Catholic News 2

Vatican City, Aug 31, 2016 / 04:00 am (CNA/EWTN News).- On Wednesday the Vatican announced Pope Francis’ decision to form a new mega-dicastery merging the Vatican offices for Justice and Peace, Migrants, charity and healthcare.

Dedicated to “Promoting Integral Human Development,” the new department – also called a dicastery – was announced in an Aug. 31 communique from the Vatican.

The announcement was accompanied by the Motu Proprio “Humanam progressionem,” meaning “Human Development,” by which Pope Francis formally established the dicastery “Promoting Integral Human Development.”

Set to take effect Jan. 1, 2017, the new congregation will take on the tasks of the Pontifical Councils for Justice and Peace, Migrants and Itinerant Peoples, Cor Unum, and Healthcare Workers.

It will be headed by Cardinal Peter Turkson, who since March 2013 has served as president of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace.

Francis’ decision to establish the new dicastery is part of his ongoing reform of the Roman Curia, and is a fruit of meetings with his Council of Cardinals, who advise him on matters of Church governance and reform.

During their Sept. 14-16, 2015, meeting at the Vatican, the Council of Cardinals submitted a proposal to the Pope to establish two new mega-dicasteries, one dedicated to Laity, Family and Life, and one dedicated to Justice, Peace and Charity.

The new congregation for Laity, Family and Life was officially announced by Francis during the October 2015 Synod of Bishops on the Family, and is headed by Bishop Kevin Farrell of Dallas. It will officially go into effect tomorrow, Sept. 1.

In addition to taking on the tasks of the pontifical councils for the laity and the family, the new department for Laity, Family and Life will also assume the competencies of the Pontifical Academy for Life.

While the original name of the new congregation for Integral Human Development was initially expected to include the elements of the councils it will merge, the final choice is a reflection of Pope Francis’ own personal style and is reminiscent of themes he has spoken of frequently since his election.

In his Motu Proprio “Humanam progressionem,” signed Aug. 17, Pope Francis stressed that the Church is called to promote the integral development of the human person in the light of the Gospel, which “takes place by attending to the inestimable goods of justice, peace, and the care of creation.”

He approved the statutes for the new dicastery “ad experimentum,” explaining that it will be competent “particularly in issues regarding migrants, those in need, the sick, the excluded and marginalized, the imprisoned and the unemployed, as well as victims of armed conflict, natural disasters, and all forms of slavery and torture.”

As of Jan. 1, 2017, the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, the Pontifical Council Cor Unum, the Pontifical Council for the Pastoral Care of Migrants and Itinerant People, and the Pontifical Council for Health Care Workers “will cease exercising their functions,” and the new mega-dicastery will take effect.

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London, England, Aug 31, 2016 / 05:33 am (CNA/EWTN News).- A relative of Princess Diana, Prince William and Prince Harry has moved one step closer to sainthood.

According to reports from the British news source Catholic Herald, a 20-year investigation into the life and works of Father Ignatius Spencer has recently been approved by Vatican historians.

The positio, or document used in the process to declare someone “venerable,” has officially been passed to the theologians of the Vatican Congregation for the Causes of Sainthood.

If sufficient “evidence of sanctity” is found, they will appeal to Pope Francis to declare the Passionist priest “venerable,” the second of four major steps on the path to canonization as a saint in the Catholic Church.

Fr. Ignatius Spencer was born George Spencer in 1799 and was an Anglican clergyman in the area of Althorp, Northamptonshire, where Lady Diana was buried after she was killed in a Paris car crash in August 1997.

Fr. Spencer converted to Roman Catholicism at the age of 31, scandalizing some in the Victorian society.

The Spencer family, mostly members of the Church of England, were the fifth wealthiest family in the country at the time.

Early on in his priesthood, Fr. Spencer was attracted to the active contemplative community of the Passionists. He became known for his ecumenical efforts in pursuit of “unity in truth,” the same quest for truth that led him to the Catholic faith.

According to Fr. John Kearns, the British Passionist Provincial, Fr. Spencer also maintained his love for cricket, calling it “my mania.”  

He was also known for his work with the poor, particularly with Irish immigrants. He once said that he wished he could die like Jesus - “in a ditch, unseen and unknown.” The words ended up being prophetic, because Fr. Spencer died alone after having a seizure on a country lane near Edinburgh, Scotland. His body is entombed in the Church of St Anne and Blessed Dominic in St Helens, Merseyside.

Fr. Spencer is the great-great-great uncle of the Princess Diana, as well as the great uncle of Winston Churchill.

Once Fr. Spencer is declared venerable, the next step in his canonization process would be beatification, which would require evidence of a miracle that occurs through the intercession.

Bishop Mark Davies of Shrewsbury told the Catholic Herald that Fr. Spencer’s life is a “heroic and often neglected” chapter of Catholicism in England.

“In facing the challenge of secularism, Fr Ignatius and his fellow Passionists – Blessed Dominic Barberi and Mother Elizabeth Prout – remind us of the missionary energy and purpose which marked ‘the second spring’ of the Catholic Church in England.”

 

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Bogotá, Colombia, Aug 31, 2016 / 12:04 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Christian mercy has the power to break down the barriers of a changing world where people have forgotten the presence of God, Archbishop Jose H. Gómez of Los Angeles has said.

“Mercy is missionary. It is driven by a universal love for humanity, by desire for the salvation and liberation of the human person,” he said Aug. 30. “Mercy aims to draw men and women out of their solitude and into an encounter of brotherhood and sisterhood in fellowship with the living God.”

Mercy helps transform one’s outlook to “to see the world through the merciful eyes of Christ,” the archbishop continued.

“When mercy becomes the fundamental outlook and practice of the Christian disciple, we begin to see the outlines of an entirely new culture. A culture of encounter rooted in compassion – especially for the poor and dispossessed, for the lonely and those left discarded on the ‘peripheries’,” he said, using a common image of Pope Francis.

Archbishop Gómez spoke on the last day of the Celebration of the Extraordinary Jubilee of Mercy held in Bogota, Colombia Aug. 27-30. The event drew Catholic cardinals, bishops, and other leaders from all the Americas and received a special video message from Pope Francis.

The event was jointly organized by the Pontifical Commission for Latin America and the Latin American Episcopal Council.

Archbishop Gómez said news media wrongly depicted Pope Francis’ emphasis on mercy as a break with preceding Popes.

“Pope Francis did not ‘invent’ mercy,” he added. Rather, mercy has been at the heart of the Christian proclamation from the start.

“In his dying and rising, Jesus Christ revealed the truth that God is a Father who is rich in mercy,” the archbishop said.

The Pope’s image of the Church as a field hospital suggests that God’s mercy is “the medicine needed by a humanity that is deeply wounded by modernity.”

“Mercy is healing medicine – not only for the physical wounds inflicted by the many wars, injustices and slaveries of body and mind we find in modern society,” the archbishop continued. “Mercy also speaks to the existential woundedness of people living in a culture where the memory of God is dimming, where people are no longer able to feel God’s presence and activity in the world.”

For Archbishop Gómez, the Pope’s vision is that of a priest who has spent much time in the confessional, as both a confessor and a penitent. He suggested that Pope Francis’ approach was anticipated in St. John Paul II’s 1980 encyclical Dives in Misericordia, or “Rich in Mercy.”

Christians must enter into the reality of people who are broken and wounded, who feel abandoned by the Church, or who have grown indifferent to God, the archbishop advised.

In the U.S., he said, “there is a growing coldness of heart, a harsh and fearful rhetoric in our media and politics, a growing inability of ordinary people to empathize with the humanity of others.”

He noted the cruel treatment of refugees and undocumented migrants, debates over social programs for the poor and the homeless, and severe punishments and poor conditions for criminals.

Archbishop Gómez suggested secularization and de-Christianization are the dominant realities in the Americas and throughout the West. Wondering whether the Church has come to terms with these threats to Christian institutions and souls, he said they are the “great test” for the Church.

“I speak from my perspective in the United States. But I think all of us can agree that the elites who govern and shape the direction of our societies are deeply secularized and hostile to religion, religious values and traditional culture,” he said.

Where there is no violent persecution, elites use the “raw power of law and public policy” to impose their views and to deny freedoms of those who disagree with them.

The archbishop said Catholicism faces “a powerful and false ‘humanism’” that purports to describe human happiness and flourishing under hedonistic, materialistic assumptions, adding that these assumptions are “completely opposed” to revealed truths of Christianity.

The witness of works of mercy is even more important in a society that denies the reality of God and the relevance of faith.

“In a post-Christian society, mercy – lived through works of love – becomes the best ‘proof’ for God’s presence and power,” he said. “By our love and tenderness, by our joy, we attract others to the cause of our joy, to the person of Jesus Christ. By our love and tenderness, we make God’s own mercy a reality that our neighbors can believe in and give their lives to.”

Archbishop Gómez cited the example of St. Junipero Serra as a true missionary of mercy.

“Like the first missionaries to this continent, we need to proclaim the beautiful reality of God’s compassion and tenderness,” he said. “The glad tidings of God’s complete mercy and love — and his desire that everyone might find the salvation he wants for us.”

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