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(Vatican Radio) Friday January 20th marks the day that Donald Trump is sworn in as 45th president of the United States of America, following an election campaign that has deeply divided the nation.

Trump will attend a service at St John’s Episcopal Church near the White House and swear the oath of office before delivering his inaugural address on Capitol Hill.

He and vice president Mike Pence then lead a parade, under tight security, down Pennsylvania Avenue which is expected to be lined with both supporters and those protesting against the views and policies of the new president.

Massimo Faggioli is a historian, author and professor of theology at Villanova University in the United States. He talked to Philippa Hitchen about his expectations for the Trump presidency and the divisions that have also marked the Catholic Church in the lead up to this inauguration day

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Professor Faggioli notes that during the election campaign the majority of American bishops were very focused on abortion which he describes as “the single defining issue of American politics from a religious point of view”. Thus, he says, their main concern “wasn’t about the election of the new president, but about the future configuration of Supreme Court. Therefore Trump’s pledges to appoint anti-abortion judges, he says, got the sympathy of the majority of U.S. bishops, who overlooked “the deeply troubling rest of Trump’s message”.  

Faggioli notes that the Catholic Church is the largest and most important Church nationally, in that it reaches “every latitude, every state, every social status, every ethnicity, every culture, so it has a special responsibility which I think it hasn't fulfilled completely during this last year”.

Faggioli believes that the Trump Presidency will be unpredictable on many levels, depending in large measure on “whether he’ll be the real president” or whether vice president Pence - a former Catholic “who knows the religious landscape much better than Trump” - will play a big role. One of the interesting features of the election, he adds, was Trump’s “ability to bypass completely all cultural mediation” and cultural gatekeepers, including the Catholic bishops.

Commenting on relations with the Vatican, Faggioli says usually local bishops have a role of drawing lines and defending Church positions, while the Vatican is the “realpolitik actor”.  But in this situation, he says the Vatican may “have to play both roles with Trump”, respectingCatholi him as the elected leader, but at same time, given the Pope’s focus on issues like immigration and refugees, the Vatican “will also have to play the role of drawing lines as the U.S. bishops have so far been reluctant to do”. He notes the pragmatic, wait-and-see view the bishops took at their last annual assembly, in contrast to their strident declarations eight years ago following President Obama’s election.

Asked about any possible areas of convergence between the pope and the new president, Faggioli points to both men’s concern for “a certain kind of globalization” without rules and respect for the needs of national workforces”.  

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A 38-meter statue of the Divine Mercy, the tallest so far of Christ depicted this way, was inaugurated  on Thursday in the town of Marilao, 24 kilometers north of the Philippine capital Manila.  The image stands on top a four-storey building inside a shrine, which is a popular destination for pilgrims and devotees of the Divine Mercy. 

Father Prospero Tenorio, director of the shrine said the project was conceived for devotees "to feel God's mercy by reminding them to live the spirituality of the Divine Mercy."  The Jan. 19 inauguration of the image was one of the highlights of the "pilgrimage of mercy" duing the 4th World Apostolic Congress on Mercy (WACOM4), Jan. 16-20, in Manila.  Father Tenorio said the building of the statue aims to perpetuate the memory of the global event that was held in Asia for the first time.

Nigerian Bishop Martin Uzoukwu of Minna and Philippine Bishop Jose Oliveros of Malolos led the inauguration of the image after a Mass attended by delegates to the global gathering of promoters and devotees of Divine Mercy devotion. The first World Apostolic Congress on Mercy was held for the first time in Rome in 2008, on the third death anniversary of St. Pope John Paul II.   Since then it has been held every 3 years.  (Source: UCAN)

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Pope Francis on Friday appointed a new bishop to a Diocese in Papua New Guinea.  Fr. Pedro Baquero, ‎the 46-year old Philippine-born Superior of the Salesian Vice-province of Papua New Guinea–Solomon ‎Islands, is the new bishop of Kerema.   The diocese has been without a bishop since April 29, 2013, ‎after the death of Bishop Patrick Taval.  ‎

The Salesian priest was born in Manila (Philippines) on September 15, 1970.  After his primary and ‎secondary school with the Salesians Pampanga‎, he entered the Salesian novitiate in 1989 and made his ‎first profession the following year and perpetual profession in 1998. After completing his philosophy ‎and theology studies in Manila he was ordained a priest in 1999.  From the period of his practical ‎training he followed the missionary vocation ad gentes and worked in Papua New Guinea in various ‎capacities.  Fr. Pedro served as the Salesian Superior Delegate of Papua New Guinea – Solomon Islands ‎from 2014-2016, until the Salesian jurisdiction was raised to the rank of Salesian Vice-province, of ‎which he was appointed the Superior.

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(Vatican Radio) Pope Francis has sent his support to the March for Life taking place in Paris, France on 22 January 2017.

The message was went through the Apostolic Nuncio to France, Archbishop Luigi, who said the Holy Father sent his greetings to the participants of the pro-life march.

“The Church must never tire of being an advocate for life and must not neglect to proclaim that human life is to be protected unconditionally from the moment of conception until natural death,” the Message said, quoting Pope Francis’ words to the Bishops of Germany on 11 November 2015.

"Beyond this legitimate manifestation in defense of human life, the Holy Father encourages participants in the March for Life to work tirelessly for the building of a civilization of love and a culture of life,” the Message concluded.

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Vatican City, Jan 20, 2017 / 08:28 am (CNA/EWTN News).- On Friday Archbishop José Domingo Ulloa Mendieta of Panama officially announced the dates of the next World Youth Day, which is set to take place in January, rather than July as is usual, due to the weather.

He made the announcement during a Jan. 20 news conference in the country's capital, Panama City, during which he also reiterated the gratitude of the Panamanian Church to Pope Francis for choosing Panama to host WYD in 2019.

According to a communique from the archdiocese, the bishop explained that the decision to choose Jan. 22-27 for the dates of the gathering, rather than holding it in July as is traditionally done, was done for reasons primarily linked to the climate and weather.

Speaking directly to youth, Ulloa said “you are the true protagonists of this World Youth Day. Panama awaits you with an open heart and with open arms to share the faith, to feel that you are the Church!”

Pope Francis announced Panama as the setting for the next WYD at the closing Mass of the July 26-31, 2016, international gathering in Krakow.

“I am happy to announce that the next World Youth Day – after the two that will be held on the diocesan level – will take place in 2019 in Panama,” the Pope said making the July 31 announcement.

In a news conference after the announcement of Panama as the next location was made, the country’s bishops said the decision is a reflection of his attention to the peripheries and voiced their hope to be a “bridge” for those who come from all continents.

“I think that it will be an occasion a revitalization of the Church in general, and for the youth in particular … not just from Panama, but from Central America and all of Latin America,” Cardinal José Luis Lacunza Maestrojuán of David told CNA July 31.

Panama, he said, will be an opportunity for a demographically young Latin America to “charge their battery” in living the Christian life.

He noted how the decision to hold the 2019 WYD in Panama comes just a year after he was named the country’s first cardinal, jesting that Pope Francis “made a lot of mischief, the first of which was appointing me cardinal. It was a great mischief!”

Now Panamanians “have the opportunity to show what we really are,” he said, explaining that while Pope Francis might have made “this mischief” in giving Panama the task of organizing the 2019 event, “with a big smile gives us this challenge to go forward.”

Due to its geographical location, Panama serves as “a bridge” connecting North, South and Central America, he said.

Given the fact that many youth from Central America will be able to arrive to Panama by land at a low cost, the cardinal said that though he’s not 100 percent sure, “this must be one of the reasons why Pope Francis elected Panama to be the host.”

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By Rhina Guidos

WASHINGTON (CNS) -- Like many concerned about what Donald Trump has said about women and his various and changing positions on abortion, Destiny Herndon-De La Rosa decided she wanted to take part in the Jan. 21 Women's March on Washington, protesting the new president on the day after his inauguration as the country's 45th leader.

She and about 50 others from the New Wave Feminists, a pro-life group against abortion, war, the death penalty and other issues, had planned to join the crowd to make their voices heard and even wanted to be listed as partners in the march's official roster.

"We were going to send a message that we were going to be holding Trump accountable," Herndon-De La Rosa said in a Jan. 19 interview with Catholic News Service.

While officials with the Women's March, a conglomeration of groups dealing with issues ranging from equal pay for women, against sex discrimination and violence against women, said they would march to defend the marginalized, Herndon-De La Rosa said her group felt marginalized after they were accepted, then kicked off the roster of partner organizations, along with other pro-life groups.

No one contacted them to give them the news, she said, but they found out after a flurry of stories announced pro-life groups like hers were taken off the roster as partners by officials. The groups And Then There Were None and Students for Life of America also were denied or taken off the Women's March roster.

"We don't want to be opposing the (Women's March)," Herndon-De La Rosa said. "We're not trying to make them look bad."

In fact, many members of her New Wave Feminists still plan to participate in the event. Pro-life groups like hers still have legitimate concerns, which they share with others who are marching, Herndon-De La Rosa said.

Trump's past, which includes periods in which he has said he supports abortion, then says he doesn't, makes the New Wave Feminists, based in Texas, worry. They want to let him know they'll be watching his position on abortion, on the death penalty, on other issues involving war and violence, she said.

"Information leads us to be he truly doesn't believe in the value and dignity of all human beings," Herndon-De La Rosa said.

The Women's March website lists a "statement of Inclusivity" and says it's heard about some concerns others have voiced. "We seek to address these divisions and stand together in the face of injustice," it says. "Together, we will raise our voices in the service of all people."

In a news release, Students for Life of America president Kristan Hawkins said that while she still plans to attend, organizers have a ways to go when it comes to including all.

"They are excluding the majority of American women who find abortion to be morally wrong and believe in protecting families, defending the marginalized, and achieving social justice," Hawkins said.

Abby Johnson and her group, And Then There Were None, also said they would still attend.

"To silence our experiences is detrimental to women and our rights," she said in a statement issued late Jan. 19.

The organization of former abortion clinic workers "who can attest to the corruption of the abortion industry" may be seen as "a direct threat" to several of the other march partners, such Planned Parenthood, Johnson added. "But no matter what -- we will be there on Saturday morning, making sure that our voices are heard."

Herndon-De La Rosa said that she can't be too angry with what happened. All the publicity has helped her group gain more members. She has recently done interviews with the BBC, Rolling Stone magazine and other major media outlets. It has helped advance the Texas-based group's agenda about a consistent life ethic, she said.

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Follow Guidos on Twitter: @CNS_Rhina.

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By Cindy Wooden

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- God forgives and forgets the faults of repentant sinners, unless they keep reminding him of their errors by pretending they have no need to change, Pope Francis said.

The new covenant in Jesus Christ, the new relationship God wants to establish with each person, is sealed by being "faithful to this work the Lord does to change our mentality, to change our hearts," the pope said Jan. 20 during his morning Mass.

Being a Christian, he said, is making a commitment to changing one's life by "not sinning again or reminding the Lord of that which he has forgotten."

The pope preached on the day's reading from the Letter to the Hebrews, which says God will write his laws on the hearts of believers, "will forgive their evildoing and remember their sins no more."

"Sometimes I like to think -- joking with the Lord a bit -- 'You don't have a very good memory.' It is God's weakness that when he forgives, he forgets," the pope said.

By writing his laws on people's hearts, he said, God wants to renew creation at its roots. Obedience, then, is not an external matter of following rules, but "there is a change of mentality, a change of heart," a different way of acting and of seeing things.

"Think about the 'doctors of the law' who persecuted Jesus," he said. "They did everything, everything prescribed by the law, they had the law in their hands, all of it. But their mentality was far from God. It was a selfish mentality, centered on themselves. Their hearts were hearts that condemned."

In forgiving rather than condemning, the pope said, God's call to believers is a call to sin no more and to change one's life.

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By J.D. Long-Garcia

LOS ANGELES (CNS) -- On the eve of Donald Trump's inauguration as U.S. president, Los Angeles Archbishop Jose H. Gomez renewed the call to recognize the humanity of immigrants at a Vatican-sponsored migration conference at the University of California in Los Angeles.

"People do not cease to be human -- they do not cease to be our brothers and sisters -- just because they have an irregular immigration status," the archbishop said in a keynote address closing the "Workshop on Humanitarianism and Mass Migration" Jan. 19. "They are children of God and they are brothers and sisters. Our family."

The Jan. 18-19 conference -- sponsored by the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences, the Ross Institute of New York, and the Graduate School of Education and Information Studies at UCLA -- brought together leading scientists, policymakers and philanthropists.

"The fundamental crisis that forced displacement and mass migration are generating represents the most significant concern of all men and women of good faith," said Marcelo Suarez-Orozco, a UCLA professor who specializes on migration. "Our work was inspired by so many of our colleagues here today."

Suarez-Orozco and Msgr. Marcelo Sanchez Sorondo, a professor at Maria Santissima Assunta Free University in Rome, served as the conference chairs. The city of Los Angeles, home to millions of immigrants, was an appropriate location to host the dialogue, Suarez-Orozco said when introducing Archbishop Gomez.

"Tonight -- in this city and in immigrant neighborhoods all across this country -- there is a lot of fear, a lot of uncertainty and a lot of anger," the archbishop said. "Because our new president campaigned with harsh rhetoric about foreigners and sweeping promises to deport millions of undocumented immigrants."

Los Angeles is home to an estimated 1 million immigrants in the country without legal permission, he said. The archbishop also said that politics is not the answer.

"We know that both political parties are exploiting the immigration issue for their own purposes," he said. "That is sad to say, but it is true. And it has been happening for years."

While expressing concerns about the incoming president, Archbishop Gomez also noted that President Barack Obama had deported more immigrants than any administration in U.S. history -- 2.5 million over the past eight years.

"The vast majority of those that we are deporting are not violent criminals," he said. "In fact, up to one-quarter are mothers and fathers that our government is seizing and removing from ordinary households. Nobody talks about this, but we see it every day here in L.A. When the government comes to deport people, they are taking away some little girl's dad, some little boy's mom."

The estimated 11 million immigrants living in the U.S. illegally arrived over the past 20 years, the archbishop noted. The government at every level failed to enforce immigration laws, he said.

Most of these immigrants have been in the country for at least 10 years, he said, and nearly half live with a spouse and children. The reason, he said, is that government has failed to act. That's despite a broad public consensus for "compassionate and reasonable" solutions to the broken immigration system.

"When you look into the eyes of a child whose parent has been deported -- and I have done that more than I want to -- you realize how inadequate our politics are," said the archbishop, who noted he came to the U.S. as an immigrant from Monterrey, Mexico, and has been a naturalized U.S. citizen for more than 25 years.

Following the theme of the workshop, Archbishop Gomez said immigration is part of a bigger challenge of globalization, de-industrialization and new economic challenges.

"It's not a matter of building walls. That won't solve anything," the archbishop said.

During a question-and-answer period, he underscored that it is still unclear what the Trump administration will do about immigration. In the meantime, dioceses throughout the country are finding ways to protect immigrants while seeking to dialogue with the new administration. In Los Angeles, ongoing efforts have educated immigrants in the U.S. without documents about their rights when facing deportation.

Yet the entire community needs to be educated, the archbishop said, applauding workshop participants for efforts to deepen understanding of the emerging, multicultural reality worldwide.

Maurice Crul, a professor at Free University in Amsterdam who gave a presentation on the education of refugee children during the conference, said the changing demographics in the United States are part of a global phenomenon.

"My own home city, the people of Dutch descent are a minority," he said. "Only one in three children in Amsterdam is of Dutch descent."

Europe, which has experience an influx of immigrants and refugees, can provide insights to the U.S., he said. European nations have tried various approaches with various degrees of success.

"The real solution to the populist movement is that we have to adapt the system so that we have good outcomes for everybody," Crul said. "People (dropping out of school), being unemployed -- that is not a good outcome."

Crul also said the election in the United States demonstrated that academia needs to do a better job explaining social trends. Academic discourse has not convinced the general public, he said.

Those who voted for Trump, Crul said, have many things in common with those who did not.

"Any family has the same concerns," he said. "They want safety. They want their children to do well in school. So we have to find common ground. That is difficult because we naturally want to draw back into our own bubble when we encounter those with other opinions. But the real change will happen when we find where we align."

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Long-Garcia is editor-in-chief of Angelus News, the multimedia platform of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles.

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Copyright © 2017 Catholic News Service/U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. www.catholicnews.com. All rights reserved. Republishing or redistributing of CNS content, including by framing or similar means without prior permission, is prohibited. You may link to stories on our public site. This copy is for your personal, non-commercial use only. To request permission for republishing or redistributing of CNS content, please contact permissions at cns@catholicnews.com.

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By Cindy Wooden

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Telling the bishops of Ireland that he wanted to hear their questions, concerns and even criticisms, Pope Francis spent almost two hours in conversation with them.

In the continuing evolution of the "ad limina" visits bishops are required to make to the Vatican, Pope Francis met Jan. 20 with 26 Irish bishops and set aside a practice that began with Pope Benedict XVI: writing a speech to the group, but handing the text to them instead of reading it.

Pope Francis did, however, maintain his practice of sitting with the bishops and asking them what was on their minds.

The ministry of a bishop, the clerical sexual abuse crisis, the role of women in the church, the need to find new ways to engage with young people, the changing status of the church in Irish society, the importance of Catholic schools and methods for handing on the faith were among the topics discussed, the bishops said. They also spoke about plans for the World Meeting of Families in Dublin in August 2018 and hopes that Pope Francis would attend.

Archbishop Eamon Martin of Armagh, Northern Ireland, president of the bishops' conference, told reporters that Pope Francis led a serious reflection on "the importance of a ministry of presence, a ministry of the ear where we are listening to the joys and the hopes, the struggles and the fears of our people, that we are walking with them, that we are reaching out to them where they are at."

"The meeting this morning was quite extraordinary," said Archbishop Diarmuid Martin of Dublin, one of the few Irish bishops who had made an "ad limina" visit previously; the previous time the Irish bishops made one of the visits to report on the status of their dioceses was in 2006.

"The dominant thing was he was asking us and challenging us: What does it mean to be a bishop?" the Dublin archbishop said. "He described a bishop as like a goalkeeper, and the shots keep coming from everywhere, and you stand there ready to take them from wherever they come."

The Armagh archbishop said meeting with different heads of Roman Curia offices and with the pope, "we haven't received any raps on the knuckles," but rather felt a desire to hear the bishops' experience and their ideas for dealing with a situation in which the voice and authority of the church in the lives of individuals and society has diminished rapidly.

"We are realistic about the challenges we are facing in Ireland at the moment," he said. "But we are also hopeful that we are moving into a new place of encounter and of dialogue in Irish society where the church has an important voice -- not the dominating voice or domineering voice that perhaps some say we've had in the past -- but we are contributing to important conversations on life, on marriage, on the family, on poverty, homelessness, education."

One of the factors pushing such a rapid loss of public status for the church in Ireland was the sexual abuse scandal, he said. And as he told Pope Francis, just as the bishops were meeting with the pope, in Belfast leaders of the Historical Institutional Abuse Inquiry in Northern Ireland were making public their report on the abuse of children in residential institutions, including some run by Catholic religious orders.

One of the first meetings the bishops had in Rome, he said, was with staff of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors, sharing the steps the Catholic Church in Ireland has taken to prevent further abuse, to bring abusers to justice and to assist survivors "affected by the awful trauma of the sins and crimes of people in the church."

Archbishop Martin told reporters there was a recognition that Ireland had gone "through a bad time -- not for us, but particularly for children who were abused, and that anything that we did would inevitably be inadequate in responding to the suffering they experienced."

He also told reporters the bishops brought up the role and position of women in the church during almost every meeting they had, including at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, where they discussed "the areas within the church where a stronger position of laypeople is not only licit, but is desirable."

"One of the groups that is most alienated in the Catholic Church in Ireland is women, particularly young women, who feel excluded and therefore do not take part in the life of the church," he said.

The bishops, he said, found "a willingness to listen and an awareness that we were asking a valid question rather than something we should not be talking about."

After about 90 minutes of conversation with Pope Francis, the Dublin prelate said, the pope asked if the bishops were tired. In the past, he said, that was signal that the pope was tired and the meeting was about to end. Instead, the conversation continued for another 25 minutes.

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Follow Wooden on Twitter: @Cindy_Wooden.

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