine, along with the Prefect of the Congregation for the Oriental Churches, Cardinal Leonardo Sandri, participants will therefore analyse some issues and challenges linked to this particular migratory phenomenon. The economic situation of the countries of Eastern Europe which leads to migration will be examined with the help of the economist Prof. João Luís César das Neves; the issue of integration will be enriched by the testimonies of a Romanian family and a teacher working daily with the “children” of migrants; and there will also be an examination of the relationship between the welcoming church and the church of origin.
The meeting, marked by the daily celebration of Mass in various Eastern Rites, testifying to the riches of the different liturgical traditions in the Catholic Church, also envisages a visit to the Shrine of Our Lady of Nazaré and a prayer of entrustment, in the Shrine at Fatima, presided over by the Secretary of the Vatican dicastery in charge of the Oriental Churches, Slovakian Archbishop Cyril Vasil’.
Participants at the meeting, organised by the Council of European Episcopal Conferences (CCEE), also include Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco, attending his first meeting as the new President of CCEE.
The meeting will end on Sunday 23 October with the celebration of the Divine Liturgy presided over by His Beatitude Sviatoslav Shevchuk, Major Archbishop of Kyiv-Halyč, in the Church of the Most Holy Trinity and the procession through the Holy Door of Mercy.
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Information for journalists
The meeting is behind closed doors, apart from the opening session on Thursday 20 October from 1600 in the parish hall Rua dos Jerónimos, 3 in Lisbon, which will be followed by Vespers in the Byzantine Rite in the adjacent church.
A news release will be published at the end of the meeting on Monday 24 October. The full programme and list of participants are available at the website: www.ccee.eu
The meeting will take place at the Casa de Nossa Senhora das Dores (Fatima).
Within the Catholic Church there are particular Churches, called sui iuris Churches or Rites, in full communion with the Church of Rome but which are distinguished from the Latin Catholic Church by their different forms of liturgical worship and popular piety, sacramental (administration of the sacraments) and canonical discipline (legal norms), theologcial terminology and traditions. Throughout the world there currently exist 24 sui iuris Churches with different liturgical rites in full communion with Rome, 15 of which are of the Byzantine Rite.
List of the sui iuris Churches present at the meeting
• Italo-Albanian Catholic Church (dioceses of Lungro and Piana degli Albanesi, in Italy)
• Belarusian Greek-Catholic Church (Belarus)
• Byzantine-Slav Rite Catholic Church of Bulgaria (Bulgaria)
• The Maronite Archdiocese of Cyprus and Maronites in Europe (Cyprus, France and Western Europe)
• Greek Byzantine Rite Catholic Church (Greece and Turkey)
• Greek-Catholic Church in Poland
• Romanian Greek-Catholic Church (Romania)
• Ruthenian Greek-Catholic Church (Eparchy of Mukačevo, Ukraine)
• Slovakian Greek-Catholic Church (Slovakia, Czech Republic)
• Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church (Ukraine, Poland, United States, Canada and Ukrainian communities throughout the world)
• Hungarian Greek-Catholic Church (Hungary)
• Armenian Catholic Church (Europe)
• Church of the Chaldeans in Europe
• Syrian Catholic Church
• Greek-Catholic or Melkite Church
The first meeting took place in 1997 in the diocese of Hajdúdorog (Hungary) and was promoted by Cardinal Achille Silvestrini, then Prefect of the Congregation for the Oriental Churches, who wanted to create a space where the bishops of those churches, which had been particularly damaged by atheistic regimes, “may find with ever greater clarity their role in today’s Europe and be loved and respected for their history of loyalty to the Church and to the Pope, paid at a dear price” (From Cardinal Achille Silvestrini’s Introduction to the Acta of the first meeting).
(from Vatican Radio)…
(Vatican Radio) Pope Francis said a good shepherd is one who follows Jesus rather than power, money or cliques and even if deserted by everybody is sad but never embittered. He was speaking at his morning Mass on Tuesday celebrated in the chapel of the Santa Marta Residence.
Taking his inspiration from the Second Letter to Timothy, the Pope’s homily was a reflection on the difficulties faced by the apostles like Paul in the final stage of their lives when they are left without means, deserted by all and having to ask for things like beggars.
“Alone, begging, abandoned by all and the victim of fury. But this is the great Paul, the man who heard the voice of the Lord, the call of the Lord! The man who went from one place to another, who suffered so many things and so many trials for preaching the Gospel, who made the Apostles understand that the Lord wants Gentiles to enter into the Church as well, the great Paul who when praying rose to the Seventh Heaven and heard things that nobody else had heard before: the Great Paul, there, in that small room of a house in Rome, waiting to see how that struggle would end within the Church between the different sides, between the rigidity of the Judaizers and those disciples faithful to him. And this is how the life of the great Paul ends, in desolation: not in resentment or bitterness but with an inner desolation.”
Pope Francis went on to point out that Peter and St John the Baptist suffered similar privations in the final stage of their lives with the latter having his head cut off owing to “the caprice of a dancer and the revenge of an adulterous woman.” In more recent times, he said it was the same for Maximilian Kolbe who created a worldwide apostolic movement and yet died in the prison cell of a death camp. When an apostle is faithful, stressed the Pope, he or she knows that they too can expect the same end that Jesus faced. But the Lord stays close and does not abandon them and they find their strength in Him. Pope Francis said “This is the Law of the Gospel: if the grain of wheat doesn’t die it doesn’t produce new seeds” and reminded that a theologian of the early centuries wrote that the blood of martyrs are the seeds of Christians.
“To die in this way like martyrs, as witnesses of Jesus, is the grain that dies and gives rise to new seeds and fills the earth with new Christians. When a pastor lives like this he is not embittered: maybe he feels desolate but he has that certainty that the Lord is beside him. When a pastor during his life was attached to other things, rather than to the faithful – for example he was attached to power, money, being part of a clique, to many things – then at his death he won’t be alone, maybe his grandchildren (heirs) will be there waiting for him to die so they can see what possessions they can take away with them.”
Pope Francis concluded his homily by describing the attitude of many elderly priests now living in retirement homes who despite their sufferings remain close to the Lord.
“When I go to visit the retirement homes for elderly priests I find so many of these great shepherds who have given their lives for the faithful. There they are, sick, paralyzed, in wheelchairs but you can see them smiling straight away. ‘He’s well, Lord; he’s well, Lord,’ because they feel the Lord very close to them. They have these shining eyes and they are asking: ‘how is the Church? How is the diocese faring? How are vocations going?’ (It’s this way) right to the end because they are fathers, because they gave their lives for others. Turning back to Paul: alone, begging, the victim of fury, deserted by everybody except the Lord Jesus: ‘Only the Lord stayed close to me!’ And the Good Shepherd, the shepherd must have this certainty: if he journeys along the path of Jesus, the Lord will be close to him right to the end. Let us pray for the shepherds who are at the end of their lives and who are waiting for the Lord to take them with Him. And let us pray so that the Lord may give them strength, consolation and the certainty that, although they feel sick and alone, the Lord is with them, close to them. May the Lord give them this strength.”
(from Vatican Radio)…