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Vatican City, Jan 4, 2017 / 04:14 am (CNA/EWTN News).- After launching the first video series on his monthly prayer intentions last year, Pope Francis has decided to make some changes for 2017 by going back to an older system focusing on just one intention rather than two.

However, true to form, he has also added a novelty: in addition to the one monthly intention, Francis will also issue an “urgent” prayer intention himself each month in order to garner rapid support for the cause.

According to a recent blog post by Fr. James Kubicki, national director of the U.S. branch of the Apostleship of Prayer, the Pope decided to launch an urgent intention “given the speed of communication in the digital age.”

While the 12 monthly prayer intentions for 2017 have already been published on the Apostleship of Prayer’s website, Francis will announce his urgent intention during his first Sunday Angelus address of each month.

The Pope’s intention for January is similar to that of last year: Christian unity, specifically “that all Christians may be faithful to the Lord’s teaching by striving with prayer and fraternal charity to restore ecclesial communion and by collaborating to meet the challenges facing humanity.” However, his urgent intention for the month has yet to be announced.

Founded by Jesuit seminarians in Francis in 1884, the Apostleship of Prayer was established as a means of encouraging Christians to serve God and others through prayer, particularly for the needs of the Church. Since its foundation the organization has received a monthly universal prayer intention from the Pope, but in 1929 an additional, evangelization intention was added, aimed at the faithful in particular.

However, aside from his urgent prayers, after nearly 100 years Francis has decided to return to the old system of just one intention, which will alternate between universal and evangelistic themes each month.

According to the Apostleship of Prayer’s website, the Pope’s urgent intention will focus on “current events or urgent needs,” such as disaster relief, and will “help mobilize prayer and action related to the urgent situation.”

Fr. Frederic Fornos, S.J., the international director of the Apostleship of Prayer, has said that for him, the Pope’s urgent intention is a way of confronting “the culture of indifference” by drawing not only attention, but also prayer, to situations that are “more concrete, precise, current (and) related to actual circumstances.”

In 2016, the Pope's intentions focused on themes close to Francis’ heart, such as creation, families in difficulty, small farmers, indigenous peoples, countries receiving refugees, an end to child-soldiers, solidarity and respect for women.

It also marked the first time his prayer intentions had been featured on video as part of an initiative called “The Pope Video.” While there were two intentions, the prayer videos, filmed in collaboration with the Vatican Television Center (CTV) and La Machi, centered on the Pope’s universal intention.

The videos, which were initially created specifically for the Jubilee of Mercy, will continue during 2017, and the first one will be published Jan. 9.

Pope Francis’ intentions for 2017 also focus on topics he has frequently spoken out about, such as support for persecuted Christians, youth, Christians in Africa and Asia, workers and the unemployed, and the elderly.

In his blog post Fr. Kubicki noted that finalizing the monthly prayer intentions is a lengthy process, since it involves gathering suggestions from both Vatican dicasteries as well as from members of the network around the world, proposing them to the Holy Father, waiting for his final versions and then translating and publishing them.

Because of this, the intentions for 2018 will already be chosen and translated “in early 2017,” though they likely won’t be published until the beginning of next year.

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Vatican City, Jan 4, 2017 / 04:59 am (CNA/EWTN News).- While no words or gestures will ever be enough to comfort the pain experienced by those who have lost a child, Pope Francis said that God’s response to our tears is the offer of hope – hope in the promise of eternal life.

Reflecting on the Old Testament figure of Rachel, who in the Book of Jeremiah is weeping “for her children – they are no more!” the Pope focused his Jan. 4 general audience on God’s response to her mourning.

“God, with his gentleness and his love, responds to the cry of Rachel with real words” through the Prophet Jeremiah, he said.

“Cease your cries of weeping, hold back your tears! There is compensation for your labor,” Jeremiah writes. “They shall return from the enemy’s land. There is hope for your future…your children shall return to their own land.”

The pain of Rachel in the loss of her children “embodies the pain of all mothers of all time, and the tears of every human being who cries for irreparable losses,” the Pope said.

Rachel’s refusal to be consoled, Francis said, shows the “depth of her pain – a pain in proportion to the love.”

“Every mother knows all this; and there are many, even today, mothers who weep, who are not resigned to the loss of a child, inconsolable before a death impossible to accept.”

Francis said the figure of Rachel teaches us how to respond to those who have or are experiencing similar pain, stressing that if we want to bring hope, we must approach these people gently, uniting our tears to theirs.

“To speak of hope to those who are desperate, one needs to share their desperation,” he said, adding that “only in this way can our words truly be capable of giving a little bit of hope.”

Later, in St. Matthew’s Gospel the Evangelist uses this text in reference to the massacre of the Holy Innocents, Pope Francis said, explaining that it is a text that puts us right “in front of the tragedy of the killing of defenseless human beings.”

But in the New Testament when Jesus dies on the cross, death is conquered and Jeremiah’s prophecy fulfilled. “Even the tears of Mary, like those of Rachel, have generated hope and new life” in this instance, the Pope said in conclusion.

At the end of the audience, Francis asked attendees to pray for victims of a Jan. 1 prison riot in Brazil that left 56 people dead. The fight erupted between two rival gangs at the overcrowded prison in Manaus and lasted for around 17 hours, according to the BBC.

“I invite you to pray for the deceased, for their families, for all inmates of that prison and for those who work there,” Pope Francis said.

“I renew my appeal so that penitential institutions would be places of rehabilitation and social reintegration, and that the living conditions of the inmates are worthy of human people.”

The issue of poor living conditions and overcrowding in prisons has been a recurrent topic during Pope Francis’ pontificate. He commonly makes visits to prisons during international trips, and his first Holy Thursday as Pope was spent visiting a youth prison in Rome.

More recently, in November 2016, he hosted a special audience for prisoners during right before the close of his Jubilee of Mercy.

The Pope closed his appeal by turning to Mary, Mother of Prisoners, and invited attendees to pray “for these prisoners, living and dead, and also for all prisoners in the world, so that prisons can be for rehabilitation, and not overcrowded, that they are places of reintegration.”

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Asyut, Egypt, Jan 4, 2017 / 06:01 am (Aid to the Church in Need).- Coptic Catholic Bishop Kyrillos William of Assiut, Egypt, commenting on the Dec. 11, 2016 suicide bomber attack that killed 26 people and wounded scores at an Orthodox church in Cairo, confirms that the country’s Christian community fears further violence and terror.

But in a Dec. 22, 2016 interview with international Catholic charity Aid to the Church in Need, he also sounded a note of hope, citing the efforts of Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi.

Please find below the full text of Bishop Kryillos' interview with Aid to the Church in Need:
 

ACN: What is the current situation in Egypt, from a Christian perspective?

Bishop Kyrillos: There is of course deep sorrow. However, at the same time, we are seeing a deep trust in God and great strength. The same can be said today as was the case in the wake of previous acts of terrorism: when attacks are carried out to keep people from going to divine services, more than usual actually attend.

ACN: How did your non-Christian environment react?

Bishop Kyrillos: We are experiencing a great deal of solidarity and sympathy! The state reacted immediately and opened investigations. That means a lot, especially when you consider that in other cases, such as the attack on Alexandria a few years ago, there are still no leads. In those cases, people were convinced that the police and the state were helping the perpetrators. That is not the case this time. A president who personally attends the funeral service and shakes the hand of each family member and all Church representatives sends out a strong signal.

ACN: Have special security measures been put into place?

Bishop Kyrillos: In addition to external security, which is the job of the authorities, they want to train our people, show them how to be vigilant. Our scouts, who are responsible for security on feast days, will receive civilian security training. Metal detectors are to be installed in front of our cathedral and our guest house.

ACN: Do the Christians feel adequately protected by this?

Bishop Kyrillos: For many years now, soldiers have been stationed in front of a number of the churches. However, the problem is that they are neither very well equipped nor very well trained. Better methods need to be found, such as better trained and better equipped security forces.

ACN: What Christmas wish do you have for your country and your believers?

Bishop Kyrillos: I wish for peace for our country, of course. We see the efforts of our president, who wants Egypt to have a future. These efforts are being undermined by terrorist attacks. The country also needs peace for tourism, which is an important source of income. If there is no peace, then no tourists will come.
 

Andrea Krogmann writes for Aid to the Church in Need, an international Catholic charity under the guidance of the Holy See, providing assistance to the suffering and persecuted Church in more than 140 countries. www.churchinneed.org (USA); www.acnuk.org (UK); www.aidtochurch.org (AUS); www.acnireland.org (IRL); www.acn-aed-ca.org (CAN) www.acnmalta.org (Malta)

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Vatican City, Jan 4, 2017 / 12:04 am (CNA/EWTN News).- The ideological efforts to change Catholic doctrine after the Second Vatican Council were deeply misguided, said Cardinal Gerhard Mueller, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and a leading interpreter of Benedict XVI.

“Ideology,” he said, “is always a proud attempt to subject the Word of God and the doctrine of the Church to the prejudice of one’s own thoughts, with the aim to obtain a manipulative power over the faithful and their lives.”
 
Theology is different, the cardinal explained, because “theology is the humble reflection on faith that rises up from listening to the Word of God.”
 
For this reason, “any fear that the Council might provoke a breach with the tradition of the Church is not only heretical: it would dismantle the meaning of supernatural mediation.”

Cardinal Mueller spoke at the Pontifical Gregorian University for the Dec. 14 presentation of the Italian edition of the seventh book in a series of Joseph Ratzinger’s complete works. The seventh volume contains all the writings the man who served as Benedict XVI wrote about the Second Vatican Council, including writings when he was an expert advisor to Cardinal Joseph Frings of Cologne.

The complete works are curated by Cardinal Mueller himself.
 
In his remarks, the cardinal said the Second Vatican Council’s wake included a conflict between theology and ideology: “the expected Pentecostal renewal was replaced by the perspective of a ‘Babylonic’ confession of faith and by the attempt to contradict the thought of the theological school.”
 
All of this was “not a work of the Holy Spirit, because the Holy Spirit always listens to the Church in love and truth.”

“Defecting from faith and counterfeiting faith, and the division from the Church that follows, are fruits of another spirit that is not the Spirit of God,” he explained.

Cardinal Mueller cited a famous expression of Benedict XVI: his Dec. 22, 2005 Christmas greetings to the Roman Curia, in which he spoke of a “hermeneutic of continuity” to interpret the Catholic faith.

Cardinal Mueller emphasized: “without a hermeneutic of continuity and of reform, the Church would secularize itself, and would turn into something more similar to a humanitarian organization.”
 
If this would happen, he said, “there would be no reason to be part of the Church.”
 
Cardinal Mueller underscored that “the hermeneutic of reform and continuity is nothing more than the hermeneutic of faith as it is testified by the Holy Scripture, that lives in the apostolic tradition interpreted in the authentic way of the magisterium. Certainly, the Church is founded on revelation, and not on the magisterium.”
 
Cardinal Mueller further reflected on the nature of ideology. In light of 20th century developments, “we noted that ideology is nothing more that the claim of some human being to dominate the moral conscience of other people.”
 
He added that “renewal” and “mainstream” are secular terms. He suggested their use are “the signs of ideological strongholds raised against the consciousness of God.”

These ideas, he added, “can be glimpsed in the philosophical roots of the Enlightenment, idealism and materialism, that is, in the ideological turn Europe lived through in the last centuries.”
 
Cardinal Mueller said these ideologies may fall short.

“The question is whether man can really find his foundation and his self-fulfillment without recognizing his constitutive bond with the sovereign Creator and Reconciler,” he said.

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