(Vatican Radio) Pope Francis has sent a Message to the Grand Chancellor of the Pontifical Oriental Institute , Cardinal Leonardo Sandri, who is also the Prefect of the Congregation for Oriental Churches . The Pontificium Institutum Orientale , or “Orientale” as it is known in Roman shorthand, was founded in 1917 by Pope Benedict XV, and became part of the “Gregorian Consortium” including also the University and the Biblical Institute, under the direction and tutelage of the Society of Jesus. In his Message, Pope Francis makes note of the high achievements in the twofold mission of research into liturgical, theological, ecclesiological, and spiritual sources of the Christian East, and the preparation of instruments by which to make the riches of the Eastern Christianity more readily available and accessible to Christians in the West. The Pope also calls on the Orientale to mindfulness of and solicitude for the enormous challenges facing Christians in the East. “Keeping intact the attention and application of traditional research,” Pope Francis writes, “This Institute, through research, teaching and testimony, has the task of helping our [Eastern] brothers and sisters to strengthen and consolidate their faith in the face of the tremendous challenges they face,” challenges which, in the present day, include strong temptations to leave their native homelands, and often forced displacement under threat of persecution and even martyrdom. The Holy Father concludes his message, “In joining myself to the thanksgivings to God for the work it has done over these 100 years, I hope that the Pontifical Oriental Institute will pursue its mission with renewed impetus, studying and spreading with love and intellectual honesty, with scientific rigor and pastoral perspective, the traditions of the Oriental churches in their liturgical, theological, artistic and canonical variety, better and better responding to the expectations of today’s world to create a future of reconciliation and peace.” (from Vatican Radio)…
(Vatican Radio) The President of the Pontifical Council for the Promotion of the New Evangelization , Archbishop Rino Fisichella has been speaking about Pope Francis’ speech on Wednesday evening marking the Twenty-fifth Anniversary of the Promulgation of the Catechism of the Catholic Church.
The Council sponsored a meeting to celebrate the anniversary and reflecting on the Pope’s address, Archbishop Fisichella said that, “there are many different issues in the discourse of Pope Francis.”
Archbishop Fisichella spoke with Vatican Radio’s Blandine Hugonnet.
Listen to the interview:
The Archbishop noted in particular the Pope’s reference to Pope John XXIII ’s opening speech to the Second Vatican Council . The Pope, noted the President, explains in his words that faith is not static but dynamic . The Archbishop added that, “ in this speech I would say the dynamic of the Christian truth and our faith is what, in my humble opinion, touched me personally.”
Asked about Pope Francis’ reference to the death penalty, Archbishop Fisichella said the Holy Father’s comments are very much in line with the words of St Pope Paul II and Pope Benedict on this issue. But he continued, “yesterday it seems to me that Pope Francis said something more, because he said that when we have a voluntary suppression of a human life so this is against the Gospel itself. I think that this is something with strong; very profound but very strong.”
(from Vatican Radio)…
(Vatican Radio) Pope Francis on Thursday celebrated Mass in the Basilica of St Mary Major to mark the centenary of the foundation of the Pontifical Oriental Institute and the Congregation for Eastern Churches. In his homily the pope encouraged all Christians of the Oriental Churches to continue with their courageous witness, despite the dramatic persecutions that they suffer.
Listen to Philippa Hitchen’s report
Recalling the establishment of the Institute by Benedict XV in 1917, during the First World War, Pope Francis said that today we are living though another “piecemeal” world war. When we see the persecution and worrying exodus of Christians, he said, just like the people of the Old Testament, we cry out “Why?”
Persecution of Christians
In today’s reading from the prophet Malachi, the pope continued, we read about those who turn away from God and do evil, yet they go unpunished. In the same way today, he said, we see unscrupulous people who destroy others in order to pursue their own ends and we ask God, “Why?”
We find the answer in the verses of Malachi, Pope Francis said, as we read about the way God listens to his people and records their suffering in a ‘book of memories’.
Pray and trust in the Lord
Pointing to the words from St Luke’s Gospel, the pope said if we pray and trust in the Lord, we know that “everyone who asks, receives; those who seek, find; and to those who knock, the door will be opened”.
But do we really know how to pray, to knock on the door of God’s heart, the pope asked? The Gospel reminds us that if we, sinners, know how to give good gifts to our children, how much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him?”
God’s gift of the Holy Spirit
The Spirit is God’s great gift to us, Pope Francis concluded, so let us learn how to knock courageously on the door of God’s heart. May courageous prayer inspire and sustain your service to the Church, he told the Oriental Church leaders, so that it may bear fruit which does not wither and die.
(from Vatican Radio)…
(Vatican Radio) Pope Francis on Wednesday evening addressed participants attending a meeting celebrating the Twenty-fifth Anniversary of the Promulgation of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which was sponsored by the Pontifical Council for the Promotion of the New Evangelization.
In his prepared remarks to those gathered the Pope said that, it is in the very nature of the Church to “guard” the deposit of faith and to “pursue” the Church’s path, so that the truth present in Jesus’ preaching of the Gospel may grow in fullness until the end of time.
Medicine of Mercy
He went on to say that, “with the joy born of Christian hope, and armed with the “medicine of mercy”, we approach the men and women of our time to help them discover the inexhaustible richness contained in the person of Jesus Christ.
The Pope described the Catechism as an important instrument adding that, it “presents the faithful with the perennial teaching of the Church so that they can grow in their understanding of the faith.”
Death Penalty
During his discourse, the Holy Father brought up the subject of the death penalty saying that it is a “subject that ought to find in the Catechism of the Catholic Church a more adequate and coherent treatment”…
Pope Francis went on to say that, “it must be clearly stated that the death penalty is an inhumane measure that, regardless of how it is carried out, abases human dignity.”
Concluding his remarks the Holy Father said that, “ the word of God cannot be moth-balled like some old blanket in an attempt to keep insects at bay! No. The word of God is a dynamic and living reality that develops and grows because it is aimed at a fulfilment that none can halt”, he said.
Before imparting his Apostolic Blessing on those present, the Pope underlined that, “doctrine cannot be preserved without allowing it to develop, nor can it be tied to an interpretation that is rigid and immutable without demeaning the working of the Holy Spirit.”
Please find the English language translation of Pope Francis’ prepared remarks below:
I offer a warm greeting to all of you and I thank Archbishop Fisichella for his kind words of introduction.
The twenty-fifth anniversary of the Apostolic Constitution Fidei Depositum, by which Saint John Paul II, thirty years after the opening of the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, promulgated the Catechism of the Catholic Church, offers a significant opportunity for taking stock of the progress made in the meantime. It was the desire and will of Saint John XXIII to call the Council, not primarily to condemn error, but so that the Church could have an opportunity at last to present the beauty of her faith in Jesus Christ in language attuned to the times. “It is necessary,” the Pope stated in his opening address, “that the Church should never depart from the sacred patrimony of truth received from the Fathers. But at the same time she must ever look to the present, to the new conditions and new forms of life introduced into the modern world which have opened new avenues to the Catholic apostolate” (11 October 1962). “It is our duty,” he continued, “not only to guard this precious treasure, as if we were concerned only with antiquity, but to dedicate ourselves, with an earnest will and without fear, to that work which our era demands of us, thus pursuing the path which the Church has followed for twenty centuries” (ibid.).
It is in the very nature of the Church to “guard” the deposit of faith and to “pursue” the Church’s path, so that the truth present in Jesus’ preaching of the Gospel may grow in fullness until the end of time. This is a grace granted to the People of God, but it is also a task and a mission for which we are responsible, that of proclaiming to our contemporaries in a new and fuller way the perennial Good News. With the joy born of Christian hope, and armed with the “medicine of mercy” (ibid.), we approach the men and women of our time to help them discover the inexhaustible richness contained in the person of Jesus Christ.
In presenting the Catechism of the Catholic Church, Saint John Paul II stated that it should “take into account the doctrinal statements which down the centuries the Holy Spirit has made known to his Church. It should also help illumine with the light of faith the new situations and problems which had not yet emerged in the past” (Fidei Depositum, 3). The Catechism is thus an important instrument. It presents the faithful with the perennial teaching of the Church so that they can grow in their understanding of the faith. But it especially seeks to draw our contemporaries – with their new and varied problems – to the Church, as she seeks to present the faith as the meaningful answer to human existence at this moment of history. It is not enough to find a new language in which to articulate our perennial faith; it is also urgent, in the light of the new challenges and prospects facing humanity, that the Church be able to express the “new things” of Christ’s Gospel, that, albeit present in the word of God, have not yet come to light. This is the treasury of “things old and new” of which Jesus spoke when he invited his disciples to teach the newness that he had brought, without forsaking the old (cf. Mt 13:52).
One of the most beautiful pages in the Gospel of John is his account of the so-called “priestly prayer” of Jesus. Just before his passion and death, Jesus speaks to the Father of his obedience in having brought to fulfilment the mission entrusted to him. His words, a kind of hymn to love, also contain the request that the disciples be gathered and preserved in unity (cf. Jn 17:12-15). The words, “Now this is eternal life, that they should know you, the only true God, and the one whom you sent, Jesus Christ” (Jn 17:3), represent the culmination of Jesus’s mission.
To know God, as we are well aware, is not in the first place an abstract exercise of human reason, but an irrepressible desire present in the heart of every person. This knowledge comes from love, for we have encountered the Son of God on our journey (cf. Lumen Fidei, 28). Jesus of Nazareth walks at our side and introduces us, by his words and the signs he performs, to the great mystery of the Father’s love. This knowledge is strengthened daily by faith’s certainty that we are loved and, for this reason, part of a meaningful plan. Those who love long to know better the beloved, and therein to discover the hidden richness that appears each day as something completely new.
For this reason, our Catechism unfolds in the light of love, as an experience of knowledge, trust, and abandonment to the mystery. In explaining its structure, the Catechism of the Catholic Church borrows a phrase from the Roman Catechism and proposes it as the key to its reading and application: “The whole concern of doctrine and its teaching must be directed to the love that never ends. Whether something is proposed for belief, for hope or for action, the love of our Lord must always be made accessible, so that anyone can see that all the works of perfect Christian virtue spring from love and have no other objective than to arrive at love” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 25).
Along these same lines, I would like now to bring up a subject that ought to find in the Catechism of the Catholic Church a more adequate and coherent treatment in the light of these expressed aims. I am speaking of the death penalty. This issue cannot be reduced to a mere résumé of traditional teaching without taking into account not only the doctrine as it has developed in the teaching of recent Popes, but also the change in the awareness of the Christian people which rejects an attitude of complacency before a punishment deeply injurious of human dignity. It must be clearly stated that the death penalty is an inhumane measure that, regardless of how it is carried out, abases human dignity. It is per se contrary to the Gospel, because it entails the willful suppression of a human life that never ceases to be sacred in the eyes of its Creator and of which – ultimately – only God is the true judge and guarantor. No man, “not even a murderer, loses his personal dignity” (Letter to the President of the International Commission against the Death Penalty, 20 March 2015), because God is a Father who always awaits the return of his children who, knowing that they have made mistakes, ask for forgiveness and begin a new life. No one ought to be deprived not only of life, but also of the chance for a moral and existential redemption that in turn can benefit the community.
In past centuries, when means of defence were scarce and society had yet to develop and mature as it has, recourse to the death penalty appeared to be the logical consequence of the correct application of justice. Sadly, even in the Papal States recourse was had to this extreme and inhumane remedy that ignored the primacy of mercy over justice. Let us take responsibility for the past and recognize that the imposition of the death penalty was dictated by a mentality more legalistic than Christian. Concern for preserving power and material wealth led to an over-estimation of the value of the law and prevented a deeper understanding of the Gospel. Nowadays, however, were we to remain neutral before the new demands of upholding personal dignity, we would be even more guilty.
Here we are not in any way contradicting past teaching, for the defence of the dignity of human life from the first moment of conception to natural death has been taught by the Church consistently and authoritatively. Yet the harmonious development of doctrine demands that we cease to defend arguments that now appear clearly contrary to the new understanding of Christian truth. Indeed, as Saint Vincent of Lérins pointed out, “Some may say: Shall there be no progress of religion in Christ’s Church? Certainly; all possible progress. For who is there, so envious of men, so full of hatred to God, who would seek to forbid it?” (Commonitorium, 23.1; PL 50). It is necessary, therefore, to reaffirm that no matter how serious the crime that has been committed, the death penalty is inadmissible because it is an attack on the inviolability and the dignity of the person.
“The Church, in her teaching, life and worship, perpetuates and hands on to all generations all that she herself is, all that she believes” (Dei Verbum, 8). The Council Fathers could not have found a finer and more synthetic way of expressing the nature and mission of the Church. Not only in “teaching”, but also in “life” and “worship”, are the faithful able to be God’s People. Through a series of verbs the Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation expresses the dynamic nature of this process: “This Tradition develops […] grows […] and constantly moves forward toward the fullness of divine truth, until the words of God reach their complete fulfillment in her” (ibid.)
Tradition is a living reality and only a partial vision regards the “deposit of faith” as something static. The word of God cannot be moth-balled like some old blanket in an attempt to keep insects at bay! No. The word of God is a dynamic and living reality that develops and grows because it is aimed at a fulfilment that none can halt. This law of progress, in the happy formulation of Saint Vincent of Lérins, “consolidated by years, enlarged by time, refined by age” (Commonitorium, 23.9: PL 50), is a distinguishing mark of revealed truth as it is handed down by the Church, and in no way represents a change in doctrine.
Doctrine cannot be preserved without allowing it to develop, nor can it be tied to an interpretation that is rigid and immutable without demeaning the working of the Holy Spirit. “God, who in many and various ways spoke of old to our fathers” (Heb 1:1), “uninterruptedly converses with the bride of his beloved Son” (Dei Verbum, 8). We are called to make this voice our own by “reverently hearing the word of God” (ibid., 1), so that our life as a Church may progress with the same enthusiasm as in the beginning, towards those new horizons to which the Lord wishes to guide us.
I thank you for this meeting and for your work, and to all of you I cordially impart my blessing.
(from Vatican Radio)…
(Vatican Radio) Cricket is not a sport normally associated with Argentina, but among the groups greeting Pope Francis at his general audience on Wednesday was a team of young cricketers from his native Buenos Aires .
Cricket Sin Fronteras (Cricket Without Borders) is a project that was begun almost a decade ago in the poorest parts of the capital, the ‘ villas miserias ’ where the Church is engaged in offering alternatives to the widespread violence and crime. Though few Argentinians were familiar with the sport, its popularity has grown and now hundreds of kids, both boys and girls, take part in the project.
This week a team of young players was invited to play against St Peter’s Cricket Club , set up under the auspices of the Pontifical Council for Culture and comprised mainly of seminarians studying for the priesthood here in Rome.
The cricketers attending the audience in St Peter’s Square had brought with them bats to be blessed, made by inmates from a local jail. The organisers insist that through the sport, youngsters learn values of respect, inclusion and teamwork that will enable them to build a brighter future. Among them is the team’s head coach, Hernan Fennell , who talked to Philippa Hitchen about how the project began:
Listen:
Fennell explains that the idea was proposed in 2009 to Fr Pepe [Di Paola], one of the best known Catholic priests working in the poorest areas of Buenos Aires. Among the founders of the project was Daniel Juarez, a longtime friend of Jorge Bergoglio, who was on hand in St Peter’s Square to tell him more about the initiative.
Example of inclusion
Pope Francis blessed the team and encouraged them to “keep it going, really, it’s an example [of inclusion] for all of us”.
Fennell explains that the project began with just four or five kids from the poorest part of town. As it became more popular, the team needed to find more coaches and it has recently been rolled out in state schools as well. Almost 800 boys and girls, aged between six and twenty, are now learning to play the sport
Teaching spirit of cricket
Among the major challenges, Fennell, goes on, it the difficulties of teaching ‘the spirit of cricket’ to those living in a football culture. If we can make that spirit better known, he says “it’ll be a huge win for us”.
(from Vatican Radio)…