input and clarity, other than by some hasty addition, to that which had
already been offered. So we must, with serenity and on the basis of the
evidence - because we have nothing to hide! - bring forth the explanation of
the position of the Holy See,
respond to the questions that remain, so that the fundamental objective that
is to be pursued - the protection of children - can be achieved. We are
talking about 40 million cases of child abuse in the world: unfortunately some
of these cases - even
though in small proportions in comparison to all those that are happening in
the world - affect people in the Church. And the Church has responded and
reacted and continues to do so! We must insist on this policy of transparency,
of no tolerance of
Subject: VISnews140206
From: Vatican Information Service - Eng - txt
abuse, because even one single case of child abuse is one case too many!”
___________________________________________________________
AUDIENCES
Vatican City, 6 February 2014 (VIS) – Today, the Holy Father received in
audience:
- Bishop Zbigniew Kiernikowski of Siedlce, Poland.
- Wafaa Ashraf Moharram Bassim, the new ambassador of the Arab Republic of
Egypt to the Holy See, presenting her credential letters.
- Archbishop Franco Coppola, apostolic nuncio to Burundi.
- Nineteen prelates from the Polish Episcopal Conference on their “ad
limina” visit:
- Archbishop Jozef Michalik of Przemysl of the Latins, with his auxiliaries,
Bishop Adam Szal and Stanislaw Jamrozek;
- Bishop Jan Franciszek Watroba of Rzeszow;
- Bishop Marian Rojek of Zamosc-Lubaczow;
- Archbishop Stanislaw Budzik of Lublin, with his auxiliaries, Bishop
Mieczislaw Cislo, Bishop Artur Grzegorz Mizinski, and Bishop Jozef Wrobel;
- Bishop Krzysztof Nitkiewicz of Sandomierz, with his former auxiliary, Bishop
Edward Marian Frankowski;
- Bishop Zbigniew Kiernikowski of Siedlce with his auxiliary, Bishop Piotr
Sawczuk;
- Archbishop Edward Ozorowski of Bialystok, with his auxiliary, Bishop Henryk
Ciereszco;
- Bishop Antoni Pacyfik Dydycz of Drohiczyn;
- Bishop Janusz Boguslaw Stepnowski of Lomza, with his auxiliary, Bishop
Tadeusz Bronakowski and Bishop emeritus Stanislaw Stefanek.
___________________________________________________________
OTHER PONTIFICAL ACTS
Vatican City, 6 February 2014 (VIS) – The Holy Father has:
- appointed Rev. Ham Lim Moon as auxiliary of the diocese of San Martin (area
102, population 761,000, Catholics 525,000, priests 79, permanent deacons 29,
religious 179), Argentina. The bishop-elect was born in Suwon, South Korea in
1955 and was
ordained a priest in 1984. He holds a licentiate in theology and a licentiate
in spiritual theology from the Pontifical Gregorian University, Rome. He has
served in the following pastoral roles in the archdiocese of Buenos Aires:
vicar in the parish
“Reina de los Apostoles” and chaplain of the “Dr. Teodoro
Alvarez” hospital; priest of the parish “Maria Madre de la
Iglesia”, member of the presbyteral commission and dean of the
“Flores” deanery. He is
responsible for courses in ongoing formation for the clergy of Buenos Aires
and has accompanied the Korean community in Argentina. Since 2003 he has
served as priest in the parish of “SS. Cosme y Damian” in Buenos
Aires.
- confirmed Cardinal Stanislaw Rylko as president of the Pontifical Council
for the Laity, and Bishop Josef Clemens as secretary of the Pontifical Council
for the Laity.
- appointed the following members of the Pontifical Council for the Laity:
Cardinal Christoph Schonborn, archbishop of Vienna, Austria; Cardinal Angelo
Scola, archbishop of Milan, Italy; Cardinal John Njue, archbishop of Nairobi,
Kenya; Cardinal
Reinhardt Marx, archbishop of Munich and Friesling, Federal Republic of
Germany; Cardinal Willem Jacobus Eijk, archbishop of Utrecht, Netherlands;
Cardinal Luis Antonio G. Tagle, archbishop of Manila, Philippines; Cardinal
Joao Braz de Aviz, prefect of
the Congregation for the Institutes of Consecrated Life and the Societies of
Apostolic Life; Archbishop Charles Joseph Chaput of Philadelphia, U.S.A.;
Archbishop Orani Joao Tempesta of Sao Sebastiao do Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; Dr.
Yago De La Cierva,
Spain, lecturer in Crisis Management and Communication at the Faculty of
Social Institutional Communication of the Pontifical University of the Holy
Cross in Rome; Dr. Irene Egle Laumenskaite, lecturer at the Centre for
Religious Studies and
Research at the University of Vilnius, Lithuania; Dr. Fabrice Hadjadj,
director of the Institut Europeen d'Etudes Anthropologiques Philanthropos in
Fribourg, Switzerland; Dr. Jocelyn Khoueiry, foundress of the Associations
“La Libanaise-Femme du
31 mai” and “Oui a la vie”, Lebanon; Dr. Franco Miano,
national president of Italian Catholic Action; Dr. Genevieve Amelie Mathilde
Sanze, Central African Republic, representative for Africa of the
International Secretariat of Economy
of Communion.
- appointed the following consultors of the Pontifical Council for the Laity:
Archbishop Alberto Taveira Correa of Belem do Para, Brazil; Archbishop Filippo
Santoro of Taranto, Italy; Bishop Anders Arborelius of Stockholm, Sweden;
Bishop Dominique Rey
of Frejus Toulon, France; Bishop Christoph Hegge, auxiliary of Munster,
Germany; Fr. Arturo Cattaneo, professor in the faculty of canon law of St.
Pius X of Venice, Italy; Fr. Fra Hans Stapel, O.F.M., founder and president of
the International
Association of the Faithful Family of Hope, Brazil; Alejandra Keen von
Wuthenau, superior general of the Marian Fraternity of Reconciliation, Peru;
Dr. Laurent Landete, moderator of the Community of the Emmanuel, France; Mimmo
Muolo, journalist from the
daily newspaper “Avvenire”, Italy; Marguerite A. Peeters,
Belgium/U.S.A., director of the Institute for the Intercultural Dialogue
Dynamics; Silvia Recchi, Italian professor of canon law at the Catholic
University of Central Afr
ica in
Yaounde, Cameroon; Maite Uribe Bilbao, El Salvador, director general of the
Theresian Institute.
___________________________________________________________
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VISnews140206
VATICAN INFORMATION SERVICE YEAR XXII - N° 25 DATE 06-02-2014
Summary: - MESSAGE FOR 29TH WORLD YOUTH
DAY - THE POPE TO THE
YOUNG: REJECT LOW-COST HAPPINESS - POPE FRANCIS DEEPLY SADDENED BY THE
FIRE IN BARRACAS, BUENOS AIRES - ARCHBISHOP TOMASI: THE HOLY SEE WILL
RESPOND TO THE CONCLUDING OBSERVATIONS OF THE U.N. COMMITTEE FOR THE RIGHTS OF
THE CHILD -
AUDIENCES - OTHER PONTIFICAL ACTS
Vatican City, 6 February 2014 (VIS) – We publish below the full text
of the message the Holy Father has sent to the young people preparing for the
29th World Youth Day 2014, which will take as its theme: “Blessed are
the poor in spirit,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven”.
“Dear Young Friends,
How vividly I recall the remarkable meeting we had in Rio de Janeiro for
the Twenty-eighth World Youth Day. It was a great celebration of faith and
fellowship! The wonderful people of Brazil welcomed us with open arms, like
the statue of Christ the
Redeemer which looks down from the hill of Corcovado over the magnificent
expanse of Copacabana beach. There, on the seashore, Jesus renewed his call to
each one of us to become his missionary disciples. May we perceive this call
as the most important
thing in our lives and share this gift with others, those near and far, even
to the distant geographical and existential peripheries of our world.
The next stop on our intercontinental youth pilgrimage will be in Krakow in
2016. As a way of accompanying our journey together, for the next three years
I would like to reflect with you on the Beatitudes found in the Gospel of
Saint Matthew. This
year we will begin by reflecting on the first Beatitude: 'Blessed are the poor
in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven'. For 2015 I suggest: 'Blessed
are the pure in heart, for they shall see God'. Then, in 2016, our theme will
be: 'Blessed are
the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy'.
1. The revolutionary power of the Beatitudes
It is always a joyful experience for us to read and reflect on the
Beatitudes! Jesus proclaimed them in his first great sermon, preached on the
shore of the sea of Galilee. There was a very large crowd, so Jesus went up on
the mountain to teach his
disciples. That is why it is known as 'the Sermon on the Mount'. In the Bible,
the mountain is regarded as a place where God reveals himself. Jesus, by
preaching on the mount, reveals himself to be a divine teacher, a new Moses.
What does he tell us? He
shows us the way to life, the way that he himself has taken. Jesus himself is
the way, and he proposes this way as the path to true happiness. Throughout
his life, from his birth in the stable in Bethlehem until his death on the
cross and his
resurrection, Jesus embodied the Beatitudes. All the promises of God’s
Kingdom were fulfilled in him.
In proclaiming the Beatitudes, Jesus asks us to follow him and to travel
with him along the path of love, the path that alone leads to eternal life. It
is not an easy journey, yet the Lord promises us his grace and he never
abandons us. We face so
many challenges in life: poverty, distress, humiliation, the struggle for
justice, persecutions, the difficulty of daily conversion, the effort to
remain faithful to our call to holiness, and many others. But if we open the
door to Jesus and allow him
to be part of our lives, if we share our joys and sorrows with him, then we
will experience the peace and joy that only God, who is infinite love, can
give.
The Beatitudes of Jesus are new and revolutionary. They present a model of
happiness contrary to what is usually communicated by the media and by the
prevailing wisdom. A worldly way of thinking finds it scandalous that God
became one of us and died
on a cross! According to the logic of this world, those whom Jesus proclaimed
blessed are regarded as useless, 'losers'. What is glorified is success at any
cost, affluence, the arrogance of power and self-affirmation at the expense of
others.
Jesus challenges us, young friends, to take seriously his approach to life
and to decide which path is right for us and leads to true joy. This is the
great challenge of faith. Jesus was not afraid to ask his disciples if they
truly wanted to follow
him or if they preferred to take another path. Simon Peter had the courage to
reply: 'Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life'. If you
too are able to say 'yes' to Jesus, your lives will become both meaningful and
fruitful.
2. The courage to be happy
What does it mean to be 'blessed' (makarioi in Greek)? To be blessed means
to be happy. Tell me: Do you really want to be happy? In an age when we are
constantly being enticed by vain and empty illusions of happiness, we risk
settling for less and
'thinking small' when it come to the meaning of life. Think big instead! Open
your hearts! As Blessed Piergiorgio Frassati once said, 'To live without
faith, to have no heritage to uphold, to fail to struggle constantly to defend
the truth: this is not
living. It is scraping by. We should never just scrape by, but really live'
(Letter to I. Bonini, 27 February 1925). In his homily on the day of
Piergiorgio Frassati’s beatification (20 May 1990), John Paul II called
him 'a man of the Beatitudes'
(AAS 82 [1990], 1518).
If you are really open to the deepest aspirations of your hearts, you will
realize that you possess an unquenchable thirst for happiness, and this will
allow you to expose and reject the 'low cost' offers and approaches all around
you. When we look
only for success, pleasure and possessions, and we turn these into idols, we
may well have moments of exhilaration, an illusory sense of satisfaction, but
ultimately we become enslaved, never satisfied, always looking for more. It is
a tragic thing to
see a young person who 'has everything', but is weary and weak.
Saint John, writing to young people, told them: 'You are strong, and the
word of God abides in you, and you have overcome the evil one'. oung people
who choose Christ are strong: they are fed by his word and they do not need to
‘stuff
themselves’ with other things! Have the courage to swim against the
tide. Have the courage to be truly happy! Say no to an ephemeral, superficial
and throwaway culture, a culture that assumes that you are incapable of taking
on responsibility and
facing the great challenges of life!
3. Blessed are the poor in spirit...
The first Beatitude, our theme for the next World Youth Day, says that the
poor in spirit are blessed for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. At a time when
so many people are suffering as a result of the financial crisis, it might
seem strange to link
poverty and happiness. How can we consider poverty a blessing?
First of all, let us try to understand what it means to be 'poor in
spirit'. When the Son of God became man, he chose the path of poverty and
self-emptying. As Saint Paul said in his letter to the Philippians: 'Let the
same mind be in you that was in
Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality
with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a
servant, being born in human likeness'. Jesus is God who strips himself of his
glory. Here we see
God’s choice to be poor: he was rich and yet he became poor in order to
enrich us through his poverty. His is the mystery we contemplate in the crib
when we see the Son of God lying in a manger, and later on the cross, where
his self-emptying
reaches its culmination.
The Greek adjective ptochos (poor) does not have a purely material meaning.
It means 'a beggar', and it should be seen as linked to the Jewish notion of
the anawim, 'God’s poor'. It suggests lowliness, a sense of one’s
limitations and
existential poverty. The anawim trust in the Lord, and they know that they can
count on him.
As Saint Therese of the Child Jesus clearly saw, by his incarnation Jesus
came among us as a poor beggar, asking for our love. The Catechism of the
Catholic Church tells us that 'man is a beggar before God' and that prayer is
the encounter of
God’s thirst and our own thirst.
Saint Francis of Assisi understood perfectly the secret of the Beatitude of
the poor in spirit. Indeed, when Jesus spoke to him through the leper and from
the crucifix, Francis recognized both God’s grandeur and his own
lowliness. In his
prayer, the Poor Man of Assisi would spend hours asking the Lord: 'Who are
you?' 'Who am I?' He renounced an affluent and carefree life in order to marry
'Lady Poverty', to imitate Jesus and to follow the Gospel to the letter.
Francis lived in imitation
of Christ in his poverty and in love for the poor – for him the two were
inextricably linked – like two sides of one coin.
You might ask me, then: What can we do, specifically, to make poverty in
spirit a way of life, a real part of our own lives? I will reply by saying
three things.
First of all, try to be free with regard to material things. The Lord calls
us to a Gospel lifestyle marked by sobriety, by a refusal to yield to the
culture of consumerism. This means being concerned with the essentials and
learning to do without
all those unneeded extras which hem us in. Let us learn to be detached from
possessiveness and from the idolatry of money and lavish spending. Let us put
Jesus first. He can free us from the kinds of idol-worship which enslave us.
Put your trust in God,
dear young friends! He knows and loves us, and he never forgets us. Just as he
provides for the lilies of the field, so he will make sure that we lack
nothing. If we are to come through the financial crisis, we must be also ready
to change our lifestyle
and avoid so much wastefulness. Just as we need the courage to be happy, we
also need the courage to live simply.
Second, if we are to live by this Beatitude, all of us need to experience a
conversion in the way we see the poor. We have to care for them and be
sensitive to their spiritual and material needs. To you young people I
especially entrust the task of
restoring solidarity to the heart of human culture. Faced with old and new
forms of poverty – unemployment, migration and addictions of various
kinds – we have the duty to be alert and thoughtful, avoiding the
temptation to remain
indifferent. We have to remember all those who feel unloved, who have no hope
for the future and who have given up on life out of discouragement,
disappointment or fear. We have to learn to be on the side of the poor, and
not just indulge in rhetoric
about the poor! Let us go out to meet them, look into their eyes and listen to
them. The poor provide us with a concrete opportunity to encounter Christ
himself, and to touch his suffering flesh.
However – and this is my third point – the poor are not just
people to whom we can give something. They have much to offer us and to teach
us. How much we have to learn from the wisdom of the poor! Think about it:
several hundred years
ago a saint, Benedict Joseph Labre, who lived on the streets of Rome from the
alms he received, became a spiritual guide to all sorts of people, including
nobles and prelates. In a very real way, the poor are our teachers. They show
us that
people’s value is not measured by their possessions or how much money
they have in the bank. A poor person, a person lacking material possessions,
always maintains his or her dignity. The poor can teach us much about humility
and trust in God. In
the parable of the pharisee and the tax-collector, Jesus holds the
tax-collector up as a model because of his humility and his acknowledgement
that he is a sinner. The widow who gave her last two coins to the temple
treasury is an example of the
generosity of all those who have next to nothing and yet give away everything
they have.
4. … for theirs is the kingdom of heaven
The central theme of the Gospel is the kingdom of God. Jesus is the kingdom
of God in person; he is Immanuel, God-with-us. And it is in the human heart
that the kingdom, God’s sovereignty, takes root and grows. The kingdom
is at once both gift
and promise. It has already been given to us in Jesus, but it has yet to be
realised in its fullness. That is why we pray to the Father each day: 'Thy
kingdom come'.
There is a close connection between poverty and evangelisation, between the
theme of the last World Youth Day – 'Go therefore, and make disciples of
all nations!' – and the theme for this year: 'Blessed are the poor in
spirit, for theirs
is the kingdom of heaven'. The Lord wants a poor Church which evangelises the
poor. When Jesus sent the Twelve out on mission, he said to them: 'Take no
gold, nor silver, nor copper in your belts, no bag for your journey, nor two
tunics, nor sandals,
nor a staff; for the labourers deserve their food'. Evangelical poverty is a
basic condition for spreading the kingdom of God. The most beautiful and
spontaneous expressions of joy which I have seen during my life were by poor
people who had little to
hold onto. Evangelisation in our time will only take place as the result of
contagious joy.
We have seen, then, that the Beatitude of the poor in spirit shapes our
relationship with God, with material goods and with the poor. With the example
and words of Jesus before us, we realize how much we need to be converted, so
that the logic of
being more will prevail over that of having more! The saints can best help us
to understand the profound meaning of the Beatitudes. So the canonization of
John Paul II, to be celebrated on the Second Sunday of Easter, will be an
event marked by immense
joy. He will be the great patron of the World Youth Days which he inaugurated
and always supported. In the communion of saints he will continue to be a
father and friend to all of you.
This month of April marks the thirtieth anniversary of the entrustment of
the Jubilee Cross of the Redemption to the young. That symbolic act by John
Paul II was the beginning of the great youth pilgrimage which has since
crossed the five continents.
The Pope’s words on that Easter Sunday in 1984 remain memorable: 'My
dear young people, at the conclusion of the Holy Year, I entrust to you the
sign of this Jubilee Year: the cross of Christ! Carry it throughout the world
as a symbol of the love
of the Lord Jesus for humanity, and proclaim to everyone that it is only in
Christ, who died and rose from the dead, that salvation and redemption are to
be found'.
Dear friends, the Magnificat, the Canticle of Mary, poor in spirit, is also
the song of everyone who lives by the Beatitudes. The joy of the Gospel arises
from a heart which, in its poverty, rejoices and marvels at the works of God,
like the heart of
Our Lady, whom all generations call 'blessed'. May Mary, Mother of the poor
and Star of the new evangelisation help us to live the Gospel, to embody the
Beatitudes in our lives, and to have the courage always to be happy.”
Vatican City, 6 February 2014 (VIS) – The Pontifical Council for the
Laity has issued a press release to explain the content and objectives of the
Holy Father's message for the 29th World Youth Day.
“This is the first annual Message from Pope Francis to the youth of
the world. It follows the tradition begun by Blessed John Paul II and
continued by Benedict XVI on the occasion of each World Youth Day (WYD). Pope
Francis is resuming the
conversation he began with young people at the very successful WYD that took
place in Rio de Janeiro in July 2013. He presents the themes for the next
three WYDs in order to set in motion the three-year path of spiritual
preparation leading to the
international celebration in Krakow in July 2016.
The themes for the next three WYDs are taken from the Beatitudes. The Holy
Father considers this passage from Matthew’s Gospel to be a central
point of reference in a Christian’s life. It should be part of
everyone’s life plan.
In this Message, the Holy Father reminds young people that Jesus himself
showed the way by embodying the Beatitudes in his life. It is a real challenge
for young people today to live according to the Beatitudes by following Jesus.
It means going
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