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The Holy Father has accepted the resignation presented by Monsignor Carlito J. Cenzon C.I.C.M. from the pastoral governance of the diocese of Baguio (Philippines), and has appointed Msgr. Victor B. Bendico, from the clergy of the Archdiocese of Capiz, until now parish priest of the Immaculate Conception Cathedral, in Roxas City.  

Msgr. Victor B. Bendico was born in Roxas City, January 22, 1960. He completed his philosophical and theological studies at the University of Santo Tomas Central Seminary in Manila. From 1996 to 2000 he studied in Rome at the Pontifical Institute of St. Anselm, receiving his Doctorate in Sacred Liturgy. He was ordained priest for the Archdiocese of Capiz, on April 14, 1984.

As an ordained priest he was: Spiritual Director of St. Pius X Seminary, Roxas City (1984-1988); Vicar at St. Theresa parish of Roxas City (1992-1995); Rector at St. Maria Mater et Regina seminarium maius, (Saint Mary, Mother and Queen, Major Seminary) Roxas City and pastor of St. Isidore parish, Pontevedra, Capiz (2000-2006); Pastor of St. Laurence parish, Panit-an, Pontevedra, Capiz (2006-2011). Currently he is pastor of the parish of Immaculate Conception Cathedral in Roxas City; Member of the Commission for Clergy and the one for liturgy; Member of the Council and the Senate of the clergy; Member of the Council of the ‘Colegio de la Purisima Concepción’ (College of the Immaculate Conception) in Roxas City.

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(Vatican Radio) The 2016 Day for Life is being marked across Ireland this Sunday highlighting the meaning and value of human life at every stage. The theme for this year is, “Everything is Connected.

In their Day for Life pastoral message the Bishops of Ireland have drawn inspiration from Pope Francis’ encyclical letter “Laudato Si” on the care for our common home.

The Bishops also comment in their message that, “when we recognise and grow in wonder that we are all brothers and sisters living in one common home, it will not only affect how we care for the environment, but also how we care for one another and how we welcome and accept those with different needs and abilities, refugees, the elderly, the unborn, the forgotten and the abandoned.”

Listen to Lydia O'Kane's interview with Bishop Kevin Doran of Elphin 

Speaking on this year’s Day for Life theme, Bishop Kevin Doran, Bishop of Elphin and the Bishops’ Conference Day for Life delegate told Lydia O’Kane, “our theme this year in trying to draw attention to the Day for Life, it’s not a very obvious one in some ways, when people think of the Day for Life they might think more directly in terms of the right to life of the unborn or the end of life; people with terminal illnesses and so on, but the point that Pope Francis is making is that the care of the environment can also be a life and death issue for people.”

Day for Life is celebrated each year by the Catholic Church in Ireland, Scotland, and in England & Wales.

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(Vatican Radio) Pope Francis’ meeting  with Assyrian-Chaldean community in Georgia was an opportunity to show his closeness to the Church in Syria and Iraq, said the director of the Holy See press office.

“This is extremely important,” Greg Burke told Vatican Radio about the meeting, which took place on the first day of the Pope’s visit to the Caucasus nation.

He observed while it is currently impossible for the Holy Father to travel to either Syria or Iraq, nonetheless they are “both places very close to his heart, with the Church suffering there.”

Listen to Gabriella Ceraso’s interview with Greg Burke, director of the Holy See press office:

Burke also commented on Pope Francis’ meeting with Catholicos Patriarch of all Georgia, Ilia II earlier in the day at the Patriarchal palace in the capital city of Tbilisi.

“I think the important thing is this: It’s the relations with the Orthodox,” he said. He recalled how the Patriarch sang “May God bless the Church of Rome.”

There was a sense that “despite the difficulties, there’s a lot of good will,” Burke said.

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(Vatican Radio)  Pope Francis has sent greetings in a message to the Jewish community of Rome and throughout the world to mark three upcoming Jewish holidays, Rosh Hashanah 5777, (the Jewish New Year), the Yom Kippur Day of Atonement and Sukkot, the Feast of the Booths or Tabernacles. In the message addressed to the chief Rabbi of Rome, Riccardo Di Segni, the Pope expressed his hope that the upcoming holidays would bring “abundant blessings.”  He wrote: "May the Almighty grant us the untiring desire to promote peace and strengthen the cordial links of friendship between us.”

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(Vatican Radio)  In Tbilisi Saturday, Pope Francis offered words of consolation to Georgia’s small Catholic community  and invited the faithful to be like little children who are so lovingly embraced by God. 

Celebrating Mass at Tbilisi’s Mikheil Meskhi Stadium on day two of his pastoral visit to the country, Pope Francis spoke of the “importance of women” as one of the nation’s many treasures.  

Quoting Saint Therese of the Child Jesus whose feast is celebrated on this day, the Pope said, “‘they love God in much larger numbers than men do.’”  He noted the “great number of grandmothers and mothers who unceasingly defend and pass on the faith” in Georgia, whose female Saint Nino is credited with first evangelizing in the fourth century.

As a mother takes upon herself the burdens and weariness of her children, “ the Pope stressed, “so too does God take upon himself our sins and troubles” in his infinite love for us.

Keep the door of consolation open to Jesus

God, he said, is always ready to offer us consolation in times of need, “amid the turmoil we experience in life.”  It “liberates us from evil, brings peace and increases our joy.”

But, he warned, we must leave the “doors of consolation” open to Jesus, through daily reading of the Gospel, silent prayers in adoration, confession and receiving  the Eucharist.

When the door of our heart is closed, he said, we “get accustomed to pessimism” and “end up absorbed in our own sadness, in the depths of anguish, isolated.”

God best consoles us, he noted, “when we are united, in communion” and the Church is “the house of consolation” to which we should turn.

Pope Francis urged the faithful to offer to others the same consolation that  they receive.  “Even when enduring affliction and rejection,” he said, “a Christian is always called to bring hope to the hearts of those who have given up, to encourage the downhearted, to bring the light of Jesus…and his forgiveness.”

“Countless people suffer trials and injustice and live in anxiety,” he continued.  And though God’s consolation cannot take away our problems, he said, it “gives us the power to love, to peacefully bear pain.”

Consolation: the Church’s urgent mission

Receiving and bringing God’s consolation, he stressed, is the Church’s “urgent” mission.

And in order to do this, he said, we must become, as Jesus tells us, like a little child.  “For God is not known through grand ideas and extensive study,” he noted, “but rather through the littleness of a humble and trusting heart.”  Likewise, prestige and earthly success mean little to God who wishes us to empty ourselves of such things.  “A child has nothing to give and everything to receive,” the Pope went on: “the one who becomes like a little child is poor in self but rich in God.”

We are not the masters of our lives:  live in simplicity like children

Children have much to teach us, he observed: they show us that God “accomplishes great things in those who put up no resistance to him, who are simple and sincere, without duplicity.”

The Pope reminded the faithful that we are all children of the Father: “not masters of our lives” or “autonomous and self-sufficient adults,” but children “who need love and forgiveness.”

In the same way, Christian communities who live the Gospel with this simplicity may be “poor in means” but “are rich in God.”  And blessed are those “Shepherds,” the Pope said, “who do not ride the logic of worldly success, but follow the law of love: welcoming, listening, serving.”  Blessed too, he observed, is the Church “who does not entrust herself to the criteria of functionalism and organizational efficiency, nor worries about her image.”

Again quoting St. Theresa, Pope Francis concluded his Homily by inviting the faithful to “bear with the faults of others” and delight in the “smallest acts of virtue we see them practice.”  Charity, he said, “cannot remain hidden in the depths of our hearts.”

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Vatican City, Oct 1, 2016 / 01:52 am (CNA/EWTN News).- It’s important to follow the example of St. Therese's “little way,” trusting in God and his consolation with the faith a small child, Pope Francis said Saturday, which marked the feast of the young saint and Doctor of the Church.

Quoting from her autobiography, he said St. Therese “shows her 'little way' to God, the trust of a little child who falls asleep without fear in his Father’s arms, because 'Jesus does not demand great actions from us, but simply surrender and gratitude.'”

“To receive God’s love we need this littleness of heart: only little ones can be held in their mothers’ arms,” the Pope said during his homily at M. Meskhi Stadium in Tbilisi, Georgia Oct. 1.

“Here in Georgia there are a great number of grandmothers and mothers who unceasingly defend and pass on the faith,” he said, adding that they “bring the fresh water of God’s consolation to countless situations of barrenness and conflict.”

Tbilisi is the Pope’s first stop during his Sept. 30-Oct. 2 visit to Georgia and Azerbaijan. Expected to largely focus on the topics of peace, ecumenism, and interreligious dialogue, the trip is seen as a conclusion of his Caucasus tour, following his visit to Armenia in June.

In Georgia, Eastern Orthodox make up 84 percent of the population, Muslims 10 percent, Apostolic Armenians close to three, and Catholics less than one percent.

The Pope's homily at the public Mass centered on the comfort of God as being like the comfort of a father to his children.

“As he looks at us, he is always moved and becomes tender-hearted, with a love from the depths of his being, for beyond any evil we are capable of, we always remain his children; he wants to take us in his arms, protect us, and free us from harm and evil,” he said.

It is God's presence that frees us and gives us joy, even amid conflict or turmoil in our lives, Francis said. “For this reason, if we want to experience his consolation, we must give way to the Lord in our lives.”

“There are doors of consolation which must always be open, because Jesus especially loves to enter through them: the Gospel we read every day and carry around with us, our silent prayer in adoration, confession, the Eucharist. It is through these doors that the Lord enters and gives new flavor to reality.”

“When the door of our heart is closed, however, his light cannot enter in and everything remains dark,” he added.

Pope Francis noted also the importance of community, saying that “in the Church we find consolation, the Church is the house of consolation: here God wishes to console us.”

“It is when we are united, in communion, that God’s consolation works in us,” he said, explaining that we must ask ourselves if we who are in the Church truly bring God’s consolation to others and welcome them, consoling the tired and disillusioned.

“Dear brothers and sisters, let us take up this call: to not bury ourselves in what is going wrong around us or be saddened by the lack of harmony between us.”

“It is not good for us to become accustomed to a closed ecclesial micro-environment,” but rather “to share wide horizons open to hope, having the courage to humbly open our doors and go beyond ourselves,” Francis said.

The Pope also stressed the need to always trust and hope in the surprises of God. Doing this, he said, “will help us to remember that we are constantly and primarily his children.”

We are “not masters of our lives, but children of the Father; not autonomous and self-sufficient adults, but children who always need to be lifted up and embraced, who need love and forgiveness,” the Pope continued.

“Blessed are those Christian communities who live this authentic gospel simplicity!” he said. “Blessed are the Shepherds who do not ride the logic of worldly success, but follow the law of love: welcoming, listening, serving.”

“Blessed is the Church who does not entrust herself to the criteria of functionalism and organizational efficiency, nor worries about her image,” he added.

Pope Francis offered encouragement to the “little and beloved flock of Georgia,” telling them to receive the encouragement of the Good Shepherd who “takes you on his shoulders and consoles you.”

“The true greatness of man consists in making himself small before God,” he said, adding that God is not known through “grand ideas and extensive study, but rather through the littleness of a humble and trusting heart.”

“To be great before the Most High does not require the accumulation of honor and prestige or earthly goods and success, but rather a complete self-emptying.”

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Washington D.C., Oct 1, 2016 / 04:25 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Churches concerned about Internal Revenue Service intervention if they engage in political speech should take a look at a proposed federal bill that promises fewer restrictions, the bill’s backers say.

“No tax exemption can be based on a requirement that a church or any other non-profit organization give up a constitutionally protected freedom, including free speech,” Alliance Defending Freedom senior counsel Erik Stanley said Sept. 29. “With regard to churches, they can decide for themselves what they should or shouldn’t say from the pulpit. Americans don’t need the IRS to be the referee.”

Reps. Steve Scalise (R-La.) and Jody Hice (R-Ga.) have introduced the Freedom of Speech Fairness Act, which claims to restore free speech and religious freedom to churches and other nonprofits. It would allow churches to make political statements in the ordinary course of the organization’s regular and customary activities, and if any expenditures on such statements are minimal.

The bill would ensure that a minister may make a comment about a political candidate or issue as part of a sermon. It would also allow a charity that sends out a monthly newsletter to occasionally include comments on political issues or candidates, according to Rep. Scalise’s office.

The bill maintains some restrictions. It would not allow non-profits to create an entirely new mailing campaign dedicated solely to political information. It would not allow non-profit organizations or churches to engage in political activities outside the scope of their normal tax-exempt work. They also could not contribute to political activities or candidates.

Stanley spoke in support of the bill, contrasting it with the 1954 Johnson Amendment. Lyndon Johnson, who would later go on to become president, backed legislation as a U.S. Senator to bar non-profits from participation in any political campaign on behalf of or against any candidate for public office. That rule is still in place.

For Stanley, the Freedom of Speech Fairness Act is a needed corrective.

“The IRS has no business acting as the speech police of any non-profit organization, as its many scandals over recent years have made clear,” he said. “This bill corrects an unconstitutional restriction put in place in 1954 that was never intended to affect churches and other non-profit groups but has been used to intimidate them ever since.”

“By removing the threat of an IRS investigation and potential penalties based simply, for example, on what a pastor says from the pulpit, this bill brings the law into conformity with the First Amendment,” Stanley said.

Rep. Scalise’s office said that present law creates a “chilling effect” on religious institutions’ speech.

In response to a 2012 lawsuit settlement with the Freedom from Religion Foundation, the IRS created a unit called the Political Activity Referral Committee. It identified 99 churches for “potential impermissible political campaign intervention activities.”

Groups like Americans United for Separation of Church and State often send letters to pastors warning them about the tax regulations.

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Office of General Counsel has offered guidelines to Catholic organizations on political activity and lobbying.

The July 2016 edition of the guidelines runs to 44 pages. It offers careful rules concerning candidate forums, debates, photo-ops and facility rentals at churches and other Catholic organizations.

The guidelines are relevant to non-profit Catholic media organizations, including CNA’s parent organization the EWTN Global Catholic Network.

“Prudence dictates that Catholic periodicals reject columns that endorse, support or oppose candidates,” the bishops’ document states. It notes that Catholic news publications should avoid crossing the legal threshold of attempting “to promote or oppose a candidate through editorial policy” or through selective acceptance of political advertisements.

Alliance Defending Freedom organizes protests of the tax regulations in its Pulpit Freedom Sunday events.

The U.S. bishops’ guidelines caution against Catholic churches’ participation in the event, saying it could cause problems with the IRS non-profit requirements.

“If the IRS determines that an organization has violated this absolute prohibition against political campaign intervention, the IRS may revoke the organization’s tax-exempt status, including its ability to receive tax-deductible contributions,” the guidelines say.

 

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