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Vatican City, Sep 1, 2016 / 02:32 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- As the Catholic and Orthodox worlds unite to celebrate a day of prayer for the care of creation, the Vatican’s social justice head is offering a reminder that the human person must be at the center of efforts to better the environment.

“It's very simple: the core of development is the human person. And that's why Pope Benedict referred to development as a vocation. It's a vocation that we people have and that basically is a spiritual reference,” Cardinal Turkson told CNA Sept. 1.

“It's so important that we get a very clear perspective about what we're doing, about the dignity of people, about their own relationship and dignity, (and) relation with God,” he said.

The cardinal stressed that it’s especially important to remember that “in rendering service in any country to anybody, we seek to improve upon the image of God that already exists in the person.”

Cardinal Turkson spoke to CNA on the same day that Pope Francis released his message for the World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation, which takes place each year on Sept. 1 and was instituted in 2015 shortly after the release of the Pope’s environmental encyclical “Laudato Si.”

In addition to serving as president of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, Cardinal Turkson is the president-elect for the newly established dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development. He was a key player in drafting the environmental encyclical.

In his role as head of the new Vatican department, which will go into effect Jan. 1, 2017, the cardinal will oversee the Holy See’s involvement in issues surrounding migration, slavery, poverty and exclusion, as well as armed conflicts and natural disasters.

In a Sept. 1 news conference on Pope Francis' message for the World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation, Cardinal Turkson emphasized that care of creation is about care of people: “When we hurt the earth, we also hurt the poor, whom God loves without limit.”

“So we are being asked to complement both the spiritual and corporal works of mercy with care for our common home,” he said, referencing Pope Francis' message suggesting that an eighth spiritual and corporal work of mercy – care for creation – be added to the traditional sets of seven each.

When asked if he knew about this “eighth work of mercy,” Turkson replied that he had not had any discussion with Pope Francis about it.

When it comes to examples of how to put the human being and human dignity at the center of all we do, Cardinal Turkson pointed to Mother Teresa, who will be canonized Sunday, as a key figure.

“So now with Mother Teresa, the celebrating of her sainthood in the next few days becomes a big invitation to all of us to know the significance of under-girding our life of service and ministry, of all kinds, with a deep personal life of spirituality and prayer,” he said.

“So thank God for Mother Teresa, and for the example she's giving to all of us.”

 

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Lincoln, Neb., Sep 1, 2016 / 04:11 pm (CNA).- The Diocese of Lincoln held its first “Sacred Music Clinic” Aug. 27 at St. Thomas Aquinas Church on the campus of the University of Nebraska in Lincoln.

The event was sponsored by the diocesan liturgical commission at the suggestion of Bishop James Conley.

The turnout of diocesan musicians – cantors, adult or youth choir directors, singers, organists and other instrumentalists – far exceeded organizers’ expectations. A total of 230 people attended from 59 parishes in the Diocese of Lincoln and two parishes from the Archdiocese of Omaha.

“We were overjoyed with the turnout,” said Father Daniel Rayer, chancellor and chairman of the diocesan liturgical commission. “It far exceeded our expectations. We maxed out the facility so we are thankful to the participants for bearing with cramped spaces.”

He said that several members of the diocesan commission who have attended the annual Catholic Music Association of America colloquium – as Bishop Conley did this summer – wanted to start a smaller version for musicians in the diocese. The goal of the commission is to make this clinic an annual event.

“I think the response of the people indicates that there is a hunger for formation in the sacred liturgy,” Father Rayer said. “The Church offers us direction for beautiful liturgy in her liturgical documents. Our aim is to offer assistance to our musicians to help them implement the Church’s vision for sacred music in the liturgy.  As Bishop Conley reminded us in his homily at Morning Prayer, this implementation will need to take place in ‘small steps’ and in a way that takes into consideration the talents, abilities, and needs of each parish all while aiming for the beauty called for by the Church.

“We want to strive for excellence in the liturgy since this is where we come to worship God and we should give our best to God,” he continued. “This was our first event, so there is much room for us to grow and learn on how we can better help our musicians.”

The clinic, which was open to beginning, intermediate and advanced musicians, included presentations by several experienced educators, including organist Matthew Meloche, director of sacred music at Sts. Simon and Jude Cathedral in Phoenix, and Adam Bartlett, a composer, conductor and teacher of sacred music. Local instructors and directors included Nicholas Lemme, the Latin chant director at Our Lady of Guadalupe Seminary in Denton, and Amy Flamminio, who was recently named choir director at the Cathedral of the Risen Christ in Lincoln, and Jessica Ligon, music teacher at Cathedral School. Father Michael Zimmer, diocesan master of ceremonies, led a breakout session on Church documents pertaining to music and liturgy.

As Father Rayer reiterated in his homily at the closing Mass, “We’re called to sing the Mass, not just to sing at Mass.”

“Chant has really been the Church’s musical tradition for centuries.” Literally practicing what he had preached, Father Rayer chanted the Eucharistic prayer, something he’d been hesitant to do in his priesthood.

“I am not a natural musician,” Father Rayer said, “so I had to listen to audio recordings of it and practice it many times. It was worth the commitment to do that and I plan to sing it at Mass on special feasts in the future. Audio recordings of the priest’s chants of the Roman Missal are all available on the internet. With a little time and practice, most priests should be able to sing the chants proper to them.”

All participants were welcomed to test out the skills they were learning. Breakout sessions focused on different aspects of liturgical music such as chant, organ accompaniment, hymn selection, leading the responsorial psalm at Mass and other pertinent topics. The instructors led music at Mass so that all could participate.

Wayne Ringer attended the conference from St. Mary Parish in Denton, where he is a member of a three-man schola cantorum led by Andrew Vinton. They just started three years ago, but he said attending the conference gave him great hope for the future.

“I could see from the enthusiastic participants in the clinic that a great movement (toward use of chant) is afoot in our diocese. It will still take time to mature, but the seeds have been planted.”

He called the clinic “an awesome opportunity for formation in the rich tradition of sacred music that the Church has asked us to implement in our parishes.”

“I think that many people do not realize,” he explained, “the emphasis that Vatican Council II and the subsequent popes have placed on returning Gregorian chant to ‘pride of place’ in the Mass.” He said he thought the clinic would be a “real force for years to come” toward achieving this goal for the diocese.

“I would encourage anyone in the music ministry to attend next year’s music clinic,” Ringer said, “to gain a deeper love for the Mass and for sacred music. One of the primary ways to evangelize is through beauty, and I think that everyone who participated in Saturday evening’s Mass was overwhelmed by the grace, dignity and solemnity of the liturgy.”

In fact, the night before the clinic began, artist and writer David Clayton delivered a free lecture at the Newman Center on “The Way of Beauty.” He explained how beauty can be the most basic form of evangelization, a detail Katie Dubas also took from the conference.

Dubas, who is director of youth ministry for the parishes of the Grant Deanery, also occasionally serves as a cantor. She said she learned a great deal about the different styles of music and how they are best suited for different occasions.

“I never thought about how some music is best for basic evangelization, some for private devotion and then the sacred music that was designed for the liturgy,” she said. “Gregorian chant has a rich history in the life of the Church and it was good to learn about the history and role it plays in the Church today.”

She got to see firsthand how chant can be brought to the present Church, when she attended a Sunday morning Mass at the Newman Center.

“I was surrounded by college students,” she said. “Most of the Mass used chant, and all of the students around me were joining in song, so that showed me that they have been taught about sacred music and are embracing it wholeheartedly,” she said.

“I do think young people today are open to learning about sacred music and how it was designed to help us have one united voice in response to Jesus’ invitation to be inserted into the mystery of the Trinity.”


This article originally appeared in the Southern Nebraska Register. Republished with permission.

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Denver, Colo., Sep 1, 2016 / 04:54 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- The American reporter who first brought news of Mother Teresa’s work to an international audience still remembers the day in 1966 when he met the nun serving the poor in the slums of Calcutta.

“Certainly she totally deserves to be a saint. In my eyes, she was a saint her entire life,” retired Associated Press reporter Joe McGowan, Jr. told CNA. “She was so humble and yet so pleasant.”

McGowan, 85, was an AP reporter for 42 years who covered wars, revolutions, and earthquakes.

In 1966, he was an AP bureau chief with a huge territory – India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Nepal, Ceylon, and the Maldives Islands.

Trying to dig up more stories, he was speaking with a newspaper editor in Calcutta about anything unusual or ignored.

“He finally said ‘Well, there’s that funny little nun who goes around collecting dying people.’  And I knew I had a story,” said McGowan.

The reporter took a bike taxi over to her home for the dying and spent two days with Mother Teresa.

She was dressed in the local sari, the homespun material common to average or poor Indian women.

“There was nothing pretentious about her at all,” McGowan said.

The nun would walk around Calcutta with a two-wheel cart with the help of two hired men.

“They went around picking up dying people,” the reporter recounted.

“In those days there were not enough [hospital] beds in places like Calcutta. So if you were declared terminally ill, your family had to come and take you home so that there was a bed for somebody else,” he said. “If nobody picked you up, they put you on the sidewalk to die.”

Since 1952, Mother Teresa and her Missionaries of Charity sisters had cared for the abandoned and the dying at their Home for the Dying Destitutes. The building, a former Hindu chapel, was divided into two parts, one for men and one for women.

Conditions were cramped.

“They slept on the floor on crude little mats. It was so crowded they couldn’t even get up and go to the bathroom,” McGowan recounted. “I tried to stay out of the way, these people were crammed in there so tight.”

“Under her outstanding care, some of those people recovered and got up and walked out,” he said.

McGowan said he was “extremely impressed” with her work.

“I think that showed in my writing about her.”

His Associated Press account from March 1966 was the first international news story about her.

McGowan said he didn’t know if he could even explain what motivated her.

“She always wanted to do the Lord’s work, I guess she would say.”

“I’m not Catholic, but obviously she is an amazing woman,” he continued. “She will be sainted in just a few more days. I just have the highest of respect for her, the work that she did, to work there in the slums of Calcutta.”

The Indian city was a rough place in the 1960s.

“Calcutta is a place all unto itself,” McGowan recollected. “I saw a couple of completely naked women walking the streets, their hair all disheveled. They would see a cigarette butt and they would reach over and pick it up and chew it and eat it.  This was the kind of thing you saw in Calcutta in those days. How they are today, I don’t know.”

Another time he saw a group of students waiting and waiting for a streetcar, growing increasingly angry at the delay.

“They were so mad, when the street car arrived they set it on fire. That meant fewer streetcars for the next day.”

In a world like that, McGowan recalled, Mother Teresa was “very, very calm” and “very unpretentious.”

“She was doing all this work, but it was just her life. She wasn’t bragging about it.”

The people she helped reacted with great appreciation.

“Elsewhere they had not received any aid of any kind,” he said. “It was so unusual in an extremely overpopulated place like India for them to get this kind of attention.”

McGowan continued his reporting career and retired to Broomfield, Colo., a suburb of Denver. He told of his experiences and the people he met in his 2012 book From Fidel Castro to Mother Teresa.

“On the one hand, you had Fidel Castro. On the other hand, you had Mother Teresa: this small nun who was doing – I guess you would have to say – miraculous things for people at the bottom of the societal rung,” he said.

The journalist and the nun reunited when she visited Denver in May 1989. She passed him a written message.

“She gave me a card. In her handwriting, it says ‘Love others as Jesus loves you. God bless you. M. Teresa, M.C.’”

McGowan says it’s among his most treasured possessions.

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IMAGE: CNS photo/Tyler Orsburn

By Mark Pattison

WASHINGTON (CNS) ? Not many people know that Blessed Teresa of Kolkata's first visit to the United States was a trip to Las Vegas -- in 1960, when the Strip was still mobbed-up.

She didn't go to cleanse the casinos of their corruption. She went to speak at the convention of the National Council of Catholic Women.

That tidbit is one of an untold number of facts and perspectives that can be gleaned from examining the Mother Teresa Collection that resides within the archives at The Catholic University of America.

The collection has a copy of Mother Teresa's 1979 Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech, autographed by the founder of the Missionaries of Charity herself. There are also two copies of the Marvel Comics illustrated biography of her life, issued in 1983, one year after Marvel successfully published a comic-book biography of St. John Paul II.

There also are, in a burlap bag, 2,000 tiny coins bearing Mother Teresa's likeness struck for the United Nations for its 1975 observance of the Year of the Woman.

Even without the coins, there are an estimated 10,000 items in the collection, according to Shane MacDonald, an archives technician at the university who spent four months organizing and cataloging the materials.

With Mother Teresa's canonization set for Sept. 4, the collection will represent the archives' first collection dedicated to a saint, MacDonald said. While Catholic University has the chairs St. John Paul II used when he celebrated Mass in Washington, it does not represent a detailed collection like that for Blessed Teresa.

Many items came from Eileen Egan, who had worked for Catholic Relief Services, the U.S. bishops' overseas aid and development agency, when it was founded in 1943 as War Relief Services during World War II. As part of her work in Asia, Egan was told of a nun in India who was ministering to the poor.

Egan traveled to Kolkata, then known as Calcutta, in 1955 and met Mother Teresa. She was convinced of the value of the nun's work among the poor in the city's teeming slums and struck up a friendship with her.

The friendship led to a correspondence stretching over four decades. MacDonald, who has read much of the letters from Mother Teresa to Egan that are in the collection -- Egan's part of the correspondence appears lost to history -- said Egan became an advocate for Mother Teresa's ministry. It was Egan, for instance, who convinced the reluctant Macedonian-born nun, a virtual unknown, to travel to Las Vegas to address the NCCW.

MacDonald told Catholic News Service in an Aug. 30 interview that Mother Teresa, who had entered religious life with the Sisters of Loreto, expressed similar unease about returning to Ireland, where she had ministered before the war, for the first time in 30 years because she was uncertain of her reception.

Egan, who routinely obtained travel documents for others because of her work at CRS, also did so for Mother Teresa as she coaxed the nun to travel more to spread her message of love and mercy, MacDonald said. She later wrote a definitive biography of the future saint, "Such A Vision: Mother Teresa, the Spirit, and the Work."

As Mother Teresa's ministry began to captivate the imaginations of people, support organizations for her and the Missionaries of Charity sprang up in the United States, Malta, Germany and elsewhere. Their newsletters are also part of the collection.

So too are seldom-seen photographs of Mother Teresa, some in color but many in black-and-white, as she crisscrossed the world, opening new Missionaries of Charity communities in far-flung countries and speaking before attentive audiences.

Not everything in the Mother Teresa Collection is tucked away in dark temperature-controlled rooms at the University. A sampling of some of the items was put on display at the university's student center prior to the canonization.

Scholars are welcome to view and study the materials. MacDonald said some of the visitors have been high school students working on class projects. "This is one way to make history come alive for them," he said.

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(Vatican Radio)  The program for Pope’s Francis’ visit to the Italian hilltop town of Assisi was released in the Vatican on Thursday. During his one-day visit the Pope will be taking part in the closing of an interreligious World Day of Prayer for Peace, organized by the Community of Sant’Egidio. His latest pilgrimage to Assisi marks the 30th anniversary of the First World Day of Prayer for Peace that St. John Paul convened in the birthplace of St. Francis, back in 1986.

Pope Francis’ presence at the interreligious prayer summit on September 20th will mark his second visit to the birthplace of his namesake in less than two months. 

Listen to the report by Susy Hodges:

Please see details of his programme below:

10.30 Departure from Vatican City’s Helicopter Pad

11.05 Landing at Assisi’s Migaghelli Sports Field near the Basilica of St Mary of the Angels.

Pope Francis will be greeted by Bishop Domenico Sorrentino of Assisi and the local authorities

11.30 Arrival at the Holy Convent of Assisi

The Pope will be greeted by:

Father Mauro Gambetti, Custodian of the Holy Convent, the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, Bartholomew I, a Muslim reprepresentative, Dr Justin Welby, Archbishop of Canterbury, the Syro-Orthodox Patriarch of Antioch, Efrem II, a Jewish representative and the Supreme Head of Tendai Buddhism (Japan)

They then move to the Cloister of Sixtus IV where the representatives of Christian denominations and World Religions are waiting. 

12.00 The Holy Father greets all the representatives one by one.

13.00 Lunch together in the refectory of the Holy Cnvent that also will be attended by several war victims.

15.15 Pope Francis meets individually with the following:

Bartholomew I, a Muslim representative, Archbishop Justin Welby, Patriarch Efrem II and a Jewish representative.

16.00 Prayers for Peace

 ECUMENICAL PRAYER OF CHRISTIANS taking place in different places in the Lower Basilica of St. Francis

17.00 All the participants exit from the Lower Basilica and meet with the Representatives of other religions who have prayed in different places and they move to the podium in the Square.

17.17 CLOSING CEREMONY in St. Francis Square

Greeting by Bishop Domenico Sorrentino.

Messages read by:

A testimony from a victim of war, Patriarch Bartholomew I, a Muslim representative, a Jewish representative, Japanese Buddhist Patriarch, Professor Andrea Riccardi, Founder of the Sant’Egidio Community, address by Pope Francis, Letter appealing for peace that will be handed to children in various countries, a moment of silence for the victims of war, the signing of an Appeal for Peace and the lighting of two candles, exchanging the sign of peace

18.30 Pope Francis leaves by car for the St. Mary of the Angels Heliport.

19.30 Arrival at the Vatican City Heliport.

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(Vatican Radio) Ukraine's President Petro Poroshenko says a new cease-fire between government forces and Russia-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine is holding, after months of clashes which included the deadliest fighting in a year. 

Listen to the report by Stefan Bos:

Poroshenko said in a statement Thursday that his forces had not seen any fighting with Russian-backed separatists in the prevous 12 hours. 

The parties in the conflict, which has claimed more than 9,500 lives, earlier agreed to stop fighting by September 1, which is the first day of school in Ukraine.

Media of pro-Russian rebels confirmed the reports. 

Yet the road towards a new ceasefire hasn't been easy. Poroshenko said in separate remarks that more than a dozen Ukrainian soldiers had been killed and nearly a hundred wounded in what he called Russian shelling in recent weeks. 

ANGRY AT PUTIN

He accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of seeking to destabilize Ukraine, which just celebrated its 25th anniversary of independence from the Soviet Union. 

"The purpose of [President] Putin is attempt to destabilize the situation in Ukraine. They don't need neither Donetsk [or] Luhansk [regions]," he said. 

"They need the whole Ukraine [that] should be part of the of the Russian empire. And they want to destabilize the global security situation in the world."  
      
Moscow has denied wrongdoing.  

Government forces and Russia-backed separatists agreed back in 2015 to stop fighting and pull back heavy weaponry. Yet the cease-fire failed, however, and international monitors had said the fighting had intensified in the past month to nearly a full-blown war.

The conflict began in eastern Ukraine in April 2014, shortly after Russia annexed Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula following the ouster of Ukraine's pro-Russian president Viktor Yanukovych.

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The Venezuelan opposition coalition is mustering and coordinating supporters for a giant rally which they`re ominously dubbing....Takeover of Caracas.  

Listen to the report by James Blears: 

Electoral Authorities in Venezuela conclude a Referendum obliging a fresh Presidential Election can`t be done by January 10th.  

So even if the overall groundswell vote rumbled against Nicolas Maduro, his Vice President would step in his shoes and limp to the end of the proscribed term, due to expire in 2019. 

Weary of playing by pre-ordained rules, the Opposition are today taking to the streets of the Capitol en masse.  The Government describes this as an obvious attempted Coup.  

President Maduro is vowing an overwhelming response with counter rallies,  and to also respond with riot police. 

Many shops and businesses are shuttered and shut, fearing a showdown.  Opposition  Leader Henrique Capriles is calling for a measured and peaceful protest, as many pause and hold their breath. 

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