From: richarra@gmail.com   
      
   Comfort for those who doubt God's providence in Christ   
      
       "To bestow yet another means of comfort on our minds, he forcibly   
   added that five sparrows are scarcely perhaps worth a penny, and yet   
   God does not forget even one of them. He also said that the separate   
   hairs of your head are all numbered. Consider how great care he takes   
   of those that love him. The Preserver of the universe extends his aid   
   to things so worthless and descends to the smallest animals. How can   
   he forget those who love him, especially when he takes so great care   
   of them? He condescends to visit them, to know exactly each particular   
   of their state, and even how many are the hairs of their heads... Let   
   us not doubt that with a rich hand he will give his grace to those who   
   love him. He will not permit us to fall into temptation. If, by his   
   wise purpose he permits us to be taken in the snare in order that we   
   may gain glory by suffering, he will most assuredly grant us the power   
   to bear it."   
    by Cyril of Alexandria(excerpt from COMMENTARY ON LUKE, HOMILY 87)   
      
   <<>><<>><<>>   
   21 October – Blessed Giuseppe “Pino” Puglisi   
   (1937-1993)   
      
   Priest, Martyr, teacher, vocations, youth and social reformer and   
   activist – was a Roman Catholic priest in the rough Palermo   
   neighbourhood of Brancaccio, Sicily. He openly challenged the Mafia   
   who controlled the neighbourhood and was killed by them on his 56th   
   birthday in the same town. His life story has been retold in a book,   
   Pino Puglisi, il prete che fece tremare la mafia con un sorriso (2013)   
   and portrayed in a film, Come Into the Light (“Alla luce del sole”   
   original Italian title) (2005).   
      
   Dom Pino Puglisi was born in Brancaccio, a working-class neighbourhood   
   in Palermo (Sicily), into a family of modest means. His father was a   
   shoemaker and his mother a dressmaker. He entered the seminary at age   
   sixteen. Following ordination, he worked in various parishes,   
   including a country parish afflicted by a bloody vendetta.   
      
   Puglisi was ordained as a priest on 2 July 1960 by Cardinal Ernesto   
   Ruffini from Palermo. Ruffini regarded Communism as a greater threat   
   than the Mafia. He once questioned the Mafia’s very existence. To a   
   journalist’s question of “What is the Mafia?” he responded:  “So far   
   as I know, it could be a brand of detergent.” This denial persuaded   
   Puglisi of the need to challenge church authorities. “We can, we must   
   criticise the church when we feel it doesn’t respond to our   
   expectations, because it’s absolutely right to seek to improve it,” he   
   said. With his trademark humour, Puglisi added: “But we should always   
   criticise it like a mother, never a mother-in-law!”   
      
   With little support from the Palermo archdiocese, Puglisi tried to   
   change his parishioners’ mentality, which was conditioned by fear,   
   passivity and omerta – imposed silence. In his sermons, he pleaded to   
   give leads to authorities about the Mafia’s illicit activities in   
   Brancaccio, even if they could not actually name names. He refused   
   their monies when offered for the traditional feast day celebrations   
   and would not allow the Mafia “men of honour” to march at the head of   
   religious processions.   
      
   He tried to discourage the children from dropping out of school,   
   robbing, drug dealing and selling contraband cigarettes. He ignored a   
   series of warnings and declined to award a contract to a construction   
   firm which had been “indicated” to him by the Mafia for the   
   restoration of the church, where the roof was collapsing. Those   
   parishioners that made attempts to reform matters were sent strong   
   messages. A small group who organised for social improvement found the   
   doors of their houses torched, their phones receiving threats and   
   their families put on notice that worse things lay in store.   
      
   On 15 September 1993—Puglisi’s 56th birthday—he was killed outside his   
   home by a single bullet shot at point-blank range. He was taken   
   unconscious to a local hospital, where surgeons could not revive him.   
   The murder was ordered by the local Mafia bosses, the brothers Filippo   
   and Giuseppe Graviano. One of the hitmen who killed Puglisi, Salvatore   
   Grigoli, later confessed and revealed the priest’s last words as his   
   killers approached:  “I’ve been expecting you.”   
      
   Puglisi’s murder shocked Italy. There was an immediate call by eight   
   priests in Palermo for the Pope to travel to Palermo to be present at   
   his funeral. St Pope John Paul II, however, was scheduled to be in   
   Tuscany on that date and did not attend the memorial service. At the   
   funeral Mass the Archbishop of Palermo, Cardinal Salvatore Pappalardo,   
   spoke out very strongly against the Mafia, echoing the Pope’s words on   
   a visit to Agrigento, Sicily, just months earlier.   
      
   On 14 April 1998, the Mafiosi Gaspare Spatuzza, Nino Mangano, Cosimo   
   Lo Nigro and Luigi Giacalone received life sentences for the killing   
   of Puglisi. The Graviano brothers also received life sentences for   
   ordering the killing.   
      
   During his visit to Sicily in November 1994, ST Pope John Paul II   
   praised Puglisi as a “courageous exponent of the Gospel.” He urged   
   Sicilians not to allow the priest’s death to have been in vain and   
   warned that silence and passivity about the Mafia was tantamount to   
   complicity.   
      
   Puglisi’s favourite rhetorical quote—“Se ognuno fa qualcosa, allora si   
   può fare molto” – “If everyone does something, then we can do a lot”   
   —is scrawled on walls in Brancaccio.  In 1999, the Cardinal of Palermo   
   started his Beatification process, proclaiming Puglisi a Servant of   
   God.   
      
   To underscore this anti-Mafia conviction, he composed a parody of the   
   Our Father in the Sicilian language:   
      
   “O godfather to me and my family, You are a man of honour and worth.   
   Your name must be respected. Everyone must obey you. Everyone must do   
   what you say for this is the law of those who do not wish to die. You   
   give us bread, work;  who wrongs you, pays. Do not pardon; it is an   
   infamy. Those who speak are spies. I put my trust in you, godfather.   
   Free me from the police and the law.”   
      
   On 28 June 2012, Pope Benedict XVI approved the Vatican Congregation   
   for the Causes of Saints to designate Puglisi a Martyr in a first step   
   to Beatify the slain priest. The Pope signed a decree acknowledging   
   that Father Puglisi had been killed “in hatred of the faith” meaning   
   that he can be beatified – the last step before sainthood – without a   
   miracle being attributed to his intercession with God.   
      
   The Beatification of Pino Puglisi took place on 25 May 2013. The   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)