Catholic News 2
WASHINGTON (AP) -- She was at her best. He was not at his worst....
CHARLOTTE, N.C. (AP) -- The fatal shooting of a black man by a police officer in Charlotte is only the latest shooting to raise questions about how the department uses body cameras....
Views from around the world on Monday's first U.S. presidential debate between Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Donald Trump:...
HEMPSTEAD, N.Y. (AP) -- Donald Trump repeatedly clashed with Hillary Clinton during Monday's first presidential debate, interrupting her and appearing agitated at times as they tangled over the economy, her use of a private mail server and his unwillingness to release his income tax returns. Clinton maintained an even demeanor, smiling indulgently when Trump turned aggressive....
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Donald Trump's habit of peddling hype and fabrication emerged unabated in the first presidential debate while Hillary Clinton played it cautiously in her statements, though not without error. They both denied making statements that they are on the record as saying....
HEMPSTEAD, N.Y. (AP) -- In a combative opening debate, Hillary Clinton emphatically denounced Donald Trump Monday night for keeping his personal tax returns and business dealings secret from voters and peddling a "racist lie" about President Barack Obama. Businessman Trump repeatedly cast Clinton as a "typical politician" as he sought to capitalize on Americans' frustration with Washington....
Mexico City, Mexico, Sep 26, 2016 / 02:15 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Some 400,000 people filled the streets of Mexico City on Saturday to protest the Mexican government’s attempt to redefine marriage as anything but a union between one man and one woman.Juan Dabdoub Giacoman, president of the Mexican Council of the Family, which helped organize the event, told CNA on Sept. 10 that the march was “historic” and an “example of the awakening of Mexico.”“It is a march to express to politicians and leaders of the country that this is really what Mexican society is searching for, which is not what gender ideology and the international LGBT movement is promoting.” After Mass on Sept. 25, Pope Francis voiced his support of the Mexican bishops’ role in supporting the march, and their efforts for society “in favor of family and life, which at this time require special pastoral and cultural attention throughout the world.”The size and r...
Mexico City, Mexico, Sep 26, 2016 / 02:15 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Some 400,000 people filled the streets of Mexico City on Saturday to protest the Mexican government’s attempt to redefine marriage as anything but a union between one man and one woman.
Juan Dabdoub Giacoman, president of the Mexican Council of the Family, which helped organize the event, told CNA on Sept. 10 that the march was “historic” and an “example of the awakening of Mexico.”
“It is a march to express to politicians and leaders of the country that this is really what Mexican society is searching for, which is not what gender ideology and the international LGBT movement is promoting.”
After Mass on Sept. 25, Pope Francis voiced his support of the Mexican bishops’ role in supporting the march, and their efforts for society “in favor of family and life, which at this time require special pastoral and cultural attention throughout the world.”
The size and reach of the protests came as a surprise, even for event organizers, Dabdoub told CNA.
“Mexico really isn’t characterized as being a country with great social participation,” he explained. “Civically, we have been very apathetic and this awakening to the national level was shocking and surprised us.”
“The family is the fundamental cell of society,” Dabdoub said. “But what the president proposed not only fails to protect it, but shatters it.”
“If we send our message and show that there are many people willing to go out and face what is happening now, we will have the opportunity for politicians to reverse the situation and begin to make the changes Mexicans need,” he asserted.
Sept. 24 marked the country’s second March for the Family. The march brought together more than 400,000 people to protest against efforts by Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto to push for same-sex marriage and to show the Mexican people’s support for marriage and the family.
During this year’s event, the organization announced that it would create a permanent civic movement in defense of the family and marriage. The organization also relayed their request to meet with President Peña Nieto in order to promote a Citizens' Initiative to strengthen the family and also to create the National Institute of the Family.
Mario Romo, director of Family Network, said after the event that “the response was overwhelming. This is a great gift that we all made to our country.”
He also pointed to the existence of two citizens’ initiatives “seeking to protect marriage between man and woman.”
“One in the Senate, which came this year in in February with more than 250,000 signatures, and another in the Congress that 30,000 people went to present on September 1, and was signed by 50 federal deputies,” he told CNA.
Romo encouraged Mexican citizens not to be afraid and to “say what they want and what they do not want. This is a sign that when we unite, citizens can be heard. “
In addition, Jose Enrique Guzman, counsel for ADF International in Mexico, highlighted the importance of defending the rights of parents to educate their children, “according to our convictions and principles.”
“Our children have a right to be educated in a natural way. We all come from mom and dad, we all have the right to be educated by a father and mother, and to education in schools that conforms to our convictions and principles as Mexicans,” Guzman told CNA.
“We are not marching to be homophobic, we are not marching to spit on someone nor to discriminate against someone. On the contrary, we are here to demonstrate and that in a democracy such as that of Mexico, biology is enforced and not an ideology,” he said.
Würzburg, Germany, Sep 26, 2016 / 02:29 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Fr. Engelmar Unzeitig, a priest of the Mariannhill Mission society who was interred in the Nazi's Dachau concentration camp and has been recognized as a martyr, was beatified during a Mass on Saturday.Bishop Friedhelm Hofmann of Würzburg said during his homily for the Sept. 24 Mass at the city's cathedral that Fr. Unzeitig, known as the "Angel of Dachau", brought the light of God's goodness to the place where his presence “is least expected.”Fr. Unzeitig lived under a “dehumanizing dictatorship,” Bishop Hofmann noted, saying, “we can learn from him not to subject ourselves to a dictatorship, even a dictatorship of opinions.”The following day, before leading pilgrims to Rome in the Angelus, Pope Francis made note of the beatification, saying that “Killed in hatred of the faith” Fr. Unzeitig “opposed hatred with love, and answered ferocity answe...
Würzburg, Germany, Sep 26, 2016 / 02:29 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Fr. Engelmar Unzeitig, a priest of the Mariannhill Mission society who was interred in the Nazi's Dachau concentration camp and has been recognized as a martyr, was beatified during a Mass on Saturday.
Bishop Friedhelm Hofmann of Würzburg said during his homily for the Sept. 24 Mass at the city's cathedral that Fr. Unzeitig, known as the "Angel of Dachau", brought the light of God's goodness to the place where his presence “is least expected.”
Fr. Unzeitig lived under a “dehumanizing dictatorship,” Bishop Hofmann noted, saying, “we can learn from him not to subject ourselves to a dictatorship, even a dictatorship of opinions.”
The following day, before leading pilgrims to Rome in the Angelus, Pope Francis made note of the beatification, saying that “Killed in hatred of the faith” Fr. Unzeitig “opposed hatred with love, and answered ferocity answered with meekness. May his example help us to be witnesses of charity and hope even in the midst of tribulations.”
Fr. Unzeitig was born in what is now the Czech Republic in 1911, and he joined the seminary at the age of 18 and became a priest for the Mariannhill Mission Society, whose motto is: “If no one else will go: I will go!”
He was arrested by the Nazis in 1941, when he was only 30 years old and had been a priest but two years, serving in Germany and Austria.
His crime was having preached against the Third Reich from his pulpit, particularly against their treatment of the Jewish people. He encouraged his congregation to be faithful to God and to resist the lies of the Nazi regime.
As punishment, Fr. Unzeitig was sent to what has been called the “largest monastery in the world”: Dachau concentration camp, which became renowned for the number of ministers and priests within its walls.
The camp housed some 2,700 clergy, roughly 95 percent of whom were Catholic priests from Poland, making it one of the largest residences for priests in the history of the Church – hence the name.
While imprisoned at the camp, Father studied Russian in order to be able to help the influx of prisoners from Eastern Europe, and had a reputation at the camp as a holy man.
For several years, Fr. Unzeitig was able to remain in relatively stable health despite the poor treatment he received. However, when a wave of the often-fatal typhoid fever swept through the camp in 1945, he and 19 other priests volunteered to do what no one else wanted to – care for the sick and dying in the typhoid barracks, an almost-certain death sentence in and of itself. He and his companions spent their days bathing and caring for the sick, praying with them, and offering last rites.
Despite his bleak circumstances, Fr. Unzeitig found his hope and joy in his faith, as evidenced in letters to his sister from the camp:
“Whatever we do, whatever we want, is surely simply the grace that carries us and guides us. God’s almighty grace helps us overcome obstacles … love doubles our strength, makes us inventive, makes us feel content and inwardly free. If people would only realize what God has in store for those who love him!” he wrote.
In another letter he wrote:
"Even behind the hardest sacrifices and worst suffering stands God with his Fatherly love, who is satisfied with the good will of his children and gives them and others happiness."
Eventually, on March 2, 1945, Fr. Unzeitig succumbed to typhoid fever himself. Dachau was liberated by American soldiers just a few weeks later, on April 29.
In recognition of his heroic virtue, Fr. Engelmar Unzeitig was declared venerable by Benedict XVI in 2009, and Pope Francis acknowledged him as a martyr in January, which opened the path for his beatification.
Some 1,800 people participated in the beatification Mass at the Würzburg cathedral. Several representatives of the Czech government were present, as well as members of the Mariannhill missionaries and the bishop of an Austrian diocese where Fr. Unzeitig had served.
His feast is to be celebrated March 2, the anniversary of his death.
Aleppo, Syria, Sep 26, 2016 / 04:17 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Christian and Muslim children of Aleppo, Syria will gather together in prayer on October 6 to plead for an end to the violence and devastation in their city and country.Archbishop Boutros Marayati, the head of the Armenian Catholic archieparchy in Aleppo, told a mission society news agency that the initiative will involve mostly primary school-aged children, who will add their signatures and fingerprints to an appeal to all world leaders, asking them to help stop the violence."But above all, they will pray. They will pray for all of their peers,” the Archbishop told Agenzia Fides, the information service for the Pontifical Mission Societies.“And we trust in the fact that children's prayer is more powerful than ours," he added.Last month, the bloodied, dusty face of five-year-old Omran Daqneesh, sitting shell-shocked in the back of an ambulance after his house had been bombed, brought new attention to ...
Aleppo, Syria, Sep 26, 2016 / 04:17 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Christian and Muslim children of Aleppo, Syria will gather together in prayer on October 6 to plead for an end to the violence and devastation in their city and country.
Archbishop Boutros Marayati, the head of the Armenian Catholic archieparchy in Aleppo, told a mission society news agency that the initiative will involve mostly primary school-aged children, who will add their signatures and fingerprints to an appeal to all world leaders, asking them to help stop the violence.
"But above all, they will pray. They will pray for all of their peers,” the Archbishop told Agenzia Fides, the information service for the Pontifical Mission Societies.
“And we trust in the fact that children's prayer is more powerful than ours," he added.
Last month, the bloodied, dusty face of five-year-old Omran Daqneesh, sitting shell-shocked in the back of an ambulance after his house had been bombed, brought new attention to the plight of Syrian children caught in the crossfires of the ongoing war. Since then, many more photos and videos of children caught or killed in the rubble have emerged, sparking increased humanitarian pleas on their behalf.
The already dire situation in Syria has only worsened in recent days and weeks as an attempted ceasefire collapsed and other diplomacies failed. Since Friday morning, hundreds of airstrikes have battered neighborhoods in rebel-held eastern Aleppo, killing an estimated 100 people and leaving at least 50 more, including children, trapped under the rubble.
The recent use of so-called bunker-busting bombs, which weigh about a ton and can blast through two meters of underground, reinforced concrete have only added to the horror and destruction in the past few days.
A humanitarian truce, called for by the United Nations and brokered this month by the United States and Russia, fell apart less than a week after its institution after U.S. forces struck a Syrian position killing dozens of soldiers, though the move was reportedly unintentional.
The Syrian civil war, which began in March 2011, has claimed the lives of between and estimated 280,000 and 470,000 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.
The civil war is being fought between the Syrian government’s regime and a number of rebel groups. The rebels include moderates, such as the Free Syrian Army; Islamists such as the Army of Conquest and the Islamic State; and Kurdish separatists.
Catholic leaders in the city, including Archbishop Jean-Clement Jeanbart of Aleppo, have made continual appeals to the international faith community for prayers and humanitarian aid.
United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said last week that the continued fighting and horror in Aleppo shows the failure of the international community.
"The Syrian tragedy shames us all," he said. "The collective failure of the international community should haunt every member of this Council."
MIAMI (AP) -- Dee Gordon hit an emotional homer in Miami's first at-bat following the death of Marlins ace Jose Fernandez in a boating accident....
