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(Vatican Radio)  Officials say Macedonia's governing conservatives have won the country's closely-fought early parliamentary elections, despite a massive wiretap scandal and allegations of corruption and wrongdoing. The state election commission said that the governing VMRO-DPMNE party secured 51 out of 123 seats in parliament in Sunday's vote, while the opposition social democrats took 49 seats.

Listen to Stefan Bos' report:

Though the key Social Democrats opposition leader had urged his supporters to celebrate victory, overnight results showed that the ruling conservative coalition of Nikola Gruevski were in fact the winner of Sunday's vote in the former Yugoslav republic of Macedonia.

That surprised friends and foes as it followed scandals. The political crisis began after the opposition accused Gruevski's conservative government of an illegal wiretapping operation that targeted 20,000 people, including politicians, judges, journalists, police and religious leaders.

Gruevski charged that his rival, Social Democrats leader Zoran Zaev was guilty of plotting a coup and created the worst political crisis since the country's armed conflict with ethnic Albanian rebels in 2001.

'Massive theft'

Zaev accused Gruevski of massive theft, social injustice and corruption. Over several months, Social Democrats leader Zoran Zaev released audio of dozens of wiretapped phone conversations that he said indicated Gruevski and his aides were involved in multimillion-dollar corruption deals, tampered with election results and brought spurious criminal prosecutions against opponents.

The conservatives vehemently rejected the charges, saying the wiretaps were conducted by unnamed foreign spies.

However Gruevski is under investigation by the country's Special Prosecution branch and has already been charged with enticement and carrying out a criminal act against public order.

Gruevski, who headed the government since 2006 before resigning as part of the deal to hold early elections, sought a new mandate. And now he is smiling once again telling journalists and supporters that "with this results" his conservative coalition "is the winner of this election in Macedonia...and that it is the 10th victory in a row".

Yet it now remains to be seen whether the opposition will accept the results in the Western-backed early elections aimed at ending the political tensions in this Balkan nation of just over two million people.

Whoever does go on to form the next government they will have to seek a coalition partner among parties representing ethnic Albanians, who account for one-third of the population.

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(Vatican Radio)  Bishop Javier Echevarría Rodríguez of Opus Dei died in Rome on Monday, the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, at the age of 84.

Bishop Echevarría was head of the Opus Dei organization and Grand Chancellor of the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross in Rome.

A statement released by Opus Dei said he died at Rome’s Biomedical Campus, where he had been since 5 Dec for treatment of a lung infection.

Opus Dei was founded in 1928 by Saint Josemaría Escrivá. Its worldwide membership was around 94,000 people in 2015, including more than 2,000 priests.

Spanish Bishop Echevarría was the second successor to head Opus Dei after St. Escrivá.

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(Vatican Radio) Archbishop Bernardito Auza, the Holy See’s Apostolic Nuncio to the UN, addressed a working group on Ageing, inviting them to “recognize that dignity does not disappear with age or with a decrease in market productivity”.

The open-ended working group is entitled ‘Measures to enhance the promotion and protection of the human rights and dignity of older persons’.

Archbishop Auza, Permanent Observer of the Holy See to the United Nations, recalled Pope Francis’ commitment to building a more inclusive society.

“As a person ages, he or she normally grows in maturity and, even if the nature of one’s social contribution may change, one can still contribute much to society. In this regard, Pope Francis recently affirmed that each of us is called to commit to building a more welcoming and inclusive society, but ‘to do this we must counter the harmful throw-away culture that marginalizes the elderly, considering them unproductive.’”

He said, “The elderly are not only a resource but an essential point of reference at a time when many are struggling to find their identity and are uncertain of the future.”

Please find below the full text of Archbishop Auza’s address:

Mr. Chair,

The Holy See is pleased to participate in this Session of the Open-Ended Working Group on Ageing (OEWG) and would like to thank you for your continued leadership as Chair of the Group since its very first session.

My delegation remains committed to the protection, promotion and practical realization of the human rights of the elderly, as well as to respect for their inherent human dignity. We commend the work of the OEWG since 2010 to address in a concrete way the many injustices faced by the elderly and to call attention to their social increased marginalization.

The importance of the work of the OEWG will only increase in the coming years. By 2030, the number of people in the world above 60 years of age is projected to grow by 56 percent, from 901 million to 1.4 billion. By 2050, that same population bracket is projected to double in size, reaching nearly 2.1 billion. [1] This dramatic increase in the ageing population, coupled with a rise in average life expectancy, will place a significant strain on health care systems and social safety nets. We must address these concerns and do so without treating the elderly as if they are merely an impending economic and social burden.

To avoid this reduction, we must recognize that dignity does not disappear with age or with a decrease in market productivity. Moreover, as a person ages, he or she normally grows in maturity and, even if the nature of one’s social contribution may change, one can still contribute much to society. In this regard, Pope Francis recently affirmed that each of us is called to commit to building a more welcoming and inclusive society, but “to do this we must counter the harmful throw-away culture that marginalizes the elderly, considering them unproductive.” The Pope encouraged all “institutions and social structures to help older people make the most of their abilities, to facilitate their active participation, [and] particularly to ensure that their personal dignity is always respected and appreciated.” [2]

Mr. Chair,

During previous sessions, it has been made abundantly clear that there is consensus on the importance of addressing the serious gaps that exist in protecting the human rights of older persons, but not on how to remedy them. Some have advocated a new mechanism like a convention or treaty, while others have spoken about ensuring that States fulfill the commitments they have already made to respect and promote the rights of the elderly in other treaties and conventions. Others have emphasized that the basis for the protection of the elderly must be found in the Madrid International Plan for Action on Ageing and in the commitments made in the implementation of the 2030 Agenda.

Whatever form the protection of the human rights of the elderly may take, it is essential to ensure that agreed measures must be adequate to protect, respect and realize the particular human rights of older persons. Experience has shown us that treaties, conventions, conferences and declarations, while helping to build international consensus and norms, often lack the political will necessary for their full implementation. And we cannot allow our seniors to be left behind by words without follow through.

Mr. Chair,

In order to guarantee that the human rights of the elderly are respected and commitments for their wellbeing are implemented, it is crucial that such guarantees and commitments be complimented with concrete policies and programs that address the underlying root causes of the violations of their human rights and, sometimes, their abandonment.

In this regard, it is crucial to promote values and systems of education that propose an alternative approach to the “throw-away culture” of which Pope Francis speaks, which judges each human being simply by their purported usefulness.  We must work collectively to help discover new ways to reaffirm and re-propose the important role that the elderly play in the society and to convince everybody of the crucial place of the elderly in our families, cultures and societies.

The elderly are not only a resource but an essential point of reference at a time when many are struggling to find their identity and are uncertain of the future. Because in some places the elderly have lost their proper place in society, they can sometimes feel useless and alone. It is on this point that we must work perseveringly to educate present and future generations. This is one of the most important reasons behind intergenerational solidarity and dialogue.

Finally, Mr. Chair, it is important to remember that when we speak about ageing and elderly people, we are speaking of a class of people to which we in time will inexorably belong. The decisions we make and the work we do today will affect all of us tomorrow.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[1] “World Population Ageing Report, 2015”, United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population

[2] Pope Francis, Discourse to the Members of the National Association of Elderly Workers and of Senior Italia FederAnziani, 15 October 2016.

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(Vatican Radio) The spirit of clericalism is an evil that is present in the Church today, Pope Francis said, and the victim of this spirit is the people, who feel discarded and abused. That was the Pope’s message in the homily at the morning Mass at the Casa Santa Marta.

Among those taking part in the Mass were the members of the Council of cardinals, who are meeting with the Pope this week in Rome.

In his homily, Pope Francis warned pastors of the dangers of becoming “intellectuals of religion” with a morality far from the Revelation of God.

The poor and humble people who have faith in the Lord are the victims of the “intellectuals of religion,” those who are “seduced by clericalism,” who will be preceded in the Kingdom of Heaven by repentant sinners.

The law of the high priests is far from Revelation

The Pope directed his attention to Jesus, who in the day’s Gospel turns to the chief priests and the elders of the people, and focuses precisely on their role. “They had juridical, moral, religious authority,” he said. “They decided everything.” Annas and Caiaphas, for example, “judged Jesus,” they were the high priests who “decided to kill Lazarus”; Judas, too, went to them to “bargain,” and thus “Jesus was sold.” They arrived at this state of “arrogance and tyranny towards the people,” the Pope said, by instrumentalizing the law:

But a law that they have remade many times: so many times, to the point that they had arrived at 500 commandments. Everything was regulated, everything! A law scientifically constructed, because this people was wise, they understood well. They made all these nuances, no? But it was a law without memory: they had forgotten the First Commandment, which God had given to our father Abraham: “Walk in my presence and be blameless.” They did not walk: they always stopped in their own convictions. They were not blameless!

The people discarded by the intellectuals of religion

And so, the Pope said, they had forgotten the Ten Commandments of Moses”: “With the law they themselves had made – intellectualistic, sophisticated, casuistic – they cancelled the law the Lord had made, they lacked the memory that connects the current moment with Revelation.” In the past their victim was Jesus; in a similar way, now their victim is “the humble and poor people who trust in the Lord,” “those who are discarded,” those who understand repentance even if they do not fulfill the law, and suffer these injustices. They feel “condemned,” and “abused,” the Pope said, by those who are vain, proud, arrogant.” And one who was cast aside by these people, Pope Francis observed, was Judas:

Judas was a traitor, he sinned gravely, eh! He sinned forcefully. But then the Gospel says, “He repented, and went to them to return the money.” And what did they do? “But you were our associate. Be calm… We have the power to forgive you for everything!” No! “Make whatever arrangement you can!” [they said.] “It’s your problem!” And they left him alone: discarded! The poor Judas, a traitor and repentant, was not welcomed by the pastors. Because these people had forgotten what it was to be a pastor. They were the intellectuals of religion, those who had the power, who advanced the catechesis of the people with a morality composed by their own intelligence and not by the revelation.

The evil of clericalism can still be found in the Church today

 “A humble people, discarded and beaten by these people.” Even today, the Pope observed, this sometimes happens in the Church. “There is that spirit of clericalism,” he explained: “Clerics feel they are superior, they are far from the people”; they have no time to hear the poor, the suffering, prisoners, the sick”:

The evil of clericalism is a very ugly thing! It is a new edition of these people. And the victim is the same: the poor and humble people that awaits the Lord. The Father has always sought to be close to us: He sent His Son. We are waiting, waiting in joyful expectation, exulting. But the Son didn’t join the game of these people: The Son went with the sick, the poor, the discarded, the publicans, the sinners – and that is scandalous – the prostitutes. Today, too, Jesus says to all of us, and even to those who are seduced by clericalism: “The sinners and the prostitutes will go before you into the Kingdom of Heaven.”

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(Vatican Radio) Pope Francis is celebrating the 47th anniversary of his priestly ordination on Tuesday 13th December. He will soon mark another milestone, when he turns 80 years old on Saturday 17th December. As this significant year comes to an end, we take a look back at some of the Pope’s highlights over the past twelve months, which include six overseas visits and the Extraordinary Jubilee Year of Mercy.

Susy Hodges spoke to John Allen, editor of Crux and author of nine books on Vatican and Church affairs, about what the legacy of the Pope’s activities and documents might be at the end of 2016. Mr Allen is one of the world’s leading Anglophone commentators on the papacy.

Reflecting on the Jubilee Year of Mercy, Allen remarked that the Pope would probably call it the “peak moment” of his papacy, during which the message about the importance of mercy in the Church was revivified. He added that the call for every diocese around the world to spend time carrying out concrete works of mercy could be thought of as the most significant “lasting impact” of the Jubilee Year.

When asked about the Pope’s own works of mercy during the Jubilee, such as meeting with prisoners and those who had left the priesthood, Allen asserted that the Pope surely aimed to “set a tone” and “recalibrate” the image of leadership in the Church.

Moving on to speak about the Holy Father’s Pastoral Visits in 2016, Allen suggested that the most striking might be the shortest; the one-day trip to the Greek island of Lesbos in April. According to him, this visit displayed the overarching themes of the Year of Mercy: ecumenism and reaching out to the peripheries. Pope Francis met with the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople and the Archbishop of Athens and all Greece during the visit to the island, and he brought refugees back to the Vatican with him onboard the papal plane.

Allen went on to call the publication of Amoris Laetitia, the Pope’s post-synodal apostolic exhortation, “groundbreaking”, both because the document is “magnificently pastoral”, and because it is “controversial”. Referring to the question about whether to allow the divorced and civilly remarried access to the sacraments, Allen suggested that the Holy Father wants to see how the document would be interpreted around the world.

Allen was also asked about the ongoing reforms in the Roman Curia, and about the significant anniversary and birthday that the Holy Father celebrates in 2016. He reflected on the Pope’s “very active” lifestyle, suggesting that he derives most pleasure from “reconnecting with his priestly roots”, seeing himself as the “world’s parish priest’.

The entire interview can be heard below. Allen begins by reflecting on the lasting impact of the Jubilee Year of Mercy.

Listen: 

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Vatican City, Dec 13, 2016 / 03:02 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Every day in the remote villages of Northeast India courageous priests and nuns are braving the elements of the wild – including tiger attacks and elephant stampedes – to bring the Good News to people who have yet to hear the name of Jesus.

People in these “unreached” areas “are very attracted to a sense of relating in a very human way to a God who loves them and is present with them,” Msgr. John Kozar told CNA Dec. 7.

Part of what makes this “missionary outreach” so important is the fact that the priests and sisters serving in the areas “heroically live in very crude conditions right with the people, in huts made of mud and cow dung, no plumbing and very little privacy.”

“Even their meals are taken with the entire village outside in a common setting on the ground,” Msgr. Kozar said, explaining that the ministry carried out in these areas is primarily one “of presence.”

Rather than building institutional churches, which is the focus in India's southern states, such as Kerala, evangelization in these smaller, tribal regions “is about being with the poor and sharing with them in a very natural way who this Jesus is and how He wants to share His love with all.”

Msgr. Kozar, president of the Catholic Near East Welfare Association (CNEWA), traveled to the Northeast of India, including the country’s Assam State, Nov. 20-Dec. 2 not only to visit with the tribal peoples that live in the area, “who are just being introduced to Jesus,” but also to accompany India’s two Eastern Churches as they serve the poor and needy.

Part of the itinerary, then, was spent assisting two bishops overseeing “the Great North of India” – Archbishop Kuriakose of the Syro-Malabar Diocese of Faridabad and Bishop Jacob Mar Barnabas of the Diocese of Gurgoan – in planning missionary programs.

A second phase of the trip was spent visiting Syro-Malabar projects in both “blighted urban areas” of Delhi and in the neighboring state of Haryana, including a new school, an open school – one that isn’t accredited or recognized by the Education Ministry – in the middle of a ghetto, a special needs facility for children, and a settlement for trash pickers.

Msgr. Kozar recalled that in several of the villages they visited, “we were very warmly” embraced and frequently welcomed with dances and songs, “signs of great love and respect.”

“In some instances I was probably the first person with white skin to ever visit them,” he said, noting that the terrain in the remote tribal areas they visited is rough enough that people are still at risk of attacks by wild animals.

As an example, Msgr. Kozar said that during their trip one woman was mauled to death by a wild tiger, while a man was trampled by a herd of elephants that “poured out of a tea estate and trampled a poor three-wheeled jitney driver.”

“This is a very common occurrence,” Kozar said, noting that he met several people who had lost loved ones in similar incidents. The landscape, he added, “varies from jungle, to forest, to rolling tea estates to plains cultivating rice in paddies.”

He pointed to the “impressive” catechetical work that lay people, both indigenous and from the Syro-Malankara Church, do in the tribal areas.

Since it’s still early on in their formation, courses deal largely with basic concepts of God, Jesus and Mary, teaching the people simple prayers and bible passages, as well as the concept of what it means to pray.

“The people are responding wonderfully and welcomed us with religious singing and even did a religious enactment of the Prodigal Son in their tribal language,” Kozar said, explaining that they are likely on a two-year program to be baptized.

He stressed that there’s no hurry, and it could even take up to a year of more after their baptism before the people are fully introduced to the Eucharist. In this sense, he said the Syro-Malankara Church “is doing the evangelization in a most responsible way and I think in a durable way.”

At one event 575 tribal people came together to participate in a religious ceremony and cornerstone laying for a new Church, he said, noting that they came from different villages and tribes in the area, some of whom traveled 7 hours by truck or jitney (a small bus), or walked several miles on foot simply to welcome the delegation and be present for the event.

During the celebration, “many tribes shared their cultures with each other by dressing in their native handmade woven skirts and performed their ritual dances, perhaps for the first time shared with other tribes.”

“This was in itself probably an historic event for them,” he said, noting that “it was the Church which brought them together.”

One “sad reality” CNEWA is constantly seeking to address in collaboration with the local churches, he said, is the fact that lots of children have no opportunities for education, many because their families work on estates or because from age seven they have had to work long hours in the sun making bricks.

“Many children attend no school, some only attend for five years and drop out because the quality is so sub-standard that they cannot continue to a higher level,” he said.

The Church, then, provides opportunities for schooling via these “open schools” in the ghettos, which, though not officially recognized by the state, provide “some semblance of learning, even if it is very basic literacy class or vocabulary building about certain basic realities in life.”

At times the Church offers classes “in very crude conditions,” Kozar said, recalling how happy children have been when they go to school, particularly the ones who sort garbage outside of Delhi.

These children live “at a ‘mountain’ of garbage which is probably 4-5 hundred feet high in elevation and continues to grow as trucks deliver more garbage,” he said, noting that people there “actually live on compressed garbage – they sort through what arrives daily and some collect metal, some plastic, some cardboard and some, even human hair.”

Msgr. Kozar also cautioned that although the Church is doing a lot, she must be discreet, because “there are some very hardline Hindu nationalists” who consider evangelization as being “anti-Hindu.”

He said that he must also be cautious of his own presence when arriving to airports and public spaces since CNEWA is a pontifical foundation, and as its president he represents the Holy See.

The tribal people “are humble and even protective of us and the priests and sisters,” he said, recalling how one of them told him that if the sisters living with them were ever threatened, “there will be one-hundred tribal men to guard them within a very short time.”

“They greatly love the priests and sisters who live with them and serve them.”

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