(Vatican Radio) An inter national conference entitled “Women and the post-2015 development agenda – The Challenges of Sustainable Development Goals” got underway in Rome Friday. The May 22-24 event is jointly sponsored by the Pontifical Council of Justice and Peace, the World Union of Catholic Women’s Organizations and the World Women’s Alliance for Life and Family.
President of the Pontifical Council of Justice and Peace, Cardinal Peter Turkson said 2015 is a crucial year for the international community concerning development issues and said the new Sustainable Development Goals to be approved in September have many important implications for women and their role in society.
Following on the heels of the U.N. Millennium Development goals which expire this year, the international community has proposed 17 new goals to achieve for sustainable development within the next fifteen years. One of the goals aims at achieving gender equality and empowering all women and girls.
But conference organizer Flaminia Giovanelli, Under-Secretary of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, says women have much to contribute to the achievement of every goal on the list.
Listen to the interview with Flaminia Giovanelli:
Some of those targets include ending poverty and hunger and achieving food security, ensuring healthy lives and equitable quality education, ensuring sustainable water management and sanitation, promoting inclusive economic growth and fostering innovation, making cities and towns safe and sustainable and taking action to protect the environment.
“Looking a these goals we noticed that the role of women is very important for every one of these goals,” Giovanelli stresses. “Particularly because the contribution of the woman is essential…to achieve the goals, every one of them.”
But a sustainable society is also needed for women’s development, says Giovanelli. “So, creating a sustainable society, in my mind, is to create, to help to build a new culture. The goals are there; we want to achieve them but they are [just] numbers. And we can also [make] laws and the juridical [framework which are] very important, but what is needed – and of course, we need time – is a cultural change.”
Men need to be part of this cultural change but, she adds, also women themselves. “Because they must adjust – they have to find their own identity and also in relation with men so we must find a kind of equilibrium that would be a bit different from what we have had.”
More than 100 delegates from across the world are taking part in the three day conference to discuss issues pertaining to women including modernity, the so-called gender theory, surrogate motherhood, education, inter-religious dialogue, old and new forms of slavery, poverty, violence and femicide.
(from Vatican Radio)…
(Vatican Radio) Pope Francis says each of us should ask Jesus to gaze at us and tell us what we need to do to change our hearts and repent for our sins. We should consider whether Jesus looks at us with a call, with a pardon or with a mission? The Pope’s remarks came during his homily at morning Mass on Friday (May 22nd) at the Santa Marta residence. Taking his inspiration from the day’s readings, Pope Francis’ homily was a reflection on the three different types of looks which Jesus gave to the Apostle Peter. He said these three different looks were one of choosing, one of forgiveness and one of mission. The Pope recalled how according to the gospel reading the apostle Andrew told his brother Peter that they had found the Messiah and took him to see Jesus. Christ looked at him and said “You are Simon, son of John. You will be called Peter (Cephas) which means Rock.” He said Peter was enthusiastic after that first look from Jesus and wanted to follow our Lord. Moving ahead to the night before Jesus’ crucifixion, Pope Francis recalled how Peter disowned him three times and when Jesus turned and looked straight at him after that third denial, Peter wept. “The gospel of Luke says: ‘He wept bitterly.’ That earlier enthusiasm about following Jesus had turned to grief, because he had sinned: He denied that he knew Jesus.That look (by Jesus) changed Peter’s heart, more than before. The first change was being given a new name and a new vocation. That second look was a gaze that changed his heart and it’s a change of conversion to love.” The Pope said the third look that Jesus gave Peter was one of mission when he asked three times for a confirmation that Peter loved him and urged him to feed his sheep. He noted how the gospel recounts that Peter was hurt when Jesus asked him that question a third time. “Hurt because Jesus asked him for the third time ‘Do you love me?’ and he said: ‘Lord, You know everything: You know I love you.’ Jesus replied: ‘Feed my sheep.’ This was the third look, a look of mission. The first, a look of choosing, with the enthusiasm of following Jesus: the second, a look of repentance at the time of that very grave sin of having disowned Jesus: the three look is one of mission: ‘Feed my lambs,’ ‘Look after my sheep,’ ‘Feed my sheep.’” Pope Francis urged his listeners to re-read that dialogue with the Lord and think about Jesus’ gaze on us. “We too can reflect: what look is Jesus giving me today? How is Jesus looking at me? With a call? With a pardon? With a mission? But on the path He created, all of us are being looked at by Jesus. He always looks at us with love. He asks us something, he forgives us for something and he gives us a mission. Jesus is now coming on the altar. May each one of us think: ‘Lord, You are here, among us. Fix your gaze on me and tell me what I must do: how I must repent for my mistakes, my sins; what courage do I need to go forward on the path that You first created.” (from Vatican Radio)…
(Vatican Radio) The 3 day conference ‘Nostra Aetate – Celebrating 50 years of the Catholic Church’s Dialogue with Jews and Muslims’ concluded yesterday at the Catholic University of America in Washington DC. The President of the Pontifical Council for Christian Unity – and also responsible for the Church’s dialogue with the Jewish people – Cardinal Kurt Koch, was there. He says the Nostra Aetate declaration was a landmark in relations between the Catholic Church and other faiths.
But, he notes that while the Church has ongoing bilateral talks with Jewish and Muslim religious leaders, it may be too early to engage in a “trialogue” among the three monotheistic faiths.
“We don’t have trialogue and for us it is too early to make this because sometimes we speak about an Abrahamitic ecumenism – this is very clear – it is a good issue. But on the other hand, we have a very, very different interpretation of Abraham and we cannot deny this issue. And in the interreligious discussion, it is very important to treat also this difference that we have in the interpretation of Abraham.”
Asked if Muslim and Jewish religious leaders would be open to such a dialogue and if it could pave the way to improved relations among the three faiths, Cardinal Koch responds,
“We hope that we can go in this [direction] in future but we have in every religion, we have opposition. We have open leaders, we have open Muslim leaders, we have open Christian leaders, but we have opposition in all the three religions. We have also opposition in the Catholic Church against Nostra Aetate. The same groups, they are against ecumenism, against interreligious dialogue, against the religious freedom declaration. And I think that they are minorities. We must go on the basis of the Second Vatican Council with the high authority of the Catholic Church and we cannot deny this very important influence.”
Listen to Philippa Hitchen’s extended interview with Cardinal Koch:
(from Vatican Radio)…
(Vatican Radio) Pope Francis on Thursday (May 21st) encouraged Italy’s police officers to take action against violent and corrupt individuals, saying the country needs people to serve it with altruism, generosity and continuity. He praised the police officers for their help in welcoming migrants landing on the nation’s shores and in counteracting the “unscrupulous human traffickers” and said their job is an important and noble mission of service to the entire community that sometimes can lead to the sacrifice of their own lives. The Pope’s remarks came in an address to the family members of Italian police officers who were killed or injured whilst on active duty.
Pope Francis said the work of a police officer is a mission that carries a strong sense of duty and discipline and a willingness, if necessary, to lay down one’s life in order to uphold “the rule of law, defend democracy” and engage in the struggle against “organized crime or terrorism.” Your mission, he said, requires “the courage” to rescue whoever is in danger and to stop the aggressor in order to protect the wider society from “the arrogance of corrupt or violent individuals.”
The Pope noted that nowadays police officers often find themselves on the front line, both in welcoming migrants landing on Italy’s shores and in taking action to apprehend the unscrupulous human traffickers. In this work, he said, you distinguish yourselves by “the moral imperative to do good, to save as many people as possible and to not spare yourselves in donating energy and time for this mission.”
Pope Francis concluded by urging the police officers to continue their mission and Christian witness at the service of all and said by defending the weak and the rule of law they are a role model for Italy that “needs people to serve it with altruism, generosity and continuity.”
(from Vatican Radio)…
(Vatican Radio) His wounds are the “price” that Jesus paid for the Church to be united forever to Him and to God. Christians today are called to ask for the grace of unity and to fight against all “spirit of division, of war, of jealousy.” That was Pope Francis’s reflection during his Homily at Mass Thursday morning in the chapel of the Santa Marta guesthouse.
For Pope Francis, “the great prayer of Jesus” is that the Church is united – that Christians “be one” as Jesus is with his Father. Drawing his reflections from the day’s readings, Pope Francis immerses us in the atmosphere of the Last Supper – not long before Christ gives Himself over to the Passion. Recalling Christ’s weighty words entrusted to the Apostles, the Pope warns us against “the great temptation” and entreats us not to yield to the other “father:” the one of “lies” and “division.”
The price of unity
It is comforting, observes Francis, to hear Jesus say to the Father that He did not want to pray simply for his disciples but also for those who will believe in Him “through their word.” That’s a familiar phrase, but one the Pope thinks is worth drawing special attention to:
“Maybe, we do not pay enough attention to these words: Jesus prayed for me! This is really a source of confidence: He prays for me; He prayed for me … I imagine …a figure …as Jesus is before the Father in Heaven. It is so: He prays for us; He prays for me. And what does the Father see? The wounds, the cost. The price He paid for us. Jesus prays for me with His wounds, with His wounded heart and He will continue to do so.”
The faces of the division
Jesus prays “for the unity of His people, for the Church.” But Jesus knows, Pope Francis says, that “the spirit of the world” is “a spirit of division, of war, of envy, jealousy, even in families, even in religious families, even in dioceses, even in the Church as a whole: it is the great temptation.” One that leads, the Pope says, to gossiping, to labelling, to pigeonholing people. All attitudes and behavior, the Pope stresses, that we are called to refrain from:
“We must be one, just one being, as Jesus and the Father are one. This is precisely the challenge for all of us Christians: to not give way to division among us; to not let the spirit of division, the father of lies, come between us. Continuously seek unity. Everyone is different in his own way, but [we must] try to live in unity. Has Jesus forgiven you? He forgives everyone. Jesus prays that we are one, one being. And the Church has great need of this prayer of unity. ”
Unity is grace, not “glue”
A Church held together by “glue,” jokes the Pope, doesn’t exist – because the unity Jesus calls us to “is a grace of God” and “a struggle” to be won on this earth. “We have to make room for the Spirit, Pope Francis concludes, so that we are transformed as the Father is in the Son: one being”:
“Another bit of advice that Jesus gave in these days before He takes His leave is to remain in Him: ‘Abide in me.’ And He asks for this grace, that we all remain in Him. And here He shows us why; He clearly says: ‘Father, I want those whom you have given me, that they too may be with me where I am.’ That is, that they remain there, with me. Remaining in Jesus, in this world, in the end [means] remaining with Him ‘so that they may see my glory.’ ”
(from Vatican Radio)…