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(Vatican Radio) Pope Francis spoke on Thursday of the suffering of innocent victims caught up in the Syrian and Iraqi conflicts, saying that nothing can justify such terrible violence. His words came as he met with the head of the Assyrian Church of the East, Mar Gewargis III, who was making his first visit to the Vatican since being elected as Catholicos-Patriarch in September last year.

Listen to Philippa Hitchen's report: 

In his words to the new leader of this Church, which traces its roots back to the apostles Thomas and Bartholomew, the Pope appealed for an end to the conflicts in the Middle East which cause such great suffering to Christians and members of other religious or ethnic minorities.

Every day, the Pope said, Christians in these places "walk the way of the Cross". They remind us that Jesus is always at the heart of our faith, even in our adversity, calling us to live out his message of love, reconciliation and forgiveness.

Blood of martyrs is seed of unity

Just as the blood of Christ, shed out of love, brought reconicilation and unity, the Pope said, so the blood of the martyrs is the seed of unity for all Christians.

Theological dialogue and practical partnerships

Pope Francis also spoke of the important progress in relations between Catholics and the Assyrian Church of the East, recalling especially the Common Christological Declaration signed by Pope John Paul II and by the previous Catholicos Mar Dinkha IV. He encouraged the work of the joint commission for theological dialogue between the two Churches, saying that partnering together though works of charity can also help to heal the wounds of the past.

Shared Christian witness

Unlike most other Churches that trace their origins to the first centuries of Christianity, the Assyrian Church of the East is not in communion with any other Christians of either the Eastern or Western traditions. Pope Francis concluded his remarks saying that the great evangelizers, saints and martyrs throughout history accompany us and urge us to open up new paths of communion and shared witness to the world. 

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(Vatican Radio) Pope Francis met leading representatives of Caritas on Thursday and urged them to persevere in their fight against poverty and at the same time learn from the poor themselves. The participants at the audience in the Vatican included leading Caritas officials from across the world.

The Pope did not read his prepared remarks, instead handing out the text of his address and speaking off the cuff, followed by a question and answer session with those present.

In his prepared remarks the Pope noted that we are called to act against social exclusion of the weakest and strive for their integration. With our society dominated by the throw-away culture, we need to overcome that indifference and learn the art of solidarity. 

Your mission, he went on, is to promote charity and justice in our world in the light of the gospel and the teaching of the Church by involving the poor as the true protagonists of their development.

Stressing it is possible to change things, the Pope said poverty, hunger, illnesses and oppression are not an inevitable misfortune and cannot be considered as permanent situations.

He urged the Caritas representatives to reject everything that humiliates humans and every form of exploitation that degrades people and expressed his joy over an upcoming campaign by Caritas on the subject of migration.  

Turning to the issue of peace and reconciliation, Pope Francis urged the Caritas representatives to promote these issues and cooperate in their charitable work with other faith communities who put human dignity at the centre of their mission. In conclusion, he encouraged them both to fight against poverty and at the same time learn from the poor themselves, from their values and their sense of solidarity and sharing with each other.

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Bangladesh’s over 156 million population is overwhelmingly Muslim. While some 88% of the people profess Islam, Christians are a tiny minority.  Catholics who number over 350 thousand form a mere 0.2 percent of the country’s population.   Catholicism came to the region in the 16th century with the arrival of Portuguese traders and along with them also missionaries.  The first church in Bangladesh was built by Portuguese Jesuits  in 1599 at Chandecan (also called Iswaripur or old Jessore) near Kaliganj in the Sunderbans of present Satkhira district.

The Xaverian Missionaries are among several foreign missionary congregations working in Bangladesh.  Fr. Marcello Storgato, is a 73-year old Rome-born Xaverian missionary, who worked in Bangladesh for 21 years from 1972 until 1994 when he was called to serve in the Xaverian media in Brescia, Italy.  In an interview with him, we came to know a lot about the Xaverian mission in Bangladesh. Last week, in the first part of this interview, he spoke about how he came to join the Xaverian Missionaries, a congregation founded in 1895 by Italian St. Guido Conforti. Besides explaining the Xaverian charism, he also spoke about the values he learnt from Bangladeshis, such as  praying spontaneously from the heart, to be happy with little and sharing it with others and winning the appreciation of Muslims.  Well today, Fr. Storgato begins the final part of this interview narrating the Xaverian ministries in Bangladesh.  

Listen: 

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Vatican City, Nov 17, 2016 / 06:06 am (CNA/EWTN News).- On Thursday Pope Francis warned Catholic business leaders against the danger of worshipping money, saying corruption is to follow the lies of the devil, whereas practices aimed for the common good are always built around principals of honesty and fraternity.

“Corruption is the worst social plague. It’s the lie of seeking personal gain of that of the group itself under the guise of a service to society,” the Pope said Nov. 17.

The attitude of corruption “is the crassest selfishness, hidden behind an apparent generosity,” he said, noting that corruption stems from the worship of money and comes back warp the worshipper, making them “a prisoner of that same worship.”

Corruption, he said, “is a fraud to democracy” and opens the doors to “terrible evils” such as drugs, prostitution, human trafficking, slavery, the sale of organs and arms trafficking. Above all, “corruption is to become a follower of the devil, the father of lies.”

Pope Francis spoke to hundreds of business leaders inside the Vatican’s Apostolic Palace during a Nov. 17-18 International Conference of Associations of Catholic Businesses. Organized by the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, the gathering’s theme was: “Business leaders: agents of social and economic inclusion.”

In his lengthy speech delivered in Spanish, the Pope noted that business activity is constantly plagued by “a multitude of risks,” the first of which, according to Francis, is “the risk of using money.”

Francis has often spoken about the danger of putting money at the center of one’s life and activities, calling it “the dung of the devil.”

He told the business leaders that, as stated by the Fathers of the Church, money and riches “are good when they are put at the service of the other,” but otherwise “they are wicked.”

“Because of this, money must serve rather than govern,” he said. “Money is only a technical instrument of intermediation, of comparison of values and rights, of the fulfillment of obligations and savings.”

As with everything technical, money has no neutral value, but “acquires value according to the purpose and circumstances in which it is used,” the Pope said, explaining that when the neutrality of money is promoted, “it is falling into power.”

Businesses, he said, “must not exist to earn money, even if money serves to measure its function. Business exist to serve.”

Pope Francis stressed the need to recover the full social meaning of financial and banking activities, which must always be accompanied by the “intelligence and inventiveness” of entrepreneurs.

To do this implies taking the risk of “complicating life” and having to renounce certain economic gains, he said, insisting that credit must be accessible for housing, for small and medium-sized businesses, for farmers, educational activities, for health and for the “improvement and integration” of the poorest urban centers of society.

He cautioned that “a crematory logic of the market” makes credit cheaper and more accessible for those who are wealthier, yet more expensive and difficult for those who have less resources “to the point of leaving the poorest sections of the population in the hands of unscrupulous users.”

At an international level, the risk is that financing poorer countries can easily become “a usurious activity,” Francis said, adding that even if one accepts the creation of business procedures accessible to all and which benefit everyone, “a generous and abundant gratitude will always be needed.”

Intervention from the State will also be needed in order to “protect certain collective goods and ensure the satisfaction of fundamental human necessities,” Pope Francis said, noting how his predecessor St. John Paul II insisted that ignoring this aspect would lead to “an idolatry of the market.”

Francis also pointed to the need for honesty, because there is always a danger of corruption, which is “the destruction of the social fabric under the guise of law enforcement. It’s the law of the jungle disguised as apparent social rationality. It’s the deception and exploitation of the weakest or less informed.”

Corruption isn't a vice limited to politics, but also pervades in many businesses, in communication and in social organizations, he said.

One of the conditions necessary for social progress “is the absence of corruption,” he said, noting how some businesses might feel pressured to fall into blackmail and extortion, justifying themselves by thinking they are saving their business and their workers, or that the business will grow to the point they will be able to free themselves from the threat.

Businesses can also fall into the temptation “of thinking that this is something everyone does, and that small acts of corruption aimed at obtaining small advantages have not great importance,” Francis said, cautioning that “any intent of corruption, active or passive, is to begin to adore the god of money.”

The Pope then turned to the importance of fraternity, saying business activities must always include “the element of gratitude.”

“Relations of justice between leaders and workers must always be respected and demanded by all parties,” but it’s also true that a business is a work community in which “all merit respect and fraternal appreciation” by their superiors, colleagues and subordinates.

This respect shouldn’t be limited to just within the workplace, but must also extend to the local community where the company is physically located, Pope Francis said, adding that all legal and economic relations of the company “must be moderate, surrounded in an environment of respect and fraternity.”

Pope Francis then turned to the topic of migrants and refugees, saying this attitude of fraternity must also extend to the multitudes seeking protection and a better life.
    
Both the Holy See and the local churches “are making extraordinary efforts to deal effectively with the causes of this situation” by seeking to pacify the regions and countries at war while also promoting a spirit of welcome, he said.

However, the Pope acknowledged that “you do not always get everything you want,” and asked participants to help in encouraging governments to “give up any kind of war activity,” and to collaborate in creating opportunities for decent, stable work in countries of origin and of arrival, both for the local population and the immigrants.

Immigration, he said, “must continue to be an important factor of development.”

Francis concluded his speech by pointing to the Gospel passage in which Zacchaeus, the chief tax collector of Jericho, climbed a tree in order to be able to see Jesus. When he met the Lord’s gaze, this led “to a deep conversion.”

“I hope that this conference is like a sycamore of Jericho, a tree which can be climbed by all,” he said, so that, “through scientific discussion of the aspects of business activity, all may meet the gaze of Jesus and that from there result effective guidelines in order to make the activity of all their companies always and effectively promote the common good.”

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Vatican City, Nov 17, 2016 / 08:37 am (CNA/EWTN News).- In a meeting with the Patriarch of the Assyrian Church of the East Thursday, Pope Francis criticized ongoing violence in Iraq and Syria, saying no motive can justify or allow the killing of innocent people, especially children.

Asking the Lord for the “gift of peace,” the Pope said he was “dismayed by what continues to happen in the Middle East, especially in Iraq and Syria.”

“There, upon hundreds of thousands of innocent children, women and men is poured the terrible violence of bloody conflicts, which no motive can justify or allow,” he said.

In Iraq and Syria, he said, “our Christian brothers and sisters, as well as various religious and ethnic minorities, are unfortunately accustomed to suffer great trials every day.”

“In the midst of so much pain, of which I implore the end, every day we see Christians who walk the way of the cross meekly following the footsteps of Jesus.”

Pope Francis met with Mar Gewargis III, Catholicos-Patriarch of the Assyrian Church of the East Nov. 17, praising God for the “fraternal bonds” which exist between them and the “significant steps” which have already been made in strengthening dialogue.

His comments came as a three-week halt in airstrikes, declared by the government’s ally Russia, ended Nov. 15. With government airstrikes over Aleppo raining down again, at least 32 people, including several children, have been killed over the last two days, the BBC reports.

A children’s hospital, blood bank, and ambulance in rebel-held eastern Aleppo have been reported hit, with at least 21 people, five children and one emergency worker killed. The Independent Doctors Association reported that the hospital was severely damaged with some people trapped in the basement.

The Syrian civil war, which began in March 2011, has claimed the lives of more than 300,000 people, and forced 4.8 million to become refugees, about half of them children. Another 8 million Syrians are believed to have been internally displaced by the violence.

“These brothers and sisters,” the Pope said in his speech, “are models that encourage us in all circumstances to remain with the Lord, to embrace his cross, to trust in his love.”

“We show that the center of our faith is always the presence of Jesus, who invites us, even in adversity, never to tire of living his message of love, reconciliation and forgiveness.”

We learn this, Francis continued, from the martyrs of before and also of today, who “remain faithful to the Lord” even at the cost of their life, and with God “overcome evil with good.”

In his message to the Pope, Patriarch Mar Gewargis III said their meeting would be “a source of spiritual joy and encouragement” to the Christians of Iraq and Syria “in the midst of their suffering and pain, which unites them to the suffering and pain of Christ.”

Their suffering, caused by the “difficult and dire circumstances in which they live,” has caused many of them to leave the land of their ancestors, he said.

“In these countries are the roots of human civilization and the first Christian Churches, whose light shined on these peoples in the second half of the first century, through the missionary activity of the blessed apostles of our Lord.”

“In the midst of so much suffering, our ancient Christian communities of the East in general, and our Assyrian Christian community in particular, continued to bear witness to the Gospel of Christ, even paying with their blood.”

“We are grateful to these brothers,” the Pope said in his speech, “that impel us to follow the way of Jesus to defeat enmity.”

Just as the blood of Christ was “shed for love, reconciled and united, making fruitful the Church,” he said, “thus the blood of martyrs is the seed of unity of Christians. It calls us to devote ourselves with fraternal charity for communion.”

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By Carol Glatz

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Where there is no tenderness, there is cruelty and what is unfolding in Syria is a veritable "workshop of cruelty," Pope Francis told governing members of Caritas Internationalis.

"I believe the greatest illness of today is cardiac sclerosis," he said Nov. 17, implying a kind of hardening of the heart that renders a person unable to feel compassion or be moved by another's suffering.

An example of this, he said, is Syria and how so many parties are involved in the conflict, each bent on seeking its own interests and not the freedom and well-being of the people.

"Where there is no tenderness, there is always cruelty. And what is happening today in Syria is cruelty. There are intersecting interests, a workshop of cruelty," he said.

At the meeting of the Caritas Internationalis' representative council, Pope Francis also discussed the dangers of bureaucracies and his hope that Caritas would not be one.

"I would like Caritas not to be an institution that depends on the pope, the Holy See, Cor Unum, (the Pontifical Council for) Justice and Peace. No. It is a federation of diocesan Caritas (agencies) that are linked with the Holy See," he said.

In 2012, Pope Benedict XVI issued new statutes for Caritas Internationalis, a Vatican-based confederation of 165 national Catholic charities, to place it under the supervision of Cor Unum. But Cor Unum will cease to exist Jan. 1, 2017, when it is absorbed together with three other pontifical councils into the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development.

The Caritas statutes will have to be rewritten to reflect the reorganization of the Roman Curia, Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle of Manila, president of Caritas Internationalis, told Catholic News Service after the papal audience.

Cardinal Peter Turkson, who will be prefect of the new dicastery, was scheduled to meet with Caritas representatives to discuss what kind of relationship the confederation would have with the new office.

The pope told the Caritas representatives, about 80 people gathered in the apostolic palace's Sala Clementina, that he asked Cardinal Tagle whether he should read his written speech aloud or just sit and listen to what they had to say and have a "little dialogue."

"We chose the second" proposal, the pope said to applause.

As is the usual practice, the audience was broadcast via closed-circuit audio feed so journalists could report on the proceedings as they unfolded. However, the last minute change in the nature of the meeting meant the Vatican cut off the audio feed after about 13 minutes. The Vatican later said the encounter was meant to be private.

An unidentified man from Aleppo, Syria, thanked the pope for his encouragement and underlined the importance of the church's presence in the Arab-Islamic world.

An unidentified woman who covers Caritas efforts in the Middle East and North Africa said Pope Francis' call to be a sign of tenderness to the people truly changed their hearts and minds and approach to their work, giving them greater courage in a sometimes "arid" world.

The pope told his audience that a "revolution of tenderness" was needed, especially in a world dominated by a "throwaway culture."

Being tender and close to the people means holding them, embracing them and "to not be afraid of the flesh," the pope said.

God chose to become flesh through his son so he could be even closer to humanity; the church, too, must be near the people and show this same love -- this "tenderness of the Father," he said.

The flesh of Christ today, he said, are people who are unwanted, exploited and victims of war.

"For this reason the proposals of spirituality (that are) too theoretical are new forms of gnosticism and gnosticism is a heresy," he said. Gnosticism reflects an idea that a select elite can develop special powers and gifts through specialized knowledge that is hidden from most people.

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