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Louisville, Ky., Sep 27, 2016 / 08:44 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- For the first time in centuries, an ancient Biblical scroll could be read, thanks to a computer scanning technology that can reconstruct a clear text from damaged, unreadable material.

“This work opens a new window through which we can look back through time by reading materials that were thought lost through damage and decay,” Brent Seales, a University of Kentucky professor of computer science, said Sept. 22.

“There are so many other unique and exciting materials that may yet give up their secrets — we are only beginning to discover what they may hold,” Seales added, according to the University of Kentucky.

Seales and his team developed a high-resolution computer scan that will “virtually unwrap” a severely damaged ancient scroll of animal skin with an ink-based text. The scan can create clear, legible text from a wrapped scroll despite the damage.

Analysis of one scroll revealed 35 lines of text from the first two chapters of a version of the Book of Leviticus.

The scroll is at least 1,500 years old. It comes from a 1970 archaeological excavation in the synagogue at En Gedi in Israel. The scroll was badly burned at some point in its life and it was previously undecipherable.

“The discovery of text in the En Gedi scroll absolutely astonished us; we were certain it was a shot in the dark, but the most advanced technologies have brought this cultural treasure back to life,” said Pnina Shor, who is curator and director of the Israel Antiquities Authority’s Dead Sea Scrolls Project.

Seales and Shor are among the co-authors of a study about the project, published Sept. 21 in the Science Advances journal.

Scholars at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem were able to conduct a critical analysis of the recovered text.

The scroll’s text is identical to the Masoretic text, which is often used as the basis for Protestant Bibles’ translations of the Old Testament, the New York Times reports.

The Dead Sea Scrolls found have many small differences compared to the Masoretic text.

Carbon dating of the scroll indicates it is a copy dating back at least to 300 A.D.

Analysis of the script’s style suggests it could date back as 50 A.D. to 100 A.D., according to Ada Yardeni. Yardeni, an expert on Hebrew paleography, analyzed the text in the journal “Textus.”

The new computer technique could reveal the contents of other damaged, unreadable scrolls, such as Dead Sea scrolls found near the Dead Sea. Classical texts from places like Herculaneum, the Greek city destroyed by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 A.D., could also be recovered from carbonized scrolls.

 

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Vatican City, Sep 27, 2016 / 02:32 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Feelings of spiritual desolation, or a lack of will to live, should be combated with prayer, not with sleeping pills or alcohol – things that only distract us from the problem – Pope Francis said Tuesday.

“We need to understand that when our soul is in this state of generalized sadness we can barely breathe: This happens to all of us… whether strong or not,” the Pope said in a homily Sept. 27. We need to “understand what goes on in our hearts.”

Offered on the Feast of St. Vincent de Paul, the Pope said Mass at Casa Santa Marta for the Vincentian Sisters the Daughters of Charity, who serve at the house.

In his homily, Pope Francis reflected on the day's first reading, which is from the Book of Job, saying “Spiritual desolation makes us feel as though our souls are crushed, we can’t succeed, we can’t succeed and we also don’t want to live.”

“‘Death is better!’ This was Job’s outburst. It was better to die than live like this. What should we do when we experience these dark moments, be it for a family tragedy, an illness, something that weighs us down?” the Pope asked.

Instead of giving in to this despair, or trying to distract ourselves from our problems by taking sleeping pills or drinking “one, two, three or four glasses” of alcohol, which “do not help,” Francis said we should pray.

“It is a prayer to knock at the door but with strength!” Pope Francis stated. “Our Lord himself taught us how to pray in these dreadful moments.”

Quoting the day's Psalm, he said to pray, “Lord, you have plunged me into the bottom of the pit. Upon me, your wrath lies heavy. Let my prayer come before you, Lord.”

“This is the prayer and this is how we should pray in our darkest, most dreadful, bleakest and most crushed moments,” the Pope continued. “This is genuine prayer. And it’s also giving vent just like Job did with his sons. Like a son.”

Pope Francis emphasized that spiritual desolation is something that happens to everyone and said that the first step is to recognize within ourselves when we are having these moments of hopelessness or when we don't understand why something is happening.

And then, he said, “we must pray to the Lord like today's reading from Psalm 87 teaches us to pray during our dark moments. 'Let my prayer come before you, Lord.'”

Offering advice for when we encounter a person who is suffering or experiencing a sense of desolation, the Pope said we should be silent; “but a silence with much love, closeness and caresses. And we must not make speeches that don’t help in the end and even can do harm.”

Francis' homily concluded with his asking the Lord for the grace to recognize spiritual desolation, the grace to pray when we are afflicted by this feeling of spiritual desolation, and also the grace “to know how to be close to people who are suffering terrible moments of sadness and spiritual desolation.”

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Washington D.C., Sep 27, 2016 / 03:40 pm (CNA).- There were few direct statements about faith by the two presidential candidates in Monday’s debate. But that is not necessarily a cause for worry, Catholic analysts said.  

Monday’s event was only “the first of three presidential debates,” noted Dr. Matthew Bunson, senior contributor to EWTN, and the candidates did not have “many opportunities” to discuss faith issues because of the structure of the debate, which focused mainly on national security, the economy, and the direction of the country.

“And I think they were much more concerned with going at each other than they were with bolstering their image with faith voters,” Bunson said of presidential candidates Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton.

However, Bunson expects that there will be more mention of faith at the Oct. 4 vice presidential debate between Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), a Roman Catholic, and Indiana Gov. Mike Pence (R), who was raised Catholic but currently identifies as an evangelical Christian.

Presidential contenders Trump and Clinton officially debated for the first time on Monday evening at Hofstra University in Hempstead, N.Y.

Clinton has identified as a Methodist; Trump has said he is a Presbyterian Protestant at Marble Collegiate Church in New York, but the church has clarified that he is not a regular attendee.

Throughout the evening, they fielded questions from moderator Lester Holt, the anchor of the NBC Nightly News, on issues of the economy, national security, race relations and civil unrest, and their own personal lives. However, their own faith and the role of faith in today’s public square were topics largely absent from the conversation.

Sara Huckabee Sanders, a Trump advisor and daughter of former presidential candidate Mike Huckabee, said the lack of talk of faith was “a little bit” concerning.

“I think that particularly when it came to the conversation on race relations, that’s where I think faith could have played a really big role. But I think that both candidates have talked some about that in the past,” she said.

However, both Trump and Clinton have already reached out to “galvanize” their religious bases, Bunson noted, so they didn’t necessarily need to do so in the debate.

Clinton has reached out to supporters in the mainline Protestant congregations as well as “more secular voters” who may have voted for her primary opponent Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-Vt.); Trump has courted Evangelical Christians and – “somewhat belatedly,” Bunson suggested – Catholics, in recently naming a list of over 30 prominent Catholic advisors.

While issues like religious liberty, marriage, and abortion were not mentioned at the debate, the candidates did touch on issues directly affecting families, like “pocketbook issues” and “paid leave,” Joshua Mercer of CatholicVote.org told CNA.

And in the debate section on racial tensions, Clinton did mention the importance of churches helping to ease tensions between African-American communities and the police: “And so we need to do a better job of working, again, with the communities, faith communities, business communities, as well as the police to try to deal with this problem.”

The U.S. bishops have spoken out prominently about racial tensions, holding a Day of Prayer for Peace on Sept. 9 and announcing that a new pastoral letter on racism is in the works.

Archbishop Joseph Kurtz of Louisville, the president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, created a task force in July to investigate what dioceses could better do to heal racial tensions and address problems plaguing certain communities. He did so after protests in several cities occurred over incidents of young black men being shot by police officers, as well as nationwide horror after a retaliatory killing of five police officers in Dallas.

Archbishop Kurtz condemned the violence while also calling attention to the serious problems many urban communities face, including drug abuse, unemployment, and lack of access to quality education and affordable housing.

Last week, riots broke out in Charlotte, N.C. and protests in Tulsa, Okla. after the deaths of young black men in those cities in dealing with the police.

When asked how they would, as president, work to heal racial tensions, Clinton discussed the various problems affecting minority communities like gun violence, housing, education, and “the systemic racism in our criminal justice system,” while Trump focused more on gun laws and the importance of “law and order.”

“Unfortunately, race still determines too much, often determines where people live, determines what kind of education in their public schools they can get, and, yes, it determines how they're treated in the criminal justice system,” Clinton said.

She also praised the positive aspects of many of these communities, “the vibrancy of the black church, the black businesses that employ so many people, the opportunities that so many families are working to provide for their kids.”

Another subject that was absent from Monday’s conversation was the issue of abortion, despite a recent Knights of Columbus/Marist poll showing that almost two-thirds of Americans want Hyde Amendment protections so taxpayers don’t directly fund abortions, and 60 percent of respondents saying abortion should be limited to the first trimester at most.

Kellyanne Conway, a pollster who is now campaign manager for Trump, wished the life issue has been asked about by the moderator so that “Americans should know that Hillary Clinton is for late-term abortion.”

When pressed that many pro-life voters still have serious concerns about Trump’s commitment to the pro-life cause given his statements in the past, Conway said “they shouldn’t have those concerns,” pointing to Trump’s present support for the pro-life cause and his pledges to major pro-life legislative goals like a late-term abortion ban and to “make permanent the Hyde Amendment.”

 

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Vatican City, Sep 27, 2016 / 04:33 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Tanya Cangelosi never imagined that she would one day be bringing homeless people on pilgrimages to Rome. And Shyla Montoya never thought that she would someday go on a pilgrimage to Rome.

But earlier this month, that is exactly what they did. And what’s more, the pair was even able to meet Pope Francis.

On Sept. 7, in St. Peter's Square, Pope Francis stopped to speak with the two women after giving his usual Wednesday General Audience. Cangelosi, who started her own homeless ministry in Denver, handed him a collage she had made with photos of “our homeless kids,” as she calls them.

Pope Francis held the photo: “he didn't just hand it off, he really looked at it,” Cangelosi said.

Montoya is the third person from the homeless community selected to go on pilgrimage to Rome through Denver Homeless Ministries (DHM). The first was Clarissa “Glitterbear” Salazar in 2014 and the second was Derrick Yearout – known as “Tree” on the streets.

That she would take homeless people on pilgrimage to Rome was the “furthest thing from my mind,” Cangelosi told CNA.

As an organization committed to providing awareness of homeless persons in the Denver community and providing opportunities to serve them as both equals and friends, DHM offers the pilgrimage as a way to inspire those committed to bettering their lives.

According to Cangelosi, however, the effects of the trip aren't always seen right away. “Maybe things don't make a difference for 3 or 4 years down the line,” she said. Sometimes it needs time to sink in, and that's okay.

“It's the hardest thing I've done in my life,” she said. “I just do what the Lord asks me.”

Montoya, 22, said she was pleased to meet the Pope, and that for her, the trip to Rome was not just for herself. She uploaded pictures to social media throughout the pilgrimage for all of her friends – who she calls her street “family” – following along back in Denver, Colorado.

The trip was “not just for me,” Montoya said. “That's really important for me. I would bring everybody (along) if I had the chance.”

Growing up, Montoya never knew her father, and went back-and-forth between living with her birth mother and great-grandparents until she was six, when her mother died. After that she was raised by her great-grandparents.

When she was 14, her great-grandfather died, and heartbroken, she ran away from home. She lived in a group home for a while. Eventually, when she wanted to return home, she wasn't allowed to because of her great-grandmother's age. So she was put into the foster care system.

She eventually ran away again and lived by couch hopping until she went back to the group home. She got back in touch with her family, and her great-grandmother – who she calls “mama” – inspired her to go back to school.

But when she was 18 and her great-grandmother died, she, in her own words, “relapsed,” didn't go to school, and fell into a “depression.”

“I started stealing. Eventually, I lost everything – again. I still had my apartment, but I didn't know how to survive,” she wrote in a statement prior to the Rome pilgrimage.

“Struggling for food and clothes, and drinking a lot, I was lost. But something hit me. The Holy Spirit, I think. Something made me completely stop doing all the bad things I was doing.”

“I started going to school. One step at a time, I picked everything up, piece by piece.”

Montoya, now age 22, has an apartment and said she loves her job working at Auntie Anne's pretzel shop. Starting next year, she plans to study social work at a college in New York City through a program that helps pay for higher education for those who grew up in foster care.

She said she has dreamed of living in New York City ever since she was a little girl. Going to Rome, on the other hand, “never crossed my mind.”

“Not a day goes by that I don't reminisce on the past,” she said. “With every struggle that I faced and that I am facing today, I'm not negative about life. I always have a smile on my face and it's rare when I don't believe that everything happens for a reason.”

Despite the challenges to this year's Rome pilgrimage, Cangelosi said God's “calling me to do it again next year.”

In the meantime, though, Montoya said she is grateful for the experiences she's had in life, if only because she's learned from them. Everything “definitely made me open my eyes and appreciate life and everyone who walks in it,” she said.

“Because even though sometimes I may not like them, I always remind myself that the sky isn't the limit because there's footprints on the moon.”

 

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