Catholic News 2

(Vatican Radio)  A new report has found that at least 547 young members of the Regensburger Domspatzen boys choir in Germany were subjected to physical and in some cases sexual abuse.

The report accuses 49 members of the Church of carrying out the abuse between 1945 and the early 1990s.

The lawyer tasked with investigating the abuse Ulrich Weber spoke about the investigation during a press conference in Regensburg.

"The fact is this: it is likely that there are almost 550 victims, of these 67 were victims of sexual violence; There are altogether 9 accused of carrying out sexual violence against children... There have been cases of severe physical and sexual violence, which have always been prohibited.

Even physical violence, with rare exceptions, was forbidden even punishable in the era where the facts and our assessments are placed, and in any case not justified by the predominant mentality of the time... External institutions also have responsibilities ranging from "not paying attention" to the parents, to which the events were reported, which did not give enough weight (to children's accounts), and in this we acknowledge the violation of the duty of protection; But there are also shortcomings by the external control and oversight bodies: the board of directors who have the task of overseeing the establishment of state controlled institutions. In fact, according to our assessments, laws concerning school inspections and the protection of pupils in colleges were not adequately applied."

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(Vatican Radio) As the conflict in Syria continues the Catholic Charity, Aid to the Church in Need (ACN) has announced 32 projects to support thousands of suffering Christian families.

The projects include food aid for displaced families, funding for education, and rent assistance for families.

Lydia O’Kane spoke to John Pontifex, Head of Press and Information for ACN who explained more about the projects in towns and cities across the country.

Listen: 

“What we’re doing is focusing on the most basic of aid, so we’ve got food aid, for example for 2,200 displaced families in both Aleppo and a neighbouring city of Hasakah; we’ve got ongoing support for two schools run by religious sisters in Aleppo and we’ve also got a multi-purpose sports hall and pitch for young Christians in Aleppo, as well as support for university students and support for widows and those who have been war wounded…”

Hope amid conflict 

Asked about the difficulties in maintaining hope during 6 years of conflict, John Pontifex said that during visits he has made to Syria he noted that, “you got a very profound sense of the devastation and despair into which so many people have been plunged because their very livelihoods have been completely devastated. But the hope is that by developing these programmes we can help people to move on…”

He added that projects like these also help people to feel they are not forgotten. Recalling visits to families while in the country Mr Pontifex said, “their message to us was very simple, the fact that you’ve come, the fact that you want to meet us is a sign of the huge amount of support that comes to us from so many parts of the world.”

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El Paso, Texas, Jul 19, 2017 / 03:05 am (CNA/EWTN News).- A U.S. bishop on the border of Mexico hopes his new pastoral letter on migration will turn the hearts of Catholics to encounter their migrant brothers and sisters in a concrete way.

“It is first and foremost a reflection on the signs of the times by the light of faith,” Bishop Mark Seitz of El Paso told CNA of his new pastoral letter on migration.

The letter is not meant to be “simply abstract,” he said, but “has to come down to the daily life and daily realities.”

Bishop Seitz’s letter on migration, “Sorrow and Mourning Flee Away,” was released on Tuesday.

He explained to CNA that the letter was prompted by reflection on the current situation for migrants in the U.S. At present in the country, there is a “great deal of fear in the midst of our migrant community,” he said.

“We had all hoped that maybe there would be a different tone when a new president came into office, and we really didn’t see much of a different tone” on immigration, he said.

It was by reflecting on this problem that his idea of a pastoral letter was born. The bishop hopes to teach Catholics and prod them to think about what Jesus said of the poor and the migrant.

“By sharing these reflections with people of faith, just by inviting them to step out of their preconceptions and the tendency that we have in this country to deal only with the level of politics,” the bishop hopes to encourage readers to “reflect from a standpoint of faith on what this might mean.”

“What does Jesus have to say about the poor, about the marginalized, about what they can actually teach us and how they are the really important ones in the Kingdom of God?” he reflected.

Bishop Seitz began his letter by stating some of the great challenges facing migrant communities in the U.S., and how the Church should respond to them.

“Since Jesus announced Good News to the poor, our Church has been called to stand with the suffering,” he wrote, saying that “migrants are living through a dark night of fear and uncertainty.”

“Recently we have witnessed indefensible, hateful words towards our neighbors in Mexico, the demonization of migrants, even of those children known as Dreamers, and destructive language about our border,” he said.

He also pointed to other problems – the breaking up of families by deportations, an increase in deportations of those without criminal records, and the detention of asylum seekers.

The journey north to the U.S. through Mexico is a dangerous one, Bishop Seitz said, with harsh desert conditions, drug trafficking, and smugglers all posing a danger to migrants. Yet once they reach the border, “increased militarization and more walls will only make this journey even more dangerous.”

“As God’s people here on the border, we are called to transform this desert, making refreshing pools of the burning sands of injustice and quenching the thirst of the oppressed,” he wrote.

The Diocese of El Paso has a long and storied Catholic history, he said, outdating the British colonies. Spanish migrants in the area held a Mass of Thanksgiving there in 1598, along with a feast with the local Manso indigenous tribe.  

“Life in the midst of an immigrant community is really much more pronounced,” Bishop Seitz told CNA, and has a “richness” to it “that I really couldn’t say I anticipated.”

The Catholic culture continues today, he wrote in the letter. “With our brothers and sisters across the bridge, we speak the same language. We wake up each morning to the same beautiful mountains, we dance to the rhythm of mariachis, and we share burritos and champurrado. With San Juan Diego, we stand together under the mantle of Our Lady of Guadalupe.”

And Catholic ideals of hospitality and “encuentro,” or encounter, are practiced today in the services provided by the Diocese of El Paso to migrants coming to the U.S.-Mexico border.

“The Pope talks about accompanying the migrant,” the bishop told CNA, and he “talks about recognizing their face” and asks that people “see them as a fellow human being, and even more than that, as a brother and sister.”

“It’s just amazing, when that is allowed to happen, how the perspectives and the attitudes of people change,” he said. This theme of encounter is the focus of a significant part of the bishop’s letter.

Yet Catholics also must work to meet the needs of migrants in a concrete manner at the parish level, he said. This includes denouncing the injustices of today like “family separation,” “for-profit immigrant detention,” and “the disparagement of our Muslim brothers and sisters.”

And Catholics must also “address the plague of substance abuse afflicting our people” which is connected to “the drug trafficking destabilizing Mexico and Central America, driving migration to our border.”

Bishop Seitz emphasized the role of Catholic education in improving the lives of immigrants in the U.S., and promised to create a fund for tuition assistance at diocesan schools for children from migrant families.

He also recognized members of law enforcement for their “dedication and bravery in serving our community and protecting our country.” He exhorted them to uphold human dignity in their line of work and to uphold “the noble ideals in the Constitution of equal treatment under the law and due process.”

However, the bishop instructed parishes and schools to respectfully decline immigration officers access to churches in cases where there is no “imminent danger,” unless they have a warrant signed by a judge.

 

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New York City, N.Y., Jul 19, 2017 / 06:01 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Religious leaders, not secularists, are often in the best position to persuade violent religious extremists towards peace, the papal nuncio to the United Nations has said in response to an effort to prevent atrocities.

“The very existence of a plan directed toward religious leaders is also a humble recognition by the international community that those who are being incited by pseudo-religious motivations for violence aren’t going to be effectively persuaded out of it by secular argumentation from so-called infidels or by economic materialism,” Archbishop Bernardito Auza said July 14.

“They need, rather, valid religious arguments that show that extremists’ violence-inducing exegesis is unfaithful to the text and to the God they’re claiming to serve; they need persuasive counterarguments that plant the seeds of peace and eradicate the weeds of violence.”

Archbishop Auza is the apostolic nuncio leading the Holy See’s Permanent Observer Mission to the United Nations. He spoke at the launch of a Plan of Action for religious leaders and other actors to prevent incitement to violence that could lead to atrocities.

The plan follows two years of consultations by Adama Dieng, the U.N. Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide. Dieng told UN Radio that the plan had been designed to counter the kind of ideology that led to the Islamic State group’s genocide against the Yazidi people.

For the papal nuncio, the prevention of genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity “requires the contributions and collaboration of each of us and all our communities and institutions.”
 
He noted that some religious leaders abuse their influence and authority “to spur or justify atrocities.” At the same time, many more religious leaders condemn these abuses and stress that “violence against others in the name of God is a great blasphemy against the name of God and the greatest disservice to religion itself.”

According to the nuncio, the United Nations’ plan and recommended practices can help religious leaders inoculate their congregations against “the half-truths that ideologues can use to incite them to hating rather than loving, and attacking rather than serving, their neighbor.”

Archbishop Auza noted that religion and violence can be delicate subjects.

“Acknowledging explicitly the religious dimension of some expressions of violent extremism is fraught with danger, and we can understand the reluctance of governments and international bodies to do so,” the archbishop reflected. “Thus, the most important contribution of religious leaders to this debate is to help people understand that acknowledging the religious dimension of some violent extremism, or more precisely the manipulation of religion for violent ends, does not mean equating religion, or a particular religion, or an entire religious community, with violence.”

“Understanding the motivations that lie at the root of terrorism and violence is complex and requires careful reflection and analysis, all the more so when there is a religious dimension to it,” he added. “Religious leaders are uniquely placed to offer such reflection. Pope Francis has helped to open up spaces for this reflection to occur so that religious leaders are able to contribute to the sensitive debate about religiously motivated terrorism.”

At the same time, the archbishop stressed that other bodies, like national governments, are more capable of stopping atrocities than religious leaders.

“There has been some focus recently on the role of religious leaders in preventing atrocity crimes — and this is good, because religious leaders have much to contribute — but, at the end of the day, religious leaders and organizations obviously do not have the resources by themselves to stop atrocities,” he said.

Religious leaders can influence behavior and mentalities, but do not control law enforcement agencies and armed forces. Rather, national governments and the international community have the primary responsibility “to act to protect the innocent from savage acts.”

Although the Holy See could not support all the elements of the United Nations’ action plan, Archbishop Auza said the plan is “a major, practical step forward” in fostering a culture and society consistent with the 2005 world summit on the Responsibility to Protect, a U.N. commitment to prevent genocide, war crimes and other crimes against humanity.

The latest action plan also notes the need for meaningful interreligious dialogue among religious leaders.

On this point, Archbishop Auza cited Pope Francis, who has called this dialogue “a necessary condition for peace in the world.”

In January the Pope told diplomats accredited to the Holy See that interreligious dialogue provides a paradigm to discuss differences, to grow in mutual appreciation of others’ perspectives, and to journey towards peace and other goals. The pontiff said that religiously motivated men and women can show adherents how to fight injustice, root out discord that can lead to war, renounce violence and vengeance, and transcend selfishness, hatred and lack of forgiveness.

Archbishop Auza emphasized this effort.

“That’s why the work of religious leaders and believers in general, and interreligious dialogue in particular, are crucial not just in preventing incitement to violence among susceptible coreligionists, but in fostering incitement to virtue and thereby creating the type of peaceful and inclusive societies in which atrocity crimes are ethically unimaginable,” he said.

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(Vatican Radio) In this week's edition of There's More in the Sunday Gospel than Meets the Eye, Jill Bevilacqua and Seàn-Patrick Lovett bring us readings and reflections for the Sixteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time. Listen:

Gospel  - Mt 13: 24-30

Jesus proposed another parable to the crowds, saying:
"The kingdom of heaven may be likened to a man
who sowed good seed in his field.
While everyone was asleep his enemy came
and sowed weeds all through the wheat, and then went off.
When the crop grew and bore fruit, the weeds appeared as well.
The slaves of the householder came to him and said,
'Master, did you not sow good seed in your field?
Where have the weeds come from?'
He answered, 'An enemy has done this.'
His slaves said to him, 'Do you want us to go and pull them up?'
He replied, 'No, if you pull up the weeds
you might uproot the wheat along with them.
Let them grow together until harvest;
then at harvest time I will say to the harvesters,
"First collect the weeds and tie them in bundles for burning;
but gather the wheat into my barn."'"

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